Tom Facchine – University Raids, Fake Negotiations, Holocaust Remembrance
AI: Summary ©
The Yakinah Studios' livestream discusses the importance of organizing student alumni networks and fundraising for events like the Islamic Book featuring the Islamist movement. The speakers emphasize the need for students to be more inclusive and show up at police vehicles, as well as the importance of following orders and rules to prevent false accusations. They also discuss the need for students to support their cause and the importance of building community power and trust in oneself. The importance of trusting oneself and building character is also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Assalamu alaikumab, everybody.
I'm Ivan Tom. Welcome to Yakinah Studios livestream.
We're happy to have you with us tonight.
We've got an exciting program for you all.
First, let's take a look at who we
have with us in the chat. Drop us
a line, where you're from, what's on your
mind. We have Cece from Virginia, Aya from
Chicago,
Shafi from Florida.
Someone from raised in Michigan,
but now in Egypt, Sara Ansari from Toronto.
Everybody, welcome to the program.
From
New Jersey, my home state.
Minnesota is representing Toronto,
Victoria, Canada.
Very, very nice. Welcome everybody to the program.
We've got a lot of
intense things that have been happening. If I
look tired, it's because I am tired. The
last,
week to 10 days has been
very, very
jam packed and we have been on the
road as you saw last week, we went
live from New York City right across from
Columbia University.
Now
as we had said last week, the plan
was to actually go live from inside one
of the encampments, actually the encampment at City
College.
But by the time that we had gotten
to the city, the encampments both at City
College of New York
and the student encampment at Columbia University had
been completely raided and wiped out by the
police. Many of the people that we were
in contact with, the students had been arrested,
and we weren't able to get through to
anybody. So we made the best of a
of a interesting situation. Wouldn't say a bad
situation.
And we posted up right there on the
street corner across from Columbia University. We've managed
to get in touch with some Columbia students,
and that was last week's.
Since then,
I have gone to a few more encampments.
I was in San Diego,
the previous weekend at the University of California
San Diego
and spent some time that weekend with the
students. I gave a and one of them.
It was a very, very peaceful, well organized
encampment. And I think the day or the
day after I left, that encampment was also
raided by the police in a very, very
brutal fashion,
which surprised me, honestly. And it surprised a
lot of the students too as well because
there was no warning signs. There were no
sort of escalation. In fact, it was a
very peaceful camp encampment and they had sort
of made an effort to be out of
the way, not obstructing anything,
and yet that did not save them from
getting,
beaten over a 100 students arrested.
And that was in addition to what happened
at UCLA right up the road.
Then I came back from that, and I
had an event in Washington DC last night,
so I went down to visit the UPenn
encampment on the way there.
And then late late last night after my
event, I made a surprise visit to the
George Washington campus
and visited the encampment there.
And
literally 2 what not more than 2 hours
after I left,
the police came in and swept down and
raided that encampment,
brutalizing the students, beating them with batons, arresting
them, spraying mace, and things of that nature.
So this is something that
continues to be the topic of the day,
continues to be a topic on everybody's minds
That we see that the student encampment movement
to attempt to change United States foreign policy
on Gaza, on Palestine,
has been spreading like like wildfire. And unfortunately,
the majority
of universities and colleges across the country
have decided
to betray
their students
and betray the duty that they have to
their students, which is to protect them and
to serve primarily
as a place for free thought and a
pray place for critical thinking and a a
place for free speech.
Right? But they have betrayed that trust and
they have actually
sicced the local police forces and in some
cases,
not local police forces on their own students
in a dramatic escalation. And again, I want
to to reiterate this is not something that
is,
always or even ever deserved. I would say
it's not something that's ever deserved by the
students.
And in many cases, there were no provocations,
no even justification whatsoever
that the students were simply exercising their first
amendment free,
right to free speech, their right to free
assembly,
and their duty to speak out when their
universities and, the places where they study are
invested in this genocide as what happened not
too long ago with South Africa, as what
happened before that with segregation.
The students are sort of leading the way
with this particular thing.
And this highlights,
a very, very problematic thing, but also something
that shows us an opportunity. It highlights
how much the university system in the United
States and the many places of the world
have been dependent
on greed or have actually become sort of,
vulnerable to the profit motive. That are not
like they were 30 years ago or 50
years ago, that they are
set up to maximize profits, and a big
part of maximizing profits has to do with
the alumni networks.
And we see a big difference between
how the Zionists have organized their alumni networks
and threatened to basically
to, pull out lots of donations and donor
funds if the United States excuse me, if
the universities do not crack down brutally,
on these
peaceful protests
calling or
supposedly on the allegation that they are antisemitic.
Of course, I saw many Jews that were
there,
and Jewish organizations that were there in the
encampments as well. So we know that that's
not true. But it does show us, I
think, in the Muslim community the importance of
organizing, especially organizing
our alumni.
And this is something that comes even from
the time of the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam when it comes to organizing money,
That everything that you are able to do
in society,
part of it or a dimension of it
is organizing the funds. And every masjid knows
this, every mosque, you know, the 27th of
Ramadan. That's why they lock the doors and
have the the awkward fundraisers and don't let
you get back to your prayers until they've
raised a certain amount of money that
organizing your funds is a very, very important
part of any political movement or any religious
movement or any movement whatsoever.
And so we are in need of organizing
our funds similarly and the funds of our
donors. And this type of organization is something
that Allah,
actually commands us within the Quran. Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala said,
He basically says that the people
that represent evil forces on earth, or as
I like to say evil doesn't rest, Evil
does not
sleep. And so the forces of evil, those
who are motivated by greed and motivated by
tribalism and motivated by less than noble motivations,
they're not gonna rest, they're not gonna stop
organizing, they're not gonna stop spending, they're not
gonna stop doing what they're doing in order
to bring their vision to life. And so
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in this, he
said,
if you don't do similar,
and what is meant by similar means organize
yourselves in the same way, act in a
similar way, then there is going to be
a lot of mischief and corruption
on earth.
We have a question here, and I I
wanna pause and take it because it's a
really good one. Muslim 604 says many celebrity
scholars are taking photo ops at the encampments,
but would they be willing to show up
when a police raid is imminent? And I
really appreciate you saying that, and I completely
agree with that a 100%.
That and that's part of why I
tend to not announce if I'm going to
a specific place. I tend to wait until
I'm invited. Or if I show up, I
am there actually to protect if something were
to go down. And I was there, at
George Washington in the middle of the night,
and if I had known
that
the police were going to raid it 2
more hours, I would have stayed there for
2 more hours,
In any attempt to to try to these
students are putting their bodies on the line,
and I believe that the imams and the
local religious leaders, and the greater community,
the greater Muslim community, should also put their
bodies on the line to protect these young
people. And I actually gave,
a somewhat fiery Khutba at the Islamic Center
of San Diego, you can look up their
their YouTube channel,
challenging the local community to do just that.
This is something that I believe personally,
is is an important thing It's an important
thing for our communities to rise to the
occasion and protect our young people because,
our universities are not protecting them. Quite the
opposite, they are actually endangering them.
That being said, a huge congratulations has to
go out to these students that they have
forced the issue. They have made this into
a nationally discussed issue. Without the student encampments,
which are were very organic and very grassroots,
that
we wouldn't be talking about it in the
same way. Pay attention how
this week, a new interesting development
has happened as unfortunately,
Israel is encroaching and invading Rafah.
That,
for the first time so far, that the
Biden administration has delayed or paused
a shipment
of weapons
to Israel. Now this has never happened before,
and this, I think, is very concerning to
Israel that the United States would,
I wouldn't say something as strong as put
its foot down because that's not what it
is, but
show perhaps there's starting to be
a reluctance
to be so directly involved.
And I, a 100%, believe that the student
encampments are part of that change in policy
that making it
into a very,
a national conversation.
It looks bad. We have a national of
protest movements, of student movements. Everybody's comparing it
to Vietnam. We all know how history treated
those people who were trying to perpetuate the
the war against Vietnam,
that it looks very, very bad for the
government right now. That,
the government wishes that all of this would
go away. They did not anticipate on things
dragging out this long. They did not anticipate
so much resistance.
And the students,
kudos and congratulations to them,
by turning this into a national conversation, forcing
it in a very, very visible way
has not just made it into a national
conversation, but the imagery
of students being maced of religious leaders. The
imam I was with in San Diego, Imam
Taha, I was with him just a day
before he was maced by police. Right? It's,
it is achieving the increase of sympathy
for this cause.
Despite the mainstream media narratives of these encampments
are are supposedly pro terrorist, supposedly anti Semitic,
which everybody sees through at this point, that
putting your body on the line is actually
increasing sympathy for this cause, and the students
are leading the way. Props to them.
This is something that actually also comes from
our tradition. We see that the Muslims, the
early Muslims,
when they were
sort
of an embattled minority
in Mecca, that a few of them dared
to pray in public and they were beaten.
They were publicly beaten for this for this
cause. And that even the boy, the Quraish
went to the extent to boycott
them. And this was something that actually even
stirred the sympathy of some of the Quraish
who weren't so opposed to the Muslims.
And there's a long history there that we
can go. We have one thing that we'll
go to the guys in the studio to
bring up. There was one University of Chicago
student
that's been making the rounds. He was given
the opportunity to speak to media, and he
was extremely articulate
in, in pleading the case. And, again, we're
talking about legacy media. We're talking
about, media folks and journalists who are not
particularly friendly to this cause,
but the cause is becoming so imminent and
the righteousness of this cause is becoming so
imminent that we're starting to see the cracks
in that. So let's play, let's play the
interview. Continue following orders. And when you're talking
about a genocide, visited upon a colonized population
of 2,000,000 people trapped in a ghetto that's
as long as a marathon and 6 miles
wide. When that ghetto is being systematically starved,
slaughtered, every hospital bombed, every university bombed, 70%
of homes destroyed,
40,000 people murdered, 15,000 children murdered, the entire
population on the brink of starvation. We say
and if our government and our academic institutions
are complicit in this, there comes a point
where we say we're not following orders, and
it doesn't matter what we do to us
because there are principles and there are human
lives that matter more than our careers and
our futures. And that's what separates us from
people like Paul Alivisatos, the coward president of
this university, and these coward cops that come
in terrorizing and encandered what people people I
sleep
with.
Yes. Excellent. A very, very articulate young man,
very well stated, and I'll,
prop up Muslim 604 again with another insightful
comment,
saying, sadly, the Muslim community isn't really helping
out the encampments
when, they are being attacked by police. It's
mostly just leftists. I will say that having
been to several encampments now, there are there
is some difference between from encampment to encampment,
but largely, unfortunately, that's correct. And this is
where the message that I've been trying to
carry to the different places that I've been
traveling
is for the Muslims to support these things
that if you're if you don't like how
how un Islamic they are, then the solution
is to step in and make it Islamic,
to be frank. Not in a controlling way,
not in a way that you're taking over,
but in a participatory way. And this is
a big subject, and we'll be writing on
this for Yaqeen Institute upcoming,
Insha'Allah, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
But I agree that this is a very,
very important point.
Now
as the university sagas continue to unfold, we've
seen that some universities
seemed to have negotiated or seemed to have
listened
to, the demands of their student encampments,
and have attempted to sort of remedy things.
However, upon further inspection
upon further inspection,
many of these negotiations
were fruitless or let's say they're not completely
in good faith. This is actually a well
known tactic
where universities
promise certain things that are unenforceable or very,
very vague in order to appease and to
mollify the student,
the student movement. Whether it's Evergreen University and
Rutgers University, there's been some dispute about,
are they really going to divest? Did they
agree to agree to agree to talk about
it? Right? Those are 2 very different things.
That
long story short, the universities have the ability
if they really wanted to, just like they
exercise the ability to unilaterally come down and
call the police on their own students, that
if they really wanted to, they do have
the unilateral ability to divest from genocide, but
they refuse to. And so now there's this
stance,
now there's this dance where if they're really
pushed, they will pick a few students, perhaps
students that they think that they can influence,
and they will meet with them, and they
will say, well, let's agree to some certain
points, but those points are really
without teeth. They're without enforcement mechanisms, etcetera, etcetera.
And this is a,
this is something that all the Muslim students,
I hope that if you're watching, to be
aware of, to not be suckered by this
type of negotiation tactic. This is actually something
that the Quraysh tried to pull on the
prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Right? That when the movement started really catching
on, the movement of tawhid, the movement of
worshiping the one God, the creator,
and getting rid of all the superstitions and
getting rid of all of the accumulated sort
of human inventions
within religious practice that was prevalent at the
time, they tried to strike a deal with
him. But it was not a good deal.
It was a raw deal. They said, hey,
guess
what? Why don't you worship our idols for
a year and we'll worship just Allah for
a year and we'll switch off? And as
we all know how that ended up, Allah
revealed Surat of Kafirun
where Allah told the Prophet to
tell
them that we don't worship what you worship
and you don't worship what I worship. You
have your way and I have mine. This
is a lesson about how to not give
up your leverage and how to keep what
makes your cause righteous, and to not give
it up just at the very, very, very
first instance.
Excellent. The second thing we'd like to talk
about today before getting into we do have
a special somebody who made a big splash
on the student activism scene from one of
our own.
Before we get to that, we wanna talk
about Biden's address. So the anniversary of the
Holocaust
recently passed, and president Biden genocide Joe himself,
he
took the opportunity
to put his foot or or wedge his
foot even further in his mouth. I know
we have a graphic. Can we pull it
up?
Showing his quote, what he said.
What would he choose to use this opportunity
to draw attention to?
Only blaming
Palestinians,
ignoring the plight of Palestinians,
only talking about the
increased antisemitism
since,
October 7th,
nothing at all
about
the holocaust that's going on right now,
the,
the genocide that's going on right now against
the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, whether it
was the slow genocide of before October 7th
or the fast genocide after that. And also
nothing to say, he mentions the hostages, etcetera,
that Israel this week admitted what we've known
for quite a long time that they have
no interest in recovering these hostages. That basically,
that was a legitimizing discourse. That was something
that they were sort of holding on as
a bargaining chip, but in reality, their demands
are elsewhere. They want to eliminate
Palestinians from Palestine and the people of Gaza
from Gaza in particular.
Now
it's important to know, and we're spending quite
a bit of time on current events because
things are happening so fast these days, that
during this process, these last 7 months, a
lot of us have been reexamining
our relationships.
Okay?
Reexamining the relationships that we've been forging as
Muslims
in our communities. And we wanted to highlight
somebody and we don't always do this. We
prefer not to mention individuals, but this person
is outside of the Muslim community. So they
have a different sort
of, standard that we apply to them. Let's
bring up we have,
Craig Considine, doctor Craig Considine,
somebody who was a darling in the Muslim
community, as a Christian who was saying positive
things about Muslims
before October 7th, somebody who
was
well compensated on the speaker circuit and getting
invited to speak at universities and different interfaith
events,
has
gone or has reduced himself to this.
And you can read the sort of anti
Palestinian, anti Muslim rhetoric
that so easily comes out of his mouth.
That
I will stress it again that this should
be a time where when Allah
shows you something about people. When people show
you their true colors then you pay attention
and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that
the believer is not stung through the same
hole twice. The believer is not stung through
the same hole twice. That much of what
we believed was interfaith or that we called
interfaith before October
was in reality
what people call faith washing, or what I
call biryani diplomacy. The premise upon the idea
that if enough people like us, if we
are cuddly and friendly, that they won't want
to kill us. Well, we've seen that that
strategy
didn't work unfortunately. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says something very, very interesting in Surah Al
Ma'idah He says,
He says, oh, you have who have believed.
Don't take as close intimate friends, people other
than yourselves.
4,
some of these people will not spare you
any ruin. They don't want good for you.
They wish that you would have hardship
for those who for whom hatred has already
appeared from their mouths,
then what they conceal on their hearts is
greater.
So we see the types of remarks made
by the the likes of doctor Craig Considine,
and I don't want anybody to forget this
going forward. That this is what has come
from his mouth or from his fingers on
Twitter, and that what he holds within his
heart is even greater than that. Allah says,
we have certainly made clear to you the
signs if only you will use your reason.
And with that, we go to our 2nd
segment today. So in the context of the
student encampments and the student protests, as we
know it's May, it's graduation season. We have
somebody who,
made quite a splash at Georgia Tech University,
a university that I visited not too long
ago.
We would welcome like to welcome Bisan Hamid
to the program.
Y'all can hear me?
Sorry. Let me get my sound here. Oh,
how are you? I'm good.
I graduated from Georgia State, but Georgia Tech
is awesome.
Apologies. Georgia State. Excellent.
So let's play, first of all, in the
studio, let's play the clip from the graduation
ceremony, and let's take a look at that,
and then we'll we'll chat about it.
Palestine
Hara Hamid.
What's that? The
man in blue is probably the lightest clap
I've ever seen,
though he picks it up at the end.
So
let's talk about it. You changed your name
or you put your name as
as Palestine Hurrah,
and you were shouting we can't hear what
you were shouting on the video. Tell us,
what were you what was the plan, and
and what did you do? Yeah. So,
I you can briefly hear in the beginning
of what what I was saying, and then
the cheers start. But I was saying 40,000
Palestinians
have been,
massacred.
And I was saying Georgia state divest from
Israel
and there are no more,
universities left in Gaza.
Yeah. That that's basically That's all. And is
this something that you had planned ahead of
time, or is this something that was spontaneous?
Were other people sort of helping you think
up what to do?
Yeah. I was I planned this,
ahead of time. I you know, the flag
that I held towards the end, I originally
wanted to bring that on stage, but they
caught me. And,
I was trying to push past them and
to to have them let me go on
stage with the with the flag, but the
the police officer who was, you know, intervening,
he
offered at one point. He was like, here.
You can give me the flag, and then
I'll give it back to you. So I
I looked at him, and I was like,
give me the flag immediately after I get
off the stage. I was pretty much just,
like, having
to, like, ad lib this as as I
was going because I didn't expect that. But
that's when I, you know, got off the
stage and immediately decided to, like,
head in the the center of the aisle
and hold up the flag, which says GSU
and GILLI. And I can explain more what
that is if you would like. Yeah. Please.
No. Go ahead.
So,
Gilly is actually a program. It's called the
Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program. And this
is ideally what I wanted to bring
attention to. It's like I honestly did not
imagine that the video would go viral. I
was addressing this to my community at Georgia
State.
And,
so basically,
Georgia State houses in its school of, Andrew
Young School of Policy Studies
what's called the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange
Program.
And this is a program which sends Georgia
police
everything from MARTA police like the our public
transportation police to school police
to you know just just Georgia police in
general to train
with Israeli police
in counter terrorism and urban warfare tactics. And
Israeli police also come here and train with
Georgia police. And, this is not a unique
program. There are other programs in other states,
but, I I believe,
the the Georgia
program is the only one which is actually
housed at a public institution like Georgia State.
So that's really what I wanted to bring
attention to.
And I love that. And that's one thing
that I've noticed going around the different encampments.
How smart the students are and how specific
their demands are. And so that's a very,
very concrete thing that you're asking of the
university. We're not asking for something vague, like
tear down white supremacy, which I'm not saying,
hey, that needs to be done too. But
when it comes to when we're talking to
a university,
part of the strategy is to craft demands
that can be met and that are specific.
And that really make the college look really
bad if they say, no. We don't want
to,
actually do that. When I was in San
Diego, the University of California San Diego had
an exchange program with universities
with a university in Tel Aviv, and the
Palestinian students can't go. Like, not only, like,
would they not want to go. Right? But,
like, just to think that there is that
universities in the United States of America are
having exchange programs where
some of their students cannot go. Is there
anything more damning and indicative
of apartheid than that? So that was one
of their very specific demands.
So that's really an amazing,
job, a well crafted message, a very tight
organized message.
Talk to us about sort of
how has the the this the university's reaction
been? Has there been any traction for this
type of divestment movement?
Yeah. So
can you know, conveniently,
the university didn't
say anything about what I was trying to
raise awareness of. They really just said because
okay. And so,
let's let's talk about how,
after what I had done and you know
the images were going everywhere,
there was
talk of how
I was removed for for wearing a
which
in my case that wasn't the that wasn't
the case, but,
my
commencement ceremony was in the morning and then
there was the undergraduate commencement ceremony which happened
at 1 PM later.
And so, Folesini
students, like undergrads who were wearing kufiyas,
I suppose because of what I had done
had were were being discriminated against. So they
had their kefiyas
confiscated. Some of them had their kefiyas confiscated.
Some of the families of the students who
were wearing kefirs were told
to go put it back in their cars.
Otherwise, they weren't allowed into the into the
the building.
They were told they were threatened with the
rescinding of their degrees,
which the, the president who you saw in
the video had sent out an email saying,
you know,
nobody had their degrees removed.
We allow people to wear their cultural dress,
but, like, there was no
acknowledgement of the very real
threats that were made to the undergraduate students
of rescinding their degrees and also the very
real confiscation and discrimination
felicining students at the undergrad when you feel
like wearing Kaffee is.
And that's a very important point too because
one of the tactics we've seen from the
universities is to play both sides, right? They're
sort of like a good cop, bad cop
sort of thing where
it would look really bad if they're actually
universally throughout the the institution threatening to take
away degrees for something as simple as a
or
or this type of statement.
But then they'll allow
sort of the security forces or the other
sort of forces that they are giving directives
to or giving instructions to to basically make
these threats and make intimidation and and and
these sorts of things. So they let other
people do their dirty work,
which is a a theme that we've seen
over and over again. And they try to
turn other students against you. Right? So that's
something I've seen in other
universities as well where they'll take something away,
a privilege. Right? And they'll say, well, we've
done this because these troublemakers have sort of
ruined it for everybody.
Tell us about sort of what were your
emotions? Were you were you scared? Were you
excited? Like like, what about sort of you
didn't expect this to blow up the way
it did. It blew up. Now, you know,
you're much more famous than you anticipated on
being.
Is that something that scares you? Are you
concerned about getting docs? Like like, where are
you at emotionally now?
As a little freaked out, you know, my
last
everywhere I'm a person
with my information.
Yeah. We're having a couple audio issues here.
That last
those last comments didn't come through. But, Savannah,
a lot we'll try to reconnect, be sent.
And if we can't,
I think all of us have benefited plenty
from her courage,
and we certainly see here an example of
what Allah said
that
if you have
if there is
evil going on, that you have a duty
to change it. Right? That Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala
That the people who were sort of rejecting
faith from the children of Israel,
David himself
and Jesus himself cursed them.
And what what was one of the reasons
for cursing them?
Allah
says They used to not
try to prevent other people from doing evil
that they saw. We know the prophet said
that if you see an evil, then you
change it with your hand. And if you
can't, then with your speech. And if you
can't, then with your heart. I think we've
got here,
again. Sorry. Let's let's try it again.
Yes. Are you able to hear me? Yes.
Yes. I can. Alright.
Yeah. So,
I don't know at what point I cut
out, but It was towards the beginning. So,
your your emotional state, how are you doing
now? Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm glad I'm
glad that it happened the way that it
did. You know, Allah only allows for things
to happen,
as as he wills.
I I would say, like,
as worried I was about maybe doxing or
people in my family saying, oh, I hope
they don't take away your degree or something
like that. I think what's important to mention
here is that
our our fear of what repercussions we face
that are related to Dunya
should never supersede
our fear of Allah. Like this is really,
and I think that what I did wasn't
even like the most that anyone could do.
I feel like it was the least that
I could do, honestly.
I, you know,
in for like, I think individual acts of
sacrifice are important. You know, maybe if I
was, was potentially putting my, my degree on
the line, but also like,
it's more important that we also move towards
building power, like, community power. And I I
believe you you talk about this, a lot.
Oh, so you're speaking my language.
Yeah. This is what we do. And, I'm
a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement,
actually. Oh, wow. So, yeah, this is it's
just
yeah.
Well, good for you. I mean, I I'm
I'm extremely proud of you, and everyone like
you, and I think that this is
one of the most hopeful things. You know,
I was sitting
yesterday with,
you know, the the students at UPenn, and
they were asking me, well, what if our
parents are sort of discouraging us? I said,
there's certain things that you have to do
in this life that, you know, this is
farqifay on us. Like, to be able to
show up for Palestine is is a communal
obligation.
And we know that there's no obedience
to the creation when it contradicts obedience to
Allah
that we know that we're going to have
people that are concerned for our safety and
concern for our well-being and may Allah reward
them for their intentions. But
at the end of the day, that
a 100%
sacrifice mindset is what it's going to be.
Like, if we really believe that Allah is
a razak, we really believe these things that
we've heard every single year in Sunday school
or weekend school or every single Khutba
about the angels writing your risk and how
much money you're going to have in your
job, in your house. It's already decided.
So, really, we have two choices. We get
to get what's determined for us anyway
and be brave
and do what we need to do from
what Allah hopes for us,
or we're gonna get what we have been
sort of decreed anyway and live like cowards
and fail the test that is presented to
us.
And I was just very,
happy that you're able to to join us
and and inspire,
the rest of us with your courage. So
is there anything, I guess, to to close
out, is there any sort of message that
you would give if there's high school students
or if there's other university students that are
thinking about
doing something similar or they want to do
something, what would you say to students like
that? Yeah. I would say just,
and this is part of, like, our politics
is the Palestinian Youth Movement is
understand your role in the diaspora,
your role as a Muslim, as a Palestinian,
as Arab,
that we're not just in solidarity
with
Palestine and we're not just in solidarity with
with the people in Palestine. We are Palestinians.
They are they are Palestine, they are Muslims,
we are,
we should be we are we should be
considering ourselves as fighting alongside
our our our ummah, our fellow Palestinians.
We are fighting just another front
of of of the battle.
They're fighting one front in Gaza,
and we are also fighting another front here
in the diaspora. When we talk about
the the Intifada is globalized.
We like we are here and and and
we are also
fighting as
this this fight as well and that
the support for the popular cradle, the resistance
in Gaza is is
is like our support for them is integral
is integral to to to to the to
the to the resistance in Gaza. And,
and and throughout 48, like, we,
as Muslims, like, they are fighting the the
the the in in the cause of Allah,
and we cannot abandon them. We cannot
for fear of whatever
repercussions in this dunya cannot afford because they
ultimate so we
taking
your sound is starting to go again.
But, one thing that your comments remind me
of are, images we showed last week from
the
the messages that were coming from Aghaz, people
writing even in English on the side of
their tents with nothing in support of the
student movements, in support of the student encampments.
So there is this interconnectivity.
Right? And I always
tell, you know, people we're here, we're Muslims,
like, not just Palestinians that are in the
diaspora, but we I believe that Muslims need
to consider this our diaspora too. Right? Because
the prophet
said that we are one body as Muslims.
So it's not yes. I mean, obviously, it
immediately affects Palestinians more immediately, but it should
also very, very, very immediately affect every single
Muslim on earth.
That this is something that is our issue.
And our role here in the United States
is to
do what we can to change the the
foreign policy of this country. And that is
something that we shouldn't be shy to say,
that the foreign policy of the United States
is
hurting
people abroad. First of all, it's immoral, and
it's evil, and it's wrong. And second of
all, it's hurting
other Muslims.
And so we exercise our rights,
in order to try to change that, and
that's sort of, a huge role and a
huge,
a huge role for us to play.
Now we've got you're with us again, Vissen?
Yeah. Can you hear me? I'm so sorry.
I don't know what's happening.
We can't hear you. Oh.
Okay. Well,
we'll
cut our losses, and we thank you very
much, Bissen, for,
for coming with us, and we hope to
see you again.
And, Insha'Allah, we'll be in contact, Hopefully, be
down in Atlanta sometime to do some things
with with PYM.
Keep up the great work. We're all very
proud of you, and salaam alaikum.
Thank you.
Okay. Very good. So we're gonna transition to
our next segment,
which is going through Amalul Laylul Nahaar. We
have the sort of actions of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Let's see. We have here 444 here. We
got a we got a comment that we
have to highlight here.
Fun and facts, though, is it's not about
Muslims. Palestine is a diverse community. It has
people from all sects. People need to look
at Palestinians without a religious lens. I completely
disagree. I think that's completely backwards.
Now
there's a way in which you're right,
and that is it is not exclusively a
religious issue. And nobody's pretending that Palestine is
only made up of Muslims,
That there are Christians, there are atheists, there
are Jews, etcetera, etcetera.
That's not the claim. But to say that
there is no religious dimension
or Islamic dimension to this cause is is
foolhardy,
to be frank.
That when
the Zionists have worked so hard
to establish this pipeline
where anybody
who supports Palestine is on this sort of
construed as
a target for anti terrorism legislation or anti
extremism legislation,
and that does affect all Muslims. Right? That
all Muslims are affected by this type of
legislation,
that all Muslims are affected by this type
of discourse. We are criminalized and we are
securitized.
So there are specificities
and there is nuance.
But to erase religion from it entirely
is a mistake
for the reasons that I mentioned
and for the reasons of many of the
people in Gaza themselves
are,
they are engaging in the activities they're engaging
in upon religious grounds. So we cannot sort
of you know, it's no secret that there
is sometimes a,
disconnect
between pro Palestinian activism
in the western world or in the diaspora
versus pro Palestinian activism
in Palestine and Gaza.
Right? That many people
are,
motivated by what they're doing
by
religious sentiment, and that is not something that
we should necessarily hide from. In fact, if
we erase it,
this is another
type of colonialism. This is another type of
colonialism and we've seen this that the colonial
powers,
colonial Europe has always attempted to secularize Islam
because of the,
potent force that it represents and the counter
and anti colonial force that it represents,
but more on that later.
We'll get to actions of the prophet We've
reached the time of day around Asar and
Maghrib, and so there are certain things that
happen around Asar and Maghrib that every Muslim
should be aware of.
Asar and Maghrib and this is actually a
difference between of opinion between the
as to when is the appropriate time of
the dhikr of Al Mas'at. Is it after
Asr
or is it after Maghrib or around Maghrib?
These are two opinions. They have many ulama
on each side.
If you want to put it in a
general sort of way, the time between Asr
and the setting of the sun, that is
a good time and the preferred time to
make the same sort of that
you were made making and that we covered
around Fajr, around the dawn, to make it
again at the evening.
And we have hadith from the prophet
that told us that this is also one
of the times after Asr where the angels
sort of swap out that you have these
angels on your shoulders. They're recording your deeds.
Right? And they exchange with with 2 other
angels every fajr and at every Asar.
Now there's a couple of particularities
when it comes to,
in particular, sundown. We if you've studied a
bit of Islamic law, you might know that
the setting of the sun is.
This is a,
a very particular time, like, a time of
prohibition where certain types of prayers
are not permissible,
and whatnot. And there are is a hadith,
I think, that we have it, yeah, if
we can show it here in the studio,
where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam also
encourages
us to
keep our children close to us and even
to keep our children indoors
around the setting of the sun.
Right? That now what I find very interesting
is that when
we get more distance from the setting of
the sun, then it it's explicitly saying that
you can let them free. You can go
out again. So it's not necessarily saying that
you need to
have your children and lock them in the
house from sundown on. No. Going about after
that is perfectly fine according to the text
of the hadith.
But there's something interesting in the unseen world
that we're not a 100% observant of or
able to observe that goes on around the
time of sunset.
That makes it particularly dangerous for children, and
the prophet Mohammed said
to keep a watch over your children around
that time.
Moving on,
let's hit our
personal development segment for today. We're going to
condense because we've got,
a lot of really good books to get
through. And we I think that sort of
the pace of going through this particular book
on leadership by John c Maxwell was a
bit slow up until now. So we're gonna
sort of ramp up the pace. We're going
to accelerate our progress through it,
that we're gonna tackle 5 laws at a
time, and we're going to pay particular attention
to how we find these laws in the
Islamic tradition. And that's our whole purpose is
that, you know,
we're
we're reminded or these things remind us of
things that we have in our own tradition
that sheds light or inflects or helps reinforce
these things that other people have noticed from
hebra and hebra, from taking lessons from others
and from direct experience
themselves.
So the first one that we have,
for today, law number 5 is called the
law of addition.
K? The law of addition.
The general idea of the law of addition
is that one of the hallmarks of leadership
is that it adds value
to others
by serving others, And this is very, very
crucial to understand that many of us when
we think about
leadership, we only think about the perks.
We only think about
the, you know, the benefits. How people stand
up when you walk in or they treat
you a certain way or everybody wants to
be like you or you've got a ton
of followers and fans and etcetera etcetera.
But that's not what leadership is about, and
it never should be about that. That leadership
is about adding value to other people's lives.
And this actually coincides perfectly with a, an
Arabic proverb which is,
that the leader of a nation or the
leader of a tribe is their servant.
That there is a,
there's an inherent relationship between leading people and
being in the service of people.
That that is really the essence of leadership
is service. And we see this throughout
our Islamic tradition. There's many famous examples from
the leadership of Umar ibn Khattab when he
became the leader of the Muslims after the
death of the prophet Muhammad SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
such as when he used to walk the
streets at night to make sure that everybody
had enough food and that everybody was safe
and was protected.
And he came across one particular household where
there is, I believe, a single mother, and
she was upset because she didn't have enough
food for her children. And Omar himself became
upset
at his failure in leadership.
And he went back to, you know, to
gather up grain and gather up flour to
bring to this family.
And he had servants. He had people that
he was that he hired that were in
his pay, that were under his authority, and
they said to him,
let us carry it for you. We'll go
there together. And Umar himself,
who said, no. This was my failure. Right?
This is my shortcoming.
I am going to make up for it
myself. So he put the sacks of flour
on his shoulder, and he's the leader of
all the Muslims.
And he carries it himself
to the woman's house and then proceeds to
actually cook them a meal himself. That that
is what leadership looks like. It is service
to your people.
That we have another example of Umar when
he actually, you know, germanely enough, when he
conquered Palestine, or the Muslim armies conquered Palestine
for the first time, that Umar, he went
there with his servant, and they were sort
of taking turns. They only had one horse
or camel or whatever it was, and they
took turns riding on it.
And when it was it just so happened
that when they reached the city,
that it was the servant's turn to ride.
So Umar was walking, and, normally, the person
walking next to the animal is the is
the the slave or the servant.
Now even the servant realized that this was
bad optics, that this didn't look right, that,
you know, how are you going to impress
these people if you're not riding triumphantly on
top of this animal?
But Omer said, no. This is fair. This
is what we agreed to, and he entered
the city walking. And it was a tremendous
demonstration of leadership
and
his ethic of serving the people, both the
people close to him and the people that
he was about to rule over, and it
was something that
really impressed the local population. They've never seen
a leader like that before.
Similarly, of course, the prophet Muhammad himself, alayhi
salatu was salaam. When people used to come
to him with requests or with needs,
if he had the ability to satisfy the
need, he would always satisfy the need. He
would never turn anyone away
unless he literally couldn't do it for them.
Right? And another thing that maybe is even
more amazing than that
is that the prophet Muhammad SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
we have it on different hadith that he
made
everybody
feel like
they were his favorite.
He said that to them. Can you imagine?
We struggle with this so much today. We've
got our cell phones and these sorts of
things, and we're distracted. And sometimes it's for
Allah. Our kids are talking to us, or
our spouse is talking to us, or our
friends are talking to us, and we're checking
messages, and we're scrolling or doing something like
that. A for Allah. But it happens. Right?
The prophet
when he talked to people, he would face
them and look at them, and his entire
focus and energy was on that person
such that that person felt
like they were his favorite
to the point where we actually have somewhat
a humorous,
Hadith where one of the companions basically
goes to the prophet
that and asking him who's his favorite and
he's expecting to be mentioned
and
other people are expecting to be mentioned, and
they're not mentioned at all. That they he
then goes down with his favorite people in
order he loved Aisha the most and then
her father, Abu Bakr, etcetera. And the people
who had asked the question,
they were, like,
shocked. Like, I thought the way that he
treated me, I thought that I was his
favorite. Right? So that's an amazing aspect of
leadership that
that the prophet
truly valued other people. And that is a
key concept in leadership, that you're not just
doing it instrumentally. You're not just doing it
because you want the company to run better
or you want the organization to run better.
You actually value people. You actually take interest
in their lives. What are they interested in?
You
also
make yourself
more valuable so that you can add value
to them. You can't give something that you
don't have.
And so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was
easy for him. He's a prophet. So he
can add value when it comes to their
understanding
of sort of the divine and the unseen
and what's going to happen in the afterlife
and religious instruction and sort of tarbia, the
sort of, you know, character building and things
like that. But we also have to work
on ourselves
so that we have something to give other
people. That that when we
upskill, quote unquote, that we're not just doing
it for selfish reasons, we're also doing it
to raise everybody else up with us.
And that you're able to know and relate
to what other people value, and the prophet
Muhammad did this as well. Even with young
kids, we know that there was a child
at the time of the prophet who had
a pet bird.
And the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used
to ask him about this bird. And one
day the boy was sad and it turned
out the bird had passed away. The prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam could have easily said, I'm
busy. I have other things to think about.
I have so much on my plate.
But he took time to connect with even
the children
with something that mattered to them.
The next law that we have, so that
was law number 5. Law number 6 is
the law of solid ground. Right? And this
the main gist of this,
of this law is that
trust is the foundation of all leadership.
Trust is the foundation
of all leadership.
That you build trust through different sort of
avenues. You can build trust through your competence,
your ability to do something. You can build
it through the connection that you make to
other people like we were just saying. But
most importantly, you build trust through your character.
And character is a large concept we could
talk all day about, but some of the
things that go into character
include
admitting your own mistakes
when you've been wrong,
not being so quick to be defensive and
to just jump to your defense because of
your ego or your reputation. If you've made
a mistake that you own it, say, yeah.
I'm not proud of that. That wasn't my
best moment. But you know what? I'm working
on myself, and and, you can expect big
things and big changes from me.
And another aspect of it
is putting your values ahead of your interests,
and this is huge. And this is where
Islam plays a huge part that, yes, okay,
anybody can cheat anybody. Anybody can sort of
look out for their own self interest. But
who's going to put their values first
such that their values are the reason why
they're doing what they're doing? And we have
examples of this such as when Abdullah ibn
Abbas
was
he sent a servant to market to buy
a horse.
And the servant was able to haggle with
the horse
seller to get a really good price. And
so he comes back to Abdulai Ben Abbas,
and he's so happy that he haggled down
this price. And Abdulai Ben Abbas, he said,
okay. Let's go to the market. We'll complete
the deal.
He asked the horse seller, did you agree
to sell this horse at this price? He
said, yes. He said, no. I wouldn't I
don't agree to that. I wanna pay you
more.
And the seller was shocked. He's like, how
what kind of person is this? He's he
wants to pay me more than than I
asked for. Right? Imagine if you went to
the grocery store and you got your bottle
of water and you check out and you
say, actually, can I give you a few
more dollars? Nobody does that. Right?
But and Abdulaz ibn Abbas didn't just do
it once. He did it again and again
and again. He said, no. I'm gonna pay
you more. No. I'm gonna pay you more.
No. I'm gonna pay you more until the
seller was basically embarrassed. And he said, okay,
stop, stop, stop. Right? Just let's be done
with this.
And this is very curious behavior. And so
he asked Abdullah ibn Abbas, why are you
acting like this?
And he said, because if that were my
horse, I would not sell it for less
than what I'm telling you that I'll pay
for it right now. So he put his
values ahead of his interests,
that he is somebody who do does things
on principle
and not just
what benefits him.
Entrusting others is another huge thing when it
comes to building trust. You cannot be or
you will not be trusted if you're not
willing to put trust in others. And this
is something the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
right,
he did with other people when he sent
them out. He sent, Mu'ad ibn Jabu, right,
to, to Yemen. He sent other people out.
He entrusted them with tasks. And guess what?
They didn't always
do the right thing. Sometimes they messed up.
He sent Khaled ibn Walid to a place
to collect Zakah, and Khaled misinterpreted something, and
they went to war, and he killed a
bunch of people wrongfully.
And that was a huge mistake, and he
had to make repentance and atonement for his
mistake, but that didn't stop the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam from trusting
other people, and through trusting other people,
that is how you also get trust. The
next law we have is the law of
respect,
and that is that people tend to respect
strong leaders. Now what we mean by strong
leaders
is a type of boldness that
is not just trying to be popular. You
can't be a leader. Being a leader and
being popular are 2 different things.
That
true leaders are going to be bold and
courageous in turbulent times. They're willing to do
the right thing
even if it's not popular.
Right? And we had a great example of
that just a second ago with Bisan.
Right? It was not maybe a popular by
definition it wasn't a popular thing to do,
to stand up and to,
make Gaza visible at the commencement or at
the graduation ceremony, and yet she did it
at risk
to her own self, to her own career.
Her her she doesn't know what's going to
happen to her. Right? But she was able
to do something bold and do something courageous
even if it wasn't popular and she stood
to lose. And we have other examples from
the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam at battles, we
we think about this when, you know,
the odds were stacked against the Muslims and
the prophet
was always right there at the front. He
was not someone that was cowering behind. He
was not waiting to see how the situation
would play out to do what was popular
or to do,
you know, these sorts of things, that he
was somebody who led by principle
and was willing to be courageous and principled
even when other people weren't.
The next one we have, we've got 2
more.
The next one we have is the law
of intuition,
Law of intuition, which basically comes down
to leaders develop,
or they have, if Allah gives gifts it
to them, a certain amount of
intuition
that
you can see things may be further along
than other people can see them, and you
trust your judgment based off of that. And
we look at the life of the prophet
Muhammad alaihi wasalam, we see a lot of
examples of this. Hudaybiyyah,
the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was a classic example,
where even the companions weren't really happy with
the terms of the treaty, but the prophet
understood that the treaty was actually very, very
favorable to the Muslims and was going to
put them in the best position
to eventually conquer Mecca,
and accomplish their goals. We also see it
when even some of the companions, they stepped
out of line.
Right?
They stepped out of line and they experienced
punishment,
right? Criminal punishment.
And sometimes the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
said things that indicated
that, for example, like, Yeah, this person did
that and we're going to punish them, but
this person loves Allah and His Messenger Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam that they have a sort of
intuition of what motivates people. This is also
sort of the example of when the Muslims
did march on Mecca and they had one
of their own
try to send someone to sneak a message
to Mecca to try to protect their family.
This is something where the companions were very
upset. It was basically treachery
and you could say an act of espionage
or passing on secrets, right? Treason perhaps you
could say to the point where Umar and
others were willing to punish the person severely.
But the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam understood what
he wanted and understood his motivation and understood
that that really wasn't the reality of what
was going on, that he had that intuition
of leadership.
And the final one we have is the
law of attraction, and this is kind of
an interesting one. That you can learn a
lot about yourself
as a leader by the type of people
that you attract to you.
And this is actually something where if you're
attracting the wrong type of person,
then you might need to take stock of
yourself.
Or if you're attracting the right type of
person, then this is something that is also
interesting to learn from. Now we don't mean
by this. We don't mean that we're just
trying to attract, you know, popular people and
rich people and stuff like that. No. What
we're talking about is just like the prophet
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
who did he attract with his message?
He attracted
all of the sincere people,
people who wanted to do the right thing.
It didn't line up
with
the rich. Yeah. There were some rich people,
but there were a lot of poor people
that followed him.
It didn't line up with a certain tribe.
It didn't line up with a certain race
or a certain ethnicity or a certain color
of the skin or whatever
that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was the
type of person that attracted
people of principle,
people who wanted something transcendent,
something that was bigger than the sort of
tribalism that was going on. And that was
a perfect indication of who he was, alayhi
salatu salaam.
So that concludes our segments today. If anybody
has any questions, we'll turn to them now
and tidy them up.
If you haven't asked your question by this
time, this is your chance. We'll give it
a few minutes.
Thanks everybody for your patience
with the technical difficulties.
0, I wish I spoke French, but I
do not, so I can't understand your comment,
but it looks like a good one. May
I bless you?
Okay. Here we go. Sorry. Let me get
back to the top here. I didn't see
any questions going back.
So we have,
Sheikh Thomas.
I did not visit Italy, no, on my
recent trip to Europe. I was in the
UK and,
and Ireland, and that was a very, very
beneficial trip. May Allah bless the Muslims there
and, cause us to all come together on
what he is pleased with.
Hopefully
hopefully next time.
Cute kitten12 asked, how can a leader build
trust between the opposition as well? And I
think that we did
start to address that a bit. Right? You
build trust through trusting others. You build trust
through your character and your integrity.
Right? Part of that is admitting mistakes. Part
of that is admitting your shortcomings and admitting
when you were wrong. Unfortunately, we usually see
people who are more into their ego,
are more interested in defending themselves. They're afraid
of losing their power and losing their,
status and reputation.
Where
as the person who, you know, they're sincere
to Allah, we don't pretend that anybody's perfect.
We're all sinners. We know it. It's just
that Allah hides some people's sins and Allah
exposes other people's sins.
But if you're confronted with it, do you
admit it? Do you promise to do better?
Do you promise to try to make up
for it? Right? That's sort of that goes
a long way. People will trust that.
And that is Musahed.
Interesting question from Abdullah Masala Abu Mahfud,
who's a dear friend of mine. Who is
your favorite filmmaker?
Boy. Oh, man.
I I don't remember the names
of, some of my favorite
filmmakers, but I do like the works of
Abbas Karostami.
I think he's,
he's a very important filmmaker. Obviously, he's very
decorated and things like that. I like that
aesthetic.
So if I'm gonna have to go with
somebody, I'll go with Abbas Gharistami.
Sabr
wrv asked, can you share the the hadith
about Palestine and Israel? We have that,
on Yaqeen Institute. So if you check Yaqeen
Institute, we have articles and written material on
the benefits and the blessing of Palestine.
No worries. You can always catch up on
the show. We're happy to have everybody live
with us. But as you know, it'll be
up,
and
we hope that everybody benefits
as we can. So that seems to be
the end of the questions. We ask Allah
to accept from us and from you, and
that we please Allah with all that we
do. May Allah continue to guide us with
what is pleasing to him.
Until next time, Assalamu alaikum.