Dr. Hamzah Raza | Apartheid, Anti-colonialism & A solution for Palestine | MindTrap with Mufti #20

all right people I take it is that way too loud on momento momento of rye people are frightened alhamdulillah wa kafa or salat wa salam o allah rasool mustafa ala i body Ladino remember hotel me tada Bobby a third Medina Tov were bad for Salam Allahu Allah Oh avoir I was just checking on Facebook and YouTube to see

that it's coming through fine that you guys can hear me okay just right just hola me people all that me let me let me see that everything so cool alright what's going down man ash Aslam froggy froggy first that's what I'm talking about that's what I'm talking about let me bring up these comments for YouTube as well guys alright somebody I'm Batman amigo avoir you're doing it you're doing it people just to make sure

that the volumes coming through fine that there's no issues with that just before we begin I'll just slightly move this back right somebody said Mufti you never applied to my DMS yeah you have to build the suspense sometimes right speaking of suspense people today's guest let me bring up the profile for our guests tonight the esteemed Honorable

chaplain all the way from Boston RI this is Hamza Rosa that you can see right there a fine graduate student people of Islamic Studies from Harvard University from the Harvard right so he's he graduated from Vanderbilt I'm not sure if I'm probably totally mispronouncing that but in 2018 in be a religious religious studies he received the highest honors possible for his senior

thesis on the role of Muslims in the anti anti-apartheid struggle and will speak a bit about that today as well his writings have been published in USA Today The Huffington Post Jacobean alternate Muslim matters the grey zones project and mondo mondo ways I've got no idea what some of them are that's just that's my fault because I'm so living in a bubble let's bring in our guest people of right Alamos Allen Alamos right arise

Salam alaikum Hamza shukran for being on minecraft with Mufti you are live right so how's it going over there man what's what's going down Hamza what's let me just bring up trying to fit you into the look at that in the logo right there so I know we've been trying to set this up for a little while now obviously Ramadan timings have been a bit all over the place but sugar and once again for taking the time out for

coming on tonight so we've got people right here look right people posting away with their comments I'm gonna come back to that in just a moment Hamza right I don't know what's Allen let their foot in and facade begin so what have you been up to Hamza what's going down I mean in America in Boston man well how's it going how many other things are good I'm at I'm at my parents house now in Maryland actually I haven't left the house in like two months the last time I left the house was March

13 so you know just been trapped you know waiting for this COBIT stuff to end well Ramadan has actually been surprisingly good at the hamdullah it's been good to you know we've been praying to Allah we like inside my house it's been a nice moment for you a reflection and a good moment to kind of be secluded and be away from society and to sort of like looking inwards so but in terms of you still keeping active with some of your your work you're involved in a few different kind of things thank you for our viewers fill us in on you know the different kind of

projects or thoughts or circles you're a part of your life what we occupies your life yeah so I'm a I'm a graduate student in Islamic Studies at Harvard so I finished out my last final a couple of days ago so inshallah I should be done with my I should be graduating in a couple of weeks inshallah and then I'm also the Muslim chaplain at Boston College for kind of the remainder of whatever academic year we have left so you know just engaging with students and trying to help people you know better understand their religion and it's more for it's a learning experience for them

in terms of like technically learning from me but it's more so learning experience for me I feel as though I learn a lot from the students and I learn a lot more from them than they do from me so the students teach me a lot more than I end up teaching them though being a chaplain has really taught me a lot in terms of you know how to engage with people how to help people better understand their religion and it's really required me to kind of know where the resources are and kind of who to go to to learn and that sort of stuff yeah and you've done you'll your undergrad your BA you did have it is that correct

my BA was at Vanderbilt my okay yeah all right I'm sorry I'm mixing the two up so I mean this wanting to study Islamic studies as a degree that's not a a common kind of choice is it like that's something quite almost almost art tell us about that what's what's that all about so the way it started was in in the UK you guys have to enter sort of a degree program from the moment you come in but in the u.s.

you can sort of the undecided the first two years or so and then it's really the third year that you have to decide and your third and fourth year you do the necessary coursework so my original plan was actually I wanted to be an investment banker because I you know I thought of that you know that makes money that's what is like you know that's what life is about that's where the money's Goldman Sachs or something one day so my first year I was studying my first two years really I was studying math and economics and I studied Arabic the summer of after my first year of university and Jordan and over there

I took some like very elementary like thick classes with the teacher and I was just really really impressed by sort of his character the way he would act and I loved the fact that like whenever he asked him a question like there was just the whole manner in which he had through the question like I showed of the OhLaLa she said no problem one day tom was the walking Quran and I felt like I had in I had encountered a sort of walking Quran and I was like wow like what a time it is to spend time with a person like that so then when I came back to the States and I entered my second year at the University it was kind of like oh let's forget about all that and let's go back

to studying math and economics and then there was a fast in the Religious Studies department that was called Islam in South Asia and I thought to myself oh you know this will be an easy a no Islamic South Asia I'm I'm Muslim I'm South Asian what could there possibly be to learn and then I you know we did this whole survey of you know how Islam got to South Asia the spread of Islam in South Asia all the way down to sort of you know 20th century issues all the way down to partition and all this sort of stuff and I thought to myself you know there's this there's this rich Islamic history that I know nothing about so I I thought myself I'm gonna keep majoring in the subject

I'm gonna keep majoring in mathematics but I'm gonna take his money classes in this department as I can and so the next semester I ended up taking I think two or three classes and religious studies and I thought to myself oh I can still complete the other two majors while taking as many classes as possible and then the end of my sophomore year I thought to myself if I want to take classes in these department in this department why don't I just do my major of study there because that's what I actually like to do and yeah that's how it sort of culminated and in college I also had a great interest in sort of you know student activism I was very involved with sort of like you know

prison divestment with Palestine song very stuff all of that and the math and economics professors they weren't all that sort of a makeable to that stuff but the professors in religious studies they like have you talked about Palestine in class they were people who you know we're very kind of attuned to the issues on the ground they're kind of uh they're people who kind of shared my worldview and so I just like hanging out with them also I just really like the faculty and I really like the coursework and yes that's how it happens I mean a

lot of people who write who study who want to study Islam usually take a very kind of traditional if I can call it traditional kind of a pathway so they might go to a madrasah or maybe study with mache eier or maybe taking a university route seems so much more career oriented generally speaking I mean in general things like you know if somebody wants to become I don't know they want to pursue a medical field or they want to become an engineer or they

want to do something University so I don't know I mean how does that then pan out because I'm assuming in the UK there isn't much of a career role for people coming out with on the other end with Islamic studies but I don't know how do you feel about that most people in the US in order to really get a career out of it you have to have kind of like a PhD like even with the masters or something there are limited career opportunities you'll have but if you want to do stuff within the Muslim community you really have to have

traditional education no one it's it's another thing that Muslim academics have like a difficulty with whereas like when I go to the Muslim community with sort of my masters and you know very little sort of traditional education they're like oh you know you studied Islam from non Muslims you start yourself um Orientalist there's kind of like I'm not taking you seriously within the Muslim community yeah but then we've been within the Academy most of my academics have the same issue because it's like oh you're this you know biased Muslim you're not someone who can look at things objectively and there's a whole history of sort of like you know Orientalism in this power dynamic attached to that so it's something that's very difficult for you

know Muslims in the Academy whereas in Jewish Studies if you are non Jewish you it is the you are an outsider right in Latino Studies if you're not Latino you are the outsider in the field in African American Studies if you are a academic studying African American Studies who's not african-american you are the outsider whereas in Islamic studies if you are a practitioner of the religion if you are a practicing Muslim you're an outsider in the field that you're studying and this is changing very much over the years but it's a it's a very big difficulty but yeah you're right actually I never really thought of it like that but I see your point how

because the whole narrative the key players of that narrative the Orientalists and how they've kind of shaped that discourse it would be entirely almost alien to somebody who's just a Muslim yeah okay and then you've you followed on from there to Harvard where you're at right now yeah yeah it's also very much changing like actually Jewish studies had this issue about a hundred years ago where it was mostly not unjú ish academics who were scholars of Jewish Studies and then there was a movement of sort of young Jewish

Americans who said you know you can study in like a rabbinical school but then you're only speaking to the community whereas if you become an academic you are you know broadcasting what are our beliefs our what our religion is what our cultural identity is to the entire world so the way I the reason I think the academic study of Islam is useful in a Western sense is because you are not influencing how the people at the Masjid understand the religion you're not influencing how practitioners understand the religion but you are influencing how sort of the world understands Islam so if someone go like CNN is like a major news channel we have in the u.s.

if someone goes on CNN and they say you know I've CNN is looking for someone to bring on as a Aslam expert and one person says I've studied the derson nizami curriculum and the other person says you know I have a PhD in Islamic studies from Yale University or from Harvard University or from the University of Chicago CNN will take on you know the guy with the PhD over the guy with the person atop of goes yeah even though there's an Islamic curriculum in my opinion is I mean from what I've seen from be more traditionally trained it's something that's a lot more extensive and you're gonna get more comprehensive understanding of the religion but it's just the way the power dynamics are designed that you get or legitimacy from

non-muslims with your PhD than you do from you know a sort of traditional classical study of the religion no frog people shukran shukran fool you'll love a lot of people sending they love this way this furrow Harun you're doing it you're doing it and as arathi as well shukran Homs I wanted it so you know just out of curiosity then so this because somebody who like my speaking from my own perspective I've studied traditionally as far as Islam is concerned and the sciences and things like that

I have studied with secular universities but not really I mean Isis lamech stuff I suppose I did I had a my Master's part of it was in religious education so it was covering but it's more about how to teach religion as opposed to studying it so I mean what were some of the challenges that you faced because it's different when you're studying Islamic studies are a secular University they obviously challenging so many narratives of Islam so many say like they're not taking everything as they're taking nothing as a given you know it's not taking everything taking nothing as

a given everything is up to scrutiny so I mean sometimes it and it doesn't have to be evil it could just be that look because they're coming from like how we would question something that we're not so kind of submitted to so well there's certain shock factors that you got at while you were going through certain topics or certain I don't know projects I think one one difficulty I had it first I was sort of the shock is you know someone will mention something crazy that Muslims were doing like five hundred years ago and and you have to

realize that just because a group of Muslims data thing in history that doesn't mean that it's in line with you know what Allah and His Prophet as I saw to a summer teaching right so I'll learn you know five hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire like this was going on and I'm just like wow like a sulphur law like how could something like that happen but then when you go deeper into it you realize that it's not me who's saying well look for love why does that happen but there are people in that time period saying in this area this particular activity is going on and this is not in line with the religion but you know so just because Muslims did something historically particularly after you know the proximal mandates are those long

after the early generations particularly people who are not William ah it doesn't mean that that thing was okay right so that's one thing cool and then the second thing is is that oftentimes in academia there are no truth claims right so no one will ever say this view is correct so they will give you a historical perspective on a particular issue and they'll say you know this is what this group believe this witless group believed this was this group believed and I remember you know one time I was in class and you know we're being taught the view of the forage on a particular issue and the view of look it was presented as you know equal to the view of you know asana equal to the

view of this group equal to the view of that group and then I thought to myself you know the waters are the people who killed like what's mine and I'll leave Red Eagle l1 home right so I was it it was strange to me that the cottage view was prevent presented as this view with like you know no you know no good or bad attached to it right and in my view these people are you know horrible people they killed you know the last two caliphs right but in academia there's you're not attaching a good or bad to things you are there's no kind of value judgments although to be fair I think they would recognize that look this is

Orthodox Islam doesn't recognize these people as let's say being obviously good because they've killed the Calif or they're behind this kind of insurgency but they themselves won't be emotionally attached to either group in that sense yeah but it's just you know it's just amazing how just thinking in certain ways with you know just not having blinkers and I don't even mean this in a like a sectarian or a negative way but I'll give you an example just recently on I've been really looking into this

topic of Moses in are cannot in and are they the same one and the same or are they different people what some people have kind of this a Egyptian historian at modest man who's written quite a bit on this topic and he's kind of turned the chronology the biblical chronology on its head everything is but as I was just going through this topic it's just you know sometimes you just ask yourself a question and that question could be so simple but it just blows your mind like I was just reading through and I was contemplating and it's discussing the

events of the Exodus and things like this and and allegedly like so in the view that Moses comes down with the tablets on obviously as it says in the Bible that you know that God had written the commandments but you know it's written by the finger of God now the question just occurred to me that what has writing even been invented that you know because I know this sounds crazy but writing generally cursive writing by and large hasn't really been invented because I mean generally I'm assuming it's probably six to eight

hundred years BC that cursive writing really appears from the Phoenician script Moses if he's anything from twelve 1300 to 1500 BC as some some people are saying so and I know that okay so there is hieroglyphics which is you know the Egyptian and there is the high erotic as well the kind of priestly script but it just got me thinking that Wow okay so let's say even if we're saying Moses wrote these and God didn't write it Moses would have written this in Egyptian script he wouldn't have

written this either in hieroglyphics or her attic or but he wouldn't have written it in what was later paleo Hebrew because most likely that didn't really exist at that time and the Israelites definitely weren't two people that could read and write now even though I don't even know what kind of ramifications this question has but it's such it's such a basic question but you would you know in all my previous years of having done half of the Quran read the tough sieves reading these things learning fix living in a mother stuff for years you know I never asked this question that you know how could people

even read and write then but it's what I mean is sometimes you in academia they you will be made to look at things from such an angle that may even be simple but it just it just stops everything for a moment in its tracks I don't know if they if there were certain standout moments for you when you're studying Islam this happened to me actually when I was taking a class in Christian Studies can you see me you're frozen on my screen but yeah you're coming fine I mean other things I mean everybody can see you so don't don't do anything funky we

can see you fine in case you start to dis wrong boy you think well since they can't see me I'll just sit here with I'll just take my trousers off and see ya relaxed I would say I was thinking a Christian Studies class and a lot of it sort of aligned with the Islamic narrative that you know the earliest biblical transcripts that we have is two hundred years after I saw a Saddam you know is raised up and the Christian historians say that these copies that exist this 200 years after there are hundreds of thousands of you know

differences and you know I thought to myself you know like hamdullah like you know this aligns with the Islamic heritage and I thought to myself you know these same Christian textual critics they believe in the preservation like there's amongst us amongst Western academics and among like Muslim Ummah so I thought to myself you know this is something that really aligns the Islamic narrative but then the the historians of sort of you know Christian textual criticism they asked was there even a text given to Esau these from there because they're like we don't even possibly know what the original text looks like because the latest texts come 200 years after and they are so different right so that was awesome I

think by text you mean a book is what we would actually a book given to you fellas love and that was something that shocked me because I thought to myself you know of course there there's there was a book given these how they stone but I realized this is a faith-based claim that we believe that a lost one daughter gave these how they found the NGO right but but I mean some have said injeel you see if it just means gospel the good news is that a book or is that just a kind of inspirited message of good news i mean what what is that actual is this the the discussion at hand

oh okay but but i but also i realized that like the lack historical evidence for something doesn't make it not true just because there's no historical evidence of Esau they saw being given a book doesn't mean that it can't it doesn't mean it's not true right so that's another thing in academia that someone might make a claim and there's a way of reconciling it with your your faith but on the surface the people who are teaching you they're not looking to increase your Eman they're not looking to you know tell you that this view is correct and that's why I think Muslims in academia will really

struggle if they don't know ulema if they don't know scholars who can kind of give them the whole worldview on something and I think that another issue in academia is it's all about you know reading a text and then writing you know a response to that text and that response might entail you know like a 20-page paper that you know you and the professor are gonna read right but you want to like really thoroughly engage with the with the text in that sort of manner and there's this emphasis on you know like critique and and that sort of stuff and the the idea of critique is you should understand the text and then you should give a sort of response but a lot of graduate students and academia do because they're you know they're overly

excited is you know they'll they'll read you know the works of a figure and they won't fully understand it when they critique it so they're sort of kind of straw Manning the argument yeah when I've started to a traditional ulema there's a really really big emphasis on really really understanding the text so like like the forty Arbaeen of imam know his forty hadith collection I studied it in a class I took that was a class on you know the major works of the Islamic civilization and during that class he gave us the forty Arbaeen Ovid nominally as you know a reading he he gave us the Arabic in English and you know he read both of them and then we we wrote a one-page response to the entire utter

belyanov no leaks like what do we think of it what stood out what would we push back on that sort of stuff and then we spent an hour and a half of class you know discussing the hubby tradition and and then we spent an hour and a half you know going over the are valuing of normally whereas if I when I started this with you know traditionally trained Islamic scholar we spent you know twenty thirty hours on this text alone and we went hadith by hadith you know disgusting breaking down every single little word so there is a huge emphasis on really really understanding the text and in academia there's less of an emphasis on you know studying classical works cover-to-cover and really really comprehending them though and you know their strengths too both of these things

of course of course and now life as a chaplain what is is it how you expect it is it very different I mean what give us a kind of camps of what's going on has it shocked you in any way or has it what has it brought into your life it goes back I feel like as an academic one is very much trained and sort of critical thinking and all that whereas with classical Islamic training not to say that they you know don't critically think or something I don't wanna you know undermine anyone but there's a huge emphasis on content so when I came into the chaplain position I

was severely lacking and sort of the content element but hamdullah I had people I knew who were you know well trained Islamic scholars and I was able to kind of go to them and sort of catch up on this sort of content area so that was that was one thing that I needed to do myself the way I got the chaplain position was the person who this is at Boston this that Boston is it a Boston College yeah okay so the person who the chaplain before me was also a master student at Harvard and he asked me he said you know do you want to be the chaplain and I thought to myself like no I'm I'm not qualified like you know I'm just a Western academic you know I write

these papers that one guy will read like [Laughter] when you say no no I'm I'm not worthy but but inside thinking you better bloody choose me no is this a big place by the way what is this Boston College just to get an idea of a Boston College is a it's a university in the United States if you look at like you know the

rankings of United States universe cities it's a you know very prestigious university it is okay well yeah so the the students that I am dealing with are you know very kind of intelligent but you know cream of the crop of the u.s. steep it's a creme de la creme so my friend knew that Kaplan before me he said you know like don't think of yourself as you know you're like a shake when you're in this job but think of yourself as you know like as a person

sort of Mentor to them so he said because you know in many cases I'm only one or two years older than some of the students oh the one thing that surprised me the most was um I was really scared at first I was like you know like you know people are gonna they're not gonna want to like learn so I'll just be giving a football once a week you know maybe get a little how about going but there won't be much there and I thought to myself you know how can I get people you know interested in the religion and because the way with me wasn't necessarily that I learned a lot when I was you know studying Islam but I I came in touch with people who really made me you know fall in love with the being and I feel like teaching love for the religion is something way more important

than teaching content because if someone has a love for the religion they will gain in the content as they go but if someone doesn't have that if someone is just learning content then it'll just stop you know once you're done teaching that particular thing but love for the Deen is something that is really important to instill and that's very well said Wow and so one thing that I found really amazing was as soon as I got in there are a lot of young people really eager to learn so I think very often we think to ourselves you know these young people they don't they don't come to the Masjid they don't want to learn the being this this and this but the reality is is that there are so many young people who are really eager to

learn the religion and the issue is is that there aren't enough of them on trying to teach them or the ulema aren't they're not connected with allamahu can teach them they're not connected with these you know walking qur'an's who are sources of knowledge um I kind of realized that you know someone like me who has who knows Allah MA who knows people who are learning part of my roll is sort of to connect the ideas I'm learning from these ulema to people who other my otherwise might not encounter them or you know get these people in touch with other MA find a way to save us the kind of conduit the thing in between to kind of have that a

connection to make that connect mmm yeah like a sort of middleman like I didn't study I didn't study in Syria I didn't study in you know daughter a loom or something but I know people who study in Davos I know people who know people who studied but I got my people but sometimes you just need to know the people who do spitting wisdom right here on mine crap you don't need to know how to fix the car but you need to know who

the mechanic is right there similarly with the beam you don't need to have all the answers but you need to know people who can guide you through the process of getting the answers yes so right sorry just a sight just just momentarily sidetracking somebody in posted somebody's put a question David about the writing that I've mentioned the Canaanites yes of course that is what I did mention by the way not to sidetrack I can discuss that on Monday nights with Mufti but the Canaanites script is the Phoenician script and the Phoenician script which you're talking about the cuneiforms and things like that wasn't it only developed into the cursive

nature which was also called paleo Hebrew much after so but did the Israelites have it in Egypt it's very they won't have had it so I mean it's very unlikely they would have had it in Egypt that was my point but let's not sigh track coming back to this so what are Hamza so what are some some some I don't know some wacko scenarios or some crazy stuff that you've had to face being a chapel in Boston Boston College what are the what are the young people the young Muslims up to you [Laughter]

I wish I had something like spicy I could tell you but for the most part you know young Muslims you know they want to go to Juma you know they want to you know if they're not praying five times a day they want to get to bring their five solos if they're not you know praying there if they're praying their five loves you know they want to start praying soon enough they want to learn how to like better worship Allah they want to connect you know with their Creator like I guess one thing that's interesting is when you enter a university particularly in the u.s.

you know these students academically they're on the same par you know they came from very good high schools they scored very high on their standardized exams they had good grades so there there's a sense of continuity there but in terms of being there isn't a continuity so there are some students who will come to me and you know my Arabic grammar is very very bad so they'll probably know very better Arabic grammar than I do you know they'll have done this you know three-month Quran intensive and you know they'll be telling me about you know like sort of know who but all of that and there are other students who will come and they'll say you know before I came to the University I had never been to Juma before so they'll say you know

at first I didn't really know what was going on like you know I like I came and I thought you know the speech was nice but then everyone started praying and I thought you know what's happening now like we prayed together to after zoom off and you know little stuff like that so there is a sort of a lack of like continuity it with regard to that that isn't there on like you know the academic level and so one thing I realized is you got a kind of start from the basics and there are very basic text that I think young Muslims should read that will really help them in sort of connecting with you know like like what what would you suggest like actually I have one right next to me this is not clear coming prepared

yeah you you you look of assistance okay which is like he basically gets those alleys in here and he summarizes it into you know very short parts so this is basically like a summary of the religion and each chapter is between one and two pages and the longest of chapter reads like five pages right so this is a really really good book for someone to get you know very basic understanding of their religion and whether you've been whether you just learn how to pray or whether you've been studying the scene for 20 years like Imam Haddad is always relevant you know and you change

your mom has this quote where he says knowledge is repetition so his his students he would make them you know study a book like this a you know very short elementary text and then they would go for three or four years and they would study and then they would study the same elementary text again because these are texts that you know the more that you read them the better you engage with them you know okay yes yes and what are their any other suggestions as well for what to read in English because I get asked this a lot and the dilemma I have is you see I did a lot of I did my basic learning of the Dean you know decades ago yes so and

ever since my reading about Islam is now just research and the research is is seldom done in English so I'm usually out unarmed googling research I'm reading up certain things and and I'm it says question you know it's just investigative learning now a lot of my stuff is done in Arabic when people ask me that look oh I want to learn something about I want to get more involved in the Deen I want to read and wanna wash that is there good seer eyes there good seed of the Quran I'm you know it's I'm so confused in what to say to them so kind of baffled that I don't really have a response even though it's

such a simple question because I just simply don't know what what would you say that since you're you know in the heart of of this kind of problem you've got young students around you trying to reconnect to their faith what do you tell them to read in terms of ceará I would say actually wrote a paper in undergrad where I was looking at 5-0 text and I was sort of at five like translations applied biography to the proclamation saw this up in English and I was comparing these five texts and one of them was written by Martin Ling's who one of them was by say to Hussein no sir

it was like Muhammad man and messenger I believe and he is you know he wrote this book as sort of her high schoolers to like understand the religion one of them was by anne-marie Chimel who to my knowledge was not a Muslim one of them was by William Montgomery watt who was a very huge German Orientalist and he was someone who he was a Christian priest I think he was an Anglican priest and he actually believed that the home and I saw those thumb received lucky so me and my friends joked that William Montgomery watt was like basically a Muslim and he divided it up into two books Muhammad Ali Sado saman Makkah and Muhammad Ali so are those from in Medina and then the

fifth book I looked at was Michael cooks like I forgot what it's called but like don't read that book it's it's not very good it's you know very kind of Orientalist and all that but I was comparing these five books two of them written by Muslims and two of them written by non-muslims and my favorite or three of them were in by non-muslims and two of them written by you know more Orientalist types and enry Shima was someone who had like you know a great admiration for Islam and a great admiration for like the solo first V ISM and I really liked the Martin Ling's book okay thanks I really paid I really liked the same Husain does her book but when I was reading the Emory Shima book

I actually was brought to tears as I was reading because for me because I'm in this you know academic setting I'm sitting in the library I'm with my friends they're studying for these their exams you know my friend is doing his organic chemistry my other friend is doing like you know like calculus and I'm sitting there and I'm reading my book and I just start crying and you know one of my friends looks at me and he goes is everything all right I'm like yeah you know this text like someone Ola it's just a beautiful so Ann Marie symbols it's called and Muhammad is His Messenger they saw those from Muhammad is His Messenger yeah it's an amazing book she starts it off and I feel like before you read that book you need to write read a

chronological biography so Martin Ling's is like the best chronological biography that I've read and then say those Leonel series is also very good because it's a quick read and the the Emery's Chimel book she only spends about 15 pages on a chronological biography of the problem and then she spends the rest of the book analyzing the beauty of character and all this sort of stuff well I think she is a chapter dedicated to Iqbal poetry about the problem of the hub system so it's something that it's really important for us to understand the problem Salemi is not you know a human being you shouldn't study his life as a human being you know beginning middle and end

but you study his life as this sort of you know as this sort of light and as this sort of model to represent that he was for us and you got to connect with you know his character so I feel like that book does a really good job on that okay so yeah you'd rate that number one out of them what's it called again what do you say is cool cool all right that's awesome all definitely somebody had put up here the study core and would you I don't know if you've read that or read from it would you would you recommend that or what's your what's your thoughts on it's funny because people have a lot of critiques of like kind of like the

the perennialism within it the idea that Islam doesn't abrogate you know previous religions but the the perennialism really only exists like three or four verses right as a whole the study Quran is amazing because the footnotes in it they take from quarterly they take from a been cut the year they take some zamok cherie so especially if someone doesn't know about these texts especially if someone you know isn't trained in Arabic and all this sort of stuff the study Quran is really one of the best thing with those translations out there I mean I would imagine so as well to be honest with you I only I watched one of the lectures by Joseph Lombard on it and

where he was kind of I I think it was actually with a non Muslim that he was speaking about the study Quran and they were going over just the whole project how it began the difficulties along the way you know how it took so many years to kind of it and really just exhausted and depleted their efforts and and then some of the backlash the criticism he was just discussing and I was really wild by that the whole you know that the level they took it to in that he was explaining in that lecture so yeah well sorry what was the second book that using and then the second one is mas Abdul Halim text it's the Oxford

translation of the Quran and then I really like Muhammad Ali's thematic commentary of the Quran and then what is it another one that's good those three are generally pretty good I like my boobies subsea a lot that might be a you know a bit controversial but I feel like mo do these stuffs here is actually very very good I mean he added the female Quran yeah yeah and he my understanding is he had written that so in a way that the common person could access the Quran that was that kind of the kind of moxa the objective behind it

because sometimes tough see like if I think about it tough seed you see because once again I've got remove layers and lenses because I've been through a learning system so when I read let's say that the Farsi like if I pick up good to be or the other day I was looking if not sure on a certain masala and even a dill in his loop up but you see there's so many things they're discussing but to me I mean I'm acquainted with the topics they're gonna be saying well you know this this group said this year the martyrs Allah said this this grammatical error over here is presented in this way

and this is how we respond and but to the common person who just wants to understand or on let's say this kind of stuff just would they would lose the actual message in trying to understand what's being said the terminology I mean just getting you couldn't get around the terminology you'd have to learn the actual Sciences so I heard that mo Doody when he wrote the female Quran that was one of the kind of although I haven't actually read much of the female Quran but I heard that was his objective because I have at times seen some tough

are Syrian or do and to be honest with you they are I mean once again they're not even though they may not be that difficult for me but there I can imagine they would be very difficult for a common order to speak in person because they just use Arabic terms all the way in Estella he terms which if you're a regular person you wouldn't like if I was just reading and they said well here to Yahweh masala ham or sellout it's their son okay my slaw here I mean nobody would even know what the hell have just said like that wouldn't even make sense to be pulled because what what is this this and I mean what does these these are not words used by this is like Arabic terminology

in fifth yeah Moe du/dx they didn't even call his workers of Syria even though it effectively is he called it tough him on Quran towards understanding the Quran yeah and what someone told me is that an exegesis is a commentary of the text and will do these texts is more of what's called an ISA Jesus where he's using the text as a commentary of what's around him so it's almost like a social commentary that is ready it is oh Jesus and oh Jesus yeah oh Jesus oh why am i rocking it with the

vocab in this once and I said you know this is an exegesis and an ISA Jesus and he said to me what does Jesus have to do with this things like why do you think ISA in Jesus alright so right tell us a bit about your thesis what's what's all of this about yes since we're speaking to an academic you know it's not every day we get to speak to academics people talk to us about in academic speak what's going on my my last year at the University I was taking or my second of

last year my what we call my junior year it's a four year system so my third year I was writing I mean I was taking a class on democracy in South Africa and in South Africa they had at the end of apartheid so I should explain what apartheid is just like very very so apartheid was a system we're not like any of our dumb viewers are gonna know what that means

thank you for trying to Toki infantilize our viewers who don't know what an apartheid is two things you have to do when you teach people you said the first thing is is you can't be late because if you're late people are gonna think that you don't take them seriously and he says don't miss them that's how not to teach and then he said the second thing is is you can make the person they is learning from you think that you think that you're better than them or that you think that you know more than them and he said ideally you have to let them

know that you're there to learn from them as much as they're there to learn from you and he said that if you don't actually think that then you shouldn't be teaching so it's so with that I'll give a brief summary of apartheid not because I don't think that people don't know what it is because after that we'll move into the definition of the particle the pronounce that times V this definite article will speak about it shortly [Laughter] enacted in 1947 up until 1994 where you

know different racial groups were apart from one another and they were given their own specific areas to live in and you were your race define how many rights that you had so many people know you know white people had rights and under apartheid and black people didn't have rights but in actuality there was actually a four tiered system and white people had you know full civil rights full you know citizenship under comprehensive service yeah they had it all you know they were just little if you're white and you don't know that non white people of this you might not even know apartheid is happening I mean you will because you there's this black labor that they're using but in theory

if you're white like you know you're living you know your full life right and then the second most amount of Rights were this group called Indian people and these were Indians who either came as indentured servants in the late 19th centuries to Durban so Ahmedabad came from that group they were Indian South Africans who were brought as indentured servants and then there was a second class of Gujarati and naman businessman businessmen who came in like the 1930s and a good amount of these Indians house Africans were Muslims and then the third category was they had less rights than Indians and a lot less rights than white people and

they were called colored people and colored people consisted of mixed-race people so the black person and a white person had a child it was illegal - it was illegal for black and white people to have you know have relations with one another but you know it happened and then the child would be what was called a colored and they would have even written less less rights and white people and less rights and Indian people so colored people they had their own townships and then there was also a group of people who were classified as colored and they were the descendants of Malaysian and Indonesian slaves who came to Cape Town at least the Cape Malay PBR

the Cape Malays excitement and they intermixed with with the you know black indigenous African population so these what were called coloreds and there are in South Africa there are like coloured communities and Cape Malay became almost like a religious identity so colored people were Muslims they were classified as Cape Malays and they were considered the the group of color people closest to Indian people so they had like it the best out of all the Indian Duke Adams of all the colored people you can say and then there are other other colored people who have the same like racial heritage but because the Cape people were forced into slavery a lot of them you know weren't able to preserve their

religion so colored people often time commented a result of this group or they'll be you know people who are mixed race and that sort of stuff and I think mixed race is actually even like an offensive term in South Africa but in the United States it's not and I don't I don't think it is in the UK so I apologize to anyone if I you know use that term I didn't mean it sort of derogatory way and then below the colored people were indigenous Africans so apartheid consisted of this sort of racial hierarchy there were white people at the top and then the second group on the pyramid was the Indians the lowest group on the pyramid was the coloreds and then the absolute lowest group was the indigenous African how did Indians

get to number two I'm trying it was it like the proto Pakistanis bribing whether they given the rich wah trying to get to number two how did that happen the Gujarati businessman the Gujarati and Mayman businessmen who came to so the Western Cape where Cape Town is was ruled by the Dutch and the Dutch didn't allow any religious freedom so the practice of Islam was banned in South Africa for a hundred fifty years in the Western Cape under Dutch rule but the British who were ruling in the northern parts which is like Durban Johannesburg be sort of arts they were the British you know granted

you know freedom of religion you could say like you know allegedly in a way so the the Gujarati businessmen the Mayman businessmen who came they thought to themselves you know we are British subjects like we don't really care about like the government oppression we're here to you know make money and the British let us build much it's the British let us build mosques the British let us practice our religion so they didn't really oppose the government as much as the people in the Cape for doing or as the indigenous Africans were doing the interest Africans you know the land was hollow and ice from them the colored group they had a history of sort of you know slavery that they were opposed to but the Indians they kind of came in and they said yeah you know the

British are fine you know just let us run our businesses so business yeah so they were the least opposed to the apartheid system and they were the most kind of amicable to white people they're the most friendly to white people in a way you could say um so where are they going with it I feel like we got sidetracked what are they and I've read the initial question now again but yeah this is the this is the question really to put to your life where are you going with you know the private your your racial identity determine how many

rights you had and you were put in like different townships and you know this was the the nature of apartheid so I took a class at Vanderbilt it was a political science class you know circling all the way back and at the end of apartheid in 1994 they had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where it was headed you know Archbishop Archbishop Desmond Tutu and they wanted to establish the the truth of what happened under apartheid all the you know horrific things that happen and they wanted to reconcile the country and there the there's a huge question today of our South Africans actually reconciled and I would say that a lot of remnants of apartheid still remain but this

Commission was to reconcile you know these four groups that were divided as a result of apartheid laws and the professors that I took the class with he actually played a very very large role within the TRC within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he was a white South African and we studied apartheid all the way from Dutch colonialism up until you know modern issues going on in South Africa and as I was going through the the book for the class and me and the professor we were we were very close and he was he's someone who used someone very supportive of you know the Palestinian struggle so me and him would talk outside of class about bad and all backs and he actually once told me he said you know in order to really understand Israeli Apartheid

you have to understand South African apartheid so I was taking the class and I was you know very you know is there a big Muslim community in South Africa and he said to me numerically no he said there 1 to 2 percent of the population the actual number is there 1.3 percent of the population in 1994 at the end of apartheid and I asked him I said why is it that when we go through this book about the history of the anti-apartheid struggle there are all these Muslim names like Muslims are everywhere in the struggle so he said to me he said you know this should be a good project for you to do research on all I know is that there aren't that many Muslims in South Africa but they're very very you know involved so he said you know you as a

person who studies you know Islamic studies as a person who you know has a bit of understanding of you know the intersection of Islam in politics says if you do an independent study with me I would love to do the research like I would love to see your research findings he said like it would be good for me to understand my own country in a way so I you I do one semester of independent study with him and then I apply for a summer grant to do research in South Africa for about two months you float on yeah and my university actually like funds at all

getting free holidays in the name of studies Honda on the back of all that suffering you get to chill the sake of research but it's really like I couldn't I couldn't think of like any other way to like have fun you know I'm spending I spend two months and I'm just eating like biryani with busy uncles and they're telling me their life stories and not just based on course but Malay uncles African uncles also but a lot of just encode just uncle so just ankles

it's Ramadan so we'll keep it to just uncle sir so you know somebody might ask this question it you know we're told look apart I ate the whole thing is tragic and that's for sure unquestionably but is it really relevant now I mean somebody might say you know is this relevant you know 2020 now what what's this got to do with me what's this got to do with the world today we all recognize his but how do you feel this is relevant so the reason I think that it's relevant is first of all as like minorities in the West we need to learn how to engage our

brother society we're just something that Muslims in South Africa have really really effectively done at the end of apartheid Muslims are 1.3 percent of the population but there's 16 percent of the first part isn't in how much percent how much percent sixties how much percent of the problem 16 percent so what exceed 60 16 percent of the first Parliament while being one percent of the population so Muslims are a community that there needs to be more research done on this but proportionally however you define racial community however your defined religious community mostly is word the most involved community in the anti-apartheid struggle and so this really gives us and

as a result of that Muslims are widely respected in South Africa so one thing that is really beautiful in South Africa is it's really easy to find a halal food even though Muslims are such a small percentage of the population because Muslims have these like relationships with other people in society and you know people don't mind you know making their restaurant about right like I remember I I pulled up at Johannesburg Airport I was wearing like a ringer topi and I was ringing like a shewhart canoes and I meet these stably Keys and they say you know where are you from and I told them that I'm from the US and they're like it's your first time in South Africa and I say yes and you know East oblique he is they they sit me down at a restaurant in the airport and

they they buy me Nando's and they're like what do you want and you know I'm like I'm a little skeptical because I'm like you know Nando's just sells chicken and that the bleedy looks at me and he goes yeah you're really not from here he goes most of them like 90% the restaurants in this country are a lot like Nando's o'clock so so Muslims are very widely respected in South Africa you see you know these people you know wearing Dopey's with long beards and you know just walking through malls and no one bats an eye no one thinks that they're not a part of society no one thinks that they are you know somehow like a foreign threat and you know women will be wearing niqab in a mall and it's not a big deal Muslims are just as much a part of South

African society as any other you know non-muslim South African in the eyes of the 99% of society that's not Muslim right meanwhile in the US and Europe we see our societies you know sort of grappling with this institutionalized Islamic phobia where there is you know the majority of the non-muslim society in South Africa is it the when when you're saying like the 99% what is that is that generally by and large mostly indigenously a black or is it Cape Malay or is Isis still like a white proportion there what's the what is that mixer what is that makeup all among Muslim today I wouldn't know the numbers off the top of

my head but overwhelmingly African indigenously black and white people are maybe like 10 percent of the population yeah so uh but in in the United States for example there's a lot my home Ambani cause the good wolf some bad Muslim there do so who's this is a good mobile Ambani is a professor at Columbia University okay he's a he's a really good scholar on you know like the politics of being Muslim in the 20th and 21st century and yeah he's a either really great caller one of really the best people in the field and he writes about the good Muslim bad Muslim

distinction anything what is that the good Muslim bad Muslim what's this about so the good Muslim in the eyes of you know Western society is you know the guy who you know drinks alcohol doesn't pray and doesn't talk about you know the Iraq war doesn't talk about the Israeli occupation of Palestine doesn't talk about the Saudi bombing of Yemen doesn't talk about you know political issues that put the kind of the imperialism of the less tended question doesn't put the the problems of Western foreign policy into questions this is the good most this is the good of the bad this is a good muffin this is the good

one okay okay he says what a political and irreligious yeah okay just ethnically Muslim kind of thing yeah you know like Islam is like an ethnicity kind of thing yeah but the social identity he doesn't pose any threat to you know really bad flaws that exist in Western society particularly with the foreign policy particularly with regards to you know lack of spirituality whereas the bad Muslim the bad Muslim is someone who prays five times a day the bad Muslim is a woman who wears he got the bad Muslim is a you know a Muslim man

who has a beard and you know won't shake hands with women because this doesn't you know fit into the moral fabric of Western society and the bad Muslim is also someone who you know talks about you know the failures of American foreign policy how it's about you know the failures of Western foreign policy in general so there's like this uh you could think of it as similar to an apartheid there's this hierarchy within the good Muslim and bad Muslim there's a hierarchy but that's it I mean there'll be many many non-muslims who will still equally problematize let's say Western foreign policies or they will question they will protest you know the lot of

anti war cries and things like this I'm just out of curiosity it's not strictly these are not strictly Muslim kind of domains yeah it's also like to fit in in society like like Lupe Fiasco he has this lyric where he says you know society is pretty easy if you don't comply pretty pretty easy if you comply pretty easy if you don't complain right so a good Muslim doesn't necessarily comply with you know the norms of Western society so similarly there are non Muslims in our society people like people like Jeremy Corbyn and people like Noam Chomsky people like Cornel

West people like Marcel Hill who are well Marc Lamont Hill is actually Muslim so that's a bad example but mark Aman hill I don't think most people know people said but these are people who will talk about you know the Israeli occupation they'll talk about you know bad or imperialist foreign policy and they're not accepted in society also but for so this doesn't just apply for Muslims the like political part but they right like because people like non Chomsky who's so outspoken I mean and the blessed kind of longevity he's had in his life I mean he's still vocal and I feel that you know it's such a shame that Muslims don't really capitalize on

such a kind of such a resource really full you know for us today but the way he's you know despite all of that is it's like a huge part of society doesn't seem to accept him non Chomsky I mean for the left obviously he's there but generally people seem like you know even though he's a legend he was one of my heroes in that sense you know yeah but he's someone who goes against the orthodoxy of society yeah so you so bad Muslims are those who question the orthodoxy of our society whether that be on a political level or whether that be on sort of like a spiritual level but the

interesting thing about Muslims in South Africa is that they are bad Muslims in this sense they are deeply invested in their religion and they're deeply invested in politics they're deeply invested in the anti-apartheid struggle but they are fully accepted in their society and we need to so I think it's important for Muslims in the West to understand why that's the case how can we be bad Muslims how can we be people who are deeply invested in our in religion and deeply address very problematic you know political plinks of our of our societies and still be accepted in society so see but somebody could question here somebody could question that because the

the Muslims in let's say South Africa are part of the struggle which represents South Africa as in in the sense that they are obviously the anti apartheid kind of movement but following that they're not necessarily critical and anti South Africa whereas many Muslims today or like many Muslim narratives the kind of backdrop in Muslim societies is an anti Western kind of narrative that the West are these kind of like almost like these ya jus Jamaat Jews that have come and kind of you know destroyed and you know raped

the Muslim world of its resources and they are always the Antichrist and the devil so Muslims that grow up here and become religious they then tap into these narratives and they think well yeah you know well of course look that they're bombing Iraq it makes sense there you are so there's a lot of the narrative is very hateful towards the West whereas you know whereas in South Africa or in other parts of the world or even let's say you could say a Muslim growing up in I know now there's a lot of things in China but generally there's a lot of

you know with the Uighur Muslims this kind of discrimination but that said there isn't a worldwide worldwide Muslim anti-chinese narrative like as far as the Muslim world is concerned they don't really care like if anything China is either an ally or it's indifferent like they don't there's no hate against China even though ironically many Muslims in the past thought yeah do de Madrid were the Chinese it's like behind the Great Wall of China but so even if Chinese do you know they've got atrocious human rights let's say things but Muslims won't view them necessarily so bad but

the moment the West do something there's this huge narrative which is so anti Western I mean doesn't that have a role to play in all of these yeah so it goes to how you know understand how they're gonna make these critiques so like if you like if you look at it in the UK I saw this vice documentary of people in the UK who were like they say that voting is cooler which is you know imam arrazi the verse that they cite Imam Razi says the only word the only people who understand this verse this way are the quadrature so there they have this like neo potter giant narratives and they go around london you know giving out pamphlets like stable some don't vote and that's

you know like these foods like his foot that he eat and some of these other kind of groups do that I mean shocking that they do that in 2020 I think Baldwin or Frederick Douglas made I'm forgetting who but he said I too AM America so like it's important for us Western Muslims to understand that we are Western like I am someone who you know my family has been in the United States since the 1960s so I am a part of this you know American fabric like mostly Western Muslims a viewer to put him in Pakistan if you were to put him in Egypt if you were to put them in you know bungo today is she were to put

him in Turkey they wouldn't fit in because they are you know Westerners they are American so it's important for us to embrace our identity as Western Muslims and understand that as much of the critiques that we have of our various countries like as much as the critiques that I have of the United States I too AM America and as much of the Iraq war something carried out by the American government the movement of posing the Iraq war is also very much an American movement right and the biggest schools the babies anti-war protest held in the United States was by by Emma Mac Libre who was you know an imam or if you

look at you know if you see Trump as you know this image of the United States you have to understand the women's March which was the largest march in the history of the United States it also is America and one of the people organizing that marches Linda Sarsour you know a palestinian-american woman so she has not as much claimed into being an American as Trump does right so it's very very important that we as Muslims we don't couch our criticisms of Western foreign policy in in an identity where we alien ourselves yeah and I feel that sometimes you see we have to not not forgetting it's like how you said look it's

important to know aspects of history it's important to know for example the apartheid kind of struggle to to be able to identify to be able to recognize pointers of how people built up a civilization and society after that similarly it's important not to forget that yes atrocities many atrocities have been committed by you know by the empires and the occupational kind of powers during you know occupation and during the whole kind of you know you've got this whole Eva this whole era of the British Empire out there and all these other countries

but you see what the colonialists did I feel it isn't really we have to jettison to some extent that kind of this prejudice and this kind of like lens that we carry which straightaway sees people today like let's say the society in 2020 London Birmingham or wherever or in America but I'm speaking about the British because of the colonial kind of past they the people today are not those people and many of these people today would equally condemn the actions of the

past so what happens is when what is and I fear that this this kind of I this this idea it germinates so well in Muslim circles because of the past because of the suffering and the soot and and the schools that have kind of continued that so let's say in India India pact being Pakistan as well today when the British were they they obviously finished the entire motherís or system so the motherís our system that began anew during their time which was the the opened kind of system and then an offshoot of that or not an offshoot but a reaction to that the bravery system these are madrasahs

systems that came about during colonial times so there's always this you know the enemy the the other the this kind of hatred you know we hate the English language we hate this we hate the address we hate the way of life we hate their these are the absolute the gel is this is them so yeah and I feel the doctors so much damage today today because I can understand it makes sense then if you lived under the British Raj but today in 2020 still having this kind of a or you know it's so harmful I feel because it doesn't let people organically it doesn't let Muslims

organically develop because they you know you said like oh being you know you are American you are America you know as much as anybody else it's true and I feel in some way Americans have it a bit easier I I don't know I mean maybe not easier in some ways but when it comes to identity because America I suppose is itself quite you know quite young as a country whereas the whole British thing is so old and you know mine ancient in that sense people now okay they will say look we're British Pakistanis were British this were British that British

Muslims but people still struggle here you know it is still in some ways like a good example it's like saying English you see like I I live in England but yet I don't know how people feel about this you see like would you say you're English now to me but the understanding of English is somebody white still like it's not whereas British I suppose is everybody now I might be wrong in that honest I'm just telling you what I experience when I hear that turn on like English like I don't envisage like you know like somebody black or somebody Asian or

somebody like whereas British okay but English I would think hmm now this is still a you know residue of this whole kind of growing up with all this kind of identity struggle yeah so I mean I I just felt it's important to to kind of say that these are huge problems and I know you were highlighting this person or saying good Muslim bad Muslim narrative probably tying it in with but okay I mean how would you feel that all these kind of issues that yours you've kind of you've studied in your have you finished your thesis by the way or is that still going on

yes this is my undergraduate thesis my knowledge I have sort of an answer for why American will soon as I think have an easier time than British Muslims and this is because you know America is advertised as this land of immigrants you know and it erases this whole legacy of you know settler colonialism where we you know wiped out the indigenous native population but it looked like America is a land of immigrants if you come here you work hard you can achieve the American dream and you too can you know come to the highest levels of society whereas there isn't really a British dream yeah so so immigrants are sold this thing in America that you can be part of the moral fabric that you can be

part of this melting pot whereas in the UK it's kind of like oh you know we colonized India we took you know trillions of dollars and resources and in exchange you know we brought a bunch of like you know people from like we brought a bunch of like y'all Cordys and abundance evil for like here for you you know and they still regretting it hitting tauba tauba tauba tauba because the Pakistanis that came here we're just all rural yeah Oh from like you know the countryside back home it's not no city

folks I think the one kind of remnant of colonialism that Muslims need to that individual Muslims need to grapple with obviously like for like India and Pakistan like there should be a notion of reparations because like you know the UK took all these resources and stuff but like on a personal like individual basis there's this idea of sort of decolonization of the mind Frantz Fanon talks about this he's considered like the father of g colonial theory what's his name he says the most powerful tool that the colonizer has is your mind so we need to think about it why is it that if someone you

know has read you know Shakespeare and you know all the sort of you know white people thinkers they're considered an intelligent but someone who hasn't read it was ugly someone who hasn't read you know even Sina someone who hasn't read super would be someone who hasn't read Hafiz someone who hasn't read you know I shall add the we are someone who hasn't read look at the name dropping going down people's going down but there's this whole like tradition there's this whole intellectual tradition that you can be an intelligent person or society without ever having it counted so we need to analyze that you know why is it that we

exist in a society where all of these things are what it means to be successful there's a Eurocentric means of being successful whereas there isn't this you know you can ignore this whole great intellectual tradition that we have and you're still considered you know a capable human being right so it's it's very very important that we decolonize our minds that we engage with these thinkers that have been sort of left out of the the Western corpus and that are a very very very important part of our society Frenchman on he ends his book where he says you know let's let us stop imitating the West and let us turn towards ourselves and he talks about

this idea of the national bourgeoisie so he says in post-colonial countries after the colonizer leaves he says there will be this class of people that are basically you know black and white people in black and brown skin so you know if you go to you know these these foreign countries if you go to a place like Pakistan or India or the Arab world you know the the most wealthy people will be people who speak English in their homes there'll be people who have like you know the sort of secular education there will be people who are unaware of this you know whole intellectual tradition that exists within their societies so it's really really important for us to uncover the

jewels of that tradition and very many people will say you know these are the people who colonized these people so therefore their intellectual tradition is is better right but the reality is is because you know the playground bully was able to you know overpower you and take things from you it doesn't mean to demean he doesn't mean he's better mean he's better at that way of you know living everyday life than you it doesn't mean that he has all these better things in you so I think if Muslims really want to decolonize it shouldn't be in a state of animosity towards the west they shouldn't hate you but I want to just just pick on that point they that look this thing about

saying well just because they know there was a bit of feedback there because just because they colonized this doesn't mean we have to copy them or we don't have to this giving me feedback all right so

just started but anyway isn't this as opposed to them copying them because they colonize them could it also be because those things seem to be they seem to have some currency so for example the the internet the technology use the gadget the science the money is coming from the designs are coming from this part of the world can you repeat that I didn't really understand you all

that well it's kind of cutting off yeah I'm trying to see why see - I shouldn't really I shouldn't really be giving a lot of feedback oh can you write okay okay skip that another girl can switch

these other things yeah I don't know why that is I think it's coming back through through your your kind of mind so don't think it's on this okay let me try let me try again yep hello yeah okay yeah that's a lot

better yeah that's a lot better right so as I was saying is that you know you'd asked a question you'd said look just because that the author said that because these people had colonized us we don't need to think they're so great you know yes they've ruled over us but you know we need to grow out of this this thing of them being so amazing but what if what I'm arguing is the things that people are drawn to I know even a hold on argues this as well that look people are always you know that the occupiers are always held in all by the people

being occupied so they end up emulating them and copying them this was what I've McCollum's part of his thesis in the medina but I I would kind of add a nuance to that you see a slight spin-off that you see the occupying forces or today even though they're no longer occupying they've moved away they usually are stronger in resources they have more wealth they have more and with that comes culture with that comes fashion because you have more leisurely time resources you have these Minds that are slightly creative in that way thereby you get a lot of the

largest let's say fashion designers in the world maybe coming from the West now people might people are naturally drawn by aesthetics to certain fashions now they will say hey that's sleek you know because it's chic and because it's so OnPoint it attracts people it's not what I'm trying to say is does it have to be necessarily be because they were the occupiers or is it that they that having a certain amount of resources attracts a certain amount of talent that attracts people mm-hmm well I think the two are interconnected because then you ask yourself why did they have those resources and the answer

is because they were the colonizers oh yeah of course I'm not I'm not denying that part but what I'm saying is that there's this argument that you see the attraction is merely a superiority complex you know so for example we dress like let's say people in the West Western clothing because we hold the Western people to be superior but is that the case or is it that it actually tends to in certain cases look better to people like those certain things appeal to certain people now you know one could say well you know Western music for

example but it could be that as Western music has proliferated people actually find it appealing so I'm just saying as an example bollywood could be exactly the same what I'm trying to say is that is it I I'm arguing against that it's always a superiority angle it could just be that it comes across Sheik and comes across kind of attractive to people yeah I guess one shouldn't one shouldn't say that this means that everything Western is bad right like if you like I can like you know western clothes and it doesn't mean that I have an inferiority complex

right it like you said it's often connected to the fact that Western manufacturers have the most amount of resources right like if you look at universities in the world the best universities are the universities that just have the largest endowment so if someone I asked actually when my professor is this you know he did a he did his PhD at Columbia University and he studied you know Sufi shrines in India so I asked him I said you know why didn't you do this in India because you know he's all about you know this decolonial to y'all so I said why would you go to this you know prestigious Western University and he said you know for the research I wanted to do the reality was the most resources were at this

university in New York City it's ironic that I was studying you know diddly and look now in all these places but the resources were in New York City so I went where the resources were but I think often times like the coloniality acts is sort of like critique right it doesn't really give an answer in a lot of ways because in some ways like I'm just putting the question out there you know real talk in some ways where were the Muslims Muslims is such a broad term because it's not this you know there isn't this kind of homogeneity in that sense there isn't there's it's like an amalgamation of so many cultures

throughout the Muslim lands but where the Muslims Empire is not just you know Cloney lists of their of themselves like were they not well the Ottomans not just colonizing Eastern Europe and colonizing Egypt and colonizing and prior to them where the abbasids or you know opposites for whenever they had power and your milliards was this not just all the far the minutes in let's say you want to say Sicily and in different places were they not was not everybody just doing the same were they not just kind of how how

do we manage to be ok with let's say a one set and not ok is it what we're saying is that there were less atrocities committed because there were always atrocities you know wherever this power there is always atrocity but the but one could say ok the under the colonial thing there was a lot more across is this the differentiation or is it just because they're Muslim we're not going to question that you know when the Ottomans used to go around killing people or you know the Armenian Genocide or whether it's gonna be things like the yeah you know all right early from the or sectarianism or

they're going to kill off certain people for speaker do may it's not allowing the odd journeys to speak they had to speak Arabic if they want to live in certain cities but also on you know how is this is it just how do we justify this kind of stuff I mean I I think a lot of this stuff you can't justify so like like Sheikh Hamza Yusuf says that when you read a Sami history you have to take it you Mon pills because you know a lot of the way that these empires are acting is not contrary to the tradition of the proclamation how this club yeah but uh I guess the this is like a major like question like what it what does it mean

like it china is also you know engaging in this sort of colonialism right now yeah I think on a very broad level one can differentiate between expansionism and colonialism so if you're expanding your Empire and you are still giving people in that Empire equal rights if you are not you know taking resources from this part of the Empire and sending it to the center and sort of having these people live on the periphery without rights as you know sub as like second-class citizens then like that's not as much an issue like expanding your empire isn't wrong but the active imperialism is so you find examples in Islamic history where these Muslims you

know they'll go to into an area they give everyone their rights they don't you know steal resources from these people and that's just expansionism that's not colonialism but being real I mean let's say let's say they landed in letting North out North Africa the Muslims did in the time of twenty or may year I mean they gonna take all the resources they can take I mean they're not gonna be like well you know this but it's interesting how under the Islamic empires the indigenous people seem to

accept that message and they become part and parcel of because there's no way like if you're gonna look at just let's say the arab invaders if we that go into North Africa they can't become North Africa I mean this is ridiculous they couldn't just you know they weren't that many people it wasn't like let's say five million people came in killed off five million people and became the new inhabitants even though there was a resistance it is interesting that within usually a few years they full-on embrace a usually Islam they embrace their way of life I suppose that's something that didn't happen necessarily

or mostly under the colonial kind of past they didn't seem to embrace no matter what the but otherwise I mean in many ways they were also just kind of but I suppose we because we're Muslim I'm their Muslim it's easier not to kind of find folks with them in in that sense one thing that I find interesting is that there was a part of the Roman Empire there was a time period where they would actually discourage conversion to Islam yeah it's only becomes Muslim they pay zakat and if they're not Muslims they're paying the jizya which is higher so you see these

Muslim empires that in many ways are not acting Islamically but yeah I think it was actually the hard thing that more on land that they were paying which was higher yeah so then the zakat but I mean yeah you're right I mean so I do find it sometimes the reason I'm saying that is because people sometimes sense this Islamic it'll you know this whole kind of this this utopia of Islam and then along comes colonial powers and they kind of ruined that and put her on it said but in all honesty I mean the Islamic empires I mean they they were obviously I feel in their treatment were

much better incredibly better than the colonial powers were mainly because for some reason I would say obviously it's you know welcome I don't I mean it's difficult to explain actually but for some reason the indigenous people usually seem to have embraced them and their message which didn't really work in the last two three hundred years with colonial powers but yes so I I see this and I think you know hmm that it's Muslims you know we also in our history you have I've been doing a lot of you know imposing culture imposing things

whether it's going to be certain times Persian culture Turkic culture you know all these kind of things are are really imposed you know the name ha all these kind of things that these Islamist things which today is really just coming from the Turkic people a long you know embedded culture of a kind of Turkic colonization of the Muslims right from the early one could argue from the early opposite time normal say they set their foot in but yeah so I just wanted to point that out because sometimes we do get you know I we get or all of these people I've spoken

sometimes and they speak about D colonialization and I think you know but one could put some of these arguments us back to Muslims to ourselves you know we could just say well you know if you're gonna say well you know yeah but the you know stealing resources but then in all honesty everybody's been stealing resources you know like the golden Damascus still in just landed the Muslims obviously robbed it from the neighboring dynasties you know they they obviously took over the sassanids and they took over the Byzantines and they took over and with them brought immense amount of gold in you know didn't just land in their lap its I mean human

beings have been doing these kind of things since time immemorial I think there are sort of two maybe I might have a third answer to that so the first thing I would say is the issue is is like nowadays where we're dealing with the remnants of European colonialism we're not dealing with the remnants of Turkic or Persian yeah these are civilizations that carry we have this rich intellectual tradition that if we don't engage with it and just engage this European intellectual tradition that tradition will be lost so it's very very important that we as young Muslims that we as Muslims in general engage this intellectual tradition that we

carry and then the the second thing would be that was my second thing the second thing would be that from a from a faith-based perspective I haven't really studied you know the history of this all that well but from a faith-based perspective we can kind of take pride in the fact that Muslim civilizations as a whole if you were to look at it you know at the entire thing we have been sort of better to religious mind then say Europe was too religious language particularly particularly Europe actually so we can kind of you know take pride in that like there's a there's a professor at Vanderbilt where

I did my undergrad his name is david Wasserstein and he wrote a book called how it's on save the Jews and he says that if it wasn't for the rights that because when the Jews are expelled from the Jews have considerable rights in Muslim Spain not to say that was perfect but it was better than any other civilization at that time and when the Muslims in the Jews are expelled from Muslim Spain in 1492 the Ottoman Empire takes them in and even North Africa as well I mean huge like in Fez you know this huge Jewish settlements that took place at that I mean huge as in relatively huge I don't mean huge but Muslims including scholars like chef Ahmed see the admin so Ruth was some of

the scholars that when their rights were being jeopardized stood up and fought for their rights and things like that but yes sorry carry on yeah Amira blue collar also but the Ottoman hold on when he takes in the the Jews from Spain he thinks the the Christians who persecuted or expelled them and he said thank you for enriching my Empire at the expense of years so there are all these examples like Emir of Bukhara Gaddafi he you know sticks up for the rights of Christians and Jews in his empire and David wah they're seeing who the professor van der Rohe of Jewish Studies he actually ventures to say that modern Judaism would not exist where enough for Muslims who took them in so that's

something that we as Muslims should have like a really a pride in and it should show there are traditions about you know this because Jewish people you know historically throughout the Muslim era I mean throughout Muslim history - I mean if we lets us say the 20th century ignoring the 20th century for a moment putting it aside prior to that the Jewish people have haven't really been viewed negatively by Muslims I mean they've if anything they've been they've held some of the highest offices besides the office of a Calif you know within Muslim in some places they had

offices as high as what would be a modern day primary stell things like this partially because a lot of them are very well educated in their day and age they were describes in fact there's certain books written by scholars condemning the que lives because fistic there be a little Khattab because they seem to employ and give higher office to the people of the book now you see so this recent anti-jewish or this anti kind of like Jewish antipathy that we find amongst Muslims today commonly like they say you know yeah hoody you know this Jewish person I

would feel that this is a very recent a result of the Israeli kind of thing as opposed to I mean I don't know what you feel on that yeah so there's this scholars have talked to scholars of like anti-semitism talked about this that modern like anti-semitism that exists in many parts of the Muslim world it's actually a European import that comes as a result of of European anti-semitism you know we have like the Holocaust ago zone we have very very bad things happen to Jewish people in Europe and after the creation of the State of Israel a part of it's not to say European

anti-semitism goes away but a part of you know the power structure actually becomes a makeable to sort of the Zionist movement and the design is movement is closely linked to the Jewish religion so then you see this sort of act of you know the shift and then in the Muslim world you see this sort of you know modern anti-semitism there's actually really good book on this is called Islam in Freemasonry and it talks about if it's not the Jews is the Freemasons ng Freemasons sentiments in the Muslim world also comes as a sort of European import and the original

Freemasons were actually also very friendly to Muslims so abdullah Quilliam for example with a fourth generation freemason but I'm pretty sure I think jamala Dean Lahani was part of the Freemasons if I recall correctly and I think that I think they actually chucked him out because they said that they weren't sure that he believed in God Taliban and then interestingly enough the the Nation of Islam movement in America was founded by Elijah Muhammad was taught by this man

named WD FAR's who was a formerly a member of the more science temple and the more science in Temple was founded by a named man named the noble drew Ali who was a freemason who claimed to have studied with Jamal adenine Afghani at all Osman so there's whole this whole like history of Islam and Freemasonry that is covered in that book it's a very short book I'm forgetting the name the author's name is angel Miller but he talks about how there was this elders of zion conspiracy in in europe and later on that conspiracy was sent to damascus and Damascus is where you find the first of these sort of anti a Jewish conspiracy

theories in the Muslim world and from there it spread upon so it's really really important for us to understand that you're that Muslims were a wild they had a very makable relationship toward you know I mean for the most part I would all gain I mean reasonably I don't mean that there were no issues ever but for the most part as far as societies were that mean that day and age I would argue that they were quite you know amiable and it wasn't something so tense the way it is today and this is very a very modern phenomenon I mean you're quite it's it's a topic you know close at heart with you isn't it the whole Palestine as it is

with with all of us you know with Muslims generally but you're quite socially involved in some of the activism the whole Palestine thing is there in your view a solution to this problem uh-huh yeah what I believe in is a sort of one state solution one solution okay Oh a secular state for all people Israelis and Palestinians from you know the river to the sea from the the Bank to Gaza to tell leave everything in what is Israel and the Palestinian territories would be one secular state

and be cooler Israel it would be called this is a good question Ali Abunimah has a book called one country where he basically talks about a one state solution and he says that the country should be called Israel Palestine and he says when you say it in Arabic you can say Philistine 'extra you and when you say it in Hebrew you can say Israel Palestine but the naming would be Israel Israel is I assume Israel is a secular country I mean I would argue that most of many Jews living in Israel are not actually religiously Jewish but they as neatly

Jewish yes you mean yeah this is something that's very difficult Israel has sort of grappled with this are they a state governed on Jewish law or are they a secular state for Jewish people and there's always this clash going on within Israel so it for example Jews cannot marry you know like Christian and Jewish I mean Christian and Muslim Palestinians and this part of the idea of that is like based on like the religious law right but but one could say Muslims say the same thing yo slim say well you know

Muslim women can't marry non-muslim men I mean in most of the Muslim countries it's it's illegal in most not in all but in so you know in this one state vision who would be the ruling power Israel would be the ruling power so I think you would have to do what you what happened in South Africa you'd have to have because in South Africa one of the ideas was actually that they would have independent black homelands and then they would have then they would have like a country for white people so it's kind of like a separate States in that sense and but then but then that's not one state is it like if we're gonna have

separate you mean like they would kind of they'll be like an independent province yes and that didn't work out in South Africa they determined and we need to have one country for everyone and what you see now in Palestine if you look at the the two-state solution where Palestinians get 22 percent of the land it's a non contiguous state one of the conditions of the two-state solution is that it's a demilitarized state the country won't have a military so there never really was a two-state solution and any one who has studied the politics of it will tell you this that the Palestinians were essentially offered you know a way to decorate their jail cells in a lot of ways they were never

offered a real estate so let me just no just playing devil's advocate but let me just put a question to you I mean what is the population of of Palestine right now what would you say approximately so that's not a huge population as far as countries go I mean if these let's say all of the Palestinians were to be relocated in Arab cities throughout the Arab world

distributed like evenly as in but sporadically not as them to create Palestinian cities but just to kind of settle them in with as in let's say fully you know in accommodation fully paid for well Walter do like let's say a flat you know where families leave they moved into a city in Cairo they moved into a city let's say in Algeria in Tunis in Morocco in Jordan and they kind of spread out throughout the arabic-speaking world with certain funds with a guaranteed education and if

Israel was to take that cost because it would probably be cheaper in the long run than all the bombing it does then to just pay to have all the you know like 5 million people be relocated would that not be a better more viable solution I don't think Palestinians would agree to that and like I when I was in Jerusalem I was I stopped it you know this shop like close to Michelle Alexa and I I asked to say and I said you know how long have you had this job and he said to me he said we've had this shouts for 700 years he says my family has been on this you know plot of land for 700 years

so how are you gonna tell a man that because of you know why should he have to you know leave that strip of land and because because life is more valuable than land and quality of life is arguably you know and a significant factor to because obviously we've got a kind of moot point where Israel is not going away it's there to stay and whether you like it or you know don't like it it's there to stay now the thing is living in a prison like Gaza assisted-living prison it's not like really you know it's it's below living

standards so rather than having people live like that where they are just precariously kind of just struck dead every now and then because you know they get close to a border they just get shot there or they're always speaking about this kind of oppression what if they were just relocated I mean what would be the I know I'm just here's another you know from a devil's advocate point of view that the even in the Quran the the Jewish people are just constantly reminded about you know the kingdom on earth did you go and build the kingdom of Judah this is ultimately

what they didn't I mean isn't this what even in the Quran the Jewish people were kind of this was the the moxa in this world to kind of build that state whatever is the loss you know this sacred state in the Quran all of them a desolate iberic now holla this was for but is really wasn't for anybody else so arguably they're just living out what the Quran even says that they meant to be living hell so you know I'm just saying from a devil's advocate point of view that and the only people upset about it are the Muslims the neighbouring Muslims but it's not not to

laugh at the tragedy but I'm just saying at the irony at the the thing is you know people have an attachment to their homeland and they don't they're not just gonna give it up to like if someone came up to you and you know everyone in London and said if you guys leave we'll pay you to leave so that we can live here and carry out you know he stated but if I was if if I was if I was living in yeah look if I was living comfortably I wouldn't want to leave because you know I've got a life let's say I've got a circle of friends I've got a a hole every my whole world

revolves around my kind of let's say geo location but if I was living in like a an expanded prison where I was just being tortured I was witnessing people dying all the time just surrounded by a morbidity and death then in that sense if somebody said hey would you like to go live in this capital city and you can have fully paid for apartment and you could have free education for your children and you can have this much money let's say as compensation of course I would say yeah another question here do you feel part

of this that you know not relinquishing your land this is a kind of guilt that the rest of the Muslim world has kind of imposed upon Palestinians in saying you guys are fighting the good fight don't give up because this is the because it's easier for people living in you know from a safe distance like if you're staying people staying in Saudi Arabia in great comfort to win to buy your people in London or Paris saying to Palestinians you know don't give up the land it's a good fight but then you know we're just reclining drinking our tea and coffee do you not feel that that's part of that kind of

like stay there is a guilt that we've imposed on them as a Muslim collective I would say the first thing is that there's there's a certain like life under occupation that people sort of there's a certain Beauty to life under occupation off reflection on the apartheid South Africa they weren't miserable all the time but they knew that they didn't have full right so similarly but Palestinians they still have friends they hang out with no I don't mean like you see even when you live in a prison yeah so when if a

person goes to prison you still it doesn't mean that life stops like you still you know crack a joke at some point you still talk to your cellmate you still do stuff but it's not you know any instant you get at liberty you will snatch it if you could you know if they were to say which would you like a newly release of course you want an early release but sure you're playing games you can play snooker you can play pool you can still you know get your stuff it doesn't so I accept I'm not saying that they're living in non-stop incessant pain that they I'm sure they there are intermittent moments of joy and

relaxation just like everywhere else but it is like a living prison almost it's like a prison strip Gaza almost you know and then also like for in the example of Gaza right in 2014 when the Israeli military killed you know 2,000 civilians basically everyone knew someone who was killed as a result of it and these people you know their grandparents were you know expelled out of their land you know there are people who died with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 they're Palestinians who were killed and forcibly kicked out of their homeland let's go so if Palestinians were to say you know we're just gonna get up and leave it

would kind of be an insult to all those lives that were lost you know they see themselves as part of a struggle to take that Book Fairs if someone like for example if someone we're to you know barging in your house with the gun kick you out of your home with you know and let's say one of your family members dies and then you're living in this other you know place five miles away but the United Nations tells you you have the right to return to your homeland you will eventually be allowed to return to that home but for some reason because of our lack of enforcement authority we can't um we can't get you back to your home and then the entire international community is saying you have the right to eventually return to your home you're you're they're always gonna be

the hope of returning to your home I'm just saying in a very long stretched way in a very high with hyperbole the Israeli people are saying the same thing this is our homeland that we're just returning to you oh I'm just saying that this argument that this was the promised land I even the Quran says this was the promised land for Bernice Rahil you know they're gonna say exactly this and and that Muslims took it office when they took over I'm just saying whether there was bloodshed or not I'm not saying that it's there were no of course there were tragedies and the people that were massacred when

you know with the whole Israeli conflict and when they took over by brute force and broke the kind of agreements the peace treaties but moving on 60 50 70 years now from from that time when these things have happened if if if people and the majority of Palestinians they are actually the descendants of the Bani Israel there were people who were Jews who then became Christians who then became Muslims so I find that's not

gonna be true majority of the Palestinians are Jewish by descent that's not going to be true I think it is they've done Studies on this i renown oh no I mean they would be Arab why he said I know the Arabs are also Semites ultimately I accept that but they won't be the Lost Tribes of Israel I really doubt that Middle Eastern Arabs of the most tribes of Israel but praise so I feel like that argument is very difficult that you know they're coming as promised change because like I know

I'm not supporting tomorrow and have the right to return to Israel even though like I'm not a defendant of you know children of Israel true look I'm not saying although Judaism to be fair was mostly an ethnicity wasn't actually a conversion religion so it wasn't people you know through the mother they became Jewish it wasn't something like Islam where you majority of Muslims in fact almost all Muslims are like people embraced Islam whereas they were kind of born into Judaism only like I suppose like how Sikhs are now into Sikhism so I'm not

saying that look I think the Jewish people should be building the Land of Israel although I'm not saying that what I'm saying is this is a post occurrence discourse like this has really happened they've already taken over and they are here too and they are here to stay you know it's not a whether we like it or don't like it and I feel that there's been created rasa tea is committed it's unacceptable I think the Israeli state just works with impunity like it doesn't give a damn about anything about the loss of human of the sanctity you know it doesn't care about the sanctity of life now given this when you know

somebody's like that it's it's like is it not a lost like do we not should we not choose our battles like because there's no if a person here has a gun and you have nothing or you have I have this Cup should I charge him you know charge into him with this whilst he's holding a gun I mean the odds are that I mean heavily you know if I was a betting man I would bet the other way that he's definitely just gonna shoot me so is this not a lost battle the whole thing like what's the

point of just kind of just elongating victimhood why not just say well okay you know what okay fair enough we've lost this one you know it's not the first battle that you know as Hakeem said woman here Bo we'll aconitine Kucera to fail islam you know i said a beautiful it's an amazing quote of his where he's talking about something about tragedies and he says but it was not the first class vetal vessel to have been broken within Islam you know it's like meaning that we've we've had other tragedies before it's not the you know

yeah I guess my thing is is I I see the I see an end in sight to the be patient and I see a way that the one-state solution will happen and the way that I see it as especially as an American my government provides a lot of support for the Israeli government so much that if the United States were to you know stop giving his real arms it would end tomorrow and the way in the United States it was before was that anybody who talked about you know the Israeli occupation would be would be breaking orthodoxy would not be able to you know really function in political life would not be able to function in social life but what we're seeing now in the United States is we're seeing this opening where people are able to

criticize his really policy you know Bernie Sanders who was the second last person remaining in the Democratic race was someone very very critical these are the occupation and someone who said you know we should redirect aid that we're giving Israel to rebuilding Gaza and there was polling done that actually 60 percent of people within the Democratic Party support a boycott divestment and sanctions against Israel and Shibley tell ha me did uphold at 81 percent of Democrats who have heard of the idea of BDS they support the movement so I see it in the next 10 20 30 years if enough activism is done on the ground then the situation is resolved well and we can

see this realistically speaking even when we say that like what we're talking about is political pressure political pressure for what like as in like realistically speaking what would it really do okay there might be one or two sanctions there's already sanctions in the United Nations you know against Israel so many kind of things have already happened but they just don't care it's not like you know it's not like does it really make a difference I understand that countries might say this is wrong you naughty naughty you know it's not but it's not you know it's like to Israel it's like well okay who gives a damn who asked you you know it's like

that so I know I don't really see a practical difference by just trying to say okay let's tell let's you know like let's tell them they've been wrong and naughty on this that they don't really clearly don't care well thanks here I mean like an arms embargo so we don't sell them weapons which isn't an issue if like two or three countries or say if let's say if the let's say let's just say we reach a state we own Western powers withdraw any kind of support from Israel let's say and it's say it's up

for grabs they would just be a you know an unfathomable bloodbath that would happen they I mean the the even if like let's say we were to say they had no support and the Arab world could just come in like they could just pour in she would be speaking about genocide even if it was an Israeli genocide like you would be speaking about a genocide like you would that you see it was it would only end horribly like there would be no and even if they killed so many Israelis the scar that that would leave in

Israeli and Israelite kind of memories to only try and come back and avenge what has happened at some point in the future again is I mean is this do we not learn from history I'm just saying the South African apartheid regime was very strong supported by the u.s. the UK all that and through a period of ten of over twenty years there was this international campaign to boycott Israel right the international campaign begins in the nineteen sixties and how and South Albert goes free in nineteen ninety four so it's a thirty five-year-old or thirty four-year-old battle and towards the end of apartheid

South Africa when no one is really trading what's how about forget aside from a handful of countries the country is on the brink of civil war or so there is exactly where you're talking about there's fear that there's gonna be this this genocide of the white population and then the the white African government the apartheid government they are forced to the negotiating table with Nelson Mandela so I think the Israeli government if there is this time where you know there's all this international pressure on them that will force them to the negotiating table and the one reason where why negotiations have not worked in the past is because this is excessively negotiate with someone you have to have leverage and they have exactly yeah so what I see the boycott

sanctions movement doing is it gives both sides leverage if all this pressure is on Israel but they're the ones with the state while the Palestinians are stateless it gives us sort of means for them to sit down and negotiate and inshallah I hope that is what happens I mean no one can like really tell the future but looking at the history of apartheid South Africa and how that situation which seemed as you were talking about today which seemed irresolvable it seemed you know all the power was on one side you know if you were to do this there would be a bloodbath those same questions were asked in South Africa and alhamdulillah we have you know a place today where

everyone has political rights in South Africa so inshallah in in Israel and Palestine we can also have this sort of one state solution where all people have their political rights but yeah it's difficult because when you're fighting in such a calm you asked the question you say you know is what I'm doing will it be productive will it be something that'll give the the right solution and I I think it's a way of the believer that we that we never we never give up we always try to do what's right in the moment Thanks and whether our our solution comes to fruition that is something that's not on us but it's on us to put in the effort right we we do the action and then we leave it up so uh

so like mutiny Salam you know his dream was to you know see the promised land but unfortunately he wasn't able to do it despite all the effort he he exerted because the people around him weren't ready so I feel like on an individual basis it's up to us to do all that we can to help the cause and not be people people who you know give up and throw up our arms would be people who consistently like do what we can there's a there's a hadith where I think Albani narrates it where he says that if you see the day of judgement you know happening before you if you see the earth you know being swallowed up and you have a seat in your hand plant that seed so it's not because you don't think

that's a hadith insani Muslim obviously you don't know you don't know that no a tree won't come out of that but it's in our it's about positivity and optimism spoken like a true chaplain you do and it hugs that you know what we've we've taken up so much of your time today I know you've got a star over there but it's been awesome incredibly awesome very uneasy all right so I've

got Briony but this it's it's been incredibly awesome discussing these things coming to learn about certain facts involved in the apartheid the struggle how we can perhaps take from you know the the lessons we can take from that how to deal with a history of global colonialism how that ties in to Islam and then also what about a major conflict in the world today and the israeli-palestinian conflict are there any solutions to things like this discussing these things and even you know some of these difficult kind of

thoughts like okay what about these what about giving up the land I mean it's amazing to just be able to to say this stuff is there i people have been some people have just been going off topic on the on the comments but is there any kind of message you'd like to give some of the viewers before we kind of wrap this up channeling hamza right from from the chaplain right this is what would you like to say to our distraught the

last tribes of this ummah the wandering tribes that are still wandering we're still haven't finished our 40 years I would say on the Palestine thing these aren't really my closing words but one thing that you can do to help the Palestinian cause that you as an individual as a consumer you can do is support the boycott that's been in movement and if you you can just google BDS movement and they have a website right and the BDS movement has been able to accomplish a lot like the Labour Party in the UK they introduced lucien calling for an arms embargo on israel and that is something that it's

really effective that we can do Corbin was great on that yeah you know yes but on the more like spiritual Muslim stuff I guess like in this month of Ramadan I guess we can close out with like a sort of blah like may we be people of sincerity may we be yellow maybe the make us people who use our time wisely and make us people who are not only people of a thicker not only people who you know thinking ponder upon things but people who you know put our things into action and people who don't let you know the things of this world distract us from what the real goal of our time on this earth is which is to to know Allah

to you know reach the sword of Mari cauce so we rid ourselves of these veils and were able to know Allah subhanAllah subhanAllah sugar and for that and if people want to reach out to you wish it they we should they connect ah you you can follow me on Instagram my at is just my first last name Hamza Rosa I mean very very responsive on Instagram so if you hit me up on either you said I'm very very irresponsible making a confession right at the end I said I

said I'm very irresponsible of course I'm gonna send these kind of pictures my Twitter my last name underscore my first name Rosa it's been an absolute pleasure shukran for coming on man you doing it you doing it guys likewise do reach out to the chaplain himself especially if in America or even if you're not Instagram seems to be the place or Twitter the name I've got right here spelt hands are Jose you can see right there on underneath just beneath

people and if you haven't still subscribed to my channels thank god damn you [Laughter] alarm clock not go off for Sehun just missing people take very good care of yourselves man as always much love Salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu I'm gonna put up the final slide right here so Salam alaikum o stars as well before we go