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The Irvine 11 Fought the Zionist Lobby—and Won
In 2011, the Irvine 11, a group of students in University of California, Irvine, were prosecuted for staging a protest on campus during a speech by then-Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. At the cusp of successful careers, it seemed that everything was suddenly taken from them—just for speaking up for what’s right.
Today, students across the country are staging similar protests. Names are being circulated on do-not-hire lists and personal information is being disclosed as an intimidation tactic.
But your future is not in question. Today, the Irvine 11 are still standing up for the truth, and Allah provided for them in ways they hadn’t imagined. Palestine teaches us that rizq is from God alone—it only requires a bit of intelligence, the courage to speak truth to power, and a lot of tawakkul.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. My dearest brothers and sisters, the current assault on Gaza and in Palestine is a flashbulb moment in our lives. The videos and images of destruction in Gaza and the martyrs are forever etched into our collective memories. Our children and our grandchildren will ask us one day what we were doing when this was all happening. Not a day passes but we hear about the most repulsive lies coming out of the Zionist regime or the U.S. government. Just today we heard Joe Biden say that I have no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people have been killed. So we are witnessing some of the most egregious crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine. The blood of our brothers and sisters in Palestine is more sacred than the Kaaba, as the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said. And he told us that during such a time that it was important for us to always do our best to change evil. He said sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, whoever amongst you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand. And if you cannot, change it with his tongue. And if you cannot, then you should feel bad about it in his heart, and that is the lowest level of faith. My dearest brothers and sisters, speaking up for the truth is one of the most powerful acts of worship in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was asked which jihad is best. And he responded, speaking a word of truth before a tyrannical ruler. And my dear brothers and sisters, the Ummah has responded. We are speaking out. So many people in different capacities, whether it be online, with their co-workers, on their universities. We are trying our best to do justice in fulfilling our obligation to our brothers and sisters. The masses are well aware of the issue, and the Zionist media is becoming hysterical when they're seeing that we're having an impact. They're realizing that the spell they had over the masses is disappearing, and that people are waking up to the propaganda of the past 50 and 75 years, and thus they are lashing out in a hissy fit, kicking and screaming, as they are retaliating and trying to punish those people who speak
truth. Tonight we want to discuss the importance of speaking truth to power, and standing up for justice in Palestine, despite the consequences of doing so. I'm joined today by a panel of three esteemed speakers, three brothers I have known for much of the last two decades, who were part of the Irvine 11, and I'll let them speak about their cause, but they are examples and exemplars for young people who had spoken truth to power, and there was consequences for that, but Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is Ar-Razaq, and Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is in control of the universe, and you will hear from them about how despite the consequences that they faced, that they have been able to achieve success in both this life and insha'Allah in the next. So I want to say salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh to my beloved guests, Dr. As'ad, Tahir, and Osama. So I want to begin, and I'll introduce all of you, just to give maybe a little bit of a background. So Dr. As'ad was at UC Irvine, did his bachelor's, he was a president of the MSA, he ended up doing his master's in public health at Harvard, he did his medical program in Vermont, he did his, and so he's gone on to do many things, he's a physician and a medical director currently in the Bay Area. Tahir is no stranger to many of you involved in the Palestinian work as a director of outreach and grassroots organizing at A&P, American Muslims for Palestine, also completing his PhD currently at the University of Minnesota. And Osama Shabaik is a graduate from Harvard Law School and a successful businessman. So I want us to just stop for a minute, because a lot of folks say Irvine 11, like what is that all about? Those of us who obviously were there, it's forever in our memory. But take us back down memory lane a little bit and recount what happened to us back in 2010, when you were all on the front lines and speaking out on behalf of the Palestinians. What was happening in Palestine back then? And why did you feel the need to speak up? And maybe you can tell us a little bit about where your lives have gone, maybe since that moment.
Maybe Tahir, start with you. Sure, sure. You know, subhanAllah, the Irvine 11 came in the wake of the brutal assault on Gaza in 2009, which at that time was unprecedented in its brutality and its egregious nature. End of 2008, early 2009, right as Obama was being inaugurated to become the President of the United States, Israel engaged in a brutal assault on Gaza that lasted about two weeks and murdered 1,400 Palestinians. And that was a turning point in my activism, at least, for Palestine. Gaza became the central focus of my work, and Gaza became really a pillar of the Palestine organizing work that I was going to do. And for me, those few months from January 2009 to July 2009 were formative in my Palestine work and experience, because that was a period where we had a lot of discussion at the time in the community to support Gaza and how we can support Gaza. And there was a man by the name of George Galloway who came from the U.K. and was organizing a delegation, a humanitarian aid delegation, to Palestine to break the siege on Gaza. And so myself and some of the brothers here on this call, and Osama was joining us at that time, went to Gaza in the summer of 2009 on this humanitarian aid convoy, and we witnessed firsthand what had taken place. We saw with our own eyes the devastation that Israel had done on the people of Gaza, the infrastructure of Gaza, the children of Gaza, who had suffered tremendously from these aerial bombardments and airstrikes that were targeted killings of civilians. It wasn't like they, it wasn't collateral damage. It was a clear and deliberate attack
on civilians that Israel was engaged in. And this is why at that time, and we knew very well that this was an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. And now the term genocide is being used so ubiquitously. But at that time, we knew already that this was a genocide. And the MSU at UC Irvine, although I wasn't part of the MSU in any official way, but I did come to Irvine a lot. They themed their entire anti-Zionism week at the time, Israel, the politics of genocide, because it was very clear to us, even then, 13, 14 years ago, what Israel's objective was. And it was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, to erase their history, their presence, and to take over their land. And so, the lead up to the Irvine 11 was just this profound experience in Gaza for many of us that went to Gaza. I think there were a couple dozen, at least, UC Irvine students who went to Gaza, and I had the great fortune of going there myself with them and joining them on this delegation. And so, when we got the word that the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was going to have a specially organized VIP event at UC Irvine, we knew that we had to respond. And so, I'll let the brothers talk about that a little bit, but the prelude to it definitely was Gaza. And so, it's only appropriate now that Gaza brings us back together. So, let me recap some of this, and then maybe Asad and Osama can jump in. So, essentially, from what I remember, I was in Egypt at the time, actually, when you came in 2009. I remember we were in contact in Camp George Galloway. And so, you guys all got together. Michael Oren, essentially, is a war criminal coming to campus to whitewash what the Israeli military
is doing, what the IDF is doing. And 11 of you from UC Riverside and UC Irvine got together, and you guys protested that by getting up in the middle of a speech in a packed auditorium of 400 or 500 people and just made statements so that the crowd could recognize that the person was not someone of decency, not someone of integrity, not someone telling the truth. And essentially, each of you, as soon as you guys got up and made your sentence that you made, you guys were arrested, handcuffed, taken out, ultimately, after that, taken to trial, which was absurd at that time. I mean, like, so many students throughout the decades have done these different things of acts of civil disobedience or speaking out at protests, speaking out at different events, and nothing ever happened. And all of a sudden, they want to throw the book at you all because the issue was Israel-Palestine. And ultimately, taken to trial and convicted of a misdemeanor for conspiring to disrupt a speech and actually disrupting that speech. You were all asked to do 56 hours of community service. You guys were on three years of probation. You were even fined. So it sounds like your lives must have been destroyed. And like, that's it. Philosophy, you have to go and sweep the ground for a living. So like, I just really want to understand, like, how, how are you all kind of like, where did your lives go after that? You know, it was, it was definitely at the time, I think, a very trying moment, not only for ourselves, but I think even for family members. We had, I think, even folks who had grown up around the Palestine issue. But actually, I think, and Tohara might correct me, but Tohar, Shaheen, and Khaled were the only Palestinians from the from the Irvine 11. The rest of us are not Palestinian. But either growing up around the cause or in college got a little bit more involved in the cause. And so I think a lot of families were concerned. And one of the things that I think even we haven't really talked too much about is, is we were very well aware of the fact of who Michael Oren was. Michael Oren had a long history
in regards to being a paratrooper in Lebanon, during the 80s, when when when Israel had just bombarded Lebanon, he had been the spokesperson for the Operation Cast Lead for the Israeli military. And he was currently at that time on a trip around the United States in order to whitewash Israel's crimes. So we were we were very well aware of the situation. And I think that gave us the certainty in what we had to do. And for us, I think we viewed UC Irvine and the MSU as being an organization that was going to push the envelope. And I think now Todd mentioned it that these ideas of saying the words genocide, apartheid are much more ubiquitous and more common in our in our, you know, dialogue on the issue, but back then it was not. And I think even on the personal note, we're all kids of like the 911 generation. I was in eighth grade when 911 happened. I was in middle school during the second intifada. These were very formative moments of our lives at that time. And so I think it was all of that was a buildup to kind of the situation when Irvine 11 happened. And ultimately, when we were convicted, I remember folks oftentimes saying like, all right, well, yeah, you're not going to be able to go to law school, you're not going to be able to, to really achieve the professional success that the others who didn't speak out achieve. And I think that's often used to really silence us to really take a very pragmatic approach to our activism. And for us, maybe in our, in our, in our youth, you know, there's a little bit more of the hotheadedness, but we were also at the time very focused on what our mission was. It wasn't just like youthful enthusiasm that was that was pushing us. And I think for me personally, I decided to own my narrative. When I went on to apply to law schools, I made it the focal point of my personal statements when I applied to law
schools. And I told myself, if it closes certain doors, and those were doors that I just wasn't meant to walk through. And those are probably rooms that I wouldn't want to be in. I very much wanted to chart my own path. And I wanted to be surrounded by individuals and people that that believed in the causes that I believed in. And that was an important part of my law school application was to then own that narrative if a school didn't and I got rejected from a ton of schools, schools that were ranked far less on the rankings and then Harvard was rejected. And at the same time, I mean, obviously, I think we've everyone's heard about Harvard Law School has students have have gone through recently. And what even honestly, the the Harvard Law School Alumni Association, the Harvard Law School Dean, the Dean of Harvard College, all of them have have put out horrendous statements in the last two weeks. But kudos, I guess, to Harvard Law School admissions office ended up accepting me. So I think ultimately, things work out. So I mean, to be honest, one of the things that I remember, because I was a generation before you guys in the early 2000s, or the second and the father was kind of the same position that many of us young folks were in, it was like it was a time to speak up a time to be courageous. But I think what makes today so different is what you mentioned is that these terms, like calling Israel an apartheid state, right, calling out Zionism, right, the way that we did was kind of foreign, because the media controlled the narrative completely. The only place you get information was from CNN, Fox News, right, MSNBC, and the entire mainstream media is, you know, is is pretty much supporting the Zionist project. But today, what we find is so different is this partial democratization of information, I say partial, because still meta X, you know, all the other social medias are still shadow banning and banning, trying their best to eliminate, you know,
the Palestinian voices, but we still able to penetrate so much more than we ever have before. And what I find with this is that this is causing the Zionist lobby to get even more desperate, and try to stifle and shut down anybody who's going to condemn the genocide. And so I mean, going back to Harvard Law School, recently, we saw that there were some graduates from Harvard Law School who got their job offers rescinded, right? Governor DeSantis in Florida is trying to ban students for justice in Palestine, as an organization on campuses all across Florida. So my question that I want you guys to speak about is like, should Muslims be scared? Right? Should we like, you know, be like, hey, this is not the time to speak up? And if not, then what advice do you have for college students and young professionals? And what are the best ways they can make their voices heard, whether it be online, social media, campus, corporations, kind of what are some big things that you've learned in this that you'd like to pass down to folks? I can say just real, real briefly, my experience when I when the protests happened, I was 18 years old. And at the time that it happened, I was not I, to me, it was like another protest. And I had been to a million protests, you know, my father was a political prisoner in Libya. I had gone to all the anti-Adolf War protests, like I like, I had been to many protests, and it didn't seem it seemed different, because I know anytime you protest Israel, it's different. But I had done many anti-Israel protests. So I didn't think it was a huge deal. Even after I got arrested, I was the second person arrested after Osama. Osama was the very first person to speak up. And then it was me. Even when they when they took us to the back room, and they arrested us. It didn't really make I didn't really realize how far they would try to go with it. Until, and I really remember the time that I got, I felt bad. The first time I felt like, oh, man, like this might be a big deal is when I saw my mom was actually really crying and upset. And I mentioned that because I know that was the hardest part for me. Forget med school interviews or anything else. Like my mom
was really upset. In the beginning. She came around and she's very proud and very supportive. But I think that's another thing that people fear is like, you know, my parents sent me to college to get a degree and to get a job. They didn't send me to college to protest for Palestine. Right. And the perspective that I had at the time, and I'm, you know, all these years later, I'm much more confident about is that the choices we make and our commitment to, you know, have the courage of our convictions, is that the, you know, essence of who we are. And if we keep delaying that, then we always have an excuse for why we can't say the truth, why we can't speak up, why we can't, you know, actually act upon our beliefs. Then we basically become people who don't act upon their beliefs. That's that's what happens after years and years and years of doing that point. This is something that comes up time and again, or people say, especially to the young folks, hey, guys, this is not the time to rock the boat. This is not the time to speak up. Hey, stay quiet, get educated, get powerful, get wealthy, then go and do what you want to do. What do you guys think about that logic? And how does that fit into things? Well, then you then you won't speak. So you didn't speak up initially, because you wanted to get stuff. And then you got stuff. And then you won't speak up because you don't want to lose stuff. It just won't happen. Because the same thing that keeps you from speaking up initially will keep you in even more so. And I now the stakes for me, for example, are much higher. I have a wife and kids and a job and I'm supporting people, you know. So it's not like it gets easier to speak up when you when you get older. So I think you just have to commit to that. And like you mentioned in your opening, in your introduction with the ayat, you know, وَمَن يَتَقَى اللَّهَ يَجْعَلْ لَهُ مَخْرَجًا like if I think to me, it's about the sincerity of the intention, right? Because you can get lost in all kinds of other side issues and motivations. But if the motivation if we can try to purify our intention
and keep it for the sake of Allah, then he's going to have our back. And it's going to be good for us, even if it seems horrible at the time. And there's countless examples of that. If I could jump in, I think, even from a pragmatic approach, you know, coming out of 9-11, we, at least for me, I felt like so much of what I was hearing at the time was, was kind of a very defensive perspective from a lot of the Muslim community of like Islam is peace, Islam is peace, was like our, the mantle that we stood on for so long, and it got us nowhere, taking that approach. And I think so much of what I experienced at the MSU when I when I first started was the exact opposite. It was like, no, we're Muslim, we're proud. This is our religion. This is who we are. These are our values. We're going to be loud about it and deal with it. And I think that actually pushed the Muslim community forward. And we stood on the shoulders of people like yourself, you know, and others at UCI, and in the Orange County community in the Southern California community at large, and across California. I mean, there's just so many individuals that even I look back on that we're just proud to be Muslim. And we're saying it proudly. And that that took us far, I think, in our own personal development as people. So even from a pragmatic approach, I think that pushed the community further than, you know, saying, Oh, well, that means peace. And it gave us this, I would say for myself, it gave me the strength, that experience, and many others that I had in my undergraduate experience, made me feel like I can go anywhere in the world, I can be in any room, and I know who I am, I know how I want to live my life. I know, you know, that I'm going to pray regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable it is in various settings. I'm going to say what I think regardless of what with wisdom, like none of that wisdom is a part of that process, and you learn it and you grow in it, but not to not to be a coward and then hide it as wisdom. You know, pretend like I'm being wise when really, I'm just scared, you know?
Yeah, that reminds me, SubhanAllah, in Surah Al-Ahzab, Allah talks about this exactly, when it's like, look, when the going gets tough, there's two groups of people. There are those who are courageous, and those who are cowardly, right? And Allah talks about what they were thinking, right? They literally see the Muslims are 3000, and they see 10,000 enemies coming at them. And Allah says, وَيَقُولُ الْمُنَافِقُونَ وَالَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِ مَرَضٌ مَّا وَعَذَلَ اللَّهُ رَسُولُهُ إِلَىٰ غُرُوعٍ Like the people who are hypocrites and have weak iman, right? They say, oh, God and His Messenger have lied to us. وَإِذْ قَالَ طَائِفَةٌ مِّنْهُمْ يَا أَهْلَ يَفْرِبَ لَا مُقَامَلَكُمْ تَرْجِعُوا Like people pretty much are saying, hey guys, hey, we got no chance, like kind of dispersing it away. وَيَسْتَأْدِنُ فَرِيقٌ مِّنْهُمْ النَّبِيَّ قُولُونَ إِنَّ بُيُوتِنَا عَوْرَ وَمَا هِيَ بِعَوْرَ They come with all these excuses. They go to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and say, ya Rasulullah, hey, our houses are exposed. And they're not really exposed. They just want to run away. And then you have the flip sides. We have وَلَمَّا رَأَى الْمُؤْمِنُ الْأَحْزَابَ قَالُوا هَذَا مَا وَعَذَلَ اللَّهُ رَسُولُهُ وَصَلَقَ اللَّهُ رَسُولُهُ وَمَا زَادَهُمْ إِلَّا إِيمَانَ وَتَسْلِيمَةً But the true believers, when they see the enemy coming, when they see the Zionists coming, or they see the pagans coming, whoever that enemy is in front of us, whoever that oppressor is in front of us, they said, this is exactly what Allah and His Messenger have promised us. And Allah and His Messenger have spoken the truth. And that increases them in their faith and their submission. So I'd love for you guys to unpack, because you were getting at this aside just now, how does it set when you do this as an action for the sake of Allah ﷻ with the right niyyah, how does it affect your iman? How does it rejuvenate your faith? How does it make you learn things about Allah ﷻ with the arad that you didn't know before? How does it change your tawakkul upon Him? So I'd love to hear about this, because this is really, I think, at least for me, I remember it being like the catalyst to my faith changing, right? It was through speaking up for Palestine, it was through engaging in something greater than just graduating and making some money. So I really want to get to the imaniyat out of this. Yeah, I mean, one of the things I would say is, you know, and I say this all the time to people when I talk about the Irfan 11, because I do still talk about it to a lot of students and young folks,
is that I've never felt more euphoric and more proud in my life than the moment when those police officers put the handcuffs on my wrist. And it was such an incredible feeling to know that we had spoken up for justice, that we were clearly dismantling the narrative of the oppressor, that this man that was standing in front of us, the war criminal that was standing in front of us, was hearing it loud and clear from all of these students, not just from the Muslim students that were there, but particularly from the Muslim students, that business was not going to be as usual, that we were going to scream, shout, whatever it took to bring the truth to the audience and to the people that were watching. To send a clear message that the Muslim community was not going to stay silent, that Muslim students were not going to stay silent as Israel continued its oppression of the Palestinian people. And we're sitting in this room now with all of us handcuffed, you know, and sitting on the ground. You know, they keep bringing one guy after the other. You know, I think I was like number six or something. So I walked in, I already saw Osama, I already saw Assad, I already saw several other brothers already in there, you know, sitting on the ground or being processed by the police. And there was no fear in that room. There was no regret in that room. There was only pure joy that we felt. And Allah, Assad and Osama speak for themselves, but that's the sense that I got. That what we were doing was right, that we were doing was just, we were doing it on principle. And what we were doing was how our parents raised us. Our parents didn't raise us just to get degrees and become doctors and engineers and lawyers. Our parents raised us to become good Muslims. And at the end of the day, if speaking out and doing what is right maybe takes away one aspect of those things,
that so long as we are good Muslims, that's what our parents wanted us to be. And so, yeah, you know, the fear, the concern from our parents at the time, you know, and I feel like, you know, with my mom, it was different than with my dad, but it wasn't about that they felt that we did the wrong thing. It wasn't. It was absolutely, you know, they were confident that we did the right thing and that we needed to do this the way we did it, even tactically speaking, even though some people were trying to argue that the tactic might not have been appropriate. But no, when you have an oppressive tyrant standing, receiving a red carpet treatment, applauded by the university, paraded around as if he's some hero, no, no, you better believe that somebody is going to go and upend that whole narrative. That some Muslim with principle, with full belief in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, is going to go and upend the entire narrative, that we will not allow some guy to come and spew his lies, propaganda, and continue to spread falsehood and misinformation about what's going on in Palestine. And so, for us, it was clear and our parents fully understood that. Even if they were concerned for our well-being, our parents understood very well that this is not something that you regret. And you know, it's crazy, subhanAllah, about it. When we talk about, you know, just the yaqeen that you have when you're engaged in something like this. What's crazy is at the end of the trial, you know, after a year and a half of just back and forth with the prosecution, after two and a half weeks of trial and, you know, 300 jury pool, and then, you know, they narrowed it down to the 12 jurors that we had, after finding us guilty on both charges of disrupting a public event and conspiracy to commit a crime, you know, the judge, after all that, gets on his bench and he sits down and he says something profound. He says, jail would not be appropriate for these young men because prison is supposed to be a rehabilitory. You're supposed to sit down and you reflect on what you did and you come back and you recognize what you did was wrong.
But, you know, knowing, getting to know these young men over the past two and a half weeks, I recognize that they feel fully confident in what they did was right. And there's nothing that we can do as a court system to make them feel what they did was wrong. So, therefore, I'm just going to give them community service and a restitution fee that they have to pay. And that was a slap in the face to the district attorney who had spent a year and a half of tax dollars, you know, hard earned tax dollars to prosecute this case, to put us in jail. And now all of a sudden he has a judge who is saying, yeah, I mean, you're not, you're not going to, you're just going to make these guys political martyrs. They're not going to change what they believe because of what, you know, because of what you're trying to do to them. And so, subhanAllah, you know, this is the kind of stuff that we need to re-emphasize. Like, you know, when you stand firmly on principle and you have tawakkulun Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that what you're doing is right and the niyah is right. We didn't know that this was going to become an international case. We didn't know that the national media was going to be covering this. We didn't know we're going to be at the front cover of LA Times and Orange County Register. We didn't know any of that. I mean, we just wanted to go and stage a protest and do something for the sake of Allah and for the sake of the Palestinian people. The rest was, the rest wasn't on us. The rest was, it was a natural result of what I believe, this true sincerity from every single one of the brothers that were participating in this protest. And, you know, subhanAllah, that's one of the things I really want to re-emphasize here is that we didn't go into this planning to make this a big deal. You know, I didn't go into this with my phone on live, you know, or I wasn't even using Instagram at that time. You know, like, it wasn't like we, the brothers before, before the protest happened, Maghrib prayer came in and they said, we're going to pray before we walk into this room. And everybody prayed behind the imam and we all prayed and we finished the prayer and we walked in. So it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't this, you know, this intentionality to make a big deal out of it. The intentionality was to send a clear message. Allahu Akbar, that's incredible.
And honestly, it shows me just like how much power we have as a people, because for someone to take so much tax money to try and prosecute 11 random college students, right, shows that like, they are scared to death about our voice. They're scared to death and they want to set a precedent. And they know that this has the ability, right, to impact, like you said, generation by generation, because 20 years ago, you couldn't say these type of words and now it's become commonplace. And I think what you said is beautiful. You weren't looking for some particular outcome. You were just trying to stand up on principle. And I really want to get to that point because I feel like sometimes today, people become very utilitarian or like pragmatic about this. It's like everything we do is going to be only related to the perceived outcome of it, right? But this is not how we operate in Islam, right? We put forth our most sincere efforts and the results we leave to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And it reminds me, because you mentioned this issue of praying maghrib before, right? Like Abdullah ibn Mas'ud radiAllahu anhu, right? When Islam, right, the dawah was trying to go public, right? And the Prophet ﷺ and the companions are like, okay, who's going to go recite the Qur'an in public first? They all kind of want to do it. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud gets up. He's like, I'm going to go do it, right? And he's not like a strong guy. He's actually a scrawny sahabi, radiAllahu anhu. And he goes and he stands up in front of all the mushrikeen and recites ar-Rahman, a'allama al-Qur'an, khalaqa al-insan, a'allamahu al-bayan. And what do they do? They come and they jump him, right? The mushrikeen come and start punching him in his face. And he's literally all bruised and he's bloody. And what I find so fascinating about the story is he goes back to the companions. And they see essentially that he's all beat up. And they're like, man, you know, like we worried for you because we know you're not like a big strong guy. And he's like, if you want me to, I'm going to get up and go do this again tomorrow, right? And another narration, it said like, you know, what this, what happened to this eye is the needed, you know, I'm happy to have for this eye. And they said, look, enough, hasbuk, right? You know, you made them hear what they despise.
So just the act of speaking up and making the enemy in this case angry, right? Is praiseworthy, right? And I'm sure that that salah, I used to remember the same thing before our protest. Like salah, we get the brother with the loudest voice, call the event as loud as possible and the salah as long as possible. And they're just fuming because the words of Allah are being recited, right? And so really what I wanted to get to this, my point in all this is say, look, there are consequences for doing what we're going to do. Abdullah Masood got beat up, but he wasn't like, hey, because I got beat up, I shouldn't have done it, right? And the sahaba were not like, hey, that was a bad consequence. Don't do that next time. Like he was saying, I take this for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and I'm happy to do it again. And so I want to say this today because people are scared to speak up because of the fear they will lose their jobs. They're scared they're going to get doxed and information will be made public. They're scared they're not going to be able to get a job after graduating. So if you were to tell these young people or young or parents were like, hey, we don't want our kids to be involved. What advice do you have for them about this fear? What mindset should they have so they don't fall into this paralysis? Asad, you started, so you got it. Yeah. I would say. And by the way, before you answer real fast, just want to let the audience know that please send your questions because I'm sure you all have very specific questions for our panelists. So go ahead and send your questions inshallah. We'll throw them to our panelists inshallah. Someone asked me recently a similar question and the way I answered them was two ways. So first I would say my first reason to speak up is to feel like Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave me so many blessings, right? So I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I have family in Libya and other parts of the world. And I know very well that I have tons of blessings that I never worked for a single millisecond for in my life, right? I have all these blessings Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave me. And I know also that I'm going to be accountable for them. So part of it is, and it's, I, you know,
I feel it like, like you call it a guilt or an obligation. Like I need to do something with all these blessings Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave me. And I'm literally watching what's happening in Gaza and I'm making dua. But now I have an opportunity. This guy's coming to my university campus. What am I going to do, right? And so I felt like, you know, like it's an excuse to God. A way, something for me to say on the day of judgment, even if it has no political practical impact, right? That's first. The second good news is it has a huge political practical impact, right? So we're on, we're on this call with Tahir Harzallah, who a sitting Congresswoman tweeted out saying he's quote, a very dangerous man. And for Zionism and for the state of Israel, Tahir is a very dangerous man. He is an incredibly dangerous man. And because of his, you know, principle continuously standing up and all of us as a community supporting him, supporting AMP, supporting care and all the different organizations that, you know, advocate on this. It's having a huge impact. That's why they're terrified. That's why they, that's why they went after the DA and pressured him to charge us because they wanted us to be afraid and never do it again and send a, you know, scare every, every other kid who wants to go and protest against Israel, right? But it's not going to work. It's not going to work. And my advice to the situation that you said where, oh, someone's afraid of like, oh, I might have this or that consequence, you know, in my view, the opposite. So to live basically in fear of ever expressing who you are or, you know, standing up for what you believe in is a much, much, much worse fate than whatever consequence. And we have to put it in perspective, right? Like, what did we, we got, we got a couple of misdemeanors and we got some community service and, you know, some disciplinary action from the university. So I had to explain it when I applied to medical school. Oh, you know, so sad, so hard, right? That's not, the people are facing death. The people are being killed. The people are being martyred on it.
Every, you know, every minute, every, so, you know, Alhamdulillah it's not, it is something we can, we can acknowledge it and say that it's worth doing and standing up. And that's really, but it's also important to put in perspective. So for me, there's no doubt that, you know, and then Allah blesses you in so many other ways that you see over the years that you get in other things, not just for that, but for many other things. Like if you, whatever you do with sincerity and for the sake of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, for sure it goes, you get benefits in this life and then also InshaAllah in the next. I would also like to add to that. I think it's important for us to realize that ultimately we're all going to have to sacrifice something. We can't leave it upon the Palestinian people to sacrifice their lives to defend, you know, much to defend as a, while we just sit here idly by, you know, twiddling our thumbs and just watching it on Instagram and social media. But ultimately we're going to have to sacrifice as well and to do our part. And when we went to Gaza, one of the things that stuck with me was just hearing so often from the people of Gaza directly when you, you know, what can we do for you? And it's often make dua and let the people know our story. Tell people our story, get our story out. Don't let us be silenced. And it's like, okay, you know, it's the least I can do is tell Michael Oren to his face that he's not welcome here. That's the bare minimum when you have, you know, brothers and sisters being, you know, literally living in the condition that they're living in. It's the bare minimum of, and I think we need to, as a community, come to terms with the fact that this is our mission. We're here in the West and we have a mission. And our mission is to stand up for, you know, our brothers and sisters across the world with the freedoms and the abilities and the avenues that we have that they just simply don't have. I think all of us probably can talk about family members, you know, for me, family members in Egypt that have been imprisoned by the Egyptian regime.
As I talked about Libya, families from Gaza, like, you know, we all have seen family members who just don't have the same opportunities that we have, at least in a, you know, physical, like dunya sense, the same opportunities. And that's something, you know, a lot of people always ask me, like, why do you do this? Why do you do what you do? And quite frankly, the basic answer to that is I have no choice. I have no choice. My family in Gaza is being killed and not only are they being killed, the Zionists and the United States of America want them to be killed in silence. They want them to not, they don't want their message, they don't want their suffering to be known to the world. And so I utterly refuse, I utterly and unequivocally refuse to allow anyone, be it the U.S. government or Zionists or anyone for that matter, to kill me and my people and then expect us to remain docile victims. We refuse, utterly refuse. And so at every opportunity, I will bother them. At every opportunity, I will put their murderous actions in their face so that they can see what viciousness looks like, so they can understand what this violence is like. Because President Biden today is, like you mentioned in the introduction, is even questioning the amount of Palestinians killed as if we have a reason to inflate those numbers. Are you kidding me? 6,000 Palestinians in 18 days and the things that come out of the president's mouth is, oh, we're not sure if those numbers are accurate. Are you kidding me? And so not only are we being killed, we're being blamed for our own ethnic cleansing, like the whole bogus thing with the rocket and the hospital, which now the New York Times just came out today with a full expose saying that it did in fact come from Israel, okay? And so we're being killed, we're being ethnically cleansed
and now we're being blamed for our ethnic cleansing. And then when we state the numbers, when we give the real numbers and we show the world and full display our suffering in 4K high definition, the US government and Israel wants to obfuscate the facts, wants us not to show the people what is happening. And so the reason why the response from the universities, particularly for students, is so severe and so strong is because they fear what's inevitable. They fear what's inevitable. And what I mean by that is, look at us, we were, and you mentioned this Dr. Othman, you were a student during the period of the second Intifada and you were organizers, and you were mobilizing students on campus and you were creating awareness events. We grew up in the period of the attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, that's when we were on campus. And every generation before you and after us has had to contend with these massive aerial bombardments of either Gaza or situations in Sheikh Jarrah or attacks on Al-Aqsa. There's always been a moment that mobilized people, that was an inflection point for any particular generation of students to take a stand and work on Palestine. And so what they know is, they know that they can't quash this movement as much as they've tried. As much as they've tried, they tried to make an example out of us by prosecuting us, by suspending us. I mean, Osama was suspended for a year from his undergraduate studies. I was put on academic probation for an entire semester. Yeah, they tried to make it very difficult to continue working on Palestine. We had our vice chancellor of student affairs at UC Riverside making threats and tried to bribe other students to essentially let go of this work for Palestine and prevent them from continuing this work for Palestine. What does that tell you when the strongest organizations, Zionist organizations,
not on campus, off-campus organizations, lobby groups working to leverage their connections with elected officials, with media, with the university leadership, the president and the board of trustees to quash a student group simply talking about the situation on the ground in Palestine? What does that tell you? That means their narrative is weak. That means that their narrative is built on very weak pillars that eventually this house of cards will fall. That they know that if you engage in this discussion, this back-and-forth, this dafu'ul lahi, walaw la dafu'ul lahi nasa ba'dahum ba'dah you know, this dafu' is required, this sunnat al-tadafu' that I talk about in my khutbas all the time, this back-and-forth, this conflict needs to exist because if the forces of truth are not willing to engage in speaking the truth then the forces of batil have already prevailed. And so in my position at least, it is absolutely incumbent upon everyone as the bare minimum to be engaged in speaking the truth. Whatever the repercussions may be, and I'm not saying to be reckless, but I'm saying to be brave, to be courageous, to be bold and not allow them to put you in a state of fear where you are just so debilitated by this fear that you cannot speak out anymore about any issue and then you come up with excuses as to why you should not engage with this issue. And they tried this with the MSU at UC Irvine. They tried it with other organizations on campuses across the country. Then you had Muslim leadership coming afterwards and saying, brother, we're just trying to build wudu stations on campus and the campus is giving us a hard time. If we continue this work, they might not give it to us. SubhanAllah, there was always like a quid pro quo. There's like an exchange happening here. We'll give you something, the administration is saying, but you need to let go of something else. Let go of Palestine, but we'll give you prayer space. We'll give you wudu stations. We'll give you halal food options. We'll give you gender-separate dorm rooms, whatever.
And so this is something that we have to avoid at any cost. We have to battle this sort of this dichotomy that exists that we gain something as American Muslims or as students on campus at the expense of speaking in truth and power and for the just cause of Palestine. Well, wudu, wudu for you, right? They want to make this compromise, right? All right, you guys don't do this. We're going to give it to that, right? SubhanAllah, I mean, honestly, what you said is so many memories come back. Like you mentioned, like SubhanAllah, I remember like at UCI, the vice chancellor pulled me into his office like Israel is like begging that, you know, putting pressure on us to stop you guys from speaking out. And I'm like, you know, like a 21 year old. I'm like, why does the Israeli government care about what a bunch of kids are doing, you know, in Orange County, California? And then like now, like this is what they fear because they know that it is that the House of Cards is falling down. But I want to kind of build on one thing you mentioned, like Usama, I didn't even know you got suspended for a year. But like I remember the exact same thing was like how like life comes full circle. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is like ever, you know, like, you know, infinite wisdom gets manifested. Like I'm being like scrutinized and yelled at on campus and trying to, you know, again, put pressure on the MSU and like the administration hates us. And like you think that's it, your academic careers are going to be ruined. Like even for myself, went back to graduate school there, graduated with my doctorate there. I even teach there. And now I advise, you know, the campus when it comes to a lot of these issues. So like things just come full circle and you just do what you got to do. Right. Like these people, they come and they go. Right. The Zionists, they come, they have no heart. They have no real heart. That's what I've noticed. That's why I look online. Who's doing all the talking? It's all the Palestinian supporters globally. And the Zionists are hiding behind like their media, you know, mouthpieces, essentially. Right. They have no heart. They don't want to lose anything for this, for this cause. And we're willing to give up whatever it takes for sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And Allah will protect us. Right. Like so many of us have seen. I want to quickly.
I know some questions coming in. So this Assad is probably going to hit right into you. I have a question coming from Omar to say anything. What advice would you give to one before that? I'll come up with a question coming up. What advice do you have to engage both positions and trainees about the Palestinian cause? So maybe this is more general question about the workplace. How do you engage with your colleagues and really try to set that right environment? People are sending all kinds of horrendous messages probably come out. I heard like, you know, Kaiser and other organizations have put a default statement out. And then Muslims have to get together and do stuff. So what do we do? Yeah, I think there's a lot of great ways to speak up. I think it depends a lot about like what stage of your training you're at in terms of medicine. So like in medical school, for example, is probably one of the easiest. It's not it's never very easy, but relatively easy than other places to organize because there are student groups. You can connect with the other graduate students and undergraduate students and do work. Setting a statement or organizing an event. I know I live in the Bay Area now and I'm part of multiple Muslim physician groups, and I know many of them have organized at UCSF, at Sutter, at Kaiser to in all three of those cases to respond to horrendous, incredibly biased, dehumanizing statements that came from the leadership of those organizations. And I would say, especially in those settings, we have so many Muslim physicians, it's it's unbelievable. Sometimes we complain and we say we want to have more people in other disciplines and that's definitely needed. But since we have so many, we might as well have them do something. So we need to stand up. We need to speak to the people in those positions. And we have a lot of we have a lot of sway in those smaller organizations. Right. So Kaiser should be afraid of upsetting all of their Muslim physicians.
They should be. There's a ton of them. And those people should speak up and not just the Muslim physicians. All the people of conscience who recognize what's happening in Palestine. So I think, yeah, it depends a lot about your position and relationship. I would say on a personal level, I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot about a lot of my different levels of medical school, residency and now in practice to discuss it with various people. And a lot of times when you have a relationship, it's easier. Right. So that's the other thing is like if you've sort of established yourself as somebody who, you know, they trust and they they would like to discuss these things with and they're open to hearing your perspective. But I would say, yeah, you know, we have a huge obligation as physicians to discuss this issue and to advocate in those in those spaces. All right. Next question from I'm going to say what advice would you give to college students of today? Would you do anything differently knowing what you know now? Yeah, that's a very good question. I think the work that college students are doing now is paramount. It's the most important work that's being done, in my opinion, on the ground insofar as reaching the widest audience possible. What I mean by that is that. The work that students are doing and have been doing for more than 15 years, at least on campuses across the United States, is what's led to the vast shifts that we're seeing in public opinion on this issue. If you look at all the polls, you compare the polling data of supporters of Palestine and supporters of Israel over the past 20 years, you're seeing massive dynamic shifts in the American public in general, not just among certain segments of the community. And the reason for that, I believe, is because there's a robust and strong student organizing happening on campuses discussing this issue, bringing it to the fore, continuing to up the ante and change the discourse level.
You know, like I was saying earlier, we were calling it the politics of genocide back in 2010. Nobody was even daring to call it that at that time. But now this is a this is a term that's commonly used even in the mainstream media. So that you keep continuing to up the ante in the conversation on campus. And I think what I advise students is to not not get so caught up in the in trying to use policy speak and to use mainstream language when it comes to discussing the issue of Palestine, discuss the issue of Palestine as it's understood by the people who are who are oppressed, by the people who are at the other end of the of the gun, so to speak. And so I think that's number one. Number two is it's it's it's good to be tactical and strategic with the things that you're doing on campus so that you have the most effect. You know, it doesn't make sense for students to be engaging in language of resistance when that's not something that they're actually going to be working on. That's not something that they're actually going to be doing. You know, there's certain things that are going to get you in trouble that there's no need for. And quite frankly, and and and you could do a lot more effective work if you are engaged in the strategic discussions about what's happening with Palestinians on the ground. What life is like in Gaza, you know, discussing genocide and defining what Israel is doing is genocide rather than portraying yourself or what you're doing as something that is not. And so that's the advice that I would give the students so that they can continue doing this work because universities, they can't they can't stop you from doing that. But they will look for any angle to stop you from doing it. And if you give them the angle, then obviously that's that's a strategic error on your end. And so that's the main advance advice that I would get to students right now.
I had a quick just to follow up on that. One of the ways that I've seen specifically physicians trying being silenced, but I think it applies to a lot of other areas. Like I saw, you know, physicians that I would that I know starting to do something like drafting a letter, wanting to respond and then saying, oh, well, I heard that, you know, they might report me to the medical board. And my license might be revoked. I won't be able to practice. I'll get fired from my job. And I would say in all activism, you have to have an all life right knowledge before action. So you have to educate yourself. You have to be well informed. You have to do things that you are. You can stand behind, say things and do things that you can be proud of in front of a law in front of in front of the people. But if you do that, if you stand up for Palestine, no, you should. It would be incredible for someone to lose their license for that reason. And there are some few examples that people cite. And usually all the examples that I know of, you know, the people did. They made some serious mistakes in their approach. But if you if you have a principled stand for the innocent people that are the violations of human rights, the war crimes that are happening right now in Palestine, and you take a principled stand for that, and then some people decide to report you to the medical board or dox you or whatever, they can do that. And that would be, you know, maybe a difficulty that you'd have to face. But it wouldn't it would be extremely, extremely unlikely for it to result in your licensure removal. And again, if these kinds of things happen. The other thing I should mention is the community rallied behind us like crazy. And the community will still rally behind you if you're speaking the truth and people come to to persecute you for that. There are organizations and communities and people we want to stand behind you. We want to support you when you do that. And Charlie, you will feel and you will see that support in those settings.
So if that were to happen, I'll come to your medical board. I will speak in support of you. And I know many other people will, too. So we and we shouldn't share those types of things either. Like I see sometimes people sharing frivolous ideas about how you can be targeted for this or that that are really meant to intimidate. That's they put that stuff out there because they want to scare you from even thinking to speak up. Right. So let's not support their agenda of intimidation. And instead, let's support each other to speak up. And when someone does speak up and they are being intimidated, let's come defend them and help them. And I just want to bring up one last point about this, because it's something that comes up a lot. The Zionist lobby, in our case in particular, failed in its objective. It failed because it wanted to send a ripple effect through the entire Palestine movement. And if you speak up on campus in this way, you're going to be you're going to be brought down. And what it did is it made more people in power to engage in this work. So the Zionist movement, although it's powerful, it's not all powerful. Allah is the most powerful. And so when you you know, we just have to kind of deconstruct this idea in a lot of people's heads that the Zionist lobby has power and everything. And in economics, in media, in universities, and that, you know, that they could they could wipe us out. No, no, no. Their power is limited and we know their weaknesses. And that's why we need our community to continue to engage in this work, because the critical mass is going to overwhelm their best abilities. I mean, just look at it this way. With their entire propaganda arm in the in the Israeli government, with the global machinery of propaganda that we're seeing from the West, especially from the from the United States and Europe, with all of the financing, with three point eight billion dollars in military support every year.
Israel still cannot defeat Gaza. Allah cannot defeat Gaza with everything they've tried. They cut off water. They cut off electricity. They've killed the children. They've killed the fathers. They've killed the women. They've destroyed their houses. They've done everything they can. And yet they're still failing. Because they're not all powerful, because Allah is powerful. And so when you work and you put in this effort, just keep that in your heart that Allah will protect you and that Allah is the most powerful. That's why we say Allah Akbar when we engage in this work, because Allah truly is Akbar. Sorry, I just wanted to add real quick on the point to college students is is also at least me personally. When you see what college students are doing and how they're standing up, it inspires us. Like I'm not in that college environment anymore, but but they really inspire us. Those of us who are older than them and those who are younger than them as well are inspired. Look up to them. And as I spoke to this and especially the power that college students have, they have tremendous power. And that's why you see such a such a fierce response from the Zionists, from from the Israeli lobby to silence them. And even now, when I look and I see what what college students are doing across the country and leading the protests across the country and across the world, it really inspires you to say, you know what? We're getting there. We're getting there. And on the note of I think, would we do anything differently? I think I speak maybe on behalf of all three of us. Absolutely not. Just in case anyone had had any reservations about that. I do also thought I'd spoke to this a little bit and I guess going back to the college students advice right now during such a trying time like this.
It's very obvious what side we're on. But oftentimes I think college kids and I spoke to this are oftentimes universities, administrations attempt to okey doke, you know, and hoodwink students by offering them and appeasing them with, you know, interfaith type organizations that are meant to silence the Palestinian voice. Before all of this was going on, we were seeing even folks from Muslim leadership across the country taking trips to Israel. And there was essentially this whitewashing of the Palestinian narrative or an attempt to whitewash it within Muslim circles. And that's stuff that we, especially college students, need to be aware of because because it's so often happening on college environments that we should not back down from from from our beliefs, from our stances, from supporting the Palestinian cause. Yeah, so it seems like part of the wisdom would be to plug into those folks who have that institutional knowledge or I go to the ANPs or I go to the other organizations that can provide this. Hey, look, be aware that these are the things that like they might try to do to derail you. So I look at what you guys were all mentioning, one verse came to my mind where it's like this notion that's been in our community for so long, unfortunately, which is like, hey, that Zionist lobby is so powerful, you can't challenge them. Allah says in the Qur'an, إِنَّمَذَلِكُمُ الشَّيْطَانُ يُخَوِّفُوا بِهِ أَوْلِيَاءًۭا وَلَا تَخَافُوهُمُ مُخَافُونِينَ That is the plot of Shaytan. Shaytan is trying to tell each and every one of us and all of his allies, which is Fox News, CNN and all these other accounts everywhere that, hey, don't do this. If you say this, you're going to get in trouble. You say that, you're going to get in trouble. Don't lose your job. You're going to lose your career. We need to just call that out. That is a shaytanic approach that someone is trying to use on you. And so we should not. We should not fear them. We should fear Allah ﷻ and fear standing before Allah ﷻ and telling Allah I didn't say anything. That's what I should be scared of. I should be scared to death.
And I'll be honest. I put the fact that I was arrested for protesting for Palestine on every single application that I did. I mean, I got into Harvard for a leadership training. I got into my Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota. I made it very explicitly clear who I was in the application. I'm a Palestine organizer and activist. I'm a Palestinian. There's a lot of baggage that comes with that. But you guys must be prepared for me when I come to campus. And they were welcoming of that. They wanted that. And so I think that sometimes we fear. I mean, and obviously I'm speaking for myself. I'm in liberal arts and I'm in different sectors. So, you know, there's a lot more compassion for Palestine in those sectors. But I just want to make it clear that I've never shied away. I've never hidden the fact that I do work for Palestine. And alhamdulillah, all the doors have remained open. And whatever door was closed for me because of that was probably better for me, to be quite honest with you. You know, it's probably better that I didn't go into other fields. Probably better that I didn't work in tech and contribute, you know, to the suffering of my people in a direct way. So, you know, these are things that I, you know, I want to emphasize as well. That, like, take an action. Be firm and confident in the action that you take. Don't shy away from me. Don't shy away from me. Be confident that Allah ﷻ got your back. Be confident in the principle that you stood on. Because that is who we are as Muslims. We don't shy away from the good. We don't shy away from the haqq. بَلْ نَقْضِفُ بِالْحَقِّ عَلَى الْبَاطِلِ فَإِذْ مَوْهُمْ فَإِذَا هُوَ ذَكْرُ I mean, this is something that Allah ﷻ told the Prophet ﷺ when he entered Mecca and he opened the Ka'bah. And he told him to destroy the idols. بَلْ نَقْضِفُ بِالْحَقِّ عَلَى الْبَاطِلِ I mean, this is something that is a very powerful verse. That we will smash falsehood with truth. Smash falsehood with truth. And that's exactly what we need to be doing.
Smashing this falsehood of the Zionist narrative with the truth of what is going on. I'm going to jump real fast just to say, Asad Rufat. Alhamdulillah, one thing that we should be aware of. It's true that it's challenging and many people feel guilty because the companies that they work for, the corporations, are supporting the Zionist regime. But I also just want to let people know that it is important that there are still ways to do good within that. So alhamdulillah, those are the brothers who work in tech, some of them. They are heavily involved in making sure that a lot of that shadow banning and all those terrible things, that stuff is not happening. Because there's principles and there's protocols. So there are ways, no matter what industry you're in, to try and do the best you can possibly do. Because we recognize that we live in a society that is like the whole industry in many ways. It's so hard to find industries that have nothing to do with it. We ask a lot of put us in those industries. But if you find yourself in something that has a little bit that is undesirable, still do your best. If you can't achieve everything, you don't give up on everything. I agree with that. I was going to piggyback on what Bahar said because it obviously depends on what you're applying to. So Sam was saying when he applied to law school, he owned his narrative and he made it front and center in his personal statement and stuff. So when I was applying to medical school, I got all kinds of different advice. It wasn't really all kinds. It was mostly don't talk about it. And I had a lot of people tell me that you should apologize for it and you should just say. And I was like, well, I don't actually feel that way. And they were like, well, just kind of say it anyway because otherwise you're not going to get in. And I interviewed at 16 different medical schools and I ended up getting accepted to only one where usually it's about a 50% chance of getting acceptance if you interview. And I got that question over and over again. And my approach was basically like I didn't put it front and center in my personal statement. But I did have to mention it because I was for two. I had to explain both why the why the university disciplined me and put me on probation.
I also had to explain the misdemeanors and I explained what happened and I explained why I did it. And I said, you know, I think this is going to make me a better physician because, you know, integrity and standing up for what's right and doing what you think is right. Even when it's difficult is an important quality for any human being and especially someone who's entrusted with providing health care to vulnerable people. And that didn't play very well in 95% of the places that I went. But there was one person who actually where I ended up getting accepted to medical school. He looked it up and he read my statement and he looked up the video on YouTube and all this stuff. And he was very supportive. And I 100% believe that Allah ﷻ planned that out exactly for me because that's where I that's where I needed to be. And then I took a different approach for my masters. And the reason I mentioned that is just because like you do what's right. Do something you believe in. Do something you can stand behind. And then there will be you will get nothing that you were supposed to get will miss you and nothing that was going to miss you. You're going to get it anyway. Right. So that's a promise from Allah ﷻ. But there's strategic. You know, there you can. There are as bad that you can take. There are ways that you can take to try to make wise decisions in that setting. But, yeah, that's all I want to say. So I want to read a quote. We have one last question. We'll get to it. But there's a quote that I pulled when I was just kind of refreshing. My memory will happen. You said this. You said without hesitation, this was a single most important thing I've done during my college career. And I don't regret it at all. It's part of what I want to be. That's part of how I want to be a doctor, too. I want to be an activist and I want to be able to advocate for patients. I think it strengthened my character. I think it strengthened my skills as well. I really love that quote because I think what it captures, I would love for you to elaborate on, is that like people, again, part of like Allah's a plan for every single one of us. Like we might think that we're going to college because it's just kind of what everybody does to go and get a degree and just get grades and go for a job.
But for many people, those experiences can be life changing in terms of their character, in terms of their connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And I know none of us would ever like, Alhamdulillah, like we were more happy with like our activism and simply just like going to classes. Like people who just went to classes, you could sense it's like, what am I living for? It's like so boring, right? You know, like there was really no purpose behind it. So I'd love for you to just unpack that quote a bit just to help. How did how did that strengthen you as a person? How are you a better doctor? How are you a better communicator? How are you a better community advocate? Right. You're on the care board recently. Like what did this experience like really do to make you more holistic, more fulfilled? I think it strengthened my backbone. It just made me feel like, you know, if I reflect and I spend the time to really feel confident about what I'm saying or what I believe, then I'm willing to stand up for it regardless of who's trying to push me down or belittle me or yell at me or threaten me or intimidate me or whatever. Like it just gave me that kind of resolve. And I'll say now, you know, I'm the medical director for a county jail. And anyone who knows anything about, you know, mass incarceration in America and stuff knows that like these are institutions, unfortunately, filled with a lot of oppression and where a lot of things happen that shouldn't happen. And a lot of people who are, you know, homeless and have severe mental illness and have all kinds of problems are not getting the help they need. In fact, they're, you know, getting worse. So like I think in all of these different places that I've been, I feel like that's been like a sort of formative experience for me where I'm like, OK, I'm going to say whatever I think is actually true. I'm going to I'm going to try to pursue whatever I think is, you know, the best thing to do in this situation. And not everybody has to like it. You know, and oftentimes if you're trying to if you're doing something that's really needed, people aren't going to like it. But that's not the that's not the metric by which you decide if it's a good thing to do or not.
You know, it's there's a there's a different one with a lot of data that we have to reflect on. Any last statements? I'd love to hear from you all. Last to say hi to anybody. You know, I saw the the question regarding the any words of advice for high school students and the young nephew concerned about hate crimes. I think that's definitely a real reality that that young folks are having to deal with. And I think something for me personally is, you know, my response would be just to continue to encourage the young people in your life who are passionate about Islam, passionate about Palestine. Don't tell them to hold back. Don't don't don't scare them from from from speaking up. But instead, these are the future leaders of our community who are going to be the ones that are passionate. And I think all of us came from families that supported us and supported our passions regarding Islam, regarding Palestine, regarding activism and that we wouldn't be who we are without coming from the communities and the families that we came from. And so that would be my my final message would be just continue to support in whatever way you can. who are who are passionate about these, whether it's, you know, the young folk or whether it's people like that who has made it his his his day job to advocate for Palestine. And I think it's important for us to support folks like him and others in the community like him, whether, you know, it's care, whether it's a MP, whatever the organization is to continue to push their their their voices forward because they're they're carrying the mantle for the rest of us. So I thought I'd bring you one last question, build on what Osama just said. So Ammar Kamal is asking, do you have any words of advice for high school students in particular? She said, I have a young nephew who I'm concerned about, especially with the rise of hate crimes. Mashallah, he's very passionate about Islam. So how do we kind of, what would you give advice to parents and family members of high school students?
Yeah, I mean, look, undoubtedly, this is a very scary time. It's very 9-11-esque in the way it's taking shape. There are people who want to push us back into the closet. There are people who want to push us into silence again, force us to be in the shadows. Absolutely. This is a very difficult time. And but what I refuse to do is to respond as a community the same way we did after 9-11. I think that we have an opportunity now to set a new trend. We have an opportunity now to set a new course to fight back in the best way possible. We are in a much better position now than we were on 9-11 as a community. We are much more powerful as a community, much more affluent, much more politically connected. And I do feel that we have an opportunity to push back on the mainstream narrative as difficult as it seems to push back on the mainstream narrative and to bring the truth to the American public. I mean, look at this. Despite the warmongering rhetoric that the Biden administration has been putting out over the past two weeks, and despite what they perceive to be the sympathy of the American public with Israel over the past two weeks, you look at the poll today that just came out. More than 66 percent of Americans want a ceasefire, do not support U.S. intervention in this. That's a huge number. And that's a very big indication that what we are seeing on TV, what was being spewed by the Biden administration and others, is not characteristic or does not define the way the American people are thinking.
And I think that if we stand firmly on our positions and our high school students, our college students remain strong in their approach to this and confident that whatever they're saying is true, then I think their peers, their teachers, their administrators will also see the truth. No state has a right to commit genocide. No state has a right to ethnically cleansed people. No state has a right even to exist. That's just absurd. States don't have those rights. That's not something that's given to states. People have a right to exist. Human beings have a right to live in peace and freedom and justice. And so if we keep pursuing this line of narrative and being confident about what we are saying, I truly believe, I have full confidence that we will be victorious, not just in this life, but in the hereafter, because we have committed ourselves to what Allah has put us on this earth for. And we have committed ourselves to enjoying the good and forbidding the evil. And I ask Allah to bless all of you and to give you the fortitude and strength to continue this work again, because the people in Gaza have committed everything to this cause, have committed everything to Allah. They're losing everyone and everything around them. You know, when the ayah came down and says, وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ بِشَيْءٍ مِنَ الْخَوْفِ وَالْجُوعِ وَنَقْصِن مِنَ الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَنفُسِ وَالثَّمَرَاتِ, you know, this ayah, sometimes you feel it hard when you lose one of those things. But in Gaza, they lost all of those things. They lost all of those things, and the guys are standing up and saying alhamdulillah, standing up and saying alhamdulillah for what Allah has given us. I mean, we have no excuse. We have really no excuse. Watching what we're watching, I truly believe the awliya of Allah, the people who are blessed to be in this position in Gaza, we're observing them as an example for this ummah.
And we cannot betray them and betray our covenant with Allah by cowering away and losing courage at the first sight of fear or at the first sight of opposition. So I ask Allah ﷻ to give you all fortitude and strength in this world. Jazakumullah khair. Jazakumullah khair. I love you all for the sake of Allah ﷻ. I know we don't get to meet very often. I want to say it to you all. May Allah ﷻ raise another generation of folks who do the type of work that you have all done. I envy you all. I imagine this pun line literally when I remember I heard about it when I was in Egypt. It was like a judgment when folks like you who suffered trying to do little for the sake of people. Like how Allah ﷻ is going to reward you for those lives. To all the parents who are listening, my closing comment is you have before you today an opportunity to see that the fear that you have for your children, that we do what's right for the sake of Allah ﷻ. Allah will protect your children. We have examples. I just want to be very clear again. Dr. Asad, arrested, went to a master's in public health, medical school, medical director, Osama, Harvard Law School. By the way, I did mention on scholarships, Tahir, community activist, PhD student. Allah has not closed any of those doors for them. And even if He did, we're happy to take any of those because we know that is what's best for us. Allah is Al-Razzaq. He is Al-Waqeel. We put our complete trust and reliance on Him. We know that is our wealth and our sustenance and our salaries are not in the hands of anyone else except for Allah ﷻ. So we ask Allah to give us the best this life and the next. We ask Allah ﷻ to give victory to the brothers and sisters of Al-Fazlah. We ask Allah ﷻ to give them resilience, to give them strength, to feed them, to give them water, to give them all they need to continue to resist the brutal occupation.
And we ask Allah ﷻ to give us the strength to speak out on their behalf. And we ask Allah ﷻ to reunite us with all the martyrs and the righteous and the prophets and those. SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah. Bi hurmati l-Habib, bi hurmati l-Fatiha.
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