Naima B. Robert – The {VIRTUAL} Salon Raising Black Muslim Children Pt 1
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the challenges faced by black people in their communities, including the lack of diversity and fear of violence. They emphasize the need to teach children about their pride of being black and create safe spaces for them. The speakers also discuss the importance of protecting black people from harm in theield and finding safe spaces for them. They suggest creating "starboards" to protect black people from being incorrectly identified, but it is difficult for children to learn about their own language.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah Salam aleikum, everyone
welcome to the second session of the virtual salon. I'm your host
name OB Robert and it is an absolute pleasure to be here with
our amazing panelists Masha Allah my panelists today are sister Rama
Radha who is an author. I have a doubt as a mother of three. But I
heard she's an author and an activist within the community,
masha Allah. If you remember her from last week's session, she
shared some very, very, very poignant points with us, masha
Allah so that's Rama Radha all the way from Canada. Then I have
brother Michael Musa, who is an academic hailing from Zimbabwe,
he's an academic he's at Cambridge University mashallah and he was
also here in our first session Welcome brother Michael. And I
also have banana Mohammed here a poet speaker post produce producer
director from Canada Masha Allah and again and again and again. Oh,
he also told us last week that he's a Muslim model, but he's not
wearing a cheeky today so I don't know looking for brother Mike. I
want to brother bar brother Michael's shirt. I like your
shirt. I like that style. Okay, great. Okay, so we'll see if we
can organise some kind of sponsorship or something like that
in exchange. Exactly. Then I've got access to Bill keys quick who
is also with us mashallah from Canada she is an entrepreneur and
or the mother of three boys and one girl or boy Well boys,
mashallah for boys and one girl and Masha Allah then I have the
two I also have the three coaches, who are mashallah grace us with
their presence last week, and they are polygyny, polygyny, and
relationship coaches, based in the states Mashallah. So, guys, just
everyone, just give yourself a big, a big wave to the camera
Insha Allah, it's wonderful to have you here. And Bismillah the
reason that we've come together today is to continue these
discussions that the virtual salon is for, and these are
conversations between thinking people about some of the issues
that we care about within the Ummah, you know, within our
communities. So today, we are talking about raising Black Muslim
children, we want to look at some of the challenges some of the
issues that have arisen when it comes to identity, belonging and
self worth. So my first question to the panel is this. Since over
the last couple of weeks now, there has been a lot of talk about
anti blackness within the Muslim community. We mentioned this in
session one. And so my question to you is, how do you think or what
do you see is the effect on our black Muslim children in light of
the attitudes that we know to exist within the Muslim community?
The floor is open Bismillah. Guys, take it away. I mentioned this to
you last week that Canadians have a tendency to be very polite, so
we allow everyone else to speak, and then we kind of reflect.
But to answer your question, I think many of us have been having
this uncomfortable conversation, I'd love to hear from bopis
Because he has mashallah grandkids and the youth as well, Sniper. But
I think at some point, especially as a black men,
I don't look forward to it. But I understand my responsibility. And
in terms of the day, I will have to explain to my son, that he is a
threat. You know, that's that's an unfortunate reality that was,
was explained to me indirectly by people that were older than me.
But
at some point, you have to tell young black men specifically,
society sees you as a threat, you leave your home. And I cannot
guarantee your safety any longer. When you go to
public school, when you go to the grocery store, whatever you do,
when you leave the sanctity of my home, there are people that might
look at you in a certain way. And that has real ramifications. I
think specifically now, I'm having that conversation with with young
men and women and young kids and explaining to them that you know,
of course, in your home, you build this bubble of love, and for my
kids and my kids are still young, my kids are seven and five. But my
wife and I have been slowly trying to explain to them, you know why
the world is the way it is. And it's really hard to explain to a
five year old, I find it difficult to explain to a five year old why
someone might hate you, without having without ever having met
you. You know, and it's it's extremely, I guess, difficult to
have that conversation. But I think as a responsible parent, you
You have to set your children up for success. I don't want my kids
walking into situations and thinking everything's all good.
And realizing that it's not I mean, from day one, my kids have
been learning martial arts. My kids are both involved in karate
and martial arts, I don't play, I'm not playing around, you know,
like, I don't want them to be in a situation where they feel like
they're ill equipped to deal with life's reality. So for me, it's
about preparing my children mentally, preparing them
physically giving them the tools they need to succeed. We're not in
the US. So we don't have the Second Amendment. But if we were I
mean, that's, that's a reality. Many people have to examine how do
you protect yourself and your family? I think that's something
that really as black people, you know, we have to be cognizant of
that that's, that's deep, I wanted somebody to jump in there, I'm
still processing that on a lot. Anybody want to jump in?
I think I'll go next.
So boy, no, my kids are around the same age as yours. I have a
daughter, that's, that's eight. I have a son, that's five and young
daughter. That's two. So for me, like I mentioned last time, and
the first time my daughter encountered
visibly discrimination, she was four. So she didn't have the
language to express that she felt excluded, but it was happening,
and it happened in front of my face. So I've never shied away
about educating my children about, you know, what is happening in the
world, the fact that they are different. And my daughter is
someone that's very sensitive. She does understand that there are bad
things that are happening, but still has this notion that police
officers and things like that there are designated for to
protect people. So I think that's the hard part is trying to explain
to your children that law enforcement, perhaps will not be
on their side when we have taught them to call 911 or to call for
police officers to protect them. So now how do we explain that
police officers will now treat you different because of the your skin
color.
I grew up with one brother, and we lived in Ottawa for a long time,
which is the capital of Canada. And when I was around the age of
19, my mother made the decision to actually approve us and move us to
Alberta where we currently reside. And the reason for that was is
that we were living in government housing, and there was a lot of
violence that was happening in terms of little boys just kind of
getting in trouble and things that happen normally, and certain
communities, and that happen in a lot of different communities as
well. And my my mother, intuitively understood that my
brother, even though he might not be someone that would do something
violent or something criminal, understood that he could easily be
at the wrong place at the wrong time, and could be involved in
something like that. So she literally made the decision to
uproot us. And to move us to a province where there was really no
not much diversity, like when we came here in Alberta. And we've
enrolled in schools, and we were studying in French, we were the
only Somali family. So we were like, basically the pioneers here
when we moved to Edmonton. And we had to go through a lot of growing
pains just because we were the only ones. But she felt that it
was much safer for us to be the only ones and to be in a community
where perhaps we were alone, but isolated, and she felt that was
safer, like you know, and I commend her for the decision that
she has made. I do see a lot of the children that we grew up with,
and a lot of them have now gone through, you know, the legal
system and where they just petty crimes and things like that. And,
you know, we all know that
white children get treated differently than are the black
men. So she made a very wise decision. So I mean, these are all
things that we have to think about and now raising a black son, it's
things that I have to consider.
And it's just interesting to see that, you know, my mother had to
deal with that. And it's not getting better. It's just you
know, you have to be more aware of it. I've worked in the school
system. I know how the administration of schools see our
black children are you know, that they don't have the education to
know and to have that type of sympathy to know where they're
coming from, how they judge them, how they see them from just being
in the administration. So
I feel like I have a lot more knowledge than my parents did. And
therefore I have a lot more fears than they did because they just
saw the things that were visible, but they don't understand the
system as in depth that I do. And therefore I have so much more
fears for my children because I know how everything works. And
they say, you know, knowledge is power, but knowledge is also
something that can cripple you because you know how many things
can go wrong?
So I mean, we just don't have the option of not talking about it and
you know, when brother Bona says, you know, you have to cook for
your kids mentally, physically, and as well emotionally because
they have to be ready to combat this because it's coming at them
they're basic, I see it as a there's no option to Pamela so
many things I have but mashallah brother Michael has mastered the
hand up in zoom. So I have to give him the mic. There you go,
brother, Michael.
I think what we, we have to do is really to teach our children to
embrace their outsider status.
To celebrate that. And I think if you we all know that is the
Prophet said in one of the most famous tradition of Islam, but
ribbon was I wrote to hurry been Kumar Budda foobar Laura lamb
started, is,
is very strange to many people, is an alienated
way of life. It's, it should, it will once again become very
fertile, but in hora, so glad tidings to the alienated and the
strangers, the outsiders those on the margins of society. I think
this is important, I think for them to understand that they they
stayed in a long line of it of people who were considered
outsiders right at the very beginning of Islam itself. If you
look at the majority of the followers of the Prophet right at
the beginning, there were those people who consider to the mat to
be on the margins, they were mostly the young people, because
in a culture of Western Europe, it really was regarded as it'll be
more important than knowledge and your skills and your
qualifications. And young people flocked to the message of the
Prophet because they saw that as a message that liberated them from
that kind of jagged edge ism. And then you also had a lot of women
who were among the early followers, you had a lot of black
people who had become, you know, the diaspora community in Makkah,
including, of course, they were already black Arab tribes, but you
also had a large number of people that come from Ethiopia, in
particular, who became
residents of Mecca ended they were among because of their status as
outsiders from the protection of the Arab tribes, they found the
new message of Islam is something that would offer them that
protection is something that was,
you know, reaching out to the marginalized. And you also had to
be disabled, you had
the former slaves, or sorry, those who were still slaves, slaves at
that time, and, of course, many of those who had become liberated by
Islam, and you know, some of the famous ones, so, so these people
really become the founders of the Muslim tradition. So when young
people if they're if the if children really are made to feel
as though they do not belong to Islam, they have to be reminded of
these stories, as the as the famous African saying goes, until
lions begin to tell their own stories, the story of the hunt
will always glorify the hunter. So the stories have to be told,
whether it is through, you know, poems, like brother Boehner does,
or the writing, like Sister Nyima does with her books. I think that
it also teaching. And that is really important. I think that
those are some of the ways through which young people can be given
the tools they need to reclaim their place and reclaim their
identity in Islam and for them to understand that blackness itself
has always been part of the cultural intellectual DNA of
Islam. We wouldn't have to have seen without all those black
scholars in the early stages of the development of Islam, we
wouldn't have the field of study of Hadith, we wouldn't have a
solid Faker, he wouldn't have an Bulava and all the other key
discipline
Beans considered to be essential in the study and understanding of
Islam, they wouldn't exist. Without the contribution that was
made by the black scholars alongside, of course, Arab
scholars were working at a time, including Asian scholars. Even
before the the advent of Islam, the Prophet himself had been
brought up in a community and the society in which black culture
was, was influential. The Prophet spoke some with some, according to
AMA to Ben, Ben had been to * it famously known as Mohammed who
was born in Ethiopia. And that's, of course, another story because,
as you know, the first migration in the early stages of Islam was
to Ethiopia, the prophet sent his immediate family and others to go
and seek refugee in Ethiopia. They settled there for a number of
years, and some children were born. So the first born Muslims in
history of Islam were born in Africa. Not in Medina, they were
born in Africa. So she was among those who were born there,
including, of course, some Ethiopians who had embraced Islam.
And she returned as a young girl. And she narrates that when she she
was brought to the Prophet, he spoke to her in, in some Ethiopian
language, which she was familiar with. It's not surprising because
he was brought up as you know, by a black woman after the death of
his, his mother, and he grew up being surrounded by
an Arabic language that was saturated with words from various
languages, many of which were from African languages. Imam Jalla
Dini, Sophie is one of the scholars has touched on this and
has written a lot on the,
on the language of the Quran and, and how the language of the Quran
also reflected the influence that Africans or rather the black
culture had on Arabic society before Islam. And of course, there
are many points, even before Islam called the Gini Points, points in,
in the period before Islam, who were black points, they were it
was even a genre of poetry in Arabic in Arabic, which was mostly
associated with the black coils. And when the Prophet was growing
up, this was part of the education of the day that you had to learn.
Part, this poetry in the same way that you send children to school
these days. A properly educated or a boy would be would have
memorized a lot of these poems. And if you look in interiorly, the
the collection of Hadith also known as the OED, there is a
section on the recitation of poetry. If you read those
traditions, fortunately, Sunan Abu Dhabi, I think it's available in
English, the autonomy that don't think as it has yet, it may have
been translated in English, but I'm not aware of that, you will
find references to a lot of the poems that the Prophet recited
inside the masjid, after fajr. And in these coil poems, and the poets
they discussed, according to the inheritors of those traditions,
were mostly predominantly from the pre Islamic period. And it would
be made up of a huge number of poets who were also the the
rebuttal Arab, the black Arabs, or the black poets, who composed
poetry in Arabic, before Islam, and that became part of his
education and he had his favorite poets as well. And favorite poems,
one of the narrators was narrating the traditions, says that, the
prophet would often ask his companions to recite, for him his
favorite poems from the Slavic period. And he would continue to
tell them to recite until they had recited even 100 West or other 100
poems, in one sitting, and these were mostly poems that he
considered to be the best of the, of that particular tradition. So
this is I think, this is part of the knowledge that young people
need to be,
to be provided with. And also, for them to understand that Islam
really is not an Arab religion. It's not a South Asian religion.
It's not an Iranian religion, but it is. It is a religion for the
whole ummah. And that Islam reached Africa, Ethiopian long
before it reached Medina, and long before it reached Karachi and
Baghdad and in even some parts of Arabia. So they were already
Muslims, in Ethiopia, in particular, and also, I mean, of
all the places that prophet could have sent his hair
The elephant was to seek refugee he chose an African country to go
and settle, they could have sent them somewhere else for, for many
reasons he chose that particular country. So I think this is
important. The tradition I mentioned, all, I think, is
something that I'm always reminded of the importance of being an
outsider, being an outsider is something to be to be celebrated.
Sometimes children have to be taught that it's important to
stand outside of the circle, than being in the circle. Being outside
of the circle is a good thing, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
That's why we see someone is outstanding, because they, you
know, they are not someone who simply glow with the wind. And
the, the tradition that speaks of the Kaurava when the Prophet was
asked, What do you mean, when you say Glad Tidings be to the
horrible or the strangers, and he described or he defined them is a
Newser or mineral about another mineral carbide it means those
alienated from society, or from
alienated from the tribe or from the community. So in our time
today, it is really this, the situation where a lot of black
Muslims find themselves, they find that they're being they're
alienated from if they are living within a South Asian,
predominantly South Asian community, they are alienated from
that community. So they constitute to the horrible praise by the
prophet, or if it is an Arab community. And so young people
need to know their history, that they are not new to Islam, that
blackness in itself has always been part of the intellectual and
cultural DNA, of the religion of Islam. And there are so many
stories that they can be told and, you know, to make themselves feel
very proud of their place in that faith, scholars of Islam like so
you will see, starting with, of course, jarhead was the first one
to address this issue. What we are discussing right now, is nothing
new. In the ninth century, Elijah had addressed this question
and tried to produce works, some of which are available in Arabic,
and one has been translated into English, really talking about the
black the contribution of black people in Islam. And then after
him, you had other scholars, but key, rather prominent among them
was in New Jersey, who also wrote work, specifically addressing what
he noticed to be deep rooted anti blackness in his society. And then
he had others until we reach to gelada Dena Sophie who also did
the same. So the fact that these works exist is in itself evidence
that anti blackness has always been there. And that there were
scholars who try to respond to this to that anti blackness, but
we live in a time where scholars are producing that anti blackness
and disseminating it,
and demonizing any
attempt by black people in general, to liberate themselves
from forms of oppression. And what is even sickening about it is that
they tried to invoke the same tradition that came to liberate
people, they tried to invoke
Islam as a, as a way of denying people the right to, to fight for
their freedom, when we know that, you know, Islam has always been
the religion, of course, you
know, I could hear some, so So I think that's, that's what I can
say for now. And I'm sure others would like to maybe contribute to
the discussion. That cloudfare. Brother, Michael, thank you so
much for that. And there's a lot to unpack there. We'll we're going
to have to circle back around. I've got some amazing questions
that have come in some comments as well. Does anybody want to quickly
Well, answer the original question, which is, you know, you
know, how is the anti blackness affecting our children? Because
so far in the conversation, we've spoken a lot about raising black
children in the West in a place where they are, where they are
seen as as dangerous, you know, and we're going to unpack all of
that in Sharla, because I've got lots of questions, but
specifically, children who are black and Muslim. I'm really, I'm
interested in your thoughts on what that intersectionality means.
Because if you have a wider society that stigmatizes you on
the basis of your race, and then you have a faith community that is
anti black in some ways, you know, do we need to create safe spaces
for our children, even within the OMA as black children and this is
something
I really, I feel is really a legitimate topic for conversation
because in some of the conversations we've been having
about anti blackness this week, something that has come up from
non Black Muslims is we must not divide. We must not divide, we
must not divide, we must not divide. You know, if we have a
problem, it's the homeless problem, and we all need to work
together to solve it. But the answer is not for Black Muslims,
two separate
coaches have something to say. So I want to hand it over to the
coaches, but everybody else I want to ask you your thoughts on do
black Muslims need to create safe spaces? Do we need to separate to
protect our children? Do we need to have our own books do we need
to have our own cultural literature that teaches our
children the pride of being not just Muslim but being a black
Muslim? I want to hear your thoughts. I'm seeing those hands
going up. I love this. Yes, coaches take it away.
Samaniego, like
Yes, ladies.
I learned something that I want to share. As far as that goes. Well,
first, first of all, both of our, our children have all of our
children pretty much been online school for years. My youngest
daughter just graduated high school from online school she's
been in for seven years.
And her three sisters before her online school. So it just takes
out so much guesswork, you don't have to worry about them being
bullied or mis educated because you know what the homework is, and
you know how to
educate them because you know what they're learning.
To add to that, what I learned from my aunt, she only bought
Barbie dolls of color for her daughter. Her daughter is almost
30 years old now. She only bought books with children of color in
them. I don't care if they were from Africa. I don't care if they
were from the UK, the states. Because
she wasn't she wasn't in law. So she's married to coach now viewers
uncle on his
Puerto Rican Caribbean side. She said it's important for my
children to see themselves in books, in literature in our home
to see black people to see art
to see content that we create all over their home. Because I had
little girls I you know, I grew up with a white Barbie doll. And she
said don't ever buy them a white doll, buy them a doll that looks
like them. And I did it ever since.
They were very, very young. But she taught me that because I think
from a young age, especially people that are from my age group,
you were taught to hate who you are and how you looked.
My daughter my second oldest daughter went to school at
Boehner Institute and Texas. And she was roommates with three was a
four girls that were
I think three were Indian. And then one was Pakistani, and my
daughter's light skin and they thought she was you know of their
ethnicity. So their mothers were there speaking their languages to
my daughter, my black daughter. And she's like, I don't understand
what you're talking about. I'm not Desi, I'm not Indian. I'm not
Pakistani, I'm black. She still continued to do so. to such a
point of being obnoxious. I said well, to her black doesn't look
like you.
And Black doesn't look like how you look.
In her mind, I said but we black people look all different kinds of
ways. And so my daughter be the 22 year old, introvert, powerful
spirit that she is. She bought a t shirt that was red, black and
green. And it said I'm black every day of the month on it.
They quit asking her what she black after that.
I don't want people to mistake it. They think black is one way they
think black is, you know, just
I don't know, they just have this vision in their mind what we look
like. And there's no set vision on what we look like we make every
shade of eye color of hair color of skin color. And when my
daughters were little and I'm gonna pass it to my co wife, they
were in school and they said well, you're not Muslim and Arab Arab
school. She knows it's going to talk about here in the Midwest.
And my daughter said why I guess I am that she said no because your
mother's black. They think that coach Nivea was the J
option. So, you know, you muslim on that part of you that side. And
I said, you told me a black Mama said you are Muslim?
And she did. And a little girl left her alone. So that's my story
on that, you know that.
It's it I hate that it came from the Muslim community. But it did
come
Sorry girls
like taking those because there were a number of things that were
sad, like just from the beginning. So now, I'm like, Okay, wait, let
me
go back to some people like
Aurasma, she made the comment, you know, it's just about mindset.
Knowledge is power. Also, knowledge can you know, breed, you
know, fear and kind of like the stagnant type of thing. And I get
to but we actually stay applied knowledge is power. So you can
have all the knowledge you want to if you're not moving on it, if
you're not doing anything positive to it or with it. That's kind of
it's irrelevant. So the thing is, you want to make sure that a
couple of things. I like what the Buddha was talking about as far as
preparing your children, because we do the same
12 children we are dealing with right here, we said it last week,
to our children. So
a good portion, Omar dogs, but they're still children, you know.
But the thing is, is that
starting it,
just like brother Michael was talking about is about knowing
your history, you know, knowing the history, because the thing is
when you don't know where you came from, when you don't know what
your history is about when you don't know, when you only are fed
the the thing of like you were slaves or your ancestors were
slaves and things like that. And you see 12 slave business slave
and another slave and all these slaves. And that's all you were
wherever slaves. It's like, okay, I don't want to be part of that. I
don't want you know, you have kids that don't see the strength and
the fight and all that other stuff. But to start looking at, it
was it's it's more than that. They're kings and queens and all
of this other stuff. And knowing the history behind it and teaching
your children at a young age, how they can understand in a way that
they can understand. So to answer the one question that talked
about, should we have our own our own books, our own teachers
aren't? Yes, definitely yes. Because then we know that it's not
going to get skewed into a way where it makes this one person or
just one group of people look superior, when all it is is
masking or trying to sweep other things under the rug that, you
know, that caused them fear to begin with fear of looking
inferior, and, you know, greed and all this other stuff. So we know
the history, we know the stuff, but being able to teach our
children that stuff, being able to teach our children at a young age.
And that's the thing, what we do with our children is like, Okay,
we teach them the power, we teach them the history that they have
and where they come from. The one thing I took a couple of notes
because it was it was some good stuff. Um,
Delaney, someone put a question in the chat, asked about the ln
children from being in like the public system or something along
the lines of is that a way to protect? The thing is this is not
about delaying them in, in the public system. Because if whether
they're in the school system, or whether they're not involved in
the school system, they're still going to encounter this stuff.
Regardless, my oldest will be 21. And the reason why I took him out,
and like I said, we we virtual school homeschool, we we've done
our stuff for years. It wasn't necessarily my decision wasn't
necessarily to say, You know what, let me protect him from, you know
what's going on and everything like that. My reason was that they
weren't teaching him the stuff that he needed to know. And they
weren't allowing him to grow, where he wanted to move forward,
they were still on the same thing. So in order to win, he was antsy
because he was bored. They labeled him as having ADHD or all this
other stuff. So as these different things where we see in the school
system or in a public system, that you have to be like them or do the
things like that way. And if you don't, then there's something
wrong with you. But when you take control as a parent, and say, You
know what, this is what I'm going to teach my child. This is how I'm
going to teach my child because I'm going to arm them and prepare
them with the things that they need in order to be out here in
the world. And it doesn't matter if they start if they went
to a public school or not, it's still our job. As parents, to
teach them, it's not about just taking them away from something is
arming them with the knowledge and the know how of how to delegate
and how to just go out there and know what they're about, know
where they come from, you know, know, the being able to separate
the lies from the truth and all that other good stuff, but it
starts at a young age, and you continue to build on that and, and
lead by example. So we have to continue to increase our knowledge
as well. We have to continue to increase our self esteem our self
awareness, so we are able to teach our children the same Yes, I thank
you so much for that. I mean, so much good stuff. They're nice
guys. Oh, everybody wants to know do the coaches have any lectures
and they can go and listen to mashallah guys. Follow them on
Instagram, the outstanding relationship and me.
What's that? Hold on? Let me just get that.
That video. Oh, there's a book. Okay. You heard it here. First,
Masha, Allah. Okay, so there is so much there. I'm not even gonna say
anything, because the simple case has been waiting. So I'm gonna
give it to her. Then bonus hands shot up. And so I want to hear
about that. And just those of you who are on social media, those of
you who are tweeting, or who are updating Instagram, I really think
that what the sister said about taking control of our, our
children's education, and their Tobia is huge. And it's doesn't
depend on as what the sister was saying, it doesn't depend on them
being removed from the school system, per se, or whether they're
in Islamic school or they're not, it's still our responsibility to
make sure to ensure that they have the knowledge that they need. And
that's the point I'd like to go to, because we've talked about
preparing them for the worst, right, we've talked about,
unfortunately, letting them know that it's not going to be, you
know, all strawberries and cream, and that there are going to be
people who hate them. And for me, I have that is very problematic
for me, okay, so I'm not gonna say anything, we're gonna come back to
that, and I'm gonna go to the middle case, and then brother
Bula. And then brother, Michael's hand was up as well go ahead,
says.
So
this is a, this has been a very long struggle for me.
Just even starting back with my brothers. So myself and my, my, I
have four brothers.
And
we're, we're second generation Muslims, and living in Canada. And
I feel like, in Canada, there is like a little bit of a different
theme for Afro American, afro, Afro Caribbean Muslims.
Because the the community, or the amount is very small, right. And
especially back when we were growing up here.
It was very, it was like, even smaller. So
just to try to keep yourself in having like an Islamic identity,
or, you know, my parents, my dad's a historian, African history. And
so for us, he, you know, he was able to teach us about, you know,
the history of Islam in Africa. And so that's kind of how we,
that's kind of how we grew up. So we kind of had, like, it was sort
of a strange kind of culture that we created in our family, because
it was like a hodgepodge of all different sorts of, you know,
Islamic cultures put together to kind of, and then on top of it
were Western, so we have, like, you know, my mother is Jamaican,
so we had bit of Jamaican thing going on, and American, you know,
Bostonian sort of thing going on. So it was just like this kind of
culture that we kind of grew up in. But now to the next
generation, and my children.
You know, I'm not my parent. And so I grew up in the Canadian
system, this Canadian school system, and I watched my brothers
in the Canadian school system being being black boys, and just
how it was completely out here to destroy them, like completely. And
so, you know, just, you know, when I started having children, and it
was, you know, I gave birth to one male and then another male, and
then another male, and, you know, and, you know, just realizing what
I had to do the responsibility that I had, you know, to these
children, and so, I had decided from the very beginning to
homeschool them and that was one of the main reasons why I decided
to homeschool is to protect them.
Basically from the system and
And,
and then you know, just kind of including the kind of things that
I learned as a child of the way I grew up. I taught them when, you
know, when it came to teaching history, I taught them Hispanic
history alongside African history, like it was a joint sort of lesson
from from a very young age. So, you know, they, they studied great
kings of Africa, you know, and, you know, at that time, that was
the new poster of the great kings of Africa was, like, amazing, if
you guys haven't seen them, they're just so beautiful,
maybe goop lit or something, but
they just, you know, those two things came together as one and I
had to make that personal decision myself, because being in the
community that I was in, predominantly South Asian,
you know, and then also the homeschooling community that was
in which is, which was also predominantly South Asian, and
just, you know, everyone discussing the curriculum that
they were using, and, you know, I just had to decide on my own, what
I, what I needed to teach my children, right. And, and that was
really just to try to develop their self worth, and self
confidence and their and, because I knew what was coming, right, I
knew what was coming, and then as well to just giving them defense
against the Muslim community. And that's like, a horrible, horrible
thing to face. But that just was the reality of it, you know, like,
giving them you know, the armor. So when they go out there, you
know, and the kind of the racism that we're going to experience
from the Muslim community.
And so,
you know, this has been like, years and years and years of
struggle for me, and now my eldest is almost 24. Mashallah, and, you
know, the, you know, like the sisters, were saying the range of
colors in your, in your family, that the use of black blackness
also coming into play, my eldest son is very, very light skinned,
he's like skin, light skin is, you know, more light skinned than
anyone, okay. So, to the point that people think that he is
mixed, like some parents is white, right, right. And then, you know,
going towards, you know, my third son who has a dark skin,
dark skin, so it was just trying to navigate that as well. And, as
well in the Muslim community, and the way that people treated each
each child because of the color of their skin, and literally the
color of their skin, you know, and, you know, just them, just
them trying to kind of
navigate through that. And I feel like, you know,
the, the, the issue right now for me is, you know, them being young
adults, is
just trying to, you know, they know, the history, they they know,
basic history, I mean, there's there's a lot of things that are
being uncovered right now that have been hidden from from us, in
front of the whole Muslim world, like brother, Mike, Michael was
mentioning all the all of that information, you know, that has
been hidden. So there's that, but, but then trying to get them to
feel that it's important to actually learn that now. Because
because of the damage that has been done to them in the Muslim
community, you know, like to pull them back in and really like this
is this is, you know, they know that Islam is between them, and
Allah ultimately, that's it, right? It's between you and Allah
and, and, you know, they have judgment, you're going to be
answering to a lot for your own deeds. So they've got that. But
then the community aspect of Islam is also very important, you know,
so to pull them back in into the Muslim community and say, you
know, what, it's okay, you've been treated this way, whatever,
whatever. But, you know,
to make it safe again, you know, and they're just sick and tired of
being the teachers.
This is not how you're supposed to treat black people, you know, when
you go out to the rest of the world, this is not how you're
supposed to be treating black people.
And, you know, they just don't feel very comfortable. And now
because of, you know, this whole insurgency, like, you know, even
before the murder of George Floyd and them really coming into
themselves as males, like black males, and paying attention and
listening and knowing what is happening out there. And then just
now say, you know, I'm going to identify as a black male, you
know, and they haven't taken on any of the clothing of, you know,
the other parts of the world Islamic world. So they're, they're
dressing like a Westerner, right, but their taste so now it's like,
they're identifying as a black male. And so that identifies the
black male. They are now looking more Western. Now it's, you know,
there's a whole dynamics about how Western, you know, the brother was
saying, stranger, how strange Do you want to be like, it's the
whole thing. Yeah, in a way
Do you want to be strange? Like if you have to choose where you're
going to be strange and where you're going to stand out? Which
community? Are you going to be? Okay being alienated from? You
know, and I think I think that, that
thank you so much. It's the bookies because I think that that,
that tension, especially at times like this, between your race and
especially as you said, you know, black boys out there, you know,
that the tension of of living that reality, and then also kind of
being part of a faith community where, you know, you maybe don't
necessarily feel like you belong, you don't feel like you're
accepted or, or, you know, respected. I think it's not even
about acceptance or tolerance. I think, for me, it's about respect.
But anyway, I'm not here to do the talking. So I'm gonna go to, can I
go to Warner, then Michael benrahma. Go ahead, guys unmute
yourself, and Inshallah, what we will do, because I don't want
today to go three hours like it did last time. So what we can do
in Sharla, is, once we've kind of done this, we've got lots of
questions that have are coming up from the audience, and I'm sure
amongst ourselves, well, we can do is we can try unmuting and having
like a dialogue across across the panel in Sharla. Okay, go ahead.
Yeah, I want to, I want to
I don't want to be controversial, but I want to kind of be
controversial. I want to spice it up a little bit. All right, put it
that way.
Because I think that
as Black Muslims, there's there's also a level of romanticizing,
that occurs when we talk about creating black safe spaces, right?
I think maybe just Rama can agree with me, in certain communities
and East African communities, right? There are certain people
who would not be welcomed, although we would consider them to
be black. Right? That's just an obvious truth. That's not
something that you can lie about, or whatever. So we have in Canada
and Toronto, and I'm sure in Alberta, and other places, you
know, you'll have black, quote unquote, massage, and you'll have
but their ethnic base, right, you have a Somali machine, you'll have
Oromo, machine, Ethiopian mustard, whatever. And these are black
spaces. But in many, the vast majority of these times, other
ethnic groups, other ethnicities, other people, even though they may
look like us, they're not valued or respected.
And I think black is such a beautiful term. But for me, it's a
unifying term, right. It's a term that brings people together,
despite our own nuances, our own differences, but it always reminds
me when I think of the word black, I always think of like, how
beautiful and important the overall legacy is people who are,
you know, coming from Africa, but there are so many black people who
don't realize they're black. And they are gatekeepers to these
spaces. And it's almost impossible to get them all on the same board,
like get them all on board on the same time. Right. Like, it always
reminds me of the quote of Harriet Tubman. I don't know if it's
authentic or not. I don't know if we can if there's a Senate for I
don't know, but one of the statements that's attributed to
Harriet Tubman where she said, you know, she freed 1000s of slaves,
and she, she could have Fred, she could have freed 1000s of more, if
they only realized they were slaves. Right? Oh, somebody do
something with that, quote, please. There are so many people
that I wish as a community I could reach out to and explain to them
and prep their children prep them and their families for what's
coming to them. But they're just not they think black people are
them no black people is that those are black people. And you look in
the mirror, you're like, What am I? You know, I I'm from my parents
are from Ethiopia. My wife is Eritrean. Right? What does that
make my kids confused, right? When they're just born in Canada, they
don't have a particular my myself and my wife are not cultural. We
don't have like a particular culture that we identify with. And
so growing up our our identities are much more in flux with being
black and being you know, this identity, this kind of app pan
Afro perspective on the fact that we embrace all types of blackness.
But I would go on a limb and say that's not the experience of the
vast majority of black people who are not necessarily my age, I'm
talking about parents and older, right. I think the younger folks
maybe are having younger children, that that may be different. But I
think that's something to be cognizant of. Because I think many
times we romanticize this notion of black spaces. I'm just I'm
responding to that statement earlier. Should we have our own
spaces? I don't know if we can have black spaces
that are not
ethnically divided. I don't know if it's possible. I don't know if
you can have a space where everyone is black and everyone
feels that we're all the same that all of our experiences and I in a
way I think that that sometimes can be detrimental because it's
also erasing our own individual experiences and identities, right?
I'm not African American and African Americans have unique
experience.
In histories and cultures that we shouldn't just erase and say,
Okay, no, you're like us now you're African or you're you're
from this, but no, you have your own. I have my own cultural
baggage baggage, everyone has their own cultural baggage. And I
don't necessarily think we need to minimize our race those. That's
why I've always taken the approach. And this is where the
controversy lies. This is why I wanted to get I wanted to spice it
up a little bit. I think in terms of really, creating black only
spaces isn't more important. And I don't dismiss the work of anyone,
by the way, I think it's not a matter of this or that I think
everyone should be doing something, right. I'm not saying
you have to do what I'm doing. I'm saying do something. I always take
the approach of taking Islamic spaces and making them more
relevant to diversity and the black Muslim experience and other
experiences as well. Because I think that I'll give you an
example of my students, my Muslim Students Association in the UK,
you call them ice socks, right? I went to university, I had a Muslim
Students Association. That was like 100%, Desi, like, 100%.
Indian, right? And, but you know, there's a lot of black Muslims
that go to the school. So you go to Jamaica, you get all these and
they put on events, and we just be like, this is wack. Like, we
don't, you know, these people are out of touch. And so now actually,
ironically enough, there's a movement in the US, which I
definitely, you know, I vibe with where there are black Muslim
students associations, which I think is cool. It's a great
alternative. But in my day, they didn't have that. So what I did
was that, I said, Well, look, I want to join this organization, I
want to, basically, and I did I join the organization, I became
the vice president, whatever. And I started making it more
accessible to black students. And then eventually, more students
started showing up we had, you know, a lot more diversity
throughout the ranks. And I think to me, that creates a more organic
culture of unity amongst the OMA I know, a lot of people will say
this, don't divide and divide. I don't think we're the ones doing
the dividing. I don't think it's it's a response to what's already
been divided. It's not like people are saying, well, we don't want to
be with you guys. It's, it's, you're saying you don't want to be
with us. So we got to figure out where do we go? Right? It's kind
of would you say, when I started to jump in there, say that it's
like, it's, it's not even so much. We don't want you here. But it's
more like, we will tolerate you here. Like, it's okay. Like, you
can come. But we still going to have video any and all the chefs
are going to be, you know, one from one background. And yeah, the
way that we will approach things is going to be our way, because
we're the dominant culture, you can come like, it's okay. You
know, but I feel like just to what you were saying about the
different groups, would you say then that the future generations
will have a much more black or Pan African approach due to the
watering down of culture, and the culture and the intermarriage and
also the fact that, functionally, I feel when we are in the West, we
become black by default, because we are the other and the white
gaze is on us, right? As far as white people are concerned, we
just like they don't care about you know, your tribe or your
country or your nation, would you say then that the next generations
maybe will be will will be free to just be black, or just be Pan
African or whatever? What's what I think this is what I kind of
alluded to this last last week, because I do believe that future
generations will eventually improve upon, you know, the
foundations that have been laid before us. I love I love the fact
that, you know, little pieces, children, you know, there's
there's what is a third generation now and you have my children now
who are, you know, second, like a second generation Canadians. And
and when you get old enough, when these kids start looking at each
other, they're not going to see anything else. It's not going to
be well, your family's from your one quarter this one quarter that
now we're gonna start talking in quarters, it's not even your half
this your half that your, your 115 We're gonna be like the white
people we have here who are 1/17, Welsh, 118. Scottish was like,
You're not even you're just white. Right? Yeah. But for us, I think
we need to have a more holistic approach to creating safe spaces.
I don't think it should be just black spaces where we and I agree,
there's times and especially in our day, there are times when we
need to be amongst each other, to just give our give each other that
boost. You know, it's hard to be in spaces where you're not
recognized what you're not respected. But I think ultimately,
change cannot happen unless it's done at a leadership level. I
don't care about the demographic of your Masjid. I'm worried about
the leadership, I want to know who's in charge. I want to know
what space is on your board have been reserved for people outside
of your ethnic group. I want to know, who are the people that are
calling the shots, I think we need to stop worrying about the
miniscule things. And we need to start looking at the bigger
pictures, right? Because there are people that are calling the shots
once you and once you become a shot caller you can change that
culture and tradition. But many of us we kind of look back and we say
well, you know I don't like this organization. I don't like that
machine. What okay, you don't like it fix it? Let's let's and it's
not easy. I'm not this is not me minimizing the effort and saying,
you know, just go ahead and do it, but I
I feel like it's it's to the betterment of everyone if we take
that approach but again, it's not just this approach I think there
has to be a variety of approaches there has to be some black safe
spaces where people can go and recharge and feel loved and feel
valued. Then there has to be times when we're able to go into the
public sphere in the public Muslim sphere and and really wreak havoc
and take those faces and make them like our own. Yeah, stand up now
100% Anybody who disagrees guys, I really would like it to be a safe
space for anybody to just be like Nana Nana, Nana, Nana, so if you
if you want to respond to something specifically to what
someone has said right then and there of the panel, please like
make a sign in your in your mind in your you know, make a sign in
your video so that I can so that I know that you want to come in and
bring it on. By the way, I want people to disagree. I think we
were all kind of singing Kumbaya for a second. So I was like, let's
let's, let's spice it up a little bit. You know what, let's hear
from the streets boys bringing it is this like, yeah, okay, let's,
let's rouse the rebels. Okay, brother, Michael. Yes, yes, I
think I'll really echo a lot of what Brother Boehner has said and
to say that the, this is exactly what the Prophet was trying to do.
The Masjid of the Prophet was that safe space for black people? We
know from the traditions in Bukhari and others that African
performers
came to the masjid to perform playing drums and singing the war
songs and dance, you know, dancing in the presence of the Prophet.
Today, you can't You're not even Welcome to pray in a mosque as a
black person, and yet the Prophet Welcome to them to come and dance
in the mosque. Michael Can I just jump in there to say as well that
although they may not like you to come and pray, they have no
problem with us coming to perform at the fundraiser, and do and rap
and poetry so that they can take money to to to Afghanistan and
Palestine and Kashmir and Musharraf. So just to just despise
that? Oh, yes. Yes, it's it's very important. I think that's an
important point. And then the other question was, What should
parents do and I think parents first responsibilities towards
their children to protect their children, even in the Quran, and
Sunnah. It is not your responsibility, it's not your
first responsibility as a parent, to, to learn to protect the
symbols of religion. That's why when a child is crying, there, you
can break your Salah and go and and look after a child, you know,
it all defecting we have, I don't want to go into that. So that's
important. So if your children are being abused in the madrasa or are
being made, to feel that they don't belong, or you are concerned
for their mental health, or their concern, even for the idea that
they may be made, to hate themselves, and also to have that
religion that fade, then of course, you you can, I think
protect your children from that kind of environment, where that
environment is harmful. And the is
the is an important principle in Islamic Fetty shared by all
Muslims, regardless of the madhhab whether they are Salafi chef, he,
whatever this school of thought, they belong to these subscribe to
this principle, that ladder, what are the raw Islam that
Islam can which is based on a tradition from the Prophet, where
he said that there shall be no harm to yourself and harm to
others in Islam. So this is one of the fundamental principles of
Islamic law, that there shall be no harm to self and to others and
that harm can be physical harm, or it can be mental harm,
psychological harm. So Islam can to stop that and prevent all that
from happening. So if a certain space, even if it is a religious
pass, once it starts to cultivate a culture, which really cause a
lot of people harm, mental harm, and physical harm, then it ceases
to be an Islamic space. And the prophet in the Quran that is
determined virar which is mentioned in this tradition is
also mentioned in the Quran. In the in the case of that masjid,
which was destroyed by the prophet must do there are the masjid which
had been established to cause this kind of
to cause people a lot of harm. And that was not physical harm at that
time. It was the, you know, the kind of things we're talking about
at that time. It may have been something different, but the
mental and the harm that was that it was doing to people's Eman as
well as to their mental health was so serious that the Prophet
ordered that it be destroyed. And, and that's and that's one thing we
have to of course, this is not to suggest that people you know, do
anything extreme that what is being said what
The point I'm trying to underscore here is that,
especially is only Islamic, if it doesn't cause harm to others. If
it causes harm, it's not an Islamic space, then you have to
create an Islamic space. If it's causing Dirar, and you know to
other to others, overall to yourself, when you go there, it
causes you viral in the sense that what you are learning from there
is making you doubt your faith, you are being taught a lot of
horrible things about black people in for example, you are listening
to racists hold worse, or you're being given racist or fear that
does happen. Racist commentaries of the Quran do exist. And people
have even gone as far as fabricating tradition of racist
traditions and attributing them to the Prophet. And I think I
mentioned last week, yes, exactly, exactly. They do. So if you're
going to a mosque like that, and you're hearing this, it's causing
you harm. And the mosque itself is causing JIRA. Right. So it is, I
think, what you have to do is to find a way of solving that
problem, of course, you take your context into consideration, it may
be that you may have to remove the whoever is in charge, there are
ways of removing the trustees. But we have organizations in this
country in the United Kingdom, whose constant written
constitutions clearly stipulated that only a member of a certain
ethnic ethnicity of you know from the community can be elected to
the committee or can take a senior position in the mosque. So if you
have that, as a constitution, what can you do about it, and then some
may not have these explicitly written in the Constitution, but
it is an unwritten law in that particular community. So you be
wasting your time causing yourself a lot of problem by trying to
change something that cannot be changed. And, you know, sometimes
you just have to look into the examples of the Sahaba what they
did look at, you know, we know from history that copies of the
Quran were destroyed, because they were causing the wrath.
And, and because the the Sabbath wanted to have a unifying, you
know, because there's so many, there's so many different
versions, people had written some commentaries in their own copies,
keeping them under a mattress, according to some some of the
tradition, the tradition of Irish, for example. And so they had all
these extra commentaries, when people will get their children are
getting confused, they couldn't tell the difference between a
verse of the Quran and a commentary inserted in they were
starting to say that, well, this is part of the Quran, when
actually it was just a comment. Now you have a situation where
racist commentaries do exist. So if you have your children if your
children are going to mosque and getting access to these kinds of
commentaries of code that caused them harm, so I think, you know,
parents can just decide what to do with this. Just a few more points,
which are, the other question was should Black people have their own
books, I think for early Muslims, and Black Muslim, their book was
the Quran. And they came to Islam, as I said, because they saw it as
a duck as a book that was liberating them from their
situation. And the teachings of the Prophet was, you know,
especially in the form of Hadith becomes that book for them, that
would be brightened. But of course, at some point in history,
you had the faculties and other commentaries of the same Quran
produced to oppress black people, especially in areas to do with
slavery, and so forth and so on. So So So then again, you you have
a problem here, where you have the Quran, which is a liberating
document, but commentaries of that Quran are oppressive commentaries,
not all of them, of course, some of which are produced by people
with, you know, different agendas. So the Quran can be that book that
Muslims should reclaim, I think all Muslims, whatever their
ethnicities, you know, it is the document for black people in
particular into the document and demonstrated in the history, then
you have books, which were written specifically for black people
need. The tradition of writing books for black people is not new.
It started with a jarhead in particular, and then I gave
example, even Josie there are many others, I'm simply giving examples
of the most famous works available. So you see, and others
wrote these books. And of course, you had implementers, the band is
writing in one of these in the introduction to one of his works
that his friends, he was patient himself, but he said his friends
were already talking black scholars in Iraq in the bassinet
period, we're already talking that they needed to produce more wax to
reflect their experiences. But what was happening in the writing
of, of the production of knowledge is that it was based on patronage.
So you could be able you you could only write and maybe do a lot of
teaching if you were being paid by the college from some of the
elites. So if you're already a marginalized community, then it
made it difficult for you to combine whatever you were doing,
and also what
on producing Linux Yes. I feel like you've opened a big can of
worms there.
Rama, I want you to unmute, please because I feel like the that issue
of patronage and you know, being from a marginalized community and
producing cultural artifacts for that community and the
difficulties of you know, if you choose to write something for
Muslim children, but you choose to have it with black Muslim children
characters, now you lose the mainstream appeal of your original
work, right. So we are definitely going to have another session
inshallah talking about cultural creation and cultural artifacts,
etc. But Rama even wanted to speak. Thank you so much, brother,
Michael. Go ahead, Raha Okay. Thank you. So, the first thing I
wanted to mention, I think your original question was,
Is it important to create safe spaces, the way that I see this,
and one of the reasons that led me to write the books that I that
that I do is that I see our blackness being attacked at both
fronts, I see our blackness is being attacked. And when it comes
to mainstream with the, from, you know, just normal society, being
black people, and I see our blackness also being attacked in
our Muslim community, where are we are made to feel less than so for
me, when I am bringing up my children,
I've made the decision to enroll my children in Islamic school so
that they wouldn't have to have,
they wouldn't have to explain their their religion. However, I
see now that this is the second year of Islamic school for my
daughter. And I see some of the problems
of parents that have chose to enroll their children in public
schools. And that's because the pain that can come from
experiencing racism when it comes from your own community. So now I
am having to shift that and strongly considering doing
homeschooling or distance learning, simply because I need to
have children that understand this concept. Like brother Michael has
said, the concept of being the outsider how it is, okay, I am a
product of this society, the programming that has been
indoctrinated in me is taking me so many years out of school to
kind of unprogrammed myself to understand that I don't need to
make myself small, I don't need to make myself in a certain way not
to be perceived a certain way. So I don't want my children to go
over like, you know, to kind of it's as if almost I'm putting them
into a system and then expecting them to learn something that's
different later on. So why would I even put them in a system that is
not is ill equipped to teach them what they need in order to survive
in this society. So when I hear Brother and Michael talking about
children needing to learn their history, they're not doing that
even in the Islamic schools. It's not happening, they do have
components of Islamic teaching, however, the African feel like you
know, history is not being taught. They even though my children are
among a diverse population, and it is mashallah beautiful to see a
Muslim community,
they're still a minority when it comes to that. So it is really
upon yourself to take that ownership of your children's
education and, and build that foundation from the start so that
they can in in the future, be able to take those actions that brother
Boehner has mentioned, to create safe spaces and things like that.
I think initially, for me, it's important to create a safe space
for them to safeguard their blackness because it's being
attacked in both sides. So that's it's for me to raise children that
is that understand that. And then I believe that if we are able to
do that, then we're able to send children out there that understand
the need for diversity and inclusion in all spaces,
especially when it comes to our religious spaces. But if we don't
do that, and safeguard their their emotion and their mental wellness,
by protecting their blackness and their identity from the start, it
will be very difficult for them to go ahead and you know, do the
things that we have mentioned
in my household we have black, you know, dolls I have tall right
here. I mean, making sure that you know, my daughters they have to
see themselves whether it be in the books, would there be in the
in the toys, in every single thing that we introduce, making sure
that they are featured and
They are celebrated. And this is the reason why I chose to write
Muslim children's books that have African features. They have to
have African features because the other ones don't.
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