Tom Facchine – Whats Next For Muslims In America
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Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, wassalatu wassalamu ala ashraf al
anbiya wal mursaleen, nabiyyina wa qudwatina Muhammad alayhi
wa sallamu alayhi wa ashka taslim, Allahumma a
'alimna ma yadfa'una wa anfa'na bima
a'alamtana, wa zidna illa billahi rabbil alameen,
salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Well, this has been a beautiful homecoming and
the weather cooperated in true fashion.
I missed you a lot and missed you
all, so this is very special for me.
Thank you for welcoming me back with open
arms, may Allah bless you all and accept
from us and give us many more opportunities
to work together.
I wasn't told what to speak about tonight,
so I'm going to speak about what I've
been speaking about in my travels across the
country.
I was in LA last weekend, I was
in other places, I've been to Chicago recently,
and other places around the country, and everybody's
got the same thing on their mind, now
what?
The election is over, Trump is incoming, we've
got potentially who knows what's going to happen
in Palestine, Syria's popping off, everything is crazy
out there.
We don't know if they're going to try
to go for the mosques, the non-profits,
I talked about entrapment a little bit earlier
in the khutba today, which is a very
real threat.
There is a lot of moving pieces, and
we have to try to look ahead and
behind at the same time.
Why behind?
To learn from both our mistakes and where
we've been, and also to try to see
the opportunities that are coming in front of
us.
Because there are opportunities, in fact there's tremendous
opportunities.
But the first thing that I want to
get into, I want to get into, I
want to structure this talk by breaking it
into thirds.
That Islam has, Islam expects things from you.
Islam is not just about how you identify,
or you wake up in the morning and
you say, well I'm a Muslim, or I
feel like a Muslim, no Islam expects things
of you.
And a lot of times we understand very
clearly the minute details about what it expects
from you.
It expects you to pray five times a
day.
It expects you to make good on your
shahadah, believing in Allah subhana wa ta'ala
and his angels and his books and his
messengers, the day of judgment, qadr, these sorts
of things, arif jibreel.
It expects you, Allah expects you to make
your five daily prayers, he expects you to
fast Ramadan, he expects you to pay zakat
if it's due upon you.
These are expectations.
But there's other expectations beyond just the five
pillars.
That Islam has more expectations than that.
And so, I want to talk about three
expectations.
That if you make istiqra al-Quran, meaning
you go through the whole Quran, you can
notice that these expectations are there.
Sometimes they're stated explicitly, and sometimes they are
implicit.
So explicitly, meaning Allah says it directly, and
then implicitly, Allah's telling you to do stuff
that implies that he expects x, y, or
z from you.
So there's three things I want to focus
on.
One is the mandate for dawah, and there
is a mandate for dawah, okay?
Two is a cultural mandate, and it actually
relates to the mandate number one, the mandate
for dawah.
And three is the political mandate, and I
talked about that a little bit in the
khutbah, but we're going to expand upon it
inshaAllah, and I'm going to describe some ideas
for how to move forward and how to
organize as a community to attempt to push
the needle forward and to get real change,
first locally and then beyond.
So by a dawah mandate, what we mean
is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala expects
you to consider this deen as the truth,
such that you want to take it to
every household in every corner of the earth.
That we don't have a privatized deen or
a privatized faith, that we don't believe that
our religion is just a private matter that
we keep to the four walls of our
home.
We believe that this message is for everybody,
and we believe that everybody stands to benefit
from this message.
We don't believe that there's a single person
on earth that if they didn't accept Islam
or enter into the fold of Islam, it
wouldn't improve them and improve their lives.
In fact, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam said that the best of you before
Islam are the best of you after Islam.
What that means is that that doesn't mean
that there's not people with good qualities that
are non-Muslims.
There are.
There are people that are fair, there are
people that are just, there are, Allah says
in the Qur'an, in Al-Imran, He
talks about from the people of the book
are people that if you gave them an
entire mountain or an entire treasure of money
or of gold in trust, that they would
return it to you.
You don't even have to ask, but they
will return it to you.
They're people of their worth.
And then there's other people that if you
gave them even a cent or even a
penny, you're going to have to be on
their head constantly to just get that penny
back, right?
So Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the
Qur'an makes this differentiation.
He doesn't say all these kuffar are just
rotten and they're all bad and what, no,
He says that there's some of them that
are good and there's some of them that
are bad or in other places He says
there's some that are good and then the
other them or most of them or many
of them are bad.
And so we have to believe that the
people out here, the people on Campbell Street,
people on James Street, people on Genesee Street,
people on Oneida Street, everybody in this city
needs Islam.
Everybody in the city of Utica, in Oneida
County, in Mohawk Valley, in the state of
New York, in the United States of America,
on God's green earth, needs Islam.
And so we're not supposed to just sit
at home or sometimes what we have the
American dream and an American dream is like
an inoculation.
It puts you out where you think, okay,
the first thing I have to do, I
got to finish high school and then I
move on and I go to college and
I pick my major and then I get
in debt and then I go and I
get my job and I get my house
and I get married.
Where's the dawah?
Where's the dawah fit into that?
That's not the pipeline of a believer.
That's not the conveyor belt of a believer.
Not that those things are wrong, not that
those things are haram, they're fine, but they're
not the point.
They're not the main point of your existence
here.
Why did Allah put you in a place
where the vast majority of people are not
Muslim?
Why did Allah do that?
So that you could just hide out?
So that you could just duck people?
So that you could try to act like
everybody else, be like everybody else, drink like
everybody else, gamble like everybody else, sleep around
like everybody else?
No, Allah put you here to change things.
He puts you here to do dawah.
And the more that we keep that in
mind, the better off we are.
And the more that we forget it, the
further astray that we go.
Whether it comes to the affairs of the
masjid, or whether it comes to the affairs
outside of the masjid.
We are here to do dawah, first and
foremost, in our lives and especially here in
the United States of America.
Point number two.
Mandate number two.
Islam has a cultural mandate.
What does that mean?
That means that everywhere Islam goes, it improves
not just the individual people, but it improves
the cultures that they are a part of.
When Islam came to Arabia, when it came
to the Hijaz, when it came to Mecca
and Medina, the people had a culture.
They had tribes.
They had songs.
They had celebrations.
They had foods.
They had everything that any anthropologist would say
is part of culture.
And Islam put it into a filtration system.
So that the good things that they were
doing, Islam said, stamp of approval, you keep
on doing that.
Generosity.
The Arabs were some of the most generous
people.
Legendary generosity.
You know that any people who in the
language they call him Abu Humad, that he's
the one of ashes, his father of ashes,
because he keeps the fire going for his
guests.
So he's got a lot of ashes.
And that's a praiseworthy quality.
You know people who when they wrote their
pre-Islamic poetry about, I don't have anything
to give the guests to eat, I'll slaughter
my son.
And the son says, let's do it.
Those people take generosity very, very seriously.
So Islam put a stamp on that generosity
and said, good, let's keep that.
And then the second category are things that
have to be tweaked a little bit.
Things that have to be edited.
Things that are not great, but they're not
all rotten either.
Things that need to be fixed.
And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala took
some of the things in the Arab culture,
and he edited them.
And he fixed them.
He said, you know what, you keep this,
but you get rid of that.
So some of the things around how they
would do meat and slaughtering meat.
Some of the things about marriage and the
different types of marriage that they had, they
would say, keep this type of marriage, forget
this other type of marriage.
Keep this type of divorce, forget these other
types of divorce that aren't fair.
And then the third category are things that
were so rotten to the core that they
have to be stopped.
Misogyny, burying your baby girls, worshipping idols.
These types of things that are rotten to
the core had to go.
Now what I want you to understand, the
point is that as Islam expanded, and it
went from Arabia up to Sham, then into
Iraq and Iran, what's today Iran, and then
to Asia Minor and to North Africa, first
Egypt and Sudan, and then West all the
way to Al Maghrib.
Every place that Islam went, and eventually it
reached the Balkans, and eventually it reached Sindh,
and eventually it reached what's today India and
Pakistan, and then eventually it reached, we got
Bangladesh, we got Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia, all
the places that it reached.
In order for Islam to establish itself, it
had to interact with the local culture.
And it had to produce a new Islamic
version of that culture.
You understand what that means?
So when Islam came to Persia, it had
to go through the same process.
What's the good stuff?
We're going to keep that.
What's the bad stuff?
We're going to get rid of that.
What's the stuff that's a mixed bag?
We're going to purify that.
And then when it came to North Africa,
the same thing.
What's the good stuff?
We're going to keep that.
And so each place was able to produce
a local Islamic culture.
And so when we're in the United States
of America, and we see people, they have
their own cultures already.
African Americans have their own culture.
Italian Americans have their own culture.
Hispanics, Latinos have their own culture.
Many of the groups that are here have
their own culture.
If you expect to recreate Cairo in New
Jersey, you could do it.
You can do it.
But you can't expect that to bring the
people into Islam.
If you want to recreate Istanbul in New
York, you could do it.
But you can't expect that to bring the
people into Islam, Afwajah, in droves.
If you want to recreate Islamabad, or Lahore,
or Karachi in New York, you could do
it.
You could do it.
It's not haram.
But you're not going to be able to
crack the majority people of this country.
You're not going to be able to break
into the point where the majority of people
are seeing, huh, this is something that could
be for me.
This is something that I could get along
with.
This is something that I could benefit from.
This is something I could see myself taking
this on and improving.
Is kebsa an Islamic dish?
No.
It's an Arab dish.
It's permissible in Islam.
And so, Islam was able to interact with
that culture, and alhamdulillah, we got kebsa.
Okay?
Wouldn't it be nice if we had an
Islamic version of tortellini or ravioli, right?
Or grits, or whatever else we have, right?
There's a cultural mandate to Islam.
Islam has to be allowed to interact with
the indigenous cultures that are on the ground
if you want to be serious about dawah.
Don't think that we're going to recreate things
from others, and that's not to denigrate them.
We love and we benefit, and Allah subhana
wa ta'ala said in the Qur'an,
we benefit from the diversity of the ummah.
Diversity of the ummah is beautiful.
But if we're talking about dawah, you need
to be able to allow Islam to enter
into the cultures, to go into the barrios,
to go into the hood, to go into
the reservation, to go into the trailer parks,
and produce an Islamic version of that culture.
And then you're doing dawah.
And the last mandate that we want to
talk about is the political mandate.
Islam has a political mandate.
That means that Allah doesn't want you to
be chumps.
Allah doesn't want you to be chumps.
Allah wants you to have influence.
As we said in the khutbah, when the
righteous people have influence, when the righteous people
have power, everybody benefits.
This is in a hadith that Prophet ﷺ
said that all of creation, all of the
creation seeks Allah's forgiveness for the scholar.
حَقْتَ الْحِيْتَانِ فِي الْبَحَةِ Even the fish in
the sea, or even the whales in the
sea.
And the ulema, when they explain this hadith,
why?
What do the fish care about whether somebody
goes and understands the deen or not?
The fish care because somebody who knows the
deen is going to give the fish their
right, their haq.
They're not going to let anybody come and
pollute the waters.
They're not going to use up all the
water for themselves.
Didn't the Prophet ﷺ say to his one
companion, don't waste water even if you're making
wudu in a running river.
So the person who understands the deen, the
whole creation benefits.
Someone who's righteous when they're in charge or
when they have influence, the whole creation benefits.
Take a look at some of the, I
know it's a cheesy example, but look at
some of the athletes that we've seen, the
Muslim athletes that have come out in the
last five, ten years.
Look at Habib in UFC and let's put
aside the ruling of UFC for a second.
Let's just take the fact that how much
respect has he demonstrated and people able to
recognize that's, you know, I respect somebody who
acts like that.
I respect someone who's strong.
Muhammad Ali back in the day and other
people.
Now it's Kyrie Irving, may Allah continue to
guide him, mashallah, we got our man Kyrie
and Dallas and others.
Obviously Muhammad Salah, no offense, I got Egyptians
here, I know you got it, we got
to go with Muhammad Salah, etc.
We know, who's the brother at Manchester United?
The Egyptian soccer player at Manchester United?
Huh?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what, Mazraoui.
Yeah, that's what I said, Mazraoui.
Did I say Egyptian?
No, no, sorry.
It's late.
I meant to say Moroccan.
That's why I looked over here to Khadim.
The Moroccan, look what they were about to
do, the rainbow flag for Manchester United.
Mazraoui said, no, you're not doing the rainbow
flag.
I'm not wearing the rainbow flag.
All of a sudden Manchester United is not
wearing the rainbow flag.
So you see, this is cultural power.
You have people who have influence, and how
many people, normal, every day, non-Muslims, when
that happens they say, thank God somebody said
it.
Thank God I can see somebody who embodies
values, who's respectful, who has honor, who has
dignity, who's not going to get pushed around
by being politically correct or pandering to other
people.
The people appreciate that.
So Islam has a political mandate.
That means that the righteous people have to
attempt to have influence in society, and that's
a very difficult thing in America, where everybody
tries to set you up to just be
a consumer, to just be somebody who sits
on their couch and watches TV or watches
Netflix, mind your business, don't worry about trying
to improve things, don't worry about the way
things are running.
We'll take care of everything.
No, that's not what Allah wants.
Allah said, He said to the Prophet ﷺ
that we sent down to you this book,
in truth, so that you would judge between
people.
These, like look at what's happening now with
sports betting.
Sports betting is a new thing.
Gambling is off the chain.
We see in the last five years, gambling
and sports betting has been the most aggressively
pushed vice, yeah, I'd say in the last
two years.
Let's say in the last two years.
After we kind of came down off of
the transwagon, now everything's gambling, everything's sports betting.
You see professional athletes talking about it.
You see professional athletes getting charged.
They have gambling addictions.
They've got all sorts of problems because everyone's
pushing gambling on them.
Is that something that would happen if Muslims
had influence in the society?
Absolutely not.
In fact, Muslims are some of the last
people to stand up and say, what are
you doing?
You want to legalize weed?
What are you doing?
You want to legalize this and legalize that
and legalize that just because you can make
money off of it?
I was here when New York State legalized
it and they were going town by town
and voting on what they wanted to do.
The Muslims are some of the last people
around to put their foot down and say,
no, we don't want this.
And that is something that benefits not just
us, but it benefits everybody.
You want to walk down Genesee and get
a contact high from somebody?
No, it makes your life worse.
It makes my life worse.
It makes our kids' lives worse.
So if you're not in the game, if
you're not paying attention, then these things are
going to continue to steamroll.
They're going to continue to move and you're
not going to have any say.
All we're going to be stuck in is
complaining in our WhatsApp groups instead of actually
having the opportunity, which we do, to influence
things.
Now, some people, some people are under the
mistaken belief that power is the same as
representation and participation.
And that's not true.
That's not true.
That participation does not translate to power, nor
does representation.
We've seen plenty of people claim to represent
us.
Have we not?
That don't end up doing any good for
us.
In fact, when the United States wants to
send someone to the UN to try to
facilitate a genocide or try to facilitate an
invasion or to try to facilitate an evil
deed, who do they send?
They send Colin Powell.
They send, who's the lady?
Linda, whatever her name is.
They send someone that looks like us.
Or as Malcolm said, they will pay one
of us to kill one of us just
to say it was one of us.
That's, if we're only looking at representation, they'll
send someone named Mohammed, looks great, prays in
a mosque, excellent, but his representation is worthless
because it doesn't represent our values.
They will give you representation of your identity,
your skin color, your ethnicity, all day long.
But they will not give you representation of
your values unless you are actually trying to
build power.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, وَأَعِدُ
لَهُمْ مَا اسْتَطَعْتُمْ مِنْ قُوَةٍ He said that
you, believers, should attempt to build whatever power
you can because the powers of evil do
not rest.
Haven't we seen the Obamas come and go?
Haven't we seen the Kamala Harris come and
go?
And even in the Quran, in surah Al
-Qasas, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us
the story of Qarun.
Qarun was the person who was the supervisor
of Bani Israel.
He was the one entrusted to do Fir
'aun's dirty work.
And guess who was his first cousin?
Qarun was the first cousin of Musa alaihi
salam.
They were fanned.
That's what happens.
I'm sure he got a nice check.
They said that the keys to his treasure
were so big that they took many men
to carry them.
So he got paid, he got the bag.
But he's not a representative.
He's not a good representative.
So we have to sometimes we talk about,
and I've seen a lot of mosques across
the country in the election season and after
the election season come up with a civic
engagement committee or something of this.
But what we want is we want to
go beyond civic engagement.
We want civic transformation.
We want civic redemption.
Everybody knows the United States of America has
original sins.
It's got original sins when it comes to
stealing the land from the native peoples.
It's got original sins when it comes to
bringing enslaved Africans here and destroying their culture.
What is going to redeem America of its
sins?
What's the only thing left?
The churches are empty.
They're getting sold off.
The only thing left is the Muslims.
The only thing left is Islam.
So we need to understand that when we
act anything, you go to the store, you
show up, other people see you, you're visibly
Muslim, especially obviously our sisters know this because
they don't have a choice, they're always visibly
Muslim.
That we understand that we're trying to bring
glory to Allah subhana wa ta'ala.
We're trying to represent our principles wherever we
go.
At your job, at your school, in your
family, on your sports teams, wherever you go,
you're attempting to represent the principles that Allah
subhana wa ta'ala has given you.
They're not just some dude a couple of
hundred years ago that made up these principles.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala gave us these
principles.
People say freedom of speech this and freedom
of assembly that and this constitution over here.
Allah gave us our principles.
And so we have to make sure that
we bring them forward.
Now, we've talked a lot about, in the
khutbah, we talked a bit about the moment
that we live in right now and how
we've seen moments like this before.
We saw moments like this after 9-11
when there was a lot of hysteria, there
was a lot of entrapment, there was a
lot of aggression to try to undermine our
community.
And unfortunately, there were people even inside of
our community that were willing to throw each
other under the bus in order to save
themselves.
That happened.
We need to make sure that we don't
repeat the same mistakes of the past.
We need to make sure that we learn,
and I think that we have learned in
the last 24 years or 23 years, that
to hide away from these problems is not
going to solve these problems.
That we can turn to relief effort, we
can try to be the most likable people,
the most well-behaved model citizens in the
world.
We can all shave our beards and take
off our hijabs and do everything and it
won't be enough.
It won't be enough.
So rather than fold and compromise, what we
really need is we really need to think
about how can we build power through our
communities.
How do we build power through our communities
so that our values are represented, so that
we're all safe, and so that we're actually
fulfilling our mandate to try to transform the
society that we're in and stop it from
harming itself.
Because that's ultimately what we want to do
at the end of the day.
In order to do that, we need the
masjid to function.
The masjid, and I know I'm preaching to
the choir, some of the brothers here, the
masjid is the most important facility that American
Muslims have.
We have sunk so much money and time
and energy into building these beautiful buildings.
But at Yerkeen Institute we did research and
we found that over 50% of the
mosques in the United States of America do
not have a full-time imam.
Over 50%.
And we found that the average tenure of
an imam in a masjid is two years.
That the turnaround is extremely high.
That we haven't figured it out yet.
That we lag behind our brethren of the
book, the Jews and the Christians, who have
not just unions for their religious leaders, but
they actually have licensing organizations and things of
that nature.
So it's very, very organized and it's very,
very professional.
This is not just a Yiddish problem.
This is a country-wide problem, a national
problem.
But we're not going to be able to
really use what we have and get the
most out of the human capital that we
have.
Look at how many young people we have
here today.
And Yerkeen is a beautiful community with a
lot of talented youth.
We're not going to be able to get
the most out of those youth, let alone
keep them around.
Yes, even you.
You're still here, inshallah.
Non-Baha'is.
Let alone keep them around if we don't
figure out how to set up the masjid
for leadership.
How to set up the masjid for leadership.
So there's a couple of other things that
we've learned.
First of all, we can't run away from
the problems.
We can't go over it, we can't go
under it.
We've got to go through it, as the
book says.
African-American brothers know this very well.
In the 60s, there was a civil rights
movement.
Desegregation.
Some people had to engage in civil disobedience.
People had to hear the nastiest stuff said
to them.
People had to get dogs sicced on them
by the cops.
People had to face down fire hoses and
get arrested and get busted up by the
cops.
This is all part of our American history,
and now, 60 years later, we say, you
know, yeah, it was great.
But at the time, at the time they
were going through that, that was a scary
time.
We live in a country right now where
the people who are our fiercest opponents are
attempting to criminalize us.
They are attempting to make it illegal to
be a basic Muslim.
To make the definition of what is anti
-Semitic or what is hate speech or what
is support for terrorism so broad that it
could really apply to anybody, anything that we
do, anytime.
And there have been people who have suggested
editing the Quran or banning certain verses of
the Quran.
Those people exist out there.
So don't think that this is going to
go away.
This is not going anywhere.
If we don't actually come together as a
community, look at ourselves, see what are the
things that need to be in place to
maximize our potential and our power, and then
to do those things to make sure that
we have a fighting chance.
Another thing that we've learned is that loyalty
first, politics don't work.
Loyalty first, politics don't work.
What do we mean by that?
That means that, I'm going to give you
some old school examples.
Everybody who's come here from a different land.
You know the Souk back home.
Think about you in the Souk back home.
You're in Yeven, you're in Egypt, you're the
Souk.
Okay?
You're in Bangladesh.
You're at the marketplace.
You really want to buy something.
You're at the table, right?
You want to haggle the price down because
it's the Souk.
That's what you do at the marketplace.
There's no barcodes.
Now, if you're never willing to leave the
table, are you going to be able to
haggle?
Never.
Ever.
He's got you.
He sees the holes in your clothes.
He knows you're not going anywhere until you
buy some clothes.
He knows you're desperate.
Okay?
When do you actually get to start haggling?
The second you say, you know what, no,
I'm good.
I'm going to go to somebody else.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, come
back.
What price are you looking for?
One thing you're looking for, that's when you
start to be able to negotiate.
Now, let's bring this to politics.
Do you think that if we sign up
uncritically, loyal to either party, red or blue,
elephant people or the donkeys, donkey people, and
we're not willing to walk away from either
of them, are we going to be able
to negotiate with them?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
In fact, it actually, if we say, you
know what, no matter what, blue team's our
team, we're going with the blue team, we're
riding blue, ride or die with the blue
team, what does that do for them?
That actually creates a situation in which they
have it in their interest to give you
the least thing that they can give you
in order to make you happy.
They're not competing for you.
They say, oh, we got them in the
bag.
They let us come into the mosque.
They let us grab the microphone and stand
up on the minbar and give a nice
speech.
We smiled at everybody.
I remember they told me, say inshallah.
I shook hands.
I kissed babies.
We're good.
We don't have to worry about that.
We don't have to give them anything real.
We're good.
No, no, let's put our attention over here.
These guys are playing hard to get.
We got these Muslims taken care of.
On the other hand, let me tell you
a story.
All right, so there was a politician.
There was a politician in Pennsylvania who was
a very, very slick Democratic representative.
And one of my colleagues and mentors, when
he moved to the area, she actually invited
all the imams to come and sit down,
have a sit down.
And you know what she said to them,
all the imams?
She said, I just got back from Israel,
but I demanded that they take me to
see the other side.
And I know what you're going through, and
it's horrible over there.
Now all the guys are like, are we?
Okay, this is good.
And she was playing them the whole time.
She was totally playing them the whole time.
They supported her.
They let her come to the meeting.
And then they started paying attention to the
votes.
It's like, well, wait a minute.
How come if you said that, then you're
still supporting every military aid package.
You're still sending all the bombs over.
You're still voting on every single thing.
And then they figured it out.
And then they said, you know what?
This person's not allowed to come into the
masjid anymore.
And then they stopped picking up her phone
calls.
And then I kid you not, you know
what happened?
Sorry, let him sleep.
He's tired.
You know what happened?
She showed up at a masjid event.
Imagine this, like a masjid event like this,
like a potluck.
She drove up into the parking lot.
The security already had, you know, been tipped
off.
If she shows up, she's not coming in
the mosque.
Security said, excuse me, ma'am, you're going
to have to leave.
That's political power.
When they start chasing you, you have to
play hard to get.
You can't be a chump.
You can't sign yourself up.
And this is like a one-way relationship
and unrequited love.
You're just, you know, mashallah, this party, I'm
so happy with Ashab al-Himam.
They've been there for us.
And they give us speeches.
They say some nice things to us once
in a while.
You know, our allies do so much for
us.
Show me the results.
What are the results?
Are people still getting killed?
Are people still getting killed?
We're still getting locked up?
We're still being treated like this?
Okay.
So we have to get a little bit
more mature.
We have to understand that when it comes
to building power in a community, building power
is not about, it's not like dawah in
the sense where you give someone biryani and
you hope that he accepts Islam.
That's what I call biryani diplomacy.
Biryani diplomacy is very good for dawah.
It's not good for politics.
You have to negotiate.
You have to stand up for your principles.
And you have to play hard to get.
And you say, okay, what am I getting
out of this?
The imams that went on stage with Trump
in Michigan.
My question to them was, what did you
guys get out of it?
And they didn't really have an answer.
I was like, okay, you guys got your
boy.
Now Trump's in power.
All right.
So what did you get out of it?
You didn't get anything out of it?
Come on.
We have to, all of us as a
community.
And I'm not saying, don't get me wrong
here.
There is room for different opinions and different
tactics.
There's going to be people who go red.
There's going to be people, I don't see
Erson here.
I know Erson is solid Republican.
And everybody's go, some people are going to
go blue.
That's okay.
But it has to be strategic.
And it has to be built on power.
And bringing power to the Muslim community.
One of the things, an attitudinal thing, that
we have to have.
That means like the proper attitude that we
have.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala actually talks about
it in the Quran.
It's a very, very interesting ayah.
The story of Bilqis and Suleyman in Surah
An-Naml and other surahs.
It's a really, very interesting interaction.
Where Bilqis gets this letter of Dawah from
Suleyman.
And now Bilqis is wondering if they should
go to war or not.
And she asks her advisors.
And her advisors are like, listen, if you
want to throw down, we're ready.
But it's up to you at the end
of the day.
They decide to send a gift to Suleyman.
Listen to Suleyman's response.
فَلَمَّا جَاءَ سُلَيْمَانَ قَالَ أَتُمِدُّونَنِ بِمَانِ فَمَا آتَانِيَ
اللَّهُ خَيْرُ مِمَّا آتَاكُمْ بَلْأَنْتُمْ بِهَدِيَتِكُمْ تَفْرَحُمْ It's
a really powerful response.
He says, are you giving me money?
Do you think I can be bought?
It's kind of the attitude of his response.
What Allah has given me is better than
what you could ever possibly give me.
No, actually, you guys are the ones that
are happy with gifts.
بَلْأَنْتُمْ بِهَدِيَتِكُمْ تَفْرَحُمْ You guys are happy when
you get gifts.
I'm not happy when I get gifts.
I'm not out here to get gifts.
I'm not out here to get the red
carpet rolled out for me.
I'm not out here to take selfies with
the mayor.
I'm not out here to get to Hobnob
with the big shots and the senators and
the things like that.
That's Suleyman's attitude.
I'm doing with Allah.
I'm dealing with Allah.
I'm trying to advance Allah's deen in this
world.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I don't get happy when I get invited
to some sort of closed door meeting or
something like that.
This is the attitude Allah subhana wa ta
'ala is trying to teach us.
If we're going to build power in our
communities.
Don't be, mashallah, the glitz and the glam
and the lights and the pomp and the
circumstance.
It's all very seductive.
They make you feel like they're doing something
for you.
That you should be happy just even to
be in the room.
No.
We're not people who are happy with gifts.
Like Suleyman.
We're not happy until we actually do what
Allah subhana wa ta'ala is pleased with.
So, let's talk a little bit about practicality.
And then we'll open up to questions and
then we'll bring it to an end, inshallah.
7.30 is the time?
7.30, okay.
So, the corollary of this.
If we're not happy with gifts.
If we're not looking for access.
A lot of people say we have to
have a seat at the table, seat at
the table, seat at the table.
How many times have you heard we have
to have a seat at the table?
The problem is that sometimes we think we
have a seat at the table.
And we're just getting called over to bust
the table.
We're not actually sitting at the table.
We're sure as heck not eating at that
table.
So, we have to be able to differentiate.
When are we actually, let's forget tables.
Are we actually able to bring results to
our community?
All the anti-terror laws that criminalize us.
Or any of the other laws that criminalize
us.
Have we been able to roll any of
them back?
Any of the free speech cases.
Any of the entrapment cases where the FBI
tries to suck someone in or radicalize someone
on the internet.
Have we been able to win any of
those cases or get this sort of horrible
practice made illegal?
If we haven't been able to get results,
then we're doing something wrong.
So, the second part of this is to
understand that not everybody is gonna like this.
And that's fine.
We don't need to be liked.
The Prophet ﷺ was not concerned with just
being liked.
He was doing dawah.
He was trying to speak the truth.
He was going to do it in a
beautiful way.
He was going to do it according to
the proper etiquette.
And as best as he could.
Qawlan balighah, as Allah ﷻ says in Surah
An-Nisa.
But he wasn't just, how many times does
Allah ﷻ say, وَلَا تُطِعِلِ الْكُفَىٰ أَوْ كَافِرِينَ
Don't obey them.
Don't follow them.
Don't give in to them.
Right?
It's that this is something where you have
to be dedicated to your principles enough that
you understand that people aren't gonna like you.
Not everybody is gonna like you.
And that's perfectly fine.
As long as you have discharged your duty
to Allah ﷻ, then you have done what
you can.
And that's the right thing.
And you ask Allah ﷻ to give you
results.
So, what's coming next and what can we
do?
The first thing that we have to do
is we have to pay attention to how
things work.
A lot of us don't have any idea
how things work.
The United States of America is a place
where a very small amount of people can
have an enormous impact.
Very small amount of people can have an
enormous impact.
We just had an opportunity that we lost
in Pennsylvania where there was a state treasurer
that was running.
Democrat.
Erin McClellan, I think was her name.
And she promised to divest the state of
Pennsylvania from Israeli bombs.
Now, this is not a race that most
people paid attention to.
Most people, they pay attention to the president,
maybe the senator, maybe the representative.
Once you get down to state government, people
really aren't paying attention like that yet in
the Muslim community.
She lost the election by 300 votes.
300 votes is nothing for an entire state.
300 votes is nothing.
And I remember sitting here and showing some
of the brothers the election data from Utica,
from this ward for the city council.
And it's the same margin.
That this particular ward that the masjid is
in, in the city of Utica, to get
someone onto the city council, all you need
is 200 votes.
That it is the city ward with the
lowest amount of voter turnout.
That if you got everybody that's a Muslim
in this ward to vote, or even 75
% or 60% of them, you could
easily put someone on the city council.
Easy.
Very, very easy.
But what does it take?
How can we not do that?
It sounds nice.
Okay, here's where the work comes in.
You have to study the issue and understand
how things happen.
Who makes the decision?
Some people, when the roads aren't paved, or
there's a pothole, they want to complain to
their senator.
The senator doesn't have anything to do with
the roads.
Neither does the representative.
Federal government has nothing to do with the
roads.
Your local government has to do with the
roads.
The city council has to do with the
roads.
Okay?
Vice versa.
There's a zoning issue.
You're trying to build a masjid or build
an expansion on a masjid that's not zoned
properly.
Who do you go to for that?
That's your local government.
You have to study and understand who is
responsible at every phase.
So what we did, or what we're doing
in our community, we got a spreadsheet.
We got a group of brothers that gets
together for an hour.
Every week.
Tuesday night at 9 o'clock.
Just an hour.
And it's a standing meeting.
That means that it's a working meeting.
We just show up when we work.
We got a little agenda, two, three items.
Got a big spreadsheet.
This masjid is in this ward of this
city, in this county, in this state, in
this country.
And then we've got, there's executive government, there's
legislative government, there's judicial.
Who's in charge?
We started looking.
We started, okay, the legislature is the city
council.
Similar to Utica system.
How many people are on a city council?
What's their term limits?
How often are they reelected?
Let's look into the numbers a little bit.
How many people would we need to mobilize
and how many votes would we need to
deliver if we wanted to put someone on
the city council?
Okay, well, maybe we don't have those numbers
yet.
But what was the margin of victory and
defeat for the last election?
Maybe we have those numbers.
That's where you start.
So maybe we don't have 200 votes to
put our, to put Ibrahim or to put
Mohammed on the city council.
But maybe we saw that the last city
council between, you know, Jim and Harry, it
was a 60 vote difference.
We got 60, we can get 60.
That's where you start.
You start by at least, well, we can
decide between these two.
And then the next level is that we
can actually put someone there.
The person we want.
Maybe they're a Muslim, maybe they're not.
Doesn't have to be a Muslim.
But they have to represent our values.
Okay, let's look at, we look at the
city council, we got the mayor, we got
the same thing.
If you go to the county level, you
go to the state level, it's the same
thing.
You need to understand that political power is
about getting a lot of people to do
the same thing at the same time.
Voting is not like a savior sort of
situation.
No one's going to come and save you.
That's not what voting does.
And electoral politics is not the end of
everything.
But voting is a really good metric to
measure how many people you can mobilize to
do the same thing at the same time.
Some of the communities I've been in, mashallah,
the Muslims have a lot of doctors.
Doctor employees, I say.
Because sometimes they forget they're just employees.
They don't really have that much power.
Sorry guys, I know some of you are
going to med school.
You're just an employee.
So for all these doctors, have we ever
been able to leverage that power?
Have we ever, if there's a hospital system
or a medical system, and we've got 10
doctors and 20 nurses and 30 CNAs, have
we ever been able to get them all
to walk off the job at the same
time on a strike?
Have we ever been able to get them
to band together and put their names down
on a list and demand at least fair
treatment?
If they're going to make a statement in
support of Israel, are they also going to
make a statement in support of Palestine?
So then what's the point of all the
doctors?
So that's what we're talking about.
Power is the ability to do, to get
a lot of people to do the same
thing at the same time.
And when you're able to do that, it's
not about putting up your savior.
They're just politicians.
They lie.
They're liars.
But once you're able to do that, people
take you seriously.
Because then they say, okay, well I know
I can't cross these Muslims.
Because if I do, I'm out.
I know they can mobilize.
I've seen them be able to do it.
And sure enough, I guarantee you, I have
been shown text messages from insiders in the
Democratic Party this last presidential election, even all
the way up to the federal level.
And people were saying, Muslims aren't going to
come together.
Muslims are too disorganized.
We would rather bet on the Zionists punishing
us than have to worry about the Muslims.
Muslims aren't there yet.
Muslims can't get their stuff together.
Muslims don't vote.
Muslims don't turn out for elections.
Muslims don't get organized.
That's what they said.
I was shown text messages from the inside
of the party.
That's what they said.
So the only thing up to us is
to prove them wrong.
We have to prove them wrong.
We have to know where everybody lives.
Not so that we can sell your information
to Google.
So that we can know what area you're
in, what school system your kids are in.
If we want to, there was a brother
that came up to me.
He said, we met with the superintendent of
the schools to try to get Eid as
a holiday.
And he asked me, he said, how many
students are we talking about?
And I don't know.
He's not going to give me the time
of day.
He needs to know that there's a critical
mass.
That there's a number of students.
How many students?
They started doing data.
They started collecting data within the community.
Every Jummah, they would have people at the
door.
We promise, we swear by Allah.
We're not going to sell your data.
We're not going to give you data.
But we need to know what school, how
many kids you got.
And which school system.
And where you live.
At least what neighborhood.
What city ward.
So we know who you're voting for.
What's your area, what's your district.
They were able to then come back to
him a year later with data.
That said that they have 300 students in
that school.
300 Muslim students.
And the superintendent was shocked.
He said, I never thought we had that
many Muslim students.
I thought we only had like 30, maybe
20.
And then at that point, the superintendent went
ahead and pushed it forward himself.
He said, I'm going to make sure there
is a holiday.
And then we recognize it because that's a
significant number.
So this is the type of organizing that
is very, very, honestly, it's simple to do.
It's not that hard.
And anybody can do it.
It doesn't take a PhD in political science.
It doesn't take a data scientist.
It doesn't take a PhD in this or
a PhD in that.
All you have to have is a group
of people who are willing to put in
a little bit of work.
An hour a week to study it.
And inshallah, by the end of this month,
I will have a template to give to
this masjid.
And I'll be honored to give it to
this masjid first, obviously, as part of the
home team.
And then other masjids that have been requesting
it from me from around the country.
A template that you can implement yourself.
That you can get your committee together of
civic engagement, whatever you want to call it.
And that you can start studying the issue.
Who do we have?
Who can we have?
Let's organize.
Let's get people together.
So that we're able to start to make
our voices heard.
And as we've learned in the last 20,
25 years and more, if we don't make
our voices heard, people are going to speak
for us.
And when people speak for us, it's not
going to be good.
It's not going to be what we want.
And it's not going to deliver anything for
our community.
So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept
and make it easy for us.
And guide us to the truth.
اللهم أعلن الحق حقا ورزقنا التباع وأعلن الباطل
الباطل ورزقنا الاجتماع بارك الله فيكم.
سبحانك اللهم وبحمدك.
أشهد أن لا إله إلا أنت أستغفرك وأتوب
إليك السلام عليكم ورحمة الله