IC Gala 2019

Excellence in Leadership Award Speech

Imam Omar Suleiman - IC Gala 2019

Opening and Introduction

Mashallah it's great to see everybody here. The wonderful community, the bright faces, the inspiration, the future, it's all here mashallah.

It's very rare that when the earth and the heavens careen into each other, are we able to find leadership that's not drunk with one of the other. Oftentimes we find people who are drunk with the world and untethered from God and then we know, oftentimes we find religious people, as Imam W. Muhammad says, are a little bit too tipsy with religion. Can't drive straight.

And that's what makes our guest Imam Omar Suleiman special, is that he has consummately been able to manage the responsibilities due to God, with the responsibilities due to people. And that really is the crux of Islam. And we heard a number of speakers tonight to exemplify that, right? Meaningfulness, sustainability, relevance, care, dedication, bravery, sacrifice.

Imam Omar is of course the founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute. Anyone that has a teenager, you know how important that is. Number two, he in Dallas has been a consummate voice for the most vulnerable, especially under the current administration.

The immigrants, the children of immigrants, those separated from their parents, Black America, standing with Black American when people were shot and killed by policemen in Dallas, Texas. He started his career, mashallah, in New Orleans. He was an Imam there for six years and during Katrina, as a young budding Imam, immediately Imam Omar, from his prophetic compassion and not being too drunk with religion, found in his heart the capacity to care for the people who were the victims of Katrina and led efforts in the city through the interfaith community and through social justice people, to make sure that those people were taken care of, mashallah.

So tonight, we're blessed to really find that unique leader that balances being tipsy with God and tipsy with Yeezys. He's able to move through that seamlessly and beautifully, so I want to welcome, he's going to receive today, mashallah, our Excellence in Leadership Award, our brother Imam Omar Suleiman. JazakAllah khair, thank you.

Speech Begins

بارك الله فيك get that picture man, get those pearls.

Peace be with you all.

In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful, we ask him to send his peace and blessings upon his prophets and messengers, those that follow in their blessed path,

and we ask him to make us amongst them. اللهم آمين

A Civil Rights Pilgrimage: Lessons from History

Dear brothers and sisters, you've had your food, and you had some incredible speakers, some incredibly inspirational people that have done so much, and I want to thank Imam Suhaib and I want to really thank ICNYU, Imam Khalid, for bestowing this honor upon me. But I want to share with you all an experience that I had the blessing of undertaking with my family last year. In April, we took a civil rights pilgrimage, and I'm from New Orleans, we took a civil rights pilgrimage through the deep south, starting at Medgar Evers' home, going to the delta where Emmett Till was mutilated, going up, going through Birmingham and Selma, Montgomery, going to Memphis for the MLK 50, and we stood in Medgar Evers' blood in his carport, which is still there, still stains the carport where he was assassinated.

And you can still see the bullet holes in his house. And stood there at the MLK 50 when the speakers, one after the other, spoke from the balcony of the Lorraine. And one of the things that kept on occurring to me was the quality of life that these people lived.

My own children sat where the Freedom Riders used to congregate for secret meetings in one of the neighbors of MLK's there in Alabama. And then a week later, I had the opportunity to come back up to New York and to go to the Shabazz Center where Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz Malcolm X, rahimahullah, breathed his last. And when I stood in the place where Malcolm was assassinated, the former Audubon, I kept thinking about that last moment of Malcolm.

Malcolm said,

peace be with you. And then Malcolm was taken from us. The same age that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was taken from us, at the age of 39 years old.

The Tragedy of Lost Potential

39 years old. Not Medgar, nor Martin, nor Malcolm lived to see 40 years old. And if you think about the travesty of that, and what could have been here in the United States, had the North and the South of the civil rights movement been able to come together.

If you think about what could have been and what a tragedy that was, and that's why they were too dangerous to live. They were too dangerous to the structures that continue to oppress today, to be able to exist. I stood there where Malcolm was assassinated.

A Prophetic Teaching on Death

And I thought of a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, a saying of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Bukhari hadith 6512)

That when you leave this world, either you are relieved or the world is relieved from you. When you leave this world, either you are relieved, or the world is relieved from you.

Those that witnessed the assassination of Malcolm said that Malcolm smiled at his assassins, as they started to unload those bullets into him. And you could think of how exhausted Malcolm was, how tired he was, of what he had given of himself at the age of 39. The man who did the autopsy of Dr. King said that the heart of King was 60 years old.

He was 39, but his heart was 60. What his heart looked like was the heart of a 60 year old. And I think of Malcolm here in New York, and I think of how much his heart had worn at that point.

Malcolm's Final Days

What he had been through, the days leading up to his assassination, the week before, which really threw him off because Malcolm anticipated assassination. But when his house was firebombed, and many people don't know, Malcolm arrived from France at 12:36 AM, his house was firebombed at 2:08 AM. Meaning he had just got back from Europe, being denied from France, spoke at the London School of Economics, got here, his house was firebombed at 2:00 AM, and they attempted to attack his family.

And it fazed him. It was the first time he was fazed. He flew to Detroit that same morning, spoke at the Ford Auditorium, flew back, spoke at the Audubon again, all in the same day, and he didn't even have his suit when he went to Detroit.

And he was so fazed. If you listen to Malcolm that day, he was exhausted, he was tired. Because he knew he would be killed, but he didn't want his family to be hurt.

And you think about how tired he was, and those moments that he breathed his last. And you think, relieved. We pray that Allah grants him the status of a martyr.

That as he said,

peace be on to you, for the last time, that the angels greeted him, peace be on to you, Malcolm. And welcomed him into another realm where he didn't have to worry about people firebombing his house. And he didn't have to worry about being chased.

And he didn't have to worry about all of the stress and the exhaustion. And though he did not hesitate to die for us, because he loved us so, he too deserves the same peace that he was seeking for his people. He too deserved that at some point.

The Principle of Giving What We Want from God

We all seek that sense of security and peace in our lives. What Islam teaches us to do is to give to others what we want from God. I'm gonna say that again, to give to others what we want from God.

The best way that you can honor the attributes of God, are to live a human manifestation of them. So, you want the mercy of the most merciful, how much mercy have you shown to someone else? You want the justice of the most just, how much justice have you stood for, for someone else? How have you manifested in your human capacity those qualities that we invoke, those attributes that we invoke of Allah? We have 99 attributes of Allah to invoke. 99 names and even more attributes to invoke of God.

How many of them do you provide in your human capacity, when there is an avenue to do so for other than you?

The Metaphor of Faith as a Tree

When we started Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, we chose that word Yaqeen, we chose that word certainty, because the way Allah describes faith in the Quran, is as a tree that is deeply rooted in the heart, and its branches are high in the sky, and it's in constant production of fruits. What that means is that, that faith that's anchored in your heart, provides branches for all of humanity and everyone that's around you. It provides first and foremost a sense of shade, security.

The Definition of a True Muslim

The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Bukhari hadith 10)

A Muslim, we know Islam means peace attained through submission to God, the one from whom people feel salaam, they feel peace in the presence of that person, from your hand and from your tongue. They know that they will not be harmed by you, because you are a person that is in such pursuit of your own peace, that you will not rob someone else of their peace, because you know that that might lead to the loss of your eternal peace.

So you don't do that to people. Likewise, the word iman comes from safety, amn. People should feel the iman, the mu'min should provide a sense of amn.

The believer should provide a sense of safety to those that are around them. People should feel safe in your presence, blessed in your presence, healed by your presence.

The Impact of the Awardees

And here's what I want to bring it back to. And I want to speak to the incredible awardees that we had here today. The three people that spoke before. In all of their stories, whether it was a girl from Tijuana, or a girl from Afghanistan, or a girl here in New York, or a man in a homeless shelter, whoever it may be, lives were touched.

They managed to become a source of blessing to someone else's life. All three of them. Incredible human beings, may Allah bless you all and accept from you all.

All of them managed to touch someone's life.

You Cannot Out-God God

Here's something about Allah. God will not let you out-God Him. Alright? So let me explain this to you from a sense of power. Here's what this means from a sense of power. We know of people and tyrants that were destroyed in the past.

We know of the Pharaoh, because Pharaoh tried to be God. You can't out-God God. You don't get to act like a person who has unlimited power, and oppress because you are intoxicated by your own power.

So you can't out-God God in a sense of power. Right? But there's another level of that. We know people were humbled by God's punishment that we read about in our scriptures, because they tried to act like they themselves were the source of all power.

There's another end to that too. God, the most merciful, will not let your mercy to someone else go unthanked. God, the most generous, will not let you show generosity to someone else, and it not be responded to with a greater form of generosity.

The Story of the Man and the Dog

There's an incident that the Prophet ﷺ told us about a man from the children of Israel, who was thirsty one day, and as he was thirsty on this long journey, he finally found some water, and he took that water, and he drank from it, and nourished himself, and then he went out and he saw a dog, and he saw that the dog was panting out of thirst, and he thought to himself, that that dog is suffering from the same thirst that I suffered from, and that's where he took his shoe, he went back to the well, put water in it, and brought it back to the dog. And the Prophet ﷺ said:

- Allah was grateful to him, and Allah was grateful to him. Even though he didn't give water to Allah, he gave water to one of Allah's creation.

He showed gratitude by connecting what God had done for him, by reflecting that mercy and that generosity upon a dog, upon an animal. And the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Bukhari hadith 2466)

So Allah granted him paradise forever. Why? Because God will not let you out-generous him.

You don't get to out-mercy the most merciful. You don't get to show love and generosity to someone else, and it's not responded to with way more than what you did. Because that's his mercy, that's his love.

The Test of True Faith

So you go back and you ask yourself, what do I bring to someone's life? What does my faith do for the people around me? Because if becoming a more religious person makes you a worse human being, you're doing it wrong. You're doing faith wrong. If it's making you a worse person, you're doing it wrong.

But if you are living your faith in a way that anyone around you, a human being, an animal, the environment, is blessed and healed by your presence, you're doing it right.

The Prophet's Character

The Prophet ﷺ was described in this way, that he was always generous. I mean, if you were anywhere in the path of the Prophet ﷺ, you would be met with his generosity.

He never didn't have a smile on his face. No beggar in his path. No person that was seeking to be consoled. No person in hardship. He never looked at a person and said, that person is not deserving of me talking to them at this moment. That person is not deserving of my generosity at this moment.

I got bigger things to do. I'm a Prophet of the Ummah. Every single person that was in the path of the Prophet ﷺ, was touched by his mercy and his generosity.

But then he was described in the month of Ramadan as what?

(Bukhari hadith 6)

, like this hurricane of generosity. Like it was indiscriminate. It was like a hurricane coming.

I'm from New Orleans, I know what hurricanes are like. It's like a hurricane coming through a city. The Prophet ﷺ, if he was anywhere in the vicinity, you were gonna be touched somehow by his mercy and his generosity.

That charity was gonna reach you indiscriminately. It was just gonna overwhelm everything in front of it.

The Example of Muhammad Ali

And I wanna bring that back to another Muhammadan conclusion. A man who brought the name of Muhammad in his actions, in this country, Muhammad Ali. I went to Louisville for the funeral of Muhammad Ali. And Imam Ali, so he's named Muhammad Ali, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Imam Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, he said that, live your life in a way that when you're alive, people long for you, and when you die, people miss you.

Live your life in a way that while you're alive, everyone longs for you, and when you die, people really miss you. I went to Louisville, Kentucky when Muhammad Ali passed away. And I attended his funeral.

The thing that blew me away about the funeral of Muhammad Ali was not the people at the funeral. It wasn't the aura at the funeral. It wasn't Bill Clinton or the dignitaries that were there to speak that day.

It was none of that. What blew me away was that every single gas station employee, every single bus driver, every person that worked at a hotel had a Muhammad Ali story. Every single person in Louisville, Kentucky.

And by the way, they're now naming the airport after Muhammad Ali. Let's give a round of applause for that. Finally, he's still making history.

He's still making history. But the thing that I left Louisville, Kentucky with was that every person that started to tell us about when Muhammad Ali came to their school or walked in their hotel or rode on their bus or walked through their gas station or was jogging one day and saw them was brought to tears as they started to narrate that incident. Every single person would just break down crying as if they had lost a family member, as if they'd lost a relative.

That was Islam. That's faith. That's a person who truly understood that you are sent to this world to be a source of peace to someone else's life and that you can't do that properly unless you're always connected to the source of peace.

You connect yourself to the source of peace so that you can be a source of peace. When you say salam, peace, as you derive your peace in your prayer, you say (السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ - as-salamu alaykum) to everything on your right, peace be on to you, and peace be on to you to everything on your left. The fact that Muhammad Ali had that story with every single person in Louisville, Kentucky, that's why they're still honoring him today.

That's why as the world is starting to move on from this giant, they still know in Louisville, Kentucky because each one of them encountered him in a very special way.

The Call to Action

So here's my message to you and to myself. Do not belittle, do not belittle the role that you play in somebody else's life.

It only takes one person to show up in front of God on the day of judgment and to say, when I was in my darkest moments, it was that person's smile, it was that person's help, it was that person's aid, it was that person's love and generosity and mercy that got me through my most difficult moments. That person was a light in my life in my darkest moments. When you do that, the source of light provides you everlasting light in the hereafter.

Closing Prayer

We ask Allah to make us amongst them. We ask Allah to make us amongst those that are constantly connected to the source of peace and that are always a source of peace and benefit and love to everyone that's around us. We ask God to comfort people through us, to allow us to be vehicles of His mercy and

His peace in this world to allow that tree of faith to be rooted in our hearts in a way that anything that's around us is comforted by its shade and is able to taste the sweetness of its fruits.

اللهم آمين. Thank you all very much for the award. It's an absolute honor to be here.

جَزَاكُمُ اللهُ خَيْرًا