# Will Celebrity Muslims Save Us? | Imam Tom Weekly

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-02-20
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/WBwucUfD-Z0
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/will-celebrity-muslims-save-us-imam-tom-weekly
**Topics:** Culture, Family & Community, General Psychology, Psychology & Mental Health

## Description
Do we have a ‘savior complex’? It’s easy to look to celebrities or influencers to lead the way for Islam, hoping their fame and status will do the work for us. But is this the right mindset? Imam Tom Facchine breaks down the ‘Bani Israel mentality’—relying on others instead of taking ownership of...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Sometimes we fall into a problematic thing I call the savior complex. Basically what it means is that we look towards celebrities in the sense where we assume that they have some type of skill or charisma or they have some type

**[0:20]** of secret sauce that they're going to be able to leverage and we say, oh we hope that that would be leveraged for Islam. It's kind of like a Bani Isra'il mentality you know in Surah Al-Baqarah where Bani Isra'il, they have a prophet among them this is the time of Talut. So the setup here is that this is Bani Isra'il post

**[0:38]** Musa (عليه السلام), right? They've been taken out of Egypt, they have this sort of cycle where they're given prophets and they are sort of trying to fulfill what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants of them and they ask their prophet that is with them for some type of leader. They're basically saying, hey we really

**[0:55]** wish that we could fight in the way of Allah, we really wish that we could put ourselves out there and sacrifice and the only thing that we're missing is a leader. And the prophet responds to them and says, well are you sure? If Allah gives you this leader are you sure? Because you've just raised the

**[1:13]** stakes on yourself. Now Talut is not the type of leader that they expected. He's not rich and this is I think very important for us because especially in a society that's very materialistic and very consumer-based like the United States, a lot of times we associate money with power and this is actually the

**[1:31]** same mistake that they make. The whole idea of the savior complex that we need someone to accept Islam, where we look for these celebrities and this is a Ahlan wa Sahlan, you know, to anybody who wants to accept Islam. We're not trying to gatekeep but we also have to have our own pride and dignity and know

**[1:49]** that Allah is going to help His deen. He will do it with whoever He wants. It might be the janitor, it might be the street sweeper, it might be someone who's homeless, it might not be somebody who's on the A-list of celebrities or some sort of YouTube, Twitter sensation. And some of it's natural, even the Prophet

**[2:05]** (ﷺ) made du'a for one of the two Umars, hoping that because they were powerful and influential people that they would accept Islam. So there's nothing wrong with that but the problem is we look towards heroes, individuals to come and just do the work for us. That's a Bani Isra'il mentality. We

**[2:21]** can't do that. Rather we have to really just look inward and say what are we gonna do for this deen? And hey, if a celebrity comes along and it's a Ronaldo or anybody else and wants to accept Islam, alhamdulillah that's great and we can use that as a da'wah tool to reach out to other people and say hey do

**[2:37]** you know Kyrie Irving is now a Muslim and these other people are now Muslims but we have to be super careful to not expect that, you know, this person is now going to be Shaykh al-Islam on day one or day two. You thought this person was going to do the work for us? That's a Bani Isra'il mentality. There's no

**[2:54]** shortcut to putting in the work and that's not glamorous and it's not easy and it would be nice if some celebrity would just come along and, you know, LeBron James and Steph Curry and everybody else would just become Muslims and bring the da'wah forth for us. But I'm not holding my breath and I don't think

**[3:11]** you should either.

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