Tom Facchine – O Muslims, THE TIME IS NOW!

			If you look at the assault that we are subjected to, in public schools, in media, in modern day
society, as believing Muslims, it should really drive home the necessity and the urgency to build up
our Islamic institutions. And it starts with the messaging, the messaging and Islamic schools and
everything else, it's approved for us or against us at this point, we need to invest in them
seriously, put our money where our mouth is, put your hours where your mouth is, the Masjid can't be
in these cultural conditions in this day and age, just a place where we unlock it for the prayers,
and then have a Friday prayer and then go home, that's not good enough. And it's not going to be
		

			good enough, you know, the machine has to be a place where you know, you're spending your time where
there's always activities going on where every sort of segment of the Muslim population has some
sort of program or service that's geared towards them, it's going to take visionary leadership, it's
going to take shaking things up, there's going to be people who are uncomfortable because it's
changed. And that's not the way that they're used to doing things. But if we don't get over this,
then you know, you're going to turn your kids over to a society that is literally trying to take
away their Islam, the libraries aren't safe anymore, especially in June, the public schools aren't
		

			safe anymore, look at what's being taught, right, and where are you gotta go, you only have your
house. And if your kids are on a smartphone, then you don't even have your house. So we have to wake
up, we have to wake up, we have to, again, put the money in, put the hours in, put the skills and if
we really believe in Islam, if we really believe in the OMA and the Muslim community, then the
machine has to be better everybody has to take it personally, if your machine is not working or
operating properly, don't just you know, complain in your living room, you know, with your friends,
take it personally take ownership of it and try to do what you can to get involved and to make just
		

			incremental change and to keep on getting incremental change. And so something real happens if your
Islamic school is of poor quality. And to be frank, most of them are, this is the time to get
involved. And if you have skills, or if you have vision, or if you have funding or whatever it is,
this is the time to get involved. If you have an idea for other spaces, whether it's a Muslim gym
with alternate hours for males and females, or if you have, you know, Muslim sports leagues or
whatever. This is the time to build up our our parallel structures in our parallel institutions, the
thing that's going to actually let ourselves and our youth have sort of a society that's not
		

			completely dedicated to the destruction of their faith. So it's put up or shut up time and I hope
that everybody gets the message and I hope that everybody, myself included, rises to the challenge