Mohammed Faqih – Compions for Change- Guiding Youth to Greatness
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the "back-to-school" program for young people to learn about change and strategy, emphasizing the importance of belief in a world and learning from failure to achieve success in Muslim nonprofit organizations. They emphasize the need for individuals to have a professional and committed professional approach to their work, as well as the importance of strategic planning and the importance of building schools and non-profit organizations to achieve sustainable growth and impact. The speakers also emphasize the need for financial resources to achieve growth and the importance of understanding the size and scope of a community or organization, as well as finding the right market for certain programs and building a gym for engagement among people. They also discuss the importance of targeting Muslims in the community and finding a way to unlock people's need for social services and empowerment.
AI: Summary ©
I need
the chair to stand up, that's why I
sit next to him, so I'm not going
to do that, but you don't need a
chair.
Oh, this is not even long-term.
Long-term.
Long-term.
Allahu akbar.
La ilaha illallah.
I will stand up.
Allahu akbar.
Bismillah.
Ameen.
Allahu
akbar.
Subhanallah.
Bismillah.
Bismillah.
Bismillah.
Alhamdulillah.
Allahu akbar.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh.
Bismillah alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulillah
salallahu alaihi wa salam.
The plan two weeks ago was, I was
going to speak tonight, on lessons from the
seerah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
when it comes to, you know, having a
vision and strategic plans in the life of
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's life
is full of inspirational stories.
And then something very extraordinary happened over the
past week or the past ten days.
Syria is free.
Alhamdulillah.
Allahu akbar.
And there is an extraordinary story there to
be told.
And we're still learning more and more and
more, not only about the brutality of this
regime that many people didn't realize how bad
it was, one of the worst on the
face of this planet, but also about the
extraordinary work that an entire generation of young
people who were brutalized and persecuted, and you
would think they would have been broken by
now, yet they were so determined to liberate
their people and did an amazing job.
And Allah azza wa jal gave them success.
There's no doubt in my mind that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala and Qadr worked in
mysterious ways and they were able to accomplish
much more than they have themselves expected.
And this is ذلك تقدير العزيز العليم.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has His
ways, something that we are learning more and
more about.
So inshallah we'll talk about that.
In the meanwhile, subhanallah, a very dear friend
of mine was going to visit me and
then less than a week ago he told
me that Friday opened up, I'm going to
be in town, would you like me to
give the khutbah?
I said, of course.
And we decided to have this program.
So tonight inshallah wa ta'ala, because you
all have right inshallah to do your ibadah,
after the sunnah, we're going to give five
minutes, we'll do a setup here, we're just
going to have a conversation or an interview
between myself and my dear brother Tayyib Yunus
inshallah, and I'll tell you all about how
we two met, and inshallah we'll have a
discussion about change and strategy, inshallah.
You're all invited to do that inshallah, and
if anyone wants to ask questions or have
follow-ups, we can entertain that as well
inshallah.
So inshallah after the sunnah, inshallah we'll start
the interview.
First of all, welcome Tayyib.
Thank you for having me here.
To Memphis Islamic Center once again.
Last time brother Tayyib was here, you were
here in the capacity of an advisor or
consultant for one of the most reputable and
effective Islamic organizations, and that is CARE, Council
on Islamic American Relations.
And we reconnected again, but that wasn't the
first time we met, right?
No.
Yeah.
So the first time Tayyib and I met,
it was during Hajj.
I was honored and lucky enough to have
him in my group, and we were able
to connect.
It was a very, you know, personal experience
for me because my older sister, one of
my sisters, they're all older than me, but
one of my sisters, Fatima may Allah Subh
'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless her, was
performing her Hajj, and we went together, and
Tayyib was there with his wife, may Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless both
of them, and then we connected there, and
alhamdulillah.
And then soon after I came back, we
stayed in touch, and then Tayyib told me
that he was going, you were considering being
the?
Oh, CEO of ISNA.
CEO of?
ISNA.
ISNA, Islamic Society of North America.
And he's like, what do you think?
I'm like, oh, great.
You know, go for it, insha'Allah ta
'ala.
And that was an interesting experience, and we
stayed in touch, and then finally we reconnected
here, and to his surprise, he found me
here.
Last time we met before that was in
Southern California.
So alhamdulillah, it's great.
Now Tayyib, someone might ask, okay, we've heard
of him, we know him, but we don't
know him that well, and most of us
don't do our due diligence, so, you know,
many people did not look you up.
So why, you know, tell us a little
bit briefly about Tayyib Yunus.
Oh, man, first of all, thank you so
much for having me out here.
You know, I would say I mentioned in
my khutbah today I was born and raised
in the Panhandle of Florida.
My father was actually one of the founders
of ICNA, Islamic Circle of North America.
And so growing up in the Panhandle, in
the house, in our home, there was always
this priority of public service and service to
humanity.
That was a priority.
It wasn't, you know, you just do good
in school and go become a doctor or
an engineer.
That wasn't the priority, and I think that,
Sheikh, influenced me the most in the early
stages of my life.
And my mom, her uncle was the first
scholar at Medina University from India and Pakistan
at the time, and so my mom only
spoke Hadith with us.
That was her only language.
So I would say that's the early upbringing.
Beyond that, I would also say that I
was a youth in the 80s who struggled
with identity.
If I can be vulnerable, I really struggled
with my Muslim identity in the 80s.
Is this a safe space, Sheikh?
Yeah, it is a safe space.
Like many of our generation.
Are we the same generation?
Like many of our generation.
Okay, so Sheikh said it's a safe space,
but I struggled with my identity in high
school.
But what helped me, Sheikh, was actually a
mentor at the time.
So my father kind of knew, okay, I
don't know what to do with Tayyib.
So he reached out to an older guy
in college.
His name was Ammar Atiyah, who I need
to introduce you to him.
He's the imam at a masjid in Gainesville,
Florida.
And he really kind of spent time with
me and taught me what does it mean
to have that ahuwa and learn from teachers
and scholars.
And by the way, that's what drew me
to Sheikh Faqih.
When I went to hajj, you know, and
I just wanted to be around the Sheikh.
My mother said, if you want to learn
from a person with knowledge, serve them.
Because people with knowledge, right, they're good people.
And a good person is always going to
want to give something back to you.
And this is the joke.
Don't take this serious.
I'm getting vulnerable here.
My mom said, and most sheikhs don't have
money.
So if you serve them, they'll give you
knowledge back.
But mashallah, I'm sure you're doing it.
Yeah, that didn't work, did it?
Yeah, it didn't work, did it?
But so for me and for my younger
guys in the room here, you know, you
have mashallah an awesome, may Allah bless you,
serve him.
I was actually, I learned a lot.
Remember, there are many lessons that I learned
from Tayyib during that hajj experience.
One of the lessons that still stuck with
me because I love to was, you know,
remember you said how there has to be
a story behind every purchase or every gift.
Remember that?
Yes.
So I'm still practicing that, alhamdulillah.
Okay, now what did you do to qualify
to be a consultant to one of the
most influential national organizations?
Yeah.
So first of all, and this is for
everybody in the room, one of my teachers
and mentors said to me that if you
want to be an expert at something, there's
three E's to expertness.
This is a framework.
The first, like if I want to be,
sheikh, if I want to be an expert
chef, right, the first E is I need
to educate myself on how to be a
chef.
I need to read some recipes, right?
The second E to expertness is I need
to get some exposure.
I need to see somebody else how to
bake a cake.
That's exposure.
And even for the doctors in the room,
you don't just go to medical school and
treat patients, you have residency.
And in residency, you observe other physicians.
So the second E is exposure.
The third E is experience.
So these are the three E's to become
an expert at something.
Educate yourself on it.
Number two, you get exposure.
You follow a mentor and you learn from
that mentor.
It's a Jedi training.
And then number three is you do it
and you learn from failure.
You learn from failure.
So these three things qualify you as an
expert.
And so for me, I wanted to help
Muslim nonprofits, and I'll tell you why.
It all starts with I believe a world,
and hang with me now, I believe a
world served by Muslims experiences Islam.
Say that again.
I believe a world served by Muslims experiences
Islam.
So if I serve my neighbor as a
Muslim, they experience Islam.
Yeah?
So a world served by Muslims experiences Islam.
Then the question is, hey, how do you
get everybody to serve?
How do you get every Muslim in the
world to serve everybody?
That's the mission I'm on.
So then I thought to myself, okay, who
are the Muslims in the world that are
serving people?
Well, it turns out, Sheikh Faki, there's a
lot of what I call heroes and sheroes.
These sheroes and heroes, they saw a fard
kifaya.
They saw a problem that they want to
solve, and they went and they set up
a nonprofit.
These are heroes and sheroes.
They quit their jobs.
They registered a masjid.
They registered a nonprofit.
They had some vision.
I'm going to solve this problem, and they
registered a nonprofit.
But the problem, what I found, Sheikh, is
out of all of these heroes, sheroes, and
actually in the U.S., there's 8,000.
In the United States of America, there's actually
8,000 Muslim nonprofits.
Out of the 8,000 Muslim nonprofits, 350
are Islamic schools, and just over 3,500
are masjids.
So that's about 4,000, if you were
hanging with me with the math.
The other 4,000 are your relief organizations,
your advocacy organizations, your soup kitchens, and all
those things.
These 8,000 Muslim nonprofits, they were founded
by heroes and sheroes.
The problem is 95% of them lack
the financial resources, human talent, human capital, and
one more thing, a clear strategy.
They lack these four things to fulfill their
mission.
And so these nonprofits are stuck in something
called a starvation cycle.
And so, Sheikh, when I heard about that,
then I said, I wanna somehow understand this
and work on it.
You heard about it, you saw it, you
experienced it.
All of it.
Let's be honest and open.
Okay, before we go any further, I just
wanna read just one paragraph from multiple paragraphs
generated by one of the most sophisticated AI
services about this man.
Just to give you, this is what AI
is saying.
Tayyab Yunus is a prominent leader in the
social impact and nonprofit sectors, known for his
expertise in strategic planning, organizational transformation, and community
engagement.
He is the CEO of Intuitive Solutions.
Is that accurate?
Let me finish.
A company focused on helping nonprofits achieve sustainable
growth and maximize their impact through strategy, fundraising,
and innovation.
How accurate is this paragraph?
Well, I never checked myself on chat, GBT,
but that pretty much describes my world.
Okay, great.
So now you know why Tayyab is here,
inshallah ta'ala.
So one of the things that we wanted
to talk about is, okay, you're saying 95
% lack the proper resources to succeed, right?
Where should they start?
First of all, I mean, we're talking about
change here, right?
Is change even possible?
Well, absolutely change is possible.
And where you start as Muslim organizations, and
I'm just going to use simple terms because
we're hanging out right here.
I don't want to nerd out on my
PhD, but you just got to dream a
little bit bigger.
So let me break that down.
My dad, is this YouTube live or anything?
Nobody tell him if you know, okay?
Just for those of you who don't know,
his father is a cardiologist named Muhammad Yunus.
He's, you know, is he retired?
He's still seeing patients.
He's still seeing patients, mashallah.
Well-known, prominent, you know, community leader, known
at the national level.
Dr. Zaman knows him very well, right?
Correct?
Mashallah, very honorable, respected figure who has done
a lot for the Muslim community.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless him.
So we owe him a lot.
And your mom as well, mashallah.
May Allah bless both of them.
So when, so he's, my dad came in
1970, him and his peers.
When they came to the U.S., for
example, they looked around and there were no
masjids.
There was nothing.
There was no Islamic schools.
There was nothing.
And so, and when he tells the story,
he says our first objective was to raise,
to save money and go back.
But then we had the kids and the
kids were talking English and didn't want to
go back.
So the first thing we did was we
built masjids and then we built schools.
And then we built non-profits, relief organizations,
and we started to send money back home.
As a matter of fact, $4.3 billion
Muslims donate.
More than half goes overseas.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
We need to send money to help everybody
in the world.
Now, but what did happen, Sheikh, is, and
this goes back to the question, is their
vision stopped at, forgive me, but a lot
of these community builders, their vision stopped at
building the facility.
And then they didn't know what to do
next.
They didn't know what to do next.
They didn't dream bigger beyond that.
And that's what we have to do now,
is a starting place for us as a
community is to dream bigger about the next
step.
Where do we go from here as a
community?
It can't be expand.
Expand isn't good enough.
I mean, eventually, this building will cover all
60 acres.
And then what?
That's expansion.
That's not a real vision.
That's not growth or impact.
Exactly.
So dream bigger about your impact.
Okay, so what does it take?
Dreaming bigger about impact.
Again, this is a safe place.
Well, number one, succession planning.
Succession planning basically means let's be honest about
who the institutional builders were that built this,
and let's partner with them on developing the
next set of leaders to carry it forward.
Number two, strategic planning.
What is the next vision?
And I keep coming back to Memphis because
I'm sitting here, but, you know, what is
the next stage for this beautiful 60-acre
property plus the other masjids in the city?
What is our big plan that we're trying
to achieve?
Okay, we hear this word a lot, strategic
planning or strategy.
Just briefly, if you can just define what
you mean by that.
What does strategic planning or strategy mean?
A strategic plan, in the most simplest form,
says what we want to achieve by when.
It is not an operative plan, by the
way.
That's where people get stuck.
Because most of us, we're managers in our
workplace, and then we think strategy for a
masjid is also a project plan on an
asana board.
That's not what we're talking about.
What we're talking about when we say strategic
plan for this masjid is 10 years from
now, there are four more masjids strategically placed
in certain districts that help us financially and
electorally, and we've also measured and projected growth
for our school.
We're not just trying to raise millions of
dollars for expansion.
We know that this community is growing at
this rate, and that means this is how
many more classrooms we need.
So you're always ahead of the game, basically.
You're basically ahead of the game.
Okay, so let me ask you a question.
Is this even possible?
Can you share some examples where strategic planning
directly impacted an organization that you're aware of
or its ability to actually create positive social
changes?
Oh, absolutely, 100%.
In the context of...
Muslim organizations in America.
Absolutely.
In the context of a masjid and an
Islamic community organization, there's Hira Institute in Lexington,
Kentucky.
They basically started in a small house, and
they said, we want to do this right.
We want a strategic plan from the start.
And that strategic plan had intentional impact, had
a number of how many hufadh they were
going to have by a certain date.
They had in their strategic plan by when
they were going to move from their rented
house to a rented building, to a bigger
rented building, to then a purchased land, to
then a built land.
What we see often in communities is we
go from rented house to massive facility that's
empty.
So these guys, they did a strategic jump
month to month.
I mean, year over year.
In their strategic plan, they also had human
resources.
I want to highlight...
You asked the question, what do you have
in a strategic plan?
Non-profits start off as volunteer managed and
operated.
But you can't scale up on that.
Eventually, you have to professionalize your staff.
You have to have accountable, professional, trained, and
continuously invested human resources to grow an organization.
Now, it's not wrong...
So in this particular organization, all of that
was already defined and well written.
And you're saying that they were able to
hit or meet their objectives?
Yes.
At each one of these milestones?
They executed with Ihsan.
From the day one, the board said, we're
going on this plan.
And from a growth strategy, they went from
outsourcing to insourcing.
Okay, now for established...
Okay, it might be easy for us to
talk to, let's say, a community or an
organization that is at its infancy.
They're starting.
They're like, okay, what should we do?
And you come and you say, well, this
is how you do it, and this is
how long it's going to take, and these
are the resources.
Now, what do you do with NGOs or
nonprofits or Islamic centers or established communities that
are trying to overcome resource constraints to execute
effective strategies?
Like, they have these immediate needs, you know
what I mean?
They're like, well, you don't know what it's
like.
We are really struggling with our day-to
-day operation and needs, and you're talking to
us about five years.
We don't even know what's going to happen
in the next five days.
So where do organizations who find themselves in
that kind of situation, where do they start?
Well, one of the questions that I heard
was how do you get financial resources?
Well, the first thing I would lend...
So let's say finance is not...
I just want to make it very practical.
Let's say money is not an issue.
Okay.
So you come to a community, you don't
even know whether money is the issue or
human resources.
Oh, you don't know what the issue is?
Yeah, you don't know.
So now you come and you find a
center or a school or an organization trying
to find a direction for itself.
What do you do?
I mean, how do you even start the
conversation?
How do you even start the whole process?
Well, for one, three things.
First, as part of that process, I want
to understand the size and scope and growth
of the Muslim community.
The research says that only 40% of
Muslims go to Jummah.
So if you were to fill this masjid
to occupancy over Jummah, it's only 40%.
60% are still not coming to this
masjid.
Of the actual size?
Yes.
How many people do we get here?
I mean, I'm usually giving the khutbah on
the minbar so I don't get to see
the size.
I'm talking about average Jummah.
Dr. Adnan, 500?
This is both downstairs and upstairs?
Okay, so 500 is only 40% of
the community that's around here.
On a Jummah, only for a Jummah.
It's not your Eid number.
Your Eid number is different.
Dr. Hassan Bagby calls your Eid number a
different number.
But that 500 number is only 40%.
So to have an accurate assessment or estimate
of the number, you would go to all
the masjids at the same time and then
count how many people were present.
That's the Jummah method.
You multiply that by 2.5 or something?
Yes.
And you get your number.
We need to do that at some point.
Okay, so how does that help you?
What does that help you?
That helps me because it tells me about
services we're not providing and value we're not
creating.
So as a community center, as a masjid,
we want to understand what are the needs
of the community.
What are they asking for?
How many of them need mental health services?
How many of them need Tarbiyah, Tajweed?
What are their top priorities?
Then based on that, you build a program
strategy.
And once you build a program strategy, you
build a human resource strategy.
Your human resource strategy tells you how much
money you need.
And with a proper development plan, the community
will donate.
American Muslims donate $4.3 billion.
Half of it they're not giving to the
Muslim organizations.
So you can take your budget, how much
you raise a year, and you can basically
say this is half as much as we
could raise.
Let me ask you a quick question.
I'm going to ask a couple of questions,
and then after that it's open for your
comments and your questions.
Are you familiar?
Do you remember the unmasked movement?
Yes.
Anyone remembers here?
You remember the unmasked?
This was about ten years ago.
So there was a group, I'm not sure
if you're familiar with them, that did research.
They raised some money and they started doing
research to understand why Muslim youth were getting
unmasked.
Why were they running away from the masjids?
And they started.
And the first stage of that research of
theirs, they started going to different masjids and
different metropolitan areas and megacenters.
And in the first phase, they figured the
theory was, oh, it's these irrelevant, out-of
-touch imams, most of whom happened to be
immigrants.
And then what I was told by one
of the lead people is like, and then
one-third of the way, we realized that
most of these imams were very fast learners,
they were very passionate about their communities, they
had great ideas and stuff like that.
And he said, well, the problem is not
with the imams then.
They were very receptive and very welcoming.
He said, then we came to the conclusion,
two-third of the way, that the problem
was with the boards that hired these imams
or that get in the way of these
imams.
And then he said, so we started interviewing
the board members and the presidents and the
founders and the leaders and people who take
initiatives.
And they turned out, most of them turned
out to be very passionate, amazing, generous people.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless them.
So he said, we came to the conclusion
that the problem is not with them.
And then he said, we figured out the
problem is with the community.
So they went back and, you know, because
when they interviewed the community, some communities complained
about imams.
And then when they interviewed the imams, they
found out that maybe the problem is with
the board.
And then when they looked at various samples,
they said, wait a minute, the problem is
with the community.
So communities where there are enough people who
are engaged, very aware, you know, concerned, and,
you know, they're engaged, do much better than
communities where the members are just laid back.
You know, they just don't care.
They just want to come and receive services.
Or even if there's no service, they either
complain or they just don't care.
So how, to what extent do you agree
with that assessment?
Well, I, what I, the way I solve
that problem is through what's called mission market
fit.
So what do I mean by that?
What I mean by mission market fit, especially
like, especially this center, to me, I would
classify it as a mega center.
Mega centers...
We made it, we're a mega center, M
.I.C., Allahu Akbar.
A mega, mega...
We are, we are the...
Have you ever seen a property bigger than
this?
I have not.
Okay, Alhamdulillah.
I have not.
So we're America's mega center.
Mega, so here's where I come from.
So a friend of mine, a colleague of
mine, he studies masjids, okay?
And what he, when he looked at, you
know, when masjid Quba in Medina, they had
a museum.
And if you've been to masjid Quba before
in Medina, they have a museum.
And in this museum, they have a model
of the Prophet's exact city.
And if you look at this model, you
see the Prophet's masjid.
But then you see all these other masjids.
And then in this model, they've drawn a
line that shows Masjid Nabawi today, which encompasses
all these masjids.
So my researcher friend, he basically says, Masjid
Nabawi was the mega masjid.
It's where the classes were.
It's where the zakat distribution was.
It's where business operations took place.
But then you had micro masjids in the
neighborhoods, allowing people to still fulfill a fard.
So what he writes in his research is,
is that the blueprint for the Muslim community
is you need mega centers and major centers
near populations fulfilling their needs.
And then you need micro centers to help
people fulfill their salah.
I totally agree.
You know, my dream is to have, we
should have a musallah in every zip code
in America.
That's more than 41,000 musallahs.
We're only, what, 3,500?
I would even go as far as saying,
what's the name of the neighborhood you live
in?
I drove, I've been in the car and
I see the name on all these streets
with houses.
Here?
Yeah.
Cordova?
This is, Cordova is the city.
Yes.
But then they have these housing communities.
Woodland.
Woodlands, okay.
So based on my colleague's research, he says
there should be a musallah in Woodland.
Well, there is, this is it.
Oh, this one, okay.
But there's gotta be another housing community.
So the little housing community I live in
is called Celebration.
Okay.
Which is a housing community in Orlando.
So Celebration would have a musallah.
But then, in our zip code, we have
Jami Masjid, if you've been to Orlando before,
which is the mega center.
It's where the funeral services are.
It's where the religious director is.
The tajweed teacher.
The Islamic school.
The Sunday school.
The mega center has services.
The micro centers are so you and I
can get up in the morning and walk
the fajr together.
Otherwise you have two rows here probably.
Fajr, yeah.
Two?
But imagine if there was a micro center
in every place.
Now, going back to the unmasked question.
The way we address the unmasked question is
to actually understand what their needs are and
have tailored services for them.
If you think about Roots in Dallas.
Abdulrahman Murphy...
Where is Hasnain?
Hasnain is a big fan.
He actually has a Roots...
Where is he?
If you think...
Yeah.
He has a Roots mug.
Sameer.
Sameer.
We need to have our own cafe mugs,
man.
We have our board members walking around with
Roots mugs, man.
I'm just kidding.
If you think about Roots in Dallas.
At first Abdulrahman Murphy used to go to
masjids.
And the whole theme was come as you
are.
And believe it or not, there was a
masjid that kicked them out.
Why did they kick them out?
Even when Roots was bringing Sheikh Faqih, 200
people, 300 people that never went to that
masjid before.
The masjid kicked them out because somebody complained
that the sisters were not wearing hijab and
some of the brothers were coming with shorts.
So the reason why the unmasked don't come
is because A, there isn't tailored services for
them and then B, yeah, the rest of
the community is protecting a culture that isn't
welcoming to every culture.
What's interesting, by the way, I'll tell you,
is the research right now says that we
know 23% of our Muslim population is
leaving Islam.
But at the same time, 23% are
converting back to Islam.
So it's a net zero.
And we also know that's true from a
faith-based perspective because if my ummah doesn't
worship me, I'll replace it with another one
that will.
So the net neutral number is there.
But the other thing that we know from
recent research is Muslims are, American Muslims, millennials,
is the largest demographic.
Millennials is after 1980.
That's the largest demographic.
How many of you guys in here consider
yourself a millennial?
Yeah?
How about, umm, what's the generation before millennial,
Gen X?
Yeah, that's us, right?
Gen X, raise your hand.
Yeah, so a big chunk of this room
is Gen X.
So if millennials are the largest demographic of
the community and they're not in this room,
that means we're already losing the market.
They're outside drinking tea.
Yeah?
They don't want to talk to you and
that.
They don't want to talk.
They don't want to hear anyone.
They don't want to hear us.
They just want to have an experience.
They want to have experience.
Yes.
So programming share.
Okay.
Like, you know, if I could wave a
magic wand in every masjid, I would basically,
immediately, I would invest dollars into a study.
I would launch a study and that would
target every Muslim household in Memphis.
It might cost us five grand.
And we launch a study.
We do digital ads and we find out
how many Muslims there are exactly in Memphis.
Five grand.
Number two.
We find out what are their needs.
Where are they at in their faith?
What masjid do they go to?
If they had a masjid that was welcoming,
what would they need?
Then we take this service and we go
to every masjid and say, hey, Midtown, you're
doing these services.
Right?
Hey, MIC, you're doing these services.
I don't know any other masjids here, by
the way.
Masjid al-Rahman, Masjid al-Nur, Masjid al
-Muslimeen, Masjid al-Mu'mineen.
Every masjid gets a playbook.
Every masjid gets a playbook.
Masjid Salam?
Masjid Salam.
They all get a playbook.
And then I put another five grand in
to advertising these programs to all this community
and we bring the people.
We bring the people back to the masjids
into programs that matter.
And you know what will end up happening?
The research says, Sheikh, that this demographic, they
actually are more philanthropic than their immigrant grandparents.
They donate more.
They donate more money.
So you just got to commit to a
strategy.
All right.
I'm done with my questioning.
I have more questions, but I'm sure you
guys have some comments or questions that you
would like to ask, so please feel free.
The question was mission market fit.
Mission market fit is essentially, in the business
world, you have product market fit.
Apple has an iPhone and they have like
four versions of them.
They're lined up to a market, you know.
Toyota has five or six different cars that
are lined up to a market.
That's called product market fit.
In the nonprofit world, you have mission market
fit.
Mission market fit basically means that certain programs
in...
Let me back step.
All of our programs achieve one mission.
And for a masjid, it's really engaging people
into Islamic activism and citizenship, broadly speaking.
A masjid's purpose, A, is to provide space
for aqeem al-salah, but B, it should
also unlock someone's civic power or public service.
Yeah?
Okay, so that's the big mission.
Then when I say mission market fit, I
mean, okay, how do we now find the
different markets around our masjid and line programs
up for these markets?
And we have to think about markets.
Like my dad, for example, when I have
this conversation with him, in his mind, there's
two markets.
There's youth and everyone else.
Yeah?
And he's not wrong.
Allah bless him.
In his mind, in his buddies, it was
build a gym.
Right?
And nothing's wrong with that.
I'm not complaining about it.
I'm saying, you know, people's needs change.
Markets change.
You have to adapt them.
I went to this one masjid.
They had a pickleball court.
Anyway.
We do have one.
Oh, we have pickleball.
Oh, mashallah.
Multiple ones.
Yeah, and I agree.
To me, I see centers that are specialized
in da'wah, da'wah activities, right?
Centers that are specialized in providing social services
and healthcare and mental health, you know, services.
Centers that kind of specialize in youth education
and empowerment.
Centers that kind of specialize in, you know,
academic Islamic, you know, seminary or academic.
Centers that kind of specialize in, you know,
Quran institutions and stuff like that.
You can have that.
You can have different specialties and everyone working
together beautifully fulfilling the overall need of a
very diverse community.
That can be done.
And I think I'll have to conclude with
this because we're out of time.
If I can think of any community that
is so capable of achieving this in a
short period of time is the Memphis community.
The greater Memphis area community has assets, infrastructure,
resources to get all of this done and
do it at a level that will impress
everyone else.
I promise you in five to ten years
if we adopt some sort of community-wide
strategy, Memphis will be the place that everyone
wants to move to because we've got, we
have an amazing Islamic school that obviously needs
to grow, needs to be empowered.
We have the space.
We have very engaged and diverse and generous
community.
We have talents.
We are a young community.
There is, and more importantly, there is a
sense of, there's a level of unity and
cooperation and collaboration that you don't find in
many communities.
But you can't take that for granted because
what happens with communities is that they grow
and they start fragmenting, right?
So they grow and then they grow apart
from each other.
In order for that not to happen, before
you start coming to MIC in five or
ten years and then feeling like a stranger
and you don't know anyone, you can't relate
to anyone, if you are proactive, you can
actually prevent that from happening and you can
see the community growing organically and beautifully and
becoming a very vibrant and empowering community.
People will move from other places to come
here and be part of this, inshallah ta
'ala.
And I'm very hopeful, alhamdulillah.
I think, I really thank you for joining
us tonight, inshallah ta'ala.
Brother Tayyib is available, inshallah.
We'll be out, we need to be out
of here by nine o'clock.
Does that still apply, Dr. Adnan?
Huh?
Not tonight?
Okay, good.
So, inshallah ta'ala, I just wanted to
give everyone an opportunity if you want to
engage Brother Tayyib.
If you have any questions, inshallah ta'ala.
But this was a wonderful opportunity.
Thank you for coming and visiting and accepting
to do this on a short notice.
May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
bless you for joining us.
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la