Post-Ramadan Advice
6 / 6
Guiding Muslim Youth by Prophetic Example
What would you do if hundreds of youth from the inner city arrived at your masjid, some Muslim, some not, and all eager to learn?
Dr. Tahir Wyatt describes the remarkable incident this past Ramadan when a massive group of youth showed up at the Philadelphia Masjid. Where did they come from? Who told them to come? He reflects on young people's fears and hopes and the conditions that make them prone to making devastating decisions. Learn how this masjid set a prophetic tone and precedent to not just welcome them, but include them and nurture their faith.
Listen to more from Dr. Tahir on the topic of community.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Bismillah, Assalamualaikum. I'm very happy and honored to be here this evening in this very historical building. And tonight we're gonna have a very intimate and open conversation with Dr. Sheikh Tahir Wyatt. Assalamualaikum Sheikh, how are you this evening? Waalaikumussalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Alhamdulillah, I'm doing well. Good, good, good, good. I wanna start this conversation off and I want us to just think about this building that we're in, this very historical building that for those that do not know, the Philadelphia Masjid, Sister Claire Muhammad's school actually was a Catholic school many, many, many years ago. And I always remember the conversations that many of the older brothers and sisters had with me throughout the years that when they first obtained this building, one of the very first things that they'd done, you know what that was Sheikh? No, what's that, what's that? Okay, they didn't paint it green, they didn't do any of those things. They got a crane and they knocked the cross off of the top of the building. One of the very first things that they've done. Pioneers here. And I wanted to just start this conversation off in a relaxed atmosphere. And I just wanted you and I to just imagine the brothers and sisters, many of the founders of this building. Most of them have passed on and many of them that are still here are up in age. This building right here, the Philadelphia Masjid was established many, many, many, many years ago. And we look at it today with all of the many modern changes and updates that are here in this building and how this building still has a family relationship
of older brothers and sisters that attend this building. But now we have a new generation that is calling this Masjid their home. Many of them for the very first time. I remember having conversations with you and you shared with me the many young brothers and sisters who had taken Shahada or had already had Shahada and they came to this Masjid in droves this Ramadan. I want to get your thoughts on that before we get into. Okay. All right. Alhamdulillah. Rasulullah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ma walama ba'd. Let me just take a step back because I think that knowing that the building that we're in at one point used to teach that Allah Azawajal was one of three. And now we teach the Tawheed of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and that He alone deserves our worship. He alone is the creator of the heavens and earth. He alone Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is the one that we turn to in du'a. That we go from a trinity to Tawheed is major. And we shouldn't take that for granted because the same way that we have seen synagogues turn into churches and then churches turn into Masjid, we do have to be conscious of the fact that if we don't do our duty as Muslims, the Masjids can turn into something else. They can turn into lofts, condos, like there's no guarantee that this will be a Masjid forever. The promise though, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, and the optimism comes from what you just mentioned. The fact that this is a generational Masjid, that there is a new generation coming to the Masjid. There's teenagers, there's even younger than that.
There's 20-somethings, 30-something-years-old. And to see them in the Masjid, it brings delight to any believer because you see that, Insh'Allah Ta-A'la, we can pass this torch and that the light of Islam will continue bi-idhnillahi Ta-A'la walau kariha al-kafimo, even if the rejecters of faith don't like it. And so this building that we're in is almost 50,000 square feet. I'm talking about actual space, not to mention the three-quarters of an acre that's undeveloped outside. And there was St. Tommy Morris Catholic High School when the Muslims purchased it, 1975, officially 1976, but the ones who were around, they know that they actually got it in 1975. And at that time, as you know, that was the nation of Islam. And they went through various iterations of Islamic movements until where we are today, which is mainstream, teaching the book of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, the Sunnah of the Prophet, i.e. As-Salat wa-As-Salam. And the ones that are still around, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, many of them are just so elated to see that Islam has progressed, or the Muslims have moved into where we are today with the progress, the updates, as you called it, the renovations, and just, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, serving the community as a whole. So to get to your point about the young Muslims, Ramadan was different this year, very different than anything I think we could have expected. And I don't know if you want to go right into some of what we witnessed, or if there's something else you want to talk about as it relates to the Masjid, because I think once we started talking about the young people, it's going to shift a little bit. Well, let's go back. Let's go back to, like you said, in 1975, 1976,
you had a different movement that was taking place here in this building. I can envision right outside, yellow buses that were busing kids. Right, 500 students. But all of them weren't Muslim. And Brother Anwar, who we love so much, is a former bus driver for the, it may have been called Muhammad's Temple back then, whatever it was called, it's Claire Muhammad's School. I'm envisioning buses outside, and busing children in from all across this city. And even outside the city. And even outside of the city. There was a level of respect, and love, and fear that the Muslim community had, 75, 76, and so on and so forth. And we move forward to where we are now, we have kids that are coming in, they're learning the Quran. They're learning about our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. They're learning the Arabic language. They're learning how to read the Quran. Very historical to look at where things started, where they were, and where they are right now, and where they're gonna go, inshallah, in the future. I wanna talk about all of the children, the young youth that came to this masjid for Ramadan. Something that you and I, or anyone in this room, has really never witnessed before. So, I can tell you, you'll remember, we started fasting on a Thursday. Friday, that first Jum'ah, that was, it was my turn to give the khutbah. So the first Jum'ah of Ramadan, this past Ramadan. I can tell you, as soon as I stepped into the building, it was time to get on the minbar, so we start our khutbah at 115. At 115, they were not letting anyone else in the musalla.
Now, you know, and I know, the musalla holds eight to 900 people. And, so when they said, when they were telling everybody, no, you gotta go down to the gym, I was like, subhanAllah, the musalla's already full? Wow. At 115, because that's not normal. Even in Ramadan, the musalla might fill up, but you're talking more towards the end of the khutbah, because you know how, you know how it is. People coming from work late, or, you know, whatever. But it was full, and I'm expecting to walk in and see the people that we normally see, just more of them. You know, I'm saying, okay, it's Ramadan, they coming early. When I walked into the musalla, what I saw looked like a high school auditorium. I'm talking about 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, a couple hundred of them. I'm looking at, because at the front row, the front row, because it was so many people, the front row was really the row where the imam is, so now, like, they're up on the minbar. And I can see these people I've never seen in my life. Wow. And I'm saying to myself, where these people come from? Automatically, I'm doing an alteration of the khutbah in my mind, because I'm saying these are young people. It's not that I had to change the entirety of the topic, but I'm saying I need to address them. You want to speak a language that they can understand. I gotta speak a language they understand, right. Certain words, you know, word choices and these type of things. But it still was, it was amazing because it was an opportunity, but it was also a little bit scary from the perspective of religious leadership, because you realize that this is a trust, right. This isn't a manner. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la sent these people to you. You didn't ask for them. It's not like we did a social media campaign
to try to attract youth, high schoolers, or these type of things. So you realize, like, wait a minute, this is actually Elijah and Joan, and put something in these young people's hearts to come here, because they could be anywhere. They came to the Masjid, and they're trying, they're looking for guidance. That's the only conclusion you can come to, because there's nothing else at the Masjid for them. Right, right. Like, you know, yeah, okay, we have a basketball court, but they didn't come to play basketball. They were there. And so all of this kind of like runs through your mind as the Mu'adhin is calling it then, because that's your only window to change anything as a khatib. And all of this is kind of running through my mind, trying to just figure out how are we going to address these young people? Was it challenging for you to look out and see this sea of young faces that were not familiar to you? It was challenging. It was challenging because, for several reasons, like I said, number one, you recognize that there's a great responsibility on your shoulders. Number two, you got to kind of try to figure out afterwards, and this is going on after the khutbah, because hamdillah, you know, that type of thing, the approach that I think, and I recommend to everybody, that is calling to Allah is always a renewal of intention, and that you call to Allah. You're not calling to yourself. You don't want people after the khutbah to say how wonderful your khutbah was, or how eloquent you are, or any of those type of things. It is very important that we always rectify intention. And if you rectify intention, Allah takes care of the rest. And so that's what's important here. So that part wasn't as much of a challenge as the next part, which is, and because it's a Friday, and I think I'll just kind of segue into this, Fridays and Saturdays is when we run our,
like what we call weekend program. So we have the childcare set up. We bring in a speaker. We have guest reciters. You know, like we try to make it very special. Like a family night type atmosphere. Exactly. We're trying to actually cater, make it easy for families. A lot of times, especially sisters with younger children, they're not welcome in certain masjids because the kids themselves are not maintaining an etiquette set of masjids, which is perfectly understandable. How can you lead taraweer? I mean, you know, how can a man even keep some level of concentration in the salat, and you got kids wrestling in the back, screaming, crying, whatever. We get that. So what we do, how do we do that? We have the space, and we bring in the personnel, professional childcare, you know, folks, and set up a couple rooms for childcare. All of that, right? So we set that up. And normally what we expect on a weekend is, you know, three, 400 people if we need to, because we're also providing iftar. That's the other part. And food is finite, right? So even if you don't run out of space, you might run out of food. Well, so we kind of, we can stretch it to like 500 people. Well, what happened that night? The kids never left. They came for Jummah. They prayed Asa, like all of them, hundreds. Some of them went out, they hang, you know, we got the park adjacent to the masjid. They went out, they were in the park for a little bit after Asa or whatever. They were back at Maghrib. So now, instead of feeding 400 people, now we got about 800 people. How are we supposed to- A lot different than what you and I and many others witnessed last year. Because I don't remember seeing the droves of numbers of youth. No, no, they weren't there. We did not have any semblance of that kind of numbers
from youth. So now what happens is everybody from a leadership standpoint in the masjid, when I say leadership, I'm not talking about formal administration. I'm saying whether it's the people working in the kitchen for the, you know, trying to serve the food, because we have a full commercial kitchen and that's where the food is prepared. We're not bringing in food from the outside and it's not catered. It's from right here. It's organic. So from that perspective, from the childcare side, from all across the board, we're trying to figure out how are we gonna manage this? People going crazy, pulling their hair out because we got to feed 800 people now. And I kid you not, the Adhan of Isha, not Maghrib, the Adhan of Isha went off and there were people who still hadn't eaten yet. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Explain that again. All right. So after Salat, right? After Salat and Maghrib. Right. People already prayed Maghrib. People pray Maghrib and then they go downstairs. Right. We serve the men in the gym. We serve the women in the cafeteria. Well, because there was so many people and because we were so caught off guard, when the Adhan for Isha was called, there were people still standing in line who hadn't eaten yet. Wow. Here's the thing. You know what I didn't hear from any of them? Complaining. That part was amazing, subhanAllah, that they were still patient with the situation. Apparently, and I'm saying, you're still talking about young people, right? Now, Mike Tyson said everybody got a plan until they got punched in the mouth, right? We got punched in the mouth that Friday. We didn't know what to do. We didn't have any programming for that subset of youth. Like the way that you deal with high schoolers, it's not the way you're gonna talk to younger children and you can't deal with them like they're full-blown adults with responsibilities. That's a real niche group there, right?
And the other part is, where is this masjid? This is not the suburbs. We're in the middle of the hood. I mean, you're talking about youth that are coming from this neighborhood or from surrounding neighborhoods. You and I know that Philadelphia is the most impoverished big city in the United States of America. Yes. 26% of the people live below the poverty line. High rates of illiteracy. All of that. Who are these youth? We don't know them yet. Again, you gotta understand, this is the first day. So along with the logistical issues related to the food, related to everything, we're still trying to figure out who these youth are. And many of them, what we could tell immediately was, I mean, obviously they're not our regulars, right? But they don't seem to be regulars anywhere. Many of them- So they were kind of unmasked kids. They were kind of like, who are you? Because they didn't really know the etiquette to the masjid. Some of them, even when it comes to male and female interactions, they just- And the big one. On a large level. Out in the park, kind of just hanging out. It didn't give you the vibe that these are people who were seasoned Muslims, right? So how are we gonna handle that? So that night, okay, alhamdulillah, we prayed tarawih. First night of Ramadan was excellent, alhamdulillah. They were still here, the youth. They prayed. For the first, for a little bit. Yeah, and then it was like, wait a minute, where did they all go? Because the lines got a little thinner after the first two rakats of tarawih, something like that. So the next day, so that night we get on the phone. We're trying to figure out, anybody know where they came from? I started thinking, I talked to Imam Nurdin about this.
I said, look, did the public school system, did they let all the Muslims out and tell them to go to Philadelphia Masjid? Because where did they come from? So he was trying to figure out, are they from West Philly high? Like, where are they coming from? I got on the phone with a few other people. We're trying to figure out where are these youth coming from? Could not figure it out. Nobody knew who they were. The next day is when everything became clear. I got a call from one of the sisters that works at the Masjid and she said, okay, this is what's happening. She was here at the door time and a bunch of the young ladies showed up. So she, along with some of the other sisters that work around the Masjid, she said, can we talk to y'all for a minute? Pulled about 25 of them in a row. Said, how long y'all been Muslim? Some of them was taking Shahada that day on the spot. Wow. In that room. But they all wearing Kimars. True story, the next day or two days later, I was dealing with a situation with the parents outside and I saw a couple of young ladies waiting on the side. And so the one girl says to me, she says, my girlfriend wants to take Shahada. I'm like, but I'm talking about Kimar, Bayeh, everything. How old are you? She's 12 years old, right? Subhanallah. Said, do you know what Shahada means? And then she said, no, I don't really know. And then I explained to her what a Shahada means and what it means to testify to la ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah. She said that she believed it. And she said she wanted to be a Muslim and she took Shahada on the spot. But this was happening, no exaggeration, 10 to 20 times a day. So we get all these kids coming in. I'm talking about some of them are fresh. Some of them have been Muslim for a couple months. Not many of them have been Muslim for more than a year.
But they were here though. They were here. All right, so this is the point. So the sister says to them, okay, how many of you all know how to pray? So you got about five out of the 25 know how to pray, right? And she says, all right, well, look, I need to break y'all down. You sit with these ones, teach them how to pray, do this. Each one teach one type of thing, right? But beyond that, she said, how did y'all find out about the Philadelphia Masjid? They said, oh, we were tagging each other on social media. Wow. I thought that was phenomenal because normally you hear about that for bad things, right? They're tagging each other, flash mob downtown. Just happened a couple of weeks ago. Don't matter, right before Ramadan, you had a group of kids down Center City. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is like, this is what the, you know, the youth, they're tagging each other, meet up at this particular spot, raiding stores, whatever they're doing. But this time, they're tagging each other to meet up at the Masjid. Mashallah. So now, how do we harness that energy? How do we take them, because they obviously looking for something, right? That's the beauty of all of this. They're looking for guidance. Now, they come back the second day. They were a little bit more prepared. We're more prepared on the food side. We're more prepared to kind of monitor. From a security point of view. From a security, yeah, from a security standpoint also, just because you want to maintain some level of peace, right? And make sure that your operation is not sabotaged. And also, when you look at it, throughout the city of Philadelphia, we have a lot of crimes that are taking place. And sad to say, a lot of Muslims, youth and older, have been contributed to a lot of these shootings and homicides that are taking place. So I'm sure you, as one of the spiritual leaders, the educators here, that had to be a concern that came to your mind.
It was, but let's take it a step further. I looked at this a little differently from some of the, let's just say, some of the other, not necessarily spiritual leaders, but just some of the other leaders in general, administratively, we had discussions. Nothing like, no major disagreements, but just how are we going to handle this situation? Because what did happen the second day was because, and this is just what happens with youth in general. If they see a hole, right, they exploit that. I mean, it's how- Our children. It's how our children operate. So when they saw that we weren't really prepared to receive them, then they started just doing what they do, hanging out, this, even some of them hanging out in the bathrooms. It was interesting. And then as you know, they're hanging out in the park. Because of that, some people said, well, we shouldn't let them come back to the masjid without their parents. That's not really an option because some of these people, some of these kids are just taking shahada. What does that mean? I'm not going to let you back without your parents. Like, no, we want them to come in. We want them to learn. Some of them are very new to Islam, even if they didn't just take shahada, right? They've only been Muslim for a few months or a year or whatever it is. I don't know what their situation is at home with their parents. Do their parents even approve of them being Muslim? Nonetheless, going to bring them to the masjid and stay with them at the masjid, right? So that really wasn't an option. The other thing is we got to look at our tradition and how this may influence our decision-making. You look at that man, the Bedouin, that came into the masjid of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, right? I mean, at the second holiest masjid on earth, and he decided that that was a good place to urinate. Right, now, rightfully, some of the sahaba, you know, they're taken aback by his actions
and they want to deal with him a certain way. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, don't make them scatter everything everywhere. Got them finished. And then the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam taught him. He said, well, he told them to pour water over it to purify the land, the earth, where that happened. And then he said, the masjid has been built for the dhikr of Allah, subhanAllah, right? This is what the masjid is for. So basically, you can't do what you just did. I understand, he's a better one. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was dealing with him understanding what his background is, and then lets him know that this is not how you handle, this is not how you deal with the house of Allah. So this was beautiful teaching from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. The famous part of the hadith that a lot of people know about is when a man made dua for him, and he said, oh Allah, have mercy on me and Muhammad, and don't have mercy on nobody else. He was upset, like, look, these people messing me up. Try to use the bathroom. So, and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, qad hajab tawas ya'nani, you've limited something that is so vast, that is the mercy of Allah, subhanAllah, right? So as we're pondering over this, we're saying, okay, we gotta figure out a way to talk to these youth so that they understand that this is the house of Allah. So there's a certain etiquette that has to be maintained, not just in the masjid, but even around the masjid. So, through some discussions, what we decided to do was, and this is what kind of came out of this, we decided that we need to identify who are the leaders. You can't talk to 200, 300 youth. Like, what are we supposed to do? Tell everybody to sit down and talk to them? Right, right, right. That's just not possible. So there were a few things that we felt like needed to happen.
Number one was we felt like we needed to set a tone. In other words, set the expectations for the masjid. I called up a friend of mine who has an armed security company, and I said, look, I need a couple, I mean, I need you and a couple guys to come through just to show, just to show presence. Because again, we don't know who these youth are yet. Some of them are clearly fresh off the streets. Some of them may still be in the streets. We don't really know that, but they're Muslim. And so we're not gonna tell them they can't come to the masjid, but there's gotta be a certain decorum when you're at the masjid. So we wanted to set expectations. I don't know how much detail to go into, but I'm telling you, we went through a lot of discussion about how to make this work until we settled on the Iftar invention. I like that. What is the Iftar invention? An intervention with Iftar. So I call up one of the brothers that, former rapper, know he's good on the mic, knows how to talk to the youth, kinda still has his finger on the pulse. He actually called me up. He said, Shay, we gotta do something about these kids. Wow. I said, tell me what you're thinking. He said, be honest with you, I don't really know. He said, but, but they're at the masjid, and if we don't do something to help guide them, they're gonna go the wrong direction. It could happen. We don't know who they are, so maybe they, even though they all Muslim, they might be from different neighborhoods. True. You know how it is. True, true. Neighborhood drama between this one and that one. So he said, we got to figure out something.
He said, look, one of my close friends told me that you gave the khutbah at the Juvenile Justice Center, which we used to call the Youth Study Center, but basically, I mean, for those who don't know, juvie, it's like prison for teens. For the most part, yes, yes. So I had actually given the khutbah there a couple weeks before Ramadan, and we started sending some of the brothers through to give khutbahs there. He said, so one of the counselors from juvie, been there for about 16 years, he said, mashallah, you did a really good job with the youth there. He said, maybe he can come through and talk to the youth. I said, set it up. I said, let's do it tomorrow. So what we did was we set up the iftar. I'll tell you just in a second how we did it, inshallah. And so I talked to one of the other young boys, he's about 26, he took shahada four years ago. He used to be into drill rap and real in the streets, like really in the streets, but he's something that totally left that but knows how to connect. So I talked to him, talked to a couple other brothers. I said, look, this is what we gotta do. We gotta get the leaders. I'm gonna pull them in, have a special iftar for them. I can't do it. I can't get on a mic and say, hey, I'm gonna talk to y'all. One of y'all guys say, look, the man wants to meet with all the brothers in here that's 19. Where did we come up with the number 19? Just stay with me for a second. Because this is an interesting part of how this all came to be. We said, look, we kind of saw the ages to be from about 14 to 19. We said, the 14 year olds definitely ain't leading the 19 year olds. So if we start with the older ones, then we probably can catch the leaders.
That was the idea. Okay, that didn't work. I would say we had the ad lib on the spot because what we found out was none of them was 19. Dealing with 15 and 16. They were younger? Younger, all of them. 15 and 17 was the age group. We had maybe one or two 18 year olds. Alhamdulillah, we were able to get about 35 of them for Iftar. That's when it got real, got real. So the brother I was telling you about that set everything up and got the counselor to come through, he started having to just telling them, listen, we wanted to invite y'all to a special Iftar, A, B, C, and D. We want y'all to know that the masjid is home for all the Muslims. And kind of had that conversation. I'm just trying to read the room. Then the young brother I was telling you about was 26 years old and used to be into drill rap and all of that. He started addressing them. I could see he was connecting well. But up until now, for the first 10 minutes, they didn't say anything, the youth. I wanted to flip that. I wanted them to feel like they were being heard and not being talked at. I said, look, Zachary, before we go any further, mind you, at this point, they were happy because they didn't have to wait in line for Iftar. That was on purpose. That was smart. Yeah, so we want to get them into a separate room, special Iftar. And so they had been fed now, they feeling good. So everybody just introduce yourselves. Your name, your age, where you go to school. And that was telling, because you started seeing the different schools. You started saying, okay, this one go to school in North Philly. Geographically. Exactly, that one go to school in West Philly. They go to school together, started picking out who's who, right?
And then you could also see, how did they present themselves? Some of them, you could tell, were very uncomfortable introducing themselves. Others were very confident. It was interesting just to watch the whole mix. But I wanted to get a read on who are these people? And then talk into it. So they talked about who they were. Turn the floor back over to the brother, he hadn't spoken yet, the brother was the counselor from Juvie. And he said, look, I just broke fast. Because he came late. He said, I just had Iftar at Juvie. We had some nasty food. He said, look, y'all in here, might as well all with fish and chicken and mac and cheese and cabbage, whatever. He said, we just had some nasty food. He said, I got a message. Because I told them I'm coming down to Philadelphia, managed to talk to some of the youth. And mind you, man, subhanAllah, this for me, this is the first time I've been in Juvie to give a khutbah. I've been to prisons multiple times. I mean, before COVID, after COVID, I haven't been back to a prison. Because they shut everything down. Like big time, shut it down. But this is my first time in Juvie. And I'm looking at, we got like 70 Muslims in Juvie. And this wasn't all of them. And one of the ones that literally broke my heart was after Jumai, a brother that brought me in. There were about 10 girls, like 60 boys, youth, about 10 girls. And I gave them salams on the way out. He said, the 14-year-old right there, he said, yeah, you remember that situation down in North Philly last year when the youth killed the brother that's 70 years old? Remember that? They hit him with a comb or something. You remember that? And he turned out to be Muslim.
The girl, the 14-year-old girl, she was one of the ones that was involved in that situation. She's a Muslim, hijab and everything. A Muslim killing a Muslim, man. SubhanAllah. So, I mean, let's fast forward. So the brother came. He said, look, I got a message from inside, from Juvie. They want y'all to know that y'all get to go home tonight, sleep in your beds, and eat this kind of food. They don't get that. Wow. You got freedom. They don't have that. Recognize that blessing and protect it. Don't get involved in something that's going to jeopardize your freedom. That resonated. I could tell. Now, it wasn't like you was talking at them. Now you got them involved in a conversation. The other brother, Manny, 26 years old. He opened up with them differently, subhanAllah. And he said, look, I need to talk to y'all about something. He got very emotional. I've been with him on different sets for anti-violence work and stuff like that. Manny, 215? I didn't want to say all that. The brother. I told him, I said, I might have to mention your name. He said, it's not a problem. Because I asked him, I said, man, afterwards, I said, you know, what allowed you to open up like that? Because what I'm telling you, he got emotional, very. To the point, he couldn't talk for about 90 seconds. And watching somebody go through that is deep because you can tell there's a pain inside that hasn't been resolved. You know, he had two friends. I mean, you know his story. But you know, he had two friends that killed each other. Or one of them killed the other one, rather. And he felt the pain of that because he felt like he could have intervened and did not. And he shared that with the, and I've been with him on a lot of different sets.
I'd never heard him share that before. And he shared that. And I asked him, I said, man, what made you share that with them? And really just allow yourself to be that vulnerable. He said, because I saw myself in them. Wow. He said, you know, at these young boys, at 16, 17. Mind you, he didn't take shot until he was 22. So, 21, 22. So he said, at 16, 17, I was one decision away from being in jail for the rest of my life, from being dead. And I look at these young boys the same way. They are one decision away. Islam, if they really hold on to Islam, Islam's gonna protect them from all of that. But you actually have to practice it. You can't just call yourself a Muslim. You can't just, you know, put a soul bone or put a kemar on and think that's going to save you from bad decisions. You actually gotta practice this thing. And so he wanted them to get that. He wanted them to understand the value of really being a Muslim. So then we circled back. And it was my turn to kind of address them again. And I had one major take, one major goal of that whole conversation. And alhamdulillah, we got there. But we had to go around. You know, you have to be strategic about how you address that. So I said to them, and this is interesting. I said to all of them, I said, okay, before I start talking, I said, I'm gonna ask y'all something. What's your greatest fear? Unanimously, if it was 35 of them in the room, 33 of them, literally, said death. You know, one of the old heads was in the room. He just listened the whole time. He didn't say anything, but he pulled me to the side later. He said, that to me is incomprehensible. He said, when I was 17, me, my crew, 18, 19 years old, we never feared death.
We thought bullets could bounce off our chest. We didn't fear death. These kids are literally walking around, scared that somebody is going to kill them. That fear manifests itself different ways, right? Some of them are traumatized, literally, right? Because they see death so much because it's become so commonplace, right? So my next question was, so some of them had some profound answers. Matter of fact, one of them was a young brother. He works, and this was good because we were able to leverage some of that. He actually, he's a mortician. Wow. Works with Khadijah. Okay, okay. Yeah, for those who don't know, the Alderman Funeral Home is, to my knowledge, the only Muslim-owned funeral home. I could be wrong about that. But, and she's been around for a long time, her and brother Amin Alderman have been serving the community while humbly left for quite some time. So in any event, what happened at this particular time, I had to go on to the next thing. Well, what are you doing about that? I said, look, ain't no cops in here. How many of y'all carry? He says, 15, 16, 17, 18. Obviously, none of them have a license to carry. None of them should be carrying. So about five or six of them admitted to carrying. So I figured there's at least 12 of them that carry on a regular basis. Now, they weren't in a match with that because we had already established, like I said, we had established that the masjid is a safe zone. This was my, this is what I wanted to happen. I wanted them to know that they're welcome here, but that it's a safe zone. So I said, okay, what you carrying for? I said, you trying to hurt somebody? He said, no, we're just trying to avoid being hurt. It was interesting. And so this part of the conversation, so it was getting close to Asa'at al-Isha'a at this particular point. And I said, look, I want y'all to know something.
I want all y'all to know that you are welcome here at the Philadelphia Masjid, always. This is your home. This is the house of Allah and you're welcome here. But the masjid has rules, the etiquettes. There's a way that you have to behave here and you have to learn that. And you got to follow those rules. Whatever we can do to help you understand more, that's what we're here for. This is a safe zone, meaning what? When you're here, you're safe. But also, you have to keep this place safe. You have to protect this place from any outside threat, but also from your own harm. And that goes for the masjid, it goes for the adjacent, everything adjacent to the masjid. And we just laid down the rules. SubhanAllah, when I tell you that was the turning point. Alhamdulillah, it was the turning point for how they behaved in the masjid. And just, I don't know if you have any other questions, but I can tell you how it played out over time and just the beauty of what became of that whole situation. Well, I'm glad that you said that you made it very clear to them that the masjid will be a safe place for them because I'm sure you know and I know that there have been masjids in the city of Philadelphia, whereas though there were Muslims that got shot, got killed right out front of the masjid, right after Juma. So when you're telling them that this is a safe place, many of them have that trauma that you and I may not have or know of and say, well, that ain't true. My cousin got shot in front of the masjid, died. And a lot of the violence that's taking place today from the youth as a result of, in South Philadelphia,
they have, and I didn't learn this till my son broke it down. He born and raised on 15th Street, a Tiffin Christian. When we moved from where we lived at for 18, 19 years, it was traumatizing for him because we went from living what's called 15th Street across the tracks. Moved over to 24th Street. They call it where he was born at, small town, small side. Bro, I had no idea what it was about. We live in where we live at now. Two weeks after we were living there, wallahi, true story, on a Monday, my son walking down the street out of the house that we just moved in, two weeks, Muslims jumped him. From a prominent Muslim family. Jumped my son. I get a phone call from my daughter. Abby, Akhil got jumped. And I'm like, what are you talking about? My heart dropped to the ground because my son never dealt with that, never exposed to that. And then when I found out it was by Muslims, it took it to a whole different level that because where one lives today can very well get you killed. Which is crazy. I don't know if you remember, right before COVID, I don't wanna put any families out there, but you remember one of the young brothers got killed. He was very young. We brought the youth together at the masjid. To my knowledge, the one that killed him was not a Muslim, but that was then. Again, literally two blocks down, 13th Street, got problems with 15th Street or whatever it is. This brother ain't had nothing to do with that. He just happened to be with the wrong person.
And maybe this is something important to note. It reminds me of what you read in the seerah of the constant battles between the tribes. And it's like, you look at it like, why are the tribes fighting? Well, somebody from this tribe killed somebody from that tribe. Well, he killed somebody from that tribe. Well, he had killed somebody from that tribe. You know how it's like, but we don't have tribes here per se. Lineage. Oh, but we do. No, I'm saying from a lineage perspective, we do have tribes. I agree with you if you look at it from that different perspective, and this is happening, but that's supposed to be from jahiliyyah. The Muslims are not supposed to adopt that. I think part of the, one of the takeaways out of what you just mentioned, and this is what happened when I was gonna tell you, so we gathered the youth together, and I'm talking about 15 to 20-year-olds. And just to see, when we asked them, how many of you have had a close friend killed? I think we had about 25 of them. We were up on the second floor of UMM. And 23 of them had a close friend killed. I'm trying to think, man, when I was that age, I don't remember it being like that, but Allah knows best. But I'm just thinking, this is deep. But here, what you have to look at is how, can you really change the environment that's around you or not? And if you can't, what does that mean for the Muslims? I think about the hadith of the man who killed 99 people, and he goes to a worshiper, and he sees this person. Let me ask him, I'm trying to get right. Is there any forgiveness for me? Is there any toba?
He said, you killed 99 people. There's no way you can make toba for me. Well, if he's got no hope for toba, what's stopping him from making you number 100? Nothing, right? So he killed him. That's deep, because again, if there's no hope for Allah's forgiveness, if there's no, I don't see any light at the end of this tunnel, what's happening? So- That's how a lot of our youth feel today. I'm telling you, I get it. Now, he goes to, as the Prophet Isaiah mentioned, now he goes to an idol, a real scholar, not just someone who worships, but that actually has a deeper understanding. And he told him, look, I killed 100 people. Is there any way for me to repent? Is there any way that Allah will forgive me? He says, and what would stand between you and the forgiveness of Allah? But you have to go to such and such a land. In other words, if you killed 100 people, something's wrong in that environment that you're in. You have to get out of that environment and go somewhere else. That part is missed by a lot of people. We look at this hadith and we see how vast Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's mercy is and His forgiveness, but then there's that other part, which is the impact of environment. Even when we look at these youth, the masjid, if you're not creating an environment within the masjid that fosters hope, obviously hope in Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's forgiveness and His mercy, all of that. But also that they see a future for themselves. What happens? I'm sure you've been, I mean, as a deputy sheriff,
you see a lot of the other side of society that people don't see, or you see the consequences of certain actions. Yeah. If you do a crime, you're gonna take that ride on the bus. You're gonna take that ride. Going to CFCF, that's the reality for many of the youth today. Yeah, so you see that side. A lot of them don't, by the way. They just kinda, they don't know what they're getting into till it's too late. But I'm saying that because the other side is when you're sitting with people who do the anti-violence work and that type of thing, and many of them are very secular in their approach. They look at numbers, they look at data, all of the crimes that happen in this area, blah, okay, cool, all of that's real, and there's a way to address the crime that way. But in my humble estimation, if you don't get people to value life, then what are we really doing? Because, okay, you can stop it all there, but it's just gonna start somewhere else because you're dealing with empty souls, man. You're dealing with bankrupt souls. You're dealing with people who don't value their own lives. Why would they value someone else's life? Exactly. Right, but Islam changes all of that. Islam, because of the fact that it nourishes the soul, because it connects a person to their creator, that's different than you going to people telling them they came from monkeys, right, and you just an evolved part of the creation. So do you think that your Friday sermons, do you think that your talks, do you think that you're able to reach them? And I only say this because back in the day, you had a movement called the Nation of Islam, the first resurrection, many like to call it, okay?
Young brothers that were in the mosque took whatever message they were getting. In the temple? In the temple. Yeah. They took it out in the street. They went, what do they used to call it? They went out fishing. Yes. And they went and got the young guys off the corners, off the basketball courts and brought them into the temples. Is that an approach that we have to take today in 2023 of all of the violence that's taking place with our youth? So I think that you can't discount the positive social impact that the Nation of Islam had on many urban neighborhoods. Theologically, however, as you know, they're not connecting people to the worship of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Hence, hence, and this is also just a fact, it died out. It didn't have the longevity. The teachings of our Prophet Muhammad, peace on him, didn't die out. They're alive and well today. Yes, yes. But those teachings did because it connected people to the finite and not the infinite, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. It didn't. So I think that what we have in the teachings of our Prophet Muhammad, peace on him, are sufficient. However, a lot of people do not know how to take those teachings and apply them to their realities. Right. So how you're going to approach the social situation in an impoverished neighborhood and how you're going to manage what's happening there is gonna be very different from how you approach what's happening in suburban America. Right, right. Sometimes I talk to some of the brothers
from around the country and they're like, yeah, you know where people in Damascus, they're having arguments over who gets to charge their Tesla, you know? I'm like, yeah, that ain't no problem, Will. That ain't our problem. Right. But our problems are real. Right. And maybe their problems are just as real to them, but it's a lot different. And I don't want to discount that. Like, let me say this. Caring for earth, being people who are concerned about the environment, that's a Muslim issue. It really is. Yes. We are, I mean, for lack of a better phrase, custodians of the earth that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has allowed us to inherit, right? And so being concerned about environmental matters, that's not something that should be missed on the Muslims as an ummah. But when people fight in poverty, they don't have the bandwidth. Right. They don't have the bandwidth. That's not really the issue at that time when they're trying to figure out how to eat. When the majority of their day is literally fight or flight. Right. That's just not their thing. And so this is, these are our people. These are the people that are coming into the masjid. But you know who else are our people? The people that are coming from the suburbs and they're praying with us as well. So how do you create an environment? What does that melting pot look like though? Because what the brothers and sisters are dealing with in the suburbs, it's nothing to what my children, my family members and people who I grew up with and their children are dealing with here in Philadelphia. It's day and night, Shay. I think that's a lot of the work that we have to do. I think that building that bridge, I think that at one point maybe, maybe a lot of those best, but one of the bigger divides or maybe the biggest divide in the Muslim community might've been on ethnic lines. Somali masjid, Palestinian Egyptian masjid,
the Albanian masjid, the Turkish masjid, the African American masjid, everybody's separated, right? I see a lot more diversity now in the masjid across. I see a lot of diversity in this masjid. Yeah, for sure. Much more than probably what it was historically. But what I'm saying is I'm saying across the board, I'm not saying every masjid, you still got predominantly, but I'm saying there's a lot, but the bridge that has not been divided, a bridge that has not been built enough is the divide between the haves and the have nots. And that's actually the gap that divides America. Now, there are other forces, if you will, that would love to keep us divided on ethnic lines or on racial lines, because if the people who do not have one of the share of what the 1% have, that's gonna cause a whole different problem for them because the economic disparity that exists in this country is unreal. But I'm saying even amongst the Muslim community, 15 to 20 minutes from here, you got masjid with million dollar chandeliers. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get the point. So it's a delicate, it's a delicate topic. It's one that has to be broached and we can't be afraid to do that. And I think that, let me just put it to you like this. I think that our strength is in our diversity. I think that because of where certain people are from, they have an appreciation for things that maybe other people take for granted. I think that the work that is done by the Muslims in urban America to create, just the fact that many of them have non-Muslim family members, are a lot more active in dawah,
or those type of things. Whereas the financial resources of the suburban Muslims are far superior to anything that the urban Muslim community could ever imagine. So when you, in the urban community, when they're doing fundraisers at Ramadan and they're raising $50,000, it's like a lot. And they're doing that between a then and a comma of Maghrib on a random night in Ramadan. And they're raising a million dollars in Ramadan in their community. So it's, anyway, you get the picture. With us running out of time, this always happens with a good conversation. There's the elephant in the room, if I can say that. Two things that if we can squeeze in very quickly. Was there a fight out in the park from amongst the youth? That was one of the stories that I was told. Was there a fight? There was. Okay. That's right after that is when we had our Iftar event. Okay. There was. And the parents came up and Alhamdulillah, and some of them were non-Muslim parents. It was resolved, Alhamdulillah. And I think that people exaggerate from what I heard. Like they were like, ah, they pulled out guns and this was happening. No, it was a fight. It was a fight. So again, when you got a couple hundred youth, sometimes those things are gonna happen. And we did not, our step with that, or the next step for us was, okay, let's clarify what's gonna happen from now on. Okay. Here, and that's why I said, we got the armed guards established that this is a safe zone. Because that was a sight to see. People coming here for Juma, and they seeing large security officers with bulletproof vests and- Bulletproof vests, AR-15s.
Yeah, it was different to see. Yeah, well- Very different. Yeah, mashallah. But it's important. It's important because, not because we're trying to set this up as a military operation, but so that people know, we are serious about making sure that the message is safe. We had an incident a couple of years ago where somebody came in before the Eid and felt like he was doing recon. Really weird individual who said, ah, I've never seen a mosque before. And I was like, wait a minute. Anyway, so we've had situations. Well, we had another situation that the day of the Eid, the mosque of prayer, brother went to call the Ikama. We heard some noise in the background. All the brothers shifted their attention to where the sisters were. I seen with my own eyeshake, sisters running up on the stage, sisters running outside of the door of the prayer area. Once we got outside, you heard there was a stampede of people outside running through the park. We heard it was firecrackers. We heard that someone pulled out a gun. We heard numerous stories. Right before we even got outside after praying, security made a decision to shut down the masjid. Imam Nardin, as well as the head of security here, got on the mic and told everybody to relax, that those in authority would handle the situation. From the reports that you got, was that anything similar to the things that you got? Because somebody called me just the other day from North Carolina and told me that someone had gotten shot during the day of the Eid. Well, I mean, you know how it is. When it starts off as one thing and then it turns into another thing, firecrackers turn into gunshots.
I think that that issue has been addressed sufficiently, alhamdulillah, by Imam Nardin and the others, you know, administration-wise. So, you were here. Right. I wasn't. And I found out that you weren't even here. Yeah, I was actually out of town. Okay. I don't think it was youth involved, though, from what I'm understanding. I don't think that that was a youth thing, Allah knows best. What I can say, so I can't really speak to that issue. I only know what I heard, and that doesn't really add anything to that part of the conversation. But what I will say is this, and this is something that really, really, man, subhanallah, brought joy to me. As you know, the last 10 nights, the masjid was open the whole time, right? I mean, there were people here making antiqaf. To see a group of those youth that were in the room with us for iftar, sitting down, memorizing the Quran, reading the English of what they're memorizing so that they can try to understand it, short suras, I'm talking about at one o'clock in the morning, and then coming to a 10 p.m. at two o'clock, these are not youth that started off that way. They didn't start off Ramadan ready to do any of those things. But their constant participation, some of them, some of them stuck around. That's good. Some of them observed the etiquettes of the masjid. They were worshiping in the last 10 nights of Ramadan, looking for later to Qadr. I mean, you talk about people that haven't even Muslim that long. To see that with 15 and 16-year-olds, you talk about giving hope, to say that subhanAllah,
somebody can come from being one decision away, from being dead or being in jail, but given the opportunity. We didn't close the doors of the masjid. We didn't say, oh my God, this is too much. It's so crazy. We kicking everybody out. We not letting kids come back without their parents. No, we didn't, that they got the opportunity. And as some of them, apparently, and Allah knows best what's in their hearts, but literally changed their lives around. That to me is enough. la yahdi allahu bika rajulan wahidan khayrunaka min humlin na'im The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, for Allah to guide through you one person. One person is better for you than the best of wealth. The red camels, which was the best wealth at the time. And that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said that. So I think that a major takeaway from this for masjid administrations is to seriously consult the religious leadership, because as you know, our masajid, some of them, I mean, masajid are run differently, but some of them, there's like, sometimes there's a divide between the administrative side, if you will, and those who run the religious affairs. To seriously consult your religious leaders before making decisions that could impact people's lives. Can you imagine what it would be like to turn away people from the house of Allah? No, seriously, that's a major concern of mine. At the same time, you can't just let them come in, unfettered access to everything. Do whatever they want to do, and they're not coming for that anyway. They're coming off the streets into the masjid because they want to be guided. They want rules. They want regulations. You know, I hear about people that accept Islam because,
you know, you would think that they're like, yeah, because, you know, Islam doesn't allow drinking alcohol. It doesn't allow this and it provides structure. You would think that people who are taught that, you know, they should have this unfettered freedom with no restrictions, unrestricted freedom, that they would run away from a religion, a deen that puts restrictions on their lives. But no, that's what they're looking for. They want that because they realize that this is from Rabbil Alameen, the one who created you. الَّا يَعْلَمُ مِنْ خَلَقٍ وَهُوَ لَطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ There's not the one who created you. Doesn't he know better? And he is the subtle and the all-aware, subhanahu wa ta'ala. He's the one who put those rules in place for us because he knows that those rules are better for us. So, I'm saying all that to say that to see somewhat immediate change, I mean, obviously it wasn't a snap, but it happened over the period of Ramadan, to see them go from wherever they were to literally sitting down, memorizing Quran together was a beautiful thing, man. Alhamdulillah. And for that, Elijah deserves all the praise. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. Washayk, Dr. Tariq, I thank you so very much for, first of all, giving me an opportunity to have this one-on-one conversation with you. Right here in this historical building, you say it's 55,000 square feet? 50,000, 49,000 square feet. Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot. I thank you so very much for giving me an opportunity and you have shed a lot of knowledge with me and I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope that we can do this again. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la grant us that opportunity and make it pleasing to him and Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la knows best. SubhanakAllahu wa bihamdika ash-hadu an la ilaha illa ant. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
you
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
50 items
9 items
