Authentically Reclaiming the Narrative about Islam and Muslims

Authentically Reclaiming the Narrative about Islam and Muslims

Omar Suleiman - Khutbahs with Purpose

Introduction: The Challenge of Post-9/11 Narratives

Dear brothers and sisters, in a post-9/11 context as a Muslim community, as the Muslim community has come under the rampant fire, that perpetual hatred that we face right now as a community, misinformation, propaganda, and have braced ourselves as every single election season comes by, as every single attack happens in the name of Islam, whatever it may be, as a Muslim community has been trying to figure out since 9-11 in particular and over the last few years with the current president, how do we actually tell our story? How do we actually reclaim our narrative?

Those words, "reclaiming the narrative," have titled every single Islamic convention. I've been given that session like 20 times in the last three years. How do we reclaim the narrative? And there used to be an emphasis when you talk about reclaiming the narrative on making sure that we get as many da'wa pamphlets out there as possible so that people know the truth about Islam in advance.

There used to be this emphasis on reclaiming the narrative that was very much so within the realm of da'wa. But now reclaiming the narrative means a million different things to different people, to literally over a million different people here in the United States as a Muslim community.

Three Key Points About Reclaiming the Narrative

So I want to address this topic mainly to put out this idea or to first and foremost negate this idea that changing the narrative should take precedence over actually changing ourselves.

The second thing is that if a person or if we are looking to change the narrative, if we become inauthentic to who we are in the process, meaning if at the end of the day we're able to usher forward the Muslim community but not remain authentic to our teachings, then we might have changed the narrative but we would have ultimately failed because Allah requires us to maintain the cornerstone of our identity and our Islam at the end of it all as we're out there delivering a message about who we are, about what our religion teaches. We can't lose the core of our identity in the interest of advancing our interests as a Muslim community in the United States.

The third thing is this: there is an authentic way to reclaim the narrative about the Muslim community, about Islam, and those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive and we actually find a way that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) was able to do those things, to actually tell the truth about the community without masking the things they actually needed to change about themselves or obscuring the things that made them true believers in the first place and made them a group of Muslims with a capital M in the first place.

Learning from the Prophet's First Public Call

There is a way to find that balance and you find it from the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). And I wanted to actually start off with that very first call where the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) talked about what his mission was. A lot of us know the story, you've heard the story told in many different ways with many different lessons that were extrapolated from it of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) standing on Safa and calling the people to Islam for the very first time. The story of being rejected by a people that held him in high esteem for all of those years.

Going from being a beloved member of his community to being ostracized in his community. Going from being someone who was looked at as an honest man, as someone that had the goodwill of the community at heart to now being looked at as an enemy, an internal enemy who looks to sow seeds of discord amongst his society, who looks to break up the tribes, who is foreign, who has a strange ideology, who is a magician, a sorcerer and all those types of things. That moment that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) stands on that mountain and calls the people to his message and ultimately faces rejection, or at least in those moments faces rejection and the call of rejection is led by Abu Lahab, his own uncle.

The Context Before the Public Call

There was a lot that happened before that incident. And maybe understanding a little bit about the context before that incident can help us frame the conversation about what it means to actually get out there with your narrative before somebody else tells your story for you. That was not the first time Abu Lahab heard the message of Islam.

His uncle who rejected him, who led the call of rejection, who made it a point to ostracize him quickly and to turn the people away from him and to say, did you gather us for this so that we could combine all of our gods into one? And said to him, cursed him and said, may you perish. That wasn't the first time Abu Lahab was introduced to Islam. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) had gathered his relatives already privately and had laid the groundwork privately for a public call.

And yes, he expected more response from his people, especially those that were closest to him. There were meetings that took place literally around the corner of Safa where some of the relatives of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) lived. His own home being next to Marwah with Khadijah (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهَا - radi allahu anha)

Abu Lahab's Strategy

Calling his people privately and Abu Lahab did not feel the need to blast the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) in those private gatherings because the public interest of Abu Lahab were not threatened by a private call of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). It was okay for him to talk about that stuff privately, but how do we make sure this stays out of any realm of the public that would threaten our agendas? Whether they were theological, and of course the money and let's call it Meccan capitalism that was underlying their shirk,

right? Which was they made money off of the hajj, they made money off of these idols, they claimed a certain superiority off of people from these idols. So not just the theological agenda that they had, but really why they felt so important to maintain that shirk, to maintain all those idols in public.

So Abu Lahab wasn't threatened by the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) or his call privately. But there was now a growing concern amongst Bani Hashim, the tribe of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and those closest to the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) that knew that he now felt called to something greater, that he had received revelation and that it was only a matter of time before this gets out. There was a concern amongst them of how do we suppress this once it gets out? Why is that so important?

The Strategic Surprise

When the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) took to Safa and called everybody to Safa, which Safa was a place that you announced something extremely significant to the community, he took them by surprise.

Had he told Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl and his tribes that look, I'm about to go to Safa and make this call, I just want to let you guys know and make sure we're all on the same page, it actually would not have been favorable or advantageous because as bad as that incident went, it would have even went worse. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) instead took the community by surprise, said everyone come to me, gathered the people around him at Safa and the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) invoked first his credibility.

Invoking Credibility

If I was to tell you that there was an army that was coming from the other side of this mountain to attack you, would you believe me? They said yes because you are a Sadiq Al-Amin, you're a trustworthy person, you're an honest person, they said it.

And you would never say anything or you would never take us on a ride like this. If you were calling us and telling us that there's a harm that's coming to us, then of course you'd be telling the truth because you care about us. So the people that weren't already privy to those discussions were the ones that were saying that.

It wasn't Abu Lahab, it wasn't the family of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) or those that already knew what was happening that said that. It was everybody else that got called to Safa in those moments. And then the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) calls and warns them about a harm in the hereafter like the one that they knew that he would protect them from in this world as well.

Two Important Lessons

There are two important points here. Number one, people will not trust that you have their interest at heart for the hereafter if you don't have their interest at heart in this dunya, in this world. Why should I trust that you're trying to protect me from something harmful in the hereafter if you could care less when

harm hits me from every direction in this world? Why should I think that you want good for me in the hereafter if you do nothing for my well-being in this world? So the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) is showing us the power of credibility.

He invoked that with everybody else that was around. Now most people don't get to speak in the public square. They don't really have a say. They're not powerful people. But they heard that message that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) put out there. The seeds were put in.

So even though Abu Lahab is the only voice that ultimately came out and condemned him, you don't think that all those people around thought about that that night? Thought about it for some time and maybe it planted the seeds that were necessary when the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) came back to them with the full call, the full da'wah. They remembered that. That was some food for thought for them that you know what? He has always cared about us.

He is a Sadiq Al-Ameen. So we can believe that he's also Rahmatan lil-Alameen, that he's a mercy to the world. We've seen it already.

Planting Seeds Successfully

He planted seeds (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). So though only Abu Lahab, as is usually the case, the loudest and most powerful get to dominate the space. He (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) succeeded in planting seeds.

He got what he wanted. Had they known that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) was going to do that, that he was going to make a public call, they would have suppressed it the way that they suppressed it after that all the way until the Islam of Umar (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهُ - radi allahu anhu). So him going to Safa caught them by surprise, allowed him to plant the seeds (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam),and he invoked his credibility. That's the first thing.

Pre-empting the Narrative

Number two, something that's lost upon us usually when we quote this story. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam)and you can say of course this is divinely inspired, divine revelation that came at the right time that commanded him (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) to do that, pre-empted the story that would be told about him in public first. That's important.

It was only a matter of time before Abu Lahab took to Safa and said, you know what everyone, you might hear something come out of my nephew, I want to tell you how crazy he is, I want to tell you what a sorcerer he is, I want to tell you what a liar he is, I don't know what's happened to him over the last few years. The revelation pre-empted those that would tell the story about the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) instead of him being the first to introduce the story to the community. And that's profound.

That's very special that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) was able to do that, that he was able to take to Safa and to plant those seeds and recognize as a lesson for all of us that people need to hear from us

about our story not about us. You can't expect people to tell the right story about you. Especially when they are going to be inherently threatened by your presence and your call.

You can't put too much currency in people saying the right things about you. You have to pre-empt, if you know that a story is coming about you, about your community, about your deen, you have to have the vision to go out there and to tell that story first, to frame it first, because otherwise you're always playing defense which is the story of our lives as a Muslim community, post 9-11.

The Flawed Assumption

That there was an assumption that the credibility would speak for itself. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) knew the credibility was essential, but he invoked it. There was an assumption that as long as we were good Muslims, as long as we did what we had to do, people would tell the right story about us. Because we do such great work in the community, we're such outstanding citizens here in the United States, of course our Islam, why would anyone hate us? That was a naivete.

And that's not to blame any particular organization, or group, or community. We were all taken by surprise. The nation was taken by surprise, the community was taken by surprise, and we're continuing to always be surprised. And everyday when you open the news, the headlines are more surprising than the day before. No one could have predicted this spectacle politically, religiously, socially. But as a community, we did make an assumption that was flawed.

That if we did our part in terms of just being good people, that would be enough. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) covered the credibility base, then he invoked that credibility, he made sure that that credibility was affirmed in the public square, then the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) preempted the story being told about him, by telling his story first. Even if no one at that time could stand with the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and Abu Lahab would ultimately shame him in public, still he got his message out there.

He planted the seeds that would be necessary for him now to be able at least privately, when he met with people, when he spoke to people about who he was, about what his deen was, those seeds were already planted publicly.

The Current Media Reality

So what does it mean in our context? So we'll try to adjust seerah back, seerah back. In our context, according to a media content analysis, 80% of media coverage on Muslims and Islam in the United States is negative.

In 2015, which is the last time that this study actually showed it, 2015, 9 out of 10 news stories on Muslims and Islamic organizations were related to violence. 9 out of 10 stories about the community were related to violence. That was the emphasis, whether it was talking about the global community, or whether it was talking about the local community, the domestic community here in the United States.

Historical Patterns of Propaganda

So attempts at demonizing people and groups will always exist. Propaganda is always going to be employed. It was employed against the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). It was employed against other prophets before him. It was employed against every group of people that could be found vulnerable and could become the liability in the process of someone else garnering support.

Examples from Previous Prophets

When you look at the prophets of Allah as they came before, when the wife of Al-Aziz failed at seducing Yusuf (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām) what did she do? She preempted, she said that he was the indecent one. Instead, she accused him of certain things so that he would be imprisoned first before the story of her fahisha, the story of her own wrongdoing could be told.

When Fir'aun was losing traction in the fight against Musa (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām) because Fir'aun thought initially, I have sorcerers, he's a magician, my magicians will outdo his magician, or will outdo his magic. When that no longer worked, what did he do? He accused Musa (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām) of murder and corruption and trying to commit treason and plot on the inside and being a foreign agent and all those other types of things because his messaging was not strong enough to battle the messaging of Musa (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām)

Abu Lahab's Escalating Attacks

And when the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam)'s call began surfacing, Abu Lahab didn't think of magician-sorcerer first, liar first. Instead, what did he say?

He said, may you be cursed, may you perish, O Muhammad. Did you gather us for that? He didn't call the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) a name, they didn't say (سَاحِرٌ، مَجْنُونٌ، كَاهِنٌ - saahir, majnun, kaahin) that he's a sorcerer, a madman, a soothsayer.

It's when they realized that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam)'s call began surfacing that they had to get unique at discrediting him, calling him a liar, calling him a fortune teller, calling him a sorcerer, calling him a destroyer of homes. They started to employ different types of propaganda because the messaging of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) was too strong and his credibility was too strong. Therefore, if you took away the credibility of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) you don't have to answer to the message of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam)

The Cotton Strategy

That's why propaganda exists the way that it does. So when you have Tufayl ibn Amr al-Dawsi who was told to put cotton in his ears when he came from al-Daws to Mecca and do tawaf, because you don't wanna hear what the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) is gonna say, he's this magician, this sorcerer, right? The idea was stuff your ears because if you hear the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) then maybe the messaging will be too attractive. We don't want you to even think about him as being sane.

You cannot listen to this man in the first place, right? So instead of Fox News, they had cotton. But the point was, if you can cast enough suspicion about a person or a community, if you can remove their credibility, you can say things about them without having to answer their message. Because their messaging supposedly comes from a bad place and they have bad intentions for the community.

The Prophets Fought Back

Well, when you look at the Prophets of Allah, what do you see? Didn't Yusuf (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām) demand that his name be cleared? Yusuf fought back on the credibility. Musa (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ - ʿalayhi as-salām) highlighted the hypocrisy of Firaun's claims. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) recited countless verses.

Allah responded to what? Allah responded to the accusations of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam)'s credibility. Not necessarily their theological counterclaims as much as the credibility of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). So clearing the names of the Prophets was important. Restoring their credibility was actually important.

The Extreme Response

And there are some Muslims while meaning, will say, you know what? We don't have to respond because Allah will take care of us. I don't care if they think Islam and Muslims are bad. Eventually, Islam will succeed, Muslims will succeed.

"Even though the disbelievers dislike it."

Whether they like it or not, we will be victorious. Therefore, we don't need to do anything.

To preempt what's coming and to respond to what's already been said about us that takes away our credibility. That's not Sunnah. That's the extreme opposite of those that give priority to narrative over authenticity and would lose everything in Islam to portray Muslims favorably.

Why Fighting Back Matters

That's the counter extreme to that. That's also an extreme, it's a flawed extreme. There is something to say about asserting yourself publicly who you are, what your message is, and fighting back on the claims of credibility and talking about what these messages actually mean and what our religion actually is.

Three Reasons to Care About Public Perception

So the first part of this is that when someone says, I don't care if they consider us violent. 9 out of 10 of the news stories said that we were violent. I don't care if they consider us violent, anti-American, dangerous, it doesn't matter. You know what happens when you do that? When the frequent association is with violence and treason, you make your community vulnerable. That puts us in a place not only where we can't tell our story, but where we actually find ourselves in a place of vulnerability and that's the type of language that ends up in genocide. It's been a historic way of leading up to a genocide of a people, to the mass persecution of a people, to removing them entirely from the public square because we don't know who amongst them is violent or dangerous or not.

So firstly, it's dangerous. That's the first thing. To say, well, we'll just figure it out and let them do that.

Secondly, our young people are not going to tolerate living as misfits in their society unnecessarily. No one wants to live under that type of pressure. And so yes, it gets unbearable, it gets hard.

And you do have 23% of Muslims that were born in the United States leaving Islam altogether, not even self-identifying as Muslims. Ideally, you want people strong enough to resist all of that pressure. But at the end of the day, no one wants to be viewed like that.

And if a person doesn't have a strong core, then that's going to pull them away. So while we're strengthening the core, it does mean something to try to deal with that pressure and to try to deal with that type of a storm because what we're looking at then is people that will either remove from their Islam what makes them suspicious and misfits or just walk away from the identity altogether of being a Muslim in Islam. So it's either a cultural identity that's not true to Islam or it's relinquishing the identity altogether because I don't want to deal with all of that talk in the public square, in my school, in my university, in my social places about who I am as a Muslim.

The Da'wah Imperative

And then the third one is that if you care about the da'wah, you should care about this. If you're really about the da'wah of Islam, you should care about it. The Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) did consider public perception. He didn't water down the message to appease public perception, but he did consider public perceptions about Islam and about the Muslim community.

That's why the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) did not kill Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Sadur when he committed a crime of treason by every threshold that you can imagine. He committed that crime of treason. He hurt the community. He tried to kill the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). He tried to create war on the inside. Any country, any nation, any group of people would have found him guilty of execution due to treason.

What did the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) say? He said, I don't want them to say, I don't want them to come and say, that the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) used to kill his companions. So the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ

عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) was aware of that. He thought about that. He considered that in his decision-making. That doesn't mean water down the message. That means, well, I don't want to give them unnecessary fuel so that they can continue to undermine the da'wah itself.

So we're not just trying to pursue some social narrative about why Islam is not violent and hence Muslims should be tolerated. We're clearing the way for people to be able to discover the brilliance of Islam, the beauty of our deen, the beauty of this message.

We have something to say about that. That our religion has something to offer. It's a beautiful religion. And you have to be able to clear those misconceptions and to do so actively in order to do that.

Practical Steps Forward

So I'll end inshaAllah with two things here. Number one, on the credibility front.

Citing Our Track Record

When they said to the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam), we've never heard you lie. We've never experienced a lie for you. There is room for us to actually cite our track record.

So if you talk, first of all, you reject the idea that we should have a threshold for being extraordinary citizens, but we do have a track record as a Muslim community. So when you say, for example, in the American Muslim context, according to the statistics from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, one third of our community being African Americans have been here as early as anyone else. When they tell you go home, we say that our ancestors as Muslims built this country because they were amongst the slaves that were brought to this country.

So you reject that. 10%, if you look at Muslims, they're statistically the most diverse faith group in the United States. The idea that we suppress our women, Muslim women, American women surpass their male counterparts in education.

Statistical Evidence

In Michigan alone, Muslims account for 2.5% of the population. But even though they account for 2.5% of the population, they're 15% of the state's doctors, 10% of the state's pharmacists, 4-5% of their small businesses, and $117 million in Michigan alone was donated to local and international charities in 2015.

In New York, Muslims are 9% of the population, yet they account for more than 9% of the city's doctors, serving over 5 million patients annually, 12% of the state's pharmacists, 11% of its engineers, 1,000 of its police officers, firefighters, 10,000 of its teachers, educating 250,000 kids.

Celebrating Success Stories

You get the point. It's okay to cite the statistics, to cite the track records. To say that you have a person like the founder of Chobani, to celebrate Hamdi, and I don't know how to pronounce his last name, Uluqiya, I think is how you pronounce his last name, who's Turkish, who, as the founder of Chobani Yogurt, gave his 2,000 employees 10% of his company, donated over $750 million to Syrian refugees.

You can cite those examples. You can find the examples like our brother, Rami Nashashibi, who leads an organization called IMAN, Inner City Muslim Action Network, in Chicago, combats urban poverty, establishes health clinics, does so much that our community can take pride in. So we should cite our good examples, and we should amplify those good examples, while rejecting the idea that we have to operate with a threshold that no one else has to operate with.

Proactive Religious Education

And then with our deen, we don't have to wait as Muslims for our backs to always be against the wall to clarify concepts about our Islam. We should be able to read trends about what is being said about our religion, and what's probably gonna be said about our religion, and putting out the proper narratives about that religion as well.

The Game Plan

So the game plan, dear brothers and sisters, for us as a community, number one, knowledge is power. If you're not selling the truth anymore, then you've already failed. But we have to know the truth about our religion, about our community, so that we can amplify it in those spaces. Not only that, by the way, but point to the hypocrisy of those who put our community under the microscope.

Show the agendas of those who try to portray the Muslim community in a certain way, who try to portray Islam in a certain way, so they could continue to ravage the Muslim world, and also in the process, sink this own country into poverty, while destroying the infrastructure of other countries by portraying Muslims and Islam as inherently barbaric.

Balanced Excellence

We highlight excellence while being honest. We have issues as a community. They're not unlike the issues of other communities. And we have to come up with solutions with dealing with those issues. But at the same time, not in arrogance. We have people that we can be proud of, and we can push back on this idea that Muslims have been a negative impact in this country.

Amplifying the Megaphones

Number three, amplify the megaphones. And this is the last one. Obviously, I would tell you to support Yaqeen Institute, because I think it's important for us to be able to put that message out there. Supporting institutes, supporting the megaphones that amplify the true message of Islam in those

positions of power, or in those spaces is important. Supporting institutes like ISPU that collects the data on the Muslim community that pushes back and cites our credibility is important.

Because when we have our space, then we're able to better assert our truth. That's why Ibn Mas'ud said about the Islam of Umar ibn Khattab. When Umar became Muslim, it was a day of victory for Islam. Because it was the first time since Safa that the Muslims were able to go out there publicly and assert their own truth.

Closing Du'a

So we ask Allah to allow us those spaces to be able to assert our truth. We ask Allah to make us dedicated to that truth. We ask Allah with no fear that Islam will ever die. With no fear that Islam will ever die, that He makes us a part of its revival at all times. We ask Allah that we never fear great odds, but we only fear the greatest, Allah.

We ask Allah that He allows us to carry the torch of Islam in all of these places. That He allows us to always show the goodness of Islam and the community without being dishonest to Islam or about the community.

"O Allah, Ameen"