Confident Muslim | Sara Minkara, Omar Suleiman - MASCON2018

[Music] I would be less similarly min ash-shaitani rajim bismillah r-rahman r-rahim al-hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen wa sallahu wa sallam ala sorrowful NBL mystery inside anima hamid allah alias Ibis way in my dear respected brothers sisters assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh hamdulillah we're gonna get this session started in sha allah as we start we want to thank first of all the muslim american society for allowing and for hosting the athenian institute for islamic research and to have our session on confident muslim if you have not heard of us yet go to yukina institute org and inshaallah find out the great work that we're doing trying to not only dismantle the doubt that exists in the minds of people who are both Muslims and people of other faiths but also how to celebrate and indeed look at all of our contributions that Islam has made so as we do that in sha allah this is one of those sessions that contributes to the overall mission of european institute so with that i want to introduce to you I serve as the vice president on the board but I want to introduce to you our president and founder of yaqeen Institute chef Omar Suleiman give him a big hand [Music] so now I wanna come on happen to live in a castle Shakalaka dr. Altaf for for everything that you do for our community and for what you do for your queen I want to thank all of you for being here today this is personally always my favorite session of the convention a lot of you are familiar with the work that your team does and to many people you think about the academic part of it so tomorrow we have an academic conference in Charlotte Sanada where will be hosting various academics and speakers that will go through some of the topics that are relevant to our community right now essential to us in rooting our faith in our hearts and then producing through that conviction in a way that benefits everyone and everything around us today we talked a lot about courage and we talked about how courage has different manifestations that's a panel of the person that we're going to have speaking today is one of the most courageous people that I've ever met she is an incredible inspiration to me personally and inshallah tada I'm sure that she'll be inspiring to all of you confident Muslim the idea of confident Muslim was to find people in our community that are doing incredible work with their faith where we see faith in action people that have not shied away from their religion in very hostile spaces and people that have been empowered by their religion to beautify all of the spaces that they're in but I'm getting louder but I mean the person that we award every year in the name of is Muhammad Adi so every year for confident Muslim we've been doing this now for two-and-a-half years we give an award annually to one of the presenters at confident Muslim the very first confident Muslim Award winner was a young sister by the name of sister Hashmi and she was our first Muhammad Adi confident Muslim Award winner hamdullah we're honored to have her here inshallah to Eilish she'll come up and she will introduce our speaker for confident Muslim and charlotta and then I'll see you all in about 25 minutes and shallots aww it's an interview are comfortable some speakers is that gonna love it jazakallah Leighton Imam our suleiman for that introduction confident Muslim is a platform in which it empowers young bright minds to use their faith to do good in the community and I am honored to introduce today's confident Muslim Sodom and ara is the founder and CEO of empowerment through integration ETI a non-profit committed to developing a more inclusive society through empowering youth with disabilities in transforming social and cultural stigmas against disability globally ETI is committed to achieving inclusion for all people through groundbreaking initiatives that challenge stereotypes about people with disabilities sada strives to elevate marginalized voices and viewpoints and promote a robot a robust authentic respect for individual value through the organizations a Lebanese American Muslim woman who lost her sight at the age of the age of seven sada has transformed her passion for empowering persons with disabilities into innovative empowering programs ETI programs support individuals with disabilities to become catalysts for change in their own lives their communities and Beyond sadhas' personal pledge to equip young people with disabilities with the confidence and skills to succeed as individuals in advocates blossomed as an undergraduate at weightlessly College with support from the Clinton Foundation she founded ETI in college and expanded its programs and mission while earning her master's degree in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government today sada is an internationally recognized advocate in the areas of disability inclusion female leadership and social entrepreneurship dynamic and memorable she speaks and facilitates workshops across the globe leveraging her personal background and professional expertise on disability inclusion social entrepreneurship empowerment women's leadership and more please join me in welcoming Sodom and Cara Maria hey sorry we're Sydney Emily rocked Ottoman listen is a whole colony assalamualaikum everyone beautiful my name is Sarah min Cara and the fountain C of ATI as you can tell and I'm blind and I'm proud of it I'm gonna start off with telling you a little bit about my story even though you've heard of heard about it the past five minutes that's okay so 22 years ago summer 1996 on my seventh birthday I woke up and my world was completely altered I was standing on the balcony in our summer house in Lebanon in the mountains and I turned to my mother and I tell my mom I can't see the mountains those mountains are huge enormous but nothing was there for me and my mom turns around she remembers us really clearly and her hearts drops and she realizes that her second daughter has become blind my sister two years previous at 7 years old on her birthday had become blind subhanAllah al hamdulillah she hugs me really tightly and she says everything is going to be ok and everything was ok and better than okay it turns out to be the best biggest blessing in my life at hamdulillah she and my family my parents my community my especially my parents my mother never let us never allowed the narrative surrounding disability to enter the home the lack of expectation that this the negative assumptions ever to enter our home we lived a life empowerment and that was because my parents believed that what Allah decrees is a blessing Islam means to submit to Allah and submit to Allah bestows upon us so instead of them saying Ya Allah why us why my daughters they said there's a purpose behind it we're gonna embrace it and we're gonna embody it and gonna we're gonna live with it and we never saw our disability as something different they normalize it in our homes they never had a pitying narrative but they had an empowering narrative she never allowed me and my sister to utter the words I cannot do this because I cannot see that was never allowed she pushed us to tap into our potential the abilities of Allah gave us we went to the regular public school systems I went to college and major to math I went to Harvard for grad school I hiked a volcano and sled down a volcano Nicaragua biked through a jungle and Indonesia the list goes on and this is because my parents had full faith and what a love is sown on us Allah will never ever tests us with things we cannot handle our human capacity is greater than we ever realized Viktor Frankl and his book for man's search for meaning I definitely recommend this book he's a psychiatrist that lived through the Holocaust and lived through the concentration camps and as a doctor you would always say you know people cannot live without X number of hours of sleep or food or water what I what have you but then going to the concentration camps he realizes that the human capacity is greater than we ever realize so it's important for us to explore what Allah gives us our wealth our Rizk of our mind and body and soul is so much greater than we ever can imagine and explore let me tell you something has anyone heard of echolocation so echolocation is when blind people when they're born blind they use sound and vibration like with clicking their tongue or snapping their their fingers to create sound and vibration so they can actually navigate the world independently they can imagine in 3d what's around them but when a baby's born blind and in they start doing that what happens the parents and the people around the meadow know this is weird didn't know what's going on and they conform them into what quote normal behavior is and they remove that subhanAllah natural instinct for that human but when you use echolocation you're able for instance to bite independently throughout the streets because our other senses through the sound and vibration allows us to navigate independently but you don't see people doing that because it's seen as weird and awkward we tend to move towards what society confirms us to versus what we versus tapping into our potential there's a blind person that's climbed Mount of first there's a blind person who's a famous photographer I can go on but we shouldn't see them as inspiration no they're like any of us they were only able to accomplish what they've accomplished because they had the space and the ability to explore their capacity and potential but most people with disability don't have that reality unfortunately and I was exposed that to their to that reality when I used to visit to Lebanon during the summers growing up the narrative of your Haram charity pitying their narrative that there's something wrong with you we need to fix something about you their narrative oh you should hide that you're blind don't talk about it the narrative there's an elephant in the room let's go around and not even address it what does that do to you that disempowers you that makes you feel like yeah I don't like myself there's something wrong about me and we forget that Allah is the one who created us he created me in this way for a reason we're all created and perfectly in a perfect way and we should not forget that but one realizing that most kids with disabilities whether in Lebanon weather across the globe or even here in the US and our communities they're ostracized are marginalized I push to the side they're seen as less than they're seen as a charity case yeah haram we create a cycle of disempowerment then the people with disability starts embodying that and believing that and because becomes a vicious cycle and we're losing out on their potential we're losing out on the value that Allah has put forward and that's why I found it empowerment through integration an international nonprofit that focuses on empowering youth with disabilities to embrace who they are to embrace their disability in a positive way to love themselves to believe that I have the potential to make a difference in my life and the life of others but it shouldn't stop there the burden should not be on the shoulder of the youth only we also change a narrative on the family level and the community level societal level everyone needs to both be involved me you everyone everyone needs to look at person with a disability and see Allah has created that person and that person has a value to give to this world and that's our mission and how does it relate to everyone in this room all of us has experienced marginalization every single one of us has been judged has been labeled has faced isms whether it's ableism racism ageism and on the other hand we've also created these isms so let me talk about the first experience of the experience of being marginalized I want you to always say take a step back I would even say write a journal write down your identities all of your identities and what isms are associated with these identities where the assumptions associated with these identities and how have these assumptions prevented you from tapping into your full potential to give you an example blind people in Lebanon are not comfortable using a white cane why because they don't want to be labeled as wine they want to be judged so they don't use a white cane so they they're tailing their behaviors they would rather be hidden than be out in society and independent this is a very extreme ways but we also do it in subtle ways here we're not always comfortable as Muslims to be praying out in public when you need to do our prayers we have so much racism in our society we have so much isms and we are exposed to that so write down your identities what are some just created to the attach those identities then I want you to reflect on the 99 99 names of Allah loves the most loving of us the most generous a less the most empathetic and when you were on his names you can start seeing your identities that have negative assumptions turn them into positive for instance I see my blindness as a blessing I wouldn't change that for the world yes there's technical this to my disability but there's so much more positive it has given me strength and resilience and a greater connection to Allah so I want you to really reflect any identities and start loving yourself and how Allah created you so that's one side now the other side as I said we all create these assumptions we're in the society we're constructing these isms we are all humans and we all judge including me I just threw my hair I want you to reflect on what are the isms that you focus on when you see others reflect on that realize that and start working on yourself start delaying your assumption we should be moving towards a path where when we see anyone and everyone no matter who they are their background how they look whatever that we only have one assumption Allah is the one who created this person and this person has something beautiful to contribute not seeing them through a pity lens not see them through a negative lens see them through a beautiful positive lens what happens when you do that you create an empowering space we want to make sure that everyone in our society is included everyone or society is empowered feels like they belong and they can contribute we should try to learn from the prophet Mohamed Salah or an asylum on his characteristics he was the most inclusive he was the most respectful when he would see someone he would look at them and focus on them and see them and include them he would not judge them or exclude them so let's always try to remember the prophets behaviors and try to emulate them I want to get stuck further we go through tests and struggles conditions that we never would have thought we would go through and we say Ya Allah why but we need to have has not one of Allah the benefit of the doubt of Allah what we see on the surface level in this dunya is never the full picture you know today's Friday and we read super guy afraid and there's a story towards the end of sorry story of poverty Moses was hooded and there's like three experiences that that he went on a journey with said with Hodor and he used to ask why is this happening why are you doing this why are you doing this why are you doing this and on the surface level looks awful but when then hope it explains to him the true meaning in the true picture behind the story you see that Allah has a greater purpose we need to realize that this dunya is just a test and the Ezra is our end goal so try to really embrace every single condition in that positive way I never asked never in my entire life made a dry Ya Allah give me back my I said never but the duaa I make is your Allah bring to my life whatever gets me closer to you that's all I ask [Applause] so I want to close off well if you da and remembering the names of Allah so we'll start off and say yo la yeah romania rahim yo ha for all thy merciful forgive us for every time we have judge a human being forgive us for every time we have prevented a person to tap into their full potential whether our children our students our employee our colleagues our friends our community members let us create a space where everyone feels like they are included and they're seen through the your lens of your creation Ya Allah you are the most generous you are a Rosa a Kareem you have given us so much whether internally into our human capacity or externally our family our love our shelter our food our community let us realize and understand and reflect on that rez look and try to use the Rosic for something beneficial for others Ya Allah you are the Eileen you are the own knowing we might be experience a condition we don't understand it and we say why but let us have at least the strength to have peace in our heart and understand that this is a blessing for us whether in this dunya and Ezra Ya Allah you are the most loving and what dude you created us with love every single creature and human in this world is created through your love let us see the beauty behind every single creation and every single human and let us always move forward with loving each other in the most authentic and prophetic way I mean you're lost recycle mujer to Santa Monica more hope you love it I do I think I'm gonna come to live at a council does Arkham allow Hayden I assume there isn't a single dry eye in the room may Allah bless you sister sana bata Kalam Viki for sharing your story in such a beautiful way so I'll give you the story of how I met sada I was at a conference a few years ago and we had a side session on how to do better as a Muslim community with disabilities and I was there on behalf of Marcin Muslims understanding and helping with special education needs speaking on that panel I met sister sada the first thing that she says to me is you're much taller in person masha'Allah so you said the voice you could tell from where the voice was coming from subhanAllah and she gave probably the best lecture that I'd heard at the convention that year and it was maybe 30 people in the room and you could you know this is this room right now so found a lot the there's about 3,000 at least people here right now subhanAllah that just were moved by you and I thought to myself when I saw that room I remember remarking I said that was the best lecture at the convention and no one you know not many people had had a chance to hear it so then we invited sister sada to come to our morrison banquet actually here in Chicago and Hum Dil and she spoke there and now it hummed it a lot I'm extremely pleased that so many people got to hear your story just now and I think it so far is the best lecture in the convention right it probably will be no matter what with all due respect to all of our Messiah and all of our speakers and wonderful presenters your story is incredibly moving you truly embody what Allah says in the Quran that it's the hearts that lose sight not the eyes and I think all of us can see that your heart masha'Allah has an incredible amount of foresight and empowers everything around it everybody and everything around it so may Allah bless you you're an incredible inspiration to to me personally and to everybody here may allah subhanaw taala increase you and all that is good and grant you an eternity of comfort and felicity and generative for the DOS and allow you to be comforted by the sight of the prophet sallallaahu hiding aside lemon generative for those a Lama I mean so questions I think all of us are blown away by the amount of faith that you have to get you through everything that you've been through and it's not charity I think can you inspire us a little bit further by just telling us is there a particular verse in the Quran what is it in the faith that you lean on most when you're going through those times so you mentioned the 99 names of Allah which we're meant to interact with the names of a loss of Hanna Ensenada could you tell us a little bit about that the Quran or a story from the Prophet slice um or something that really powers you through first of all just like a logical Miranda thank you for inviting me and allowing me to you know present my story and be here with you guys I'm really humbled and it's just like a welfare for everything in terms of you know what inspires me from the Quran or the serie it's so much but to be honest it's the stories of the prophets that we've grown up to learn whether it's prophesying a Yusuf and saying a musa and saying mohammed salah salem i think they've gone through so much more trials and tribulation that we ever can imagine and if you read the serie from A to Z you always think I'm like oh my god hush how in the world did he handle what he experienced them faced you know we just face that one millionth of what the prophets have experienced and for me like I always when I'm really down and really in you know in a moment of hesitant on these prophets stories and I think for me it's I don't think I would have gone to the point this to this point if it wasn't for my parents and the family in the in the culture that they created at home I think that's the first stepping point for me and is there a person you know so we did this thing recently a theme called spiritual personality test so he wanted people to find in the sahaba or the stories someone that they really felt like they could relate to and identify with and then grow into that role model to the best of their ability is there a companion a Sahabi a person in the past in our history that you really identified strongly with I think for me it's to start off with Sigma hat when she was in in in Mecca and she was trying to get water and moving back and forth and trying to kind of you know and she was alone and in desperation and I think that is probably the most difficult moment that a person can have her face and but she had full telecoil and that source of calico is something I'm always trying to learn and trusting that Allah is there for us and Allah will always you know will never leave us alone and for me I've my blindness is actually a surface level I've actually would have had health issues and a couple years ago I did a bone marrow transplant and I think those that year and those moments were kind of the toughest year of my life but I will say was also the most beautiful year of my life and I try to think about the full telecoil and what's in the hair had or sedna Maryam had where she wasn't allowed you know when she say nice I was born and what society looks at her and was judging her and had so much assumptions about her imagine how much difficult that was and she could explain herself and at times that's what a lot of us feel were in in a place where we're judged really harshly and you feel like people will never see you for who you are and again all you need is a lot to see you and knows who you are fully and is there for you and it's the most sort of oh the most empathetic and panel I think um if I'm so it's hard to Ronnie has Salam for for sure she has a great impact on us and Mario Monti has Salam there are some people that are sitting in the crowd right now that are looking at you and they're saying so hon Allah she's dealt with her all of us have our share of hardships but you've dealt with your hardship so admirably and there are young people in the crowd that have been shaken in their faith in a loss of Hinata because of the hardships that they've been facing and we don't want to minimize anyone's hardship in particular but to that person at least that hardship has the potential or had the potential to really break their faith and they get into this question of why me o Allah how do i power through what is this supposed to mean for me what do you say to that 18 19 year old person that is going through that struggle right now faith because they've been through a hardship what how did they find themselves how did they find the perseverance needed to go through these things I always look at it this way and this it might be a weird way to look at it but I was always told Allah tests those he loves the most and when Allah is testing you and brings hardships in your own life it's almost like he wants you to call out for his name he wants you to get closer to him he wants you to be he wants you to depend on him fully and we need to always realize that this dunya is a small small small fraction of what the era is I think there was a chef that once mentioned that this dunya is almost like when you pull out a tooth that pain of the tooth that you pull out is in a second it's very painful the second but that's the kind of the fraction of the Sonia versus the ethanol so I will say when you are going through the hardship realize that Allah is wanting you to come out for when you make one allo will run to you there's a phrase right when you take one step allo will learn to you and know o is that after the the test there's ease it's never gonna last there will always be easy after it so yeah so we've recognized you talked a lot about lube nom and marginalization and have none and obviously as a country that's a second home to you you've done a lot of work there and you've done a lot of work here in the United States one of the things that we've tried to do through Morrison is to impress upon the Muslim community their importance of accommodating as much as they can making sacred spaces more accessible to people with disabilities and we've really tried to speak to this idea that we don't assign value to a person on the basis of their manifest abilities and say well this person deserves guidance more than this person or this person needs to hear hota more than this person or this person needs to be able to sit in the mustard more than this person what message would you give to the Mossad Jones to the sacred spaces and by the way I want to congratulate mass mashallah which has done an incredible job in terms of accommodating people with disabilities and working with more send mail lost pantai bless them but what do we do as massage said right now have you ever felt like there's a Mazda that there masada that are becoming more welcoming that are doing a better job and what message would you give to those massages to those sacred spaces so there are message going that down that path but I feel like there's so much work to be done because it's two things one we look at inclusivity of people with disabilities in a very technical way which is needed right you need to make the place accessible we need to make the infrastructure accessible for all we need to you know that is needed and that is great but I think we still the adaptive accessibility what I mean by adaptive is the culture in the Masjid the narrative in the Masjid when we enter when I enter a lot of messages and they see me blind there's the first instinct is is either awkwardness or pit enos or I don't know what to do with you and for me doesn't bother me at this point because hamdullah like you know I I can advocate for myself and I feel like this is my space but for others I could feel like you don't belong there and when you feel like you don't belong there your sub going there and then what happens is a lot of the community be like oh we don't have people disabilities in our community it's because they don't show up people need to feel like they belong and you'll only get to that point when you have people with disabilities being part of the policy making of the program program making the program delivery part of the staff is SAP infrastructure the board of deemed a their voice needs to be represented throughout and only when you see people disabilities an all aspect of our community in our system our infrastructure then we start normalizing it then we start expecting it then we don't even question oh do we have sign language interpretation for this session because it's there so we need to start moving towards that instead of seeing it as an add-on to our system or society so yeah and by the way we have if you go to the Marcin booth get your Mazda certified we need message certifications and shout Lots on it--some to get them up to to parse that they're able to accommodate inshallah Tata to the best of our ability because I think the point is we're missing out as a community on special talents on contributions and just the spirit that you bring is just absolutely incredible mush out lots of Auto Cola I'm curious has anyone asked you in public I'm sure they have as someone who visibly has a disability yet visibly wears a job and is Muslim in public do you have a story to share of like a TSA agent or someone in like a grocery store or a waiter those like well why this doesn't make sense or how do you do this how do you combine both of the these in public this way oh I have so many stories but yeah because my combining my blindness and my Muslim identity it's what cost for trouble but I think I mean TSA is I have so many so many experiences where I would walk be with my friends and have to go through security and then the TSA looks at my friend and she looks at me because of course like a Muslim has to be double-check triple-check whatever but and she looks at me she was like is she functional and my friend is look what well they're like you can ask her first of all you know she's right there in front of you you can talk to her but you get a lot of people don't know what to do and they become awkward but then also there's that Muslim identity so but on the other hand you know what's so ironic is when I walk in society I don't face so much Islamophobic experience as much as ableism the first identity that people experience see me with is my blindness so I die it's a Pamela I think my blog has been also blessing in that lens and that's in a sense that my Islam is almost like secondary to them but then I allow I'm allowed to kind of enter our space and bring my stem forward in a stronger way it's really interesting disabilities is a much stronger force I guess yeah so you spoke about your mom I think that a lot of times the heroes in the story are the parents and then they sort of disappear in the narrative and it becomes the first teacher that really encouraged your motivated you or that first celebrity or that first hero that you found in the books but in your situation the very first person to comfort you was your mom and we don't take the time out often to publicly thank our parents for the role that they played in our lives so there is their message that you'd like to send in charlotta and conclusion that all of us can benefit from and those of us who maybe also don't take the time out sometimes to appreciate our parents for loving us the way that they do I think your parents our parents our families are our greatest support system and their parents are the ones who give us unconditional love they sacrificed so much for you to a point that you take it for granted and this is why in Islam the hell your parents is so important because you understand how much their love and their support is the one that makes you who you are and how empowered you are and for me my mom did so much where she would spend nights there are growing up where she would be helping us with our homework and making sure she can read our stuff to us she would be going toward the schools and making sure we're getting the accommodations she would be you know she advocated for herself and through doing that she taught us how to for us to advocate for ourselves and allowed us me and my sister then we went to college and later on we fought for our rights we knew what our rights were and that tool is priceless and subhanAllah I can never I'm indebted to them forever Tom de Nesle we need to always reflect and appreciate them and really give them you know give them back and show them our appreciation or love because sometimes just that gesture will make the world's difference for them too so for me hamdulillah al hamdulillah and Allah reward them the highest level Jannah and reward our parents the highest level agenda and were always there to be also a support back to them that's really important for us always to make sure that we're also there for them later on in life when they need our support subhanallah hearing the way that you say alhamdulillah is so beautiful too I think all of us and so we say alhamdulillah for you you've been a blessing to the world around you you've been a blessing to us today alhamdulillah an absolute inspiration may Allah subhana WA Ta'ala always bless you with good may Allah Azza WA JAL always fill your heart with this joy and with this Iman may loss of Hannah Montana allow you to have the best moment of your existence in the moment that you meet him and may lost panettone bless your family who's been there for you your parents your mother for all that she did for you may Allah bless her and allow her to also be comforted with the presence of the messenger salallahu alayhi wa sallam thank you so much for coming and taking the time out to do this does our common law fight on to everyone in sha Allah Ta'ala soon inshallah we'll be uploading the session under confident Muslim you can download the app the obtained Institute app please do as soon as you see the video of this session go up spread it like wildfire I think that the message of sister sada is something that can move hearts all around the world and shout lots out and hopefully move us in a way that we can better see not just how we should treat others but how we should view our own relationship with the loss of Connaught on how he calls us to treat others ah come on lay down once again sister sada [Music]

Channel: MASICNAConvention

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Keywords: confident muslim, sara minkara, omar suleiman, mascon2018, Muslim, islam, convention, icna, mas, quran, world, speaker, lecture, knowledge, retreat, religion, religious, mas-icna, masicna, mascon, confident, muslim, Muslim Speakers, Muslim Youth, MASCON2018, yaqeen

Id: cBAu3jwaHT0

Length: 42min 6sec (2526 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 09 2019