Imam Omar Suleiman: "Human Rights, Faith, and the Border"

By Omar Suleiman | 2026-01-06T17:33:12.21147+00:00 | Topic: Iman

2019 Human Rights@Duke Lecture

Introduction

It's my honor to welcome all of you to the annual Human Rights at Duke lecture. The annual Human Rights at Duke lecture was established in 2018 as a forum for scholars and practitioners to discuss current human rights research and activism. It is a collaboration between the two Duke Human Rights centers here on campus at the Franklin Humanities Institute and at the Kenan Institute of Ethics.

This year, we are also grateful for the support of the Center for Muslim Life, the Muslim Students Association, Duke's Amnesty International, Duke University Middle East Study Center, and the Duke Islamic Studies Center. Together, we would like to welcome Imam Omar Suleiman in giving the 2019 annual Human Rights at Duke lecture on the topic of human rights, faith, and the border.

About Imam Omar Suleiman

Imam Omar Suleiman is a well-known religious leader and theologically driven activist for human rights. He is the founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and an adjunct professor of Islamic studies in the graduate liberal studies program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is also the resident scholar of the Valley Ranch Islamic Center and co-chair emeritus of Faith Forward Dallas at Thanksgiving Square, a multi-faith coalition of clergy for peace and justice.

He frequently writes for news outlets such as CNN, USA Today, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and the Dallas Morning News. And in May 2019, he delivered the invocation in the U.S. House of Representatives at the invitation of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson.

Activism and Border Work

He has been active in community service, interfaith dialogue, and social justice work for a number of years. In July 2019, Imam Suleiman was one of the leaders of the Moral Monday on the Borderlands action that took place in El Paso, Texas. With only weeks of advance notice, more than 500 people showed up to witness what was happening to our brothers and sisters on the border. It was a powerful experience to be surrounded by so many people of faith gathering together for a common purpose to stand up against an injustice felt deeply within.

Some saw this moment in history as a reckoning of the souls. Imam Suleiman has also participated in the Love Knows No Borders, a moral call for migrant justice action that the American Friends Service Committee helped organize when the migrant caravan arrived.

Lecture Begins

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ. Peace be with you all.

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

- We begin in the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful, and we pray that he surrounds us with his mercy and that he brings us together in a way that is unifying and in a way that's productive and in a way that we move beyond simply grieving over the horrific situation that we see at the border and otherwise and actually be mobilized to action.

Structure of the Lecture

So the way that I want to divide this lecture is to actually start with my own personal experience at working at the border and what I've seen at the border and then go from there and transition into how we start to compare this crisis to other situations which we see around the world.

Personal Background

On a personal level, my parents are refugees, my parents are migrants, so I understand that reality in a very different way. My parents are both Palestinian. They met at University of Houston and so my entire reality is American. I was born and raised in New Orleans.

I understood that reality in a very different way because growing up I knew my parents' story but at the same time I hadn't really experienced my parents' reality. They had a very difficult time finding their way in the United States of America but both of them rose to distinguished positions and were able to not just make the most of their situations as far as the individual American dream is concerned but to be very giving people and people that taught us as well to care deeply about refugees.

Faith-Based Perspective on Migration

And then there's the faith-based element of this. As Muslims in particular, where our religion encompasses the prophets of the Old Testament, it encompasses Moses, peace be upon him, and Abraham, peace be upon him, and Jesus, peace be upon him, and of course Muhammad, peace be upon him. All of them share that common story of migration.

They all share that common story of being persecuted and run out by their people. And though Allah is the ultimate caretaker, in those stories you always have another human being on the other side that acts as the vehicle of Allah's mercy that takes them in and that chooses to support them.

The Hijri Calendar

And so there's that faith story that it was always a vehicle of Allah's mercy on the other end of that migration that took those prophets in and that championed their rights and supported them even if they didn't necessarily believe in the calling that caused them to be driven out in the first place. So there's that

idea of prophethood and where we stand with the prophets of Allah and that their story is so deeply intertwined with the story of migration to the point that in Islam our calendar is known as the Hijri calendar. It's the calendar of migration.

We start our calendar by the migration of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, fleeing persecution received by the people of Medina at that time, Yathrib, and taking him in and sharing their resources with the Prophet, peace be upon him, and knowing that by sharing with the Prophet and sharing with those that migrated with him that their society would be enriched and that they would be enriched spiritually as well as socially by the presence of those blessed people that were fleeing those detrimental circumstances.

The Ansar: A Model of Unity

And there's something to be said also about how the people of Medina, for those of you that are familiar with the Islamic story of Medina, the people of Medina had their own tribal divisions and were trying to find their own identity but were ultimately united in supporting another group of people. And in offering themselves, they found the best of themselves in championing the Muhajireen, championing those that migrated from Mecca, and gained the collective identity of being the Ansar, of being the supporters, the helpers.

Literally the name of the people of Medina, those tribes became the helpers. And they were too busy helping the other that became of them to fight amongst each other anymore. And so there's something to be said about our politics as well as a country when people are united in good that usually causes things that potentially could pit them against one another to dwindle in importance.

Because there's a common unifying purpose of good that brings out the best of ourselves and tribalism feasts on the lowest of ourselves. And so that is the story of our religion. That's the story of our faith.

Migration Ethics in Islam

And from a migration ethics perspective, I did a lecture series of which I'm compiling a book right now, Forty on Justice, Forty Prophetic Traditions on Justice. If you search up the lecture series, Forty Hadiths on Social Justice. One of them was about migration ethics in Islam and how we draw from that. And I also had the blessing of co-authoring a letter with Imam Zaid Shakir to the Muslim community as we launched the Muslims for Migrants campaign, paying bail money for migrant parents and reuniting them with their families that talks about migration ethics in Islam.

Experience at the Syrian Border

Now, where does my journey with this start? It actually doesn't start at the border of Texas and Mexico. It actually starts in Syria. Since the massacre of the Syrian people had led them to Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Greece, all over the world, some even in Dallas, Texas, where we are, I had the opportunity over a few

years to actually go to the border of Syria, sometimes because of the political situation at the border, actually enter into Dara'a, into Syria, and work with the refugees there, depending on who controlled the border at the time, particularly the Jordanian and the Syrian border.

My first time going to the Syrian border to do work with the refugees gave this entire discussion a new element for me. I have young children, and every time I met children, they seemed to be of the same age as my children. I kept on finding that the names were similar to the names that were known to me.

My mother was born in Damascus. I'd never been to Syria before the war. And there were two combating emotions as I was leaving those camps, and I had the opportunity to go four times. One was the emotion of humanizing the refugees and the people that had been not just tortured and not just having a piece of their lives or their family members taken away from them, but actually creating a human connection with them and feeling activated for their cause in an entirely different way.

But the second one was every time you finish doing refugee work, when you drive out of camps, anyone that's ever been to refugee camps, you can't help but be overcome by despair when you realize that you're driving miles and miles and miles away, and there are no lights, and there are no comfortable accommodations that make the nightmare go away for them.

Family Separation Policy

And you may have helped 100, but you just saw tents that encompass 100,000 people. So you start to wonder, well, am I really making a difference here? Am I really making a change? So family separation, the family separation policy was handed down by the Trump administration last year. And, of course, that was brought to the attention of the American people, the images of family separation, some elements of which took place under the Obama administration as well, but certainly the country had become acquainted with this topic of family separation in a whole different way.

Experience at McAllen, Texas

And I and a group of people went to McAllen, Texas, where children that were taken from their families were put and are put in warehouses, warehouses for tires and glass and all other sorts of materials that have been converted into children detention centers, child detention centers that we pay hundreds of dollars for each child on a daily basis from our taxes, where people are sleeping on concrete floors with no windows and no one to actually hold the administrators of those camps accountable or to do proper medical checkups or to give proper legal access to those children that are in those centers.

As we protested outside those detention centers, we noticed there was a bus that was coming out that was full of children. And at that time, of course, we acted instinctively. We surrounded the bus in protest. We didn't really know what we were going to do with the bus, but we were all driven to surround the bus in protest. And we were able to hold the bus for about 20 minutes with those children on board.

The Moment at the Bus Window

And that's when I had a chance to actually walk up to the bus and the windows were deeply tinted and I could see the children through the windows. And so I put my hand up on the glass and the children on the bus started to congregate around that row and each one of them would put their hand on my hand on the glass. Some of them were crying. Some were smiling. Some were waving. Some would just put their hand up and stare at me with absolutely no expression, the same blank expression that I'd seen in the faces of the children of Syria.

And it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through in my life because it was as if there was another realm of people that were permanently and physically removed from me that I could not even speak to because I couldn't hear their voices. I could see that some of them were crying, but I couldn't actually hear their cries. And perhaps if we were able to converse, I wouldn't have even been able to understand what they were saying because I wouldn't speak their languages.

But for those moments, putting your hand on a glass, those of you that are familiar with the cruelty of the prison experience in the United States where families, where a father or mother will interact with their child only through glass, putting hands on glass and looking those children in the eyes and praying for them, but not being able to touch them, not being able to comfort them, not being able to hand them a toy, not being able to give them a bottle of water, not being able to offer any type of comfort whatsoever except for those moments of connecting, never knowing their names, never knowing their stories, just knowing that these were a bunch of children that were ripped away from their families and being transported from warehouse to warehouse.

The Parallel Images

And then I started to realize, you look at these two images, one of them is Tornillo, Texas. The other one is the Zaatari refugee camp, the biggest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. The images become identical. You start to see children in tents, you start to see people that live in inhumane conditions. The biggest difference between what I saw in Zaatari and Mafraq in the Syrian tents and what I saw in Tornillo, Texas, was the presence of military in Tornillo, Texas.

Experience at Tornillo, Texas

I had the opportunity to go to Tornillo, Texas, which was known as tent city, due to an order given by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, where we could offer pastoral care to the children. We were not allowed to take pictures, we were not allowed to share anything of the identity of the children that we would work with, but we were allowed to go pray with them. I took it.

A few of us from Dallas decided to actually travel to Tornillo a few times and to work with the children there. I, not speaking Spanish, or some of the other languages present in the refugees from El Salvador

The Quran and the Sunnah

So, I want to talk about the Quran and the Sunnah. I want to talk about the Quran and the Sunnah, because I think that it's important to understand that the Quran is the literal word of God. It is the literal word of Allah. It is the literal word of God. And the Sunnah is the example of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم). It is his example. It is his life. It is his teachings. It is his wisdom. It is his guidance. And so, the Quran and the Sunnah are the two primary sources of Islamic law and guidance.

And so, I want to talk about the Quran and the Sunnah, because I think that it's important to understand that the Quran is the literal word of God. It is the literal word of Allah. It is the literal word of God. And the Sunnah is the example of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم). It is his example. It is his life. It is his teachings. It is his wisdom. It is his guidance. And so, the Quran and the Sunnah are the two primary sources of Islamic law and guidance.

The Quran

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And so if you think about this idea that, you know, that someone actually thought that it was a good idea to create a military-like force and allocate billions and billions of dollars every year annually to send this militarized force through impoverished communities of schools and places of worship and courthouses and stop people in Walmart parking lots and ask them for their passports and then strip them away from their families and put them into the system where those same private detention centers are fed, and putting that family in permanent detriment was a good idea, and it's for the safety of the United States of America, then we need to have a broader discussion.

What I always tell people is that before we could talk about abolishing ICE, we need to talk about abolishing the premise of ICE because it's a false premise, an entirely false premise that the agency was founded on.

Personal Experience with ICE

After Muslim Ban, Dallas has the largest ICE raids around the country, and after Muslim Ban, just a week after Muslim Ban, there was a well-known honest man that was picked up by ICE in the community, and his children for that week, grown children, were urinating on themselves in school because every day when they went to school, they were wondering if their father was going to be home when they came home, and you think about that fear that's created in the community now where honest, hard-working people who have tried to do things right but ended up in a horrific situation where their papers expired, and due to technicalities and loopholes and other things, they were not able to gain legal documentation, and now they've got their heads down.

The Broader Impact

They're just trying to do what's right for their families, but people are afraid of who? They're afraid of law enforcement. They're afraid of any type of public situation which could lend itself to this militarized force raiding and picking up a because they're brown, and putting them in ICE detention centers, ultimately deporting them, and leaving their family in consistent peril.

You think about that and the ethical stain that that leaves on our country, that we have accepted that as normal, that it's okay for children in Mississippi whose parents were trying to make an honest living in these plants, taking low-paying jobs, waiting for us to figure out our immigration issue, are on the streets begging for sandwiches and for water, and if you ask yourself, you know, is that anything? Does that do anything to make us safer? Does it do anything to make us better? Because often we pit those two things against each other. Does it make us safer? Does it make us better? Is this something that we're okay with? Because it's not just at the border. The border crisis exists in the inner cities in America.

Personal Incident

I actually share with you something very personal that happened with me on Wednesday. On Wednesday night, I was driving to teach class at SMU, or I was in a car on my way to class at SMU. One of my students was driving, and as we were exiting the highway, there was a rainbow, and he was remarking on how beautiful that rainbow was, and he was talking about how the cars are stopping, you know, slowing down because they're looking at that beautiful rainbow.

Just as he says that, we get popped in the back, just as he says that, and pull over, and it's a young undocumented man who is shivering and crying because he says, I was just looking at the rainbow. Please don't call the police and get me taken away from my children. I'll do anything. Here's my passport. I have cash. Whatever it is, I'll fix your car, but I have a three-year-old. I have a one-year-old. I was just looking at the rainbow, and you know what? We didn't call the police, and I thought to myself, you know, at that moment, what a blatant injustice that if that was me driving that car, and I happen to be looking at the rainbow, and I pop someone by accident, then you pull over to the side, call the police, call the insurance companies, and it becomes a nuisance. It becomes an incident, but at the same time, I have no fear whatsoever of going back home and living the rest of my life normally, but it struck home.

It actually struck me five days ago, and this is the paranoia and the culture that we are creating here within our inner cities.

Solutions and Alternatives

If you talk about the way that we are failing to process the over 800 legal asylum cases that exist at the border right now, as those people that came through Dallas response, we had white supremacist protesters that were threatening to blow up the church because we were taking people that had legal asylum cases processed, but just did not have the opportunity to connect to their sponsors. What does it mean to expand the legal avenues of immigration so that people do not have to resort to these types of situations in the first place? What does it mean to provide a pathway for dreamers who are just as American as anybody else, who know nothing but an American reality, except that it's not reflected on paper, and not just provide a pathway for them, but their parents who have also come here and made an honest living for themselves and for their children?

Community Visa Idea

And then you start to have some of the more substantive discussions. Beto O'Rourke has a very interesting part of his immigration plan called the community visa idea. And the community visa idea reflects the Canadian system, where communities are actually able to sponsor refugees, take care of refugees, not sponsor them entirely, but sponsor them to the point that they can ensure that their basic needs are met. Why not give the American people and these places of worship a chance to actually rise to the best version of themselves, especially places of worship that have been at the front lines of combating other types of societal ills that plague our community? Why not allow them to rise? If we had

a substantive discussion about what it means to decriminalize crossing into the border, once again, there's this idea that things are historically applied.

Decriminalization of Border Crossing

And so when you say decriminalize crossing the border, illegally crossing the border, it sounds like what you're talking about is letting ISIS and all sorts of horrific gangs overrun the border. The reality is that even though there were laws that criminalized crossing into the border or crossing the border for years and years and years that are actually historical, more historical than ICE, they were not actually enforced until the Bush years. And I don't recall us having this massive immigration problem in the 90s where gangs ran the border and the country started to fall apart because suddenly you had illegal immigrants that were coming into the country and forming all sorts of cities within cities, right? So these are challenging and substantive discussions that we have to have.

Healthcare and Immigration

You saw the Democratic presidential candidates when the question of healthcare came up, when you talk about universal healthcare. Do you also mean universal healthcare for illegal immigrants? Oh my God, no, wait, hold on. We have no issues taking taxes or social security from people who are undocumented. Shouldn't there be a basic ethical function of what you put into the system, you get back as a guaranteed right? And so the challenge becomes how do we actually start to form a moral framework that addresses these issues, not in isolation of one another, but in a comprehensive way?

Moral Framework

And so I want to put forth a few ideas here and then I'll open it up to Q&A. Number one, the value of a human being, the sanctity of a human being, and actually looking at the sanctity of a human being as the foundation for any discussion of any person, whether they are American citizens, legal immigrants, or migrants that are undocumented, starting with the value of a human being.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Evolution

And I actually want to read a statement from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that I found very important to this discussion. I had the blessing of being at University of Michigan last week and I gave a lecture on the intersecting legacies of Malcolm and Martin. And one of the things about Dr. King is that in those last three years of his life, his view on Vietnam, not just his policy on Vietnam, but the evolution of what he was saying about the Vietnam War is very instructive.

When Dr. King first challenged the Vietnam War, he challenged it on the basis of America spending money on war while it had plenty to spend on here in the United States. If we could not rid ourselves of poverty and the horrific conditions that take place domestically here in the United States, how could we

send these tens of millions of dollars to war and destroy other countries in the process? And then it evolved into something else.

Dr. King started to talk about how we were sending off people that did not have liberties here in the United States to fight for that same liberty that they were being deprived of. Sending African Americans off to war to fight for liberties, to guarantee liberties and freedom that they were not experiencing in any substantive form at the moment.

The Revolution of Values

And then if you look at 67 and 68, before Dr. King was assassinated, something happens in his thinking and in his speeches. He starts to talk about the war from the perspective of Vietnam, of the children on the other side, of the people that were experiencing war, not just from this side of the barrel, but the other side. And Dr. King said something that I find stunning in this regard.

He said, a genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. Imagine then what Dr. King would say to America first, with the implications that that statement actually comes with.

Starting with Human Dignity

And so you start from a moral framework, which is seeing every human being essentially as a human being that has their dignity protected, and that when we take care of other people, that when we open ourselves to cater, to care, to show compassion for other human beings, that it brings out the best of our patriotism, it brings out the best of our humanity, it brings the best out of our religious beliefs as well. You get to see people, you know, there's this concept in the Quran of people competing in good. You get to see religious communities competing to do good, competing in this belief, not just that every human being is a human being that has God-given rights, but every human being is honored and dignified by Allah, and to not honor and dignify that human being is actually to not honor Allah himself.

The Prophetic Tradition

To take it into that dimension, there's a beautiful prophetic tradition. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that on the Day of Judgment, Allah will say to a person:

يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ مَرِضْتُ فَلَمْ تَعُدْنِي. فَيَقُولُ: يَا رَبِّ، كَيْفَ أَعُودُكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ؟ فَيَقُولُ: أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّ عَبْدِي فُلَانًا مَرِضَ فَلَمْ تَعُدْهُ، أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّكَ لَوْ عُدْتَهُ لَوَجَدْتَنِي عِنْدَهُ. يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ، اسْتَطْعَمْتُكَ فَلَمْ تُطْعِمْنِي. فَيَقُولُ: يَا رَبِّ، كَيْفَ أُطْعِمُكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ؟ فَيَقُولُ: أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّ عَبْدِي فُلَانًا اسْتَطْعَمَكَ فَلَمْ تُطْعِمْهُ، أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّكَ لَوْ أَطْعَمْتَهُ لَوَجَدْتَ ذَلِكَ عِنْدِي. يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ، اسْتَسْقَيْتُكَ فَلَمْ تَسْقِنِي. فَيَقُولُ: يَا رَبِّ كَيْفَ أَسْقِيكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ؟ فَيَقُولُ: أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّ عَبْدِي فُلَانًا اسْتَسْقَاكَ فَلَمْ تَسْقِهِ، أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّكَ لَوْ سَقَيْتَهُ لَوَجَدْتَ ذَلِكَ عِنْدِي

O son of Adam, I was sick and you did not visit me. I was poor and you did not provide for me. I was hungry and you did not feed me. And so the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that a person would say to Allah, O Allah, how could I feed you and you are the Lord of the Worlds? And Allah would say that, don't you know that my servant, so-and-so, was hungry and had you fed him, you would have found my reward with him. O Allah, how could I provide for you and you are the Lord of the Worlds? Don't you know my servant, so-and-so, was poor and had you provided for him, you would have found my reward with him. O Allah, how could I visit you and you are the Lord of the Worlds? And he says, don't you know that my servant, so-and-so, was ill and had you visited my servant, you would have found me with him.

(Muslim 2569)

The Essence of Human Dignity

So this idea of actually starting, operating first and foremost from a premise that every child is dignified and honored by Allah and when you don't honor and dignify that child, you are dishonoring yourself, you are dehumanizing yourself. Dr. King talked about racism not just being dehumanizing to the victim of racism but to the racist themselves. You are rendering yourself inhuman when you don't act upon basic human instincts that are put in you by the divine.

Policy and Foreign Policy Connection

And so when we talk about America first and we talk about protecting our borders, what does it mean to protect our soul as a country, our actual soul as a nation? When we talk about domestic policy, can we really talk about domestic policy without talking about our foreign policy? And if we talk about reparations in this country as the right thing to do because America has a past with its citizens now as well, an inequity that has never been resolved. And so when we talk about reparations here, how do we broaden that to an ethical framework that you do actually bear some responsibility to fix the mess that you have created, be it domestic or abroad, that you do bear a responsibility to people who you have put in a detrimental situation.

America's Role in the World

When we talk about America thriving, can we talk about America thriving not in spite of the world but actually through being a productive citizen of the world as a nation? You know, it's always stunning to me that when we talk about these issues, we act like we don't have a legal framework or a policy place to start. There are immigration advocacy groups that do have it figured out, you know. They do actually have it worked out as to what an ethical policy looks like in dealing with the border. And I can tell you that none of those discussions revolve around a wall.

Beyond the Wall

Document

The problem is not a wall or a lack of a wall. The wall represents something. The wall represents a low-base white nativism, but it's not actually about a wall, is it? Because you don't have people really climbing a wall. You have people stuck in bodas, you have people stuck at the border, you have people either in refugee camps on the other side or in concentration camps on our side. You have people in these horrific situations, and then you have an unfounded fear, a baseless fear that distracts from the real fear that we should be having in our country, that our country is imploding not because of illegal immigrants, not because of people on the outside or conditions that are caused from the outside. Our country is imploding for unresolved American issues, unresolved Native problems.

But through the lens of white nativism, we've made it about a wall and keeping people out. The reality is that we can be enriched by immigration, that we have been enriched by immigration, that people that have come to this country, that those that have migrated to this country have been of the most productive citizens, and I use the word citizens in an unintentionally to it. They have been productive, they have worked to the enrichment of this country, they have lived in fear due to irrational fear that causes them to live in that perpetual uncertainty, and we have a responsibility as people of faith and people of no faith to not just challenge our country to act in a more dignified fashion towards them, but to challenge our country to live up to its purported ideals.

Q&A Session

Question 1: Priorities - Relief vs. Prevention

Question: What our priorities should be as a nation. Should we direct our priorities to providing relief to these countries that we have wronged in the past, or should we direct our attention to treating the refugees with better conditions?

Answer: I think the first thing is to not allow those two issues to be pit against one another. And so it was very interesting when Muslim Ban happened. Around that same time, I think it was a few months afterwards, that Trump had bombed certain facilities in Syria, I don't remember which ones, because he talked about how he was just enraged when he saw the chemical attacks used by the Assad regime and felt compelled to actually take action, to take military action against Syria.

And a lot of people cheered that on, and it was sort of like, you do realize that the same people that you've turned away from our border in Muslim Ban, and people don't realize the restriction. I don't know how many Syrian refugees actually were admitted into the country in 2018. I know that in 2017, I believe it was only 18 people, total, 18 total Syrian refugees that actually were admitted into our shores.

It's the same people here, right? So I think that a lot of times we inherit cognitive dissonance that exists with policymakers, because we feel like that's the only language that we can speak with and the only way we can make things make sense to people. And I think it's important for us to push back on that and to say, look, it's upon us to not just help refugees, but to play a productive role in stopping the situations that are turning them into refugees.

That these refugees should be sources of hope, not sources of fear, sources of inspiration. Whether they're here or whether they're abroad, that they're human beings, and sort of insisting on that essential human value. So I think from an activist perspective, or from the things that we do, I do think it's, I think we have the capacity to do both.

Question 2: Family Separation

Question: I appreciate the broad view that you've given for the need for immigration policy, but I'm wondering in the visits that you made to refugee camps, did you come across any reason why children were being separated from parents? And more importantly, did you encounter any reasons by which they're going to try to put children again with their parents?

Answer: I can tell you that, so I had the opportunity to go to, most recently to Juarez with Reverend Barber actually, Duke alumni, right, and the Poor People's Campaign. And we had a multi-faith coalition that went to Juarez. It was really interesting because you drive into Juarez, which is, you know, they call it the most dangerous place in the world, and you actually don't even go through a checkpoint. There's no immigration. It's sort of like go at your own risk.

So no one even checks your papers before you go in there. You literally drive into Mexico and start to drive through those camps, and it's at your own risk. And they have the Stay in Mexico program, and so every single person, it was just really, what struck me was that unlike the refugee crisis, every single person had a story that just seemed more tragic than the other.

So I'll give you an example. There was a mother whose two-year-old child is an American citizen, but she's undocumented, and she's in one of those camps in Juarez. She literally held her child out and said, can you just get him across the border, and I'll just die out here. I want him to have a chance at life. And you think about that, and that's why I think about demonizing and vilifying the parents. These parents are so selfless.

Question 3: Misinformation and Media

Question: Firstly, thank you for sharing these stories with us. In terms of the process of dehumanization, there's a lot of misinformation, right? So a significant majority of people don't know that much of the people in detention centers are legal asylum seekers. So how do we as people, but also content creators and journalists and consumers of social media tackle that irresponsibility and that misinformation?

Answer: I think I might not, I alluded to this, but let me just be more explicit. Immigration advocacy groups have done extensive research on this stuff, on the policy level. So like in Texas, it's ISIS, right? And the United Dream Team, North Texas Dream Team, and so many other groups that have just done incredible work on the policy side of this, where people need to be educated on the policy.

So I think writing op-eds is very important, and trying to get op-eds situated is very important to where you just challenge these false narratives that exist about people, that exist about immigrants. The second thing is the human side of this. I'm a big Maya Angelou fan, and so when I went to Syria, there was this quote of hers that just penetrated me.

When you would talk to the people, at first there was a great skepticism, right? Like they don't really feel like talking, there's that blink, and then when they start to open up to you, then they tell you everything about their lives. Everything about their lives, right? They'll tell you where they came from, they'll tell you what they used to have, and why it was taken away from them, and I used to be this, and I used to be that, because they haven't been heard for years, and years, and years, and years, so they just open up.

Maya Angelou said that there's no greater agony than an untold story inside. When you feel like you have a story that hasn't been told, it is agony. When all people see you as are a bunch of scattered refugees and poor people that are trying to take their stuff, it's like I had an identity, I was not a refugee, I was not a migrant, I had something, I am somebody, right? I am somebody, you know? That concept.

So storytelling is important, and I think that there's the bridge here. The Aylan al-Qurdi and the Jacqueline Cowell, the bridge here is that you need to have the story, generate the momentum from the story, and then have a clear policy path that is articulated in the midst of that story, as that momentum is created, and then push for it.

Question 4: Personal Motivation and Student Action

Question: So I was wondering, as students in North Carolina, we're far away from the border. We're not religiously skilled in any way to do that kind of work, so what are tangible steps that we can take to address this border issue, but also more than that, all the work that's being done, often you don't see palpable outcomes of that. You don't see any impact of it, so in the process of doing so, how do you keep yourself motivated and keep going to fight this battle every single day?

Answer: So again, there's this element of analysis paralysis. It's just too much going on, so I can't do anything. You can do something. You have a role to play. I don't know which groups in particular work out here that do immigration advocacy. Can anyone shout some of them out? Church World Service. Islamic Relief does work out here. Reverend Barber's Poor People's Campaign out here.

So I think connecting with those groups and seeing what we can do to uplift them and just playing a part in being a volunteer and being an extra person to help them. And you'd be amazed how shorthanded these groups are, even these major issues that actually dominate our political discourse. Like you'd be amazed how little volunteers these groups can usually find to actually just do some of the legwork that's necessary to make meaningful change in these things.

So I think connect with some of these groups and see what you can do to make meaningful change in your capacity. And your job is not to solve the crisis. Your job is to do your part in solving it and to amplify it so that we can collectively solve it. So kind of removing it from the individual domain into the collective domain.

This country needs to be very uncomfortable right now. It really needs to be uncomfortable. And the border is not on El Paso. The border is in your ICE detention centers here. It's not in El Paso. It's here as well.

Question 5: The Howdy Modi Rally

Question: Good evening, and thank you. My question is, what do you think of this new phenomena that was starkly evident in Houston, Texas yesterday with the Howdy Modi rally, wherein 50,000 immigrants who were in the stadium, they cheered about the bragging of Prime Minister Modi about 11 million people from Kashmir being held in an open-air prison, 50 days and counting, and cheered President Trump when he talked about making more stringent policies for the border? These were 50,000 immigrants who happened fighting for their minority and immigration rights, and they cheered President Trump talking about making the border more stringent. How do we counter that phenomena, and what do you think of that?

Answer: I was in the protest on the outside, and I can say that we probably had, I was in Houston yesterday, we probably had 20,000 to 30,000 people on the outside, too. So that was very encouraging, a diverse group. That was a diverse group of people outside in Houston heat, which is not easy to deal with, protesting what was going on on the inside.

Let me just say this. People ask me, they counter, and they say Trump's Muslim ban is not really a Muslim ban, because he didn't ban all Muslims. He didn't put it on all Muslim countries. I tell people, Trump doesn't hate Muslims. Trump loves rich Muslims that give him money to do horrible things. Trump, he's got his resorts in some of these countries. He's making money off of some of these countries. He will put his hand in the hand of any Muslim dictator that's going to further enable his global policy.

When it comes to white supremacy and the global rise of fascism, it was really interesting, because the name, what's his name, Breivik, who carried out the massacre in Norway a few years ago, Andrew Breivik, actually cited the RSS, cited Modi's group as inspiration for his white supremacist attack, because he saw, quote unquote, Hindu fascism.

And I hate to use the word Hindu, because the real Hindus were the ones that were protesting with us against Modi yesterday. I don't like to assign that to a religion, but this group of nationalists and fascists in India have been an inspiration to white supremacist movements globally. And so people are not looking at this through the lens of color. They're looking at it through the lens of nationalism. And they're looking at it through the lens of fascism.

The Global Rise of Fascism

And the reality is that I had, look, I went to Christchurch after that massacre in March, that terrorist attack in March. And I read through that manifesto. We are importing fascism now. We are importing terror. As much as the world is looking at what's taking place in our country right now and repelled and disgusted by it, these nationalist movements are gaining traction. Steve Bannon is going around Europe, riling them up, and using America as a successful project, as an example of a successful project.

So what changed? Modi was banned from the only person ever. It's just incredible. The only person ever banned from entering the United States under the International Religious Freedom Act was Modi for the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat. What changed to where he was given this glorious welcome last night? By the way, not just by Republicans. There were some Democratic congresspeople in there, too. You know what changed? Money.

It was those people, some of them who deem themselves allies to the Muslim community, were standing up on the stage handing him these gifts while Trump and Modi shouted or played to these fascist sentiments. Ted Cruz, Cornyn, of course, did their thing. You also had Democrats that were there, too. The problem is that it's fascism and then the inability to take a principled stand against fascism that continues to enable it to grow.

The Unity of Oppression

And so why? Because this isn't really about color. It's not about religion. It's about power. It's about power. And so nationalism, though it may have different iterations around the world, it is one ideology, similar to how European white supremacy is no different from American white supremacy. Nationalism is one hateful ideology.

So my message to people is if tyrants recognize a shared stake in one another, then it's about time that oppressed people recognize their shared stake in one another, as well, and that we stop looking at causes and look at the cause. Unite those causes as one. So if it's an occupation here, an occupation there. If it's apartheid here, apartheid there. If it's terror there, it's terror here. It doesn't matter who the victim is, because the hate that it's operating out of is the same.

So it's important to tie those movements together, not as a means of diminishing those movements or disproportionately assigning efforts to some of them over others, but as a means of recognizing our shared interests and working together, our shared humanity and repelling it.

Hope in Diversity

So I'll be honest with you. I was very encouraged with the amount of people that came to the protest outside. And I was so encouraged by the diversity of the people that were at that protest. I mean, you had the amount of people that came from the Sikh community to that protest. It was absolutely beautiful. You had people that have no connection whatsoever to India or Pakistan or Kashmir, but they were all there. People that drove, took buses from around the country to be there at that counter protest. So that's where my hope lies.

It lies in the fact that there was a greater diversity of people on the outside than there was on the inside that were cheering on that hateful ideology.

Please join me in thanking Imam Suleiman one more time. Thank you so much.