Yasir Qadhi – Beyond Borders Shaykh Addresses Yale Protesters on Palestine Solidarity
AI: Summary ©
The conflict in the Middle East is portrayed as patently false and has no implications for the people of the country. The conflict is a conflict easy to understand and requires no background information. The speaker warns against criticizing the president and the current president, calling for people to look up the facts of the people who have said about the conflict. The importance of faith and protecting people's faith is emphasized, along with the need for everyone to speak out against oppression and protecting people's faith. The upcoming movement for peace is also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Good afternoon, everyone. Just, like, your attention for
a moment, please. Thank you to everyone been
here all day, that's been here for many,
many days. My name is my name is
Chapo Numer Bajwa. I've also been very fortunate
to be with you throughout the many days
that you've been here periodically. Just wanted to
draw your attention and invite you forward. We
have a very special guest speaker right now,
doctor, Yasser Qadhi, who's actually an alum from
Yale. He did his PhD in religious studies
and Islamic studies and graduated in 2012.
2013.
Class of 2013, and he's actually visiting New
Haven, visiting campus today,
and through his,
busy schedule, wanted to come down and visit
the encampment here and to spend time with
you. We're gonna if you could give us
your attention for just a few minutes, he's
gonna share some words with us, InshaAllah. So
thank you so much for your attention. Thank
you.
Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming.
I wanted to say that first and foremost,
obviously, I'm really proud to be an alum
of Yale. I graduated 2013.
I I started, my grad school here 20
years ago,
and it's great to see such enthusiasm.
It's great to see the support that we
have for a cause that is so global.
I wanna share with you a few points
that I hope, will be a benefit to
all of us. Firstly,
this conflict that's taking place in the Middle
East,
the portrayal that is given is that it's
super complicated, you're never gonna understand it, this
is a conflict that is going on for
decades, for centuries,
and that portrayal is patently false.
This conflict is super easy to understand.
You don't need a PhD in political science
to understand what is going on in the
middle east. On the one side, you have
a colonization
power.
You have an aggressor state. And on the
other side, you have refugees,
displaced people from their lands.
This conflict
does not require any background information
other than a cursory understanding
of what has happened there for the last
75 years.
A simple question, where did the people of
Gaza come from? Why are they trapped behind
50 foot walls?
Their grandfathers
were expelled
from the land of Palestine.
Their grandfathers
were forced to leave their houses in the
middle of the night. For 3 generations,
over 2,000,000
people have been displaced from their homes. So
this issue is not something that requires a
lot of background information. It is extremely easy
to understand, and anybody who tries to portray
it as super complicated
is trying to obfuscate the reality of how
simple this conflict is to understand. Secondly,
secondly,
one of the tactics that is used
in order
to repel any type of sanity to this
very, very,
clear cut topic is the accusation
that criticism of a country
is the same as criticism of a faith,
and nothing could be further from the truth.
This is a patent lie, and a blatant
falsehood.
We and all of us, and I'm a
person of religion, we are not criticizing
any faith,
but it is possible, and I say as
a Muslim, it is possible to criticize the
Taliban, and you're not criticizing Islam. It is
possible
tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, and you're
not criticizing Islam. So why can't we criticize
Israel, and there's no criticism of the faith
of Jews? There is no criticism of Judaism.
This is a criticism of policies of a
state, policies of a nation state, policies of
an apartheid regime. So to criticize a country
has nothing to do with criticizing the faith
of a large group of people. We have
no problem with the faith of any person
of faith. We do have problem with bombs
dropping on innocent civilians. We do have problem
with 40,000 people having lost their lives. We
do have problem with an apartheid regime that
has been active in that system for over
75 years. The third simple request I have
for all of us here is to please
look up what people that are completely neutral
have said about this. People that are not
directly invested.
People like Nelson Mandela. If anybody knows what
apartheid is, it is
defended how he defended Palestine, about how he
himself said that what is happening there is
apartheid, and his grandson
recently visited the country. His grandson who grew
up under the apartheid regime of South Africa.
Do you know what his grandson said? And
this is in the Guardian in multiple newspapers.
His grandson said, and I quote directly from
the article, in some ways, what is happening
to the Palestinians
is worse than what happened to us black
South Africans. This is the grandson of Nelson
Mandela. Our own former president, Jimmy Carter, he
wrote an entire book about this issue. And
you know the title of the book? The
title of the book is peace not apartheid.
Peace not Apartheid. This is Jimmy Carter. He's
an evangelical Christian. He's neither a Muslim nor
a Jew, and he has
himself documented
the realities of what is going on here.
Another point I wanna share with all of
you is that in my humble estimation,
I honestly think that that country of Israel,
even if they're winning the war, they have
lost the entire battle. The morality of what
the immorality of what is going on, the
public
sentiment,
and the tide of public opinion, it has
clearly shifted. And so in the long run,
there is no question, and I say this
as a person of faith and also as
a student of history, tyranny is never allowed
to flourish. Injustice
can never continue. And what is happening in
that land is the essence of tyranny. What
is happening in that land is the height
of injustice. And so I firmly believe that
it is not possible
for such a system to maintain to be
maintained. Now when I say this immediately, people
come and say, oh, are you implying that
you're gonna be committing a genocide against the
other? No. When we call for freedom of
1 people, we are not calling for the
genocide of another. Nobody is saying this. We
want freedom for all. We want freedom for
everybody. We want equality for all. And the
very notion that to criminalize
freedom for Palestine, to say that from the
from the river to the sea, we want
Palestine to be free, to claim that that
inherently
is calling for harm against other people is
a figment of your imagination.
Nobody is calling for harming anybody. That's the
whole point. We are seeing a genocide. And
the fact of the matter, the brutal fact
of the matter, and I say this as
a proud American born and raised here. Our
country is great, but certain aspects of it,
certain aspects of our foreign policy, frankly,
dollars
have dollars have been spent from our taxpayer
dollars. For how long are we gonna go
to war? For how long are we gonna
bomb? For how long are we gonna invade
one country after another? Are we not sick
of going to war? Are we not tired
of funding oppression around the globe? We've already
learned after 911. We falsely invaded Afghanistan and
then Iraq and then other countries, and now
we're funding another genocide.
For how long are we gonna be spending
1,000,000,000 of dollars overseas? Our country needs our
taxes. Why should we fund the genocide of
another regime? Why should we spend $20,000,000,000
right now we just approved, and every single
year 4 or $5,000,000,000
goes to that country? Why don't we have
enough to spend over here? We have homeless
people. We have a health care crisis. Our
education is a shambles, and here we are
funding genocides,
funding bombs. Every single bomb that drops in
that region, every large bomb that is called
dumb bombs, that's what they call them. It's
not just dumb bombs or genocidal bombs. Every
bomb that is dropped in that region, we
are the ones who produce it. We are
the ones who sell it. We are the
ones who give loans to that country to
buy it from us. We are directly
aiding and abetting genocide.
So enough is enough. And we as American
citizens, we have every right to stand up
and protest. And if anybody wanted to see
the double standards that's taking place across the
country now,
The way that they're treating student protesters, the
way that we are not allowed to use
a microphone, we can't even speak on a
public speaker, the way that your own protest
have forcibly been moved. The way that 50
students were arrested on our campus, and what
is happening at Columbia, and what is happening
at NYU, and what is happening at UT
Austin, and across the entire country. The blatant
hypocrisy
and double standards. But here's the point,
our voices will not be silenced.
You cannot silence the voices that are speaking
out against oppression, Speaking truth to power. You
cannot silence the truth. It is impossible
to cover up the crimes that are taking
place. And we thank God we live at
a time where social media is allowing the
world to see the double standards. The I
was in Dallas the other day, and the
news came up in my in my feed
that, oh, somebody has been poked in the
eye at Yale, and a Palestinian protester poked
her. I'm like, how can this be happening?
That's so cruel. That's so evil. Why would
anybody do that? And then when I saw
the video, I could not believe. But, of
course, I can believe how something as innocent
as an innocent mistake is misinterpreted,
made mainstream. But here's the point, every one
of us has a role to play. Every
one of us has to
in correcting the narrative and making sure these
cross
these cross,
stereotypes,
these cross,
untruths are not allowed to be perpetuated.
We have YouTube. We have Twitter. We have
Facebook. Take those videos, upload them, and show
the world that what certain segments of the
media is saying is nothing but a falsehood.
We are calling for peace everywhere. There is
no violence against anybody. We are not criminalizing
or criticizing a faith. We are criticizing a
nation state that is founded in oppression, and
to claim that a nation state is founded
in oppression has nothing to do with the
faith of the people of that land. And
the fact of the matter is there are
many people who belong to the Jewish faith
that are a part of these protests. They're
a part of these peaceful movements, and yet
even they are accused of being anti Semitic.
How can you accuse somebody of his own
faith, but such is the reality that we
live in? In the end of the day,
oh, fellow fellow students and fellow citizens and
brothers and sisters, in the end of the
day, I firmly
believe we are witnessing a complete title shift,
a seismic shift, and we are all a
part of it. So I encourage you, do
not lose hope, do not falter. You might
not see the fruits of this protest today,
but I guarantee you we will see it
in our lifetimes. We will see a free
Palestine in our lifetimes. We will see the
freedom of a people that have been oppressed
for over 3 generations. We will see them
because tyranny never flourishes. Injustice is never allowed
to be rewarded. We are firm believers
that history always teaches us the truth, and
every one of you right now is on
the right side of history. So God bless
you, and God bless this country to be
in correct in its guidance, and to be
doing the right things. And thank you all
very much,
and.