Ivy Muslims Conference 2018 - Keynote by

Building Beloved Community

Imam Khalid Latif | Ivy Muslims Conference 2018 Keynote

Introduction

We are incredibly delighted and privileged and honored to welcome Imam Khalid, his beautiful daughter Medina, and his students from New York University to join us tonight in New Haven to address all of you. Imam Khalid has an extraordinary biography. I could not do it justice by reading the entire thing.

I'm going to read from people that are unfamiliar with Imam Khalid's biography. I'm going to read a quick blurb and then offer a personal introduction and then we'll invite our teacher to the stage, Inshallah. Imam Khalid is the Executive Director and Chaplain at the Islamic Center of New York University, also known as ICNYU and affectionately known by the New York community as the IC.

He's the youngest chaplain to ever be appointed to the New York City Police Department. He's the co-founder of Honest Chops, the first ever all-natural organic halal butcher in New York City. Imam Khalid's powerful oratory skills and his exceptional ability to compassionately cross interfaith and cultural lines is world-renowned, Inshallah.

On a personal note, I've known Imam Khalid for more years than I can remember. I am honored to call him a colleague but more importantly a friend and teacher. We met and really spent time together over a dozen years ago.

We did Hajj with one of our teachers and it was in the blessings of the precincts of Imam Khalid and a lot of the duas that were made but I've been in the company of Imam Khalid for the last seven years to go to Makkah and Medina every March on the ICNYU trip. We have many people in the audience today that will be on that trip as well and I think with that I want to invite him as a friend, as a teacher and as, Inshallah, a spiritual wayfarer.

Thank you.

Opening

"Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings."

"In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful."

"All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds."

"And may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon the Messenger of Allah, and upon his family and companions and those who follow him."

Personal Reflections and Duas

The last time I came here to this conference was when our dear brother, Usama Cannon, was speaking and he spoke in this room, I think in two sessions. I was here because I was his driver that day, which is great. I'm glad that I've graduated to being able to speak at the conference.

So firstly, I would just ask, just the reminder of the space has me thinking of him, if you can make dua for him, his healing, that Allah grants him a quick and easy recovery and makes this ailment a means of purification in this world and a means of elevation in the next.

My father also had a severe stroke a couple of weeks ago and alhamdulillah his recovery has been better than what people had anticipated. It's still a long track and I think just in hearing some of the remarks thus far and also just in overhearing some of the conversations, I'm thinking a lot about my father and I'll probably bleed some of that into what it is that I'm going to be talking about today. But I just wanted you to understand some of the frame of where I'm at so that it's not just coming at you, but we can kind of go through it together.

My Journey to Princeton

So I didn't go to an Ivy League institution, much to the dismay of my South Asian parents. It was really interesting, when I was in high school, I got into New York University on an early decision. I got in really early. I literally had a physics exam the next day and I got a 12 on the exam. I was in college, you know.

But prior to getting into New York University and I was trying to decide whether I would apply early or not, I went and had a meeting with my college guidance counselor, who is also the principal of our high school. I went to a small prep school in New Jersey called Wardlow-Hartridge.

And the principal was saying that, you know, you could probably get into New York University. You might want to consider some of the Ivy Leagues. And I said, no, I really want to go to NYU. And my father, who was sitting with me in the middle of the conversation, he said to the principal that my son is going to Princeton.

And the principal looked at me and eyes shrugged because I wanted to see where this was going and it was pretty amusing already. And he said, you know, sir, Princeton's a really good school and your son likely could have a chance. And my dad said, no, he's going to Princeton.

I didn't go to Princeton, at least not as a student. In 2006, I was blessed to be able to serve the Princeton community as their first Muslim chaplain. I was 24 years old, a little bit more than a decade ago. It was very intimidating to be a 24-year-old on Princeton University's campus.

Facing Resistance

And then a week into it, I started getting letters from alumni that said, we don't want Muslims at Princeton. We don't want your Sharia law at Princeton. One guy sent me a book that was about 400 pages long and he wrote a note that said, you don't belong here. Read this. It'll explain to you why.

When I sat down with people from the administration to try to understand, simultaneous to my hiring, they had a search for the new dean of religious life, the dean of the chapel. It was an amazing man who went on to be the archbishop of Southern Ohio. And the way that they explained it to me was, oh, those alums thought that we hired you for his role, not the role that you're in.

And that's why they were upset. And so that doesn't really make it any better. It actually makes it a lot worse.

Why couldn't I be the dean of the chapel here?

The P-Raid

At the end of the year, Princeton does this thing that's called the P-Raid. I'm not trying to hate on Princeton. I don't know if there's any Princetonians left here. It's a really nice place. Yeah, you all are beautiful people.

If you've ever seen the P-Raid, they essentially get the oldest living alumni to march and lead a parade around graduation time and following them are subsequent years of graduation until you get to the most recent alums. People come decked out, man, these pinstripe orange and white suits. There's a lot of flair because there's a lot of pride.

For decades, it's just elderly white men. And then after some time passes, there might be a sprinkle of color, perhaps some women. By the end of it, it's still mostly white men.

Pan-African Baccalaureate

At the end of that year, I was asked to speak at Princeton's Pan-African Baccalaureate. Most universities, whether you're conscious of it or not, have many ceremonies, but some are unofficial. And usually, black students, along perhaps with Latinos and other non-black people of color, will have their own commencement.

And the young woman who was the valedictorian at that commencement said to her peers that we should always remember what people had to go through in order for us to be here. And just because we are at Princeton does not mean we are of Princeton. But if we do not utilize the opportunities afforded to us to be at an institution like this for the furthering and advancement of our community, then what is it that we're really doing here?

Understanding Love - Hubb and Hubba

Hubb muhabba shares the same root as the seed in Arabic hubba and the relationship between hubb which is love and hubba which is a seed is that you could take those seeds of love from your heart man and plant them in as many things as you want to but for it to actually rear something it necessitates real care and attention real cultivation you just throw some seeds in the earth and just expect them to grow on their own what are they gonna give to you.

But you watch over it and you look at it and you give it it's do right the beauty of the seed is that it's not gonna ever just give you a seed back it's gonna give you so much more than that.

How you're gonna love black people if you never spend real time with black people? How you're gonna understand what it means that corporations are digging literal pipelines under the lands of true indigenous populations of this country usurping their land still centuries later the only exposure you have to those demographics is in fourth grade when they take you to visit the Lenny Lenape tribes that are not indicative of anything that those communities are actually going through.

And to recognize and understand what it is that we get bombarded with that is the prevention of that real love doesn't always come from selfishness and greed but sometimes it does it comes from this formulaic process of success that tells you that your goodness is attached to the amount of wealth that you have.

Islam's View on Contentment

Why people have problems with our religion is because our religion tells us that contentment is not tied to how much you own that goodness in the eyes of God can actually be something that people who are stricken by poverty can attain that you don't have to have the biggest house or the nicest car to be in the beloved proximity of the divine.

The Umrah Trip Story

We go on this umrah trip every year that Imam Omar just mentioned we're taking a hundred sixty people in a couple of weeks and there's times man where I take my students and we walk around the sanctuary in Medina and may Allah give us the Tawfiq to visit the city of his beloved and his house over and over and you'll see people man who are still unlike any stillness you've ever seen sleeping on the ground outside the Haram in Medina.

And I'll ask my students what do you think and they'll say that you know it's crazy where these five-star hotels overlooking these people and they're just lying on the ground and I realized that I have so much more than them and I'm so much better off than they are.

And I said first of all what makes you think that that guy's not staying in a six-star hotel just because he's sleeping on the ground with peace in his mind and secondly why do you think because you are in a hotel and he's on the ground that you enjoy life more than he does.

What is Supremacy?

When we talk about supremacy and why it's imperative to know what the obstacles are to our acquisition of real love for others. Supremacy is not the KKK in the sense that we might think it is. Supremacy is a mindset.

It tells us that there is a norm and the rest of us are always compared to that norm. That nothing of what it is that we are is going to ever be what it is that is the norm in society. That you and I supremacy says are always from someplace else and why we do what we do always has a reason but there's some people that whatever they do regardless of what it is they just do it and because they do it that's just what needs to get done. Nobody ever asked why.

The Prayer Room Story

A friend of mine is on faculty at an Ivy League institution and she and her husband were having dinner at our apartment and she was saying how frustrating it is that she shares an office with another faculty member and when it comes time to pray she prays in that office hoping that nobody will walk in and she says all the time almost every day the same people just keep asking me why you pray five times a day do you really have to do it is it that important.

The Street Cart Incident

I took about 20 of my students to have lunch one day at a street cart near our center none of the students who are with me right now which is gonna be awkward on the way home we're ordering our food waiting for things to get done and this middle-aged Caucasian woman is standing behind us and she pushes her way through our group saying excuse me excuse me excuse me can't you understand what it is that I'm saying I'm trying to order my food.

And when she gets to the front of the line she looks at me face to face and she says oh I guess you can't understand what I'm saying tell me how do they say excuse me where you come from I said we say excuse me and she said no no the place where your family's from how do they say excuse me there I said we're from Jersey and we say excuse me.

She didn't understand how somebody that looks like this is actually from the same place that she's from.

The Reality of Supremacy

You gotta understand something many of you are gonna go into a workforce that your hesitancy in telling people that you need a place to pray is not gonna be because you don't want to pray or it's not important to you but you're gonna always be basing your decisions off of what somebody else thinks about you you're gonna be scared because it's not acceptable it's not normative that's what supremacy is.

Historical Context

When in our historical lineage our heritage is a reality of slavery the reality of colonization the reality of imperialism and it's intertwined with patriarchy it's intertwined with overt capitalistic desire that says go and get yours as much as you can regardless of what it does to somebody else's living or existence.

What supremacy does is that it gets you to think that what you're thinking is your thoughts but you're not thinking things that you're thinking you're thinking something that somebody else wants you to think under the guise of you thinking that it's you thinking what you're thinking do you know I'm saying.

The Role of Prayer

Why is deen important in all this? Because our religion tells us to breathe prayer is not meant to be a distraction it's meant to be an outlet from distraction a recentering five times a day that gets you to a place of consciousness that says where are you really going man what are you doing.

And it's hard because we live in spaces where we are brought together unlike other parts of this world and the validation that at times that we seek with an uncertainty of who our God actually is looks to a generation above us and precedent that said that at times does not allow for us with comfort and it's not easy it's hard but some of our parents are racist some of our communities are racist.

Living Faith That Addresses Social Issues

If you ask me where does it all come from and why it's important to understand is because the point of religion man isn't that you just sit and pray and whatever you do those things but it has a purpose to it and good religion to me is about living your faith in such a way that it actually addresses societal ills that are transpiring around you.

And if right now your Islam is not calling you to understand the harsh realities of racism and classism that this country is built upon and how you are privileged to be at an institution such as this and many from which you come not just you all who are from Ivy Leagues I say it to my kids all the time who are at NYU the egocentricity is pervasive but we're Muslim we're supposed to do it differently.

And the distractions that Shaitaan has piling upon your heads that at institutions that are qualified at being such a level of education that they're higher still have the same tired conversations around gender you build Muslim student groups that are South Asian dominated Sunni oriented ethnocentric in ways that you don't understand how that in it of itself is the distraction and you just talk about the same stuff over and over and over again so you got to break it out a little bit differently.

And the basis of it has to be real love that love that our teachers talks to us about.

Understanding Anti-Blackness

It's hard and I'll tell you it's hard I find myself a lot the only Muslim in spaces where not only everybody is not Muslim around me but people hate Islam and if you can follow my flow of thinking I want you to understand that for us in this room to recognize what it is that we can be tomorrow you have to understand what our sister Akiba was talking about because the base of anti-muslim sentiment in this country is anti-blackness.

The reality of our country's founding was an aspiration towards diversity that the European context through which people left from did not aspire towards and as Europe embraced secularism and liberalism after they had

launched crusades in the name of religion and they launched transatlantic slave trades in the name of religion a country did not fight its worst battles in the name of any faith or religious system but our country's worst battles were fought over race ethnicity.

The Civil War in this country was about what the foundational documents of this land gave full privilege to white men women were given nothing and black men and women weren't even considered to be a whole person in comparison to their white counterparts and it didn't just stop there Connecticut where we are right now in the north it's last Jim Crow law the books was in 1935 that's not that long ago.

I took students to Houston a couple of weeks ago they had Jim Crow laws being enacted into the 60s man the remnants of that nonsense it's still there.

Navigating This Reality

You want to be able to know how to navigate some of this first and foremost understand that empathy is not meant to be a tool that dismisses people's realities that are distinct from our own.

I say this to you man is somebody who has a lot of connections I've spoken at things with people like the Pope and the Dalai Lama I've been interviewed by Katie Couric a bunch of times and Stephen Colbert I've been on the cover of Newsweek magazine I've still had that FBI up in my house when I asked them what they want from me they say you're just too good to be true no they were watching you getting on and off of planes is not a fun experience.

The realities of being detained profiled surveilled I could tell you in deep detail I still couldn't tell you what it's like to be a black person living in this country and you have to understand that because if we deal only with symptoms we don't take on actual ailments we're not actually fixing anything.

My Father's Story

And even if you have to do it in a frame of selfishness not out of real love if you say I'm fine not having the heart that makes the rest of my body tremble with real anger every time I hear one of my black brothers and sisters gets shot in the streets if you're content and okay with the realities of tons of families being ripped apart because of their immigration status people who are DACA recipients not knowing what tomorrow is gonna bring.

If you're content saying that that's not impacting me understanding that what it is that's happening to them is what is the cause of what's impacting you and if you are going to Yale and Princeton and Columbia and wherever and your degree is about you making money you don't get what it is that's really going on.

My Grandfather and Father

My father did not want to be a doctor my father's brother who's in his practice did also not want to be they lived pre-partition they lived under the realities of a colonized country my grandfather my father's father rode a bike every day to a bank where he was a teller and then came back to where they lived post partition in a town called Gujranwala in Lahore in Pakistan and then he would take my father and my uncle make them sit in the street under a street lamp to read because they didn't have electricity in their house.

And while my grandfather wanted my dad and my uncle to be doctors it's because one of the few things that you could do under that racist colonized mentality that didn't have you answer to a white person that told you to shave your beard and grow your mustache and parts your hair to the side was being a doctor and some of your parents wants you to be doctors for that reason even if they don't know that that's what it is.

What Kind of Doctor My Father Was

The kind of doctor my dad was I didn't realize until he had his stroke I knew it a little bit but not so much and what really moved and motivated him was kindness and compassion and love it's crazy man because I go all over the world and people everywhere of every faith every background Sunni Shia you name it they're telling me we're making dua for your dad.

And it makes me think like well what is he made of that these people who don't even know him are praying for him and the one elder woman she said to me that you know your father to me just represents the hadith that says:

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

(Sahih Muslim)

"If God loves somebody he announces it to all of the heavens and there's a trickle-down effect of that love that name gets announced and people just they're there with it."

Stories About My Father

I walked into a Walgreens in New Jersey to buy some water for my mother and the man behind the counter is staring at me and I'm full of myself he said to me you know I recognize you and I'm like oh you know maybe he saw me here or there and he says are you the son of Dr. Pervez Latif and I said yes.

My father you gotta understand for me growing up I didn't look like this I was clean-shaven I had really long Pantene Pro V hair I was a real pretty boy which I'm very far from anything pretty at this point it's probably the first time in my entire life that somebody told me I look like my dad.

My Father's Practice

As a doctor my dad does well for himself but not the way other doctors do and if you went looking at the books of his practice that he still runs at 72 years of age he's got three generations of families and I said to him that why are you doing this still and he said that these people if they didn't come to me other people would not take care of them and you look at his books there's tons of people who haven't paid him for years.

I said that's kindness that's compassion that's love he never throws it out he never sat down with me and said look at everything that I did and this is the way people learned about people in generations prior to ours pious individuals whose stories were not known in their communities that they would take their food and leave it for people who are in need and the only way people found out was after they died those people stopped getting food just randomly.

You can't learn that always in the school that's just breeding you to make money or feeding into your psyche a pedagogy that teaches you what it wants you to actually learn.

Practical Steps Forward

So you will never know black history by just going to school here unless perhaps you take an elective in college most of you aren't even going to do that and that's not a knock on anybody I'm just saying ask yourself why.

Starting Points

If you want a starting point for yourself I would say:

• Read the book "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
• Watch a documentary called "13th"
• Be in spaces where you recognize and understand that those are just starting points

• Go and be with people to learn and understand where it is that they're coming from

And your allyship is not about you imposing your perspectives and thoughts but you just sit and you listen.

Overcoming Discomfort

And going and being with people in a space like this necessitates with real love moving forward to overcome the discomfort that says that what is it gonna be like for me as a brown person to walk into a black students association it might be strange for you but what you'll feel in terms of discomfort internally will never match the marginalization and alienation that our black brothers and sisters have faced for centuries.

And when you go you go to actually understand love cannot breed itself when what you are loving is yourself that most of us when we listen our listening is so that we can respond to what is being said and I'm saying man just go and listen so that you can understand not so you can reply.

Understanding True Empathy

And where empathy falls into this is that many of us get to a space where when we hear what someone else goes through we automatically think about something that we have gone through and then we become dismissive of realities the same way that people say to us that what you all are going through is what the Catholics went through and the Japanese went through and so and so and such and such.

It's like man it wasn't right when it happened to them it's not right that it's happening to us but you won't actually know it or understand it if the only thing that you're engaging is the stereotypes and preconceived ideas and notions that you have been made privy to in your education and socialization and it's there.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Some of us don't want to admit that we're racist what does a person look like when you lock the door as they're walking by your car then when you're sitting someplace you hold your bag a little bit closer what do they have to look like and what do they not have to look like for you to not do that.

The faces that sat across your face at your dinner table growing up where do they come from and the fundamental question that we have to ask ourselves is what would somebody have to look like for us to actually not be there for them to not stand up for them to not leverage what it is that we have access to.

The Spectrum of Supremacy

What supremacy instills within us on a spectrum of whiteness and blackness is an aspiration to be as white as we possibly can to seek that validation and to see that it's given to us by metrics of what degrees credentials

titles but mostly salaries wealth I must be good look at how much they're paying me to be in the spaces that I'm given access to.

That can't be it anymore man and what that mindset also teaches us as we are drawing ourselves towards that whiteness is that even if we can never be white we sure as hell don't ever want to be black and that disdain just builds itself up innately within us and so we do delegitimize based off of skin color their race becomes a symbol of religiosity then we find ourselves in a place where we're not even recognizing how we are a part of the problem and it perpetuates itself.

It's hard to have love when you have hate and you might think that's obvious but if you don't even know what you hate or you don't even know what love is and try to build it for yourself and when it goes unfiltered and when it goes unchecked the realities can be devastating.

The Rohingya Crisis

I came from a people man that are victim to genocide in our generation right now 500,000 refugees and undeveloped land in an underdeveloped country in Bangladesh trying to figure out how to live and I can run you through pictures right now of real people and since the time I've been there the number of refugees is almost a million.

I couldn't meet one refugee who couldn't tell me that they hadn't seen loved ones burned alive in front of their eyes not one refugee who couldn't tell me that neighbors loved ones family members have been barricaded into homes and the homes were then burned down and the people inside of it also were burned alive.

People who said entire villages were lined up and one by one in a row they were shot point-blank and whether they were killed or not as a result of it acid was then poured onto their bodies.

Controlling the Narrative

When we were there I went with Islamic relief one person with a camera and a ton of humanitarian groups were there and they were trying to film content most had not gotten a green light to be there they were still in the process of being vetted they started following us around and filming.

They got word on the first day that said you can't use the word Rohingya when you talk about these people because the Myanmar government did not want it to seem as if there was actual discrimination targeting one group of people. The second day we were there the UK based organizations they were told you can't even use the word refugee.

And they said to me what do you think about all this I say look man it's not eye-opening or surprising where I come from our government does this to black people they control narrative fear gets constructed they impose

upon us mindsets and everything the Prophet says is true the dunya becomes the distraction and it calls you towards it in a way that you're not recognizing what it is that it's actually taking away from you.

The Global Epidemic of Indifference

They said what does it make you feel like and I said I've been in war zones before I've been in refugee camps conflict zones before I said what's killing these people is not just the perpetration of hate on the part of those who are bigoted and racist but what's killing these people is a global epidemic of indifference that so many of us have the ability to actually intervene and do something but we still just sit back and watch and do nothing.

Taking Action

You have immense opportunity where you're at right now to have a courage that doesn't just talk to the people who are sitting next to you but you look three rows ahead of you behind you and you go with a real sense of boldness and you challenge each other and say what are we gonna do to actually make this world better.

The skill set the knowledge the credentials with a recognition that our Quran tells us:

"And We have certainly honored the children of Adam."

Reference: Quran 17:70

All of the children of Adam are given dignity and elevated no qualifications you help people because they're people and then embedded within that is you live dignified life as an actual human of dignity.

That your words and language carry real weight to them that you never mock or ridicule on any element of gender race ethnicity religious distinction class whatsoever but you speak words of truth and hope and real compassion that your demeanor your persona is one that with a sense of real pride you move through this earth that God has given to you as a means of your own growth and sustenance not distracted by it but seeing it as a means to a world that is much bigger than this one.

Building Love Through Action

You let yourself be what it is that we need as we continue to move forward and we continue to grow. How will you love somebody if you never spend time with them? How will you love somebody if you never hear from them where it is that they're coming from? How will you love who they actually are when they have to be something that they're not in order to be in front of you? How will you build that love if you only stick with people that are just like you?

Who Will Build It?

So you start to take those steps you start to build for yourself the recognition that you and I we together we can do it differently we move forward in a space where we know and remember who our teachers are and we take what it is with an air of confidence and gratitude towards the divine that he has endowed us with certain skills and capabilities to go and utilize for our benefit as well as the benefit of his creation.

We start to build what it is that we have full capacity to build because who's gonna build the free clinics other than you all as doctors? Who's gonna build the legal advocacy groups other than you all as lawyers? Who is gonna build the domestic violence shelters? Who is gonna build the orphanages? Who is gonna build what it is that we have capacity to build?

But we're afraid to do it differently because the pervasive egocentricity that this supremacist society has imposed upon us needs us to be scared to move in order for it to function.

But when we really recognize what these men and women were calling towards and telling us to love one another and seeing that our strength is unmatched when we can put aside these things and not pretend like they don't exist.

Moving Beyond Colorblindness

Man I know I'm talking a lot I'm gonna wrap up but you gotta understand something it's offensive to say things like Islam is colorblind when you are not the victim of the racism that this country is built upon to say can't we just move beyond it we're all Muslim we are all people etc etc likely the person who is saying that is the person who isn't impacted by it.

You start to see and understand how it just gets put upon the way this country has influenced many of us to think of our black brothers and sisters synergizes media politics and so much so at a time when the war on drugs was being concocted and crack was being pumped into black neighborhoods all over the country and politicians were utilizing words like predator and thug.

And TV shows like cops was airing on national television usually having white men in blue uniforms arresting black men for all of the country to see reinforcing a passivity as mass incarceration reared its ugliness disrupting and devastating hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

The War on Terror

The war on terror doesn't build itself out any differently words like terrorists jihadist Islamist fundamentalist TV shows like homeland and 24 Jack Bauer introduced as a character to American public two months after September 11th and you can say they're trying to help people heal I would say they know what's gonna jump their ad revenues.

Finding Synergy Within

If you stop thinking and you stop reflecting if you stop being recentered and understanding that your inner self ties itself to your outer engagement you don't find synergy between the organ of cognition that is your mind and the organ of cognition that is your heart your days are just gonna keep being the same over and over.

There's nothing wrong with that but then we're not benefiting from all the right that you can bring we're not able to harness the blessing that is uniquely you because you're confined into these constraints they're no longer we should be confined into.

Standing Rock Story

So take some time in your college experience to stand and speak with others my daughter's here I don't know if she's still awake or not you awake yeah thanks my daughter was four and her brother was about one and a half I took them to Standing Rock in the middle of the winter my wife was there too we took about a dozen of our students from NYU we met some students from Zaytuna and Sheikh Daoud Yassin was there with them Linda Sarsour came with us also.

It was snowing like crazy and the chieftains of the tribes there every morning would gather people around a large fire and some of the things that they said to the people who came to help them was know that we appreciate your being here but when you are here you have to go by our instruction not your instruction because how you conduct yourself is not going to leave a mark on your reputation it will leave a mark on our reputation.

So they told people to abide by their tradition and they had people in a space where they relented to the fact that they were taking instruction from the people whose land it was.

Why I Took My Children

People said to me why did you take your baby boy and your four-year-old girl to stand in the middle of this blizzard I said look man firstly I gotta show my students that doesn't take a lot to actually go and be with people where they are and my baby girl and my son who I love more than anything I need for them to understand when we talk about places like Standing Rock later when they're older that when they were younger we just didn't talk about it but we actually went to be with the people where they were.

That I could say to them that you stood in that space and if that land is gonna testify what it is that we did upon it is surely gonna say what we allowed to be done to it.

But in their upbringing I'm not gonna keep them in boxes to let them understand yeah fine maybe we're not taking a vacation elsewhere and we do I took her to Disney World it doesn't have to be either or it could be both.

Practical Steps for Students

And so you start and you move forward:

• Do a semester abroad but visit the parts of the country that the university isn't taking you to
• Spend some time in parts of New Haven that people tell you don't walk in those parts
• Go to masjids that if the khatib isn't allowed to be black in your masjid it doesn't mean that there ain't black khatib somewhere man
• Venture out of your bubble it's gonna make your growth exponential

And then that beloved community that we're looking for is a community that we're going to build that we will have the aspiration towards actually constructing and then we leave a legacy behind that says that what we found that was good we made sure that we left it that much better for those that were coming after us.

We took every breath that we were blessed to breathe in this world in a way that reminded us that regardless of what everybody else does we're Muslim we're supposed to be doing it differently.

Closing

If I can ever help any of you and anything you have going on please don't hesitate in reaching out if you're ever in New York City and there's something that we can do for you there let us know it'll be an honor to return the hospitality and graciousness that we were met with here.

But if this is the only time that we are meant to be together and I pray inshallah Allah gathers us all together again in the best of places in the world beyond this one please keep me in your dua you will be in mine.

May Allah give to us and our loved ones only the best in this world and the best in the next.

وَاللَّهُ تَعَالَى أَعْلَمُ وَبِاللَّهِ التَّوْفِيقُ

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

End of Keynote