On Race, Allyship & Following Black Leadership Jummah Reflection w

Jummah Reflection: On Race, Allyship & Following Black Leadership

Imam Khalid Latif | May 29, 2020

Opening

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)

إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ لِلَّهِ نَحْمَدُهُ وَنَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَمِنْ سَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلَا مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

All praise is due to Allah. We thank Him, we praise Him, we glorify Him, we beseech Him to send His choicest salutations upon His most beloved ﷺ and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day.

Introduction

Alhamdulillah, we're blessed to be together on this Mubarak day of Jum'ah. May Allah make it a means of benefit and increase for all of us. And to understand a week out from Ramadan, most often than not, many people, if they were to be addressing a congregation, they would be addressing a congregation usually within the framework of where do you stand right now in relation to the Ramadan that you just experienced that ended not even a full week ago, but less than a week ago.

May Allah accept it from us. You would hear individuals giving you encouragement to say that you want to strive and see where you stand in terms of your growth of Ramadan in relationship to where you are now beyond Ramadan in Shawwal. Maybe emphasizing the fasts of Shawwal and telling you that even if you fell, you want to stand again.

I would say to you that in the course of this Ramadan where you and I had the privilege of being in a sphere of still many of us fasting our fasts, hearing the Quran recited, praying our prayers, getting to a place where the disruptions that we felt were not necessarily the same disruptions that so many people felt elsewhere. And to understand that within the solitude there was mode for us to grow within our self-recognition so that we could focus actually on the development of a heart that now in this month of Shawwal, removed from that month of Ramadan, not only in the backdrop of pandemic, but in a pandemic that is a global ailment that has given to us yet again insight over and over since its onslaught weeks ago, not just days ago, but since we first see it surface of other ailments that have been around for so much longer, namely the illness that is racism.

The First Sin: Racism and Kibr

To understand the gross atrocious inequity that exists within a society that has been stratified since its very inception, rooted within that kibber that is from the very first sin of Iblis himself casting him out of Jannah, that he was the first racist.

And our conversation today cannot be one that is understood in just inspirations and just all kinds of soundbites that render no kind of movement. But if you are listening to this and you are a Muslim, you are a person of faith, you are a person of ethics and morals, then your listening has to be one where you're participating in hopes of being transformed. To understand that it is upon each individual heart that hears and listens to recognize our individual responsibility in ensuring that the ugliness that exists structurally, systematically, institutionally embedded at a deeply entrenched level of anti-blackness that has permeated itself within every system that exists within the United States of America, but through a globalized mode of supremacy bears its ugliness throughout the world.

George Floyd and Our Response

That how any individual can think that it is somehow not anything less than undeniably inhumane for a person, a human, such as our brother George Floyd, to have his life taken, murdered in that way. Many of us have been in spaces where since that point we've intellectualized, we've engaged in conversation and rhetoric, I think this, I feel this, I don't think people should be doing what they're doing now, I don't think the response and the reaction is what it should be. Who are you to think anything about any of it at all? Who are you to have an opinion or an idea that if your first reaction wasn't to pick up a phone, to send a message, to reach out to somebody who is African American, who is African, who is black, whether they are younger than you, older than you, whether you don't even know anybody, but to open the door of your home and walk out on the street until you find somebody who you can say and look in their face as a person in humanity and say that I am sorry for what it is that this country does to people who are black.

I'm sorry for the systems and structures and I'm sorry for my complicitness in being somebody who leverages that privilege, that yeah, I will tweet and I will post and I will share and I will make statements, but when it comes down to it and I have to make the decision as to whether I will sacrifice the privilege that I'm afforded through the same systems and structures that seek to hold you down and oppress you because of your black skin, I still choose to take what it is that I gain from it.

Religion and Social Justice

It is not the first life that has been taken unjustly in this way, nor is it something that has prevented consequence to the perpetrator simply because they wear a blue uniform and under the guise of law enforcement that masks

supremacy in all of its ugliest of forms. But just like I said to you in Ramadan, I would say to you now that what it reveals to us more than anything is who it is that we are ourselves and what role it is that we play in determining how it is that we will individually be.

And if you are a Muslim who practices Islam as a religion and if your religion does not bring you to take on societal ills, then I would say to you as your brother who loves you that you are not practicing your religion well. And there is no societal ill that is uglier and greater than racism. And it exists in so many distinct forms in every system right now that this country has functioning within it.

Healthcare, education, prison, immigration, you want to see a system and you want to see an equity, undoubtedly it's going to be rooted in the foundational processes of what that system is about. It was built for people who were at the time enslaving, oppressing, stratifying society wherever they could. They go from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration.

The System is Not Broken

The system is not broken. The system is doing exactly what it intended to do. It seeks to empower a majority privilege demographic.

The white Protestant heterosexual male is given every single checkbox of privilege and what it seeks to do is bet anyone who is not any of those things on this spectrum of whiteness and anti-blackness. And when the only expense is the life of a black person, it demonstrates over and over and over that to it, black life does not matter. If you sit in awe and shock and you wonder how it is possible that four police officers could engage a man in this way, that they put on to him in this manner as he is pleading for his life, this is what humanity has the potential for.

And if you wonder what it is that bins someone to that place, what do you think it says of the heart that has witnessed it, seen it, knows that exists, that there cannot possibly be a person in the entire country that does not know that this thing has happened, but there are yet still so many people who have sought to act in any way to counter it, that their primary focus is still going to be, well, what about my job? What will people think about me? What will people say if I do this? What will people think?

Racist or Anti-Racist: No Middle Ground

The same people that it is that you're worried about thinking about your actions in being anti-racist, because these are the only two options. You are either racist or you are anti-racist. There is no middle ground.

If you believe that you are somehow in a third category that is not somehow involved in it because you don't do certain things, then you are arguably just as problematic as the perpetrator. We have to be people of

consciousness. We have to be people who think. We are people of aql. That is what Allah made us as humans, that he enabled us to be in such a sphere of existence that who it is that we are utilizes our ability to discern right from wrong.

It did not exist in a sphere where we succumb to a shackling psychologically of the supremacy mindset that lets us believe that we are thinking thoughts that are our own thoughts, but in reality, the thoughts that you and I think are thoughts that they want us to think, and they paralyze us and keep us from acting and doing when we have full capacity to do.

Ramadan and Our Response to Injustice

Where and how you want to think about your relation to your Ramadan, think about how your body, your being, your resources, your network, your entire existence responded to what it was that you knew and understood to be happening, what has happened, and how it is that you engage right now. The narratives that get imposed upon us are not narratives that we need to be able to succumb through, but with awakened hearts, you want to recognize and see what it means to be.

What do you think of people will do who have been oppressed for centuries? What do you think of people will do who are held down for generations? You think when oppression continues and inequity continues that their responses and reactions are going to simply be just in whispers? That they are going to write letters and they are going to say, please, can you do this? Nobody needs anybody's permission to speak out against injustice.

Nobody needs to be told that they have to understand and mind their place when they are facing the kind of realities that are being faced. And there is not any one of us who has skin that is not Black that has the place or right to comment on what it means to be a Black person living in this country or to respond in any way as to what their actions might be.

Privilege and Reality

And I say this to you as somebody who I have shared stages with people like the Pope and the Dalai Lama. I have been on Newsweek magazine's cover and Stephen Colbert and Katie Couric have interviewed me. I have gotten numerous awards and all kinds of accolades, sat down with heads of states around the world. I have had my house raided by law enforcement. FBI has visited me, sitting on my couch, meeting me at my car, coming to my office. I have been detained. I have been surveilled. I have been profiled.

I could tell you all these things. I still cannot tell you what it's like to be a Black person living in this country.

And I know that my brownness still affords me certain privileges. And I'm pitted as a model minority against those who my tokenization as an archetype still renders justification and acquiescence of an entire oppression of

a community simply because their skin is Black. If you get into shock and awe, then you have to know what the land is that we are built upon is actually built upon.

Historical Context: The Foundation of Racism

To understand and recognize that it is from its very onset, not the aspiration of diversity that it claims to have been. The European context from which people led, they did not claim to ever have that aspiration. Where they launched crusades and transatlantic slave trades in the names of religion and spirituality.

And they then embrace liberalism as a means of saying that we have reached enlightenment and we are leaving behind these ways of faith. When people left from that European context and they came to this land, they aspired towards a different vision. But they got to a space in a sphere of existence where their movement forward might not have launched anything in the name of any faith tradition like a crusade or a transatlantic slave trade.

But the worst battles in this country were fought over what still plagues the very foundations of the country. Race and class. That its civil war was fought over it. It sought to build entire systems rooted in it. And there is nothing that we are in that is post any of it. But each and every day, you and I are seeing that this gross, ugly racism exists at every systematic structural level of this society.

And you are either racist or anti-racist. There is no other option. Where we start to understand that the foundational documents of this land afforded 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 that you see into a bleeding in every single system that exists.

Law Enforcement and Systemic Oppression

The realities that are there and the narratives that seek to be imposed upon individuals to passivate and to create passivity in the face of inequities and oppressive policy and law. Do you ever understand what it means to have a law enforcement apparatus that was built within this system that didn't even consider black people to be entire human beings? When you look to see statistically at how law enforcement is actually enforced by law enforcement agents. The individuals who are getting engaged by officers of different backgrounds.

Whether that's city, state, federal, whatever. Usually tends to be people from the lower income classes. It tends to be people who are poor, people who are minorities, people who are black.

The ones who have the crimes reported upon them, the ones who are stopped and frisked, the ones who are profiled, the ones who have everybody coming against them from law enforcement is a particular demographic. People of color, black people, poor people, people who don't have so much power, people who don't have

Islam's Roots in Black America

You live in New York City, you don't know where to start. Islam owes its roots to black people in the United States. How you can be a Muslim in New York City and not know who Imam Talib Abdul Rashid is, not know what the history of the State Street Mosque is, not know who Aisha Adawiya is, not know what the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood is, not know what the experiences deeply are, the movements, what actually transpires.

If you're not in a space where you are turning towards individuals, not as just simply a mode of support, but in pursuit of pure allyship, to say that I will follow your lead, tell me what it is that you want from me. I will not come in with a savior complex, elevating my immigrant Islam status, my brownness, bringing more legitimacy with a holier than thou. But you have lived in this oppression since the very onslaught. 30% of slaves to this country were Muslim.

And the way that I have seen brown people waver in their Islam, give it up in exchange for pennies from people. I've seen generations of black people who have held strong despite what type of oppressive ugliness people have sought to throw at them. How do you do it? Be an ally.

How to Be an Ally

First and foremost, understand it is upon you if you are not black. If you are a person of color, you are still not a black person of color. You have to go and educate yourself.

You do not put upon the shoulders of an oppressed population that they are now responsible for also educating you while people are killing them unjustly. Structures and systems built to just annihilate them. Read, learn, sit, listen.

You can't listen if you are speaking. And if you're not listening, you're not learning. You engage and you pick up the books.

You understand. You practice the religion of Islam. You don't need a validation from a hadith or a verse from the Quran.

You want to know what your religion is about? It's about reality. What more do you need? What do you have to see to understand what is taking place? But you dig deep and you say that I will get educated. I will turn to the historically existing black community leaders, apparatus, institutions that exist within the Muslim community and the non-Muslim community.

I will go to my black sisters and brothers, apologize if I have never sought to gain learning from them in the first place. Then I will say if I don't know where to begin, where do I begin?

Resources and Leadership

In the Muslim community, there is an organization called Muslim Arc. Reach out to them. Go to their website. Read their resources. See who their scholars are.

Take their articles, their audio files. Stop being entertained by religion and be educated by religion. Be transformed by religion.

Let your heart be a part of your religion. There are scholars across the tradition. And not just scholars of religion, but scholars of every single field who we can benefit from to engage and understand.

You live in New York City? Go and talk to Zaheer Ali. Ask him what you can do. You want to know how to move? You want to take cues from people? The elders of New York's Muslim community are filled with amazing, accomplished African American Muslim men and women.

Google search Suad Abdul Khabir. Listen to her. Read her. Follow her.

You want institutions? What is MENA doing? You want to think about what is happening local to you? There's so many that we can gain from. So many that we can understand from. So many that we can learn from. And so many that we have to listen to, in this moment, hear, take from, and understand. Because what is happening in Minnesota is indicative of so much more that is going to continue to happen.

Using Your Privilege for Justice

And from a Muslim heart, internally, not the body that you have, but from in here, you start to think deep. You leverage your networks, your power, your privilege. You start to think creatively about what it means to be an ally.

You think about what you have access to. You work in a bank. You work in finance. You're an executive. You have a degree. You were able to transcend systems because you were part of an immigrant generation that, when this country sought to inflate its rankings in fields of science and engineering and medicine, it brought in all kinds of people, including from the countries that you and I might come from.

And so we were given access, invitations, to educational institutions that were built to keep people out who were like us, because they were built to keep out our Black sisters and brothers. And just because they gave us a biscuit to eat off of the table, some scraps of food to say, look at what we're offering to you of dunya, doesn't mean that we should forget the struggles that people went through.

And so you seek to be bold in your recruiting. What if you dare to say that I'm going to only hire people who work for me that come from minority backgrounds, people who are Black that are not given a fair shot? What would you do if, without someone having to ask you, you said to yourself that, you know what? I know that right now there are communities that serve in the inner cities, people who are true prophetic voices, that there is no doubt in my mind every single one of them could run every single multimillion dollar masjid in this country and run it to the sky, to the heavens, elevating people's iman and faith. But they choose to be with the people in the streets. They choose to be with the people doing God's work.

What if without being asked, you said, yeah, here's the money that you're not getting from your Friday collection. What if you just didn't have an empty academic intellectualizing conversation, but you sought to use your access points. You sought to use your votes. You sought to use your networks to see what it is that you can build strategically by taking cues from the demographic that is oppressed.

White Supremacy and Its Mechanisms

We root it all in what is pleasing to God. What supremacy does is that it creates itself as the primordial state of existence. It socializes you and I to believe that it is what the norm is, and we should always aspire to be it, even though it tells us we will never reach it. It says to us that everything that we do always has a reason to it, and that we are always from someplace else, that we are never from where it is that we are exactly standing at the moment. But there are some people, whether they are sitting in Australia or New Zealand or Europe or in Canada or the United States, they're exactly where they're supposed to be.

And what they do is never because of something, but what they do is always what the norm is. Your aspiration of beauty, it is rooted in the pursuit of whiteness. Your aspiration of success, it is rooted in the pursuit of whiteness. Your absorbation of validation, it is rooted in the pursuit of whiteness. And it tells you constantly that you are never good enough for it. And you seek it, you seek it, you seek it, whether you admit it or not.

And within it, you're telling yourself that even if I can't get there, I definitely don't want to be what's at the other end of the spectrum, which it has pitted in its roots of anti-blackness. How is it possible that there are over a billion and a half Muslims in the world, and this kind of ugliness runs rampant? What is the Islam that you and I choose to practice?

Taking Action Now

In the mode of what's happening in Minnesota right now, you want to know where you can be engaged and active? I would say that get on social media, follow people like Sean King, see what it is that he is telling you to do, call the phone numbers that he is saying to call. He literally has created scripts that you just have to read out loud.

This is not a time to play any games. This is a time to say whether or not your Islam actually brings you to believing in an akhira or not. Or are you simply confined to this world that hadith literally tells you that the dunya will be distracted. It will distract you with things that are fake and just showy and glossy and shiny, making you believe that this is what you should pursue. And it will be surrounded by these things. And the pursuit of Jannah will be surrounded by things that are more difficult.

The analogy is not different. Whiteness is telling you, look at how pretty I am. Come and be me.

It actually gets to a place where somehow there are people who believe that the victims in all of this are these ignorant fools who put their knees on this man's neck and crushed his life to death in this way. May Allah protect us from this. Do not end this day of Jummah in a way where you haven't done a reality check of your own heart.

Concrete Steps Forward

And you say that I will do my part every single day. You call a phone number of a legislator. You call a phone number of a DA. You call a phone number of a police precinct, of a mayor, of a governor. Call them again tomorrow. Call them again the next day.

Get all your friends to call them. Sign letters. Sign petitions.

Get involved and be active. But make sure that you are taking guidance from the people who you are supposed to be taking guidance from. There is no shortage of leadership in the Muslim community in the United States and around the world whose skin is black.

And if you don't leave from this day of Friday with your book recording that you took wisdom, learning, education, understanding from somebody who is a black leader, your pages are empty of that. And I will say to you as your brother who loves you, you need a wake up call and to really think about who God is and where it is you want to be after this world is done. There is no shortage of opportunities for people of faith to be engaged in right now to do good work.

It is not the time to intellectualize. It is not the time to engage in rhetoric. It is a time to validate feelings and emotions.

It is a time to let spaces be spaces that are dictated by those who are being held down. It is a time to be willing to follow. It is the time to be willing to learn.

And it is the time to understand that this is something that will not be fixed in just a night, but it's going to take one day to get to day two and day three and days that come after that. So make sure you're doing your part. Make sure that you are connecting.

No Excuses

Do not use social distancing as an excuse. You can log in to hear me, then that means that you have access to some apparatus that lets you listen to others as well. Know what these systems are about.

You are an NYU student. Have you reached out to your black peers? Have you reached out to the diversity office? Have you reached out to the Center for Multicultural Education? You are living in New York City. I've already named a bunch of people that you could be talking to, communities that you could be talking to throughout the boroughs of New York.

You are a person in the United States of America. There are national activists and leaders who are doing so much, both on the ground right now as well as virtually from where they are. When you turn on a TV screen and you see people, a Jesse Jackson, an Al Sharpton, you see people tweeting. You see people reposting. Don't just read it mindlessly. Follow their words.

Look at the organizations that they're speaking about. Read into it. See what they're engaging in terms of mobilization, activization, moving on an organized level, not just in these games because it's not a game.

And if you don't do it, then you are demonstrating that black life does not matter to you as well. When you do not want to be somebody who stands in front of a law on that day with that written on your record, that your actions, your decisions, your demeanor demonstrated, that you succumbed and became subservient to the supremacist systems and structures. It's told you to pursue whiteness at the expense of the lives of millions of men and women simply because they're black.

Addressing the Root Illness

The pandemic has given yet another indication to the illness that has been here from the very beginning. And we are continuously going to see symptoms of that deeply entrenched ailment of racism, that illness of anti-blackness until we address it. Do not ever make any of these people into statistics or symptoms.

Do not ever let them be people who turn and translate just into numbers, but speak their names, honor their legacies, contribute to their family members, engage in meaningful work, do good deeds. That's what it means to be Muslim. Let this day of Jummah not end without you taking steps in that direction.

If your practice of Islam is not bringing you to take on social injustice, social illness, then I would say to you, what is the point of your Islam? There is no greater social illness right now than the illness of racism, my sisters and brothers, and exists at every level of every system, of every structure. This country that wants just the majority and the privilege to retain their power, their wealth, and their privilege has built out law enforcement apparatus that seeks to enable it to gain what its interests were when it first established it. You cannot allow for this to be what it is that takes place.

Act, Speak, Pray

Act where you can act, speak where you can speak, and pray definitely where you can pray. Inshallah ta'ala, Allah Azawajal will continue to increase you from that moment of recognition. Do what it is that you have the ability to do.

This is not the time to sit back and do nothing. This is not the time back to say, well, and the only thing I do is donate. Yes, man, donate.

What do you mean? What do you think it costs to break down and dismantle these types of systems? Who do you think is going to pay for the lawyers of the family who's, they killed him. He couldn't even get them to stop that. Do you think the system is going to be in his favor or his family's favor? Where they haven't even been able to do what it is? That they as a system to arrest the perpetrators of what's happened to them.

So yes, your dollars do make a difference. As does everything else you have to offer. Don't stop.

Keep going. Keep going until you take your last act in this world. So that you meet your Lord with this understanding.

Humility and Continuous Learning

And if any one of us believes that we have already done it. If any one of us believes that we already understand. If any one of us is adopting a holier than thou. If any one of us is smirking saying that, yes, I know. I told you so mindset. You are still also part of the problem.

Every one of us has an opportunity to learn. And every one of us is still not doing what we can do. If this kind of stuff is still happening.

Let's get it done inshallah. Allah for the sake of all those who need us to be Muslim. In the way Allah has told us to be Muslim.

Community Healing Space

Tonight at 6 p.m for members of our community who self-identify as black. We have created a healing space through the Black Muslim Initiative. It's an online space.

You can find information on our social media and other ways on our website. As to how you can sign up to get access to the links. It is a space that is particularly made for people who are black. At the request of those who are black. So honor that request where you can. Make sure that this day of Friday.

This day of Jummah does not end without you taking actions. To learning how you can take more actions. And be a part of the process of breaking down racism.

Because again we're either racist or anti-racist. There's nothing else that's there. Racist or anti-racist.

That's it. Choose to be anti-racist. Live anti-racism.

That's what you want to do. You don't expect a pat on the back for it or anything like that. Do right because it's the right thing to do. Only because it's the right thing. Allah is watching and he sees. And that should be enough of a reason.

That we stand and strive to do what it is that we can. This is going to be saved on my Facebook and on my Instagram. You could share it. Go back and listen to it. Listen to the names that I mentioned. Listen to the people that I suggested. Listen to the resources that are there. And hear it. And do what it is that you can.

Get it done. InshaAllah ta'ala we're going to do what we can as a community. To help in whatever ways that we can.

But it can't go like this. It can't. I pray inshaAllah ta'ala that if you did not weep in the last days and weeks. That the numerous instances of our black sisters and brothers. Being killed in their homes. Being killed in the streets. Being killed for nothing. That Allah gives you a heart. That is able to weep when things like this happen.

Closing Dua

Join me in making a dua inshaAllah ta'ala as we close.

We begin this supplication in your name ya Allah. We beseech you to send your choice of salutations upon your most beloved (صلى الله عليه وسلم - ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam). We ask that you shower your infinite mercy upon this gathering, granting each and every one who is present herein and our loved ones only the best in this world and the best in the next.

We ask ya Allah that if all of us are meant to be together only at this time, at this place, whether we are young or old, male or female, regardless of our race, our ethnicity, our social class, our country of origin, our cultural heritage, whether we are Muslim or come from a different walk of life ya Rabbi, if our individual hearts are meant to be in the presence of all other hearts that are gathered here only at this time, at this place, then gather us all together again in the best of places in the world beyond this one.

Ya Allah, this country is on fire and it has not been on fire only in the last days, weeks or months, but there has been a fire that has been here that we ask ya Allah that you make us the means through which it is extinguished, that there is an ugliness of racism that has permeated the very systems and structures, foundations of this land, that is rooted itself in a white supremacy that has globalized itself and it runs rampant through countries all over this world.

We ask ya Allah that you make us from amongst those who are no longer distracted, who do not justify our inaction in any way, shape or form, but make us those ya Rabb who use our strength, our power, our sheer will and determination to break down these systems of inequity, oppression and injustice that hold down so many today.

We ask ya Allah that you make us the means through which there is a recognition of the structures and there is a breaking down of anti-blackness in all of its forms. We ask ya Allah that you give to us humility and forgive us each one of us who has played a role in perpetuating this gross, ugly form of racism that is anti-blackness, that is supremacy.

We ask ya Allah that you prevent us from ever engaging in acts of racial injustice against any of your creation from any background. You make us those who don't simply speak good but do good and do what is most pleasing to you.

We ask ya Allah that you bring ease to the hearts of all those who have lost loved ones to police brutality, to violence at the hands of law enforcement. You bring justice, compassion and mercy that ensures that no one will ever grow through this again. That from this difficulty, ya Rabb, let the ease come forward and let that ease be a celebration of blackness in all of its beauty and forms to make us be from amongst those who are never settled or sit as we watch this take place in front of our eyes but give us strength to stand and stand and stand again, to be good followers and to have the humility to admit where it is that we have made mistakes, where we have qualified and conditionalized, delegitimize leadership, scholarship, activism simply because the ones who are moving it and pushing it had skin that was black. Forgive us, ya Allah, forgive us.

Forgive us for being silent when we should have spoken. Forgive us for staying seated when we should have been standing. Forgive us for speaking when we should have been listening and learning.

Forgive us for everything that we could have done and we simply chose not to do because we were worried about losing a handful of dollars or not going up in our rank, in our profession, in our career. Let us not be those anymore, ya Rabb, but help us to do what is right simply because it is the right thing to do.

Bring healing to Minnesota, ya Allah. Bring ease to the people that are there. Bring healing, ya Rabb, to the people of Minnesota. Bring healing, ya Allah, to the black people of this country and in this world.

Let all of us who have the ability to be allies to them be full allies and not performative. Let not any one of us leave this world other than in a state that we can say that, ya Allah, we did exactly what you wanted us to do in these moments and leave no doubt in our minds, in our hearts that what you want from us, ya Rabb, is to speak out against this racism, this supremacy, this anti-blackness with our entire beings, our hearts, our souls. Give us strength, ya Rabb, and grant us success in this.

Bless all of those who have been doing this for so long and continue to give them all that you do. Help us to be their supporters, their helpers, only those who bring them benefit. Let not any one of us be an obstacle in their way.

Protect us always from hearts that are not humble, tongues that are not wise, and eyes that have forgotten how to cry. Forgive us for our shortcomings and guide and bless us all.

Final Call to Action

Thank you for being a part of this today. And please do make a commitment to do what it is that you can before this day is over. Contribute, mobilize, share your power, your privilege, and be a reason that there is hope in this world.

Get it done. Don't leave anything behind. It's not worth it.

This world is going to have its own end, and there is a much bigger world in store. And you want to do what's right simply because it's the right thing to do. Wallahu ta'ala alim wa billahi tawfeeq.

End of Khutbah