Perennial Spring - Sheikha Muslema Purmul
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00:00This is my last session with you all at MSA West, and again, it's an honor to be here.
00:16I have a very short amount of time and a lot of material to cover, and I'm not usually good at doing that, so bear with me if I'm speaking a little bit fast.
00:26I wanted us to think about some more of American history that we draw the legacy of MSA West from.
00:32As a matter of fact, the original founding vision of MSA West was to draw from both the American Civil Rights Movement and the global Islamic movements around the world.
00:41This was in the original founding documents.
00:45I got involved with MSA West in the year 2000, two years after Brother Ali.
00:50When I first got involved, there were things that I thought were...
00:56Initially, it put me off as being just different, and I didn't understand it.
01:00So I went to local religious leaders to ask them about it, and to be honest, they didn't give me good advice.
01:06I went to them, and I said, you know, there's this new organization called MSA West, and they want to, you know, be about unity and about bridging the different gaps between the Muslim community and work together.
01:17And unfortunately, the religious leader that I had gone to said something along the lines of, they include the Shia, with a chuckle, you know, as if that's something that means you shouldn't get involved with them, somehow they're deviant.
01:29And I still went to the delegates meeting, I didn't, at the time when I heard it, I knew it's wrong, right?
01:36When you hear something like that, internally you know that's not the way a Muslim is supposed to respond.
01:41So I still went to the delegates meeting, and when I attended, I found a beautiful example of what that vision of MSA West was.
01:49People who came from very different backgrounds.
01:52Yes, there were Shia and Sunni in the same room.
01:55There were people who, young people who belonged to the different Muslim organizations, whether it be Mas, or Ikna, or Isna, or Sabaqoon, or whatnot that existed back then.
02:06And they were in one room talking together about working for Islam in America, and working for social causes in America, not just Muslim issues.
02:15So this is something that was inspiring to me, and I began to listen to what they had to offer, and realized that I needed to take, to think critically about what I was being told in my own community.
02:27And so I give this advice again to all of you, is to think very critically about the messages you may receive here and there, and go back to what are the values, the universal values of Islam.
02:37If it feels wrong, a lot of times it is.
02:40If you're hearing a message of discrimination, of hate towards your fellow Muslim brother, of deviancy, of the kind of takfir, you know, this person may not even be Muslim, all of that stuff is a signal that you're not getting good advice.
02:55And when you get involved with MSA West, again, you get to experience the beauty of something else, the beauty that diversity and unity can bring.
03:03So thinking about the two legacies that MSA West was meant to draw on, thinking about the civil rights movement, I want to ask this audience, my show of hands, how many of you are familiar with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee?
03:19Oh, that's very bad.
03:22Snick, how many of you are familiar with the Black Panthers?
03:26Okay, alhamdulillah, that's better.
03:28Nation of Islam?
03:30Okay, better.
03:32And there's, you know, many other civil rights organizations that we should be familiar with.
03:37If the founding vision is to be inspired by these legacies, then I would argue that it is the job of the MSA West worker and the MSA worker to study these legacies.
03:48And if you can't read a book, at least watch a documentary.
03:52There are plenty of documentaries out there.
03:54I encourage you to study and read for yourself, because it's inspiring to especially the autobiographers and people who are involved at this time.
04:01Just some information that I wanted to share.
04:04Snick was actually started in 1960 by someone named Ella Baker, and this was because a series of meetings that were held by students, you know, young students like yourselves, at Shaw University.
04:17And even though it was started in the South, it spread all over America, and they have institutions all over America.
04:23They held sit-ins.
04:25What is a sit-in?
04:27You guys know what a sit-in is?
04:29Okay, good.
04:30It's not just protesting in terms of holding up signs.
04:34It's actually the areas where there is segregation, whether it be hospitals, whether it be libraries, whether it be lunch counters, deliberately sitting in the areas that they were told they were not allowed to sit in.
04:45Freedom rights.
04:46How many of you guys know what freedom rights are?
04:48Okay, good.
04:49Freedom rights, another controversial thing to do, an act of, I wouldn't necessarily even call it civil disobedience, because they found the loopholes in the law which would allow them to do things that people were uncomfortable with.
05:02And I think that that's kind of the example that I think the UCI 11 took.
05:07But what they would do is local areas would not allow, you know, would have segregated transportation, so they would take national transits into these local areas deliberately because they were able to somehow bypass the local law and culture and then be able to expose the people of that place to integration.
05:301963, the March on Washington, Mississippi's Freedom Summer, these are all events that we should try to get to know more about.
05:37But they say that what was their biggest contribution was actually field work.
05:41So I want us to think about this.
05:43The biggest contribution was not the big events.
05:45The biggest contribution was their on-the-ground work with the people, and specifically their voter registration drives.
05:51So getting people who were otherwise disenfranchised to get them involved in the voting and political process.
05:58There's more to say about this, but I want to continue.
06:02I want to say there's two values that I thought were amazing about them.
06:07Later on, Stokely Carmichael got involved with them, and also they focused on both black power as well as they joined the anti-war movement being against what was going on in Vietnam.
06:18They had a principle that they called participatory democracy.
06:24What that basically meant was that instead of voting on an issue, majority rules, they believed in trying to bring about a consensus.
06:35So they would make shura, the Islamic concept of shura, consensus, was something that they practiced.
06:43And they said they were unique in this as a student organization, as a civil rights organization.
06:47Most other civil rights organizations were top-down in their approach.
06:51But SNCC was actually bottom-up.
06:53And this is something that we have to think about in terms of MSA West.
06:57Are we top-down, or are we embodying our own values that are being practiced by other civil rights organizations, which is consensus, building shura.
07:08Moving on to other organizations, I'm not going to go into depth about their histories, but I want to say this.
07:15When you look at Nation of Islam, or you look at the Black Panthers, one of the things that I was astounded with when I did a quick search even on their social programs,
07:25is that it wasn't just political protests that they were involved in, but they were heavily involved in serving people.
07:32Serving underprivileged people.
07:34That was a big part of their platform.
07:36When I looked at the institutions that were built by the Black Panthers, 65, not just events, 65 institutions to serve people.
07:48They had a free breakfast program.
07:50They had community food pantries.
07:52They had health clinics.
07:53And again, these were organizations that were primarily run by young people.
07:57We're talking about people in their 20s.
08:00You look at the Nation of Islam.
08:02Even to this day, the Nation of Islam is involved in building clinics and providing services.
08:08So you can differ about an organization's approach or philosophy, but one thing we can't deny is how much they did to help serve poor and underprivileged people.
08:17The social issue is huge, and it's something that I think our community has neglected.
08:23And again, when you look at the worldwide or global Islamic movements, wherever they are, you do find a lot of social programs.
08:30And what really hurts me is when I find someone who lived and experienced a Muslim movement that was heavily involved in social movements.
08:41Things that got rid of prostitution and gave employment.
08:43You know, building trade schools.
08:45Feeding the hungry in Ramadan.
08:47They were involved in all of these social institutions in the Muslim world.
08:51Then they come over to America, and they forget that element of Islam even exists.
08:56You become completely isolated in the masjid.
09:00You're just focused on your Quran halaqas.
09:04Focused on the religious programming.
09:06And you came out of a history and a legacy of people that helped the poor.
09:12That helped those who were in need in different ways.
09:15And so what I'm proposing to MSA West is to go back to your own founding vision.
09:21For the students, study your own vision.
09:24And it's not so that you can become sectarian or whatnot.
09:27It's to go back to the universal values that created MSA West to begin with.
09:32Just to mention some of the basics of MSA West history.
09:36When I got involved, I found out that it was fiqh balanced.
09:39Which meant that it didn't necessarily take a position on fiqh issues.
09:42And it embraced, I guess, the spectrum of fiqh opinions that exist out there.
09:49They also said that they were gender balanced.
09:51They wanted to have not only the inclusion of sisters, but equal inclusion of sisters.
09:57They were non-sectarian. We mentioned that.
10:01And in terms of political issues, they tended to look at things a little bit differently than the rest of the Muslim community did.
10:07So the older institutions, for example, if there was a terrorist threat or bombing in America,
10:15the way that older institutions would respond, of course, would be to condemn these bombings.
10:19MSA West would condemn these terrorist acts at home.
10:23And in the same press release, condemn terrorist acts done around the world.
10:27So this is a difference. This is a difference in approach.
10:30Meaning, yes, we're absolutely against the killing of innocent people.
10:34But we're against that wherever it happens and whoever is blameworthy for that.
10:38And this is an important approach to take.
10:40And sometimes the other institutions didn't necessarily have the courage or the willpower to put this out as part of their press release.
10:47But the students did.
10:48And it's an important example.
10:51And I remember when these press releases would come out, members of the older generation in the community having their morale lifted.
10:57Being proud. Being inspired.
10:59Feeling that the students have the right to lead the community.
11:03Because of the fact that they were able to take these positions on a public level.
11:07The other thing that MSA West was associated with is looking into the subcultures within America that heavily associate with being socially conscious,
11:20rather than trying to fit into the dominant paradigm.
11:23We're not trying to get white people to like us.
11:27It's not the approach of MSA West.
11:31We're not trying to not upset white people.
11:34And I say this, and I don't want to...
11:36My husband is white, so this is not supposed to be racially...
11:41It's referring to what? That concept of privilege.
11:44What is the highest level of privilege in America?
11:46A side note, I jokingly used to tell my husband that he became Muslim because he wanted to be oppressed.
11:52Because as a white person, he just couldn't fit into the oppressed crowd unless he became Muslim.
11:57But that's a joke.
12:05We had the Imam Jamil Committee.
12:07When Imam Jamil was imprisoned, we didn't back away from him, like many of our leaders are ignored today.
12:13There are people, there are political prisoners in America that did not do the crimes that they are accused of.
12:21And it was the students who stood up for him.
12:24And specifically, his wife said that Imam Jamil had a special love for the students in California
12:29because of what they did for him.
12:31And he's all the way in the East Coast, he was all the way in the South in Georgia.
12:35And it was students from California that made his documentary,
12:39that flew around the country and showed his documentary,
12:42and asked people to support him, asking people to write letters to him
12:46to make sure that he knows that he is still beloved to us,
12:50and a figure that we have not forgotten.
12:52I mean, again, these are things that were not being done or focused on in Masajid or greater institutions,
12:58but the students had the courage to address these things.
13:01There was the Free Iraq Foundation.
13:03And I think about the story of the students who were sent to Iraq,
13:07and there's a lot of interesting experiences that they had.
13:10I don't know how many of you are familiar with Brother Mohamed Murtabani,
13:13who was part of that crowd that went.
13:15And he was actually the MSA West President when I served with him on the board.
13:19And 11 students, college students, flew to Iraq.
13:24They collected the funds, the money themselves.
13:26They flew to Iraq at a time of war,
13:29and they gave out charity to the poor people there,
13:33under heavy government scrutiny.
13:35Saddam was still in power then.
13:37And at some point, one of the guards had actually told them
13:40that we've been spying on you the whole time,
13:43but since you guys act so silly, we don't consider you to really be a threat.
13:48Which is kind of a sad thing to say, but...
13:53The hallmarks that I remember from MSA West history that the students were involved in,
13:59and again, these are things that I think we have to think about again.
14:03The two most active departments,
14:06before they divided the region, the MSA West into regions,
14:09was it was one main, it was all the committees were centralized,
14:15which means there was an education department,
14:19and students from all over California would get on one conference call
14:23and talk about what is it that the students need on a Tarbiyah level,
14:27on a developmental level, on an Islamic education level.
14:31What they found, for example, was when they did a survey,
14:33a lot of the students have trouble praying.
14:36It was at the Davis MSA West Conference,
14:40a survey done at one of the workshops there,
14:42so they developed a prayer seminar.
14:44So again, responding to the reality that the students are facing
14:47and providing services for that.
14:49They also had the political action committee,
14:52and again, this dealt with different political issues,
14:55whether they be domestic or abroad.
14:57I remember the hijab ban happened in France,
15:00and there were rallies that were organized around California.
15:03But the main thing is that it made people travel.
15:06Students in California would go from the Bay Area to San Diego for a single event,
15:11get in a van and come down,
15:13and in that meeting of people physically,
15:16although it was difficult,
15:17although sisters had problems getting permission from their parents and whatnot,
15:22the energy that was sparked from that was matchless.
15:26Seeing students from Berkeley while you're in San Diego
15:28come to your campus for an event there,
15:30you going somewhere else five hours driving for a cause.
15:35This was something that made us feel like we can actually do something,
15:39that together we can have an impact.
15:42The impact was there.
15:44We were getting emails and messages from MSAs all around America
15:48saying how do we affiliate ourselves with MSA West.
15:51We don't live in California, but we want to be part of MSA West.
15:54We like the way you work.
15:56So my encouragement to all of these young students here,
16:00my time is almost up,
16:03is to think about bringing back that legacy,
16:06going back to the founding vision,
16:09and developing an understanding of your work based on that founding vision.
16:14You're going to have to sit down and watch these documentaries,
16:17maybe form halaqas, put together a curriculum,
16:19study your history so you can know how to take advantage of the future.
16:23Don't try to copy what we did.
16:25Set up your own future, make shura,
16:27talk to us or the older people that were involved,
16:30talk to the religious leaders, but understand this.
16:33When you're talking to religious leaders,
16:35there's a difference between someone who was a campus activist
16:38and experienced that and the person who isn't.
16:41So sometimes the advice you get from one shaykh
16:44who doesn't come from your experience as a campus activist
16:47is not going to be the best advice for your context
16:50because they just haven't been there themselves.
16:52There are other shaykhs who have been MSA presidents and whatnot,
16:55and so they understand.
16:56Realize that and chart your own future.
16:59Don't do annual programs for the sake of doing annual programs.
17:02Create a vision of change that can lead the entire community.
17:06As I'm telling you, these other macro-Muslim organizations,
17:09there's so much bureaucracy,
17:11there's so much red tape to get things done.
17:15I always have had the most hope in the students
17:18because you're the least shackled,
17:20you're the least indoctrinated,
17:22and you're the most open-minded usually.
17:24So I say this, and I encourage you all to continue the legacy of MSA West
17:28and to revive the legacies of both the Islamic movements worldwide
17:32and the civil rights movement.
17:34And whatever I said is beneficial is from al-Islam al-Qamil,
17:37and what is wrong and mistaken is from myself and the shaykhs.
17:39Jazakumullahu khair.
17:47Jazakumullahu khair to Sister al-Islam al-Qamil.
17:50So now we're going to have a Q&A session with the speakers.
17:53So we have volunteers walking around with flashcards up and down the aisles.
17:56So once you bring your question, please raise it up in the air
17:58so they can come and grab it.
17:59So if you could please have the speakers come up here.
18:04Q&A SESSION
18:35Q&A SESSION
18:51There are three projects in particular that UCLA MSA has taken the lead on revolutionizing.
18:58The first is the Ummah Free Clinic, which is a free clinic
19:04that is organized by Muslims, facilitated by Muslims, funded by non-Muslims,
19:10and serving underprivileged people in South Los Angeles, over 90% of which are not Muslim.
19:16So to get to that point obviously is going to be difficult,
19:21but I'll give you the examples of the best and then some sort of interim examples as well.
19:28Another project that UCLA has is IYTP, Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project.
19:34I'm sure you guys are shocked that a USC guy knows this much about UCLA MSA,
19:38but I lived in Westwood with UCLA MSA guys and participated in all these projects.
19:43So that program goes to, or used to go to at least,
19:47the Ventura County Youth Correctional Facility and tutor inmates that are studying for the GED exam.
19:53You're not allowed to talk about religion, it's simply providing free tutoring service.
19:58And the last program is MAPS, Mentors for Academic and Peer Support.
20:03Which is a mentoring program tutoring underprivileged students that had a GPA under a certain number.
20:10USC, which had kind of gotten, it was late to the game,
20:15started an organization three, four years ago called the Ansar Service Partnership.
20:20The Ansar Service Partnership focuses on a 10 mile radius around the USC campus
20:26and provides food distributions on a monthly basis, after school tutoring programs,
20:32tree plantings, and visits senior citizens on a regular basis.
20:38And they're a Muslim interfaith community service organization.
20:42For those of you that are trying to start something, please talk to me about the Ansar Service Partnership
20:47because it's easy to start and do monthly programs that don't require full time staff,
20:52that don't require a full time space.
20:54The Oma Free Clinic obviously is a full functioning clinic with an over a million dollar annual budget.
20:59But the best way to do it is to pick one community service activity,
21:04whether it's a tree planting that you partner with a larger organization with,
21:08or a food distribution, you just make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hand them out.
21:12Start with one event that you do on a regular basis and let it grow from there.
21:17But if you want to talk more specifically about that,
21:19the Ansar Service Partnership at USC now is an IRS sanctioned 501c3.
21:24So they do have non-profit status, I can talk to you about that as well.
21:30Just wanted to add one thought to that, and that is that a lot of times the MSAs are involved in focusing on issues overseas.
21:38And I don't have a problem with doing events about what's going on overseas,
21:42but the only thing that I would encourage the MSA to do is for every event that is an overseas issue that you are doing,
21:50make sure that there is a local campaign that you're also launching.
21:54So try to create some level of balance.
21:56You cannot just be having all of your efforts about inequalities and injustice overseas
22:01and you're not addressing what's happening here in America.
22:21This is what is the best way to get past divisions within the MSA so that we can get more done, inshallah.
22:27It depends on what type of divisions they are.
22:30Are they ideological? Are they, you know, in terms of sectarian?
22:36Is it racial? Are people divided along those lines?
22:39Figure out what those divisions are actually created by.
22:42And I would say, as one of our advisors had once encouraged us to do,
22:46to get everybody in the room, lock the doors, and say nobody is leaving until we get this resolved.
22:51And if that takes three hours to have a conversation facilitated by someone who knows how to facilitate such a conversation,
22:57then that conversation has to happen.
22:59And make sure, again, that everyone is there.
23:02Every single person who is involved or feels angry or feels upset is in that room and is able to express themselves
23:08and get someone there who can facilitate the discussion in the direction of unity.
23:12Because if you get the wrong facilitator, they may encourage people to split off and do the wrong thing
23:17rather than overcome their differences and come together.
23:21Wallahu'alam.
23:34This one is for me.
23:36It says, for Brother Ali, you said that you grew up with minorities in the hood.
23:41Was it hard assimilating into college while America being not only first-generation American
23:46but also of a really rare demographic?
23:49What advice would you have to give to a kid going through the same thing?
23:52So, not only did I go from that high school context, but I went to the most conservative,
23:59most capitalist university in the entire state of California, USC.
24:03So, I don't say that with any level of pride. I say that with an immense amount of embarrassment.
24:10It was incredibly difficult, and I hated it.
24:13I hated USC. I hated being there. I didn't want to participate in anything there.
24:19I got all of my student activism outlet through UCLA MSA.
24:26So, I did drama once I was at UCLA. I did maps. I did I-Whites at PE. I did all of that.
24:35And then finally, my junior year at USC, someone nominated me for MSU president.
24:41I had not really gone to MSU at all because I thought it was lame.
24:44They just had movie nights and played board games, which is cool if you're 13, but not when you're a college student.
24:52So, I had no interest whatsoever, and there was no activism.
24:56My freshman year of college, a classmate was like,
25:01we're all going snowboarding this weekend. You should come.
25:03And I was like, okay, cool. How much does it cost?
25:05And they told me how much it costs. I was like, I can't.
25:07And they're like, why? I was like, because it's a lot of money.
25:09They're like, well, just use your credit card.
25:11I was like, well, you understand that someone has to pay that credit card once I charge it with all this stuff.
25:16So, I mean, there's a couple of things transitioning from high school to a place like USC,
25:22which is you are aware of how much privilege you don't have,
25:28and the people around you have no idea how much privilege they do have.
25:33And that is the hardest thing to reconcile.
25:36And it's hard to talk to someone that you care about, that's your friend,
25:40that is acting like an idiot because they don't acknowledge their privilege.
25:44And it's hard to do in your early 20s. Now I have no problem with it.
25:48I have friends that are white, and we talk about their whiteness all the time.
25:52Like, dude, you're just saying that because you're white.
25:54And it's fine, and he gets it, and we can go back and forth, and it's showing.
25:57He's like, you're just saying that because you're brown.
25:59I was like, damn straight, that's exactly why I'm saying it like that.
26:03But when you're an undergrad, and these issues haven't been articulated for you,
26:07and you're not a person of color, you don't understand your privilege.
26:12So my advice would be this. Do a lot of quicker, because you need the patience.
26:18And I did not have the patience, so I would not recommend the approach that I had.
26:23But find issues and causes on your campus, whether they're affiliated with Muslims or not,
26:28that you really are passionate about.
26:30So one thing was an anti-war resolution.
26:32So I was in school when the second President Bush wanted to do a unilateral military strike against Iraq,
26:39and we created the largest coalition of student organizations in the history of USC
26:43to send an anti-war resolution to Congress.
26:46We had over 100 student organizations.
26:48The Pakistani Student Association didn't sign it.
26:51The Arab student group didn't sign it.
26:53And the Indian group didn't sign it.
26:57But literally every other student group signed it.
27:00So this is why I have problems with nationalism.
27:03It's a human rights issue, and I had the LGBT community sign on,
27:07I had the Chicano and Latino community sign on, I had the women's student group sign on.
27:11So find what you're passionate about.
27:13You will find like-minded people, but they may not be Muslim.
27:16And that's not a problem as long as you don't absolve your Islamic identity as a part of your participation.
27:30So there are, I'm going to try to do one, two, three, four, five questions answered in one big answer.
27:35The questions really deal with getting people involved in the MSA and activated.
27:42Some MSAs are suffering from brothers who are not interested,
27:45and because most of the MSA are sisters or the MSA president's sister.
27:48Some MSAs are just struggling because they're in a community college.
27:51They want to get the ball rolling.
27:53Other MSAs are, they just feel that people are just not involved enough.
27:57They may come for some events.
27:59Other MSAs are, there's other cultural groups on campus that are doing their own thing,
28:03whether it be PSA or ASA or whatnot,
28:05and they want to somehow allow the MSA to be a vehicle that brings them in.
28:10The answer to all of these different issues is actually something quite simple.
28:17It's simple, but it's very deep.
28:20And it's something I didn't get to talk about last night because my time ran out.
28:24But that is so important in the history of the social movements that we talk about during the civil rights era,
28:32as well as, again, the global Islamic movements that we hear about,
28:36is that they really emphasize human relationships within the MSA, or within workers.
28:44So, uhuwa, the concept of brotherhood and sisterhood.
28:48You need to have the types of social activities at an MSA level,
28:52but also individually develop really tight bonds with one another.
28:57And this can help alleviate a lot of these issues.
29:00A lot of times people are coming to MSA because they just want a place to feel comfortable and at home,
29:04a home away from home.
29:06And that's the first thing that gets them attracted.
29:08So make sure that the MSA environment is something that can do that.
29:11In a situation where you have brothers who are not comfortable because of sisters,
29:14again, you're going to have to work around that, where they understand.
29:17We talked last night, we said that there needs to be,
29:20maybe there's an issue of understanding in terms of what are the rules regarding gender interaction.
29:25Maybe that's something that they're confused about.
29:27But let them understand that this is an environment to develop deep bonds.
29:31There's an article I recommend, I really want people to read.
29:34It's not long, it's well written.
29:36It's by Malcolm Gladwell.
29:38It's called Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.
29:43And what he looks at is things that happened during the time of the Civil Rights Movement.
29:48And he says that this type of work could not happen with loose bonds.
29:51They had to be built on strong relationships.
29:54Because a lot of times they were high-risk situations.
29:57And you're not going to get into a high-risk situation with someone that you don't trust like your brother.
30:02So you have to develop very, very tight bonds.
30:05Brotherhood, love, brotherhood, sisterhood.
30:08There have to be events that are organized just to promote this.
30:12And it's not a waste of time.
30:14Our work is not just political, it's not just religious on an educational level.
30:19A big part of our work is developing love.
30:22A big part of Islam is developing love between people.
30:25And Imam Hassan al-Banna in Egypt, they would say that whenever he would go for lectures,
30:30and he would lecture all over the country in the 1930s,
30:34wherever he would go, he would always end up bringing up the issue of brotherhood and sisterhood.
30:40Because when there are differences, when you have people who are fighting within the MSA or whatever,
30:45not getting along, if you emphasize this love for one another,
30:49even though there's differences of opinion, the MSA will stay strong.
30:52And people won't take things personally.
30:54Especially as a pilot from an Islamic perspective, the dynamic we have for Uhuwa,
30:58the teachings that we have for brotherhood and sisterhood, are unmatched.
31:01It's amazing.
31:02So make this a big part of your MSA platforms, inshallah.
31:13So that was one of the major questions.
31:15There's a couple more about how to consolidate or reconcile differences of opinion within an MSA.
31:21So I'm going to touch on a few other ones.
31:23This is a very quick one.
31:24What is the result of people who are very good but do not believe in God?
31:28So the question is, what is the point of them being in this world?
31:31And I'll give you a quick anecdote.
31:33One of my best friends is an atheist.
31:35His name is Paul.
31:36And he doesn't believe in God.
31:39He doesn't believe in religion.
31:41But he will make me Zabiha me every time I go to his house.
31:46When I go to his parents' house, who are also ardent atheists,
31:50they will make me Zabiha me.
31:52They will use separate pots and pans.
31:54They won't use the same spoon in non-Zabiha chicken in my chicken.
32:01And they don't believe in God.
32:03And when I go to a Muslim's house that doesn't observe Zabiha when it comes to meat,
32:07they find it offensive when I ask them if the meat is Zabiha.
32:11That's why people that are atheists have a place in this world.
32:15Because if you look at everything that you experience
32:19and every person that you interact with as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with Allah,
32:24that's what it will be.
32:28Salaams.
32:29Hi, Anne Hersey.
32:30Ali might be coming to our school.
32:32What do you suggest as an event in response?
32:35Lecture suggestions.
32:37So three years ago, my friend and yours, Mr. David Horowitz, came to USC
32:42and basically had an entire event called Islamofascism Awareness Week
32:47and specifically named students that I work with at USC as members of Hamas and Hezbollah.
32:54So people got really upset.
32:56There was this massive protest.
32:58USC is a private institution.
32:59You have to have a permit to have a protest.
33:02If you try to protest without a permit, you will be arrested.
33:05So I felt like that would be a relatively worthless approach.
33:09So what I challenged the Muslim students at the time to do was to write a letter
33:14documenting all of the racist things that David Horowitz has said about black people in America
33:21and the homophobic things that he's said and the Islamophobic things that he's said
33:25and get as many non-Muslim student organizations at USC to sign that letter
33:30and deliver it to the administration of USC and basically say this.
33:34We support free speech.
33:36We support the free dissent and expression.
33:39But we don't support his hate speech, racism, and bigotry being welcome on our campus.
33:44Therefore, if David Horowitz comes and he says anything that is racist, bigoted, homophobic, or Islamophobic,
33:51we want the University of Southern California to take explicit action against him.
33:55We're not going to do anything.
33:57You are forcing the administration of the university to take ownership of their own rules.
34:02So what happened?
34:03David Horowitz came.
34:04He said really stupid things.
34:06People got really upset.
34:08The protest was worthless.
34:09It was like 16 people.
34:11There were such fringe, you know, anti-semi-terrorists that were protesting.
34:17But a week later, the vice president of the university took a full-page ad in the Daily Trojan
34:24and wrote a letter on USC letterhead praising the MSU, praising Islam on campus, and denouncing David Horowitz.
34:32And then another one is, how can you define the relationship between environment and Islam?
34:45In other words, can you talk about environment and Islam?
34:48I have never heard anyone make that connection with Islam before, and you have a background in this.
34:52This is one of the topics that I'm very passionate about, so I'm glad that someone is interested in it.
34:58We are responsible for the earth.
35:01So there are some evangelical understandings that the earth exists for our utilization.
35:07This is not an Islamic interpretation.
35:10An Islamic interpretation is that we are the vicegerents of this earth, that we need to protect it.
35:15So in the same way that we believe in social justice around humanity, we have to believe in social justice around the environment.
35:22And they are one and the same.
35:24They are one and the same.
35:26The people that are most disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation are people of color that are poor.
35:32And that is a fact.
35:34It's called environmental racism.
35:36So if you're not aware of this, you need to be aware of it.
35:38So I write environmental impact reports for a living.
35:42They comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.
35:44And one of the things that we look at is population, housing, and environmental justice.
35:48So I've decided to do this.
35:51This is how I get paid.
35:53This is how I make my living.
35:54So there is a direct nexus between justice in Islam and preservation, protection, and kind of furtherance of the environment.
36:03The book that I would recommend is by Sayyid Hussain Nasser.
36:09I think it's called Man and Nature.
36:11It's an excellent book that really talks about in detail from the Quran and Sunnah what the obligation of a Muslim is to the environment.