Omar Suleiman – This Moment Requires All Hands on Deck

			Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
		

			I wanted to first and foremost start by
		

			saluting and thanking our young brothers and sisters
		

			that have taken to university lawns across the
		

			country in this inspiring act of courage to
		

			say no to genocide, to say no to
		

			apartheid, to say no to occupation, and to
		

			insist that the institutions of higher learning that
		

			they are enrolled in don't invest in the
		

			oppression that has outraged so many of us
		

			today.
		

			And I also wanted to call upon institutions
		

			and individuals to join these noble efforts across
		

			the country.
		

			This is a moment in history in which
		

			we have to insist with courage and togetherness
		

			that this cannot proceed as usual, that the
		

			status quo is unacceptable, and that we will
		

			not sit by silently as a genocide plays
		

			out on our screens.
		

			This is a time where we have to
		

			have our masajid, we have to have our
		

			msas, we have to have our student organizations
		

			all lending their support to these efforts.
		

			These young brothers and sisters are putting their
		

			academic careers on the line, people are putting
		

			their livelihood on the line, and yes, they're
		

			putting their safety on the line because these
		

			people are facing the full weight of media
		

			suppression, of political suppression, and we are seeing
		

			these heartbreaking scenes play out on our screens
		

			across the country, where once again there's the
		

			Palestine exception, where standing for the rights of
		

			Palestinians immediately takes what would otherwise be deemed
		

			a noble effort and turns it into a
		

			vilified one.
		

			We need all of our communities to stand
		

			up, we need every single institution individual to
		

			think about what they can do to lend
		

			their support to these efforts.
		

			That means providing financial support, that means providing
		

			bail money, that means providing moral support, that
		

			means providing media expertise, that means pushing back
		

			on the narrative online and all around us,
		

			that means for our lawyers to come together
		

			and to provide pro bono legal support, that
		

			means that faculty members across the country and
		

			people in higher education taking risks as well,
		

			people in different areas of government, people in
		

			different sectors of society all coming together to
		

			lend their support to this noble act of
		

			courage that students across the country are leading
		

			with.
		

			So I just want to show my support,
		

			call upon imams, call upon faith leaders, call
		

			upon institutions of all sorts and individuals of
		

			all backgrounds to lend their support in this
		

			crucial moment of history.
		

			We pray for an end to the genocide,
		

			we pray for an end to apartheid, we
		

			pray for an end to occupation and oppression
		

			of all sorts around the world and we
		

			pray that we be on the right side
		

			of history and that we be granted the
		

			steadfastness and the sincerity to face the moment
		

			that we are in.