Search for a way of life more complete & dignified
It’s a real honor a blessing to be here with you today and I want to thank you for being here and for being in this room in particular for being at this convention in general and for your support and for your love for Islam my intention in being here and I think all of us share this you know we don’t tell these stories.
I hope you know out of narcissism or out of a desire for attention but with the hope that it may be in some way beneficial in sha Allah that it may serve as a reminder to ourselves as well as to you of what brought you here what made you Muslim would kept you Muslim you know as my sister and my brother said you know thee we were all born on with a fit row with a with a tendency towards our nature towards goodness towards worship but truly we are pulled apart by the many different distractions in this world .
but every single one of you has made a conscious choice many of you act as adults you made a conscious choice to continue with your Islam you continue to pray even after your mom stop threatening to hit you if you didn’t you fasted even with no one was looking because this a man is there something you turn back to a law and a lot accepted it from you I I guess I’ll I’m uh I don’t actually I end up speaking a lot for work and .
I almost never get nervous about it if you ask me about politics I’ll be able to rant to you for an hour straight without breathing the today though this is a little bit more personal and I also hoped that because I’ve done a number of these panels warm and because many of you are familiar with them and I’m friends with in this room .
I wanted to share some of the details which I have neglected in the past I did not expect to do this for the first time in a room with cameras but such as life and perhaps is better to have multiple records of what I said exactly so shallow i’m going to choose my words carefully the i grew up just north of here in Bucks County Pennsylvania i was born in Rhode Island grew up in Pennsylvania lived in Connecticut for a couple years and I’ve been in New York and Brooklyn for wha been in New York for the last ten the if you’re doing the math,
I’m still only 26 years old I’m just it’s moved around a lot I am my father is irish american my mother is an immigrant from iran and so I grew up in oh it’s worth noting that Bucks County Pennsylvania I don’t know what it looks like these days but it used to be that was a Ku Klux Klan town when I grew up I go over to town where as we walked into the high school the high school seniors would gather in the parking lot with their pickup trucks in a circle with Confederate flags on the back I grew up in a town where I was told and I know,
I’m white to y’all but in that at that time I remember being told by and I remember this man forever I was a senior in my high school telling me when I was a freshman and that he wanted to start a club one day I wanted to start a club for white men one day and he held up his arm next to mine and I guess I was a little bit darker back then than,
I am now too but you see how it was at hand next to mine he said anyone darker than me he’s saying himself anyone darker than him would not be allowed in and I stared at my arm and I stared at his and it was pretty obvious the point that he was making this hamdullah all thanks to god I’m sorry we the arabic words are a reflex to us if anyone doesn’t understand something that we say .
I hope that you’ll call attention to it or ask questions tolman God willing the eye always you know strong enough in my identity comfortable enough with myself perhaps even sociable enough you know to not let that stuff bother me many ways I felt that my identity that what made me different was something that also made me special and .
I was blessed to have parents who were confident in themselves enough to do that and had a global enough view to give me that that town wasn’t the center of my world you know it wasn’t that that wasn’t the the extent of my world and we had to maintain that wide view in order to maintain our pride to maintain our strength I grew up also you know because of who my family was I grew up with the loose understanding of Islam .
it wasn’t entirely you know something foreign to me you know we went to had been to churches i’ve been to massage it there wasn’t really any i didn’t really feel any ownership over either you know i had you know my my grandmother my irish grandmother was a catholic school teacher and at the same time my iranian family uh through that line my mother’s family they were descended from ayatollahs from the from the shia ulema of Iran I had an aunty that would come and pray and although for me at the time.
I didn’t really understand the prayer either and I didn’t understand why she hated my dog so much that she couldn’t pray in the same room as it but this is what this is what registered with me at the time but it wasn’t something foreign it was just something that it was it was a part of the diversity of our world or something that.
I was loosely familiar with and as I grew especially in a place that was tremendously white and as a place that I did not feel necessarily included in Islam seemed to me more of a cultural identity it was more of a way of understanding oneself it was a lens through which I could understand myself in solidarity with people from the lands.
I associated with in my freshman year of high school my first week of school we were called in to one of the rooms that had a television one of those rolling units and on the TV there was a on the screen there was a image of one of the towers of the world trade center with smoke coming out of the side remember we were told that this building had been attacked the.
I thought it was a joke I thought they were playing a prank on us and it figures that it would be me that did this I I remember laughing about it out loud going up to the TVs and you can’t trick me sticking my fingers into the VCR to try to find the tape that this must have been playing from and feeling that like pit in your stomach when you realize oh this is real this is happening.
I felt like a real jerk for that this very quickly changed the dynamic in that town it was very clear that the candlelight vigils taught all this about America being United it was very clear that we were not included in that America we were not a part of this unity .
I knew that patriotism meant war nach nationalism meant death and it made me sad even to see people of color who weren’t Muslim we don’t really have Muslims around them participating in this buying into this as a way of throwing someone else under the bus the as I went through high school into college my reality were my reality was the the wars around us.
I was obsessed with it I was obsessed with the invasion of Afghanistan and the massacres that the US Army inflicted there and continues to do so I was obsessed with the war in Iraq this is something that even as a high school student I debated constantly with people.
I was angry about it how could you not be angry about it this is death on our tax dollars this is something that this was on our watch I didn’t make those arguments as a Muslim I didn’t make those arguments you know as a person of faith at that time .
I probably had very little faith in God very little understanding in any of it I did as a person with some sense of human rights perhaps some sense of dignity a wider view than these borders that Europeans drew between us I became very upset and.
I internalized this into college I started talking about war and I get the time limit Nessa sorry guys the we maybe i’m going to skip some of these details our struggle comes out of dissatisfaction yesterday we had a session with not even a quarter of the attendees of this room where we talked about our political prisoners in the u.s. Muslims who are imprisoned here in the United States.
I wish half of you guys were in that room to hear about the work that’s being done to free your sisters and brothers who are in prison for no other reason than their Islam it was the dissatisfaction with this reality that led me to search for a way of life which was more dignified which was more complete I didn’t care about whether I’m American and not.
I don’t care if you think I’m American or not I have a blue passport I have rights and those rights are not just given by a court they were given to me by a lot Onawa town but in Islam I found a way of life which was just which was dignified which was not just personal .
it’s not just for our personal worship but that personal worship the rituals our discipline these are means to an end and not just a personal and not just an N within our families but a social end I found in Islam and I have searched everything.
I my search for for for this way of life covered so much ground I from through through leftism and right ism through socialism and communism and and everything in between I certs into different religions different governance systems everything that was my interest that was my love and I still to this day this is what this is what I waste my time on.
so I read I’ll read everything on this but in Islam we found the best of all of these worlds found something which respects our dignity our equality as human beings but also our very humble are very low position before our Creator .
when we say let Allah Allah law we’re saying that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah except the One God our Creator and that includes any human beings we don’t worship any of them and they do not make laws for us God has given us what we need and we have to rise to that occasion I’ll say this because we’re here to talk about converting say.
I was I don’t know if I was a bad person but I didn’t feel like a good one despite my anger maybe because of it i diverted that energy into destructive self-destruction I wasn’t huge into drugs but it was a part of my life I was a fighter and it was and i’m not talking about in a ring and it was dealing with one of those was on the other side of one of those .
where I admit I admit to you today I hurt somebody this is something which to this day I’ve asked for a lost forgiveness but I don’t even know how to go about getting his was in this desperation in this really deep questioning of what the hell are you doing .
Who am I and why that I knew that it would take struggle it knew they would take time to change that’s things that that things had to be done differently and I knew that morality couldn’t be something arbitrary and so I began searching and I began researching and I began praying like I don’t think I’d ever prayed in my life I don’t think I call God Allah at that time.
I was a trained as if there was a path which was the one path and pleased to guide me to it and I looked into everything like i said from Islam to Hinduism from communism to Buddhism to everything in between and the only one that made sense out of any of it was Islam the only path only the book that could answer your questions was the Quran .
this is a of course we accept God’s word for its own sake but this is a rational religion it’s amazing and we have to understand it that way and we have to teach it that way and I remember waking up with all one day I was bartending at the time I was a bartender not a barista I was serving drinks and I woke up one morning and I just felt different I felt you know.
I wasn’t hungry it felt really strange nothing dramatic could happen the day before but I woke up and I felt weird I felt like I didn’t want to eat and I wasn’t all you know centered on technology back then either but something called me towards my desk and .
I went to my computer and I signed in and I saw I think they might have been on the Google screen back then and it was the first of Ramadan it was the first day of the month of Ramadan a month in which I had never fasted before but I was somewhat familiar with and I decided at that moment I know now that you have to make your intention the night before but I decided at ten o’clock in the morning perhaps that was fasting that day .
I walked downstairs I told my mother you know my I think I don’t think I meeting today I’m going to try fasting wrong dawn I was a little nervous about it and she said okay I’ll fast to just make that I began reading the Quran then she began reading the court head and I mean she was trying to struggle through the arabic i don’t know why i said just read the English miles fine?
we you know we all have different struggles we all have different problems in our conversion process and this is part of what we wanted to present to you we all have different issues that hold us up for me my parents were not a problem they were happy.
I was staying out of trouble but I was a bartender I had a girlfriend I was deep in a community which had no faith in God whatsoever I had no Muslim community around me and honestly if I weren’t so stubborn as my friends can tell you if I was not so stubborn I’ve made of let I might have left it .
I might have left it because of the nitpicking that I face when i got to the masjid because my beard was too short I might have faced it you know.
I might have left it because of the nitpicking then I heard from people at the message when they would see me walking in the street with one of my friends who was a girl I might have left it based on the conditions of the bathrooms in the massager good god I don’t know how we live like this we really like there was but if we need and and.
I found al hamd allah and i hope that we can be a part of recreating all of us together an inclusive community a principle community but an inclusive community i’m not saying we compromise i’m not saying we compromise don’t ever ever ever please don’t ever water down this religion for anybody especially not to please your oppressor please don’t ever tell someone.
that is a bit ready to impress you what they want to hear you are Lou you were losing the respect of people of oppressed people around the world who are looking to Islam and we’re looking to Muslims to lead I’m really done this time I owe my soul I think.
I got no time please I can’t I can’t I can’t stress this enough I go when I met you guys invite me to your colleges and I go to these MSA DS islam awareness weeks and they want me to talk about you know misconceptions about Islam going to talk about jihad and hijab and you know women’s rights and stuff like this and I’ll get there not ask the non-muslims.
I don’t like that word non-muslim I asked the people who don’t identify as Muslim I asked them to tell me what do they want to talk about what are you interested in why are you here and we’ll la he will lucky they’ll say I want to talk about Palestine I want to talk about Iraq .
I want to talk about surveillance I want to talk about torture what are you guys doing about it one of the Muslims going to stand up how much worse does it need to get before bosoms stand up really how bad does it need to be before we really rise to this occasion before.
we realize that our ethics have something to offer to this world that our exam isn’t just for our massage it don’t keep this Islam in a closet this is something for us to share with the world this is something that we’re called to this is our prophetic mission this Dawa is one thing to go and hand out pamphlets but our Dawa is something which should be done by example and so I’m really ending see this how you know I give hook buzz I’ve ended three times already.
the I want to I’ll mention the I’ll say for many of his converts that I’ve noticed especially most of men we look off into the example of the companion of the prophet salallahu ID who send them Omar even if I thought this was a man who had a checkered past this is the man who it was narrated that he was seen laughing and crying and or sitting aside for iron thought and people went to him and asked him what was wrong and he recalled a time .
when he built his own idol out of dates to worship it until he got hungry and started to pick it apart and started to eat the dates and he laughed about this and then he but then he thought of his own daughter as was tradition at the time of his own baby daughter which he had buried and how she had reached brush the dirt out of his beard and.
how this made him sad this is a man who was the commander of the believers this is the man who was the leader of the Muslims but he remembered where he came from he remembered the darkness inside and never stopped turning to Allah for forgiveness and for repentance but at the same time he stood with strength and when he converted he went to see his uncle and.
he told him first he said he thought ago said that he thought who could who would be the most angry that I became Muslim who would be the angriest that I became Muslim and he went to his door and knock and said I testify to the oneness of God and that will Hamid is His Messenger these aren’t fairy tales is this isn’t like these are folk legends these are examples for us to live.
and may Allah allow us and make us vessels to make this real for us make it real for us and for our children for the next generation may we live with strength maybe live with dignity may we live with his guidance I mean you Robert al-amin I said I you .
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