Lauren Booth – What Makes Gaza Different from the Rest of the World
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss their experiences with addiction and their desire to return to their normal life. They talk about their journey to-date, including their experiences with Islam and hip hop. They emphasize the importance of remaining patient and positive in achieving human rights and finding a path to success. They also discuss the negative impact of social media and the need for more information and social media to inform people about the negative consequences of social norms. They emphasize the importance of showing positive signs to achieve a better future and finding a path to success in life.
AI: Summary ©
Are you broken?
Do you need a psychologist?
Will you never recover from this?
The level of blissfulness and happiness that I
was at in Gaza, I never experienced in
my life.
When you go out of Gaza, there's a
relief like, oh, I'm going home to my
family.
I've escaped in a way.
And then the first thought after that is,
well, I want to go back.
When will I get back?
I am sure that Allah will grant us
victory, and we will remain steadfast here in
Gaza, striving through all the options that we
have against this oppression until we either achieve
victory in this world, or we become martyrs.
We are in conversation with Sister Lauren Booth.
Welcome, Sister.
It's an honor to be here, Mansoor.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
I'm good.
Thank you.
Alhamdulillah.
Jazakallah Khair.
Just a quick introduction, if possible, Sister Lauren,
for the audience.
And yeah, what brought you here to Qatar?
So I'm part of a Turkish delegation, and
we are trying to tackle Islamophobia, also give
dawah in different places.
And here was the wrap up of the
program, but really, I wanted to stay on
and make sure that we met in person,
inshallah.
Jazakallah Khair.
Thank you very much.
And can you tell us a little bit
more about yourself, Sister Lauren, if that's okay?
You know what?
I think everybody's story is both a long
story and a short story.
Yeah.
I wasn't Muslim, then Allah guided me, and
now I'm Muslim.
Alhamdulillah.
And between those, I had some work.
My profession is journalism.
I'm also a trained actor and an author.
And I just try to really present a
meaningful Muslim narrative from our point of view,
from our framing, not our stories told by
somebody else and repeated back to us in
some perverse form.
So that's where I come from.
I have two daughters.
I have a wonderful husband, alhamdulillah.
And like all souls, there have been ups
and downs in this life.
Subhanallah.
May Allah bless you.
I remember meeting the first time over social
media on Instagram and doing a live together
talking about Gaza.
At that time, I was in Nasser Hospital
in Khan Yunus.
May you take us back to that time
and what led to the interview, what your
thoughts were, how you felt during it, and
what their actions were after it?
I mean, can you take us back to
that time?
So I think that's really interesting because having
been to Gaza and lived with the people
there and also being guided to Islam by
the grace of Allah through the people and
their glorious kindness and generosity and otherness there,
in a way to humanity, I think the
people of Gaza are strange.
They were strange to me as a non
-Muslim.
And so those first days of the genocide,
I was calling people, my friends, my beloveds
in Gaza and saying, don't be annoyed with
me.
I was saying, can you make me feel
better about this?
Because being outside was just horrific.
You spend days going, this can't be happening,
this can't be happening.
I kept saying to my husband, am I
having a nightmare?
This isn't happening.
And then you'd call your friends in Gaza
city, Roseanne, my niece, my best friend Yasser
in Gaza.
And I said to Roseanne, I can't do
it this time.
I can't be upbeat for you.
They never need me to be upbeat, but
normally I'm like, hey, how are you doing?
You're going to be okay.
Alhamdulillah.
And this time I was like, I've got
nothing.
I'm shocked.
And they made me feel better.
So when we started talking, I was still
in the zone of how remarkable are these
people?
How beautiful is Islam?
How incredibly uplifting, how are they managing this?
And yet knowing how they manage it.
And so it was quite early.
It was NASA hospital when we first spoke.
So I felt out of kilter with the
rest of the world, because I was like,
yeah, but do you see what they're like?
Do you see the Sakina?
Do you see that actually on some incredibly
spiritual level, they're okay.
That what's happening is awful and evil and
we have to tackle it, but there's goodness
in the people and people like, what are
you talking about?
And I didn't really want to go into
the politics.
So when I spoke to you, I watched
a little bit of it back and I
was so embarrassed because all I did was
cry because you were by the grace of
Allah reflecting back at me what I was
having a tiny little remembrance of away from
Gaza.
Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
Can you take us back to the first
time you entered Gaza?
What happened?
I mean, how did you manage to enter
and how do you remember Gaza at that
time?
You talked about the people being very generous,
very sincere.
We talked a little bit about their level
of innovation before we started this talk.
Take us a little bit through the journey
to Gaza the first time.
Well, the first time was actually, I think
it was 2006.
I went as a journalist on my own.
I just got the permission papers and just
went in and I remember that feeling that
what was the contrast to the West Bank?
I think people just felt a lot more
kind of centered.
So the West Bank was kind of busy
and buzzy and exciting and beautiful and kind
as well, but there's something kind of weighted
that I noticed there.
But I'll tell you what I did notice
that as a Westerner, the level of respect,
and I mean as a woman, there was
a distance and that distance was never compromised.
And then really the time that I spent
in Gaza, which was most meaningful for me,
was in 2008 when the Free Gaza mission
with two boats from Cyprus coming to challenge
the Israeli blockade, which was just a year
old at that time.
And I remember standing on the deck of
the Free Gaza and looking out.
Oh God, it's really hard, isn't it?
When you, anyway, yes, okay.
Yeah, anyway, so the boats came to the
shore and I remember seeing little dots on
the shore and Greta saying to me, you
know, what are those?
And we looked and we realized they were
people.
And then a sound reached us and the
sound was Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Because we didn't know because we'd had a
media block out because the Israeli forces had
jammed our satellite phones.
So we didn't know if anybody was watching
us, if anybody in Gaza knew we were
coming even.
And 30,000 Palestinians had slept on the
beaches and were waiting for the crazy foreigners.
Are they really coming in boats?
And they're not going to be blown up?
I mean, what is going to happen?
And when we arrived...
Sorry, so the Israelis didn't stop you anymore?
No, because we were so random and we
were such a ragtag bunch of maniacs, honestly,
by maniacs.
I mean, amazing people who would just get
on a boat and go, okay, we might
be blown up, but let's do this for
humanity.
You're not going to be kind of your
average Joe, right?
Yeah.
Sorry, back to you.
So I just remember, you know, throwing our
scarves over the edge and pulling children up.
And yeah, and everything that could float in
Gaza was on the sea that day.
Everything.
I'm sure at one point I saw a
bathtub.
Well, I'm sure.
I mean, there were bits of old boats,
there were surfboards, there were little fishing, little
canoes with like 40 people on them going
Allahu Akbar.
It was truly incredible.
And then I remember pulling into what was
a little bit of a dock there.
And then the guys in black get on
board and you know, oh, it's Hamas.
Okay.
Okay.
These are the guys you're meant to be
serious about.
And my first interaction with the brothers from
Hamas was them crying.
Right?
So it's very hard to be scared of
someone.
They're going, Allahu Akbar, and turning away.
And you're like, are these big guys crying?
Are they crying?
Are you crying?
I'm to them.
And yeah, that was really the beginning of
a part of my life that's filled my
heart.
How did you communicate with them?
Did they speak English?
A lot of people do speak English.
A lot of people do speak English.
It's how you know someone's lying about whether
they've been to, so there was a, yeah,
that's another story.
But you know, there was once somebody who
said, oh, I've been to the West Bank
a lot, but nobody there speaks English.
And you're like, you've never been, or you've
been with the other side.
Right?
So yeah, lots and lots of people speak
English.
So what did you do there?
Just a quick summary.
Well, you know, we were only meant to
stay three or four days to deliver some
food aid to touch base to see what
message we could take out.
I was basically, yeah, I was literally the
human shield.
There was a human shield in Gaza and
it was me, everybody.
And it was foreigners who brought me there
because they're like, we're hoping that Israel won't
blow up Tony Blair's sister-in-law.
To be quite honest, that's the only reason
that you're here.
I'm like, great, because he hates me right
now.
So I'm no use to you at all.
Right?
So we were only meant to stay three
days and then leave.
But on day three, I stood on the
beach near the Aldera.
Yeah.
Is it still there?
Probably not right now.
Nothing is there.
Yeah.
So we stood there and they're going, get
on the boat.
And I'm like, I can't.
And they're like, Greta's going, honey, we're going
get on the boat.
You're not thinking rationally.
I'm like, I don't want to be a
grief tourist.
There's something I need to do.
I don't even know what it is, but
I'm going to stay for a few more
days and do some more interviews because I'm
not done here.
And I would be there the whole month.
I wasn't able to leave.
Alhamdulillah.
Since that time until the current war on
Gaza, any interactions with the Palestinian people there?
Any other visits?
Yeah.
Any work that you've done?
So, well, when I was there, I got
a job with Press TV because I thought,
you know, I've got to find something to
do.
I started training with Yousef Al-Halou, a
Gaza journalist, Mashallah.
I know all the journalists.
So I worked with them.
Alhamdulillah.
So, yeah, I worked as a journalist there.
Then I stayed on at Press TV.
And by the grace of Allah, we created
a program in 2009 called Remember the Children
of Palestine.
Alhamdulillah.
That ran for two years.
And then kept going back either with charity
or with advocacy work, sometimes for prisoners.
And I kept going back until 2014 when
it got really difficult to go through the
Sinai.
Okay.
Okay.
So after 2014, physically, you weren't able to
go back to Gaza?
No.
It just got really, really difficult to fight
to get the permission.
I can't believe it's been 10 years because
I made it, you know, determined to see
my friends once a year.
And the thing that I really remember, Mansoor,
because most of that, 2008, 2010, I wasn't
Muslim, was when you go out of Gaza,
there's a relief like, oh, I'm going home
to my family.
I've escaped, in a way.
And then the first thought after that is,
well, I want to go back.
When will I get back?
Isn't it?
When will I get back?
So now we're in 2024, 10 years later,
and the whole world has been seeing what's
been happening over the last 165 days there.
What's going on through your mind right now?
Let's elaborate more on that.
When I'm speaking to people from Gaza, I
can live.
And when I'm not, I just have to,
I'm just asking Allah to just make me
strong enough to not break down, really.
I'm okay here with you right now, Alhamdulillah,
because you're strong.
And, you know, we're in the, Alhamdulillah, we're
in the zone.
When I speak to my brother, Yasser and
Rezaan, Alhamdulillah.
So I'll give you an example, you know,
a call three days ago, how are you?
Alhamdulillah, it's been a little bit difficult, but
we're okay.
That's a camping holiday.
That is literally not a genocide, right?
And the weird thing is, we managed to
smile at this moment.
Why?
Because there are miracles happening, and you hold
on to the miracle that Allah reveals to
humanity in times of oppression to the believers.
And when you see Quranic ayah coming true
before your eyes, that's how I'm staying alive
right now.
Alhamdulillah, I can't say, I can't, being there,
having lived there for two years, and then
having been witnessing firsthand the war there, physically
on the ground, whether in Gaza or in
Khan Yunus or in other places, I can
tell you that the biggest miracle, one of
the biggest miracles is that despite everything that's
been thrown at them, you know, the people
there are still remaining steadfast.
There's a sense of peace and tranquility that
I have never felt in my life.
And yesterday when I was on Al Jazeera
Mubasher, they got someone to speak live from
inside Al Shifa Hospital while it was being
raided.
And they asked him to send a message
to the world.
And he said, I'm not going send a
message to the Arab countries or the Arab
people or the Muslims or anyone in this
world.
My message is that I am sure that
Allah will grant us victory and we will
remain steadfast here in Gaza, striving through all
the options that we have against this oppression,
until we either achieve victory in this world
or we become martyrs.
So this is how I remember Gaza.
This is you know, when people ask me
about Gaza, this is the mentality of the
general population there, is that they regard themselves
as those who are remaining steadfast on the
holy land on behalf of all the free
people of this world.
And when you ask them, you know, is
it just about Gaza or Jerusalem or Palestine?
No, I mean, their goal is, you know,
Gaza is like the place to start.
You know, Gaza is where they've been building
for the last decade or so, you know,
children that have memorized the Quran, understand the
Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ and his companions,
trying to apply it wherever possible in different
ways.
And despite the siege innovating in different areas,
in different sciences, in different fields of arts
and literature, despite the unemployment rate being at
75% to 80%, you know, people still
managing to produce and to continue to give
back to this ummah.
Mansoor, can we unpick that a little bit?
Because you gave some really important figures there,
but I really want to go back to
one word, because you specifically said it in
all of your broadcasts, we are steadfast, we
will continue.
And I don't think that we really have
grasp of what steadfastness means.
Can you, what does it mean from a
Quranic perspective?
And what does it mean from a lived
perspective?
What does that look like?
So, the translation in Arabic is, you know,
that the definition, in my opinion, of victory
in Islam is So,
in Islam, in my opinion, victory is achieved
when you remain steadfast on your principles, on
your values, on your Islamic faith.
And my evidence for that is that Allah
ﷻ called the people that were thrown into
the trenches of fire in Surah al-Buruj,
even though they all got killed, and they
all got burnt by the fire, and they
all died, men, women, and children, he called
that the greatest victory.
The greatest victory, even though from a materialistic
point of view, they all died.
Why did they say it's a biggest victory?
Because they stayed remaining, holding steadfast to their
values, to their faith, to their creed, to
Islam, to believing in the oneness of Allah
ﷻ and following His rules.
And even in the ayah in the Quran,
you know, Allah ﷻ talks about those who
strive in His sake.
He talks about, you know, that the first
goal, the first target, inshallah, is that Allah
ﷻ has already bought your souls and your
money in return for Jannah.
You know, this is the first, as Muslims,
like, we view this life as temporary, as
a test, and that if we achieve, for
example, martyrdom, we are going to achieve the
highest level of reward, inshallah, in addition to
a level of peace and tranquility and happiness
in this life.
However, in the Quran it says, So he
talks about, you know, that you need to
work for the sake of Allah and that
if you die, you're a martyr.
And something else that you also like, a
victory, a physical victory from Allah against those
enemies.
But that's something else.
The physical victory is kind of by the
by.
You might see it now, it might not
come, your grandkids might see it.
You never know when the result will come.
And that's why as Muslims, from my understanding,
we are not held accountable for results.
We are held accountable for actions.
Results are in the hand of Allah ﷻ.
We need to be accountable to make sure
that our intentions are for his sake and
his sake only, and that we do our
actions according to the teachings of the Quran
and the Sunnah, do proper mashura, do istikhara,
you know, speak with people that we trust.
And then we move forward, inshallah.
You know, I heard that word steadfast in
2012, when I visited Bayat Hanun, and we
were going to support, give some support to
a family who was in a difficult circumstance.
And I remember walking along Bayat Hanun and,
you know, it used to be all farming
land, right?
It was the farm part of Gaza.
And then it's all barbed wire, and you
can see the sniper turrets.
And so we go into this dwelling, which
really, Mansour, is like, it was like a
garage.
You'd consider it a garage.
It was a very open garage.
And there were two families living in there.
And the mother started introducing her children, not
by their names, but their names and their
injuries.
I've never been never seen that before.
So this is Sami.
He's got a bullet in here.
Look at the wound.
And I'm like, okay, that's from the sniper.
He was collecting stones to sell, and he
sniped him.
He'll never play football again.
This is, you know, a little daughter, Fatima.
She just rocks up and down because of
the shock of Operation Car Sled.
And it went on and on and on.
And then she said, and I'm like, okay.
I went to pray in the back, in
one of the back kind of rooms, and
I started to cry.
I started to cry afterwards, and I was
just crying and crying.
And she came in, and it was dark,
and all they had, you know, when they
use the lights from the phone.
Yeah, because there's no lighting.
She said, why are you crying?
I said, I'm crying for you.
She was shocked.
Oh, you're crying for us?
But we're so happy.
We have Allah, and Allah has told us
that if we are steadfast, he will give
us Jannah.
Alhamdulillah.
And that was, you know, one of those
moments when that word steadfast really, really has
a physical impact because you're seeing people live
that.
SubhanAllah.
And that steadfastness is not related to materialism.
Yes, and some of the other synonyms for
steadfastness is to be patient, you know.
And, SubhanAllah, Surat al-Asr.
وَالْعَصْرِ إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَفِي خُسْرٍ إِلَّا لَذِينَ آمَنُوا
وَعَمَلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالصَّبْرِ You
know, there's been an emphasis in many parts
of the Qur'an and Sunnah about being
patient, remaining patient, you know.
And there were times in Gaza, it would
have been very hard in other places of
the world for someone to be patient.
But patience sometimes opens the doors to many
good things that are to come.
And, SubhanAllah, the people there are very patient
people.
That's really interesting.
Think of how…
Sorry, Karim.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
No, I was just saying, I just wanted
to pick up on that, patience opens the
doors.
Yes, yes.
Because many times I think that there is
khair in something, right?
That there is something good that's supposed to
come now.
And I try to rush and make it
happen.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala starts putting
barriers towards it happening.
And I'm thinking, I'm doing something good.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala should open the
door for me.
Why is He making things harder for me,
right?
And in my younger times, I would try
to even push it further.
And then subhanAllah, I would face the consequences.
Now, and especially after what I've been through
in Gaza, I'm like, okay, if Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, it's meant to be, it's
going to be meant to be.
I just need to be patient and walk
towards that direction.
If it's meant to be, it's going to
happen.
If not, then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
may He make it, may He close its
door as soon as possible and keep me
away from it.
And that's how I translate patience right now.
Let me ask you this.
So obviously, I come from a non-Muslim
family, and I have mainstream friends and colleagues,
and they ask questions like, oh, those poor
people must be broken.
Oh, they're never going to recover.
Oh, they're going to need psychologists to help
them.
Are you broken?
Do you need a psychologist?
Will you never recover from this?
I personally do not agree with these three
statements.
The level of blissfulness and happiness that I
was at in Gaza, I never experienced in
my life.
And I've lived in the West.
I've lived in the Middle East.
I've lived in many areas in the world.
And alhamdulillah, I come from a very well
-off family financially.
And I'm blessed with a wife and five
kids.
And my father and mother are still alive,
alhamdulillah.
So I try my best to care for
them and get their blessings.
However, I never felt fulfilled and happy.
And like I said before, a sense of
peace and tranquility, except during my time at
Gaza, and especially during the war in Gaza.
So does that mean that after a ceasefire
happens, we do not need to attend to
the mental health of the population at large?
I think no, we should, in general.
I mean, any society definitely has a lot
of opportunities when it comes to either the
physical or mental state of its people, right?
But I strongly believe that as a Muslim,
if you're close to Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will make
things easier for you.
And let me give you an example.
I remember going through weeks without drinking good,
like clean water, living every day.
Can you just describe the taste of the
water in Gaza then?
So it's well water.
So sometimes I have a large concentration of
like salt and things in it.
So we try to filter that water through
layers of cotton, like sand and like small
pebbles and sometimes we would find like some
juice cans which we would drink.
So normally, for example, we're told to be
healthy, you need to drink two liters of
water a day.
Well, I drank maybe two liters of non
-pure water for a week, and I was
okay, alhamdulillah.
We were told you need to consume at
least 2,000 calories a day.
I'm sure I consumed less than 500 calories
a day.
And alhamdulillah, like no headaches, no stomach pains.
We were also living in very condensed areas,
like you're talking about tens of thousands of
people in hospital, in schools.
But with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's grace,
no mass outbreak of any disease was happening.
You keep talking about mass outbreaks.
There is sickness obviously, but you're saying not.
You, like, I mean, to the extent where
tens of thousands would also be sick and
you would need medications for all of them
and they would all be in bed ridden,
I didn't see that.
I did see a lot of individual cases
of people being sick.
But you would think that in a normal
situation, you know, with people being so close
and even though they try to clean the
area as much as they can with disinfectants
and they try to, you know, they try
their best because we're Muslims.
We need to pray five times a day.
We need to be clean.
We need to wash, you know.
But subhanallah, it's tough because you don't have
electricity.
You don't have, at many times, proper plumbing,
right?
You don't have, sometimes, access to water, right?
But despite all of that, I'm telling you,
it's a miracle that there hasn't been mass
infections or mass disease or mass death as
a result of these condensed gatherings.
Again, that's another blessing from Allah not saying
that what's happening there is good.
No, this should stop immediately.
What's happening is bad.
What's happening is wrong.
And inshallah, we're working towards that.
I'm just saying that this is another sign
from Allah that these people are blessed, this
land is blessed, and that their way of
life and their struggle against this occupation is
blessed.
You'd mentioned that, mashallah, you have two daughters.
Can you tell us a little bit more
about them?
Alhamdulillah.
My daughters are 23 and 21, and they
came to Islam when they were 9 and
11 years old.
They started praying, alhamdulillah.
And I was always trying to bring them
up in a spiritual way, maybe because I
was involved with Palestine, but I think I've
always been kind of anti-consumerism in that
way.
I've always got that the more stuff you
have, the less it matters, and surrounding your
life with plastic.
And so at Christmas, a couple of times,
I wouldn't buy them any gifts.
I would get them one thing each.
And then on Christmas Eve, I'd say to
their father, what have I done?
I'm abusing our children.
They're going to be crying.
I should go out and buy them a
thousand pounds worth of toys.
And then of course, being kids, they'd open
the present, they'd enjoy it, and then play
with the box anyway.
Because they do something random anyway.
I remember taking them to the Egyptian desert
when they were 6 and 3 years old
with a French couple, and all we got
for the children.
I mean, you know what birthdays are like
now in the Muslim community, or Eid is
getting very kind of like, how much can
you buy?
If you think of Christmas, right?
And all I got, we made a deal.
Each child gets a wooden toy, and a
wooden musical instrument, and one piece of clothing.
And do you know what they did Christmas
morning?
They found their little gifts, and we were
in the desert, literally, we were sleeping outside.
And they just put on a show.
And they put on the clothes, and of
course, you're a different character.
Now I am this princess.
And then they played their own music, and
it was the best.
And yeah, there's a great lesson there about,
you know, not attaching ourselves to materialism.
A lack of need, you know, not needing
to be in the shops all the time.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, being in Gaza for all this
period, you can survive and be happy while
not consuming.
SubhanAllah.
Islam teaches us to be productive.
But capitalism teaches us to consume.
So I think that, you know, when talking
to a lot of people that listen to
some, sometimes, you know, I was talking on
social media about Islam being a way of
life.
And, you know, Islam, because it's divine from
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it's not like
a man-made ideology, right?
We believe it's divine, and it has solutions
to everything, political, economic, social, etc.
I think that struck a chord with many
people, especially the young generation, who are feeling
unfulfilled in this life, and feeling that, you
know, how they're living, or the way that
they're being entertained, or what they're being exposed
to, is actually making them feel very empty,
and that maybe, you know, Islam can be
there to fill that void.
What are your thoughts on that?
You know what, I was just thinking that
when I went as a kind of Western
journalist, trying to get the best life for
my kids and buy them what I could,
but trying to resist it, when I went
to the West Bank and to Gaza, I
remember how kind of, how much a part
of life children were.
Number one, they were everywhere.
It wasn't two kids, it was five, seven,
nine, you know, kids, which was like, wow,
there's so many children here.
And secondly, that I remember at night, you'd
be in the living room, and the kids
would not be running around and interfering, but
they'd be listening and falling asleep here and
there, right?
They wouldn't necessarily be, go to your room,
it would be, you can stay here and
be part of this conversation, you can stay
here and pour tea, you can look after
uncle, and you can sleep on the floor
and stay up till three in the morning,
it's fine.
But there was such a structure, social structure,
where, and then I'd go home to an
increasingly child-led society, not child-loving society,
a child-led society, let me give you
an example.
Can you imagine saying to a three-year
-old, darling, what would you like for dinner?
That to me is so insane, because number
one, a three-year-old doesn't know what's
in the fridge, they don't know how to
cook, they don't know the options, and frankly,
that is a really stressful situation to put
a child in.
You give the child the food, they eat
what's there, thanks be to God, or that
was great, mum, on to the next thing.
And we've become, it makes you think of
that Hadith of the Prophet, peace be upon
him, and I know there's different views on
this, about they'll give birth to the maid
servant, will give birth to the master, the
maid servant will give birth to the master,
and that's been interpreted as the child taking
control of society.
I've seen that.
I see that in members of my non
-Muslim family, like, whoa, okay, that's weird.
And it makes the children unhappy, because they
have no, if you have no upper respect,
if you don't know that you do as
your mum says, and you look after your
mum, and you do what your dad says,
you do what your mum says, you love
your grandmother, if you're like, everyone just love
me all the time, I was a celebrity,
that is not healthy.
With no responsibilities, that's the kind of toxic
upbringing we're talking about in the West.
Yeah, talking about the social norms as well,
I remember going on xspace's live, so it's
like a live on Twitter, and I remember
one, a woman came and she was basically,
she asked me a question, and the question
was, I don't understand, why are you all
talking about caring only for the children and
the orphans, what about the elderly?
Why aren't we helping the elderly in Gaza?
Why is no one talking about them?
So I realised that she's living in the
United States, and I tried then to explain
to her how the social norms in Islam,
and especially in Palestine, were different, is that
we don't have retirement homes, the elderly are
not, we don't leave our mothers and fathers
once we turn 18, and that until now,
it's the grandfather and the grandmother, they're the
ones that are running the households, and that
they are very well respected, and that they
are being fed and treated before even their
own grandchildren, their grandkids, and she was in
shock to what she heard.
So maybe she was thinking, there's a whole
pile of abandoned elderly people who, when you're
told to move from space to space, everybody
else is doing this, and the elderly people
are just dropping by the wayside, because that
in their society would happen, perhaps.
Maybe, maybe, but it was definitely an eye
-opener, I think, for her and many others
who listened about how the society functioned here.
Also, I remember that before going into the
world of social media, I was very much
busy going on different TV interviews, radio stations,
digital content, web pages, talking to people online
about what's happening in Gaza, and then someone
told me, you need to be on social
media.
I'm like, what do you mean?
He's like, you need to be on TikTok,
on Instagram, like, aren't those channels about dancing
and singing and, in my opinion, like childish
things?
Like entertainment, yeah.
He's like, no, those children who are dancing
and talking about cats are now saying free
Palestine, and they showed me evidence of people
taking some of my videos and posting them
on TikTok, having over a million views each.
Wow.
I'm like, what?
This is TikTok, really?
What do you make of that?
What has that meant to you in all
of this?
It first taught me that the demographic of
television is different from the demographic of social
media, so we need to do both in
parallel, right?
And we need to try to speak at
different time zones, to different people on different
TV stations, to people with different ideologies, right?
Because one of my goals was to get
information out to all around the world, and
not only about what was happening in Gaza,
but it was also a form of da
'wah, a form of informing them about a
way in which they can help themselves in
this life and the hereafter.
See, and that's what I picked up on
when I first came across what you were
doing on Instagram on NASA Hospital.
I'm like, there is confidence, because I think
that the West, the outside world is very
confident, is very happy, is very content with
seeing the lack of success in the Muslim
world, in their perception.
They're okay with us being victims.
A mother carrying a dead body, great, we'll
show that on TV.
But where is our confidence?
Where is our steadfastness?
Where is that reflected?
And that seems to be what has penetrated
through the dancing cats of TikTok.
Alhamdulillah.
And I remember yesterday when I was on
Al Jazeera Mubasher, I told them that you
guys here are creating history, mashallah.
And you guys, for months, people tune into
Al Jazeera to know the news.
But I reminded them and I reminded myself
that unfortunately the system, the world order right
now, does not respect you if you are
weak.
It doesn't give the rights to those who
deserve it.
It gives you the right if they believe
that you are stronger and you are going
to win.
So always playing the grief card or the
pity card, even though it exists.
I mean, we are going through a very
hard time on the ground, but we still
always need to show the positive signs.
We need to give hope in a true
way, you know, coming from our Islamic beliefs
about what is happening there on the ground
and what the future holds.
You know, these man-made ideologies rise and
fall.
But Islam always is there.
Islam is a way of life, is a
religion for all people, for all places, at
all times.
What's been the most surprising comment or interaction
that you've had with somebody who's just found
out about Palestine and about Islam?
What was one that you made, wow, they
really got it all?
I had so many, I'm trying to recall.
That basically, you know, Gaza has woken us
up, like we were asleep before, or we
were in a state of, you know, we
were in this state of coma, like we
used to live in the matrix.
Now we were all forced to take the
red pill and wake up and see the
world for what it really is at.
I mean, we were taught for decades about
human rights and democracy and women's rights and
youth advocacy and, you know, voting and gender
rights now.
And now this war came and all of
these groups that have been advocating for all
of these rights and all these NGOs, they
are not able to do anything except condemn
on paper, and they're not able to, and
their main funder, you know, through the United
States.
What are they doing in Gaza now?
I mean, it's that ideology, I think, is
slowly dying, and people are looking for, okay,
what is going to fill that void up,
right?
And I think that seeing the character of
the people of Gaza, and live, and listening
to, you know, people on the ground, and
what they say and how they act, I
think that that in its own is a
form of dawah, subhanAllah.
And may Allah reward the people of Gaza
for their steadfastness, and may He ensure that
their reward continues until the Day of Judgment,
because a lot of people, alhamdulillah, have accepted
Islam.
A lot of Muslims have reverted back to
being practicing Muslims.
A lot of generations, which we thought were
lost, have gone from singing and dancing and
doing things that are, you know, that might
be harmful, like drugs and alcohol, etc, to
learning more about Islam, to trying to do
some advocacy for human rights, you know.
And subhanAllah, Palestine has always been a holy
land, has always been a land of positive
change, not only for Palestinians, or the areas
around it, but for the whole world.
So I think that 2024, inshaAllah, will be
the beginning of something great.
And when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loves
someone, He makes them go through hardship, because
He wants them to come back to Him
even stronger, and prepare them for something even
bigger and better.
You know what's funny?
It's a really simple question.
It's watching this, and it's horrendous.
You know, we all find ourselves scrolling genocide,
because you can't stop at every image.
You can't, even as a human being, you
can't walk down a high street, there's a
limit to how many times you can say
salam, salam, salam, salam, salam, salam, salam.
You can't.
So you start switching people off.
And so, you know, the algorithm knows that,
you're going to tune some of it out.
But what has jumped through the screen at
us is, how would I react on day
one?
How would I react?
I'll tell you what happened to me last
night, right?
We were in the Nablus restaurant here in
Doha, and a cannon went off.
I think they allow a cannon to go
off.
And I was like, I was like, it's
an explosion, it's an explosion.
And it took me minutes just to calm
down from that.
Right?
Just from that, and that was, I don't
know why people like explosions is a good
thing, by the way.
I'm even averse to fireworks these days.
But the point being, how would we react?
Would we be selfish?
Would we loot the shop and go, okay,
I know that guy's got a gold shop
around the corner, let me be the first
to grab that.
What do you do when gold no longer
has a meaning?
Because you can have a fistful of gold
in Gaza and not have dinner.
Correct.
And I think you bring up a very
good point about, you know, a lot of
people are telling you Mansur, I wish I
was there with you.
I wish I was there in Gaza.
You know, like, I feel I'm doing nothing
here.
And my answer to them was, why don't
you wish that you are at the time
of the Prophet ﷺ and be, you know,
you could have been one of the Sahaba.
But you could also have been one of
the non-believers.
You could have been one of the Munafiqeen.
You could have been, you know, someone who
has Quran written against them until the end
of days.
So right now, you are not able to
be physically in Gaza.
But on the Day of Judgment, what are
you going to say to Allah when He
asks you what you did, not only for
Gaza, but all the people around the world
who are suffering?
This is the question that we all need
to ask ourselves.
You might have been in Gaza, and Allah
ﷻ, you know, you won't take it, right?
And SubhanAllah, you might leave the religion, for
example.
Allah ﷻ knows what you are capable of.
He knew that when it was my time
to leave Gaza and hopefully utilize me outside
of Gaza, it's now written for me that
I leave Gaza.
Does that mean that, for example, I don't
have any regrets?
SubhanAllah, I left Gaza temporarily.
Inshallah, we will go back to Gaza.
We will all go back to Jerusalem.
But there's a lot of work that needs
to be done, I think, also on the
outside.
And I think that we are just getting
started.
And with the help and support of people
like yourself, Sister Lauren, inshallah, I think we
will get there.
You know, it's interesting, you've touched on psychology
there, and Islam being the answer, because it's
a way of life.
It's what we do.
But it's also what we think and how
our heart reacts to circumstances.
So there's so many great hadiths which prove
that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was
not only divinely inspired, which we know, sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam, but that he had an
insight into human psychology that has been unmatched
ever since.
For example, just one example is, if is
from shaitan.
So that word if is to be avoided
by Muslim believers.
Let's have a look what if does.
If I hadn't left Gaza, if only I'd
been there that day, if I had married
that person, if I had got that job,
you're living in the past and you're having
this waswas day in day out.
And then the fear of the future, if
only I can go there.
Well, you're here now.
What you're saying is, be where you are
now and make a difference where you are.
Don't say, if only I was in Gaza,
I'd be really brave.
Would you really?
Because you're in a chair in comfort and
you're not even brave.
And it makes us question ourselves and not
be soft with ourselves.
I think there's a lot of this pop
psychology, which is like, you're fine as you
are.
You're absolutely great.
Just carry on as you are.
You are magnificent.
No, you're not.
You're probably a really rubbish person right now.
Right?
A lot of us are.
We are.
We're all a work in progress, but we
have to look that in the mirror and
go, today I'm going to change.
And that's what Islam gives, is a roadmap
to that change.
Sister Lauren, Mashallah, you're a student of history.
You're a student of politics, of journalism.
Where do you see Gaza, Palestine, the region,
the world, from an ideological perspective, a political
perspective, where do you see us heading over
the next two to three years?
Gosh, that's fascinating.
Once upon a time, we'd be saying in
the next 10 years, as if we're confident.
And now we're saying two to three years
and we're feeling like, should we say two
to three months, right?
This is a pivotal time for humanity.
There's no doubt about that.
The way that I see things through the
Islamic lens, and also through my journalism lens,
is Iraq.
Our failure as an Ummah to unite around
Iraq directly led to Libya.
And our failure to gather around Libya and
go, hang on a minute, America, stop it,
led to Yemen.
And the ability of the colonial forces to
go, oh, but you're Shia and you're not
Shia, so why don't you guys just fight
each other?
And we'll arm you, but not you, led
to Syria.
And Syria is the doorstep of Gaza.
And so if we're looking at step by
step by step, before I was Muslim, there
was a song that I put to some
Palestinian images that I took.
And it was by a band called the
Manic Street Preachers.
And the line in it still stays with
me.
And I'm sure you can come up with
a better line from the Quran.
But it is, if you tolerate this, then
your children will be next.
If we tolerate this, the horrible thing is
Gaza has been a testing ground, Palestine has
been a testing ground for 70 years for
new weaponry.
That's the sick truth of it.
And if the Zionists are not stopped right
now, just watch.
We're sitting here in Doha.
You know, I am not terrified by that,
because this is not our resting place, right?
This world, none of us are stopping here.
You know, the Prophet, peace be upon him,
said, it's like you're on a long journey
and there's a palm tree and you rest
for a little bit under the palm tree,
and then you've got to get to the
end.
So we have to stop this as a
global community.
And we have to change ourselves.
I wanted to discuss this with you, actually.
The fear that I have, not the one
fear, but if I have a fear for
the children of Gaza, it's this, that when
the killing stops, the West will go, helped
by Muslims, let's send 20,000 psychologists in
there and child psychiatrists to cure them.
And they will destroy those kids with a
sick ideology, because these people have no idea
why they're born and they don't believe in
God.
And I pray to Allah, protect those children
and young people with the Quran.
We need to, for our young, inshallah, to
stop praising the West.
And I want to hear from our young,
not, I want to go to, I can't
wait to get to America, but, oh my
God, what is wrong with them?
And how can we help them?
As someone who's crossed the divide from one
way of life to becoming a Muslim, to
saying shahada, to submitting to Allah, I don't
want to destroy England.
I want to help because I see how
broken people are.
There are something like 2 million children in
the UK living with alcoholic parents.
My parents were alcoholics.
That's a horrible way to be brought up.
That is intensely difficult.
SubhanAllah.
And so, and you have drug parents and
you have, and there's no spirituality.
There's a saying in London, that in London,
you, what is it?
You die at 18 and you're buried at
70.
In other words, your spirituality is dead by
the time you're 18, but you're a walking
corpse until you're 70.
Because without spirituality, without a belief, without looking
after other human beings, without praising God, you
have no cause.
And yet our young people are still, because
of the media, because of Hollywood thinking, these
are great places.
I'm going to make a new life over
in Hollywood.
Hollywood is full of drug addicts living on
the road.
It's a tragic, tragic place.
It's a slave system.
The way that they make us go into
career, et cetera.
Thank you very much for giving us time
here.
Thank you all for your time.
InshAllah, we meet again and As-salamu alaykum
wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.