Why Are You Just Standing There

Why Are You Just Standing There?

Introduction: The Urgency of Real Action

This session is supposed to end in 15 minutes. So I'm going to do this really quick because I want to hear my friend Dr. Yasser as much as you do. And really it's an interesting topic. I'm going to touch on one point that Imam Siraj, may Allah preserve him, you know, stopped at. It's like, what is your vision? And a lot of times we tend to, and I think Hadiya also talked about outsourcing, you know, some of the, you know, Hamasa, how do you translate Hamasa? You know, like the enthusiasm that people have on NAFTA, when NAFTA was a joke anyways. So anyways, what I would like to talk about is something that's very real.

The Problem of Misplaced Priorities

People that want to struggle, stand up for justice, scream and yell, browbeat, holler if you know me, whatever it is. What I've noticed, and the scholars of the heart talk about this, how people tend to, they tend to create a sense of trajectory towards things that they could never really influence. You know, Imam Ibn Qayyim said that human beings have the propensity for delusion, right? So you'll find people, I remember once I was in Malaysia, I can say it because I'm not there now, I was at this restaurant with these young Malay dudes and they started asking about Illuminati, Jay-Z, Sasha Fierce, you know, all that stuff.

And I said to them, you know, I don't know anything about this stuff, sorry for the double negative, but I really don't, and I don't care about it. And they're like, yeah, but you know, like we're watching The Rivals, you know, we watched like all of it in like a night and we missed, you know, this and that. So there was a homeless guy who walks into the restaurant and asks for money and these brothers ignored him.

And they keep going on about Illuminati and illumination. We walk out, we walk by the homeless guy, they don't even pay any attention to him. So then we got to the parking lot, I said to them, you know, for people who are so concerned about conspiracies, right, you forgot that the Prophet said that Islam is to feed people, right? There's a man who came to you for food.

The Disease of Short-Sighted Vision

So we have a problem at times that we outsource grand ideals because in actuality it's a way that our soul cops out from being really responsible. It's a way that we cop out, and the scholars consider this a disease of the heart, they call it Tamsul Basira, that a person has a short-sighted internal vision because there's sicknesses in the heart. You know, championing big causes on the tongue attracts a lot of attention, right? But the real work that she talked about, you know, that requires like, you're going to go through some problems in life, you're going to encounter issues, and that's why the Prophet said whoever loves me, be prepared for poverty, you know, be prepared for challenges, and you talk about that, people get scared.

First Priority: Community Governance

Number one is governance. How many of you are actually happy with the governance of your community? Raise your hand. Usually you love it. Okay, so there's a challenge.

Speak to that challenge. (كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ - "Stand firmly for justice as witnesses to Allah") (Quran 4:135). Allah said, stand for justice.

All of us, and we make a special prayer for the people of Syria today, you know, we're all concerned about what we see overseas, but we can't be calling people Fara'ina, you know, if we have Fara'ina in our homes or in our communities. We are a walking contradiction of revelation when we fail to observe and pay attention to the priorities that sit right in front of us. And one of them is the governance of our communities.

Very few people in the Muslim community are happy with how their communities are ran. Now, if you're writing checks to a 501c3, you should automatically have a voice in how your community is ran and operated. There you go. Stand up for that. And don't tell me, oh, they'll never listen to me. How are you going to tell me that you can go to Syria and wage jihad against Bashar al-Assad, or you're going to go to Egypt and help one of the two parties, or now there's about 4,000 of them, if you're not able to even stand up to Chacha Ahmed on the board of your local masjid? No, honestly, I'm not trying to solicit applause. I'm just saying honestly. And we stand 50 years ago in a city where a man spoke to power, spoke to structural injustices. So we see now, for example, unmasked, that's a collective generational sigh.

Second Priority: Qualified Religious Leadership

So number one is to address governance of 501c3s. Number two is religious leadership. You know, we have to make sure that the people who are teaching us, the people who are engaging with our daughters and our sons and our children, number one, that they actually are qualified religiously. Number two, that we've done some kind of background check on them. I've worked now in three or four different communities, and I've never had anyone do a background check on me once. I've never had anyone even check my religious qualifications once. They just bought into it. So what that means is you could show up like Samiri. You could have a turban, a beard, and a thobe above your shins, and a dhikr beads or whatever, and people are going to think you're the scholar of the world.

As Shawqi talked about, there was a fox that dressed like an Azhari, and walked around and said, and he asked him, make the rooster my mu'adhin, because a fox is going to do what with a rooster? I'm mistaken as the one who thinks for one day that a fox has religion. So we need to really look into it. I remember there was a community where I was involved in that community. We found an imam who had sexually molested more than

18 girls. When he was exposed and he left the country the day after, people from his country called us and said, we've been looking for this man for 10 years. There was not even a background check done on the guy, just because he shows up with and the big beard and the glazed face, it's all good. No, it's not all good.

Religious Leadership That Partners with the Community

We're talking about religious leadership that can work and partner with the community. It's not a one-way show, a learning mosque, a learning imam, to take advantage of the profound talent that we have in our community that people have talked about. And I'll give you an example. My second week in Boston, a young boy walks into the masjid. His parents tell me he has a jinn. I said, no, sorry for the Egyptian. My man does not have a jinn. He has something else. I sat down, I talked with him, and I realized someone has abused him physically. So I asked him, who abused you? He said, tell my family to leave the room. You know the Arab machismo, which we all should respect, al-ragula.

So he asked his parents to leave the room. And he tells me, I was forcibly sodomized at the YMCA. Someone raped me. I was like, what? Like, man, I was raped, man. I don't know what the heck I'm going to do. He said something worse, like, well, my life. So immediately, I realized that Azhar has not equipped me for that problem. You have to be honest. So from the first day in an inner city community where I'm at now, I realized that we have to build coalitions with health care providers in the Muslim community.

So religious leadership is not only about ijazat and ilm and this and this, but it's having the security as a scholar or an imam or a student to reach out to other people in the community that can solve the vast needs of our community.

Addressing Radicalization Through Pastoral Care

And that gets into the piece about handling radicalization. I hate this word, by the way. And we should not say the radicalization of Muslims. It's not a fact. It's an attempt. But in our own community, what happened was we looked into some of the people that were affected by this. There was a young brother that came to me, and he said, I believe Anwar al-Awlaki is like revelation from the heavens. I said, cool, let's talk. Don't shun them. Don't push them away. Because when you shun them and push them away, then they become what? They become lost in the system. You don't know what's going to happen to them.

So they need like, and this is what I talked to the FBI about, quit holding imams as material witnesses so they can do their pastoral job in the community. But every time I talk to this guy, and then afterwards you subpoena me as a character witness, you run my credibility to be an effective pastor in the community. Like, back off. Like the Catholics back in the days with the mobsters, man. Back off a little bit. And let us handle this situation. That's why a few years ago I was there, a great, great conference on the pseudo-jihadism narrative that we did together. Beautiful effort.

Understanding the Root Causes

So I talked to this young boy who told me I believe everything he said is the truth. I said, good, let's talk about some of the evidence he uses. He said, are you sure we can talk? I said, man, talk, man. Like, if you're such a man that you want to raise jihad on people, you're not a man enough to come and talk to a big white boy from Oklahoma? Again, contradiction. So we talked. And what I found out is that he's sexually frustrated. Really? Man, it was an issue of sexual frustration. Our community doesn't want to touch that. He's like, dude, I'm a certain age. I can't get married. My shelf life is up. It's hard. I'm addicted to porn. I have this. I have this problem, this problem.

And we had a larger conversation. My man started crying, right? Then I answered some of the concerns that Anwar had presented in some of his research. And then he started crying. And he said to me, I was wrong. And then he said to me, are you still my friend? I was like, what kind of jihadi are you doing? We're still buddies. Well, let's go hang out. I said, of course, I'm your brother.

Making the Imam's Office a Viable Career

So imams in general need, number one, to be paid well. This is a major issue. We need to make the office of an imam a viable career option for young people in our community. You know, the imam drives his 96 Corolla. We say, mashallah. You say, oh, he's so, so, you know, indifferent to this world. And he loves to hear after. But the CEO of the masjid drives your SUV Lexus, mountain mad glaciers. And we're like, mashallah. But if the imam shows up in an SUV, let's have an audit of the community. It's funny, but it's true.

New York Times says that the average salary of an imam in America is $30,000 a year. Ask most imams' children, you want to be imams? Nope. Why? Man, we've been struggling, man. My dad's on food stamps. Really, it's not funny. A wick, an imam? So we should not say in the name of piety that we malnourish the office of the imam, because the office of the imam should be something that psychologically, people in our community want to be.

People ask me, do you get paid? I say, yeah, I get paid. Oh, then they asked me, how can I be an imam? But they said, do you get paid? And I was like, nah, man, dude, I just got kicked out last night. You know what I'm saying? I'm in a shelter down the street. And, you know, you want to buy a TV or something? I don't think he's going to want to be an imam.

The Philosophy of an Ecumenical Imam

The other thing is that the philosophy of the imam needs to be somewhat ecumenical. As far as ahl al-sunnah will allow him to be ecumenical, right? In the framework of orthodoxy. Then socially, he needs to be completely transparent. He can flow with Naz. He can flow with Rehan. He can flow with Abu al-Atib and Alamgir. He understands that different cultures are a threat to our community, but our vibrance and dynamism are what empowers us to address an infinite number of challenges that the postmodern world presents to us. And that's why a councilman in Boston said to me, I like your church. I said, why do you like my church? He said, it is the

most ethnically diverse church I've ever seen in my life. He said, that's, you know, Alinsky rules for radicals. Here we go. He said, that's power. I said, well, you know, however you slice it, it's called an ummah.

So the imam needs to understand that. And for a white convert, I don't really have this problem. We're the chameleon in the community anyways, right? Whatever people give us, we wear it. Literally. And we eat it, right? Whether it's hot or cold. But at the same time, there are heartful words sometimes that imams or leaders can say that might harm the hearts of our constituency. So the imam needs to understand that, look, man, you're dealing with different people with different cultural aesthetics. And that's actually a beautiful energy to have.

Third Priority: The Power of Volunteerism

The next are community members and really how we can see if a mosque is successful. And again, we pull a page out of Alinsky, all those kind of old school now, but Obama, you know, revived the whole Alinsky-esque philosophy, is the number of volunteers in the masjid. I can say something interesting. In Boston, in Boston, we actually had to let staff go because we have too many volunteers. That's a good problem to have. You know, we're like the Boston Celtics. We freed up some cap space, right? Unfortunately. And the people that were let go weren't upset because they were like, I don't really have anything to do now.

And the sign of that volunteerism is where you can contribute. You know, Ella Collins' house in Boston, right? The yard needs to be mowed. This is the house of Ella Collins. This is Malcolm X's home. I put out a tweet, who can help us mow the house of the Collins family? Right? People responded. So volunteerism is how you can channel a lot of this anger, a lot of this energy.

But if the governance is ran by the Sopranos and the imam is Gandalf, you got issues. Not really. But if the governance is transparent and the imam is orthodoxly progressive, it's a new word, right? And ecumenical in the form of Ahl al-Sunnah and understands the need to coalition build to successfully serve a community.

Practical Community Service Examples

For example, the night on Eid, some of you maybe read the article I wrote. The night before Eid, and all through the hood, not a creature was stirring. You couldn't even hear a creak of the wood. I walked down, boy, and what did I see? A drunk man wearing a white kufi. I got skills. That was freestyle. Rajas as well, Bahar Rajas in Bashir, even in Arabic. I found a drunk brother on the night of Eid. He said, imam, I made it for two hours. Two hours after Maghrib, I was in the dope house. I did it, man. I said, you didn't do anything, man. Two hours and you're smoking primos? He said, but I made it the whole month. I said, mashallah, you did.

But then he said to me, there's no services in the community for people like me. Irish converts in Boston who are converting as functional alcoholics are not finding 12-step programs, AA programs in the masjid. You want to talk about holy war and killing people, blowing up buildings, and you have people in your community who are sexually abused, who are homeless, who are drug addicts, who are alcoholics, who have trouble with success. A brother sold his company for $25 million and he's depressed. I'm like, yo, you can give me like a mil

and I'll make you happy. But the point is, the point is, why don't we turn all of that outsourced, I love what Hadiya talked about, outsourced anger, outsourced sloganeering to creating practical programming in our community.

Investing in Youth and Leadership

If you were to survey Muslims and ask them, how are your youth group, what type of youth group do you have? We don't even hire Abdurrahman Murphys. He's not even here, man. He should be here, right? We don't hire Mark Manley to lead our youth. We don't hire Hadiya Mubarak to come and mentor our daughters and our children and our men on how to be men and teach them what it means to be a man.

So at the end of the day, we are outsourcing a lot of emotionalism to nothing. And this is called ghurur. Imam al-Juwayni in Burhan called it jahl. It's the height of ignorance, actually. And in the name of that, we are, in the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, we are ignoring the people who need mercy the most. So my challenge to you is this.

A Model for Community Development

We're talking about standing up for justice. We need to stand in our communities. And we talk about it all the time. And I gave you a model. Number one, governance needs to have people who reflect the entire community, ethnically, age-wise, and gender-wise, and socioeconomic-wise. 501c3s create a problem. If you can't write the checks, you got no voice. But that's not what Islam teaches us.

Secondly, is that we need to hire religious leaders. And in Boston, we plan to hire a female pastor. Not an imam. Don't get scared. Here comes again. He did this. He did this. Now he's talking about female imams. I love that. Because I get all those hasanat when I meet Allah. But the point is, understanding now we have a plethora of brilliant Muslim women chaplains in our community who aren't finding jobs. And we have women in our community who are like, look, I got some women issues, bro. I need to talk to, you know, dear Abby or dear Aisha or whatever.

The Requirements of True Leadership

So that's a goal. Talented, intelligent, religious leadership that has the guts to take a punch to the face. Because being an imam is not about pleasing board members. Being an imam is about pleasing Allah.

The third is volunteerism. Go back to your communities. And if they say we don't need volunteers, say you're crazy. You're crazy. No institution in America now would ever turn people away from being a volunteer. That's just not how it works in this country. Every community, every institution, its health is seen on the number of volunteers. That's power as we define it in the public circle.

And the last is when we look at the volunteers, what percentage of them are under the age of 30? What percentage of them are over the age of 55 who have retired and now come back into the community to serve the

community?

Building Bridges Through Healthcare Outreach

And I'll give you one example. Out of the incident that happened in Boston, I reached out to some physicians in the community and at first they were like, imam, imam, oh God, imam, imam. I said, look, stop kissing my hand. I don't like it. It's from the sunnah, I understand, but I don't like it. And your doctor said, where's the alcohol pad? Secondly, secondly, let's get the celebrity stuff out of the way and let's get down to real work. That nitty gritty problem that she's talking about where you have a Muslim brother who you strapped him to a chair because he's asking you, I gotta shoot a needle up because it's Ramadan. And oh dear, I didn't have heroin. That's work and that's helping a Muslim.

So what did they do? 40 physicians got together under the ISBCC model, went into the hood, the neighborhood behind the masjid, knocked on the doors, canvassed, right? Asking non-Muslim neighbors, what are your immediate health care needs that we can provide for you? Do you think those neighbors, when they had the Boston bombing, you think the neighbors got our back or they're like doggone terrorists? What do you think they did? They got our back. They got our back because we got their back.

Stop the Hypocrisy, Start the Real Work

So the last is don't come to me with all this jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, and you don't even volunteer to help, for example, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqui who has trouble seeing, drive back and forth to the masjid. You're not there to clean the restrooms. You're not there to go check on the janitor's families in your masjid who are underpaid, who might not have proper food and clothing. It's all a bunch of hypocrisy.

So if there's sincerity in the heart, then we'll find that sense of altruism and we'll know by basirah what to do and I'll finish with one story. That in the time of the prophet, because people always say oh I can't do it, I can't do it. The movement doesn't say I can't do it. The movement said فَانطَلِقًا - "Go forth!" as mentioned in Surah Al-Ma'idah (Quran 5:24).

The prophet said suddenly he asked people to donate for a war and there was a poor Muslim. He didn't have the means from the sahabi. He didn't have the means. He went and worked for a week, saved money and said this is what I can donate to the cause. Like that's basirah.

Conclusion: Focus on Your Circle of Influence

So as I finish, I will challenge you. Stop with all the rhetoric. Stop with all this grand, grand theory. It's great to have dreams, but there's circle of influence and circle of what? Circle of concern. Your influence is what you need to focus on. Concerns can take you to the moon, but influence is what really causes us to think about resources and strategies.

Number one, governance. Number two, your religious leadership. Number three, your volunteering in the community and dealing with the crap, excuse me for saying it, in your communities. Because you got to. This is a generational struggle that young Muslims in America, if you don't take on this mantle, it's not going to change 20 years from now.

So may Allah give you tawfiq. As-salamu alaykum.