Tom Facchine – Our Demands from Muslims in Politics & Biden Dilemma
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Lancet.
Now they say that they came out with
sort of a a bombshell figure, but if
you're a Muslim and you're following this, this
should not be a surprise whatsoever.
It could exceed a
186,000 deaths, the the death toll and it
was now the irony is that the United
States recently prohibited
the state department from citing
death toll counts from the health care system
within Gaza,
ostensibly because it's run by Hamas. Here comes
Lancet which is has nothing to do with
Gaza or anything and they come out with
a number that far exceeds by several factors
that the figures that were the the Gaza
health system was putting out. If we have
9 and 10 people, 90% of people in
Gaza,
have been displaced at least once since the
war began. May Allah grant victory to the
people of Gaza and Palestine. So we see
that with the post war plan for Gaza,
there's a lot of jockeying going on. Israel
is trying to push, and the US is
trying to push, and even some of the
Arab states are trying to push for a
demilitarization
of Gaza. This is very insulting to the
resistance
of Gaza, which has basically been the only
bargaining chip that they have with Sabrina just
the the anniversary of Sabrina just a day
away.
What happened
to Bosnia and the Bosnians when they gave
up their arms and the UN came in
and demilitarized them? They became sitting ducks. And
so this is something that was well
this is well known. There's your phrase, you
know, from the river to the sea. It
can be argued, and there's a context about
it when you say it, where you say
it. What I would say, in a respectful
way to those who protest, you know, yes,
we're gonna have a conversation about freedom of
expression. Yes, we're gonna have a conversation about
criminal law. But actually, if you know it's
caused an offense distress
to your friends and neighbors and colleagues who
are Jewish,
don't say it. Alright. And I we can
get to conversation about freedom of expression. Okay.
So as you can tell, I mean, like,
this is a very very milk toast, vanilla
take from Sadegh Khan. We don't just want
Muslims in power. Right? We've been burnt by
that before. Tokenization is a real thing. They
will find the handful of Muslims that are
fringe. Islam supports
LGBTQ,
and Islam supports this, Islam supports that. They
will go out and find those people and
put them in power. Okay. That that is
how tokenization
works. So we need to have our own
principles and list of demands so that we
make sure that we're not being tokenized
by the people who are getting elected or
by the people who run for office or
even in our own communities,
downstream of that.
So Sadegh Khan fails. He fails at that.
Spectacularly fails because he frames the issue of
from the river to the sea as, oh,
it's causing distress,
to the Jewish community out realizing that the
Zionist
element of the Jewish community is weaponizing
their narrative of victimhood
in order to silence criticism of Israel. First
of all, not all Jews agree that from
the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free is anti Semitic. 2nd of all, it's
the Zionists who have relied specifically on trying
to get this portrayed as anti Semitic
and equated with anti Semitism so that they
can shut down any type of criticism is
Israel whatsoever.
So Saad Khan had a chance for those
who watch football. He had the ball at
his feet. The cross came in. He was
right on the 6 yard line, and he
totally whiffed. He had an an opportunity to
push back on the framing of this particular
thing,
and he fell for it hook, line, and
sinker, which is not
that's not what we want in politicians. The
phenomenon of tokenism is the people in power
will always attempt to conscript
and use Muslims
who are willing to compromise their principles
in order to
save face and say that, well, we're not
really against the Muslims. What
criteria or demands should we put in place
of people who are thinking about becoming officials
or elected representatives
that would actually mean that their presence wasn't
simply just tokenization. So there's a couple. And
I'm sure that many of you could come
up with, with your own. One of them
is very important that they have to be
accountable
to our community. They actually be have to
be accountable to our community. And that means
they need to be funded by our community,
and they need to be
in our communities, not just show up around
election time, not just be given the for
free. Right? Not,
just, they're the the person who pays or
the group that pays. They're paid by the
lobbies. They're paid by the political parties to
run, and therefore, they're not put up by
the Muslims and they have no accountability
to the Muslims so that their agenda is
determined by the party. Their agenda is determined
by the lobbyists. Number 2 is that when
people go into a position of power
that they have to bring their values
not just their identity.
They will always use one of us
to control and keep down us. The system
sometimes it will tolerate the diversity of your
skin tone. It will tolerate the diversity of
your clothing. You can wear a dashiki. You
can wear a turban hijab,
but it will not always tolerate
the diversity of values. As the saying goes
in American vernacular,
all skin folk ain't kin folk. Right? That
they will find that we remember Colin Powell
standing in front of the UN, you know,
trying to call for the weapons of mass
destruction and and justify the invasion of Iraq.
We have the US ambassadors to the UN
with the assault and bombardment of Gaza that
are pro that are vetoing
the the ceasefires.
Right? We know that they will always conscript
one of us and so we have to
be insistent on this.
That we demand a diversity of values. That
if we come to office or we come
to a position, we bring our values with
us. Identity politics is an epidemic
and too many people have caught that disease.
Too many Muslims have caught that disease. Have
an impact.
Don't be used. Okay.
Many people that are Muslims that get involved
in politics, they end up themselves being transformed
rather than them having a transformative effect. That's
backwards. Right? We need to make sure that
if you're going into politics that you're going
to have an impact, you're not going to
be impacted.
As a case study, if we're talking about
the Palestine issue in particular, what are you
gonna see now? How is tokenization going to
come to you? I'll tell you how tokenization
is going to come to you within from
now to November.
Everybody's gonna be ceasefire. Everybody's gonna say, yeah.
We're a pro ceasefire. Pro seize pro ceasefire
is nothing anymore. And I'm not saying it's
nothing when it in when it comes to
we want the ceasefire. We want the lives,
of our brothers and sisters in Gaza to
stop being killed at will as one article
said. But
all the traitors
and the betrayers are going to come with
you with ceasefire language. They're not gonna talk
about ending the Zionist occupation.
They're not gonna talk about ending the Israeli
influence on US law and politics. They're not
going to talk about,
ending the
between anti Semitism and anti Zionism. They're not
gonna talk about that. They're going to portray
themselves
as somebody who is pro ceasefire
and act as if that is some radical
position that they're making some big moral stand
about. That is nothing anymore. If you are
somebody who's going to stand up. So Muslims
do not be tricked. Do not be tricked.
Do not be tricked. Be aware.
Hold these people to account. When Abu Bakr
Radiallahu Anhu got in front of the Muslims
And that is the attitude that you should
expect and demand from your Muslim
And that is the attitude that you should
expect and demand from your Muslim representatives and
your Muslim politicians.
If you go astray, we will set you
straight. You can bet on it. Incumbent president
Biden, who is participating actively in the genocide
of our brothers and sisters in Gaza as
everyone abandons him and his campaign is in
a tailspin and he is being,
basically told to step down very public ways
by even
elected representatives, some people within his party. He
is refusing.
And this is not a good look for
the Democratic Party whatsoever. If we look and
remember just back 2016
and how they handled that election, how they
completely
sabotaged
the popular sentiment and the popular will that
was behind Bernie Sanders,
they played, you know, dirty games to sideline
him and put Hillary forth, and Hillary lost
spectacularly,
in that election to Donald Trump. It looks
as if the Democratic Party is heading in
the same direction. So the positive is that
Democrats are very vulnerable,
and as Muslims, we should think about how
then we can actually influence that agenda. Okay.
Is that when they're vulnerable, they're probably more
vulnerable to suggestion and being steered than if
they're coming from a place of strength. The
downside is that people are criticizing Biden and
his campaign for simply his mental acuity or
lack thereof,
as opposed to being guilty of participating in
a genocide.