Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. InshaAllah we will be starting our Confident Muslim session, specifically with the recitation of the Qur'an by Imam Ali from the Diyanat Center. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Sabahul khair, good morning. In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. The believers have succeeded.
Those who are humble in their prayer. And those who turn away from evil. And those who are doing zakat. And those who guard their private parts, Except for their spouses, or those whose right hands possess. Except for their spouses, or those whose right hands possess.
And indeed, they are not to be blamed. But whoever seeks beyond that, it is they who are the transgressors. And those who are faithful to their trusts and their covenants. And those who are on their prayers, keeping them. It is they who are the inheritors. Those who inherit the Paradise. They will abide therein eternally.
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. And our Lord, do not take us if we forget or make a mistake. Our Lord, do not take us as a burden as You did those before us. Our Lord, and do not make us do that which we have no power to do. And forgive us, and forgive us, and have mercy on us.
Our Lord, and do not make us do that which we have no power to do. And forgive us, and forgive us, and have mercy on us. Our Lord, and do not make us do that which we have no power to do. And forgive us, and forgive us, and have mercy on us. And if you are our protector, then help us against the disbelieving people. Allah Almighty has spoken the truth. Glory be to your Lord, the Lord of Might and Glory above what they describe. And peace be upon the messengers.
And all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. Al Fatiha. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. I'm the moderator for the morning for all of you that actually stayed around for Sunday. Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala ala alihi wa sahbihi man wala. So I wanted to introduce the topic and also the platform. This is a platform that inshallah ta'ala is going to be all around the world. And this is our second time experimenting with it at a convention. Our first time was at Mas Ikna in Chicago in December. And this time inshallah ta'ala here in Baltimore and hopefully at Isna. And eventually, hopefully within a year or so, we're going to start hosting these conferences around the world inshallah. Separate conferences under the name of Confident Muslim. So first of all, let me begin. Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala ala alihi wa sahbihi man wala. What is the idea of a Confident Muslim and why is it that we felt so compelled to do this? When we started Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, one of the things that we did is we traced the impact of Islamophobia on Muslims not just in America but around the world
with particular focus on American Muslims. And how this climate has not only affected us externally as a community and put us in physical danger, but it's also caused our young people to internalize a certain insecurity and identity crisis that's been forced upon them. And we traced all of the different things that cause doubt in the Muslim community. What is it that actually does away with Islamic identity? What makes people want to run away from the deen? And it seems like every single day we're hearing a story about someone that's starting to distance themselves from the religion. And they're for different reasons. Sometimes it's just purely personal. And more often than not, as I said yesterday in a session, a faith crisis is induced not because of something internal but because of something external. We are likely to see the people that are closest to us as representatives of God. And what that means is that psychologically, if we are abused by those who are closest to us, then we will tend to conceive of Allah in an abusive fashion. Sometimes a person might find that it's difficult to simply maintain the obligations of Islam. And it's more convenient. And I don't say convenience in a way to dismiss a person's distancing themselves from faith. But I say convenient in the sense that for it to be worth it to experience and deal with the Islamophobic environment that we're dealing with today, I have to really believe in what I'm upholding. I have to really believe in these ideals and these values and these principles. And if I have too much pressure, and then on the inside I don't have enough faith in that which I have been brought up in, then obviously I'm going to crack. So we've identified it. That's what happens when you've been speaking all day Saturday. Identified it.
We identified the root causes of doubt from all different directions, whether they're intellectual, spiritual, family, personal, whatever they may be. And you can put them in four different bubbles. One of them is that you have right-wing Islamophobia, and that's obviously the heavily funded Islamophobic industry that we see today that has taken over our government. $58 million to $60 million of traceable income that goes towards demonizing our Muslim community. The purpose of that demonization is to implement discriminatory legislation against our community. However, what impact does that have on our community? If I have to struggle for my deen, if I have to go out there and deal with slurs and deal with abuse, verbal, physical, then I just don't know if I want to deal with this. And so it causes us to distance ourselves from our faith. Sometimes you have left-wing Islamophobia, and we have ignored for too long the growing Islamophobia that's coming out of the left, out of the far left. Liberal Islamophobia is no less nasty than right-wing Islamophobia. Because liberal Islamophobia puts forth this idea that Islam and modernity are incompatible, and it's a dogmatic secularism that's being forced on our community, that you cannot believe the way that you believe, even if you're willing to fight discrimination and fight oppression. But you are not allowed to uphold your own moral codes and your own value system and your own faith. And that also has a serious impact on our community. Because if I'm being told that my religion is backwards over and over and over again, and that it's incompatible with modernity, and that the only way I can really advance myself in my career or in my education
or be treated as a dignified human being is by distancing myself from some backwards theology, then so be it. And then sometimes, parents will raise their children exactly as they should be raising them. Put them in Islamic schools their whole lives, demonstrate Islam in a beautiful way with their children, demonstrate Islam through service, and then your kids go off to Ivy League schools, or your kids go off to a prestigious program and start to advance themselves in their education, and then they're attacked by atheism and agnosticism, and they take their first philosophy class, and Sunday school was not enough, or Islamic school was not enough to prepare myself for the onslaught from a philosophical level that I would have on my tradition, on my religion. And it wasn't because of any fault of the parents. It was simply because we were not equipped. So there are different levels of Islamophobia or different attacks that will come on the faith. The result of it at the end of the day is an insecure Muslim, either insecure in their belief system or insecure in their practice, and truly conflicted with their identity. And Abdullah bin Abbas radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, he mentions that, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions the shaitan coming at us from all different directions, he might come to you from in front of you by beautifying and decorating the things of this world, beautifying the prohibitions of this world so that you could be attracted to them. Or he would come to you from your left side with your sins, and try to get you to distance yourself from Allah with your sins. Or he'll come to you with your good deeds. If he can't get you with adultery and the obvious major sins, then he'll get you with your salah and your self-righteousness and consume you in that way, as long as he can distance you from Allah.
But how does he get you from behind? And think of this powerful image from Ibn Abbas radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu. He said that the shaitan grabs you from behind, بِتْ تَرَدُّدْ وَالشَّكْ With doubts, hesitation. He starts to crack your faith. You have waswasa, whispers in regards to your religion. And suddenly as you're being held from behind, you feel like you can't progress anymore. You feel like you can't contribute anymore. Your enthusiasm for the religion starts to diminish, because he's attacking you there. And the way we defend ourselves against that attack is first and foremost recreating and reframing the narrative of our religion. And that was the purpose of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. That's why we established this institute. That's why it's a non-profit where everything is available to everyone for free. Because we want this to produce manuals for imams, for psychiatrists, for educators, reach the Muslim middle, reach our allies, reach politicians, anyone, so that we can have our own narrative and our own framing of the religion that is honest intellectually, authentic to our tradition, accessible by the masses, academically substantive, so that we could have that for ourselves while continuously studying the doubts that are created about our religion and within the Muslim community. So the opposite of a person being held back from shaitan, from behind, is someone that has deep faith, deep conviction, that sees their religion as a medium through which they can contribute to the world, that sees their religion as inspiration, that is inspired by the rich civilization that we have in our deen,
the stories that we always recount about how we once founded this and founded that. And you might remember what Imam Siraj said yesterday in one session, if you heard him, when he spoke about Huntington, and he spoke about this clash of civilizations, that Islamic civilization did not spread by the sword. To the contrary, Islamic civilization spread through a rich tradition, a rich intellectual tradition of contribution. Whereas much of what has spread from this part of the world to other parts of the world has been imperialism through violence, a violent imposition of ideas rather than winning a battle of ideas. For us as Muslims, as Muslim Americans that are both proud of their Islam and proud of their American-ness, we can dig deep into our tradition and find past contributions and present-day implementation strategies, and put that to work so that our iman is constantly at work, our yaqeen, our conviction, our faith is constantly at work, and we're constantly in a state of contribution. Because the opposite of a person being held by their garment from behind is a person that is walking in the streets. Fourth, proudly with their deen, and not contributing despite their Islam, but contributing because of their Islam. I tell people that our goal and our dream is to foster a bunch of Muhammad Ali's. In fact, if we could just get two or three of them, we'll be good. Because that man, rahimahullah ta'ala, was not just confidence, was not just cocky in a way that endeared him to the world, but he loved his religion and he did not miss a single opportunity to tell people that the reason he was who he was was because of his religion. The reason he was who he was was because of his religion.
The reason why he spent the rest of his life contributing and doing da'wah far after boxing, and didn't fall into some deep depression, was because of his deen. And he died as, quite possibly, the greatest Muslim American that has ever lived. May Allah have mercy on him. We want a bunch of Muhammad Ali's. We want to have a bunch of young people that look towards him and that also see that that's who I want to be. Anyone who grew up in the 80's and the 90's grew up with Hakeem Olajuwon. And if you don't know who Hakeem Olajuwon is, I'm just sorry. I don't know what to say to you. But look him up. The Dream Shake. And I remember watching ESPN in the 90's when Stuart Scott was talking about Hakeem Olajuwon fasting during the NBA finals. And just putting on this incredible show while he was fasting. Playing better than he played even when he wasn't fasting. And I remember the ending of that documentary or that report. It's as if the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is under his wings as he's playing out there on the court. That made me proud to be a Muslim growing up in that era. I could look to a role model and I could see someone that represented their Islam proudly and that felt like their Islam actually propelled them as opposed to hindered them. So we want to discover talents in our communities. The gems that I was speaking about last night that often go unnoticed and we wait till they rise to jump on the bandwagon. We want to discover them because they are in our midst. So today, insha'Allah ta'ala, we have one presenter. And we were supposed to have two presenters but unfortunately, Sister Saram Mankara, who by the way is probably the most inspirational person that I've ever met in my life. Sister Saram Mankara is a sister who cannot see with her eyes. But her heart has such insight.
And she's someone who, masha'Allah, has inspired the world with her work not just for Muslims with disabilities but for non-Muslims as well. She fell ill late last night and we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to cure her. She has been through a very difficult few years and in fact, she's overcome many obstacles. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give her shifa. Insha'Allah ta'ala, with her, we will allow her to or we'll have a chance insha'Allah for her to take this platform and to... Where did you come from? He's not the presenter by the way. I was going to introduce our presenter. Before I introduce our presenter, does anyone know Dr. Altaf Hussain? Good. Masha'Allah. They're still wooing even on a Sunday morning. Dr. Altaf is of course someone who subhanAllah has inspired me and inspired so many people, mentored us as we tried to do what we could in the Muslim community. And he's also the vice president of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, alhamdulillah. I'll let Dr. Altaf say a few words insha'Allah, then I will introduce our presenter for today. Jazakum Allah khair. Jazakum Allah khair. Salam wa rahmatullah. So about a year ago, Sheikh Omar Suleiman had this idea and he had been sort of thinking about the idea for Yaqeen Institute. And I just want to let you know that when Allah subhanAllah ta'ala blesses an effort and there's barakah in the time and the effort, that subhanAllah so much good comes from it. So I just wanted to come here this morning to not only say that this is the first time when we had a main session at 10 a.m. This many people are here, mashaAllah. Takbeer. I'm not going to fundraise. Although you can go to yaqeeninstitute.org and donate. Thank you Sheikh Omar.
So in six months, in six months mashaAllah ta'ala we launched in October of 2016. In six months, mashaAllah, we've not only reached the U.S. and Canada, but around the world. I just wanted to come up to make sure to let you know that as the vice president, my focus is more on the outreach and the fundraising. So please, if you, as you've heard today and you hear from our presenters, take this word, take it back to your communities, visit Yaqeen Institute. And when people are asking for resources, refer them to our website. There are tremendous opportunities there, but make sure you do support, mashaAllah, yaqeeninstitute.org. Thank you again. I'm going to read a poem from Hira, a young woman from the University of Colorado. And while other teenagers were struggling through their teens, Hira showed her maturity by penning two novels at the age of 13 and 15. She's an avid artist. She enjoys procuring Arabic calligraphy, specifically verses of the Quran. And she was in the news a week ago or two weeks ago. She was in the Guardian and she was in many different news outlets. Because, and I'll let her tell the story, she put together a document, over 700 pages, of every time Muslims have had to condemn terrorism. As a response to the idea that Muslims don't. So she's the founder of a new initiative, Muslimscondem.com. An institute dedicated to fighting Islamophobia by alleviating misconceptions.
Hira will be giving us more insight into exactly what that initiative is today. Without further ado, Hira Hasmi. Assalamu alaikum. Okay, inshallah. So I'm going to start off with a story. A couple months ago, back in around October, I was sitting in class, unaware, unassuming, probably half asleep. Because 11pm or am is very, very early for a college student. A couple minutes later, a student walked in. He sat a couple seats away from me and I paid him no attention. Until the teacher put us into groups. He was in my discussion group. And the topic of the discussion group was terrorism. So this student, he looked at me, he looked at my hijab. He looked back at me and he asked, why are Muslims so violent? And if they're not, then why don't they condemn it? And this is something I'm sure a lot of us have heard at some point in our lives. And this was not the first time for me, nor would it be the last. But I was very frustrated. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to him. Some that are kind of too harsh to say on the stage. But we started to talk. It's unfair to hold me to that standard, I told him. To ask me to apologize for the actions of a few. To paint an entire religion of 1.6 billion people with the same brush. The conversation was difficult. And it became tense very quickly. I went home frustrated. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what resources to point him towards. But I had an idea. And I put my Googling skills to good use. A few weeks later, after a lot of research, bruised fingers, I ended up with a list. A list of Muslims condemning things.
All with sources cited, to make my LA teacher proud. It was 712 pages long. Over 5,600 instances of scholars, imams, sheikhs, celebrities, laypersons, condemning violence done in our name. When my friend urged me to make this a public resource, I did what anybody does when they want to make something public news, and I tweeted about it. And it went viral. A lot of news stations picked it up. Media stations picked it up. Radio stations picked it up. And now it's an initiative dedicated to fighting Islamophobia. It has its own website, Muslimscondem.com. Alhamdulillah. But I want to pause here for a moment. I want to pause here for a moment and address something that a lot of us are probably thinking. That should this list have even been made? Was it being apologetic? Did it change anything? Because isn't it hypocritical to ask Muslims to distance themselves from terrorism and violence done in their name when no other group is held to the same standard? Absolutely, it is hypocritical. And we should continuously point out this hypocrisy. But I want to remind us of an event in the Prophet's life, the story of Abdullah ibn Ubay ibn Salul, the leader of the hypocrites. And when the Prophet was asked why he didn't have this man executed, a man who had committed treason multiple times, the Prophet responded, I do not want the people to say that I used to kill my followers. There's a couple things that we learn from this lesson. That the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, was justified in punishing this man, but understood that it would tarnish the image of Islam. That this would be used as ammo, as fuel against the Muslims of that time by the Islamophobes.
So sometimes as Muslims we do things that we would rather not do for the sake of the Ummah. Make dua for me guys, this is my first time speaking on such a big stage. So sometimes we have to do things even if we don't want to. When I'm outside, I represent more than myself, and that is a responsibility that comes with being a minority in this community. But it is still our responsibility to reach out and build bridges, to take the initiative, to fulfill that duty simply because we are Muslim. And that is part of our deen. And it's not easy, it's not easy. Sometimes we don't get the results that we want. That that person that we were discussing with, that we were talking with, our words don't affect them. That they don't change their minds, and they still believe what they believe, and that's okay. Sometimes we have to wait for our results, and sometimes we don't even get it in our lifetime. You know, I had to wait three hours for my tweet to go viral, it was very painful. But to put forth that initial effort, that is required of us. But to bring about results, that is in the hands of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alone. Remember the story of Ta'if? The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam went to Ta'if with two goals. First, to spread the message of Islam, to share the message of Islam with the people of Ta'if. And then the second goal was to find a safe haven for the Muslims. Was the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam able to accomplish these goals? No, he wasn't. But does that mean that his efforts were in vain, that they were futile? Absolutely not. Through the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was leaving the city of Ta'if,
a group of jinn encountered him reading Quran, and they accepted the message. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala brought about results without him even knowing. And one of the reasons the story is so beautiful, is that even though the people of Ta'if, even though they rejected him so strongly, that they stoned him so much so that his shoes were soaked through with his blood, that he forgave them. When Jibreel alayhi salam came to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and told him, Allah sent me, and the angels in control of the mountain are awaiting your command, say the word and the city of Ta'if will be crushed. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam responded, I rather hope that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raises from their descendants a people who will worship Allah the one. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam never lost hope. Even after failure, he never lost hope, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala fulfilled his hope. And we know that today now, alhamdulillah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran, in surah Insan, وَكَانَ سَعَيُّكُمْ مَشْكُورًا Your efforts are appreciated. So even if we think that our words will not change anything, that no one will be affected by them, moved by them, it's still our responsibility to keep the channel of communications open. And that doesn't mean having to lock, it doesn't necessarily mean having to lock yourself up in your room for three weeks, ignoring homework, and just staring at a Google Doc. But it can be as simple as keeping the doors to your mosque open, to your organizations open, and keeping our hearts open. And in no way am I justifying bigotry or ignorance. There's never any place or room for that. But what I am saying is not every person could have been born with a rhetoric of hate. That we should preemptively address these questions and educate, and answer the questions, the difficult ones,
even if we know they are coming from a place of hatred. Because that is what Islam teaches us. That is what our deen teaches us. That is what our deen teaches us. So, in the end, even if nobody changes their mind, we should be glad to have done what we could for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, for our community. With the list, alhamdulillah, now it's a website, muslimscondem.com, and now it's a cooperative effort with the Bridge Initiative, dedicated to fighting Islamophobia through education, through alleviating misconceptions, one by one. And you guys can add to it. You can go to the website, submit your own cases, go to the Bridge Initiative's website, use their resources, distribute it amongst your community, and use it how you need to use it in your communities, and what's needed there. What questions are difficult to answer. Now, I'm not saying that this list alone is going to convince the whole world of what Islam really is. Of course not. It's not meant to do that. And this effort was not done in isolation. This is simply meant to be a resource for people to go back to. When this question does arise, that all Muslims are silent, that they don't do anything about this, we can say no. We can throw at them over 5,000 examples of Muslims condemning terrorism, and metaphorically throw, because we don't condone violence here. So, the point of this list was never more than to be a resource, to show that our presumed silence is out of no fault of our own, that we are at the forefront to fight this battle that insists to twist our faith into something that it's not. So, with the list, did that student ever change his mind? Not exactly. We were in contact a couple months after the incident,
and while he was appreciative of my efforts, he still believed what he believed. But I want to leave you with this. A couple months ago, when the website was first launched, a student found the project through the website, and she came and visited our MSA office. She had very strong opinions about the project, and as we started to bump heads, I invited her to one of our events, and she came. And as she started to interact with our members, I saw her slowly start to open up and become more comfortable. The next day, she sent us an email, and what she wrote completely floored me. She wrote, 16 or 15 years ago, in the days following 9-11, my family was probably the first to curse people like you. People who wear hijab, people who have really big beards, people who eat biryani or something, I don't know. But she had really strong opinions, and she said, my family was the first to curse people like you. But today, I will be the first to knock on your door. Jazakumullah khair. MashaAllah, Tabarakallah. I'm telling you, we have gems in our community. SubhanAllah, that we... First of all, congratulations to her parents, who are also here. May Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala bless you and bless your family. And what a fantastic job you have done. So, our last speaker is a fellow at yaqeeninstitute.org. Her name is Sister Tasneem Al-Qeek, and she's actually from this area. Sister Tasneem has been, MashaAllah, one of our greatest contributors at Yaqeen. And it's been a pleasure to have her contribution.
She wrote her first publication on the treatment of Muslim minorities. So you can look it up, Inshallah. She has her bachelor's in early Christianity. She's from Michigan, and she's doing her PhD at Georgetown University under Dr. Jonathan Brown. So we'd like to invite Sister Tasneem Al-Qeek to share a few words, Inshallah, about some of the things that she does with Yaqeen Institute. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. So as Sheikh Omar just introduced, my name is Tasneem Al-Qeek, and I am in the area now doing Islamic studies full-time. And I want to share a couple stories of why Yaqeen is so important to me. So during my first semester of graduate school, I was enrolled in an introductory sharia course with Dr. Jonathan Brown, my advisor. And it was open to both graduate students and undergraduate students. And for the first day, there was a lot of students because they wanted to, you know, backpack the class, check it out, see if they'd like it. And so it was a little packed. So as the class was going on, we were just doing general topics, general overviews, just so the students could get a sense of what to expect for the semester. And so about halfway through the class, a student shoots his hand up in the air to ask a question. And so Dr. Jonathan Brown picks on him and says, go ahead, ask your question. And very blatantly says, well, isn't Islam an anti-Semitic religion? And Dr. Jonathan Brown, if anyone has heard him speak before, you can just see the look on his face. Looks a little incredible. And he looks at him curiously and says, excuse me? He's like, Islam is anti-Semitic, the things they've done to the Jews. And so he stops and he looks around the whole classroom. And it's quite a packed classroom. And he says, if anyone can give me one example, I'm talking about 1,500 years of opportunities
to look for an example, just one example of how Islam is anti-Semitic, of an instance in which Islam targeted Jews for their being Jewish, give me an example. In fact, I'll give you extra credit. Any one of you guys, you have the whole semester. I'll give you extra credit if you can give me an example. And here I'm thinking to myself, this is my very first semester of graduate school. I've got seven years ahead of me. And this just happened. And at that moment, I kind of sat up in my seat feeling so proud, thinking to myself, that's what I want to be. I want to have that knowledge. I want to have that confidence to the extent that I can face any question like that. The problem what we are facing today in our society, the problem that our youth are facing, most importantly, is the fact that we're lacking knowledge in our religion. And therefore, we're lacking confidence in our religion. So when someone goes up to someone who's 15 or 16 or 25 or 40 and says, Islam is an anti-Semitic religion, or Islam treats others X, Y, Z manner, that's a negative manner, we don't know what to do. We panic. And we think to ourselves, maybe it's true. Maybe there is an example. What exactly does this religion teach? And that little drop of uncertainty spreads like wildfire. And at times, we don't really understand how much of an impact that doubt grows inside of our minds until it paralyzes us to the extent that we're so obsessed with this fear of, well, maybe hijab isn't fard. Or maybe, you know, women are treated wrongly in Islam. And because of that fear, despite the fact that we remain Muslim most of the time, and unfortunately a lot of times people leave Islam, but despite the fact that we remain Muslim and remain wearing hijab and doing our activities, that fear stops us from doing so much more.
We have hundreds and hundreds of years of Muslim history in which Muslims were at the forefront of sciences, they were at the forefront of all the contributions and inventions. They weren't at the forefront because of some genetic, you know, mutation in which they were extra smart or whatever it was. They were at the forefront because they weren't preoccupied with, does Islam say this or does Islam say not? You know, they had that knowledge. They had that understanding, and because of that understanding, they had the confidence in order to move beyond those things that are bogging our minds. And so it's very, very important to really accept the fact that we need to do something about it. And that's what's so exciting about Yaqeen. Alhamdulillah, I'm involved in a program that's hosted during the summer for youth. And the purpose of this program is to bring youth that are 15 to 19 years of age at an intensive where they'll spend three weeks learning about law, Islamic law, about the tafsir of the Quran, about aqidah, creed. And throughout these three weeks, they have the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with speakers and scholars and teachers to ask these questions. And so during the second year of the program, what happened was that, you know, after a couple days when they started getting comfortable with the teachers, they started to ask those questions that were really like stuck in their minds, things that they had heard in high school or they learned during college or they watched during a TV show and heard on the media, whatever it was. And so it was about day two of the intensive, and a 15-year-old, a 15-year-old asked the question, why does Islam allow concubines? And I'm thinking to myself in the corner, what's a concubine? I didn't know what a concubine was at the age of 15, that's for sure. And I realized it's getting bad. Our situation is not improving, and we really need to do something about it. If these are the concerns that are at the top of a 15-year-old's mind, how is he going to be able to contribute to society?
And so alhamdulillah, what the point of the program is really is to have that opportunity to learn and to engage, and that's exactly what our society needs. And after all of those students had three weeks to learn and to engage, I had phone calls and text messages afterwards, these students went on to pursue Islamic studies, whether it was at Qalam or Zaytuna. A lot of them started doing pre-medical studies at college. The point is that they went back, and when they called me and they talked to me, they said, guess what, we just started a halaqa. Guess what, I'm running for student council. Guess what, I'm doing XYZ for my community. Because what? Because they now had that knowledge, they had that confidence to move beyond that paralyzation. They had that confidence to say, I know who I am as a Muslim, I'm proud to be who I am, and if someone tells me otherwise, I know my place in society, and my place in society is to build my character and to contribute to my community. And so that's what I'm really excited about Yaqeen Institute. That's exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to provide those resources. We're trying to provide those videos, those various engaging media platforms in order for people who just have a simple question and they don't know the answer to, to provide that outlet for them. And I'm also really excited because one of the upcoming series that Yaqeen is starting is a women's series. Female figures throughout Islamic history who have contributed to their society and who have made a difference. So I hope you guys can look forward to that and to all of the work that Yaqeen is doing. And inshallah, as a result, once you guys engage with this work, once you contribute to this work, we provide outlets for live Q&A in order for you to have that opportunity for discussion, in order for you to grow as well. Once we, you all engage and once we are able to grow inshallah, that will be the solution bi-idhnillah for our youth and for our future generations. So please make dua for Yaqeen, please stay engaged and inshallah we will all benefit.
Jazakumallah khayran. Assalamu alaykum. Jazakumallah khayran. We wanted to thank all of you and we wanted to thank our presenters and Barakallah fi ustadah Tasneem for, for presenting as well. We want to thank IKNA for giving us the opportunity to present this and inshallah as I said, we hope the platform of Confident Muslim will grow inshallah. It's confidentmuslim.com as well and it will become our version of TED Talks inshallah. Jazakumallah khayran to IKNA and to all of you for being present as well.
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