Khalid Latif – MultiFaith Solidarity 20 Years Since 9 11
AI: Summary ©
The conversation covers the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals, including loneliness, loneliness, and loneliness in personal and political lives. The importance of community engagement and self care is emphasized, as well as the need for individuals to be prepared for unexpected events and the need for individuals to be a part of the digital age. The conversation also touches on the negative impact of hate speech and the need for acceptance and change in faith and culture. The speakers emphasize the importance of creating a "cross-the-ship" approach to one's life and building in a way that is process driven and allows for the best work.
AI: Summary ©
Hello, everyone.
Thanks so much for joining us. My name
is Nina Fernando. I am the executive director
here at Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign, and I
wanna give a shout out to Cassandra Lawrence
from our team who serves as our communications
and community engagement manager and who is leading
the tech here in the back end of
Zoom right now.
And and also wanna give a shout out
to Usma Usma Sabir, our our development and
outreach specialist who reconnected us with Imam Khaled
Latif, who we'll hear from shortly.
So for those of you who don't know,
Shoulder to Shoulder is a national multi faith
coalition based campaign
of 34 religious denominations
around 60 faith based and interfaith community organizations
and thousands of individual people who are committed
to addressing the problem of anti Muslim discrimination
in the United States.
And we advance our vision by directly engaging
faith leaders in the United States to be
strategic partners in countering discrimination and violence against
Muslims
by connecting, equipping, and mobilizing faith communities.
And since the pandemic,
and particularly since Shoulder to Shoulder marked our
10 year anniversary last year,
we've been hosting a series of public conversations
to feature leaders who are doing good work
in different capacities
and utilizing different strategies and approaches to transform
our society.
And we're here today and grateful to be
joined by Imam Khalid Latif,
who is the university chaplain for New York
University and the executive director of the Islamic
Center at NYU.
He was appointed the 1st Muslim chaplain at
NYU in 2005,
and he was also appointed the 1st Muslim
chaplain at Princeton University in 2006.
And and he writes, you know, spending a
year commuting between the two institutions, he decided
to commit full time at NYU,
the Islamic Center Center there,
and his position was officially institutionalized
in the spring of 2007
where he established the first ever Muslim student
center
at an institution higher education in the United
States.
Imam Latif,
has not only managed to solidify the basis
of a strong Muslim community at NYU
that seeks to emphasize inclusiveness
and understanding of others without compromise,
but has also worked tireless tirelessly to foster
dialogue
with people of other faiths in order to
clarify misconceptions
and encourage mutual education.
So you can read his full bio on
the event page, and we're so grateful to
hear from him today to talk about Multifaith
solidarity,
20 years since 911.
Because as you know, on Saturday, we will
mark the 20th commemoration of 911.
20 years since.
So
before we dive into that specifically,
I wanna open it up by noting, you
know, it occurred to me when learning about
you, Imaan Shahid,
through your bio and witnessing your leadership in
different capacities.
You've been the first of a at a
lot of things. You know, the first Muslim
chaplain at different institutions, for example. Can you
can you tell us what it's like to
pave your own way in your work and
and life in general, and what does that
look and feel like to do something that
hasn't been done before? And we'd just love
to hear from you. You know, what mistakes
have you made? What has been exciting about
it, and and what have you learned from
that?
Yeah. Well, first off, just thank you so
much for having me, inviting me to be
a part of this conversation.
It's it's probably been a while since I,
was the first of
any kind of position.
I started working as a chaplain
in 2005. As you mentioned, we're now 16
years later.
But as best as I can, I think
the excitement of being a part of something
new, the ability to
kinda create
and help set precedent was all there?
But I think the realities of being the
minority
within spaces
that,
weren't conventionally built
to necessarily
provide entry points for people in my background
were also things that became very apparent.
There was a religious
scholar who I was quite close to, and
when he found out I was going down
this route,
said to me that, you know, this is
something that you would be perfect for,
but just be ready. It's going to be
a very lonely experience.
I couldn't really understand what that meant,
and
how that would necessarily
manifest itself.
But I soon found myself quite often
being
not just the first Muslim chaplain,
but the only Muslim
in many rooms, in many meetings, in many
conversations.
And
I think
years later,
I was asked by someone,
you know, how is it that you communicate
so effectively
and that your oratory skills are what they
are, etcetera?
And when I reflected on it,
I said, likely,
a part of it had to deal with
the fact that when I would walk into
a room,
I was more scrutinized than most people that
were my counterparts,
that I had to speak a certain way.
I had to dress a certain way, and
not just in terms of religious symbols and
things to that extent. But if there was
any opportunity for someone to be critical of
me
based off of my faith,
based off of my age,
based off of how the default assumption was
that I was not meant to be in
this place
because I was the first one to hold
certain roles.
There wasn't room to make mistakes,
in ways. And that could have a lot
of,
burdensome kind of qualities to it, but depending
on the perspective that you bring. And so
I think early on, what I recognized was
the need to employ,
very solid self care strategies
and to understand that my ability to
provide care to other individuals, to other hearts,
necessitated that I was taking care of my
own heart.
And I had a mindfulness of who I
was in my entirety,
to bear a reflection
on my own wellness as best as I
could.
Because there was a ton of people who
were super happy that I was in the
roles that I was in, and they wanted
to build, and they wanted to do things
and continue to have deep relationships with.
But there's also a lot of people who
felt as if it wasn't okay for me
to actually be in the place that I
was in. And as I'm saying this, I
remember very uniquely,
I worked at Princeton University as their first
Muslim chaplain.
And when I got on the ground there,
I was 24,
and I was meeting people like Cornell West,
who was then at Princeton,
and Toni Morrison, who was then at Princeton,
people who are, you know, from the founders
of Amazon dotcom and,
you know, someone who is integral to the
resurgence of China's economy.
And I said to myself, what am I
doing here?
And a week later,
I started to get letters from alumni of
Princeton University
that said things to the effect of,
you know, we don't want Muslims at Princeton.
We don't want your Sharia law at Princeton.
Someone like you should not ever be at
a place like this. And when I went
to talk to my supervisors, the heads of
religious life at Princeton University,
their explanation to me was simultaneous
to my hiring.
The head of religious life, the dean of
the chapel at Princeton,
a man by the name of Tom Breitendahl,
he was leaving to become the archbishop of
Southern Ohio.
And
they said that these alumni were upset
because they thought I was hired to be
in his role and not the role I
was in. And I said, well, that's not
any better. You know, why couldn't I be
the dean of the chapel simply because I'm
Muslim?
And those kind of experiences, I think, can
create now that loneliness,
but also create an opportunity
for resilience
and a paradigm shift
that if you don't know why you're doing
what you're doing, it can be very easy
to get inundated
and make compromise on places that you shouldn't
have to make compromise on.
Thank you for sharing that. There's so much
there that I would love to continue exploring
with you and and, you know, pieces that
I relate to personally, you know,
in in many ways.
But to to honor the the the conversation,
the topic that we wanna explore, especially as
we're in the lead up,
to just days away from the 20th commemoration
of 911.
And in many ways, this is connected to
what you just shared.
You know, you talk about your experiences after
911 and in in different capacities,
how it was a pivotal moment for you
in shaping how you chose to show up
in the world. And I think that probably
relates to to you stepping into these positions,
taking on the first,
in many ways in these different institutions.
Tell us more about how 911 has impacted
you personally. How
how have the new waves of Islamophobia
post 911 challenged or complicated your understanding of
self and faith and spirituality?
You know, so if we go back 20
years in the immediate,
I would say there was a deep impact.
I was an undergrad at New York University
on September 11, 2001,
and I can remember the day quite vividly
where I was running late to class, as
was part of just my normal routine. And
I got into class,
that morning, and my professor wasn't teaching.
My classmates were huddled in corners of the
room, kinda whispering to one another.
And after a few minutes, a security guard
came to the front of the door, said,
please gather all your belongings. We have to
evacuate the building.
A plane is flown into the World Trade
Center.
We emptied out into the center of our
campus,
which is a park called Washington Square Park.
And
where it was fully empty
just
some short time before,
there's now about 10 or 12,000 of my
classmates standing in the park. There's a lot
of noise and a lot of commotion,
and all of a sudden we were hit
with this very heavy silence
as we
watched the second plane fly into the towers.
And it felt like
there was just a huge amount of time
that had passed. In reality, it was just
seconds.
And as instantaneously
as it hit us, it it shattered into
pieces, and we all went in different directions.
I walked to my dorm,
and when I got onto the floor that
my room was on,
in one of the lounges, I could hear
some of my dorm mates saying, we need
to gather up all the Muslims and send
them out of the country so that things
like this don't happen anymore. And nobody had
even known who were the perpetrators of the
attack at that time. And when they saw
that I could hear them, they got silent
and they said
nothing.
And I said, you don't have to stop
talking on my account. You know, feel free
to continue if you believe it. They made
us then evacuate that building again.
And as we were going down the stairs,
a young woman tried to push me down
the staircase.
And when I turned around and looked at
her face to face,
she had a lot of anger apparent on
the face.
We were arguably the closest Muslim community to
the ground zero site at that time.
And once
the university reopened,
we had media from all over the world
that was putting microphones in our faces, wanting
to know what do Muslims think. And in
that immediacy, I think,
there was the development now of a couple
of things in retrospect.
1,
this huge transition
into
individual Muslims now losing their identity
and having to represent
an entire community of almost 2,000,000,000 people around
the world.
Everything that we said was now not
me as a specific speaking to MTV
or BBC or CNN,
but I was just the character of a
Muslim, as my peers were. And we're only
18, 19 years old.
We were made to speak on panels,
attend programmes,
and this was being done as
I was attending funerals for people of my
faith and other walks of life, Huay Nu,
who died on that day.
Federal law enforcement started to make themselves present
both,
in a very,
not so subtle manner, but attempting to be
subtle. And then also very, like, blatantly saying
that we're here.
And we're trying to reconcile all of this,
in the midst of
what
I think is the second thing that was
developing there.
This construct of, you know, what it means
to be a Muslim American.
There's very few demographics
that get to just call themselves American
without having to hyphenate an identity
or qualify their Americanness.
And I don't think the rhetoric was such
that it said
we are all American,
but it set forth on a trajectory that
creates a good bad framework.
And this is what constitutes now somebody who's
a good Muslim
versus a bad Muslim. The same way you
would have a good black person or a
bad black person. You know, somebody who is
a good minority or a bad minority,
but the standards of what's acceptable
are coming from now a majority privileged demographic.
When you're 18 years old and you're, like,
in the middle of all of it, you
don't really have any idea what's going on.
From the standpoint of multi faith work, one
of my mentors who passed away a few
years ago is a Catholic priest who served
as a chaplain at NYU when I was
an undergrad,
and I maintained a relationship with him until
he passed away.
And at a time when no one was
making real space or providing
advisement,
he opened up his church to us as
Muslim students
and said, you will always have a place
to pray here.
It was only
years later
where I was walking with him on the
street
that we came upon one of his regular
parishioners, and he said,
you know, why haven't I seen you in
church for some time?
And the person said, what church? And he
said, what do you mean? This large church.
He said, that's not a church. That's a
mosque.
And I found out even as more time
passed that he had individuals who refused to
donate to the church,
people who would send him death threats and
hate mail simply because he was providing space
to us to pray. And it gave me
a real standard
of
what it means
to actually
be good,
You know, to embrace pluralism,
not in a tokenized manner or to have
performative
allyship,
but in a way that you simply do
what's right because it's the right thing to
do. And you serve the underserved and underprivileged,
by leveraging your own power and privilege.
As years kinda moved forward,
you know, the construct
of a narrative rooted in fear was consistently
imposed
on myself as well as members of my
community,
that
had us now be a demographic that you
were suspect of before
you,
gave space to.
In 2010,
the year started pretty interestingly,
in that
we, at our Islamic Centre at New York
University, were working on
a program with the White House.
And
we had a public lecture with John Brennan,
who was then the head of intelligence for
the Obama administration.
And we
had a
more private meeting prior to with different Muslim
leaders from parts of the United States.
And in the course of the public remarks,
John Brennan alludes to a letter that I
had written to president Obama.
And he said, Imam Latif, the president received
your letter,
and,
you know, he read it, etcetera.
He believes you to be an exemplary
American
citizen and things like that.
A week and a half later was the
first time the FBI visited me in my
home.
And they knocked on the door.
A friend of mine was staying over, and
he said the FBI is here. I alerted
New York University.
I live in a university building.
And
now I sat down with them in my
living room.
Public safety officer intervened
saying that you shouldn't be here and sent
them on their way.
The next day,
they met me at my car and they
said,
we want you to come with us to
a federal building. And so there's no way
I'm coming with you to a federal building.
They followed me to my office where we
sat and talked for a much lengthier period
of time.
It became clear that their questions were more
so now about me as a specific person.
And I said to them eventually, you know,
what is it that you want from me?
And they said, you're just too good to
be true. Know that we're watching you.
And the impact that that has now on
me on a very, kind of, psychological level
That I'm, again, just in my twenties.
I have no precedent to build off of
in my role. I'm the first one in
it. So there's not so much mentorship.
There's not so many people who can relate
to this directly.
So I'm hesitant in picking up my phone
because I don't know who's listening on the
other end, and I don't want them to
engage my friends. I hesitate in going to
see my family because I don't know who's
following me and constantly looking over my shoulder.
Towards the end of that year, on the
9th anniversary of the 911 attacks,
I'm now a Muslim chaplain also for the
NYPD
at this time. And by rank, I'm given
the rank of an inspector.
And one of the things that we would
do as a police chaplain is attend the
ground zero memorial service
on September 11th itself.
We would start out having breakfast at police
headquarters with family members who lost loved ones
on that day, and would then go to
the ceremony and participate.
And in 2010, on 9th anniversary of the
attacks, it was the first time I had
an interaction with our current president, Joe Biden,
who was then the vice president, as he
was attending the memorial service.
It was a little bit more closed off
because construction was still being done on
the current memorial structure that's there.
And so they had a stage where the
ceremony took place in front of the stage,
area for VIPs, city officials, electives, etcetera.
Behind them, a place for the press to
view, and then behind that was a place
for the public.
And so I'm waiting with family members and
others in the VIP area
in my inspector's uniform, a police uniform, for
the ceremony to get started.
While we're waiting for things to get underway,
3 men approached me wearing suits saying that
Secret Service has spotted you from the top
of a building. They want us to check
your credentials just in case. And I said,
just in case what? And they said, we're
sorry that we're doing this to you. And
I said, then why are you doing it?
And to understand what they're questioning in that
moment is not merely
my physical presence at that location,
but the entire validity of my emotion attached
to that space.
I was a student in New York on
September 11, 2001.
I did watch the 2nd plane fly into
the towers and have to deal with media
removing my identity,
standing with friends of mine in long lines
who were immigrants that now had to check-in
at immigration
services
for 4 or 5 hours at a time
in the snow,
dealing with friends whose families' homes were raided
by law enforcement,
people facing deportation,
funerals of loved ones who died on the
day, and
so much more that is informed by the
atrocities
of that day.
And in that moment, these men are questioning
the validity of all of it. And the
frustrating thing isn't that I'm going through it,
but what can I really do about it?
That if I was to respond,
it would likely make the circumstance a lot
worse for me. And so where I couldn't
speak
and there was tons of people just standing
and watching, doing nothing,
there was a mother standing next to me
who lost her son on September 11th.
And she said to those men that what
you are doing right now is more dishonouring
of the memory of our loved ones that
we lost on that day than anything else.
They hear this young man is standing with
us in our moment of need, and you're
making it seem as if he's doing something
wrong just because he's Muslim.
And as easily as they had taken the
validity away, she brought it right back.
What I would say on an impact level
is that,
one, somebody sitting somewhere concocted a policy
that trickled down to these men that said,
if you see someone that looks like this,
look at them again. Right? I'm literally in
a police unit.
And even if I wasn't, it still wouldn't
be okay. And this is the reality that
minority communities face
in this country day to day.
To me, a lot of anti Muslim sentiment
on an individual
and kinda institutional level is just symptomatic of
a deeply entrenched anti blackness that the country
is built upon, that race and class are
the elements
that our country has struggled with. I don't
believe anyone has a problem with me because
of my religious theology,
because I have a God the way that
others have a god
and holidays and prayer. Like, conceptually, you can
understand it. But what people struggle with are
the same things we've been struggling with since
the inception of this country.
Someone was to ask me if I was
to go through it again, I'd say definitely.
So certain battles
have to be won. They have to take
place in the first place in order for
them to be won. And so if my
standing is going to yield understanding,
then I'm gonna continue to stand.
And that's what we need people to do.
That you might be the only one speaking
or you might be the only one that's
standing,
but you might be what's necessary to ignite
others to get out of their seats or
share their voice. And I think the deepest
impact to me
from that instance sorry. I know how to
talk a lot. Was
this mother
who, to me, represents
just what we need more of these days.
That she
recognized the uniqueness of her power and privilege
and leveraged it to serve someone who is
underserved and underprivileged.
Because who in their right mind is gonna
say something to a mother
who is standing at the ground zero site
on September 11th
that has lost a child?
Nobody.
And she knows that. And she uses it
just because it's the right thing to do.
And that to me is somebody who understands
both allyship,
solidarity,
as well as
what pluralism really is about.
Because it's easy to tokenize and be ceremonial
than to say, well, here's where I can't
stand with you.
But she did it in the moment, and
others could have as well, but there was
something else that was in her. And to
me, that's what I want to be.
You know, that's what I want to aspire
towards being within
the roles that I'm blessed to serve people
through.
To take on a mode and model
that recognizes
how we construct
and build.
But at the same time,
you just do what's right because simply
some things are just
right and wrong,
and you wanna do what's right because it's
the right thing to do.
Totally. I I, you know, I had all
these questions to ask you about what multiphates
solidarity looks like, and and you have
shared that in in in your remarks, you
know, do what's right because it's right. Do
what's right. Even if, if, if it's hard
having the courage, you know, taking the risk,
you know, even even though you will experience
pushback, even though it can be lonely.
And and and I I I really appreciate
this these insights, you know, into what
allyship looks like, into what solidarity looks like,
into what, like, using your influence,
in the space,
to to make change, to to intervene
rather than stand by and watch.
Tell us tell us a little bit more
about
what
what multi faith solidarity or or really what
your vision,
for for America, for our communities,
for coming together across difference, for living up
to our ideals, you know, ideals that have
not yet been realized. I and what does
that look like,
you know,
knowing what you've been through, knowing what we've
been through, what is what does it look
like in the years ahead?
What are we working towards, and how do
we get there?
I think, principally, one of the ways that
we can understand what something could ideally look
like
is by first identifying what it should not
look like ever.
And I think to recognize
that a 20 year anniversary of a tragedy
should be something that people stand in honor
of.
But
to understand that the lessons that we need
to
derive
from a moment like this
can't be only rooted in a 20 year
trajectory.
We have to look much further if we
want to get to where we want it
to be.
To me, you know, when I say race
and class become the foundation of this, that's
what I honestly believe.
You know, when people left
to make this place their home from a
European context,
there wasn't an aspiration within a European sphere
to be a space of diversity.
And as individuals
were launching transatlantic slave trades and crusades in
the names of faith and tradition
and then approached more of a sense of
liberalism
in order to counter some of what was
taking place socially there. In the United States,
we didn't fight our worst battles or wars
in the names of any spiritual tradition or
faith. But our worst battle or civil war
was done on
principles of race and class.
And you can see
even within the foundational
documents of this,
that
privilege and power was given entirely
primarily to individuals
who identified as white and male.
Women weren't really given anything.
And black people weren't even considered to be
a whole person in comparison to their white
counterparts.
And the challenges that we find ourselves in
in a place now
have to see societally,
well, what's really at play
to
counter it, to build what we know
it should not be? It shouldn't be the
case that
some people
are able to have access to adequate health
care and others are not. It shouldn't be
the case that there's no consequences
to the perpetrators
of violence against our black brothers and sisters
who consistently get shot in the streets by
law enforcement.
It shouldn't be the case that, you know,
I don't worry that someone's gonna take my
6 year old or 8 year old away
from me. But I walk out every day
assuming that somebody might take me away from
my family. And there's people who these are
not their realities.
The constructs that we deal with
have patterns that can be understood.
Right? The war on terror that rears itself
post 911
and yields a Patriot Act, yields Guantanamo
Bay, yields the realities of destabilizations
of entire regions of the world. You know,
we put the people of Afghanistan
through just real *,
and all of this is stemming from a
war on terror
that we understand its roots to replicate,
for example, the way a war on drugs
gets concocted.
Right? Politicians
utilizing terminology
like predator and thug to identify our black
brothers and sisters as TV shows like cops
air to reinforce those stereotypes,
usually
with white men in blue uniforms
arresting black people.
And crack cocaine gets pumped through neighborhoods when
nobody asking where the drugs come from in
the first place.
But the prison industrial complex builds itself
on the back of mass incarceration.
That's just a further step in a stratified
society
that starts from slavery, goes to Jim Crow,
and
channels now
black people into the prison system.
And the war on terror
builds itself out similarly
with politicians
utilizing terminologies like terrorists, jihadists, fundamentalist,
TV shows like Homeland and 24
airing all over television, and
people now
rendering themselves
passive
in a state where
they have capacity
to break down
and speak out, but they're seated because
the fear based construct
that's presented to them
stokes the negative stereotypes
that elicits now passivity in the face of
this. You know, when Trump was elected in
2016,
the world saw,
like,
so many things that weren't hidden before,
but
could no longer be denied
existence of in terms of issues around race
and bigotry and hatred.
And there was upticks in all kinds of
hate crimes.
One of the things that I distinctly remember
is going to a park in Brooklyn
called Adam Yock Park, named after one of
the Beastie Boys,
where there was a press conference
because a children's playground
shortly after Trump's election,
was found vandalized
with
swastikas,
you know, things like
make America white again, you know,
go Trump, etcetera.
And there was a lot of people at
this thing.
Politicians
and celebrities,
other Beastie Boys were there, and I think
Ben Stiller was there, and Big Daddy Kane,
and, you know, senators and congresspeople
and faith leaders. And when I got on
the mic,
I said to people, you know, this *
represents to me the darkest potentials of humanity.
That you had individuals
who were so motivated by their hatred
that their entire
ambition and purpose
was the annihilation and extinction of our Jewish
brothers and sisters from this world.
But it also
exemplifies
a second
dark potential of humanity
that there were those who definitively
were moved to perpetrate these atrocious
acts through their hatred,
but their success
was only
allowable
because so many more who had the ability
to stop them simply sat back and watched
and did nothing.
And that to me is what becomes the
biggest challenge
in this kind of harmonious sense of existence.
You have a system and set of systems
that are built to privilege certain demographics.
And the willingness to share that privilege
creates now
an opportunity
to
become
passive or part of the process of erasure
of what other people go through. In order
for it to be broken down,
real multi faith work
has to have its individual
members
and parts
recognize
how they themselves
benefit
from the inequitous systems that hold other people
down.
And until
individuals
that I believe we as faith leaders have
a responsibility
to convey to whatever communities we're a part
of,
recognize
that they too might gain from these systems.
And despite the gain that they have from
it, they should still dismantle it.
We're gonna still see what it is that
is taking place continue.
Good religion to me is not self
serving. That to me is just antithetical
to good religion.
Good religion to me should bring its practitioner
to take on social ailments
and injustices.
And if your practice of religion is not
bringing you to that, I would say with
real love,
what is the point of your religion?
And there is no greater
ailment in society right now
than the ailment of racism.
And if we are not coming together
as people of faith
to remedy these social illnesses and illness.
Theologically,
we might have distinctions,
but none of our religions
own values
that we claim to be a part of
our traditions.
But if we're not living those values without
conditions
and qualifications,
then we're just as much of a part
of the problem.
What does somebody have to look like for
you to not be there for them?
What part of the world, what side of
a conflict, etcetera?
And
I honestly don't understand it sometimes. You know,
I work with a lot of survivors of
abuse.
I founded with some members of our community
through our Islamic Centred NYU, a DD agency
over the course of the pandemic.
And
we work with different people, And it boggles
my mind
how
there are individuals
that are known to be perpetrators of abuse.
They mistreat
others.
And yet there are still those
who will
find room
to create, like, a both sides type narrative.
Right? I have to maintain a relationship with
this person. That's my friend. And even though
you're my friend and you were the abused
person in this relationship,
you have to understand,
how can I leave him alone? It's like,
no. You should leave him alone. Right? He
mistreated
this person
in a way that has implications
that are deeply problematic.
For whatever reason in the prism of modernity,
it seems to be the sense that there's
a higher kind of consciousness
if you're able to maintain objectiveness.
Objectiveness is just another way to maintain neutrality.
And where you are in a space of
inequity,
you cannot both sides circumstances.
There's no way to say that certain things
have validity on both ends of an occasion
because there are those who definitely
do not want to be connected to others.
There are definitely people who have no desire
to share space with someone who has a
different skin color than them or a different
country of origin or different cultural heritage
or a different level of wealth.
And if we are to acknowledge this as
people of faith,
the entire paradigm of our gatherings
are meant to be based off of principles
of inclusivity,
not exclusivity.
Right? I work at a university. I used
to work at Princeton.
Princeton is Princeton not because
of who it lets in, students with GPAs,
extracurriculars,
etcetera.
But Princeton is also Princeton because of who
it keeps out. And if Princeton started to
let everybody in through its gates, it wouldn't
be Princeton anymore. And that's how we identify
our own sense of worth at times. Not
just about who we let in, but who
we keep out. What would people say
if they saw me speaking out against what
I know to be inequitous?
What would somebody say if I started to
let certain people like this into the spaces
that I'm in?
But when you think about gatherings that are
of the divine,
they are theoretically meant to be gatherings that
anybody and everyone
should have access to,
regardless of where they're at.
And I think that has to become
now a recognition
of
what we aspire towards
within our own spaces, but still convening
on shared internals,
shared values, shared hearts, and not shared externals,
race,
class, ethnicity,
so that we start to really dismantle things.
And we start to say things that might
not be the most popular,
but, again, they're what's right.
And that has to be what the motivation
is.
Reach.
Thank you so much. This is
such incredible
insight. Super profound in in in thinking helping
us think through what this could look like.
I I wanna ask a question about
violence
committed
in the name of religion.
How do you navigate
the questions that people ask?
How do you how do you think about
even the violence that has emerged since,
and and throughout these years,
white Christian supremacists?
You know, how how do you
talk about and think about,
violence committed by individuals claiming to to ascribe
to
a religion? And and especially also in light,
of the conversations around 911?
I think
a key part to understanding
how we deal with
tragic
responses to things
comes from first recognizing who's actually telling the
story.
Right? There's a great author and scholar that
many of you probably know by the name
of Chimamanda
Adichie. It's amazing
individual,
and
she has
written numerous books and articles.
If you're not somebody who's able to find
the time to do that, you can check
out a TED talk that she wrote. It's
called the danger of a single story.
Right? Where she essentially posits
her talk
on her own socialization
being filled with
childhood
books and stories.
The characters did not look like her.
And as she builds now a sense of
self rooted
as a black woman
around
her engagement of characters that tended to boast
to be white with blonde hair and blue
eyes.
But she goes on and continues to say
that,
you know, the stories are told by usually
the ones who are in places of power
and privilege.
And they're not just determining
what the story is, but also where it
starts.
One of her more powerful lines is, you
know, she says,
they choose to start the story of Native
Americans,
with them simply
having arrows in their hands and shooting them
as opposed to saying, well, what came before
that? And why is that an important thing
to understand?
Because you can
very much so
recognize
how
narrative
then cast perspective
on demographics
who are dealing
with life and struggle in whatever ways that
they possibly
are dealing with it and some things that
we might not ever really have to go
through in our lives.
And it's
hard
to then see
what someone's life experience is when I'm only
channeling it through my own lived experiences.
Or the media narratives
of
There are individuals
who engage
within acts of white supremacist violence
that I would say
are
motivated
by
what they really believe
whiteness and supremacy to call towards.
And to recognize this as a mindset and
an ideology.
Right? Supremacy
is something that exists globally now, and you
can find it. I've been to Myanmar. I've
sat with Rohingya refugees
in Bangladesh,
where
not one of them could tell me that
they hadn't seen loved ones burned alive in
front of their eyes. These are people who
are internally displaced,
and I've met
those who have fled violence in their country
in Malaysia,
in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia,
in Chicago,
and nobody knows what's going on with them.
You have supremacy in India that's taking place
now where there's mob violence that's just running
rampant. Right? And so many other spaces.
What supremacy is claiming is that the primordial
state of existence
is
an individual
who is white.
And on the spectrum
that you now can aspire towards whiteness,
but at the very least, the mindset is
such that you don't want to be black.
And it roots itself in that prism
of
anti blackness.
That state of supremacy
claims that some of us are always from
some place else.
No matter where it is that we were
born,
what passport we have,
we are always from elsewhere.
Right? I took 20 of my students
to have lunch one day at a street
cart near our center,
pre COVID.
And
while we were waiting for our food, chicken
and rice cart, you know,
there's a middle aged Caucasian woman at the
back of the line pushing her way through
the group saying, excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse
me. Can't you understand what I'm saying? When
she gets to the front of the line,
she looks at me face to face, and
she says, oh, I guess you can't understand.
How do they say excuse me where you
come from? And I said, we say excuse
me. And she said, no. How do they
say it where your family is from? And
I said, my family is from Jersey, and
we say excuse me. She couldn't understand how
somebody that looks like this is actually from
the same place that she's from.
And this is a challenge. Right? Because that
mindset is not just somebody who's mean to
me in a line of food,
but people now sit at institutional
hierarchies
where they are determining
how people will live day to day, how
they will work day to day.
And it tends to be mostly
a demographic
that is elderly white men that is sitting
now only with
the stereotypes
of those that are not what they are
and making decisions as to how they will
live. Supremacy
also tells us that there's always a reason
why we do what we do. But
there's some people
who
there's no need for explanation as to why
what they do what they do. It's gonna
always be the norm, and we have to
aspire towards that. And it creates a psychological
lockdown. If you buy into that mindset and
you're motivated by it,
you then don't believe that the people you're
killing
are human like you are.
You have a notion that I am entitled
to treat them in this way
because they are less than me. I am
what is the primordial
state of existence.
They are subpar.
They don't have
the right or deserve to have access
to security or comfort or any of these
kinds of things.
And it becomes emboldened
by, again,
rhetoric, the synergy of media and politics
that could care less on the receiving end
of it what's happening to people.
For Muslims, there's a racialization of the faith.
I've had people who have come to me
who are Latinos
that
have crosses hanging from their necks that have
literally left roses on my office desk because
they've said walking around the village of Manhattan,
which is like super liberal place,
people have spit on them,
cursed at them,
told them that
they are
Arab Muslim terrorists and should go back to
their country.
And their responses were to give me flowers,
to give
women that they know that wear headscarves, flowers,
others, flowers.
Because they've said,
we are only
beginning to understand what it's like for you
to be who you are
in the spaces that we're in.
You
have, I think, a very
sick society
that is willing to
engage in acts of violence
more and more. And if we don't pay
attention
to what it's showing us, right, the same
way your body tells you
when it's not well. Your stomach tells you
it's hungry. Your throat tells you it's thirsty.
With every act of violence committed,
we are killing our humanity
more and more and more.
Desensitizing
ourselves to things
in pursuit of what exactly?
And the influence of wealth here has to
be understood
because we have turned war into a business
and a glorification
of war. We literally went into Afghanistan
and have broke it down and built it
up and broke it down and built it
up just to break it down and build
it up again so that people are making
money off of every single aspect of this.
In a lot of religious traditions, you have
an idea of vice versus virtue,
sins versus whatever. Right? And not to engage
on it in a judgmental level.
My tradition does not necessarily
have the concept of, like, 7 deadly sins
the way that other religious traditions do, but
there's concepts of these types of things.
You know, gluttony, lust, etcetera. And what you
see societally
is that corporations
have now learned how to take these things
and utilize them as a means
to get people
to
believe that their sense of happiness
is rooted in buying what it is that
they're selling to them.
And to push forward now more and more
and more in this way to then dilute
an understanding of what's really happening on a
global level.
What has to happen to people miles away
for you to drive that car that you
drive or to wear that shirt that you
wear? What's happening to the earth that you
walk on
that
allows for you to eat the food that
you eat
or do most of what you do.
Right? We are not, like, the strongest of
animals.
We're not the fastest. We can't fly on
our
own volition or swim to the depths of
the seas.
We're the only animals that even after our
stomachs are filled, we keep eating.
And we don't care who else has no
food as long as our plates are filled,
and that egocentricity
is a product of that supremacy.
And you keep seeing these symptoms and pockets
of things pop
up. People are engaged in mass shootings.
People are attacking others.
Next week, I'm gonna be going to Arizona
to attend a memorial service for a man
by the name of Balbir Singh Sodi,
who was the first person killed after 9/11.
A person who engaged in an act of
supremacist
violence
was just looking, he said himself,
for Muslims to kill.
And he found this man who is Sikh
that had a beard and a turban and
brown skin
and just assumed he was Muslim,
and he killed
him. And so on the 20th anniversary
of
the 9/11 attacks,
Balbir Singh Sodhi's family has been getting together
annually to remember him, and they too have
a 20th anniversary
of their loved one being killed
in an act of hate,
an act of
bigotry.
And
that can't ever be a solution.
The result
is one that can really just pass it
from heart to heart. And what it necessitates
is a disruption that we don't meet hate
with more hate,
but we meet that hate with love. Right?
We wanna be people who begin to hate
hate and really love love. And to not
see that as something that is just cliche
or platitudinal,
but you gotta want to have the same
things that you have for yourself, for others.
Even if that means that when you speak
out against oppression,
you're speaking out against yourself
and not making justifications
for it. And that's gonna be the hardest
thing. But I think there's, like, real sickness
that's out there.
And money is influencing
how we do pretty much everything
from gun control
to who gets medications and who does not.
I mean, it's crazy. In the midst of
a pandemic,
we're the only country
that saw
thousands of people lose health care
while a global pandemic is taking place. How
is that possible
that somebody sitting somewhere
on a human level
believes
that it's okay
to make guns so accessible
or that it's okay
to take health care away from people or
that it's okay
to, like, make so many of the decisions
that they're making,
they're likely not thinking about us as a
shared human family.
And that's why those of us who claim
to think that way
have to understand
the need to adapt
multi faith work
for what the
common contemporary
issues
are. And some of it is going to
have to now be versatile enough
to say that we gotta get out of
the dialogue sessions and discussion groups
that can easily turn into photo ops
and go out there and do some things
that are enacting real change for people.
Yes. I totally agree. And I feel like
what you're saying, as you focused in on
on white Christian supremacy,
can be applied, you know, to other traditions
when when,
people claim a tradition or claim a faith
and claim a tradition,
and and commit harm,
in that on that behalf. It is this
problem of of of believing a prime they
are a representative of a primordial state and
that all others are not and dehumanization.
And so I think that applies
to, to,
across the board. You know, I'm I'm not
surprised at all that we are coming up
on the hour, and this conversation has gone
by so fast.
To close out, you know, wanna think about
the concept of
and the power of multigenerational
learning. You know, multiphates solidarity is coming together
across faith and cultural lines, but but also
across generations and what we can learn from
one another.
You know, in many ways, you talked about
how you as a young person were shaped
and how have moved in these spaces,
in the years leading up to now to
today.
You know, how
what what are some lessons or or thoughts
that you want to leave us with
for for young people, for for our children,
for,
those that are in college,
those that are young adults,
in their twenties thirties,
to our elders
and and and, everyone everywhere in between, you
know, what are some,
nuggets, of insights that you want to share,
and leave us with as we close out
this hour?
Yeah. 1, I would say,
you know, don't treat hope as something that's
fleeting,
but treat it as a reality.
Things are gonna be better
And there's always progression
and movement.
But you have to believe that something is
possible
in order for you to work towards making
it happen as best as you can.
And I think within that
too, as a young person,
look to the people around you
and sit down and be bold enough to
ask questions like, what are we gonna do
to make a difference? It doesn't have to
be on a grand scale. If you can
even impact one heart, you know, that will
make all of the difference. I had a
student at New York University
who,
when the polar vortex was happening in New
York City,
all she did was walk around various dorms,
ask if anyone had
extra pairs of clean socks,
and then she went and distributed those to
people who are homeless on the street.
And did she solve homelessness? No.
She,
though, helped people to remember that they're not
forgotten,
and that's a key element.
You start to look to the people around
you in your places of work, in your
classrooms, and elsewhere,
and you create interdisciplinary
modes of institutional development
because there's a value for every skill set
and talent.
To be a multi faith leader does not
mean you're the one standing in the pulpit.
It means that you take a salient part
of your identity,
and you allow for that to inform
the good work that you do. And so
you can do that from any faith tradition
and be in any role whatsoever.
The third that I would say is that
you want to understand the need for strategy
and patience.
Organized evil will always triumph over disorganized
righteousness,
and that's just truth. And so you wanna
sit, you want to build in a way
where you're putting pen to paper,
and you are crafting
plans that say, how do we get from
point a to point b with the steps
outlined in between?
You know, what will success look like for
me? And work my way backwards so that
there's actually a plan that's there. Right? Many
organizations
can be event based, which is not a
problem. You wanna be process driven so that
the good work continues,
but you're bringing the best of your talents
to it. And the 4th thing that I
would say
is,
just make sure that you're taking care of
yourself.
You have a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual sphere
to you,
and you're not gonna be able to do
right by others if you're not doing right
by yourself.
I learned this the hard way, and it
could be a really, you know, different conversation
in and of itself,
but it can get very tiresome.
And if you don't have good outlets and
solid plans for your own self care,
it'll catch up to you at some point.
You are entitled to have relationships that are
deep with others. You're entitled to take time
for your own development and growth. And not
because you're responsible for the whole world or
your growth is tied to them, but you
doing for others doesn't mean that you can't
do for yourself.
And so you built into your routine
that opportunity
for self reflection, self growth, self care,
and you're gonna see that you're gonna get
things done that nobody believes is possible that
could ever happen.
The last thing that I would say
is,
if I can be helpful to any of
you in anything you have going on, feel
free to reach out. I'd be more than
happy to help in whatever way.
And my sincerest prayers are that you all
are safe and that you and your loved
ones are protected from any type of affliction
or ailment.
And any of you who have lost anything
over the last year or 2 or even
before,
my sincerest condolences to you all on that.
But if you're in New York City and
I can ever be helpful to you or
even if virtually there's something I could do
for you, please don't hesitate in reaching out.
We can only build together what we can
when we're actually together.
And it would be my honor to help
in any of the good work that you're
doing.
It makes sense for me to be a
part of that.
Thank you so much. Thank you for this
amazing conversation
and these insights that are are super deep
and profound. I I I hope you're seeing,
all the love that's being shared in the
chat.
And and, you know, I hope that shoulder
to shoulder can be a part of this,
this sense of organized righteousness. Some small part,
you know, of of making change,
and and moving us towards multi faith solidarity.
And that there is a space for for
those of us that ascribe
to a a faith tradition, as well as
those of us who believe that that this
world could be better, you know, and having
faith and hope,
in that possibility.
And and there there is so much work
to do.
I I wanna acknowledge that there were more
questions,
that came in. And we just want you
to know that we're here at shoulder to
shoulder.
And and you, you heard. And I'm on
Khalid
also make himself available
and to unpack further and and and so
just please reach out if you want to
to talk more and and and have some
better understandings.
You know, a lot of what we do
at shoulder to shoulder is is is help
people understand
how to talk about these issues responsibly,
how to, address anti Muslim discrimination in different
ways from our different,
locations,
and and do that and with with with
strategy and do that with messaging.
And so, please reach out if you want
to to go deeper.
I I also wanna close by by quickly
saying that we have,
next month in in October,
a workshop on allyship as an active way
of life.
And and you'll be introduced to a framework
for understanding allyship as an active way of
life that utilizes bridge building to ensure equality,
opportunity, and inclusion for everyone. And this framework
will be,
presented, has been created and will be presented
by Whitney Parnell.
And so,
you'll, you'll receive some bulk information about that,
to to talk more about that.
And then also, we have our next virtual
faith over fear training coming up in October.
And so want to encourage those of you
who wanna go deeper,
and and even for those of you who
have already been through it to to join
us again or invite others, to to join
us.
This is a chance to think through about
our own unique roles in this work,
depending on where we stand,
understand and contextualize Islamophobia in the United States,
how to talk about these issues without reinforcing
negative stereotypes, how to move people on this
issue,
and then finally, strategies, what we can do,
ideas, and and approaches to this work. So
hope that you will join us. And once
again, thank you so much,
for this amazing conversation. I think we all
learned
something new,
have more nuance,
to to understanding where we where we're going,
and and really grateful for you taking the
time and sharing.
Thank you for having me. Thank you all
for joining.
Alright.
Bye, everyone. Thanks.