Tom Facchine – We Need To Fix This

			Most converts don't feel welcome and message sheets. And that's just facts. It's sad. It shouldn't
be that way. But it's true. Most converts don't feel comfortable and messages because they don't
they feel like they're going to be judged. Or, or that's like the worst, I guess, be judged or be,
you know, sort of called out for some sort of, you know, inadequacy that they are perceived to have
in their practice of faith, or because there's simply no one goes out of their way to kind of
welcome that. And that's something that I experienced when I was a Muslim. Wonderful. When I when I
can rarely one of the last things I did was start going to the messaging, I kind of in my mind, I
		

			wanted to kind of know enough of what I was doing first before just going in, yeah, maybe having
someone say something to me, and you know, you're not doing this right, or you're not doing that
right, or why are you here, you know? So eventually, eventually I did start going. And it probably
it took a few weeks, if not months for someone to even say salam to me, right. So most people
they're not they're just, they're in a state of the muffler. They're, they're not they're not living
their lives intentionally. You know what I mean? So you come to the machine, and you have your
clique of friends, and you say salaam to your friends, and you listen to the clip, but you go home,
		

			right? You go out to eat afterwards, you only invite your friends, right? That's not a very
intentional way to be. It's fun. It's cool. It's not haram. Like we're not saying that it's like a
sinful, but you're not even thinking are aware that there's other people that maybe they struggled
so hard to just come to the masjid that day, right. And maybe they're just like, maybe they're
having a hard time in their lives. And they're just hoping, hoping that anybody would just say
something nice to them. And it's just not even on your radar. Because you just came to the masjid do
what you normally did. Say hi to the people you knew you're not worshiping. You're not worshiping
		

			Allah through your relationships or your friendships through your time, right through your
sociability or your affability. And that's what is said, that's the next level. If you're looking as
like, oh, you know, in a rut, or I'm stuck, I'm kind of doing the same things. You're looking for
the next level in your faith to start being intentional with your friendship and your time and
things like that. Go out of your way to say hi and salaam to people that you don't know people who
look different from you, people who you wouldn't otherwise be naturally friends, you might be
uncomfortable, might be awkward at first, right? Not just say hi, you know how you doing? But yeah,
		

			maybe invite them to a meal, maybe invite them over your house. And that's the thing that I think
candidates need more than anything. And we've said it before in these videos that conrex need
family, they don't need books, they don't need
		

			lessons instructions. I don't I don't mean to say they don't need them. They've got that stuff taken
care of the big need that they have that's not being met is family, social support friends, people
who are willing to go you know, take them out to lunch or just share time with them. Because it's
can be extremely lonely and alienating to be to be a new Muslim. And why it's important is because a
lot of Muslims don't want to admit this. But even if you're born into a Muslim family, a lot of
people born to a Muslim family have the same experience. The converts have, you know, there's people
who are born into Muslim families, they have Muslim names, they don't know how to pray, they don't
		

			know anything about Islam, they know how to read the Quran, they certainly can't recite Surah Fatiha
correctly, and they come to them and they're afraid to come to the masjid.
		

			They're just like the Kandra someone's gonna judge them and it's gonna be worse for them because
they're from this family or this culture where they're expected to know and we do a bad job of that.
And the messy we have this whole like, you know, Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy where everybody's just
like, pretending that we're really pious people and pretending that we're really great. And
obviously, I'm the last person to advocate anybody flaunting their sin. But we're on the other
extreme, where we're kind of act like, you know, we're a certain level of piety and we're not going
to necessarily admit the fact that yeah, that people are showing up with the maybe the first time
		

			they've been to the meshi in 10 years. Yeah, and those people need to be treated with as if they
just won a battle you know, they need to be like treated like they just won the World Cup.
Seriously, you did you want the World Cup against shaytaan like all these years, he's been fighting
you and you finally beat him and you made it to the messy like that that person should be welcomed
like a hero, right and right now, unfortunately, we're not doing that.