Shadee Elmasry – 2 The Story
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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