Ingrid Mattson – Respect Graduate School Conference 10212017
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AI: Transcript ©
Welcome everybody to Respect Graduate School. We're happy
to have our inaugural academic conference,
Islam in America Civic and Religious Youth Identities.
We're very thankful that you joined us.
You'll be seeing more of me. My name
is Ara Khan. But for now I'm going
to turn the microphone over to our president,
Rabbi Sotomayor Daras. Please help me welcome him.
In the name of God, the most compassionate,
the most merciful.
Good morning. Good morning. We are very glad
to have you here today. You are, you
are a blessing and you are very special
people for us. Thank you.
Assumed guests,
students,
faculty, scholars,
spiritual leaders from various community faiths
and community members.
I greet you with greetings of peace and
ask God to bless each of you.
May God bless our gathering with his godly
acceptance.
Thank you
all for joining us
on this momentous occasion.
Uzbek Bayardash School is very excited to present
its inaugural academic conference,
Islam in America,
civic and religious youth identities.
We are exceedingly
we are exceedingly grateful
to mister Asayedd and Marjulgi from Redding, Pennsylvania
for his generous
sponsorship
for the conference.
Definitely, without his support, none of this would
have been a, possible.
And I would also like to take this
friend and colleague of Respect Graduate School who
a friend and colleague of Respect Graduate School,
who committed herself wholeheartedly
to the success of this conference.
The Spring Branch School has made its home
here in Lehigh Valley.
We offer a master of arts degree in
Islamic studies.
Some of you may know,
may not be aware of this, but there
are very
few institutions of higher learning in the United
States that offer Islamic Studies.
And that makes our task even all more
important
and pressing.
RSPEC's vision is to share the Yahya Valley
and our nation
as a whole
by educating
women and men for scholarship,
especially in Islamic studies.
We want our graduates to go forward and
provide leadership in Muslim communities and in social
goals,
developing knowledge,
and putting into practice with excellence
locally as well as globally.
Our mission is to gain an institution where
students and faculty engage in research,
teaching,
learning,
service, with an emphasis on Islamic studies
for the public good.
Respect builds meaningful bridges with other local faith
based
educational and artistic communities,
providing students with networking
skills and opportunities
for mutually beneficial
connections.
Given our mission and vision,
our pedagogical
practice here at Rispeck Graduate School
focuses on the academic pursuit of excellence,
academic integrity,
and respect for the intellectual endeavors of others,
cultural and social diversity,
and the ability to contribute to such.
It is in this way that we have
imagined and organized the Islamic America
Conference.
The theme of our inaugural conference is Islam
in America's civic and religious youth identities.
With this theme, we hope to look forward
into the terrain of upcoming generation of American
Muslims
and be able to offer some analysis of
the major
theoretical questions and historical problems
that Islam in America
will most likely
encounter.
History matters, of course.
And so you will find that
several of the papers look back to the
lessons in history before
beginning to articulate
prescriptions for the future.
Ideas also matter.
And so other papers deal with the philosophical
implications of our time
in light of Islamic principles and norms.
Our status report as a community matters
too. And several papers you hear today and
tomorrow will give an account of where American
Muslims
find ourselves
in our religious identities
as well as our civic fulfillments.
We were surprised by the high quality of
papers we received when we put our
call for papers last spring.
And we're thankful to God for him brought
us all together
to think through these issues.
As we hope you will listen carefully and
critically,
today and tomorrow,
you will find a robust robust
selection of papers
spanning several timely and important
areas.
The presenters have all worked very hard in
their
respective fields
and it is our honor as an institution
of higher education
to receive their work.
The presenters
represent diverse backgrounds,
specializations,
and methodologies.
They have traveled from near and far to
be here today.
Some have come from across the country,
across international boundary,
and even across the ocean.
The Speck Bradford School thanks you and asks
God to increase you in knowledge and increase
your rewards, inshallah.
With that,
it is truly my honor and pleasure to
introduce you our keynote speakership
for Islam and America
Civic and Religious Youth Identities,
doctor Ingrid Monson.
Doctor Madsen is the London
and Minister Community Chair in Islamic Studies at
Quran University College at the University of Western
Ontario,
Canada.
She was educated in Canada and the United
States
earning a PhD from the University of Chicago
in 1999.
From 1998
to 2012,
she was professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard
Seminary in Connecticut,
where she developed and directed the 1st accredited
graduate program
for Muslim chaplains in America.
It was at Harvard also that she served
as
director of the McDonald Center For the Study
of Islam
and Christian Muslim Relationships.
From 2,001
to 2,010,
doctor Madison served as vice president,
then as president of the Islamic Society of
North America,
the first woman to serve in either position.
Her writings, both academic and public,
focus primarily on the Quran and its interpretation,
Islamic Theological Ethics and Interfaith
Relations.
Her book, The Story of the Quran,
Its History and Place in Muslim Life,
which was
recently
reprinted in the second edition,
is an academic bestseller
and was chosen by the US National Endowment
for the Humanities for Inclusion in its Beijing
Cultures program.
There are, of course, many more contributions
I could enumerate that decorate
doctor Madsen's
long list of accomplishments.
But instead, I prefer mention why we are
honored
that doctor Madsen accepted
our invitation to deliver
our inaugural
academic conference keynote address.
Doctor Madsen
is a Western academic
and at the same time,
a committed Muslim thinker.
As such, she enjoys the unique positionality
and responsibility
of performing a sort of dual translation
between worlds
and histories of histories of meaning.
For the Muslim community, she is a teacher
of liberal academic practices,
processes, and achievements.
For Western Academia,
she's a religious,
practicing Muslim woman,
obligated by her own admission to our beautiful
faith.
And this is no small challenge
As our own faculty here at Respect Graduate
School will tell you, to be a committed
Muslim and a Western academic
presents a unique set of puzzles and tests.
Doctor Madsen is a shining example of how
to navigate these puzzles.
Let me give you one example from her
work, the story of the Quran.
In this work, Doctor. Madsen provides a general
academic audience with clarity and accessibility,
recent and researched
insights about the
Quran's significance to Muslim life.
About popular and high culture institutions from Islamic
history and holistic frameworks
for assessing
legal rulings.
She highlights the relationship between religious knowledge,
good character,
and the community's trust,
between textual worth and practice among the living
community.
Doctor Masan reiterate
the Muslim maxim of the importance of
approaching the Quran with presence of heart.
To quote from her,
she says,
it is not just knowledge but exemplary
behavior that in the minds of the faithful
gives any individual the authority to speak on
behalf of the divine.
This is particularly true in Islam,
which despite its development of sophisticated
institutions
of religious education and formation,
never embraced a system of ordination.
We have seen that the rigid and destructive
literalism of the Hawarij in the 1st century
of Islam
demonstrated an important lesson lesson to the Muslim
community,
which is that a person could master the
text of the Quran
while at the same time,
acting in complete opposition to its spirit.
Knowledge
without good character
does not confer much authority,
end quote.
Engaging dual communities of meaning,
and I don't mean to suggest that these
are mutually exclusive community communities. They're not.
Speaking to general Muslim and Western academic audiences,
Doctor. Madsen states that
while Muslims should have full confidence in the
power of
God to guide us to correct understandings,
nonetheless,
our declarations
about true meanings
in the Koran
should at times be tempered.
When faced with imperatives to make judgments and
take action,
as
undeniably
Muslims,
American Muslims are today,
you must remember that God knows the best
and the better.
At the same time that she offers much
needed and joiners to Muslims, some of her
claims
must come as surprising
or unwelcome
interjections to her Western academic colleagues.
For example, doctor Madison's
reiteration of the normative Muslim
claims
that epistemological
certainty is a fruit of special struggle
or that
meaning exists
only in the relation to ultimate meaning, which
resides only with God.
These positions may be an upfront to secular
foundations of a liberal academic
knowledge system or epistemology,
but they represent a faithful articulation
and extension of the Muslim testimony of faith
that there is no God but God, and
Muhammad
is the messenger, peace be upon him.
For this reason,
we are honored to bring you Doctor Ingrid
Madsen
because her approach is a great lesson and
example for American
Muslims.
In closing, we are delighted and humbled that
you have joined us
for this landmark in our institution's growth
With Islam in America's civic and religious youth
identities,
we hope to set into motion scholarly discussions
across institutions,
methodologies,
academic disciplines,
ethnic communities, and faith groups.
Best wishes to you all, and please
join me in welcoming
to our keynote speaker, doctor, Indran Mans.
Good morning. Good morning.
Assalamu alaikum.
A little bit of feedback.
We might need to turn this down a
little bit.
Well, I begin my,
talk in the name of God, the merciful,
the compassionate.
I am
so grateful to be here today,
to come to respect graduate school.
I came here yesterday for the first time,
and
as I said last night, I'm just so
incredibly impressed.
We know that the prophet Muhammad, may God's
peace and blessings be upon him, said
in Allah
God has
ordained
excellence in everything.
Is doing something
in the best way possible.
And just walking into this building and walking
into the,
seeing the beauty in every aspect of this
school.
I'm so impressed. All I can think of
is this is Iqsaan.
And even the introduction,
I've never had such a detailed,
well researched introduction. I mean, usually people kind
of pull a biography off the Internet and
it's outdated. Like, I haven't taught there for
5 years or something.
And,
brothers. So they
and
everything's done so well. So thank you so
much for that, and we'll reward you.
I want to also recognize before we begin,
my good friend Rubina Tureen, who really is
the reason I'm here.
You know, full disclosure,
mostly I'm here because I wanted to see
her.
So, whenever she has an invitation, oh, oh,
great. I could see with Rubina again, but
it also meant that I could come here
and and learn about respect and the mission
and vision, and I'm very impressed.
So
so this morning,
what I want to do is I I
read about the,
theme of the conference.
I looked at the papers that are being
presented,
and I really wanna focus
on this,
I I feel like, excuse me, I feel
like I'm getting a lot of feedback in
this mic.
Yep. It's I can hear you. Do you
have a few minutes left?
Alright. So we'll try to adjust that. I'm
very distractible,
so
I hear feedback.
I can't talk because there's feedback.
So
I was I was very moved
by the focus
on
on young people and their development, and I
particularly picked up a line from the call
to papers and the description of this conference
about the need
for tools for healthy self development
and,
constructive
social civic contributions.
I'm being I I'm very interested in our
community and
the psycho
spiritual health of our community.
It's why I was so interested in chaplaincy
and one of the reasons why
it was important to me,
in developing the chaplaincy program and having this
be a,
mainstream
model of religious leadership and service to our
community.
I don't know how you feel,
but I feel that,
our community
overall is in a state of great anxiety
and tension.
Does that raise your hand if you feel
that we seem to be particularly
stressed
at
this
time.
It's I mean, you know, it it's not
like
it's the worst period in human history.
We know that
that throughout history, there always are challenges,
political,
military,
you know, all sorts of different things that
happen,
but I feel that,
there are so many
negative
impacts
and stresses
on us
at this time.
I mean, in American society generally, really,
You know, it's not just Muslims. I mean,
American society is is really facing a lot
of stresses from so many forces.
And then for the Muslim community,
with all of the, of course, Islamophobia,
racism,
all of the
major conflicts going on in the world
We're we are we are really suffering from
seeing the suffering of others and being so
limited in what we can do.
So,
when we look at our our children and
our young people,
we see the impacts, and we know that
there have been many studies on the mental
health
of of young people today
and how stressed they feel, how much anxiety
is just, you know,
anxiety levels are off the roof, and
just it is really
something that we have to take seriously. And
so today,
I'm I'm what I want to do is
I wanna point to a few areas
where we need to do more work
to help
support our community,
and that work needs to be supported by
research.
It means we need study. It means we
need research.
It means we need to develop,
methods and ways and habits and customs and
culture
that will
help build a more spiritually
and mentally resilient community.
And so,
you know, one of my great goals in
life is to make myself redundant.
My dream is always just to finally be
able to go away and live back in
the woods in in where I live in
Canada, and the
the land of my
my ancestors.
There's a place where I go for at
least a few weeks a year, sometimes more
than that. Okay. I wanna go back there,
so I'm just giving you all this work
to do. I'm giving you the ideas. I
want you to take it take these ideas
on.
When I when I created a midwife training
program, when I worked with Afghan refugees when
the Soviet Union Soviet Union still existed, and
the Soviets were occupying
Afghanistan.
I wasn't a midwife, but I saw the
need for that, and I felt that that
that
skill base and knowledge base would really serve
the people in that particular context. And so
I created a midwife training program, and I'm
not a chaplain,
but I felt
that the
that chaplains were the people who could really
help elevate the level of spiritual and religious
leadership in our community
and also provide the services that are so
needed.
That's why I teach, you know, the students.
You just tell the students they're just gonna
take over the academic positions.
So, so that's what I'm here to do
today is really just throw out some some
ideas
and hope that, others will
pick them up and institutionalize
them and research them.
And I'm gonna begin with something that is
really,
you know, what I'm talking about are issues
of
of of the deepest importance
to human beings. Our spiritual life,
our our mental health,
our relationships.
And
to do that and I'm going to perhaps
make you feel a little uncomfortable at the
beginning,
but these are serious issues,
And
one of
the problems
about
an academic environment
is the constant
necessity
that the this this convention
of constantly
taking yourself out
of
the of the issue.
Right? Acting as if
these are subjects to be studied,
and we are the
objective
observers,
the neutral observers,
and that leads to all sorts of problems.
I mean, where we don't acknowledge our own
subjectivities,
but it also means that we create
when we're talking about
an institution that's a seminary or theology
or, you know, pastoral care,
We're talking about human beings, and we're in
that. We're in that. And so it's important
that we become I I
I refuse
to take myself out of the equation.
I refuse to pretend
that it has nothing to do with me
because it has everything to do with me,
and unless we we acknowledge that we are
not just scholars, that we're human beings who
are embedded in these systems
of knowledge and power,
then, we're never gonna be able to find
truly the solutions.
So
to begin with thinking about tools
for healthy self development,
I'll tell you about an experience I had
this summer.
My
my mother, my 85 year old mother who
was really a pillar of my life, one
of the reasons why I moved back to
Canada.
We've gone for a cottage and we've
spent
a week cleaning,
cutting branches. I mean, we have a really
back to nature kind of place. No indoor
plumbing. I mean, this is so we went
to the island. We did all of this
work. My mother's extremely vigorous,
healthy, hard worker, you know, I was exhausted
just keeping up with her.
And,
came home 2 days later, she's going for
a walk with her friend,
had a little weakness in her leg,
and
thought to herself, oh, boy. Maybe I'm having
a little stroke or something. Walked into the
emergency room. They scanned her, and they found
that she
had cancer metastasized throughout her whole body.
I mean, from her brain to her adrenal
gland glands and everywhere in between,
they told us there's nothing we can do.
She said, well, I wanna, you know, I
wanna
die at home. So she went home. I
moved in with her.
My brothers and sisters also gathered around. I
come from a big family.
Most of us
moved into the house,
and, thank God Canada has universal health care.
I mean, we didn't have to think about
that.
Beautiful palliative care program.
Doctor came to the house. A nurse came
to the house every day.
Personal support workers were sent to cover
to come to the house every day for
most of the time to support us.
I mean, all of this is is just
too I mean, you don't even think about
it. It's there, that support for you.
And and she died in 7 weeks. She
went from full vitality
in 7 weeks,
where she passed away. Now my mother,
was a Roman Catholic,
and we we used to have a lot
of fun with that. I used to take
my mom on trips with me.
Once a year, I'd pick a a place
that she would like to travel to.
And a few years ago, I took her
to the Catholic Muslim Forum in Rome, and
she met pope Francis.
Just the, I mean, the thrill of her
life,
beauty you know, she got the Vatican takes
beautiful pictures,
framed it, put it up in the kitchen.
The first thing that anyone would see when
they walk in the house. It's just beautiful.
And what I loved about that experience and
and traveling with her, because normally what we
would do, I'd be invited to,
bible some communities in Europe
or interfaith, you know, things and there'd be
on one side of the table, the Christians
and the other side, the Muslims.
And we would always come in together as
a team, you know,
that crossing that boundary, we were mother and
daughter, a Catholic and a Muslim,
loving each other, being together, and, you know,
where do we sit? Which side of the
table?
And that's very much the life,
that we have as Muslims
in America.
I mean, many of us have interfaith families,
and if not interfaith families, we have,
you know, certainly very good friends
and neighbors
and Kohl's colleagues who are,
were from other faith traditions,
and that relationship
is
is is meaningful to us. I always think
about,
faith communities like like like families. We have
our, you know, nuclear
family of faith and then our extended family
of faith.
And certainly when you're with your nuclear family,
you spend you have more obligations, you spend
more time, but you also have a relationship
with your extended family, your cousins and your
aunts and uncles and others.
And so how do we how do we
make those connections more meaningful, not just dialogue,
not just working together,
but really
sanctifying them.
What does do those relationships
mean in an ultimate sense?
Why did God put us here together in
an ultimate sense?
And and and to make those meaningful.
So as my mother,
you know, became
weaker
and,
the last
day, we felt she was near the end,
and we brought the the priest had come
by
and had given her last rights,
and,
you know, we had said everything we could
say, and she was at the stage of
of not being able to communicate anymore although
it was still responsive.
And in that final period, I I felt
this rush of,
you know, we wanted to communicate to her,
but in a way that would allow her
to to pass out of this life.
You know, when we said
the Christian prayers, and I read Quran and
I, you know, put my hand on her
and I I read from,
I read Ayatul Kursi
and I read from
Suratul Nour
about God being the light of the heavens
and the earth,
but I felt it was still you know,
it's that state where she still needed something.
She needed something to carry her out.
And I I I I felt like there
had to be something more. And at that
time, I remember
from my childhood this beautiful song
that's,
the nuns who taught me used to sing.
A beautiful little it's kind of a round.
Peace is flowing like a river. Anyone know
that song? Yes. Yes. Peace
is flowing like a
wind turbine,
flowing
of you
and me, flowing
into the
den,
setting
all cat lifts free,
peace
and love and joy.
So I sang this song to her. It
just it flowed out of me,
and within minutes,
she
gave her last breath.
And my brothers and sisters, they said that.
That's what she needed.
She needed to be summoned out of this
life.
And how many other times
I have felt
the need for that expression,
for a sanctified
expression.
Not just prayers. We have our prayers.
Giving back to God what God gave us,
Quran recitation,
prayers that the prophet gave us, but our
own our own expression
of our human state,
not just as an individual expression but as
a connection.
And so every time I've lost someone,
I found myself singing, and I'm not a
good singer. Right? It's that's not the point.
It's not about performance,
it's about expression.
And it's occurred to me that we are
really impoverished
as an American Muslim community, and that we
don't even have a common songbook.
Is there an American
Muslim songbook?
From heaven.
Now
in most
Muslim majority cultures,
there are songs,
there are rituals,
there are rites of passage
that are that have grown out of that
land, out of that language,
out of those experiences,
out of those traditions.
When we come here to the melting pot
that is America,
we may still continue some of those in
our family or with those who also share
that culture or that language,
but when we come together
in our mixture,
a lot of that falls away because we,
you know, we don't wanna impose one language
on the people who don't speak that or
our culture on them. And so these things
kind of start to fall away.
And
at the same time, we have that's that's
a kind of natural reason you could say
or social reason, contextual
American
Islam,
for so long has has had the negative
effects of of Wahhabi ideology.
I'm just just gonna call it what it
is.
You know, we've had a few decades where
where Mojave Publishing houses
have sent boxes of free literature
to mosque and Islamic Center and Schools across
America
making everything Haram. Like, everything's prohibited.
Music is prohibited. Celebration is prohibited. Everything is
so it's it's a kind of cultural genocide.
Islamic
cultural genocide
of these things. So when I first became
Muslim, I heard, you know, people would tell
me, oh, no. Music's Haram. This is Haram.
Woah. What like, what kind of
sad sad religion are you talking about? That's
not their that's not the extent of my
experience when I first met Senegalese
Muslims in France. That's they they didn't think
music was prohibited
and joy and celebration and community.
So I think that our community has gotten
to the point where we have you know,
we realize that that is,
a school of thought,
a marginal school of thought, not representative
of the majority of Islamic tradition,
and we've had scholars who have talked about
the importance of building culture.
Scholars like doctor Sherman Jackson.
Scholars like doctor Ahmed Farooq Abdullah.
You know, if you've never read his articles,
Islam and the Cultural Imperative
or, Innovation and Creativity in Islam,
you know, I highly recommend them. Read them
to to
understand,
the
the the support and the evidence
of the need
for culture
and how that
how that has emerged over time in Islamic
societies.
So we have that, but unfortunately, I would
say that in many cases, what I've seen,
the response
to doctor Aalna's teachings and others
has been primarily
the emergence of what is necessary, but not
sufficient
professional artists.
So
professional
singers,
comedians,
actors,
performance,
which is great, and we need to have
masters of these arts,
but it's not sufficient
because the the the the rest of the
community, we remain spectators.
Mhmm. We remain spectators,
not very often participants.
So
we need to have
forms of expression
and community,
and rituals
that bind us together,
and that
convey
and promote
the our our feelings, our expression, our hopes,
our dreams
together.
Not to erase our individuality,
but to add on to that.
And we live in America.
We have to remember
how
powerful
the commodification
of culture
is as a force in America.
Herbert Marcusek, who was a Marxist art critic,
wrote about how capitalism
appropriates
all forms of resistance.
So if you think about think about, for
example,
what's that Netflix show, The Get Down? Anyone
watch it? Okay. So the seventies,
the era of where graffiti and tagging emerged
as an art form in New York.
Right?
But first it emerged as a form of
resistance,
as a form of expression,
as a form of,
challenging
the invisibility
of the people who live
in those neighborhoods,
and of responding to the force and power
that was exerting on them. But what happened?
What happened
is that
our collectors
started to bring canvases
into galleries and said, you know, why don't
you spray paint on this, And then commodified
this art
and sold it to Wall Street investors
who now have those pieces
stored
stored
in
hidden
places away somewhere in New York and New
Jersey
for
its value.
What's its value?
For them, it's monetary value,
not for the value of what it says
and what it expresses
and how it brings community. So it's just
sucked up. It's taken.
It's made into something that is a commodity
bought and sold and stored away.
We live in
a time when everything
Mohammed Fallow,
my friend, my colleague who I studied with
at the University of Chicago who is professor
of law at the University of Toronto School
of Law.
Many of you would have read,
Falwell's articles
on liberalism
and,
civil society,
democracy, etcetera.
But Muhammad Falaal is also his his legal
social media
after the news
of the, scandal involving
a popular,
Internet teacher in America,
and that person
suing another
Muslim teacher and preacher
for
for,
what is the word,
for
violating
an agreement
to,
use the products,
knowledge products that were created within this institution.
Right?
Now
it's quite astounding. When you look at early
books of Islamic law, there are vigorous debates
about whether someone who teaches the Quran can
take a payment
because the fear that religion becomes commodified.
The fear that religious knowledge,
right, is used for worldly enrichment.
So they're very careful about that. You know,
how can we make sure that the people
who teach and preach,
have a
are supported,
can make a living, and their families can
be supported without religion becoming another commodity.
And it's one of the reasons why last
night, for those of you who were here,
we talked a bit we talked about the
about the religious endowments
and the importance of having
an endowment
that gives
payment
to those individuals, but
it's not their product.
Right?
They're serving in that institution.
Now Monofalo
makes another statement. He says that he believes
that the proliferation
of these for profit institutes,
I mean, many people don't realize that many
of these Islamic institutes, learning centers online are
not not for profit.
They are for profit.
That these for profit institutes,
the reason that they have emerged, one of
the reasons is because
many of our Islamic centers
and mosques
simply are not paying
teachers any amount as well.
Not only are they not paying them, but
they're well, but not providing
benefits,
health care,
retirement
fund, etcetera. What people need in modern life
to live?
They can't make a living,
and so they've developed
Many have developed these this form
of teaching
that allows them to support their families. Nothing
necessarily wrong with that except in the slippery
slope of commodification
to the point where someone could say, to
someone else who's teaching about Islam,
our hand commentary and other things,
that they have violated
terms of agreement
that there's proprietary
knowledge
of this
religious learning business.
So this is something I don't know anyone
who is studying this issue
at any of our
graduate schools or seminaries,
the commodification
of religion, religious expression, cultural
assignment, cultural expression.
This is a key issue because it is
so pernicious.
I mean, we only need to
remember,
you know, follow the money is everything.
Think about Imam Abu Hanifa. What was his
response
when he was asked,
why don't you write a book on warah?
Warah means,
means
piety,
humility,
asceticism.
He said, I wrote a book
about
finance and economy instead.
Because
so much of our our morality and our
ethics really has to do with how we
use our money and where we get our
money.
And so this is a key issue that
is until now really underdeveloped,
and it is a problem for all of
us. I mean, even chairs in Islamic studies
at universities.
I feel that I am so blessed
because my chair in Islamic studies at Huron
University College, the University of Western Ontario is
called the London and Windsor Community Chair in
Islamic Studies.
Why? Because the people from the City of
London and the City of Windsor, Ontario,
Muslims and their friends, their interfaith friends collected
funds to establish this chair.
Most of my colleagues, their chairs are called
the,
you know, billionaire
so and so chair in in Islamic studies
or the
dictator
of
this country chair. Dictator of this country
chair.
So,
you know,
I'm not saying that they shouldn't take that
money. I'm not saying they shouldn't take,
but but but
but how do we,
you know, is there a potential
for having a problem about evaluating
the
economic
and political structures within which we're teaching
if
this is where
our money comes from, where our insurance come
from. So it's really a a big dilemma.
So I would love to see
that if we are going to,
you know, be
if we want to be
people who are really contributing to the welfare
of this society and to the world,
we need to care about these
things. You know, one of my one of
my little
aphorisms
or or or sayings that I
that
that I put in the ethical toolbox when
I teach Islamic ethics and we're gathering it
is that charity
is no substitute for justice.
Charity is no substitute for justice.
So when we think about young people who
are going out and we're encouraging them to
do good work, social justice work, soup kitchens,
you know, food banks,
all,
free health care
care clinics, all of these kinds of things.
We have to remember that charity is no
substitute for justice. Charity
Alright? And that's true about zakat as well.
You may have heard people say, well, if
everyone paid their zakat, there would be no,
you know, injustice,
no poverty in the world. That's not true.
It's simply not true
because zakat
is to fill in the gaps.
There are also, and there always has been,
in Islamic law, rules
and laws to limit
the unjust acquisition of wealth,
to pay the worker.
Pay the worker before the sweat of his
brow dries. Right?
Labor laws,
pay the worker
before the sweat of his brow.
So you've got a, you know, a a
place where,
you know,
dispensing charity all over the world, but the
workers aren't even being paid
on time or a fair wage.
I mean, at the time when there was
slavery
when there was slavery,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, told
Abdulla,
feed
him what you eat,
clothe him
what you wear,
and don't give him too much work. And
if you give him too much work,
help him with the work.
Okay.
Same food, same clothes.
Right. A living wage,
and there's no honor or dishonor in any
kind of work. If you're required to help
with the work, it means you're not above.
You know, there's no class. There's no manual,
like, this the throughout Islamic history, we had
the emergence of terms like the masses
and the elite.
Wow. Where where is that in the Quran?
But it is consistent
in our books of law and politics.
We need to deconstruct that.
If we're really
going to be contributing to the welfare of
society,
it means that we have to
have a critical eye
on our tradition as well.
Not all bad, not all good,
you know, where injustices
we correct it.
If the beloved companions of the prophet,
peace be upon him, and they, you know,
they they struggled so much,
they were they were our our best examples
for their struggle, but they weren't perfect, and
when they weren't, they corrected each other.
When they did something wrong, when they fell
into racism
or injustice or misogyny, how often did Aisha,
make God's peace and blessings be upon her,
correct men when they said things that were
misogynistic?
She corrected them.
You know, we need to have that same
critique. So we take from our tradition.
We take from our tradition and we learn
so much from it, but we don't fetishize
it.
It's not what we worship.
It's we draw our strengths from,
but we don't worship it.
So if I return
from this issue of commodification,
which is so important, and our I mean,
young people see our hypocrisy.
They see our hypocrisy.
So if we don't solve these issues, it's
gonna be critical.
But we take that back to what I
began with with the community and expression
of the community's
values, joys, and pain.
When we think about culture and the creation
of culture,
and
rights of passage,
and
spirituality.
Again,
the,
you know, unfortunate
commercial
of everything that's current
that happens in today's world.
I mean,
when
we talk about the commercialization
of Christmas, shall we talk about the commercialization
of Eid?
You know, we're so we're so desperate
to have our children like
aid, enjoy it, and not feel that it's
a it's a boring holiday compared to Christmas
that we think the solution is to is
to shower them with stuff.
Right.
Doesn't work,
because stuff is not meaning.
What human beings
want is meaning and purpose in their life.
Not
stuff. Stuff makes you happy for a minute.
The sugar high, the sugar rush, you know,
you get a chocolate bar, it's delicious,
then you're
These things are are that too. So
so what do we need? We need really
meaningful
community
expressions
of our
values,
joy,
pain.
We need a culture that is embedded in
place,
season,
memory, and life cycles.
If we think about, you know, just take
one,
rite of passage
in traditional Islamic society.
It used to be that a boy's circumcision,
right, was the occasion for a tremendous
rite of passage.
It was used to be done at an
older age, not as a child, not as
a baby.
So if we think about we think about
about in the Ottoman Empire, one of the
one of the things that that the elite
often did was to have
to sponsor these gigantic
public circumcision celebrations. So if, like, their son
at 7 years old was having this circumcision,
they would sponsor it for all of the
boys that age. They would get they would
get clothes.
There would be a few days of picnics
and families coming together.
Really beautiful. I mean, not just stuff, but
community. Right?
The idea that you're no longer a child,
you're going to the next rite of passage.
Now I think it's probably very good that
we we don't circumcise boys at that age
anymore, that it happens at a at a
younger age,
with, you know, anesthetic and whatever else happens,
but where's the right passage
for for a boy to become now,
a young adult
and a girl to become a young woman
and on. They they feel it. I mean,
our kids,
they see they see, you know how many
Muslim children have come home and said, I
want a bar mitzvah after going to their
friend's bar mitzvah. Well, that's it's it wasn't
only about the party and the stuff, but
it's now I'm being recognized as someone with
some responsibility.
So,
for our children
to feel
that they're part of us, that they're necessary
to us, that they're necessary to our future,
that their lives have meaning.
We need to be able to come together
and really
think about how in this land in America,
we can develop
those celebrations,
those rights of passage,
those cultural markers
in a way that has meaning.
We need more happiness, more
much seriousness. I look at our young people
very often, I see that.
Where is the opportunity
for their,
expressing
themselves? And when I talk to people, I
hear things like, oh, yes.
You know,
well, one time the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, was with his companions,
and they were having fun with each other.
After they ate watermelon, they were throwing, like,
watermelon rinds at each other.
Okay. Yes. Next. What's next? I mean, there's
a kind of, like, stop. Well, it's okay.
You can have some
fun. Yeah. But tell me how it's done
in community together.
I mean, you know, that telling me that
that they threw watermelon rinds at each other
to have fun is not the answer. We're
talking about research and institution and developments and
practices
that need to happen.
I think about how, when I went to
New Zealand
a few years ago,
there's a wonderful woman,
named Alia who's American. She's actually originally from
Michigan.
She's lived in New Zealand for a long
time, and one of the things,
she found
is that,
New Zealand had accepted a lot of refugees
from Samoa.
And she was working volunteering with the community.
Now if you think about the kind of
typical New Zealander, and you think about the
typical Somalian,
just the
the I mean, the physical differences, when I
met her, you know, all these girls were
were small couple of inches smaller than me,
you know, in a land of
kind of tall people,
and
and
there's that discomfort. Where am I? Beautiful people,
of course, but what am I supposed to
do here? And as young people,
what do young people do? They go to
clubs, they go to bars, they have parties,
and boyfriend and girlfriend, all of these things.
They couldn't do that. So what could they
do?
They they there were not things that they
could find to do, and so with the
sense of insularity,
of sadness, of being afraid,
sort of walking around worried,
you know, on the street. Is someone gonna
say something to sound a phobic or look
at them in a strange way?
So Aliyah said, I need to I need
to ground
these these
children in this land.
She did something beautiful. She developed a 3
year leadership program
for for girls.
Young women between ages 14
17, a 3 year commitment that's all about
leadership
focused on
outdoor leadership.
They learned
how to
kayak.
They learned how to camp. They learned how
to start a fire. They learned how to
climb a mountain.
They learned the names of all of the
animals and the plants.
They were rappelling
down mountainsides.
And all the time, of course, as they're
together, they pray when it's the time for
prayer. They fast when it's the time for
fast
to fast, etcetera.
If you looked just at at
the posture
of these young women who went through this
program
compared to the others, it's amazing.
Standing straight,
heads up,
strong, like, there's a physical strength.
If you saw one of those
young women walking down the street, didn't matter
if she was 4 foot 11, you were
like, wow. That's not you know, there was
strength radiating from that person.
Strength that came from physical strength but also
from confidence
of being grounded in the land. We are
not just souls, we're embodied souls.
We're people in bodies,
and the the importance of place is is
critical
when you think about the creation story in
the Quran.
Quran. What is it that
makes
Sayna Adam
able to be the Khalifa
of God on earth,
the steward
of the earth
by the command of God.
It is by knowing the names
of things. Being taught the names.
So
to be in this environment,
and and we live in age of great
displacement,
migration,
you know,
so many refugees, so many immigrants, but also
all of us are are migrating constantly. Going
away to go to school,
to work somewhere else, moving, moving, moving. How
do we become grounded in that place?
To know the names
of
the trees, the birds, the mountains, the rivers,
you know where you are.
Right? Otherwise,
people are just,
you
know, where am I? And of course, that
leads to an identity crisis,
but to be grounded in the land is
important, and I would like to see more
study in embodiment
and the importance of place and location,
and being connected
as one of God's creations
with other the rest of creation. We're not
a part of it. We are we are
a part of it.
And I think that is that leads me
into the next thing
which is
it's something that we've had in the past
but has been really lost
in modern America, and it's one of the
reasons why
when we think about what Islam is as
a tradition, it's very helpful
to us think about different ways of categorizing
Islam and what we do. So remember when
we first founded the Nowaway Foundation,
having conversations with doctor Anil Bhutbalov. We used
to speak about,
you know, I I I remember saying to
him
that I I don't
really love the idea of the Abrahamic traditions.
I understand the benefit of it as a
way of
of kind of bringing
the idea of community of faith,
but I don't I don't particularly love it
because it
it, 1, reasserts a a patriarchal
framework
where Islam is it's about our our relationship
to God, but just call it the Abrahamic
traditions is a real reassertion of a patriarchal
framework
that,
is
that excludes
women's role,
at least conceptually
as a frame.
We think about Hajj, I mean, it it
it's it's the partnership. Mecca was founded
by our mother, Hadrian.
Right?
It was her submission to God, her choice
to submit to God, her choice to stay
there,
and her,
the miracle that came to her,
the angel came to her
and to her child and spoke to her.
So
and we imitate her in our pilgrimage.
But I understand there's a benefit to some
extent, but sometimes we have to, you know,
after we had a lot of conversations about
this and we went on our trip to
China, doctor Ullman wrote this paper,
beyond the Abrahamic
box,
and looked at how
Islam in China
has had this relationship
with,
the Confucius tradition
and expressed itself
in terms that were
comprehensible
to the,
people who who were grounded in the Confucius
tradition.
So that shows us another way. And the
reason why we went on this Na Mui
Foundation trips is really to try to get
ideas, to simulate
ideas for how,
you know, what are all the different options
for being Muslims in America? How do we
create this culture?
And so we saw that that outreach with
Confucianism.
We saw the women's mosques,
an ancient tradition
in China, and and the women imams of
China. It was really mind blowing
to look at that tradition. It gave us
ideas for back here.
But I, you know, I'm an Americanized
Canadian.
So I'm Canadian. I lived in America for
over 20 years, went back to Canada.
And I'll tell you one thing in Canada,
the most important social issue in Canada, the
most important political issue,
and the people who are really leading Canada
forward in terms of social justice are the
First Nations people of Canada. The indigenous or
aboriginal people of Canada
are much more present and visible than in
America.
Much more present and visible. And I'll tell
you, I I think this is an area
where
American Muslims really need to start doing their
history.
Go to Washington DC. Go to the Museum
of the American Indian.
See all of the broken treaties.
All of the broken treaties and think about
what kind of ethical obligation that
that
lays upon us who are people of the
Quran, the Quran that emphasizes again and again
and again, fulfill your covenants.
Fulfill your covenants.
We are the beneficiaries. We are now you
know, we can't say, well, I just came
here. Yeah. I came here, but I'm getting
the benefits of this country, so I also
now must bear the historical burdens
of what's been done in the name of
citizenship and this nation.
Those covenants and treaties need to be fulfilled.
But the beautiful thing about what we find
in the Muslim community about having closer relationships
with the indigenous people of Canada
is to really
illuminate again for us the importance,
forgotten importance often of land, place,
water
in our tradition,
and the fact
that we believe
that there is
life in all things. It's very interesting.
You know, at at Hartford Seminary, I was
one of the editors of the Muslim
World Journal.
The first English language journal
devoted to the study of Islam and Krishna
relations in the United States.
And
it was founded
by,
by
missionaries who were really keen on
evangelizing to the Muslim world, and so we
know about the notorious
notorious
Samuel Zviemer and his attacks
on on Muslims.
But what's very interesting is if you look
at some of the I looked up some
of the early articles is how
he makes an analogy
between Muslim beliefs
and the beliefs of indigenous people in the
Americas
calling them animus.
Animus. Why?
Because of the belief,
the belief that
all living things
have
spirit
or a relationship with God.
What do we what do we say as
Muslims? All living things are Muslim
too. They have their
their fitra, their their,
nature that is implanted in God, and have
their communities, and have their
ways of worshiping God.
And so this was lifted up by Zweymer
as as an animist belief
like the indigenous people.
And what happened in modernity is that so
many Muslims were so eager to fit into
the enlightenment
view of modernity.
They were embarrassed by things that were labeled
superstition
by the enlightenment,
reform tradition in particular,
that a lot of things that that really
uplifted
our place
as creations of God among
other creatures of God was left to the
wayside.
And it's time to lift those up again,
because if we wanna talk about young people
in America and
about civic engagement,
perhaps there's no issue more important
than saving our environment.
Amen.
Saving us. Saving our earth.
God's earth.
This is God's earth.
The whole earth has been made a masjid
for you,
but what if it's polluted?
How are we to make if our water
is filled with toxic things?
I mean, the basic,
you know,
connecting
our rituals
with the environmental movement really means paying attention.
What is the first thing that's taught in
a book of FIP is how to identify
whether water is pure or not. We live
in a modern era where just like, oh,
turn on the tap and make a loop.
No. You gotta think about it.
We really gotta think about it, about what
it means, what obligation there is for us
to work on this so that now we
won't have
a bifurcation
between
Islamic
issues
and environmental issues or social justice issues. These
are all 1, and these are our issues,
and this is what we need in our
civic engagement, in our social justice,
in the way we raise our children
is integration.
Meaningful integration, and it is there. It's present.
It's right in front of us.
I mean, I can't know where to pray
unless I
know where I am in the world.
Ground yourself in the place. Where is the
sun? Where is where am I in the
world?
What about this water?
If you were going to be making,
making
evolution in Flint, Michigan
2 years ago,
is that water even valid for your evolution?
Full of
toxic toxic things. So it's not just a
social justice issue for others. It is at
the core
of of Muslims even being able to fulfill
our most basic obligation.
So
we need, you know, having relationships
with the indigenous people of this land is
necessary
in order for us not to be in
an ethical violation of
spiritual practice
and our worldview
the reality of the fact that we are
we have a a not just a brotherhood
of humanity, but a brotherhood of created things,
and and to bring that back.
And my final
section,
I'd like to talk about the necessity
of
cognitive science
and understanding the human mind and how the
human mind works.
It is impossible to be an ethical, faithful
person without understanding
how the human mind works.
And I don't see a lot of I
suppose that in
in some of our seminaries that
some of this is assumed
maybe that
in the undergraduate
education, people might take, you know, basic psychology
course, but I don't think we should
we should really make those kind of assumptions.
But if we look at
you know, the source of of some of
the most significant
injustices in our society, we think we look
at see things like
implicit bias,
in group preference,
framing,
cognitive framing.
What does this mean? It means that when
we walk through the world, we never see
people
for who they are.
We we see them
through
our
our cognitive
frames
that have been created
through
experience,
through language,
through socialization,
through media representation,
etcetera.
And what that means and we I mean,
certainly as Muslims, we know that. Right? We
know that because
when we, you know, encounter someone,
we know that they they
they can't say, oh, I don't know anything
about Muslim.
Because
we are swimming in an atmosphere
filled with stereotypes and biases about Muslims.
And so that's why
we get those
strange questions.
Sister, last night,
you mentioned some of those those questions that
you get as a Muslim,
you know, that you have to have some
patience with.
Oh, you know, why you have to wear
that or you don't have to wear that
or,
what do you think about that terrorist
attack?
Right? So so it shows we have experienced
that, that that we're not when we encounter
people, it's not just a blank slate. We've
been shaped, and shaped by things that are
much older than that.
You know, if you look at I I
studied as an undergraduate. One of my areas
of expertise was art history.
Well, look at, you know, look at the
Muslim in our history
in western art
or song or literature.
How How about Dante for a start? I
mean, there is a long tradition,
right, that is shaping impressions that most people,
good people are just just
they're, you know, they don't even know that
they have. We all have that too.
Racism
is
a pervasive
reality of our world.
It is a pervasive
reality of America.
It is a problem. It does not you
can't just say, well, I'm not a racist.
You cannot be a racist
thinking you're not a racist and still have
a lot of bias
that you are even aware of, and this
is the one of the things that the
Quran tells us is that we have to
know ourselves.
You know, we can't just be walking through
the world, you know, all groggy and thingy.
It's okay. No. We have to analyze and
know ourselves. We have to study ourselves,
and we have to become aware of our
biases. We all have them.
We all have those biases.
How do they work?
How are they formed? How do we deconstruct
them? How do we overcome them to the
extent that we can? And if we can't
overcome them, then like a person who needs
some kind of disability accommodation,
restructure
our institutions
to make up for that fact. I mean,
to some extent, we're all
disabled
by our cognitive biases.
And the only way
to get rid of it is not to
deny it and say and make it just
a moral issue. It is a it is
a issue of formation
that will, you know, try to form in
a different way, but it's it it it
can't happen without
a patriarchy.
And it's really interesting to me when I
founded the chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary, when
I was first asked to come to Hartford
Seminary
to establish a leadership program for all sons.
And they said, you know, something like an
imam program. I said, okay.
And I I I thought about it and
studied it for about 2 years and talked
to people
about what would be needed to really achieve
the goal that I wanted of having a
more responsible,
well trained leadership who was present where Wilson's
work
in society.
And one of the things I said is
it has to I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna run any program that excludes women.
I'm I'm it has to be whatever program
we have has to be equally open to
male
and female leadership.
What what what's been interesting to me over
the years as I've seen the chaplains graduate
and emerge and take positions
is
how difficult
without finding
new language it is
for women
chaplains
who are equally trained
often have more training, have more skills
to earn the same
esteem as a religious leadership leader as the
male chaplain,
and how the term chaplain itself
keeps getting dropped for men and they're called
imam.
So so many of our chap male chaplains
are called imam so and so. You know,
even after 6 months of training, suddenly they're
an imam.
And some woman who has been, you know,
serving in prison chaplaincy for 30 years is
sister so and so.
It's very interesting because these titles,
if you look at classical Islamic literature,
women had titles Sheikha,
Imama,
Faqihha.
Right?
Aleema. But in contemporary
America,
the context of American religious leadership
has exerted itself in a certain way, and
the idea of the Imam as the prayer
leader in the mosque is so strong
that it it's become impossible
to talk about women
Imams.
You know?
Imam, it simply means leader.
Doesn't mean that you have to give them
pride a hootba or lead a mixed congregation.
It means leader. Imam al Hanifa. He wasn't
the current leader in a mosque. He was
an imam
in fiqh, right, in law.
So we need to this is,
and this is one thing that another thing
that we need to take note of. Our
young people have no patience with patriarchy,
you know,
anymore.
And we see that. We see that for
the, you know, look at Hindemecke's side entrance
block.
Look at the emergence of women's mosques.
Look at the Unmasked Movement,
this is an issue that is of urgent
importance
for our community.
I
it is my belief that every mosque should
have a male and a female
spiritual leader.
I have no problem if they have
different,
different responsibilities.
Let let the let the Imam give the
Khuba and lead the mixed congregational prayer.
Let the female imam
give religious
lessons
and teachings and spiritual guidance and support to
both men and women. Whatever whatever is, both
men and
women.
Whatever whatever it
is or let the male emem only counsel
men and the female emem can just counsel
women. Then we get rid of some of
these problems we have of blurred lines,
ethical, professional, ethical violations that we've seen,
secret marriages,
etcetera.
It's not you know, these issues are not
gonna be solved just by saying the right
thing.
This is a structural problem.
If you have women
leaders
who are working
on an equal footing with male imams,
I bet you're gonna have a lot less
secret marriages.
If you don't know what I mean, you
can go and,
read Sheikha Zaynah Bansary's
article,
articles that you can find them. Zaydah Ansari,
who's a scholar in residence at
Institute in Knoxville, Tennessee.
May God preserve her and bless her brilliant
scholar, brilliant teacher,
who who wrote a a few articles about
this issue.
So how do we do it? Again, I'm,
you know,
it's something that we we need some creativity,
we need some trial and error, but we
also need a commitment from the community
to have
paid positions for women religious leaders,
whatever form that is.
Otherwise,
things are really going to,
continue to fall apart.
Finally, this is the last thing I'll say
and then we have some time for discussion.
You've been very patient. I know this has
been a long presentation.
I began this talk,
you know, mentioning how I I feel there's
a there's a lot of stress in our
community.
I don't think that's gonna go away.
You know, from this current administration
to white supremacy, to Islamophobia,
to,
you know, the floods of refugees,
to,
you know, we just look at that. I
mean, it would be enough to simply look
at the line of people,
fleeing Myanmar
into Bangladesh
and their heart broken.
Just
tragedy after tragedy.
I
I believe that it's because
we
are do not pay enough attention
to how we're feeling.
That we don't have enough support in our
communities
for discussing those feelings,
those tension, those stress, those sadness,
not just individual counseling, but really being together
and and mourning together,
and
and talking about how how it affects us
that we have this,
tension that builds, builds, builds, builds, builds.
And if any of you how many of
you have studied,
the theory of the scapegoat by Rene Girard?
It's very I think it's really important for
us to think about
because,
you know, I'm not an expert in this
theory, but from what I understand,
what happens is that, you know, the theory
is that in any community,
tensions
emerge over time, and they build up.
And and the scapegoat is a way to
kind of pour all of that tension
onto,
right,
onto something
that that then provides relief.
It it is a kind of purification
of the of the community. It's we've gotten
rid
of all of this
fracture,
anger,
conflict, stress, and it's all placed on the
scapegoat
and now we could be back together and
feel a sense of harmony and community and
and and sincerity.
I think because we don't have good mechanisms
of dealing with our internal tensions
that we what we're seeing recently
is a persistent
emergence
of a scapegoating mechanism.
Think about over the past 3 years in
American Islam, how
one individual or another
who may have
made a mistake,
said something wrong,
or had a,
you know, had an itchy head, had a
decided that there was a different
tactic
or way to approach a subject.
Think about,
should Muslims go to the White House for
a need? Right now you remember how many
of you remember that controversy? Okay.
And what we see is that what may
be may be a difference of a legitimate
difference of opinion about political tactics and and
perspective suddenly explodes into the political
attack on people on their sincerity and attack
on people and their
sincerity and
their this issue becomes a litmus test for
right or wrong.
Brother Suleiman,
read something from my book at the beginning
about the Huwadage. This was the methodology of
the Huwadage in the first century. They made
one issue,
the litmus test for whether you're sincere or
not.
Right. For those of you who know the
history of the Huwadage.
And if that if people didn't agree with
them about that issue,
they said, you have no sincerity. You are
not truly a believer. And, of course, they
went on and and
and did a great acts of violence against
those people.
We don't have people killing each other, but
they're killing their spirits on social media.
I mean, where where you have an issue
like, you know, the White House has thought,
and it becomes
just an opportunity for the release of all
of this tension and anger. You know, we
can't do much about the state of the
world. We can't do much about this administration.
We protest and do things, but we can't
really change it. But here, we can all
be reunited
as we are righteous and that person is
unrighteous.
And just dump on that person and grind
them down and just feel this,
finally,
I have
some kind of, you know, purity,
and and we all agree on that.
You know, this social justice warrior
phenomenon. So we need some more work
on social psychology,
on these dynamics,
on
how to relieve
built up tension,
on
why these things come out of control get
out of control. We need to study on
them on these issues.
And we need to become self aware
because
those kind of conflicts are are are demoralizing
people. It's just too much conflict
on your side. I'm just walking away from
it. Like, I I don't need more of
this in my life.
Life's hard enough. I don't need more of
this in my life.
So
again, I'm not an expert in it.
Hoping some of you are or or will
become experts in this.
So these are just a few of my
humble suggestions
for some of the issues we need to
deal with in the sun in America,
and, thank you for your attention.
We'll, I'll stop it here. We'll and then
we can have the opportunity for a little
discussion. Thank you, Simon.