The Social Roots Of Our Personal Prejudices Imam Khalid Jummah Reflection 06.12.2020

The Social Roots Of Our Personal Prejudices

Imam Khalid | Jummah Reflection | June 12, 2020

Opening Salutation

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Opening Khutbah

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ، وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَمَن وَالَاهُ

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 and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day. Alhamdulillah, we are blessed to be together on this day of Jummah.

May Allah make it a means of benefit and barakah for all of us. And even where we see that our city, New York City, is starting to open, may Allah grant us ease in this and keep everyone healthy and free from any type of affliction, anxiety, or ailment of any kind. And grant complete healing and shifa to all those who might be facing any type of sickness at this moment, whether that is in New York or in any part of this country or in any part of the world.

Introduction: Context and Purpose

May we still have unique opportunity to maintain connectedness despite physical separation, and to utilize the backdrop of pandemic as well as the realities of understanding the world that we will re-enter into with a framework of consciousness and mindfulness, as still within these days so many take to the streets to call for real justice, real equity, real recognition of how so many systems, virtually each and every one that this country is built upon does not honor and dignify Black life in any way. And we see so many who are called to ethics and values, giving everything of what they have to ensure that they do their part so that within our time and our generation, this reality changes and we become individually, communally, societally, and in every level of governance, a system devoid of structural racism and embrace the fact that Black life most definitely does matter.

Within the course of our conversation today, I wanted our focus to be upon the recognition of our own human condition and what becomes the foundational building blocks of some of our own microaggressive attitudes, our

sources of prejudicial behavior, and what renders discriminatory action, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Theological Framework: The Story of Iblis

Because this conversation, it happens quite often at the level of spirituality, theology, that we speak about the story of Iblis, Shaytan, commanded to prostrate to Adam, peace be upon him, and he says that I am a fire and he is of earth, he is of dirt, then why would I prostrate to him? That where I am from essentially makes me superior to where he is from. May Allah protect us from this type of arrogance, this type of racism, or any type of racism.

Spiritual Foundation: The Heart (Qalb)

We talk about it within the confines of spirituality, where our Prophet has spoken to us about how there are distinct elements that make us who we are in our entirety. And the principal variable of what we have that renders goodness within us is our spiritual heart, our qalb.

Hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 52, Sahih Muslim 1599)

Indeed in your body, there is a morsel of flesh. If it is good, the entire being will be good. If it is not good, the entire being will not be good. Indeed, it is the heart, the qalb.

And so within this frame of recognizing ourselves and what it is that we move forward on, I wanted to interject within these two frames of theology and spirituality, an understanding of our human condition that can allow for us individually to grow by recognizing the sociological impacts, our own growth and what the environment around us renders for us to be able to start to pull away and deconstruct so that we can in turn build positive social habits that keep us from seeing the world in a way that renders anything prejudicial or discriminatory from us and will protect us from it.

Core Principle: How We See Reveals Who We Are

Fundamentally, the principle that we want to embrace is one that tells us that how we see things is not indicative of what it is that we see alone, but how we see things tells us a lot about ourselves. And as we go into this conversation, there will become certain terms that we have to build relationships with through our own definitions because words are what give us meaning and understanding. But if we don't strive to build deeper meaning by not gauging them through ambiguity, but creating concrete definition so that we can now start to use them in our favor and in our growth.

Understanding Key Terms

Stereotyping

The first that we want to understand is the term stereotyping. Stereotyping is a cognitive function. We don't want to employ it in a framework of anything good or bad or right or wrong or recognize it solely through those prisons.

But we want to understand that each one of us stereotypes. As a cognitive function, it allows for us to see things and to not have to think so much. The difficulty that comes from it potentially is that it can render intellectual laziness.

And so a stereotype can be something as simple as all basketball players are tall. And then for those of you who know me, and we've met in person, if we were to go and start to play in a game of basketball, many of you would want to not be on my team by virtue of the fact that I don't fit into this stereotype of basketball players being tall. You can assess in your judgment.

And there's positive stereotypes as well. People are associated with kindness, compassion, certain jobs are given dignity, nobility. But stereotyping in and of itself is just that snap, cognitive function, that we store an idea in our minds as a generalization. And then we apply it when we are looking at the world around us.

Prejudice

Prejudice has rooted within it its own definition, literally, it has the word prejudge within it. And that prejudice now stems from that stereotyping that tells us cognitively to think in these ways.

And it can render a negative framework of how we then start to engage. We start to employ prejudicial views, prejudge, preconceived ideas and notions, without having meaningful interactions, substantive engagement.

And we start to then think certain things about people based off of their race, their culture, their class, their gender, their place in society.

That prejudicial behavior is something that we become socialized with. It's something that starts to ingrain itself within us. And in a little bit, we'll talk about where and how the society around us shapes us through it.

Discrimination

And then discrimination is attached to these two as well. Because our behavior, our actions, then start to become discriminatory. They start to be rooted in that prejudicial understanding that we have.

We start to treat people differently because of the color of their skin, their race, their ethnicity, their culture, their class, their gender, their age, so many different variables.

Social Identity Theory

We want to understand this now also in the framework of fundamental social identity theory, that you want to not just simply know that how you see things is an indication of who you are, where your heart is, what your perspectives are, what you hold within yourself as your own stereotypes, prejudices, discriminational behavior, your own microaggressions, your racisms. May Allah protect us from it.

And it's a hard conversation because a lot of times we don't want to admit that we actually have these ideas within us.

Step One: Categorization

So if we were to break down the why we see things in the ways that we do so that we can start to rebuild it in our first frame of understanding how we categorize the world around us, step one in social identity formation, social identity theory, is that we see the world in these boxes, at times these stereotypes, and they can be rooted in anything. Height, weight, skin color, eye color, profession, level of education, class, gender, politics, political affiliation, the part of the country you are living in, the sports teams that you like, you can have infinite numbers of boxes.

Step Two: Self-Categorization

Step two in that process is that you start to self-categorize yourself within that prism of infinite boxes that the world can be broken up into. So I am Muslim, I am American, I am a husband, a father, a son, a brother, I am chaplain, I am imam, I am professor, I am a business owner, an entrepreneur, I am short, I am bearded, I am brown-eyed. There's so many ways that I can self-categorize.

Step Three: Comparison

And then the third frame of our own identity formation is comparison, that we go from categorizing to then seeing how we fit into those boxes, and then as a third prong to it, we understand who it is that we are by understanding what it is that we are not. So I know that I'm Muslim because I'm not Christian. I know that I'm short because I'm not tall.

I know that I am a New Yorker because I am not from Chicago. I know what I am by saying what it is that I'm not.

The Challenge: In-Groups and Out-Groups

What becomes now a challenge in our engagement of the world around us is that salient characteristics to our identity at times get imposed upon us. That's what supremacy does. But also within it, we start to ally ourselves

to certain parts of ourselves, usually shared externals. And what we become attracted to socially is similarity and familiarity.

And as much as then we start to exaggerate similarities, we exaggerate differences at the same level. And those exaggerated similarities become necessary. And why our religion and what it calls to outwardly and inwardly is important to understand beyond just mechanics and ritual and practice.

That is a key part to it, but not the only part to it. It tells us to be people of aql, intellectual capacity, that we engage in the deliberate acquisition of, the discernment of right and wrong, utilizing the mind that we have. People of qalb, people of a heart that is awake and alive.

Hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 1147)

As our Prophet says in the state of his sleep in response to his wife: My eyes they sleep but my heart does not sleep.

That you start from here and not from out here. Because that need for similarity and familiarity, that has us not just exaggerate differences but exaggerate similarities, makes us create in groups and out groups socially.

So that we can feel comfortable with who we are, not based off of our convictions, our ethics, our values, our hearts, but about having people around us who are just like us. And so it's not that you can't be you, but I don't know how to be me unless you are just like me. When somebody comes in and they're a little bit different, it rattles me a little bit.

Because you not being just like me makes it hard for me to understand how I'm supposed to be, since I need everybody to be just like me around me. So it's not easy for me to be in a sphere. It's not right, I'm not saying it, just understanding through the principles of sociology, where we then set up communities, masjids, spaces, synagogues, churches, temples, organizations, clubs, affinity groups, our iftar dinners, our Eid gatherings, everybody, similar class, similar culture, similar race.

Because if somebody comes in that throws off the mix, I don't know how to be me unless you are just like me.

How Discrimination Takes Root

Where discrimination and prejudice starts to render its ugly head is that people can take advantage of what we are in terms of social psychological understandings and can impose now what they want upon us to keep us separate from each other. This is why Malcolm, he says that you want to not be bamboozled.

Is the first step in believing that you are not something is what gives victory to someone because they get you from understanding that you actually are. He says in his hikm, his aphorisms, his wisdoms, that if you believe you are not arrogant, then you probably are. So if you think you're not racist, it's a good starting point to recognizing that yes, you probably are.

I say it with love. To understand where those relationships are and how it becomes easy then to create an us versus them mentality and narrative that has you and I believe certain things. If you are like me, a person of color, but a non-Black person of color.

If you're not Black, you still think certain things about Black people. Just the same way you think certain things about people who are not of your same culture, your same class. Just think about the gatherings you find yourself in and what makes you comfortable versus uncomfortable.

Think about who it is that you find yourself situating yourselves around. That if you go to a university or you have gone to a university and you find people just purely through the perspective objectively of this idea of how we create in groups and out groups around these shared externals. There's a reason why most Muslim student associations in the country, if you ever went to one, an event or program tends to be dominated by Sunni Islam, South Asians, maybe some places Arabs, and mostly men.

They're creating a club of shared identity variables that they have a certain sense of familiarity around.

Henri Tajfel: The Minimal Group Paradigm

We start to deconstruct it by recognizing what is innate within us. There's a social scientist by the name of Henry Tajfel, who was a Polish Jew.

Henry Tajfel lived at the time of the Holocaust and he lived at a time when Jewish people were not allowed to go to many universities, so he ends up going to the Sorbonne in France to study. And at that time when he is there, people start rounding up Jewish people. Henry Tajfel can speak French and he identifies himself as a French citizen, does not deny his Jewish heritage, but simply says that he is a French citizen.

Even to the extent that when he is taken as a prisoner of war by German soldiers, his ability to speak French allows for him to be associated with that because we exaggerate similarities as much as we exaggerate differences. Henry Tajfel goes through much of that war where a Nazi Holocaust seeking to exterminate Jewish men and women from this world has many of his friends and family members not survive. And when he exits from that reality, he tries to understand and answer these questions around discrimination, prejudice, how it's possible that a human being can get to such a level of insight to their hatred being so alive that they can engage in genocidal violence.

And he also tried to understand the question of how it's possible that so much of the world knows that it's happening and they simply sit back and do nothing. They just watch. And so he starts to bring together groups

of people at random to try to understand what variables bring forward discrimination.

And he develops a theorem that's called the minimal group paradigm that basically finds that people will discriminate against each other even at the most minute of differences. Distinct eye color is enough of a reason for people to discriminate. Whether hot dog buns should be of a certain shape or not is enough of a reason for people to favor the in group versus the out group.

The most arbitrary, minute, minimal distinctions are enough for people, human beings, to discriminate against one another. And it's important to understand this man's research and so many other people in the context of what it was that their life was. This man lived through the holocaust and he's trying to understand how it's possible that human capacity renders that type of discriminatory behavior, that is genocidal violence, that type of hatred, and how it's possible that so many people can sit back and watch and they just don't do anything to stop it.

Community Learning Initiative

And you start to then think the gaps of information that give us insight as to where and how we relate to those that are different from us. In the coming week, the Islamic Center is going to be launching a learning initiative to help you and I better understand the realities lived by our Black sisters and brothers in this country and around the world. We're going to put out shortly some information on books that we will read together as a community, documentaries that we will watch together as a community, with the advice of different members of our community, our Sheikha Aisha Prime and so many others, to understand, learn, to not let this moment be something that is just emotional and reactive, but to recognize that our need to build momentum has to start with a desire to know, to learn, to get it.

Recommended Resources

So we'll read books like:

• The New Jim Crow
• White Fragility
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X

We'll watch documentaries like:

• 13th
• I Am Not Your Negro

And if any one of us is thinking within ourselves that I am not racist, I don't need to do it. I say to you again, what Ibn Ata'illah, he says in his hikm, if you think you are not arrogant, then you likely are. And if you are

telling yourself that I don't need it, then you are likely the first person who does.

To understand through it principles, realities, struggle, learning about experience, what we did not get in our schooling, what we purposely are denied access to when we go, whether it's public school, private school, parochial school. You might have had a chance if you went to college to take an elective course, if anything, but ours is a deen that strives towards inculcating within its practitioner the desire to pursue knowledge, to not be satisfied with gaps of ignorance of any kind. So you got to read the books, you got to watch the documentaries, you got to learn and listen from the black leadership that we are trying to center their voices and so many others.

Call to Sustained Action

Because it's going to be really easy that after two weeks, you stop and you start engaging in other things. That the dunya reopens and it tells you you go from phase one to phase two to phase three and your stomachs will start to decide what it is that you will do for the days that you spend together. Your physical beings will start to want to be around people who have similar features socially and an opportunity to create even more impact will start to be diminished as we stopped being a part of a movement that needs to keep going until every aspect of anti-blackness is broken down.

The way gaps start to fill themselves and synergies between governmental apparatus, media, and what we think and know, whether we are conscious of it or not, is what we will start to deconstruct. So when you read the new Jim Crow and you start to watch documentaries like Thirteenth, you're gonna see how it is that politicians are utilizing words like predator and thug to describe our black sisters and brothers.

TV shows like Cops that people are now trying to rush to pull off the air were rampant all over television affirming that language utilized disgustingly by politicians like predator and thug and so much more.

Reaffirming as usually white men in blue uniforms were arresting black men on national television to reinforce the stereotypes and in turn the prejudicial views and discriminatory behaviors that come from those and a war on drugs becomes concocted. As you see crack cocaine running rampant and nobody asks where do the drugs come from in the first place but the stratification of society built upon the notion that black life does not matter moves from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and on the slightest of infringements you see hundreds of thousands of black families having their lives disrupted and devastated for no other reason other than they're black.

You see so many people sit back and watch it happening but they have brought in to the constructed narrative rooted in fear that leverages an us versus them mindset that keeps us from doing what we can because we whether we want to admit it or not believe something about people that we don't spend any time with whatsoever and this is the moment in which it has to stop.

Islamic Teachings on Brotherhood and Love

We start to break down what is within us because not even an atom's worth of arrogance will be allowed to enter into paradise. May Allah protect us from it and love becomes that primary key to open those doors to Jannah. May Allah make us people who enter it without any judgment but you will not enter paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love one another.

Hadith:

(Sahih Muslim 54)

You will not enter paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love one another.

Hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 13, Sahih Muslim 45)

You will not enter paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love for your brother what you love for yourself.

That includes your brother, sister, all people from all walks of life who share things with you and who live totally different lives from you. It most definitely includes our black sisters and brothers.

You can't love something that you don't spend time with. You can't love someone if all you spend time with is a stereotype of them. So look out for the emails and the invitations to read the books and watch the documentaries and give us suggestions and ideas so that we can grow and we can be better.

Upcoming Programs and Community Engagement

We're going to have more programs with Shaykh Fiaz Jafar and Shaykh Aisha Prime and Shaykh Suhaib Webb and myself in conversation with different individuals like our brother Tariq Toure and our brother Bashir Jones and so many more. We need as a community to learn together, to move forward together and deconstruct our own intergroup discriminations by starting to fundamentally understand why it is that we see things in the ways that we do and how it is that we can break it down. Shaytan does not want us to succeed.

He wants us to be ungrateful. The Quran is not just a book to be memorized. It's a book to be lived and to learn from.

It gives deep insight into human condition and where it is that we are at. You have to see that there is no room for prejudice or discrimination of any kind. To break down the systems, to break down the structures, we have to do better than what it is that we have been doing.

Personal Reflection Exercise

Spend some time on this day of Jummah to just think out for yourself what makes me me. Write a list down that says what are my most salient characteristics of identity and see what it is that you relate to, what it is that you connect with and how much of that comes from within. See how much of what it is that you see yourself as are things that are attached to your external versus your internal.

And you got to be honest in your introspection, vulnerable as well, so that if your primary mode of connection is at the level of bodies as opposed to the level of souls, that you start to move away from just the physicality of it and you dare to connect from the internal at the level of hearts. You open the door to experience a love unlike anything else. You go step by step so that we in turn become brick upon brick that builds that building that is a real brotherhood, sisterhood, that is an ummah that the Prophet speaks of.

You don't want to think about it in any other way other than your building has holes in it now because there are not people of distinct races and classes helping to make you who you can be in your entirety. That your body is ill the way the Prophet says it will be, likened to that body that experiences fever when one part of it is not functioning properly. We are the part that is not functioning properly because we are not surrounded by everything that we are supposed to be surrounded by.

It does not mean you cannot have preferences. It does not mean that you have to let go of who it is that you are. You like to eat food from your own country or culture, then go for it.

You like to wear the clothes that come from your heritage and your background, then go for it. But be you without having to force somebody to not be who they are. That's why you got to dig deep and think about why you are the way that you are so that you allow for yourself to gain as much as it is that you can in these moments that we find ourselves in.

Community Announcements and Action Items

So as we wrap up and we make dua, just again as a reminder, we are going to be launching a learning initiative for our community so that we collectively can do better in our understanding and comprehension of what things are like for Black people living in this country and historically understand the roots of everything that brings us to this point so that we do what we can while we can so no one has to feel this anymore. We're going to launch a book reading club. We're going to be doing some different panels and conversations and we're going to be watching some documentaries with facilitated discussion.

Health and Safety Reminders

I hope you all are keeping well and keeping safe as New York City reopens or whatever part of the country that you are in. Please do make sure that you are still practicing social distances, that you are wearing masks, that if you have been out in the streets, which I'm not telling you you shouldn't, you definitely should be out and sharing your voice and being a part of this effort.

But get yourself tested. Make sure that if you are contracting COVID-19 you are not spreading it to vulnerable populations in any way. We want to do our part but we want to still make sure that we are not doing it without mindfulness and consciousness.

And if you have donated then continue to donate to efforts. Do your part in every which way that you can. Inshallah ta'ala we will see continued results and continued impact in our collective allyship following the lead of wise, strong, Black leadership in what it is that they are setting for us as a strategy to dismantle.

So that we most assuredly will uphold the principle that Black life matters. May Allah subhana wa ta'ala guide us and protect us. May he bless us with knowledge that benefits us.

May he bless us with the tawfiq to understand and implement that knowledge into our daily lives. And may he guide and bless us all. Wa Allahu ta'ala alam wa billahi tawfiq.

Closing Dua

We begin this supplication in your name, ya Allah, and beseech you to send your choicest salutations upon your most beloved ﷺ. 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.

Increase us, ya Allah, in all that is good. Increase us in courage, compassion, and confidence. Protect us from any affliction, anxiety, anguish, or ailment of any kind. Remove from our hearts any feelings of bitterness, jealousy, animosity, envy towards any of your creation.

Grant us hearts that are filled with understanding and love. Hearts that are drawn towards goodness and beauty. Hearts that find themselves in your remembrance, for indeed in your remembrance do hearts find rest.

We ask, ya Allah, that in these critical moments, these days that surround us, where the world is plagued by pandemics of two kinds, the illness that is COVID-19 and the illness that has been here for so long of racism, that you make each one of us a source of healing, a remedy, a means of benefit for all those who are in need for us to be our very best.

We ask of you, ya Allah, to make us from amongst those who turn towards one another and turn towards you in hopes of recognizing our own potential of being the source of love, light, and life for your creation. That we ask for tawfiq and wisdom to build what it is that we have the capacity to build for all those who are in need.

To remove ourselves from spaces and gatherings that seek to further the interests of those who are privileged at the expense of those who are underserved and underprivileged. We ask of you, ya Allah, to make us those who are bold enough to turn to you in prayer, seeking in our dua to be those who only do that which is good.

Quranic Verse:

"O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted."

We ask, ya Allah, that you make our unity not be tied to a uniformity of shared externals, race, ethnicity, culture, or class. But make our unity tied to a uniformity of shared internals, shared values, shared hearts that has us embrace diversity in every way to understand from those who are different from us as your Quran has told us, you have made us diverse for this reason. So that we embrace each other as men and women from different nations and tribes so that we might in fact know one another with a deep sense of acquaintanceship and intimacy as your verse indicates when it says, that you make our unity not tied to a uniformity of externals, but a uniformity of internals that makes us sisters and brothers of all backgrounds.

Never make us from amongst those who engage in acts of racial injustice of any kind, nor those who see it taking place in front of us and still stay silent when we have the ability to speak.

We ask, ya Allah, that you end and dismantle the anti-Blackness, the supremacy that is so prevalent in this country and has globalized itself around the world. And you bring ease to those who find themselves facing any type of discrimination, prejudice, racism, structural, systemic, and otherwise. Make things easy for Black people in this country, ya Rabb.

Make things easy for those who find themselves in any type of conflict and discrimination around the world. The Rohingya who face genocide and ethnic cleansing by the government of Myanmar. The streets of Tel Aviv and all over Palestine are filled with protesters because of the occupation, the ill-treatment, the open-air prisons that our sisters and brothers in Palestine find themselves in.

That our Uyghur sisters and brothers are still sitting in internment camps in China. That we find people still succumbing in Africa to the atrocities of the Boko Haram, who even just in these last days, under the guise of giving a Jummah Khutbah, brought people forward, told them to put down their weapons and their arms to hear a Friday prayer sermon. And once everyone was there in a state of rest, took the lives of over 80 people in this atrocious way.

We ask Ya Allah that you make things easy for all those who are facing any pain. Our Hazara Shia brothers in Afghanistan, people throughout the Gulf, people in the Indian subcontinent, our brothers and sisters in Kashmir, we ask Ya Allah that you make us people of real love. And through that love, to break down our nafs, our ego, and to address our own internalized racisms, prejudices, discrimination, so that we can be what it is that you want us to be.

A source of goodness for your creation. 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.

Closing

جَزَاكُمُ اللَّهُ خَيْرًا

Thank you all so much for joining in today. Inshallah ta'ala we'll see you all next week.

Please do partake in the programs that I had mentioned. May Allah bless you and your loved ones and give you only the best in this world and the best in the next.

وَاللَّهُ تَعَالَى أَعْلَمُ وَبِاللَّهِ التَّوْفِيقُ

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى وَبَرَكَاتُهُ