Tom Facchine – Zionists Are Exploiting Muslim Leaders Credibility
AI: Summary ©
The hosts of "Theifyingifyingifying Man and Killing Sinwar" discuss the negative consequences of actions taken against Muslims, including false accusations and attacks on the city. They also discuss the use of Facebook and Twitter to push activism and the misuse of reputation to get into politics. The segment touches on the negative consequences of actions taken against Muslims, including false accusations and attacks on groups. The importance of fostering better Jewish nationalism is emphasized, along with the use of hasn't" in the normalization of the people who use it and finding the right fit in social media. The speakers emphasize the importance of fostering better Jewish nationalism and being judicious in giving them credibility.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum, welcome to Yaqeen Institute.
This is our weekly program.
I'm your host, Imam Tom Fakini.
And boy, what a week it has been.
Of course, topping the news for this past
week was Yahya Sinwar was killed in live
action.
Very, very dramatic videos being released online about
his final moments.
Now, one of the more interesting things in
the wake of the killing of Sinwar is
is the question for the motive and the
reason why the attacks and why the aggression
from Israel is still continuing.
If you recall, Israel was saying for the
longest time that this is all because of
what happened on October 7th, 2023.
Everything that they've done is because of that,
and that basically once they avenge that sort
of action, then there's no reason to continue
the fight.
Of course, now that Gaza is completely decimated
and the mastermind behind the October 7th attack
has been killed, one would think that the
reason for war has been satisfied and that
there would be no justification to continue.
Of course, we know better than that.
That's not what they're saying now in the
media.
Israel is saying that they will continue no
matter what.
Even U.S. officials who have been extremely
lenient in allowing Israel to continue its bloodshed
have started to publicly say that, okay guys,
it's time to cut it out, but there's
no signs of Israel stopping any time soon.
One of the unfortunate consequences, but fortunate because
it allowed us to sort of reflect and
benefit from this, was some of the sectarianism
that was on display within the Muslim online
sphere after the killing of Sinwar.
There was one particular video that went viral
from, I believe, a Yemeni scholar or personality,
I've never heard of him before, that was
basically expressing joy at seeing Sinwar killed.
Many people took to social media to express
their outrage with this particular take, and certainly
we have a video that we'd like to
show from Sheikh Uthman Khamis, who's an authority,
and even within Salafi circles, when it comes
to especially Aqidah and knowledge of intersectarian strife.
So you see that Sheikh Uthman Khamis has
very, very strong words for anybody that would
take joy in such a thing, that he
equates it to an act of kufr, of
disbelief or denial or rejection, and that it
might be something that could take somebody out
of the fold of the faith.
And it certainly historically, if you see the
times when Muslims were the weakest, that was
when they allowed their sectarianism to get to
the point where they would basically attempt to
court the assistance of others against each other.
So if you go to Palestine and the
the assistance of the crusaders against their fellow
Muslims.
If you go to Muslim Spain, there were
Muslim groups and political organizations that were attempting
to court the assistance of the different Spanish
kings against their Muslim rivals.
That whenever this has happened, it has led
to horrible bloodshed, chaos, and terrible division within
the community.
So it's very, very important to realize that
there's levels to it, that you can have
an adversary and you can disagree with somebody
when it comes to either some sort of
sectarian difference or some sort of aqidah difference,
but it is a level that is beyond
the pale to attempt to say that you
are rooting for somebody else against them.
You're rooting for somebody who is a genocider,
who is a horrible oppressor, in order to
take out your opponent.
That is beyond the pale, and that is
something that should make people question their faith
or the soundness of their faith.
Speaking of Islamic scholarship, there was a very
interesting post by a brother Anwar on Twitter
who brings attention to something that many people
have been speaking about in the last year,
the world after October 7, 2023.
One of the many, many things that has
come under reconsideration are the types of peace
forums that many Islamic scholars are invited to
speak at.
Now in a post-911 world, these became
very, very popular, that trying to clarify doubts
about Islam, when people in the media were
trying to peddle the line that Islam was
sort of uniquely violent or inherently barbaric, or
that it was some sort of retrograde religion
or ideology, many of these peace forums sought
to combat such narratives.
However, we've seen, especially in the last year
and change, that many of these forums themselves
contribute to this type of stereotyping, basically having
to deny and having to stand up and
having to denounce is like being on Piers
Morgan and ask, do you condemn, do you
condemn, do you condemn, that the underlying grammar
or the underlying assumption of such forums is
also that, that Islam is some sort of
uniquely violent movement or religion.
That's to say nothing of some of the
shady characters and mixed motives of the people
who create such forums.
Knowing that Muslims are actively attempting to combat
negative violent stereotypes against themselves, many groups such
as Zionists, especially liberal Zionists, have attempted to
get onto this sort of interfaith bandwagon in
an effort to sort of normalize Zionism as
its own thing.
So basically you have a Muslim scholar or
an Islamic scholar that wants to come onto
a forum to speak to non-Muslims about
how Islam is not violent, and there are
Zionist rabbis or other folks who will exploit
that need, and they will create venues, and
they will create forums, they will create events
where they also get to push their ideology
of the normalization of the Zionist occupation of
Palestine.
And this is a way in which many,
many scholars have been duped and have been
used.
And so our brother Anwar is asking scholars,
and I think that it's a very, very
reasonable ask, to be more judicious in the
invitations that they accept, to realize and to
do your homework and to see the motives
or the possible motives behind the people who
are inviting you, that you have to take
a certain amount of responsibility when you are
going to show up to a stage.
You lend credibility to it.
You lend credibility to the entire idea that
is undergirding that event and that initiative.
There's a really good article on this that
was written by our sister Sana Saeed, called
An Interfaith Trojan Horse, Faith-Washing Apartheid and
Occupation.
It was written in the Islamic Monthly.
I highly recommend that you check that out
and read it.
It's got a lot of good information and
a lot of case studies and examples for
how Zionists have used what she calls faith
-washing, and it's a nice term, to basically
clean up the image of apartheid and Zionism.
Similarly, in the War on Terror framework, much
of this work has been predicated upon a
good Muslim-bad Muslim dichotomy, meaning that some
spaces are basically asking you or subtly pressuring
Muslim scholars or Islamist scholars in these forums
to throw a certain segment of the Muslim
community under the bus.
It tempts the Salafi to throw the Sufis
under the bus.
It tempts the Sufis to throw the Salafis
under the bus.
It tempts people to throw their internal sectarian
opponents under the bus to the non-Muslims
and basically say that we're the good Muslims,
they're the bad Muslims, they're the ones that
are violent, they're the ones that are barbaric
because of this classical scholar that they study
from hundreds of years ago, and such distortions
that all Muslim scholars have to have the
maturity and the insof, the charitability and the
fairness to see through these ploys, to resist
the temptation to sell out your brothers and
sisters to non-Muslims who are attempting to
basically put you in that position in the
first place.
And we've got many, many quotes here from
the article.
We should say beyond the to recognize the
institutes and the initiatives that are engaged in
this, right?
So one of them, the Shalom Hartman Institute
is one of the more famous ones, right?
And the article says that their interests lie
not in fostering better Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations
for the sake of interfaith, but rather in
fostering relationships with key leaders to normalize Zionism.
If you remember MLI, Muslim Leadership Initiative, where
these Zionist groups were attempting to court Muslim
leaders and fly them to occupied Palestine and
give them basically wine and dine them in
order to have a positive image of the
occupation, that this was all very, very, very
strategic.
This is manipulation, and Muslim scholars, Islamist scholars
have to do better.
And I'll put myself first in line there,
have to do better when it comes to
being more judicious and selective about which invitations
they are accepting and which ones they aren't.
Many, many times, and I can personally relate,
the scholar just doesn't do their homework.
They just, they get invited, they say, they
look at the calendar, they say, I have
a free day.
Yeah, sure, let's go.
The worst case scenario is people who are
making this into a grift.
So people who are doing this for money
and for connections or things like that.
But my personal experience, I don't see that
as the majority situation.
The majority of the situation, and I have
reached out to people in the last year
where I saw them on a flyer or
somebody pointed out to me, they saw them
on a flyer and there was a similar
type event happening, a faith-washing event happening,
or I reached out to them, I say,
hey, did you know that the person that
you're about to share a stage with has
done X and Y and Z, and they're
actually trying to support Zionism, and they're actually
using your presence to make normal and to
normalize their Zionist politics?
The vast majority of the time, in fact,
every single time, the person I reached out
to had no idea.
I said, wow, this is really crazy.
Now, the sad thing, and I think the
thing where Muslim scholars and Islam scholars need
to be challenged more, is what they then
do with that information.
So unfortunately, the majority of the time when
I have brought this to somebody's attention, they
have said, well, I already said I was
going.
Well, I already gave my word that I
would be there.
And so I feel like this is part
of the ploy and the tactic, is that
once they get you to agree, now there's
these sort of social niceties that we feel
afraid to break, and we are hesitant to
go back on our word and things of
this nature.
However, my personal opinion is that the harm
of the events themselves far outweigh going back
on your word, and obviously you committed to
this type of event without the knowledge of
what the nature of the event would do.
If you had had the knowledge about what
the effect of the event would be, would
you have accepted the invitation?
Chances are I'm going to have Hasna Dhan
and say, no, you wouldn't have.
So if the answer is, no, I would
not have accepted this invitation if I had
known about the nature of the actors and
the institutes that are putting it on, then
that means that you should tell them that.
And it's very, very important to tell them
that.
Not to make up, let's be courageous here.
Not just to tell them, oh, I'm sick.
Oh, my cat ate my speech that I
was preparing, or make some sort of lame
excuse.
No, tell them that I have now become
aware that your institute or this particular speaker
has these politics, and I refuse to lend
credibility to such people.
If you want to go to, I think
like what, Galloway in the UK, he has
a very, very famous viral video.
He was invited into a talk, and he
was under the impression that it was just
going to be him, and he finds himself
on sort of a panel discussion or following
some sort of Israeli official, and he walks
out.
He says, this is not what I agreed
to, and I refuse to normalize or participate.
I'm sorry, Mr. Galloway?
You said we.
Are you an Israeli?
I am, yes.
I don't debate with Israelis.
I've been misled.
Sorry.
I don't recognize Israel, and I don't debate
with Israelis.
We need Muslim scholars, Islamist scholars.
We have to develop that type of izzah,
that type of pride in our work, and
that type of awareness of what our presence
lends credibility to, and that type of courage.
You have to train them.
You have to train them.
There have even been people who have invited
me within the last two or three weeks
to share the stage with people within the
Muslim community whom I deem their politics on
Palestine to have been very problematic.
I deem them to have not been as
principled as they should have been, and I
have rather than simply say, no, I can't
make it.
No, I'm busy.
I have said, no, I will not share
the stage with this person.
I do not believe in giving credibility or
lending them legitimacy to the way that they're
pursuing politics.
And of course, with other Muslims, you don't
have to go to the level of saying,
you know, I believe that this person is
sinful, or they're a sellout, or they have
a bad intention.
You don't have to go to that level.
Just realize that your presence gives credibility, and
you need to be very, very judicious in
giving that, granting that credibility, or withholding it.
Now, speaking about credibility, and faith-washing, and
white-watching, the social media influencer by the
name of Nas Daily, his actual name is
Nasser Yassin, was confronted in Tokyo, Japan for
his white-washing of Israel's crimes in Palestine
and in Gaza.
This man is guilty of normalization.
Where are you from?
Japanese.
I think he's Japanese.
That's incredible.
A Japanese person is coming to tell an
Israeli-Palestinian what to think of Israel.
I want to say that I came here
for the event, but after listening to you,
after listening to him right now, I'm not
on his side.
The basic of humanity is to not laugh
when somebody's dying.
He was confronted with protesters, people accusing him
of being complicit with a genocide, saying that
we don't need influencers complicit in genocide, and
giving him an earful.
Now, if you know anything about Nasser Yassin,
he certainly deserves pushback, and he deserves to
be held accountable, that there is a lot
of sketchy stuff going on when it comes
to his identity and how he uses his
Palestinian identity, but plays into Israeli propaganda, and
is actually a very ardent supporter of Israel.
In fact, he has said that he is
Israel first, Palestinian second.
So he is somebody who is very much
in the business of using that identity to
lend credibility, because obviously, if it were just
Israelis who were attempting to justify their crimes,
then it would have very little credibility.
But every single Palestinian or person of Palestinian
heritage that Israel is able to collaborate with,
or to utilize, or to manipulate, and to
sometimes blackmail—if you know anybody from Palestine, they'll
tell you about this—then it gives them more
credibility, because Israel's always attempting to portray it
as somehow liberating Palestine and Gaza from the
violent elements, as if the occupation had nothing
to do with that in the first place.