Omar Suleiman – Out Of Context – Part 1

			Hi, my name is Mike Bachmann, I'm a United Methodist pastor serving a new church start here in the
city of Dallas called union. And I've been invited by the by ina Institute to come in and do an
interview with Imam Omar Suleiman. Today, we've got a audience with us to be a part of our
conversation, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to ask some questions of the mom, a lot of
questions that I believe that Americans wonder about Islam. And I've had this realization over time
that a lot of what I've been hearing about Islam recently, are things that I've heard primarily from
politicians and pundits, and not actually from Muslims themselves. And I think that we need to have
		

			opportunities for dialogue and conversation with Muslims, about their own faith, before we come to
any sort of conclusion or belief as individuals, as a society and beyond. And so I'm really eager
for this conversation to have the opportunity to hear directly from a man who is well studied, is
well respected, and is a leader in Islam here in Dallas area, and then also in the United States as
a whole. So I'm really excited to get to spend some time with you today. Appreciate it. Thank you
for coming. Absolutely forward to it. So I'm curious that we might as well just just start off,
start off well, off the bat.
		

			You know, it isn't that like Muslims just arrived in America.
		

			Muslims have been in this country for a while. of yours, right? Yeah. Yeah.
		

			So Muslims have been in this country for for a long time, to varying degrees, of course. And I'm not
that old in the grand scheme of things. I'm 37. But I've certainly noticed over the past several
years, that there's been more and more conversation around Muslims in America, there's been more
anti muslim rhetoric in recent times than I remember from the past. And I'm curious if you have a
sense of why, what why this has developed over the past, you know, decade or maybe two? Sure. Well,
Islam is actually very old. It's as old as the country is. So there were Muslims here when, when
Christopher Columbus arrived amongst the native population that were here, obviously, a great
		

			population of the of the slaves that were brought to the United States estimates up to 35 40% of the
slaves came from Muslim countries, they were Muslim as well.
		

			You know, the first country to actually recognize the United States was a Muslim country was
Morocco. And, you know, we find Thomas Jefferson only have a copy of the Quran, Congressman, Keith
Ellison sworn in on it, as well as Andre Carson. It's become sort of a thing, but it's we've been
around for quite a while in this country. And so, you know, Islam is, is quite old in this country,
the fascination with Muslims didn't really start until after World War Two. So historically,
speaking, after World War Two, that's when America started with its fascination of Islam and Muslims
abroad, particularly the Muslim world trying to understand the Muslim world, obviously, then you
		

			have the Israel Palestine issue arises in the 40s. And then you have after that, as time goes on,
you have the Iranian Revolution, you have the Gulf wars, right? So what we see is that around the
1990s, academically speaking, suddenly, you have all of these Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and
Islamic Studies and Arabic culture, and so on, so forth, popping up on the academic level all around
the country, then 911 happened, and after 911, it's like, you know, who are these people? What
happened, everyone wanted to know about Islam. So actually, you would go to many public libraries,
and you'd find that there would be no copies of the Quran, they'd all be checked out. So people
		

			wanted to read about Islam. And this wasn't just the American population. This wasn't just the
civilian population, even intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, everyone was suddenly
trying to get really informed about Islam. Now, the problem is, is that you had all of these, you
know, hate mongers and hate groups masquerading as experts that started all of these independent
intelligence agencies and security agencies, and started offering training to, you know, to
different law enforcement agencies across the country, and so on, so forth. Again, many of them
claiming to be former Muslims and former terrorists turned out to be complete scams, but we paid for
		

			that with our tax dollars. These were hate groups that eventually were identified by the Southern
Poverty Law Center as hate groups, but they just spread throughout the country, and they were
informing some of the most important people in our country. So for example, frank gaffney, who's
who's who's a fear monger, you know, he has a center for security policy, which all the names tend
to be around center for security policy or something of that sort. And he's in the ear of every
Republican candidate out there. You know, Rubio's attended his forums as well as, as well as Ted
Cruz.
		

			And so on so forth. And, you know, he appears to be an expert. But these are hate mongers and hate
groups that have masqueraded as experts, they don't have credentials. Nor do they have any traction
in the Muslim community. And so that's sort of a phenomenon in the West right now that we've had in
the United States. And even in the United Kingdom, where you have these, you know, these these so
called counterterrorism experts that have arose out of nowhere, and sort of taking advantage of the
fascination. And so you believe that it's largely those organizations that have led to a lot of the
negative conversation and negative dialogue that we seem to see in the United States, especially in
		

			the political arena? Are they just a contributing factor? They are contributing. So it's media as
well, right, Hollywood, the old Hollywood movies, and even till now, the portrayal of Muslims.
Number one is that they're all Arab, which
		

			Arab Arabs make up only about 15% of Muslims globally. So Muslim Arab are not synonymous. There are
a lot of Arab Christians as well. Number two, it's always backwards and people screaming, Allahu
Akbar, and you've got to worry about, you've got to worry about the Muslim next door, you know, he's
going to turn out to be an evil operative that works for someone overseas. So you know, homeland and
all these types of shows that have come out. So it's Hollywood. It's, you know, mainstream media,
what's supposed to be mainstream media also contributing as well. So it's, the climate is not good,
because people are not hearing as you started off from educated experts are experts on Islam or
		

			Muslims themselves, even they're hearing from various interest groups, either directly or through,
you know, these various manifestations that we've mentioned. Well, that makes sense. I mean, fear is
something that sells Yeah. You know, we oftentimes say * sells and Hollywood or other other
places, but really, especially in the political arena, fear, absolute fear can be a big driving
motivation. So how is it that, you know, the average American can sift through these different
voices? If there is this group that's, you know, masquerading as experts? Or, you know, how do we,
how do we work our way through understanding? Yeah, this is a good source. This isn't because it's
		

			hard. And I think we're in American society, realizing that who's speaking to us, almost matters as
much as what they're saying. Sure, sure. So how do we sift through that? Well, by approaching
mainstream Muslims going to your local mosque, reaching out to local organizations trying to
understand mainstream Muslims, there's often a, you know, this question or this that's posed, well,
why aren't Muslims out there, but it's not, you know, the media will cover who the media wants to
cover, and anyone that's involved, you know, on a local scene in whatever locality they are, will
know that the Muslim community is actually quite,
		

			you know, out upfront in terms of condemning terrorism, and so on, so forth. But it's more than that
it's actually going and experiencing your local mainstream Muslim population. So going to the local
mosques, and it might not be the most pleasant experience because mosques are as diverse as churches
are in America, if not more diverse, right? When you go to any church, you're gonna get a different
feel for each church. Right? Absolutely. So but still reach out to the local Muslim population. And
what I what I tell people all the time is that we love being asked about our religion. Yeah, I mean,
it's, it's actually refreshing. It's a nice departure from the typical go back home and stuff like
		

			that, that we usually hear at Walmart or in a parking lot of a grocery store, right when someone
asks you know, stops and very nicely says, Can I ask you a question you know about about your job,
you know, that what you're wearing, you know, the scarf that women wear, can ask you something about
your religion, is it okay? If I just ask you something politely? That actually is extremely
refreshing for us. So just ask a Muslim about Islam, right. That's it's it sounds simple, but it's,
unfortunately, you know, the intimidation and the fear factor has gotten so much that we don't talk
to each other anymore. Yeah.