Re-humanizing the De-humanized

Re-humanizing the De-humanized

I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah. I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah. Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

There is none worthy of worship except Allah. And quickly divert their attention. In the case of the people of Gaza, another child whose head is blown off, another disgusting scene.

And the end result of that is apathy, or becoming numb to the numbers, or desensitized. But the point is that it just becomes a number. And oppressors understand that psychology very well.

A Single Death is a Tragedy. A Million Deaths is a Statistic.

A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. Think about Muhammad al-Durrah 24 years ago, may Allah عز و جل have mercy on him. And what that single image did for us. And think about how many Muhammad al-Durrahs there have been since Muhammad al-Durrah that you can't name. Because a single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Clive Smith, who is the attorney for Afia, who likes to share this quote, often talks about the dehumanization of the single woman who is rightfully called by some the most wronged woman on the planet. Her number in prison is 902-79054. When you're in prison, that's the number that you hear that represents you. You actually have to learn your number because you will no longer be called by your name when you're in prison.

And so you can imagine that for the last 14 years — and we're marking the anniversary this week, and that's why there's a protest this Sunday, and lawsuits being filed on her behalf this week because we have not forgotten her bi-idhnillahi ta'ala — that Afia, with everything that has happened to her, has to know that when you hear in prison 902-79054, that means you. You're no longer Afia. You're a number.

Malcolm X, al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, rahimahullah, wrote in his autobiography in the chapter speaking about the satanic system that he was in. He actually writes: "I can't remember any of my prison numbers." That seems surprising even after the dozen years since he had been out of prison, because your number in prison becomes a part of you. You never heard your name — only your number. On all your clothing, every item was your number, stenciled. It grew stenciled on your brain.

You're a number. You become a statistic. Our dead are a statistic. Our imprisoned are a statistic. You're a number, not a name. You're a statistic, not a story. That is one of the peak ways in which you have dehumanization.

Wadi al-Fayyumi and the Erasure of Our Stories

I just came back from Washington DC. There was supposed to be a hearing on Wadi al-Fayyumi. Imagine a six-year-old American boy — just remove the Palestinian part — a six-year-old American boy that was stabbed 26 times to death. His mother, sitting in the front row, was stabbed 12 times and strangled. Miraculously alive.

And you imagine that your cold, heartless politicians could not even look at her, could not even say, "We're sorry for your tragedy," before they jumped into their AIPAC talking points. Immediately, she doesn't exist. It became a hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses, and the intifada and all of that. That's what it became, immediately. Because you're not supposed to be a story. You're not supposed to have a name. You're not supposed to have a memory. Your name can't be mentioned because otherwise people just might connect to you as a human being. So we have to keep you a number — because numbers are cold, cruel. And they represent exactly what they think about us.

SubhanAllah, if you look in this country, many of us grew up reading in school, as required reading, the Diary of Anne Frank. Some of you might remember the Diary of Anne Frank in your schools. Over 30 million copies were sold of the Diary of Anne Frank. It's been translated into over 70 languages. It's required reading in most public schools. And it's considered, by the way, the most preserved document in Holocaust history. When you say Anne Frank, it has so much more meaning than 6 million, or 1 million children, or the statistics that are thrown out about the Holocaust. Because the single connection that you're allowed to develop to a human story is that much more reshaping.

Where is our Anne Frank? Is it Wadi'a? Is it Hind Rajab? Hind Rajab, shot over 300 times in a car. And we have the instruments to preserve the legacy of a person, the story of a person, that are far greater now than what existed 60 years ago. You have her phone call, begging for her life. You have the images of the car that she was shot in. You have all of this historical documentation. But they fear that story. Because one story of Hind Rajab is enough to reshape — if it's told right and told enough — is enough to reshape the narrative far more than saying 200,000, or trying to come back with statistics when this genocide is brought up in your face.

The Power of a Single Story: Elian Gonzalez

If you go back down memory lane in this country and you read the history of the media instrumentalization of Elian Gonzalez — some of you might remember in 1999 the story of the Cuban boy being whisked away by an American soldier — it dominates the international media cycle. It was the single most observed story in the entire world. The story of a 6-year-old boy. And it was so compelling that it not only colored American-Cuban relations for most Americans, but some political historians even say that it was a major factor in swinging the election to George W. Bush in the year 2000. One story. Why? Because the story was told right by enough people, put in front of people, and a narrative was crafted out of that story — while we continue to become numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Statistics, statistics, statistics.

Not a single story from the Iraq war. Not a single name. Not a single name of a drone victim in Yemen or Afghanistan. Not a single name. Why? And how do we start to tell the stories right and not wait for them to humanize us, but to humanize our own?

How We Read Our Own History

I want us to consider this from the way that we read our own history as Muslims and the natural psychology of this. If you were to speak to the average Muslim and to bring up the Battle of Uhud — how many people were martyred on the day of Uhud from the Muslims? You would hear 70, 72, 73. But if you were to ask the average Muslim, "Who was martyred on the day of Uhud?" — naturally, the only name for most Muslims that would come up is Hamza, radiyallahu ta'ala 'anhu. A story that we connected with. Maybe Hamza and Mus'ab, radiyallahu ta'ala 'anhu. And if you were to ask them to name more than Hamza and Mus'ab, most people could not go past those two stories. Because that's how we are as people. We connect to someone when we know how they got there before they were killed. And that's us as Muslims.

And when you think about the way the Qur'an tells us the story of the oppression of Bani Israel by Fir'aun through Musa alayhi salam — we connect to Musa alayhi salam. The story of sabr through Ayyub alayhi salam — we connect to that story of Ayyub alayhi salam. Yusuf alayhi salam immediately juggles certain thoughts in your mind, immediately invokes certain sentiments. Why? Because that's who we are.

And you wonder why they're trying to make sure that names like Bisan and Wael and Mu'taz and all of these names that are becoming popularized now are not present. And you wonder why they're trying to make sure that the stories of Hind Rajab and Wadi al-Fayyumi and all of these victims of an American-Israeli genocide are not being told. And you wonder why there's complete apathy in regards to something like Sudan and the crisis in Sudan.

SubhanAllah, if you were just to familiarize yourself with one person — we have brothers and sisters in our masjid, in our community who have relatives that have been directly impacted. You tell the story of a single woman. And SubhanAllah, just as an exercise, if I was to start here and quote statistics about what's happening to our brothers and sisters in Sudan, you'd likely forget it by Asr. But I tell you one story of a sister named Rawdah who was 40 years old, 9 months pregnant and displaced, and every single member of her family was killed. And because of the rapid displacement in Sudan, going from place to place, she just talks about how she had to carry her child — 9 months pregnant at the age of 40 — and put another kid on her back and walk from place to place. You might remember that.

May Allah be with our brothers and sisters in Sudan. Allahumma ameen. And may Allah forgive us for the global apathy in regards to our brothers and sisters in Sudan. Allahumma ameen.

What This Means For Us: Practical Steps

That's the point, dear brothers and sisters. So what does this mean for us at a practical level?

1. Tell Our Stories Ourselves

No one is going to learn and tell our stories other than us. It's important for us to constantly highlight, in whatever space you are in and in whatever profession you are in — if you're a doctor, find the names of the doctors that have been killed, tell the stories of those doctors. If you are someone in education, tell the stories of the university professors that have been killed and their lives as educators before they were murdered. Whatever space you occupy, amplify these stories. Lend your voice to these stories. Because these are the only things that are going to stick with people — otherwise we give in to the cold statistics that have been used to dehumanize us as a community.

2. Connect With Refugees in Our Own Backyard

There's a chance to make this so much more real for all of us when you think about the refugees from all of these places that are already here in our backyard. SubhanAllah, it's devastating when you think about how every single refugee organization struggles — not just to get donations, but to get volunteers. Every single refugee organization in Dallas — and we have one of the largest Muslim communities in the country — struggles to get volunteers, struggles to keep the attention on sets of refugees from every single cause that was once popularized for the Muslims. Some of them, you have thousands of refugees from a single country in your backyard and they've completely been forgotten.

Do you understand the impact that it would have on them if more of us just volunteered with them, just spent some time speaking to them? There are a multitude of these organizations asking, "Hey, what can I do? Can I bring my family on the weekend? Can we do something to just take a family out?" Yes — touch one family, take them out. Can we just sponsor one family?

There are now at this point over 50 families from Gaza in the United States that have made it out for some sort of medical treatment. It's not just receiving them in the airport for a celebration. It's following up afterwards and doing the research to find out which organizations are working with those refugees and getting yourself involved and developing a personal connection with these people. And it might be through that single connection that you develop a greater attachment to that cause, because you can see yourself in the victim of that cause. So find out how you can support your local refugee organizations, how you can actually make a connection. Let your kids be on a first name basis with children that are their age that have been expelled from those same places. You get on a first name basis with people that are in that situation and that will reshape things for you far more than the statistics.

3. Do Not Abandon Our Political Prisoners

One of the saddest realities of our community is the abandonment of political prisoners. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the abandonment of political prisoners in our community. We get scared, we shy away from them because no one wants to be associated with someone who's been associated with a group like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. No one wants to be associated in this climate with a prisoner who has been stained and falsely tainted with those types of charges. No one wants that to show up on a watch list and then be used against them by their employer. I get it. It's dangerous.

But we have to remember: those political prisoners who are in prison are in prison because they were political. Meaning what? Their conscience refused them to ignore the plight of millions of other people. What does it say about us as a community when we now ignore their plight?

So someone says, "Hey, look — Dr. Afia, kind of a lost cause, right? HLF-5, kind of a lost cause, right? These are kind of lost now. Imam Jamil, lost cause, right?" I want you to know that Clive mentioned after his last visit with Afia last week that she knows when the protests are there. That to me is enough.

The letters that are written to these prisoners — just letters of compassion and solidarity. That's all. How long does it take you to write a letter to a political prisoner? Or to make a call to someone's office just to lend your voice?

When the Prophet ﷺ says:

"For me to walk with my brother in need is more beloved to me than a month of i'tikaf in this masjid [of the Prophet ﷺ]." (al-Mu'jam al-Kabir of al-Tabarani; also referenced in similar wording in related narrations)

Than tahajjud or i'tikaf in the masjid of the Prophet ﷺ. It doesn't take much to do those things. But you avoid becoming complicit in the system that turns them into casualty counts, numbers, abandoned prisoners.

You Are Not a Number to Your Lord

And the last thing I remind us with: you are not a number to your Lord. The beauty that we have in our relationship with Allah is that Allah gives each and every single one of us access to Him.

"When My servant asks you about Me, I am close to him. Allah responds to the call of the caller." Allah responds to the individual. Allah does not respond only to a priest class. Allah does not respond only to political elites. Every single person has access to Allah. Every Muslim, every believer, has the potential to become more sacred in the sight of Allah than the Ka'bah or Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa, even if they get lost in the crowd. That's something that we revel in — that we're not just numbers to Allah.

We're not numbers to our Prophet ﷺ.

He was deeply concerned for his Ummah ﷺ. Those that were immediately in front of him, and those that were distant from him. Those that lived in his time, and those that lived after him ﷺ. He had a deep concern and connection for every single person in this Ummah.

If we are not numbers to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, then how do we let our brothers and sisters become numbers to us?

Du'a and Closing Reminder

May Allah be with all of our brothers and sisters in Palestine, and in Yemen, and in Sudan, and in every single place where they struggle. May Allah be with them. May Allah grant them victory. May Allah turn us towards the efforts that are productive for them. May Allah allow us all to be brought back to Him as a result of these global events. May Allah increase us all in righteousness. And may Allah protect us from the wickedness that brings about harm on our brothers and sisters. Allahumma ameen.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is of course a call to du'a — du'a for your brothers and sisters all over. You're following the news in Palestine. You're following the news in Lebanon. You're following the news in Sudan. And your brothers and sisters that are local — all I'm asking you is, don't wait for Jumu'ah khutbah. Don't wait for someone to tell you what's happening. Do your best to find out what's happening. If you're interested enough, insha'Allah ta'ala, you will find those pathways. We ask Allah to guide us to those pathways. Allahumma ameen. Allahumma ameen.