Confident Muslim
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Building (The Difficult) Bridges - Nabeel Alauddin #ConfidentMuslim
http://youtu.be/Bnym7VNkrt0
Brightest Minds making a positive impact on society. Nabeel Alauddin on building difficult bridges. One of three #ConfidentMuslim sessions held at the 2016 MAS-ICNA Convention.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Masha'Allah. Our next presenter, our next two presenters are actually both from Ohio State University. That wasn't on purpose. There are a lot of people from Ohio State apparently. Okay. Alhamdulillah. So our next presenter is Nabil Alauddin. He's a student at Ohio State University. Inshallah to Allah I'll hand it over to him. Assalamualaikum everyone. I'd like you all to help me out for a second. And I want you to picture a friend of mine that I knew in high school. We'll call him Nick. Nick was from a poor family. And we both were involved in an organization dedicated to facilitating student volunteerism across the state of Ohio. Now I was the first Muslim he'd ever met. So our initial interactions were very formal. But as we worked together and we got to know one another better, we started having real, deep, meaningful conversations. I remember one time we were talking about what stressed us out most in life. And keep in mind this was high school Nabil. So I was talking about college applications and scholarship deadlines. And then I asked Nick, you know, you tell me, what stresses you out most? And what Nick said really floored me. He talked about how his sister had been molested as a child. And as a result, how she's now in an abusive relationship with a man much older than her while she's still an underage teenager. He told me about how his peers kept trying to push heroin, push petty crime on him, and how he was trying to resist. And subhanAllah, his struggles floored me.
I'd like to pause here and reflect on a hadith of Uqba ibn Amr. It's a very beautiful hadith in which he says, that I met the Messenger of Allah. I said, O Messenger of Allah, tell me about the most virtuous of deeds. He said, O Uqba, reconcile with whoever has cut you off. And I said, O Messenger of Allah, I can give to whoever has deprived you. And so my brothers and sisters, he said, forgive the one that has oppressed you. So the question that I have for myself and for each of us here today is do we implement the sunnah of the Prophet SAW today? Some of you may say that we do. You know, we already give. We already give food. We already give clothes. We already provide free medicine to the poor. But think about it. Where are our free clinics? Where are our homeless shelters? Our food pantries? I would venture that they're almost exclusively in the inner city, or at least urban areas, areas that, let's face it, are more geographically convenient for many of us in the room. Now, I'm not saying for a moment that it is wrong to help in the inner city because we absolutely need to, and we need to do so more. And if your masjid, your community, is not already involved in the inner city, then they need to be now. But what I am saying is two things, the first of which, is there an assumption on our part that the only community in need of help right now is the inner city?
And number two, is there some inclination towards helping the inner city because we feel more comfortable with them, because we feel less threatened by them, as opposed to a poor rural city, as opposed to a poor rural town, which may be arguably just as poor, but potentially also hates us. And so you may remember the story of my friend Nick, right? How many of you thought that I was talking about some kid from the inner city? The fact of the matter is he was actually from a small village in rural Ohio, and the challenges that Nick faced were real, and the challenges that rural America faces are also real. Talk about losing jobs, declining levels of income, failing schools, an epidemic of drug addiction and overdose, and the few kids that leave that town and finally go pursue an education or pursue work outside of that town, never come back to contribute to the failing basic infrastructure of that town, creating a ghost town. And I would contend that these are the people that we are the least connected with. So I would argue that these are the people that we are the least connected with. And so now when someone who they can relate to, someone who looks like them, comes to them and sells them the rhetoric of hate, of divisiveness, of bigotry, of xenophobia, and they take all of their community's problems and blame some community that they have no relationship with, then inevitably some of those people will be swayed. Some of those people will even commit hateful acts in the name of that backwards ideology.
Now I am not for a moment suggesting that it is okay to allow for bigotry, to allow xenophobia within our discourse. There is absolutely no valid logical reason for it, and there is never an excuse for it. But what I am saying is this. Not every single person could have been evil-hearted at the core in all of rural America. At some point, had they had a connection with someone from this other community, then perhaps they would not have been duped by this rhetoric of hate and divisiveness. So now my brothers and sisters, we can lament on Facebook about how this rhetoric is increasing in hostility, and about how the actions are increasing, or we can potentially do something about it. And we can have courage and help those who even hate us, help those who even are hostile to us, such as the example of the Prophet ﷺ. And we can... Make du'a for me guys, it's my first one. So we can actually show compassion to these people. JazakAllah khair guys, my mom is going to love that. But what I am trying to say is that... I can talk about what I did now. Alright, I am going to skip to that part because that's the idea. And so I started a program where I live. I live in a conservative suburb of a very liberal city, but in the midst of Trump country. And so I started a program where we took kids who are fourth and fifth graders from low-income families, and we started teaching them how to code and how to 3D model. And at the end of the program, the kids who learned to program,
they got to take home a small video game that they made. And the kids that learned how to 3D model got to 3D print whatever they wanted. So there were a lot of cars, a lot of donuts, like you'd think that it was sponsored by Dunkin'. That's how many donuts these kids 3D printed. But alhamdulillah, the point wasn't to teach them. The point wasn't necessarily to get them interested in STEM. The point was actually to make them feel that STEM was something that they are smart enough to study. That when they get to high school, they can dedicate themselves to studying AP-level math and science and make themselves better candidates for college. And at the end of that program, I gave every kid my contact info. And I said, if you ever need help, reach out to me. And subhanallah, at the end of that program, at the end of that program, many of those kids came and hugged myself and the volunteers. Many of those kids came and hugged myself and the other volunteers like we were a sibling that they'd never had. And every single parent, many of whom looked nothing like us, thanked me profusely for taking an interest in the well-being of their child. And so I can't help but think that the next time some negative news is portrayed, that they'll think about the actual interaction that they had with a Muslim. And they'll think through that lens and ask, is this really the truth? And so now my question to all of you is, what if each of us in this room started a YSL in a small town just a few miles away from where we lived? To start Young STEM Leaders in your town, all you would need is $500 for the paid programming, assuming that the computers are already there. You would need a couple of volunteers to dedicate an hour on Saturday or Sunday, whatever works best, to work with some kids in that locale. And that's all it takes.
And actually the more difficult part than actually getting it off the ground is making contact with a local church or a nonprofit in that community because we need someone to host us there. We need someone to introduce us to the rest of the community. And so at that point, we can do this as a group of families, or we can do this as misajid. But we reach out to that local church, local nonprofit, and we say, we're Muslims, and we want to come not to proselytize. We want to come simply to serve you. Let us know how we can help. And so if education is one of the areas that they need help in, then potentially YSL is something that we can bring to your locale and reach out to me. And I have the contact info on the last slide. I'd love to help you get it set up. But if it's not, that's okay too. Whatever their community needs, whatever your community can offer, that's what we should be offering to these rural communities. And so I would like to end by saying that all of this is driven because we believe in the example of our prophet, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And all I can think is that instead of these rural communities getting their news from CNN or Fox News or Breitbart, now they will have an actual Muslim connection that they can think about these events through. And the goal isn't to make everyone a Muslim. The goal is simply to serve people despite the fact that they hate us, just as the prophet Muhammad, Khatamul Anbiya Sayyidul Mursaleen, Rahmatan Lil Alameen, sallallahu alayhi wasallam, did. And with that, Jazakumullah Khayran.
And we say, Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen.
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