Rania Awaad – Creating Safe Spaces- Trust Your Instincts and Communicate Clearly

			I want to make sure that we talk
		

			about these things very clearly and very bluntly.
		

			Part of this is the education process that
		

			we're doing here and that we hope continues,
		

			not just in crisis mode as many in
		

			the community feel today.
		

			The question we start with tonight is, what
		

			does a safe space look like for a
		

			Muslim community?
		

			This is something I'll tell you when I
		

			went to Syria to study, one of the
		

			very, very first lessons I learned from my
		

			teachers, because we were young.
		

			I was a young teenager when I first
		

			went to study and, you know, at the
		

			hands of many wonderful teachers, but one of
		

			the first lessons we learned was there is
		

			no such thing as blind obedience in Islam.
		

			They use the term in Arabic, your eyes
		

			are wide open and fully cognizant, and that
		

			you trust your guts, as in to say,
		

			the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught us this specifically
		

			to seek fatwa from ourselves, from our own
		

			selves, as in to say, you know, you
		

			know, you, you know, and have a sixth
		

			sense that something may be off or not
		

			right.
		

			Seek out other opinions and other people.
		

			This idea of having your eyes wide open
		

			in any circumstance and place you're in, including
		

			with the teachers who you honor and trust
		

			and love and take and are taking great
		

			information from is very, very important.
		

			So how do you have these safe spaces
		

			then?
		

			I would like to start listing out some
		

			of these solutions in hopes that everyone here
		

			from whatever communities, wherever it is that you
		

			come from, that you're tuning in from to
		

			take