Tahir Wyatt – Islam and Thanksgiving, Black Friday

			As many of you know, this is the biggest shopping season of the year.
		

			Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
		

			And
		

			this to combat the commercialization of Thanksgiving.
		

			Seven years ago, a New York nonprofit created something they called Giving Tuesday. So people go and
they spend all this money in Friday, throughout the weekend, and then on Monday, and then they feel
pretty bad about themselves. So they got a whole bunch of stuff that they didn't need.
		

			And then Tuesday, they said, Let's dedicate that to give him because Thanksgiving, lost its meaning
of gratitude. And Thanksgiving is a myth, by the way, but that's beyond the scope of this particular
bookmark. But that's that whole story about Indians giving their land and showing, Hey, come on
English people, let's show you how to live here you can have all of our life, that's a myth. That's
a myth, and for Muslims to buy into that catching up since Americans don't celebrate Thanksgiving.
		

			And Thanksgiving was promoted big time after Abraham Lincoln made it a holiday, a national holiday
to unite the people, it became a real thing, because the Protestants of this country were scared
about the immigration of European Catholics and European Jews. And so they knew they couldn't affect
them religiously. They said, let us put our authority over them culturally, and so many of us
Muslims, we don't understand that buying into this whole tradition of Thanksgiving. And we're gonna
get together as a family, we're gonna eat turkey, the beehive Turkey, hoagies, whatever they do. And
then now we come. And we buy into this myth. And we show our theory arts and cultural.
		

			Because that was what it was, it was a strong armed, the non white Protestants to say, Listen, you
can come here, but you want to do it, the way we do it. This is how we did this is what we
celebrate. So everybody's gonna do, it's a cultural authority that they imposed. But that's beside
the point. So
		

			given Tuesday, is this Tuesday coming up December 3. And Facebook
		

			has announced that they will be matching donations to nonprofits, on Giving Tuesday, which means
that if you for example, went on your Facebook page, which you should do and shall on given Tuesday,
and you donate $100, Facebook is going to match that with another $100.
		

			So if we, for example, in theory, if we got donations $10,000 $20,000. For example, Facebook is also
going to match that with another $20,000
		

			which, which greatly benefits us as a community. Many of you know many of you have seen that we have
a vision for 2020. Well, it's not a dream, it's a vision.
		

			And we have over 40 people commit themselves to empowering and engaging our youth and families and
helping positive aging or aging with dignity. This is where we are we're doing real things here. But
we need your support. Everything that we have balance. Now we need funds to make these programs a
reality. So December for us here at the mansion is it is a year and fundraiser that we're having
their envelopes, you'll be able to find them after the Select inshallah, please give more than you
would normally give. Because we have to hit a goal in order to start 2020. Right. All of your
donations are tax deductible, and all of those good things because we are nonprofit will have to be
		

			learned. But again, give today, give one cyber to the given Tuesday in the lab, go to our Facebook
page and give and give throughout the month of December beating the legs out so that we can hit our
goal and start 2020. Right. We're not just trying to engage the youth. We want to empower them. We
have you here. Well, a lot of people go to different mentions and where's the US? Where's that? No,
they're there. You haven't given them a platform. So so here we have on the left, we have six seven
users who come to the masjid frequently. Give them a platform, let them reach out to the other youth
and they will be doing things to help solidify this identity that we need to be holding on to here
		

			as Muslims in this country.