Dogma Disrupted
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Students and Parents Dealing with LGBTQ Pressure | Episode 7
What religious rights are students entitled to in schools? It’s one thing to be able to opt out of a single class that doesn’t align with Islamic morality, but how can students and parents successfully navigate an environment where LGBTQ ideas are presented in math problems, showcased in libraries, and plastered in hallways?
Sh. Ahmad Saleem joins Imam Tom Facchine to discuss the prevalence of LGBTQ ideologies in public school systems, the impact of this ideology on children, and Muslim students’ rights to freedom of religion.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Imagine the pain of that mother whose son is called Abdullah and now he calls himself Abdullah Crow because he believes that he's a crow and his teacher in school and his teacher in principle says you are a crow. Imagine that mother coming to the masjid and then the imam or the board is completely disconnected from that reality. It's just so painful to see that. Salaamualaikum and welcome back to Dogma Disrupted. Today we have a very special guest, Shaykh Ahmed Salim, who is someone who's a specialist in tafsir and seerah. He has mastered the Arabic language, completed a tafsir of the Qur'an in various modes. He is currently the imam and resident scholar at Hamza Islamic Center in Atlanta and he is instructor at various Islamic institutes as well. He's also the founder of Deenagers, which I think is an amazing and excellent pun, which is a safe space for teens to learn about their deen. He intends to bring his leadership experience coupled with traditional Islamic knowledge to transform Hamza Islamic Center into a forward-thinking Islamic center rooted in traditional knowledge that represents American Muslim culture. He shares a philosophy that I have, which is accepting all mainstream Sunni opinions and basing our institutions off of that and we ask Allah to give him tafriq. Welcome Shaykh Ahmed to the program. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome, jazakallah khair for hosting me. The only philosophy I disagree with is coffee. Coffee snobbery or you know I'm gonna eliminate those people out of this. So if you're not good coffee snob, sorry you ain't got space here. I was gonna say, you threw me for a loop here because we've had many discussions about coffee. My coffee setup is set up, I need to send you the post. Yeah, that's right. So I had the pleasure of meeting Shaykh Ahmed in Toronto where he was based before he moved down to stateside
and so now welcome, welcome to America. Jazakallah khair. A soft welcome. Yeah, very soft welcome but it dovetails into the sort of the theme of today's discussion. Since you've been a recent transplant to the states, the states has exploded in issues regarding gender discussion, gender ideology in the public schools, the resistance to that, Muslims being at the forefront of the resistance to that, Montgomery County specifically, you know things are popping up all over the nation. And so that was kind of the idea behind this episode of trying to look into how students and parents, what room do they have to maneuver, what room do they have to stand up, what are the threats that are facing them, what are the rights that they're entitled to. These are all the sorts of things that we hope to, it's a huge, huge subject but at least to start chipping away at it today. So I know that we had discussed, you know, a skeleton of sorts of what we talk about and the first thing that came up was the idea of understanding or helping Muslim parents and students understand what freedoms and rights that they are entitled to, particularly the freedom of religious practice. So would you like to give us a little bit of a background about that? Yeah, definitely inshallah. Jazakallah khair Imam Tom. You know, back when I went to high school, whether it was Canada or, you know, that part of the world in America or now in America, what was really interesting was, I still remember, I have vivid memories of praying on snow, putting our jackets out and praying jama'a and jum'a and doing two-minute khutbahs because it's freezing, it's minus 25 degrees Celsius outside and we would take off our jackets and we would pray because the school would not allow us to have a room. You're going to translate that for us in America to Fahrenheit right away.
I still have my Celsius on. I still got my suit. That's going to be on your citizenship test. But if we really think about it, like we've gone so far that now you have spaces where you can pray. What's really interesting to see is that the next generation that is coming and the parents that are growing up that had those challenges now are not fighting for the same rights. They're not fighting, they're not sending like some guys like, oh, can you start a second jama'a at Masjid Hamza because our kids can't pray in the school. And I'm like, Allahu Akbar. That is literally one of the first things that I was asked when I joined Utica about following the secondary non-normative Maliki opinion that you can have a jama'a in the time of Asr because the kids get off of school at a certain time. And my response was, yeah, seriously. And my response was, why don't they just pray in school? Right? Yeah. I'm not alone. Yeah. So the thing is, parents need to step up. Oftentimes, we all know that we're coming across this filter where if the child goes up and says, hey, this is my right, I want to talk about, you know, how do I get a prayer room? They're usually shunned off. But if the parents get involved and they send them, they say, I need to meet the vice principal, whichever, you know, the last surname the vice principal is responsible for. I want to talk to the vice principal for my child, or I want to talk to the principal in this case and saying, this is my freedom. This is your you're not allowing that freedom to be expressed. When enough parents go and speak, they have no choice left. They have no choice left because they're not. How are they going to navigate that? And Alhamdulillah, this generation, I'm talking about my generation, like the ones that are in 40s and 50s that came 20, 30 years ago as you know, they have a lot more to give in these things. So they have to stand up for those kids and the rights of those kids rather than putting pressures on mosques because we are living in a time where freedom of religion is part and parcel of the society. That's the claim at least. Right?
Right. And it might be under attack, but at least on the books, we still have it. So, so let's just to be super, super clear to the listener. First fundamental right is that you have the right to pray in school. Nobody can tell you not to that. You can't pray in school and that prayer, whether it's an individual prayer for talking about making the whore, whether it's a communal prayer, if we're talking about even having some accommodation for Juma, right, there is no leg to stand on for a school to tell you that you can't pray. Okay. So I'll give you the time off to pray or not give you even time off. And that's so, so almost like a second thing. So, so situation number one is praying in school. Okay. Situation number two is being, having the right to be pulled out of school to go attend the masjid. Let's say that you don't have enough people to justify a Juma right. That it is your constitutional right to have your parents pull or a guardian pull you out of school so that you can, you can go to the masjid and attend Juma prayer. And it's the school's responsibility to provide you the support you need for the work missed. Right. So it's not on you now to chase them around and say, what did I miss? What did I miss? Because you know, on the real, and this is a good actually illustration because there is a difference between the rights that are on the books and then how individual teachers and administrators will attempt to punish students or obstruct. Right. Like we recently had that situation in Utica where there is a family that lived down in Hamilton where Colgate university is. And so for them, it's a bit of a drive, but I advocated heavily for the, for the family to do exactly that. So, you know, have pulled them out for Juma because they were feeling very isolated in their area. You know, they had a great experience but they told me afterwards that the teachers were trying to disincentivize it and obstruct it in every way possible. They were telling the students that, you know, well, you're
going to miss a lot. Well, you know, I don't know. And then every sort of opportunity afterwards, and we've seen this with the LGBTQ curriculum. So we'll, we'll come around to that eventually. Once the kid comes back to school, the teacher is sort of punishing the student either socially or otherwise by if there's anything that, you know, the student has a question in class or, or, or they're not clear on something, then the attitude is, well, you shouldn't have missed Friday. You shouldn't have missed class. Now you're behind. Told you exactly. So those are, I guess maybe people would categorize those as microaggressions, but they're really, really important when it comes to realizing what students and parents are up against and the sort of conniving ways that individuals that are unsupportive can actually attempt to dissuade and disincentivize people from exercising their rights. It's important to also understand, right? Like what's happening here is, you know, that whole post-modernism, the loss of individual and universal, you know, that whole concept, right? That, you know, basically like humanity, regardless of your race, gender, class, sex, whether it is individual or at a universal level, they're all myths. So, so the root cause of that is, is like those people that are now school teachers have come out of these universities that have taught them this, this post-modernistic law. You know, like it doesn't matter if you individually believe in something, it doesn't matter if a universal truth existed, all of those things that every type of, of collective truth that existed is up for grabs because there is no fact. Right. And then that's where it's coming from. Right. So they don't even realize that at the teachers, like I want to be a little bit like sympathetic to the one at the teacher, they went to school systems that actually completely brainwashed them. So they don't know another reality. They know only this reality. And most of them is like, yeah, I was a Christian. I was a Jew. My parents were Jew. I don't adhere to anything. And that's where it's coming from. So when they see somebody, oh, there is an
absolute truth. And I'm talking about Salah and I'm talking about a fact. And I believe in a reality that is alternate to theirs. They're like, wait a minute, but these are not factual. These are collective understandings that can be questioned. Right. Yeah. Usually, usually from my experience, it comes in two vectors. That's, that's one vector. Definitely the whole either like, you know, it usually, at least the language that's deployed from the people is that this is a violation of secularism. And actually there were, there was some bad press, um, from people in, in our area up in central New York that tried to get some sort of accommodation to pray. And then there were these hip pieces and like op-eds and things like that, that were basically like, oh, you know, this is not the separation of church, a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to have a quote unquote separation between church and state. And then there's, I think another vector, which is, I mean, and you know, the United States is a large place and you're in the South. So, I mean, you, you definitely understand that there are some people that are committed to a type of Christianity where they see something that is just, just out of prejudice against Islam and Muslims. And I think that Sharia law is knocking at the door. You got Sharia kids in school. Yeah, no, exactly. Well, Islamics, right. You know, or whatever they want to call people. But so that is a very real thing. So what would we tell, what would we tell a Muslim parent or a Muslim student if they find that they're attempting to exercise the rights that they have on the books, but they find themselves obstructed, um, by a particular individual, whether it's a teacher or something like that. Uh, first I would say that, you know, know your rights. So read up, educate yourself, what you know, your rights are, because you can't really help. Uh, you can't really stand up for if you don't know anything. So most of the parents, you can't go in this conversation or a student, you cannot go in this conversation, uh, feeling that you don't, uh, not having enough information. That's number one. Number two is seek for help. So your local Imams
who are born and raised in America would be a great resource to have, like, you know, one call from them can make a huge difference. Um, I've gotten involved in one particular case where, uh, you know, just called, Hey, you know, I'm going to use the word Ben just for this Benjamin or whatever. Hey Ben, this is one, two, three. And the guy's like, Oh, I didn't know that. Nobody explained it to me. Okay. You know, absolutely no problem. Sure. What they can leave whenever, as long as they can come back in 10 minutes. Like it was just a matter of that communication to explain to them in 10, 15 minutes in layman terms, why this is important. Right. Uh, the fourth and third is, uh, reaching out to those, uh, you know, uh, like in Canada we have NCCM and in South you have care, which if it goes to that level where you feel like your rights are completely being violated and you're not being heard, then reaching out to those chapters and, and a letter from them can also do it. But silence is not the option. Mm. I think that's, that's really important. Uh, specifically about, I think, I think the sort of flow chart or contingency plan for action shows us that the importance of being involved in your child's education period, um, and developing relationships, right? Because you don't want it to have to get to the level of like, you're now got some disgruntled opposition in the school system and now you have to try to go over their heads or whatever. A lot of these things, like you said, can be resolved with a phone call. They can be resolved with a face to face meeting. And unfortunately you don't want it to get to the point where this is the first time that you've even like popped in to say hello, right? Like this is the first time that, that your kid's teacher has heard from you or the first time that the principal has heard from you. And it's because there's a problem and now you're seeking redress, right? As much as things have a legal rule based dimension to them, they always have that interpersonal dimension to them as well. And so if you're actively cultivating
relationships, you go to the open house in the beginning of the year, you know, your, your kid's teachers, you know, the administrator, you're on a, they would recognize you, right? If you showed up, they recognize your face, you recognize them. I think it's a lot easier sledding, right? If that's sort of your situation, then if you're just completely hands off, you have no idea what's going on in your kid's education. And then now you're going to try to just advocate and secure this kind of right that you think you might have. With the cloak of a religion. So now that's even the second, like you're unknown and in a second unknown for them that, wait a minute, now this is like an overly religious person as opposed to getting involved in their education, academics, this, that, personal fights, school, sports, and all of these things. They're like, Oh, wait a minute. This is an involved student, transparent with the student as opposed to why is he getting involved only in religion? Yeah, no, definitely. Definitely. And so this becomes, you know, that we're all talking about the issue of prayer here, which is something that, you know, Muslim students have been dealing with for a long time. Now there's an added urgency to knowing your rights, because a lot of times people are going to bet on you not knowing your rights, just like police officers can do, you know, school boards and teachers the same, or they don't know the rights either. Right now, all of this stuff has interpersonal relationships, et cetera, all has increased urgency or heightened urgency because now within the last however much time it's been different depending on where you are, we have an extremely aggressive imposition of ideology that's being forced down even at the elementary school level with LGBTQ curriculum. What's going on? What are some of the things that you've seen down in Atlanta? We can talk about some of the other things that are going on nationally. Why does this now deliver even more urgency to knowing our rights and taking an active role in our kids' education?
It was a really interesting video that's going viral. I don't know if you saw that black grandfather speaking up at the Southern, it's, I don't think it's Atlanta, but it's definitely South. So it's like he had a Southern accent and he's, you saw that? He's like, it's called Jesus Pride Month. Yeah. He's like, welcome to Jesus Pride Month. And then he's like, and then, and then, but he takes it really interesting. He said that it was really interesting. He made a comment saying that the fact that the entire community is engulfed in this and God is allowing this to happen, it's already an indication that God has already passed a judgment against these people. And I was just taken aback because like, lima ta'idhuna qawman illa hu muhlikuhum Like, you know, why are you warning? And Allah's like, there's a judgment that's being passed that, you know, go ahead, you know, have at it, do whatever you want because there's an end coming. There's a time coming. So it was really interesting to see that they were able to do that. And this in Atlanta is playing out in a different way because I live in the most liberal County in Atlanta, Fulton County. So it's like the largest County in Georgia. And it goes from all the way to the airport to hour and a half North. You just keep driving where I live hour and 20 minutes. It's still the same County. I'm right at the edge of it and it's the most liberal County. So it's really interesting. You step out of that County and where you are in a Foresight County, you, you have a completely different target. So you won't go into target. You go into Walmart. There's no flags, none of that. You come to Fulton County target. It's like everywhere. Like, and, and, and, and people are starting to speak up against that. So now even the other day when I was driving, coming out of the masjid, there was like this anti flag, you know, they were holding these flag against the pride and people were like the entire road. They had like people lined up protesting against us publicly, which for me was almost never happens in Canada. But this year is
the first year, which is the exception by the way, with everybody, you know, there was, there was lots of protests against that, which was, which is nice that there's at least some balancing of the conversation, right? We're not trying to be bigots here. Like I just did, you know, no hatred here. It's just saying, do what you want to do, but let us do what I want to do. And don't shove what you're doing on us. Like that's the simple, simple thing here. In fact, the bigotry almost is, is in the opposite direction because the move that's being made is saying that to morally object is to be filled with hatred and to actually do violence, whether the violence is an internalized psychological violence or makes you liable to an external, like an external threat. Right? So to equate those two things, you know, it's like very, very far apart. Like me saying, Hey, this is not morally okay to, I want to see you hurt. Right? Those are two very far away things. And the, what has made, I think, um, force the issue is that those two far points on the spectrum are being collapsed into a singularity and said that to say one is to say the other. And now everybody like, Whoa, wait a second. Like that has such far reaching consequences on if we're going to run society like that, like seriously. And we've seen this when the equality act was proposed and thankfully hasn't made it through Congress, but it would literally mean the end of misadjusted like in the United States of America, it would literally mean the end of Islamic schools, you know, five Oh one C three, like we literally can't exist as a faith group. If you're going to say that, even to say that we're morally opposed to this means that we want, want violence to happen to somebody or et cetera. So, you know, very, very, um, disturbing times, but like you said, very encouraging to write. Right. And have you read the book cynical theories? I think you're the one who recommended it to me, right? I can't, I don't think it was, I don't think so. I might've recommended to you, but I haven't read it yet because someone recommended it. Yeah. I remember when we met
at Starbucks, you recommended it and I actually, I actually picked it up and I read it and you know, it, it, it talked about like, it's so basically like the two creaky principles. And if you want to, if we want to understand where this is all coming down from, right? Like this, what we're seeing is the fruits and the branches, but the root of it is, is that skepticism about whatever, whether objective truth is even attainable. That's where everything is coming down. Right. The summary is that. It's not about what is, but it's what it ought to. Right. And like, if you were to summarize, so right now the whole focus is, it doesn't matter what is, it doesn't matter what the data shows. It doesn't matter how much of the data shows that, you know, transgenderism or any type of this ideology is not serving those kids. It's what it ought to. Right. And who cares about the facts and realities on the ground. Right. And, and, and it was really interesting to read that book. You don't, uh, I'll just clarify by ought to, we're not saying sort of like a moral dimension, which is more into, to sort of traditional society. What we're talking about by ought to is, uh, autonomy, right? We're talking about the full logical conclusion of I own myself. The best good is autonomy. And therefore the most precious and sacred thing is to do whatever it is that occurs to me to do, to be, to feel, to think, whatever. I'm going to identify myself with all those desires and I'm going to, um, I have to actualize them. I have to bring them into reality. And if I don't, then actually it's going to be some sort of internal dissonance or et cetera. It's really interesting. All the clashes are happening where there is some form of hierarchy, like, uh, value hierarchy, right? For us, it's Quran and Sunnah. For somebody else, like the Sikhs, they're also, you know, in certain parts of the world are opposing to this. It's their, you know, their, their books and their leaders. So if you look at it, it's always, it's also the second part of the cynical theory says this,
whenever it sees a structured value system, value based hierarchies, you know, everything that is being worked upon is to destroy that hierarchy. So there is no way to, for us to be able to ascertain these truths. Sure. Yeah, no, the, the idea of hierarchy is something that I think the modern world, the modern liberal values bristles at entirely. Because the idea there's no, there's no sort of allowance. And this is sort of a more theoretical discussion maybe for another episode, but there's no, there's no allowance for a moral and dignified inhabitation of hierarchical roles. Right? So there's, you know, a lot of this comes back to the discussion of privilege and it's so crazy to see how the enshrining of the language of privilege and privilege is something that's problematic. In the earlier two thousands has led us to where we are now, because the assumption behind that is to wield power is unfair. That power itself is not a moral thing. They say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. Which is very different from the Islamic paradigm, which believes that there is just power. Sure. There's unjust power as well. Right. But the prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, wielded power, right? You could say the Quraysh had privilege. Okay. To be an Arab in Medina or in especially Mecca was privilege. And yet what were the responses that were divine responses to this, you know, sort of society, which had privilege and had power. It wasn't to destroy all hierarchy. It wasn't to destroy all, all, all privilege or to destroy all power. It was the moral redemption of those individuals in their roles, which then allowed a just power to be wielded that bore fruits of justice for everybody.
So very, very different sort of schema looking at things. Now, what you're saying is that we're in this sort of situation where 10 years ago, we were talking about privilege. Now we're talking about, yes, we're still talking about privilege, but it's been expanded. So to be a straight CIS hat male, quote unquote, if we, you know, I don't believe in any of those things, like how they're constructed, but instructed going with their logic, like that's the worst possible thing that you could be. Because you have the most amount of privilege, you have the most amount of power, and you're not even possibly able to use that power and privilege really in a good way without sort of just like wringing your hands and dragging your face through the mud. And letting, you know, people who are supposedly more oppressed than you, you know, run the show. So, yeah, and I think, I think what you're saying is very interesting, right? Because like the summary of it is like what they believe about power is that inherently power is dangerous and unreliable at the end of the day, right? That's the conversation, right? And actually it mentions that in the cynical theory, there's an entire chapter about the power of language. And it says that they want to not only take away powers and hierarchy, but they want to even take away power from within the language. And that's hence the whole pronoun and like, because that's power. Like, it's just when you read it, it's like, you know, some of the most important binaries for us is like up and down, left and right. Like these are same male and female. These are very important. And there's an art, you know, this person I spoke about, or I wanted to talk about was this professor Colin Wright. Have you heard of, seen some of his work? No, I don't. So, yeah, so Colin Wright is like an atheist, nothing to do with religion, purely science. And look at what they have done to him. Like he lost his tenured position.
He's coming up publicly, talking about it just purely from a science perspective. And he's like, now there's like these lawsuits against Wikipedia to change the definition of male and female. And he's like, and then the guy who's talking about Wikipedia is like, it's not possible because it's like structured on one or zero in like the entire structure. So it's not even possible in Wikipedia to be able to change that. And look at these people like Colin Wright. And I tell parents to equip themselves with that type of knowledge, because that when you go and have a conversation and they're going to be like, oh, you know, your child is now suffering with X, whatever they're going to, right? They're going to present their worldview as an absolute truth, knowing that they have completely disregarded facts. They've completely based it on that one singular experiment done by John Money with those two Canadian kids and build this entire thing on that and complete disregard of facts. So when you listen to somebody like Colin Wright, I think that's something the parents should definitely go look him up. He's an atheist. He's not about religion. But he talks about the gender from a scientific under his like 20 minute videos where he breaks it down for you. Understand that equip yourself with that knowledge, right? Because that's scientific knowledge in the scientific world, which is being somehow now filtered. So I think I think coming back to that, there is a fact, you know, our pedagogy or, you know, our epistemology of knowledge is, you know, there is a lot involved in all of these things. And that's what they're basically trying to.
Yeah, no, it's really important. And that brings us back, I think, to I think the focus of definitely this conversation, trying to think about parents and students, you know, in school, because when it comes to, you know, all the things that are that are fast unfolding, there's a lot of options for what discourse you could deploy. Right. If we want like which which hill do we die on when it comes to you're standing up in front of a school board meeting, for example. And these things have already been rolled out in your school. The opt out option has been cynically rescinded like it was in Montgomery County without any sort of, you know, short of any sort of, you know, democratic process or anything like this, completely unilateral. What's the what's the strategy? What's what are the tactics and what's maybe the most useful discourse to use? Because if we go up there, you know, like you and I can agree, you know, obviously, in a conversation about, you know, the different intellectual history, and then we have separation of fact and value, and we have all these sorts of things that are happening, you know, but when you go up in front of a school board, you know, or people who believe in this sort of stuff, you're not you're not necessarily necessarily going to win the day at least win what you want on saying, well, this is just a fact and this is the science or whatever. So what should parents do you think really focus in on if they find themselves in that sort of scenario? Okay. So I want to first before we get to that, there is an there's the Gareth Webb School incident, which didn't get much coverage. Is it's one of these incidents that actually sets for us how we navigate this beautifully.
So there's a poster that's posted. Last year, Pride Month, they put sister and sister, you know, you know, expressively showing affection, and, you know, kissing in that picture. One of the sisters in Gareth Webb to Muslim, like, so just so everyone's clear, two Muslim sisters with hijab kissing each other on a on a poster for LGBTQ, whatever it was in every school of Peel region. And so heavily Muslim Peel is the most dense Muslim school board in Canada. Okay, quick question on on your way. Why do they select? Why do you think they select Muslim figures and two Muslim sisters in hijab in specifically for that thing? First, hijab is the representation of Islam. They are my sisters when they go out, I have, you know, so much sometimes affection and pride when I see another sister walking in Target or working in Target or working in Walmart and putting that hijab on, you are doing dawah to every single one around. And the second part is they know that this is the symbol of Islam, and they are not accepting this. Right. So we need to attack the symbol. They're actively trying to undermine our morality while keeping our symbolism. So that's basically what's happening. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and so what they what she did is she went to the school principal and we brought her in and we she gave a speech to our students in our masjid. And they were so inspired. She said, Look, I just went took a brother with me because I needed somebody along. So the vice president of MSA she was the MSA was hands off. I was like, we don't want to help. But one of the guys in the MSA said I'll help. They went there that she said, I'm hurt.
The principal can't take that because they're trained by saying if a child says I am hurt, it sends all of these triggers and she said, I feel unsafe. And I feel that I have been neglected from the school. You know, I've been removed from the student erased. Erased. Oh, my God. She said, use your language against them. You use your language, their language against them. Here's the interesting thing. So I asked her, I'm like, dude, they're like, they asked, started justifying because when it comes to religious exclusion, they want justification. And she said, I just became a broken parrot. I was just like, I feel hurt. I feel neglected. I feel limited. I feel not accepted. They're like, but why? She's like, I feel hurt. So she just she just kept repeating to the extent that the principal she said, how can we fix this? She said, the only way we can fix this is you're going to remove these posters. Because those posters have singled me out as a hijabi. And this is not what I stand for. And this is pinnacle of Islamophobia. And that's when she said, posters have to be removed and a public apology to all the Muslim students. There are 700 students in the school, 700 out of the 1200 bodies, 700 are Muslims. We all are offended. And she's like, No, I don't think you're all of you are offended. She's like, trust me, we're offended. They're just not coming out. So okay, I will apologize. And then she says, How do you want to do the apology? I need a public apology. So like the school board policies don't allow me to publicly apologize for religious offenses. Wow. So she's like, what can you do? She's like, I can do private apologies. So she apologized to I think 300 or 350 students. They all lined up. She came out one by one, one by one for two hours.
Wow. And then this girl did a silent walkout. Next day, she said, I'm doing a silent walkout. I can pause you just for a second. I just want the listener just to register the fact. Listen to the discourse of what the principal, you know, tried to deploy when she said, Okay, so she's using the offense tactics. She even used sort of the Islamophobia. And look at how quickly she attempted to divide and conquer by saying, they're not all offended. There are some Muslims who agree with this. There are some Muslims who do this. This is a tried and true tactic that people attempt to use to divide us and conquer us by. It's the good Muslim, bad Muslim game. Yes. Where now you're going to have practicing on practice. Yes, exactly. Here's the right kind of Muslim that we want completely, you know, ascribed and submissive to liberal modern values. Right. And anybody else who's not there being tradition, they're not understanding the tradition correctly, or they're being, you know, reactionary or Canadians. Yeah, exactly. So I just want the listener very, very beautiful point. Extremely, extremely relied upon tactic in order to split people. So go ahead. So then she does a silent walkout where even the lesbians and the gays showed up in support. Wow. And there's a there's a clip that went around viral. And basically they took down all these clips from everywhere. Right. So Instagram posted, I think, Sheikha Marshal pre posted, I think they took it down from anywhere that that silent walkout was. And basically she had a statement which was drafted by somebody who's in human rights and activism. Some, you know, very nice brother. He drafted the statement. Every student was told that the media is going to be there. You're not going to say anything. It's a silent walkout. And the all I think except exception of like 50, 60 students that wanted to be part of it. They were around like 600 plus. They all walked out on that day.
And guess what? The media completely hushed this entire because it was a win. And it was a win at a level that you've never seen. So the lesson for this is the student, the policies are written where a student is always right. So we have to to have this this this this pride in our our and I use the word pride purposely. They need to feel proud that they're Muslims. They need to feel proud that they're Americans or Canadians. They need to feel this pride that I belong in this country. I was born in there. I'm not going anywhere. This is my country. And this is my right of freedom. And now you've hurt me. The beauty is because of this liberal stuff, you don't even have to justify why you're hurt. You just need to say I'm hurt. And it triggers a whole bunch of systems that can then come back to protect us. Yeah, it forces them into an awkward position where they now have to choose between different types of hurt and prioritize different types of hurt. Yeah, it's it's it reminds me and I always come back to this point from the Sierra. It's very, very fascinating to me where, you know, when, well, two scenarios like one when the boycott was happening in the Meccan period. Right. And you had even some of the the idolaters who were against the boycott. Yeah. Right. Because it was against their kind of whatever was their their traditional values of tribalism. And obviously, Islam has trenchant critiques of tribalism. However, the situation was manufactured in such a way as to almost use what they believed against them. Right. It's like now you have people who are actually calling for the end of the boycott, not because they're ready to become Muslims, but because of their tribal sort of sympathies. Right. And, you know, it wasn't the only sort of rivulet in the stream that ended the boycott, but it was there.
And then later, you know, the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and you have the situation where they put the Quraysh in such an awkward spot because their entire legitimacy is based off of protecting the pilgrims and facilitating the hajj. Well, now your sworn enemy has come defenseless for pilgrims. For hajj or umrah. Now you have a conflict of interest. You've forced the issue where they have to choose if they they can slaughter them all right there. And in doing so lose their legitimacy and lose like their honor and everyone's going to hate their guts and pretty much be plotting for their downfall probably. Right. Or they maintain a sort of the whole reason why they're there and they facilitate the hajj in some way and get totally embarrassed because it's their sworn enemy that's coming to do it. Right. So we've talked about these in on this particular podcast and in some previous episodes the difference between deploying a discourse versus believing in it fully. Right. And so when we're saying when these situations you have to be smart, you have to be very savvy. It's not that we're saying that we believe in the whole liberal paradigm of the hurt and the grievance politics and all this other stuff. No, we don't want to be constituted by that. That's not what we're about, but you can deploy it in a very sort of practical and instrumental way in order to get your rights. Similarly to how the Fuqaha say that rishwa, right, bribery is haram. No doubt. The person who gives it, the person who receives it, etc. But if you're in a situation where the only way to get your right is by paying a rishwa, by paying a bribe, then, you know, it's permissible for you. You don't like it, but that's there. So we almost have a similar situation where we have these discourses that are liberal discourses, but they're so perhaps we could say mutually contradicting or there's so much room in them.
Yeah, for interpretation and for playing games and stuff like that, that you can actually use them against the people who are trying to trample on your rights and trying to kind of target you as Muslims. And these are the systems you're in, right? So you're already in the school system. You're not going to be able to go out of the school system if you've chosen to have your kids in the school system. So this really helps. And I think also training our kids to speak up to these things. I think the other part of this is, you know, parents not showing up at those voting meetings, not knowing when those meetings are happening, not being part of the superintendents of the schools, and not even participating in that election process when that school body. Sure, you don't want to go into politics. You don't want to go to Congress. But there's Muslim kids that are going to go to these schools. This is how those policies, you should be on the platform if you have enough Muslims around. Why is it that no Muslim is represented on there, especially when there's, you know, a school that has like six, 700 Muslims, right? So I think getting involved in that is also definitely really interesting. That's a good point. And I'll jump in just to say that, you know, a lot of people have reservations about getting involved in politics at the national level. And I totally can respect and understand those reservations because at the end of the day, there's not a whole lot of difference between, let's say, foreign policy or some of the policies of Democrat or Republican or left and right. You know, you're going to compromise your tax dollars or going to bombing your brothers and sisters abroad. I get all of that. I totally respect the idea. Even if it's not my position all the time, I respect somebody who on principle says, you know, national politics, it's too, it's too messy. I don't want that on my scale of deeds, but the local level is completely different, right? Talking about, you know, you can be registered to vote and vote in a school board election. And a lot of the times, the amount of votes that it takes to swing a school board election are very, very few.
We're talking like 50 to a hundred to 150 votes and totally decide who's going to be there representing your kid, looking after your kids, sort of, you know, and it doesn't have to do anything with foreign policy. It doesn't have to do with any of the things that are necessarily against our Dean. So it's a, it's low hanging fruit, right? It's a very easy thing to get involved in. Even municipal politics, even municipal politics, right? Those are, those are where Muslims should be involved. And it's kind of like Hakeem Ibn Hizam and you, when you talked about the story, you know, there were five people that broke that bycaut. Right. Yeah. So same here, like it doesn't take much for us to be able to, you know, change all of that. I want to also pivot to this element, which is, so as, as, as somebody who's been dealing with a lot of these parents who are, whose kids have supposedly come out or whose kids have, you know, been, been indoctrinated with this, they have, they have this thing now, I don't know if you've heard of this, it's called the rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it, it, the number of cases that rise in June, is it like some, some psychiatrist, you know, she was working in the hospital. And she was like, she's like, she comes to, she used to come to my masjid. She said, you know, like the minute June comes, it's just skyrockets because every, and she's like every single one of them, every single one of them had another form of a mental health issue. Right. And I've, I've posted a link for you guys in there. There's an article called, uh, I thought I was saving trans kids, uh, worth reading that article. It's here's a nurse that believes in this. She's all for this. And now after serving, I don't know, whatever, X number of years, she comes out and she's like, she's like, every single one of those kids we helped, we knew that they had depression. They had anxiety. We knew these things were happening. And we just overlooked them.
So coming back to the parents who have to deal with this trauma, it's it's because if they go to the doctors, Oh, how, what kind of parent are you? You don't want to affirm your child. You're going to be responsible for your child's suicide. Yeah. So that imagine that trauma, imagine the trauma of their child being taken away. Imagine the trauma of finding no mental health resources out there. No psychiatrist, no therapist that is willing to affirm your feelings and your pain imagined. And this is serious. Now it has gone to the level that, you know, they were closing down these groups. So now on Facebook, there are these private groups of Muslim parents whose kids have either transitioned or, you know, lesbian, gay, whatever this is. And they're not finding any support and there's a vetting process. So I did like a, a small, zoom call with these parents and, and, and they were like, because I, as part of teenagers, all these kids would come and talk to me. And in an anonymous manner, I had figured out an anonymous way to get those concerns and eventually they would build enough trust with me and they would come and discuss this. I'm, we're talking about super practicing sisters and most of them are girls, by the way, most of them are super like a practicing sister. I could not imagine that the sister is going through this. Like she prays, she reads Quran and then she comes and I'm like, I can, in one conversation, I'm not a mental health specialist. I'm like, you need help sister. Like, you know, she's a 14 year old, 15. I'm like, you need help. And wherever she goes for help, wherever parents take her, it's like, Oh, you, you, you were in the wrong body. You're in the wrong body. You're in the wrong body. That's extremely significant because, you know, we live in, I think a time of mental health crisis. And, and, and there's so many, there's so many reasons for that. Like, you know, we could talk, that could be an entire episode, just talking about the reason or the reasons why our youth struggle so much
with mental health, you know, the breakdown of the family, the loss of purpose, you know, not having very meaningful sort of things to look forward to the removal of rites of passage. There's a million things that we could talk about. And I think what you're highlighting, and it's a really, really significant thing, is that in our current society, all of every single symptom, every single time, a young person that's around puberty age has something with their mental health. The, the, the systems and the professionals are going to say, I know what that is. That's gender dysphoria. You're in the wrong body. As opposed to all of the myriad things that it could be. And even not just one particular thing. A lot of these things might be sort of a one-off thing. One particular thing, a lot of these things might be sort of like threshold. Like one thing is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And there's all these sort of underlying issues that compound upon each other. And we live in a societal moment where psychologists and school counselors and school teachers and, you know, administrators and even doctors are basically ready to just, as soon as something comes to the door, I know what that is. That's this thing. Let's put you on puberty blockers. Let's help you transition. Let's help people quote unquote, accept, right. It's madness. It is madness. You know, I'd read a paragraph here. It says the girls that came to us had many issues, including depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism and had autism like symptoms. A report last year that was published said one third of these patients that were referred girls with, they were on an autistic, autism spectrum. And, and, and this response is, let's not affirm gender dysphoria. Like, like let's not treat it as a J because they don't believe in gender dysphoria now, because if you say it's a mental disorder, so they're like, Oh, let's remove that completely in 2055. I think it was removed in 2015.
So from the DSM and now it is like, it's like, Oh, you've got, you got a, you got a wrong body and we need to start this entire process of, of, you know, helping and changing you. And my concern is the conversations about parents, how do massage it? And I want to talk to the massage. It's, we play a role here. Yeah. Like in the last book, I talked about LGBT and parents were, the ones who were hurt, loved it. The ones that said, why is he talking about this? I'm like, your kid is 10. We want it to go away. People want it to go away. Yeah. People want it to go away. It's not going away. It's not going away. I mean, like I, if that bill passes, your massage is not going to be what you think it is. Right. And so, so I want to talk to the massages for a second and say that, you know, we play a role, which is whether we bring Muslims who are strained in psychotherapy and these things, they're also trained in Islamic classical sciences. Uh, and they have to start offering communal private kind of like alcohol anonymous so that nobody knows that their parents. So, and it cannot be done in a masjid, but it has to be spearheaded by either masjids or institutes. And this is a big issue. Those 40, 50 parents that I had a zoom call in, they all had their, you know, I think four of them or five of them, the cameras on everybody had their cameras off. So when I pinged and I said, I would love to see all of you guys, you know, they all said we cannot because we're crying deep down inside because this is the first time somebody has taken somebody that we look up to has affirmed our feeling. And I was literally taken aback for days that, you know, imagine the pain of that mother whose son is called Abdullah and, and, and now he calls himself Abdullah crow because he believes that he's a crow
and his teacher in school and his teacher in principle says you are a crow and you are going. And imagine that mother coming to the masjid and then the Imam or the board is completely disconnected from that reality. Right. Just so painful to see that our Umar going through that. Yeah. Yeah. So upon a lot. No. And, and I, I think both for youth and parents, they get driven to other circles, right. When we don't address it in the masjid and we don't address it, you know, people have basic needs and they're going to go wherever they feel they have to go to meet them. I mean, I mean, and may Allah make the masajid places where places of refuge and understanding and also remediation. Yeah. And you know, my sheikh used to say that these masajids are, are supposed to be hospitals for the spiritually sick and not clubs, not clubs for the pious. The pious is a lot of, right. Like I'm paraphrasing from his Arabic to English. If we were Christians, we'd put that on the marquee out front. Our marquee game is not like the Christians. Mark it and our key game is on point. Yeah. So anyhow, inshallah the other. So here's some material that the parents can equip themselves with. Right. There's a book that's coming out. I've already pre-ordered it in July. It's by Maryam Grossman. She's the one that actually she's, she's the one that rang the bell and the warning about this way early. It's like in 2009, she wrote the book saying, you're teaching my kids what that's the book she wrote. Then she is writing this book called lost in trans nation. And it's about how do children and parents navigate what type of words you need to say and speak when you come into these. So every scenario, that you're going to unfold, she has given us resources where parents can equip themselves with the right type
of verbiage or lawyers or whatever, so that you don't get into that spiral and you get, you don't get into dragged dragged into this. And as a parent knowing your right, because oftentimes ignorance is what they feed on, especially for the Muslim community, because parents don't know their rights. You know that you can take out your child from any class if you feel like as a parent, until they're 18, that's your right in this part, it doesn't matter. You'd like my child is not attending this and they cannot force your child to attend. If you, as a parent, you say that. Real, real quick, which is the importance also for all those listening in trying to re corral gender and sex ideology into sexual education, as opposed to letting it permutate every and permeate, excuse me, every single subject because that makes the opt out option more meaningless, meaningless, or basically you can't opt out of anything. If you're getting assaulted by LGBTQ propaganda, which is what it is in math, math, math class or in science class or whatever. But if we're able to push it back into sexual education, then that's something that we can meaningfully opt out of. And how is that coming in and max is like, I was helping my daughter grade 11 math, Mark and John went out for dinner. They, they booked a motel room. Like, look at like, this is a math problem about how do you split? And I was like, I was like, why is, why is this entire, like, so I questioned and I, so as a parent, I called the principal. I said, why is this being, who is writing this? Because why is this being, why, why is not, why are we pushing this? This is a very small sliver of a society. What happened to heteronormativity? What happened to just being, you know, you know, mother and father went out and they're like, Oh, the other people left feel neglected and left out. I said, well, they can get that in their sex education, not in maths.
There's no reason to, to create math as a political agenda or science. Organizations like GLAD, you know, are very instrumental. That's one of their goals is to increase representation in, in nonsensical ways. Right? Because if you look at, if you look at actual representation in society, it's very little. Yet I recall that they had set a goal, I believe for 2020 to be represented in 20% of all media. I don't know how they figure that out, but you know, movie characters, television, et cetera, et cetera. And once we got to 2020, they found that they had already surpassed that goal. And so instead of being content with 20% is a, you know, a fifth, it's very hefty way overrepresented already. The goal they set for 2030 was 30%. Right. So I don't understand where the, it, it belies the fact that this is just about being recognized. Like this is way beyond that. This is about imposition. This is about forcing other people to ascent to entire worldview and entire theology. We could say, it's not simply about being accepted or else this would have been much more limited and modest in its aims. Yeah. And I think also the other element also, when you talked about this, this funding and all of that you know, I read an article, mentioned that, you know, there's like a budget that they have for different sections. Like, okay, this is how much we're going to spend on Muslims is how much we're going to spend on the black community. And you know I was in a, in a meeting in Toronto and we were having this conversation. I don't know, you were, you were, were you there for that? I don't think you were there for that. Yeah. You were not there for that. So Ibrahim Hindi was there. Shekh Omar Suleiman was there, a few of us. And over there, I think they talked about that, that, you know, let's look at the black, the money that they're going to spend in America on, on blacks. Do you know like 70% of that is being spent in Atlanta?
It's not a lot. Because, because the black community on the whole is completely rejecting this notion. They're not accepting it. Christians, Muslims alike. So there's like a full agenda of how do we tackle this, right? To the extent that one of the Muslim sisters, you know, she works in the library and she said, Shekh, do you know that when it comes for Ramadan, I get $10,000 to do the decoration and do an event and bring a speaker and stuff like that. When it comes to Diwali, I get like $30,000 as she's a library head. Right? So she was telling me all the different religious subsectors and how much funding. And she's like, she's like, so, so if you were to combine everything on all China and the Taiwan, all of these, you know, subcultures that exist, and they want the minorities that want to represent. And then you look at the least amount of that mind, like the smallest minority, which is the LGBT community. He's like, there she was like, their funding is 10 times combined all. And just for this year in that one library, their funding was 80, I think $88,000 or $90,000. Right. And it's, it's like it's incentivized in the system. Like a friend of mine, this is a joke, but a friend of mine did this. He was getting his insurance in Canada and his insurance hiked up. So a colleague at work who happened to ascribe from this saying, why don't you just tell the insurance company, you're non-binary, and they'll give you a 60% discount. So I will send brother. He just called and there's no verification check on this. He calls and they're like, Oh, we're so sorry. One second. Cause they have a grant for that. They can offset that. That's extremely revealing. And I think it does, it's bigger things here without, you know, without disregarding the folks who are honestly genuinely struggling, because obviously there are, there is a population that is like that. Um,
however, there is definitely no doubt that our society, again, going back to the whole conversation about privilege and power, and then looking at sort of what instant recognition and sympathy that you get for identifying in a certain way. It's definitely, there's a strong incentive to interpret whatever mental health issue you're experiencing or whatever sort of discomfort you're having in your life. There's a very strong pull to understand that as part of your sexuality or your gender, um, you know, it's true. I think that there's, there's something going on where there's a sort of anachronistic way of looking at history where yes, in the past. And, and I talked with this with Dr. Sharif, um, on the other episode about how there were, there was oppression and there was vigilante violence and there were real wrongs that were committed to people, um, who have these sorts of issues before there's a sort of movement in the past. There's a sort of move, I think, by this, this, this movement to capitalize on the sympathy generated by those sorts of things that were more prevalent in the past and to disregard the way in which this is the new privilege. This is the new power. You're, you're, you're the oppressor. Interesting point over here. Like what you mentioned. So, so what is happening here? Like I want, I want, so every single one of us, when we were growing up, like, you know, you had to, so when we're, we're playing ball on, on street ball, when you, there is a social contract there, right? Uh, there is a dominant player. There's a second dominant. There is somebody who is going to be the pawn, like in the, like those social contracts. And what, what was happening was as we were growing up, we don't have access to this. So you had to negotiate, you know, and I mentioned this point, like the PhD,
he points out that every single interaction from the minute the child is born, he is negotiating social contracts and he's trying to rise the hierarchy or trying to fit in at the level. And that, that negotiation is taking place. Uh, for those who were weaker in their negotiations, they would get community support. They would get parental push. They would get, Oh, go and attend some tech Wando, build your confidence, come back and negotiate this contract. Now, what is happening is PHA. He mentions in this, like, you know, he's a psychologist and he says that, you know, identities that are based on questioning. So nobody likes me. I'm not, I'm not, I don't fit in. Where can I fit in? And when you start questioning everything and then the society around affirms, yeah, you're right. You don't fit in. Yeah, you're right. You don't belong in this body. Yeah, you're right. You are like this. You can opt out of that hard exercise of negotiating that your contracted position in that society. And it's easier for you to resort to these. And literally a kid can walk in. Like one of the doctors in the message was telling me, you know, a kid can walk in and in 10 minutes he can be off to a person for a first visit of how can we chop off your body parts? Yeah. And we have a 10 minutes conversation and we neglect the 14 years of experience of that parent with this child saying this is zero. It's equated to zero. And he says this is the root cause of all mental health crisis. This is like way back. Like you were talking about like, you know, 16, 17, he's saying this way back. That reason we have mental health crisis is people are unable to negotiate those contracts in the society and the systems are not in place for them to be able to help, to help them get to a place where they're content with their social status in
the society. And eventually they want to be able to create that. Create the other nest that, you know, you, you're not enough. We have to create systems to make you feel enough. That doesn't mean that we're, we're, we're talking about what is happening at a global system. And they're all connected right now over here, right? Like the, the, the feminist movement, the LGBTQ meant all of these, and there are these activist movements all of a sudden, where is this funding coming from? What is it? And there, there could be some genuine people in there, but the sheer amount of funding that is coming, it's all coming from, for, you know, pharmaceutical companies that benefit from at the end of the day, othering or mental health crisis, and then they can go on those drugs or they can go on. So what we're saying is that there's, there's a conflict of interest at play, right? Because if you, if you are in the business, right. You know, this is very gender dysphoria is very, very good for business. You know, you're creating lifelong patients you know, cutting edge surgeries, you know, re-sculpting the body in all sorts of creative ways. You know, that this is sort of very good for business. I've often reflected. Add race to that. Add race to that. Oh, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're a minority, you're Brown, you're Black, you're Latino, you're this and that you don't have access to. And all of this stuff. So add this couple it with, with your, the person feels victimized completely all of a sudden, right. They feel victimized completely. We're not saying that, you know, those oppressions don't exist, but we're looking at the political reason of how politics are being used to, to, to, to, to cover these oppressions. Right. You know, and that's interesting also because we've started to see in the sports world, how there started to be some pushback with the NHL and the MLB, you know, there used to be pride jerseys and pride nights. And we've in the last year seen pushback on that as well. I've always kind of observed or thought that when it came to the pride
came to the prioritization of different sorts of minorities and their, and their plates and their rights and advocacy that first of all, you know, LGBTQ is kind of the, the model minority when it comes to liberal values in that, in that it's based upon again, that sort of realizing your autonomy. Whereas when it comes to race, your skin color, you know, your ethnicity, you know, yes, it's very existential to you, but it's not something that's reflective of something that you've chosen. Right. And then the other thing that, okay, well, you could say that, you know, religious beliefs are chosen as well, but religious beliefs are not sort of, they're not sourced or they don't originate in this sort of like primal urge or desire assume when it comes to either your gender identity or your sexuality. Right. So all, so on one hand, and that's, that's one point I've, I've thought of this like that this is what makes sympathy for LGBTQ issues. Like, so sort of across the board, because of the values that we have at this particular historical juncture, where it is the most valiant sort of expression of the autonomous individual choosing for themselves, what they're going to be, who they're going to be with, et cetera, et cetera, in ways that other minorities aren't. The second thing, and I'm not sure if you want to comment before I move on. No, no, go ahead. I want to hear your second thing is just the sort of cost benefit analysis on the corporate end for, okay, who am I going to like, let's say that we want them to actually take race seriously in America. Like we've got the history of redlining. We've got the history obviously of slavery, all these sorts of things. If we're going to try to set that right, what does it look like? It might look like reparations. It might look like, you know, a free tuition to colleges for a generation or, or, or with, you know, like it,
it's going to cost some money. Like it's going to work, you know, like redistribution or reorganization of land and opportunities. Like it's the serious work. Right. But if we just put some rainbow flags on our, you know, merchandise and we're able to sell more and we're have this month and whatever, it seems like a very, very easy win for them. Right. They get to come across as being socially conscious and passionate about social justice issues by signing up to the one that I think is the least risky for them. And that is almost like the easiest to fix in some sort of way. But that's also changing, you know, but that's also changing. You heard about the Starbucks thing that happened four days ago. Yes. Yeah. There's everything's changing now. It's about 20, 21. I think it was 21 States, the union representing the Starbucks employees said, you cannot, you cannot post these flags anywhere. Yeah. No. And we, which for me was, I was just like, wait a minute, what's going on. Right. And, and, and, and, what are you going to do now? Which shows you that where their real interests lie, right? Because if they were ideologically dedicated to this thing, then they would have never done that for all in whatever. But the fact that they, and the MLB is the same as why I don't like, you know, the big American sports leagues, it's all about the money. The second it becomes costly, that the cost outweighs whatever benefit that they're going to get, they're going to dump it like a, like a hot potato. Like they're going to be so not, you know, ambivalent to these sorts of things. It's literally just about optics. And optics are changing. And now you are having like 2022 States in America that are not very pro this for now, the LGBTQ, they're like, wait a minute, we're going to lose out on the business in that world. And these people are going to completely buy caught. I'll give you a real example, like a local coffee shop, right? The owner of the coffee shop was having a discussion with me saying, okay,
I'm about to hire this, uh, you as a conservative Muslim, would you come if I had anybody from that segment? Right. And I said, it really doesn't bother me. Like, you know, as long as they're not pushing that to my face, it's their personal life. Right. And he was so shocked. He said, wow, because I have spoken to Christians and they said they would stop coming to my coffee shop. I thought you would be more staunch. And that's where, you know, as Muslims, when we communicate that, that, you know, if a person wants to have that lifestyle, that's, that's to them, what is not allowed is any form, even, even the heteronormativity and Halal form of sexual, any form of sexual display between a husband and wife is also not allowed publicly. Right. So, so we're not against it, but just don't make those things public. That's what Islam's position is. So people would be surprised to say that, you know, that community, we would probably be the most accommodating religious that would accommodate. I think as long as you don't push this agenda on my face in the masjid, don't publicly publicize, you can still come and pray in the masjid. Nobody's going to bother you. Right. Right. Yeah. I think we can say that, you know, both foundationally and historically Islam respects privacy much more than Christianity does. Christianity does. We're going to hold inquisition and we're going to burn you at the stake. If we find out that, you know, you believe in science. Yeah, right. Or yeah, exactly. Whatever it is. Galileo. The pretty F stops at your doorstep is sort of the ethic of, you know, we're concerned about, obviously we care about individual personal morality, but we have procedures in place where we're not going to overstep bounds of privacy. Well, that's a justice to Allah says in surah. We are concerned about upholding public morality. And we're going to have boundaries and guardrails. As to how involved we get in your personal life. Definitely. Definitely. Running out of time. I'm not sure. Like we have a, just a couple more points that we were talking about empowering students. Now we did kind of cover it. I'm not sure if you want it. We did covered it. Yeah. And then thinking generationally, if you had any sort of,
yeah, so for sure. I would say that thinking generationally, this is, this, this issue is going to impact more so my seven year old and my 18 year old right now. Because in 10 years, down the road we have to start thinking how, I mean, these are questions that parents are asking. Do we dump public schools now? Do we go virtual? Do we do homeschooling? Do we, what do we do? Because no matter how, no matter how much fight we put up the tide, I would say we're not even at the crest of the wave right now. Right. It hasn't peaked yet. It's still going to peak, right. It's if we think we have gained some ground, I think we have gained some ground. For sure in the conversation, but it's in fairness. And again, there's not a conversation of win or lose. This is a conversation of what is being done to us is not fair. Yeah. We have won some ground, but I think thinking generationally for me, I would, I would come back to these three questions, right. Every single child that is growing up, they're trying to ask. I mean, this is from my like parenting. I have this thing called teenage matters. Like, you know, like I do this workshop for parents and conversations so they understand this. And from there, we talk about this thing called identity. And your child is trying to answer this question. Who am I? Right. That who am I can be answered through books, through TV shows and through all different forms of media nowadays, through YouTube, through Facebook, scrolling, you know, a centralist as Instagram, TikTok, scrolling, all of these things, if we're not thinking that generally in the past, you and you and I were growing up, our identity was based on the person I'm hanging out with or the friend I went to and, and maybe the television show that, you know, would show up at seven o'clock, 7 PM, which was already too late for you to watch TV, right? Like, you know, it's not like your kids are watching at 11 o'clock at night. They're answering those questions. And as parents, as institutions, as organizations, we need to think that how can we,
create content that can shape their identity and help them answer this question. Who am I? Some of the good content that's coming out of, for example, Pakistan is something called Burka Avenger. You should look it up. It's an Urdu cartoon, right? But it's, it's really interesting. They've taken the concept of Ilm, Kitab and, and Ninja and fighting. And, and, and she fights with books and Qalam and it's, it's, but, but the fact that it's such a, beautifully produced cartoon that my kids are in love with, right. And it's shaping their identity. So Muslims have to start thinking about creating those contents. I don't know if you saw this. I'm the best Muslim. No, you don't have kids, right? So do you have kids? I have three kids. Yeah. I have three kids. Okay. We just don't watch television. I'm the best Muslim. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. So you're the best Muslim. So you're the best Muslim. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. So it's like, it's like every single scenario played out and my kids love it. Right. So there are alternates about media. That's number one, how we run programming is going to massage it. Number two, number three, how can we create, whether it is social masjids, whether it is within families, social structures, and I'm talking about things that are scheduled in your calendar saying, we're going to have a family barbecue every fifth or every biweekly or something like that. This family, and these are the 10 families that are going to work together. It takes a village to raise a kid. This village is going to be now, and that's going to be your local backyard. Getting inside other people's homes. I always say, it's like, you know, if you only see each other in the masjid, that's not a community. You gotta get, you gotta get in each other's homes. And that's where the bonds are going to, you know, and I mentioned this I think on a previous podcast, one of my colleagues and mentors, they said that, you know, yes, his, his, his son does go to public school and he's almost graduating, but he also is very involved in the masjid. And, um,
so he has these two sorts of friends and he was very clear with his son up front. He said, those friends that you have at public school, they're your school friends. You're not going to hang out with them. After school or outside of school or on the weekends. That's for your masjid friends, your masjid friends, they are your friends, you know, after school and whatever. It's like you can be friends with people in school, but he, so, you know, and everyone's situation is different, but the point is thinking intentionally, thinking forward, you know, like trying to, to actually create an ecosystem of faith for your kid. Well, you know, media is one dimension, friends and influences, another dimension mentors, you know, is another dimension. There's so many dimensions to it. And when it comes to parenting, you know, this is like a meta thing that every single Muslim in North America has to take seriously. You have to get in the game. You can't just watch from the sidelines when it comes to be bystanders anymore. You can't be a bystander anymore. You don't have that luxury, you know, not anymore if we ever did. So, um, with that, you know, uh, this conversation, let me finish that last point. So, so, so there's like, so number one is who am I? The second question that the kid answers with the answer you just gave is who are others like me. So, so when you are hanging out that village, that backyard, that masjid friends, that satiation can be answered with school friends who are others like me, because he can take a liking to things that they like, and, or he can take a, like into the masjid friends, and then they can be like, who are others like me? And the next question they are going to ask is who do I follow? Who's the leader of the pack? Yeah. They're like wolves. They're trying to find a leader of the pack. And the last part is you have to activate them. What do I do? So now I have known my pack, my friends, my leader, which is prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam for all of us. But what do I do? And that's where the activist Muslims come in. Right. But if you go into activism without having answered the first three questions, that's problematic, right? And if you go into, if you don't activate and you just answer these questions, that becomes a problem because now you don't have anything.
And I'm talking about beyond coming to five times a prayer in the masjid. That's, that's a given. If you get to that level or even two prayers in the masjid, I'm talking about what do you need to do in the community to be a Muslim? So you feel like you're doing something, you're giving back. Do you want to adopt a part? Do you want to do something? And that's why churches focus so much on activism and this, this act, you know, and not so much on the identity part, but like so much on this element. And I think that's a part and parcel of the society. Again, this is a longer conversation, but, uh, you know, uh, really appreciate the time for, uh, giving me the opportunity to, to speak. And may Allah bless this channel and whatever you guys do at Yaqeen Institute. And hopefully we can do some more interesting topics on, on Aqeedah. And this, who am I is a very big thing. Like, you know, how do, how do Muslims find who am I and where do they go and how did they find that answer? Definitely great stuff. Now a lot of, a lot of really important threads opened up and we thank you, Shaykh Ahmed Saleem for, you know, your generous time and, uh, contributing with your, with your perspective and your insights. Uh, we look forward to working together in the future. BarakAllahu feekum. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Waalaikumussalam warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Join us next week as we have a very special guest, Waheed Jensen, who's going to take us into the life of somebody who is trying to deal with their same sex attraction, but remain pious and an observant Muslim and fight against that attraction. Uh, it's promises to be a very enlightening episode.
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