As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We begin, as we began all of our talks, by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the Rahman and the Rahim. And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to send His peace and salutations and salawat and salam upon the One who was sent as Rahmat and Rahim. It's always nice for me to come to the ICNA convention.
In fact, the ICNA convention was my first convention that I ever attended as a teenager. Back when I think most of you in this audience were not yet even born. And I actually...
attended a YM session. This is, by the way, 1990, by the way. 1990 was my first ICNA convention. It was in upstate New York, Buffalo, New York.
And I actually attended the YM session back at a time when I vividly remember there were around 20 or maximum 25 people in that small room. And that's because, obviously, I am talking about a batch of young men and women who are really of the firstborn of the immigrant. generation.
When I grew up, Sunday school was not in a masjid. We didn't quite have a masjid. It was in the backyard of somebody's house in some type of rundown structure that was just a ran shackle type of thing put together.
And how things have changed as I see the flourishing of Islam, how Islam is growing year by year, decade by decade. And I find myself straddling that generation. where I can give talks amongst you and I feel an elder unto you and I give talks in the main session and I feel somewhat of a youngster amongst them.
I'm straddling both of these worlds and yet I feel a part of both of these worlds. A few years ago, some kid passed by me and said, Uncle Ji. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, hold on. I ain't no uncle yet. And he goes, Aren't you Ammar's dad?
I was like, Yeah, I am. Well, then you're an uncle. He's like, Well, that's true actually.
So I'm an uncle but I also feel young at heart. And of course, I mean, as somebody who who is of my generation, I kind of get to see both generations, the generation of my forefathers, my fathers before me, and the generation of my children and my younger brothers and sisters here. And there are many differences that are pretty obvious to somebody of my generation.
And today I want to talk about one of those differences and how perhaps we can use it for our advantage. How perhaps, not just perhaps, how we need to use it for our advantage. We need to realize that, and I'm speaking here to the... YM, to the younger, born and raised here, American Muslims, that there is a fundamental difference between our generation and the generation of our fathers who came to this land. And again, most of us here are children of immigrants.
There are, of course, many who are converts and children of converts, but the bulk of people in this particular room are children of immigrants. And I apologize for kind of having to be stereotypical, but really, I'm talking to the majority in this particular room at this stage. realize there are fundamental differences between us who are born and raised here and between our parents who came here.
Our parents adopted this land. We didn't adopt it. We were born here. Our parents took quite a while to acclimatize, to feel a part of the fabric of this land. Perhaps some of them to this day are not fully acclimatized.
Some of us unfortunately still make fun of their accents, which is really, really crude and stupid. Try speaking Urdu. and then see whether they speak English better than you or you speak Urdu better than them. The fact of the matter is, our parents felt the need to prove their American identity. They felt the need to be extra patriotic.
I remember when I was in college and I was going through a fundamentalist phase of my life. When I was in college, I went through a hardcore fundamentalist phase. My father, on the 3rd of July, went and purchased flags to put outside of our house in Houston, Texas. And I was the fundamentalist teenager saying, I don't want an American flag outside my house.
And I would pull it out. And we would have a fight. Like a verbal fight, don't worry.
A verbal fight. Like, better you have to show American. We have to put the flag outside. I was like, I don't need to show anybody anything. I don't need to prove.
It's like, I don't want to showcase this. Of course, back then, this is 1992, 1993. I mean, there is no Gulf War. There is no Iraq War.
There was Gulf War going on. And there was a conflict in Bosnia. That America was, as usual, doing things that I was very angry. at the time so my point being that that generation it kind of felt the need to go out of their way to prove their loyalty to a country they had adopted whereas the fact of the matter is that by and large we don't need we don't feel the need to prove that loyalty because we don't have any other country other than this country our parents as well they came from lands by and large that were repressive in nature where the government spied on their own in on their own own citizens, where there was constant monitoring and harassment and fear and intimidation of a secret police. Whereas we have grown up and we have this streak of quite literally American freedom.
Nobody is going to take my right away, especially my government. So the fact of the matter is that there's a huge difference between the psychology of the generation that came and the psychology of us who were born and raised here. And before I move on, a footnote.
I am in no way, shape, fashion or form demeaning that generation. And any one of us who does make fun of that generation, shame on you. You wouldn't be here right now had it not been for the efforts of that generation. The flourishing of Islam, the flourishing of Islam that we are witnessing and reaping the fruits of, it was planted in the 60s and 70s when my father and others like him came. We need to get out of this mentality, young men.
women. They struggled much more than we did. They had it much more difficult than we did. If we pride ourselves on having conferences of 10-15 thousand, they would be overjoyed if even 30-40 people came to one of their early halaqas.
My father tells me, tells us of the earliest Eid that took place in Houston, Texas. And I always say this story because it's so symbolic. You know, my father, by the way, was of the first Muslim immigrants, 1962, to Houston, Texas, the founder of the first masjid.
And in 1963, was the first Eid that ever took place in Houston, Texas. And my father says that a grand total of three people showed up for Eid. Three people.
And they were happy that they got three people. And they looked amongst... themselves, you think there's an hired imam?
You think there's a molvi or a sheikh? No. They looked on themselves and they decided, my father was the most religious, so they said, you lead the salah.
And my father had never led any salah in his life, much less Eid salah. But that's what they had to do. They had to make do and they had to do the best. And I hear these stories and I am literally just dumbstruck at the struggles.
I mean, we fight and bicker over beginning and end of Ramadan. Do you know back then, it sounds bizarre to me. to me, you couldn't even call back home. You couldn't call Pakistan. You had to schedule through an AT&T operator in New York that on such and such a day on Saturday, I'm gonna use you to call Pakistan.
And literally you had to wait a week and your family had to know you're gonna call at that time. There was probably one phone in the neighborhood, they'd be at that phone. And then you talk for like five, 10 minutes. The first Eid of Houston, Texas, forget moon sighting.
Do you know when the first Eid took place? The first Sunday after they heard the news, that Eid had happened in Pakistan. Because they don't have the luxury of coming on a weekday. They have to wait for the weekend. So they're all happy to come on that weekend to have Eid Salah.
So the point is, to get on to my topic here, there's actually quite a lot of difference. And this is not to diminish... or to demean.
But we do need to take into account that there is a psychological attitude that is of paramount difference between our generation and the generation of my parents and most of our parents over here. And you know, may Allah Azza wa Jal give my father a long life. He's still alive, alhamdulillah.
He's healthy. He's a young 81 years old, mashallah, tabarakallah. Still active in Houston, Texas, mashallah, tabarakallah.
You know, to this day, wallahi, to this day, it's no longer over the flags in front of our house. But sometimes he hears a speech and clip of mine from YouTube, and he goes, Bete, did you have to be so strict on the American government? Bete, did you have to be so harsh on foreign policy?
Don't you understand what they could do to you? And you know, I understand that is coming out of a love. I understand that is coming because his culture was different than our culture. But I tell him, and I tell him with utmost respect, is that, dear father, you know...
we have no alternative but to fight for our freedoms. You know, I didn't ask to be born here. I was born in this land. And I'm thankful to Allah that I was born here. But if I'm not gonna stand up and fight for our rights, if I'm not gonna preach the truth, then who else is going to do that?
So we understand. We understand that indeed, the psychology is different. And by the way, another footnote here that is very important, and especially... for the Pakistanis and Indians and Bengalis and Arabs in this audience.
You know, for the longest time, and I'll be brutally honest here, brutally honest here, I felt that I have very little to do, you know, five, ten years ago with the civil rights movement. What has that got to do with us, man? Like, it's nothing to do with me.
Okay, I mean, not that I didn't admire it. Everybody admires it, but it's like, it's not related to me and my history. And one day, I was going to a conference, and I was talking about Martin Luther King, talking about assassinations, what's going to happen.
And then it clicked to me. Hold on a sec. My dad came to Texas in 1962. He must have witnessed so many things about the racial tensions.
He must have seen those signs that say whites here and blacks there. Let me call him up and get some stories from him. So I called him up driving to the airport, driving to give a lecture at a major convention, and I said, can you tell me, did you ever see those signs that said whites in the front of the bus, blacks in the back of the bus? And my dad said, literally, what do you mean see those?
signs. I had to obey those signs. And it slapped me in the face. My father had to sit at the back of the bus.
My father had to go and drink from that. that other fountain. And you know, the fact of the matter, I realized how selfish and narrow-minded I was to consider the African-American civil rights movement as somehow having nothing to do with any of us.
We are all linked together. Injustice to one person is injustice to all of us. Zulm and oppression to one ethnicity, to one caste is zulm and oppression to every caste. And I felt so ashamed of my... myself.
This was a few years ago. But wallahi, I felt so ashamed of myself. How could I not have been so narrow-minded to not see that all of this repression, oppression is interconnected. will get away with doing dhulm to one category, they will do dhulm to another category. And it is a part of our religion of Islam to stand up against all types of oppression, no matter who does it upon whom.
As we talk of Martin Luther, and as we talk of Martin Luther, and I mentioned this in my talk yesterday as well, and I know many of you were in this audience, so I'll repeat a little bit of that. As we talk of Martin Luther, it is so easy for us to claim Martin Luther... king's legacy as well as nelson mandela's as well as gandhi's it's so easy to portray them as heroes it's so easy for us to pretend as if we are walking in their footsteps but what we we don't realize is that during their lifetimes, all of these individuals were not considered to be heroes in the slightest.
All of them were despised. All of them were mocked. All of them were discarded.
The FBI, it's well known, they had massive files on Martin Luther King. They wanted to smear him. They wanted to expose some personal faults of his and make him look like a bad person. Martin Luther King could never have imagined imagine that a day would come when there would be a national holiday that everybody doesn't go to work in honor of his memory. He could never have imagined that because in his lifetime, he was never treated like a hero.
It's so easy 50 years later to read in our heroes into their lifestyles. But heroes rarely see the fruits of their own efforts. It's typically the next generation. It's typically future generations that acknowledge the the good that they have done. And the same goes for people like Gandhi and to a lesser extent Mandela.
After a long period of time, Mandela actually tasted a bit of the fruits of what he had done. But 27 years in isolation, 27 years on Rikers Island, that's more than most of you have even lived right now. And he was alone in a cell suffering because he could not be quiet for the apartheid regime of South Africa. Now the point being, why do I bring up all of this? Is that the question arises, if we truly want to be heroes...
for the sake of Allah. If we wanna walk in the footsteps of our prophets, we have to realize the path is not easy. We have to realize, as I mentioned yesterday, that prophets never won popularity contests. They never won majority votes. Prophets always came and they said things that are very bitter for the rest of mankind.
They spoke truths that nobody wants to hear. They spoke truth to power. They spoke truth to the elites. They preached against the oppression that was the norm of our times. So we as Muslims, we need to think what exactly are we doing in this world, on this planet.
If we want to walk in the footsteps of what our Prophet ﷺ did, we will have to also preach truth to power. And what that means is we're gonna have to take on some bitterness. We're gonna have to take on some animosity. And this is where the beginning of my talk, I said there is a difference between our...
our father's generation, our generation, this is where I get back to this difference. And that difference is that subconsciously, we actually claim this land to be our own. There's no cognitive dissonance about who we are. I don't have any other nationality other than this nation state.
Whatever it is, good and bad, I have to accept it as mine. And I have to claim responsibility for it. There is no back home for me. There is no other place that I can go to. And frankly, I don't want to go to any other place.
This is where I'm accustomed to living. I grew up here. I speak the language.
This is my culture, my norms. And for good and bad, through thick and thin, I'm gonna have to stick it. this land and carve out my own existence even if that means speaking truth to power and this courage that comes this this fearlessness dare i say this is an advantage that we having been born and raised here have have it easier than our parents before us. And we have to therefore be extremely brave when it comes to characterizing what an ideal American is.
We have to be very careful about not falling prey to false stereotypes. Let me give you a simple example. Sometimes those stereotypes are nobly intended, yet they are nonetheless incorrect.
Let me give you a simple example. A few years ago, you might remember that the... Republican Party, when Obama was running for campaign for office, the Republican Party went pretty blatant in its Islamophobia, pretty blatant.
And Obama was called a secret Muslim and whatnot. You know, the person who actually defended Obama was a Republican, Colin Powell, very well-respected military general, Colin Powell. And Colin Powell, one of the ways he defended Obama was by mentioning the case of an American Muslim serviceman who had lost his life in...
in the invasion of Iraq, I think, in 2001. And an American Muslim serviceman had lost his life. He was in the Marines and he had lost his life. And Colin Powell mentioned his name, showed a photograph and said, these are the true Americans. Now, no doubt this is our brother in Islam and we ask Allah Azza wa Jal bless or reward him in his efforts and his sacrifice.
But let us not forget that the single greatest American Muslim could never have been... quoted by Colin Powell. Let us not forget that the legend American Muslim, the one and only Muhammad Ali. That legend and wallahi we are privileged to be alive when he's alive.
May Allah give him a longer life and bless him and ease his pain right now. He's obviously no sick. The greatest American Muslim ever. The most legendary American Muslim, Muhammad Ali. Colin Powell couldn't quote him.
Do you want to know why Colin Powell could not quote Muhammad Ali as a legend? legendary or a symptomatic American? Because Muhammad Ali refused to sign up and fight in Vietnam. He refused because he said, this is an unjust war.
It's a war to do with power and greed and money. It's a war that has nothing to do with freedom and justice. And I'm not going to fight a rich man's war on behalf of some greedy corporation. It's politically incorrect to mention people like Muhammad Ali in this context. But the fact of the matter is that to me, Muhammad Ali represents a far greater patriot because he understood that almost all of our wars are figments.
of rich people's imagination. Has nothing to do with freedom and democracy and has everything to do with colonialism and capitalism and greed. The fact of the matter, brothers and sisters, is that if we truly want to walk on the footsteps of the prophet...
then we're going to have to speak in a language that will not gain us popularity contest in this society and in this world. There are so many problems going on. Our sister Dalia mentioned some of them in the last session. And there are so many others to mention. Whether it's racism, whether it's police violence, whether it's our foreign policy, whether it's social inequality, whether it's social issues, whether it's the for-profit corporations that have become our prison systems.
The list goes on. on and on and on but see here's the point this is where people like me and you we actually can do more our forefathers laid the foundation we thanked them for that our forefathers planted the seeds we ask Allah to reward them but we are the fruits of those seeds if we're not gonna blossom if we're not gonna flourish if we're not gonna grow then how is Islam gonna come to this land it's our job our responsibility the torch is being passed down and the question that we have to ask ourselves, am I willing to carry that torch forward? Am I actually gonna go farther and move forward and do things that my father and mother could not have done? That's the question I wanna leave with all of us here in the YM gathering that inshallah ta'ala, we actually have an advantage. We have an advantage.
This is our land. This is our language. This is our culture.
We are a part of this people. We have no other place to go. It is quite literally.
a fight for survival. Somebody asked me, what are you going to do if Trump wins for wins and becomes president? I said, what do you think I'm going to do?
This is all joke about migrating to Canada. I'm not going to go to Canada. It's too cold.
This is my land. There's no way I'm going to Canada. This is my country. I'm going to stay here. And we're going to fight and we're going to make sure that Trump does not win.
That's the reality of what we have to do. And brothers and sisters, here's where again our religion teaches us. We have to...
stand up and fight for so many issues and causes. And if we do so, then we are fulfilling the amanah, the trust that Allah has placed in all of us. Remember, Allah created us and He entrusted us. إِنَّا عَرَضْنَا الْأَرْضِ In the Quran, Allah says, I gave the responsibility to so many other entities, the heavens, the earth, the skies, the mountains, and they all refused and shirked away. But mankind said, give it to me, I'll take it.
So we gave it to mankind. We have that responsibility. And what is that responsibility? That you may be able to be a witness to people. a witness and a testament to the people around you.
If we are not going to live up to the legacy of Islam, if we are not going to embody the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, if we are not going to preach ultimate truth and morality and justice, there will be no one on earth who will carry the torch of morality and truth and justice. And we need to invoke not just our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, but all the prophets that came before. We have partners in other faith communities.
Unfortunately, many of them, they fear us for theological reasons. We need to educate them. so much that we can benefit from from mainstream Christianity.
They agree with us on so many of our criticisms of broader society. And we need to ask them that if Jesus Christ came back to this world right now, if he came back to America. Do you think he would defend the hedonism that passes as American values?
Would he defend the greed that passes as American consumerism? Would he defend the oppression of the poor that passes as American capitalism? Would he defend the nudity and pornography that passes as family entertainment? That's the question we need to ask our broader Christian neighbors and relatives.
We're going to have to stand up collectively and bring about a better society in light of the... the laws and the Sharia that Allah has given us. Now some of us will argue and this is valid that you know Shaykh all that you said of speaking truth to power and of allowing for dissent some of us some of that you said is actually purely American values that's what America teaches us that we have the right to be free we have the right to hold our opinions that we have the right to not tow the party line and you know you are correct in that that technically, indeed, it is an American right. It is a constitutional right.
As a famous senator remarked, almost 70 years ago. The true patriotism is that when our country does right, we keep it right. But when it does wrong, we make it right. This is true patriotism. All of this is true and valid.
But I want to be very, very, very explicit. And I speak only for myself. Let us not confuse our love for a country with our love for truth. Let us not confuse our love for a nation with our love for our God.
We need to be very, very careful to not transform patriotism and nationalism into a modern idol that is worshipped besides Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We as Muslims cannot compromise on the truth. And I speak for myself in the first person. I truly thank Allah that I was born in America.
I thank Allah for the education that I received over here. all over the world. I thank Allah for the upbringing that has shaped my life and my mind. And I truly, at some level, I love this country. And I truly wish what is good for it and for all lands.
But my ultimate loyalty and my ultimate love does not lie with the land, but with the owner of that land. It does not lie with the mulk, but with Malik al-Mulk. As an American, I am loyal to this country.
As an American, I want nothing but good for this country. But if Trump comes along, or any other entity comes along, and attempts to force me to give up my religion, To give up my values, I will try my best to fight within the confines of the law. And if I fail, and I'm forced to choose between my country and my God, for me, this is a non-sequitur, this is a no-choice.
I will always choose... my God over my country. Because lands come and go.
Because lands come and go. Nations rise and fall. But it is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who is hayyul la yamud, who is the ever living and never dies. Brothers and sisters, I advise myself and all of you to have the courage to live the lives that you want to live, to live the lives that you know you should live because in the end of the day, it is only by living the life that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants you to live that you will get the eternal life in the next life.
Brothers and sisters, be proud, be brave. You're already American, be Muslim. Jazakumullahu khairan. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.