Walead Mosaad – Speech In Al Firdaus Ensemble Concert Lehigh University

And that you want immunity to the products on some man officiates

interfaith coexistence musical event sponsored by the university

champions, as well as global warming Global Union, and civic

community and local nonprofit.

So we're gonna get started a little bit, but I thought I tried

to give him a little bit of a background about kind of the

tunes. And the themes that you'll be hearing tonight.

A lot of the tunes that they'll be singing comes from ancient themes

that trace back to ambition, Spain, and as many of you are

aware of, there was a period in Spain, under the auspices of

mostly Muslim rule, that there was a flourishing of three faiths,

namely, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So some of the greatest us

philosophers came out of

academician and the Muslim philosophers as well. And also

Christian philosophers and some of the greatest music. So it was kind

of that we're at a point in history, where we have this

confluence of different backgrounds, different languages,

different religious perspectives, but in a matter that maybe wasn't

100% harmonious all the time, but to a great degree, actually

produced a lot of the world's greatest literature and music, and

so forth. So they have a lot of influences on their music.

Flamenco. You're going to hear to Arabic beginning a little bit,

even Celtic themes. Tonight, Sharla, God willing.

Also, for Muslims, this is a very auspicious night, because it's the

commemoration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad that Muslims

revere as the final and last and revered Prophet office lamp. And

these types of events, sometimes they're referred to as mobileread,

which simply means commemoration of a birthday. And you also find

in traditional Muslim texts, the idea of what we're going to do

here tonight, or audition is referred to as religious

experience. And you'll find in religious texts that there's

chapters about how does one benefit from spiritual audition,

how does one benefit from music from words, and allow them to

penetrate the heart and entertain the soul, so that they themselves

can become enlivened knowledge, not just with the tunes, and the

rhythm, but also with the music itself and the meanings. And this

is the practice in the Muslim world today. Both the Jewish and

Christian traditions also have forms of this Buddhist tradition

has forms of this. So, you know, I think we're living in uncertain

and maybe difficult times, in many ways.

Last month, or maybe earlier this month, myself, and Rabbi Steve

Nathan was here tonight and university champion, Dr. Lloyd

Stephen, we came together to do a vigil with the Pittsburgh shooting

synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, at the Tree of Life synagogue. And

we both spoke here, and there was quite a number of students who

came out. And I had mentioned that night that it seems to keep coming

together for these sorts of things. And so the inevitable that

somehow we come together once again, to talk about tragedy, and

how to cope with it and get through it. And I'd like to see a

world where people of different perspectives and backgrounds and

languages and ethnicities and religions can come together to do

something positive, and come to something that will not only

help them to cope with everyday life, but to move on to a plane to

a place where we're not just surviving, but we're thriving.

And I think too many of us were just sort of trying to get by, as

it were, you know, make it through the day, make it through the week,

make it through the month. And as human beings, I think the world

speaks to our intellects to our mind, but I also think it speaks

to our heart. I think the shorter route, and the shorter route is

the heart. And music has the ability to do that. It takes a

direct line to the heart, when it penetrates. It has the ability to

bring people together. It has the ability for people to gloss over

the differences and move on and think about the common humanity

between them all. And so I'm hoping that this type of events,

very excited and proud that we got support from the organizations

that I've been to have a lot of great thanks to Dr. Lloyd Stephens

University chaplain and Rabbi Steven Nathan and also the

coordinator of the chaplains office.

I'm terrible because for helping us and putting out this event and

we have a myriad of volunteers also that came together. So

hopefully, this will be a memorable day. We won't just think

about it while we're here but it will linger with us even for just

a bit. At least through until Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I

think we would have done what we've set out to do here. So

without really further ado, I asked the furnace ensemble take a

stage and get ready for for some good distinguish our Thank you