Shadee Elmasry – 2 The Story

Oh, bla, everyone, my name is Sergio animosity, a lot of you. I

interact with you on social media on Facebook and YouTube and things

like that I'm at MBSE. Right now this is usually where I filmed my

little Joomla clips. And I want to show you and take you around a

little bit to the story of MBSE and Safina society and how it

started. And what our latest project is, because we got two big

projects coming today we're gonna talk about one of them. But first,

a lot of you've seen this little background, let me take you inside

of mbsc show you what it looks like. We'll be learning the next

shape on it. Ragini this me?

Me so this has been our masjid for the last maybe 10 years or so. And

I've been part of every year except for the first year. But it

wasn't always like this. We started in a small little place in

Remsen Abbey, which I'm going to take you right now. I was on the

periphery of that. But I was always observing and always

interested in the community because that's where all my

college buddies were. Now these college guys have grown up got

families, we needed a bigger space. What we have here is the

msgid community and Safina society, you might be wondering,

well, what's the relationship? Well, on one hand and part of the

mbsc team. On the other hand, I started Sofia decided just to

focus on knowledge because the masjid has to do a lot of

different things. We got to cover Seca, we got to do Tata, we got to

do you and stuff. And oftentimes there's not enough energy put on

to put into knowledge too. So we made a separate organization just

for knowledge. And that's what stuffiness it is but we work

together as a partnership. Let's go back, I'll take you to where

mbyc actually started.

Me, here we are entering into a campus at Rutgers University,

which is I think it's one of the biggest campuses in the country in

the most populated Ohio State is a rival in that. But who would want

to live in Ohio, Space in New Jersey is at a premium and space

in the Brunswick area is definitely at a premium. There are

no sprawling campuses, we're never going to have that. And the

interests are different, you had two different things that we

wanted to do. On one hand,

there was this family oriented suburban communities. On the other

hand, there is this urban center where it's strangers coming in and

out. So which and there's a lot of other needs there. So which one

are we going to do? And we just realized, like, why don't we just

do both. And because you're never gonna have a sprawling campus. And

you're never going to be in both places at the same time. So let's

just do both. And that's what this idea that I'm presenting to you

today is all about is that we're going to continue building the

community and eventually we're going to get a permanent masjid

and a permanent center. And we're going to have a spot in New

Brunswick, that's the only way to do it is to have multiple campuses

being honored.

Moving I

think a lot of people will remember this little entrance.

And a lot of people put in so many hours of work, and this little

masjid,

which is now obviously a diamond. I mean,

that's a good thing.

Little analogy. So many people put so much time. So this is the

famous Remsen Avenue. And it was something that was unique because

it was mainly youth and converts and most masajid weren't like

that. I was on the periphery and always sort of looking in and

never really had a chance to come. But there was so many shields that

came here because of Imams aids connections such as Sheikh

Mohammed did alcovy Sheikh Abdullah Al Ghazi and then some of

the youth became shield such as Jihad Brown and chip with the

Mossad. They these two shields today, many people benefit from

them, they were from the youth theatre that ran the messages that

did. It did a lot of work, right and then just time passed like 20

years past and

new people came in and out. And then we moved to the place that we

just looked at one of the foundational principles that I

absorbed by being an attendee in the community and listening first,

and before even being really part of the communities that Islam

always comes to the people that come to the grassroots, and it

builds up. So one of the connection points is feeding.

That's the biggest connection point as Allah says, the prophesy

centum set up, I'm on top feed. And so one of the things that we

started here is to feed people, and it sort of died out. And then

about four or five years ago, we got this idea. Let's do it again.

And I started going out to the park out there and to George

Street and to different students just given us and we really didn't

know what we were doing. But within a year, we got into a

groove and a cadence and then every Friday and the Ramadan was

every day we had a certain

spot, we turned that then on, and we would give up food. That's our

that was our connection and our attempt really to connect because

we have such wonderful lives. In the suburbs, we have men, we have

wealth, we have health, right? 100 that we have families, we have a

lot going for us. And we're only about two, three miles away from

people who have none of these five things, right. So we have to have

some sort of connection. So let me take you out to the place where we

started to do these runs and hamdulillah the house and the

property that this is leading up to Inshallah, we'll be able to

focus on that seven days or

so I knew that we had to do something, but I didn't know how

or what we're gonna do. We started out just giving out sandwiches,

and we're walking down the street really exhausting ourselves. But

we finally came and found this spot in this nice little triangle.

It attracts a lot of people, a lot of people hanging out around here.

And it was much easier for us. And it was became known as our spot.

So this is like our little area that we come here and we are

attempting to connect. By giving out as the province I set them set

up, then we'll just give people food. And that's all we do is

sometimes it takes 15 minutes, but every Friday for the past four or

five years, and hamdulillah we've been doing this and some other

brothers have taken over the work, you're all seeing me. But there's

just so many other people that do all this stuff. And our goal now

is to take it to the next level. And that is to have a permanent

spot here that we can do this seven days a week. And we can have

people come to us and have a soup kitchen with hot meals. And a lot

of people need diapers and random things that but we can now start

communicating in what's needed because we have some and I believe

every Masjid in America should find the area of need and do this.

This is what's gonna save us. Right Allah subhanho wa Taala

saves people who are useful to the others. You know, we look at a lot

of ways to protect ourselves from Islamophobia, blah, blah, blah,

you're going to be protected from the heavens. When you're when

you're useful. Right. There's a there's a benefit for you. If you

were to be removed, people would suffer Right? Or people would at

least feel the difference. And, you know, can we all say about

ourselves that if we were to remove that people would feel the

difference?

Oh,

because behind the motor Sally, feline NIFA Katarina McCullough

Anna, Harbor on Jedi. Yes, the Fuji breed. Yeah. Jubo dunya.

Alright, so we're here, this is our spot and Hamdulillah that

we've acquired. And then that extension is what we're going to

be working at. Now we're literally you can throw a baseball two

times, maybe we're 1000 feet away from the park that we were just

there. So instead of like us having to come now we can bring

people to us. And we want to serve hot meals out of that extension

seven days a week. And Homework Help. It can also double up as a

masala. So it'll be like an MBI C's little branch here. Let's walk

it's got a lot of driveway space, which is good.

This guy's got a lot of space too. We got to buy that

driveway space, and it goes all the way back we're going to revamp

the entire place. Right? I don't want to work in some kind of

crummy old building, we got to have a nice building. Okay, so

we're going to revamp this entire place. This is going to be Insha

Allah, a parking space here. We're going to cut out this entire area

right here. And we're going to put down pavers like herringbone brick

pavers and make it look nice and have a barbecue all this will be

demolished. So that this will be an area where you can have

gatherings you can have you can do stuff, right and if you need extra

parking, you can park here too. Let's go inside now and take out

the what the building looks on the inside.

Alright, so the place comes with a nice set of appliances here. So

this so oven and stove is going to be used in Sharla. For our soup

kitchen, start preparing hot meals. And that's how our soup

kitchen is going to start we have the hood initiative. For that

purpose. We have a huge basement space to store plenty of dry food

and dried goods. And then here is our open space. This is the actual

space where we're actually going to be using this to we're going to

open up this wall if you can see this wall we're going to tear this

wall down, put a couple of doors, put a sister's door put a

brother's door and this is where all the activity will happen. And

here's the second room. Right

brother staying here to keep it busy, keeps shouting away. It's a

multi use purpose space. We could have a lot here we can have the

soup kitchen activity here. We can have homework help. It's going to

be used in a lot of different ways.

All right, you could see we have a track record of work. And now we

have a home base to do this workout of to be able to engage

with the community seven days

We constant non stop. And also to have a spot for our own community

for Silla for classes and for other things. Now, what we need is

your help. This is community work community, we're just not the

people who do the work. But it's also financiers, its supporters,

you haven't had dead, he said, every community rests on four

types of people, the people of knowledge, the people of worship

and asceticism, the managers, and the financiers, there are those

who are going to finance this type of project. So this project is

going to happen in the night, Jada, it's rolling already, we're

already doing the work. The question is, are you going to be

part of it, and we're offering you an opportunity to be part of this,

to have your thoughts as part of this work, running constantly. But

putting together this building, by revamping it completely, and

making it a place where people will say, Oh, the building that

looks like that? It'll stick out, right? We want to place that

sticks out because the prophets of Allah when he was in love, and

it's gone, if you do an action, do it well, we want to place that's

beautiful for kids to come in, to get help to get to be part of

something and to feel good when they're in this space as well and

to feel good just looking at the space. So that's what you can be

part of by supporting us and helping us with this launch

campaign. Is that going to locate and set up money