"so the BBC reached out and said we want to interview you I said we've got this idea we want to take you to a park and have you meet one of the protesters who's been wielding his gun outside your mosqu..."

"and is come inside the mosque put your gun down disarm yourself and learn and you'll be surprised what you'll walk away with and only took one meeting with him to completely shift his worldview at the..."

"Imam Dr Omar Suleiman he's a Muslim scholar civil rights leader founder and president of the yakin institute for Islamic Research and he is a professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Methodist Univers..."

"it is Deep Roots and implications in U.S politics in global geopolitics in Military and religious conflicts Wars and atrocities and basic struggle of all human beings to survive to protect their loved..."

"or wise but like Forrest Gump said I'm not a smart man and maybe you know how the rest of that goes I just like to follow my heart to whatever place it leads I ask the Muslim and the Jewish communitie..."

"journey this is the Lex figment podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Omar Solomon we've been trying to do this a long time it's uh the wor..."

"he is beyond the constructs of our imagination but he is ever accessible through sincere supplication when you call upon him alone one God he is closer to you than your jugular vein the Quran tells us..."

"there is certainly a feeling of closeness when you access him and so I think the beauty of Islam is that as perfect as God is described he's also so accessible to the imperfect and so the idea of sinc..."

"could live fulfilling lives he was he'd often be the only father on a field trip even though he was a distinguished Professor I mean he was a busy man he he was a very busy man but he tried to show up..."

"and so I work towards that and so life and death I understood existence to be Transcendent early on that if I believe that there was nothing to life except for life I would be a very bitter person but..."

"so he said that you can look to God for wisdom to make sense of the world there's a lot of stuff to us humans that's difficult to make sense of um like you losing your mother there's a lot of Cruelty ..."

"and to isolate these incidents with God and to say the wisdom what's the wisdom uh you're trying to make sense of a pixel when you can't see the bigger picture your mind is not at a place where you ca..."

"each and everything you know the prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon it mentions that on the day of judgment a person who lived the most difficult of lives will be dipped into Paradise one ti..."

"who unlike an angel who has no choice but to worship God an angel has no sense of will no sense of choice an angel is created to worship and has no desires a human being who has the choice of desire a..."

"discipline ourselves to where we can even Ascend past the angels and rank now of course I said we can go as low as an animal or as low as a devil and we have tyrants past and present and future as wel..."

"trajectory so every moment is a moment of choices and when we choose belief righteousness a pursuit of something greater than we find ways to turn things that are otherwise mundane and to miraculous a..."

"and suspend bias and you'll be surprised and so for a lot of people they come to me and they say you know this this about Islam I'm like look I'm if you're just going to talk to me about what you've s..."

"are you going to read about the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him are you going to read the Quran yourself are you going to investigate for yourself uh what it is that this faith has to offer and fin..."

"yeah I I called my my Methodist uh friends I have a lot of Methodist Pastors in the city that I work with and I said what's going on here man you're sending people on to this interesting journey of Bu..."

"comprehensive when people actually approach it with humility and uh and and appreciate what it has to offer as you mentioned uh in the minds of some Americans after 9 11 the religion of Islam was asso..."

"that happened here in the United States and around the world but a lot of young people are born into that reality and are experiencing the aftermath of it and um you know unfortunately have to deal wi..."

"it's one that ignores both The History of Violence as well as its everyday occurrence you know we're good for how many mass shootings a year once when's the last time you heard of a Muslim carrying ou..."

"factually so lazy there was a study just about how the media gives more attention to acts of violence done by Muslims and immediately uh stamps it with Islam up to 300 percent more than it will with a..."

"AR-15s talking about wanting to inflict harm on Muslims I have been to Christchurch New Zealand and buried the victims of a white supremacist terrorist who was inspired by the political rhetoric here ..."

"the burden of the act of a single perpetrator and just to reiterate in case the numbers are not known you mentioned Christ Church those are two mosque shootings oh 51 people killed and 40 were injured..."

"underlies many of the bigotries that exist I mean look um after Trump announced his Muslim ban there was a shooting in Canada an attack in Canada on a mosque in Quebec where six people were killed the..."

"their pain in their own lives I'd like to try to figure out together with you sort of um a way out to try to decrease the amount of hate in the world but maybe it's useful to talk about the BBC docume..."

"to do things for them so you have these armed protests happening right and it's horrible because think about the trauma to the children that are hearing about tree of life and hearing about some of th..."

"and only took one meeting with him um so completely uh shift his worldview at the time which was made up of heroes and villains the Muslims unfortunately being the villains that had to be wiped off th..."

"to coexist with anyone uh we are satisfied with who we are we don't we don't see a contradiction between our place of residence and our religion our nationality our religion we don't see that as a pro..."

"yeah what do you think about these kinds of protests are not allowed in many parts of the world what do you think about one of the most do you directly personally painful manifestations of the first a..."

"yeah just even watching that documentary it's hard to put into words but somehow that does not capture what maybe the founders intended right what uh what I would see is the great idea of the freedom ..."

"now personally you know Dallas had the uh the largest amount the largest number of uh detainees uh in the airport we have one of the largest airports in America and we took to the airport and we staye..."

"right now with all of the political sides with the political parties what do Muslims sit politically are they politically engaged in the function of the United States where they find themselves politi..."

"of good But ultimately we want to engage and be engaged with on the basis of who we actually are not who you need us to be right now and that's been the problem uh that we've had so it's not it's not ..."

"um and then after that we recite something else from the Quran so some other portion of the Quran and then we say Allahu Akbar once again God is greater we go into bowing and in bowing we say subhanal..."

"with God and the deepest part of the prayer the word Masjid which is mosque in Arabic means place of sujood place of prostration so think of the rest of prayer as an introduction to that particular pa..."

"to your right peace be unto you and the mercy of God to your left and that means everything and everyone to your right everyone and everything to your left so you imagine a congregation uh when you're..."

"outside coffee shop in the grass outside as it did a few days ago yeah uh so any anywhere at all and that means airports included given the context of our previous conversation of um uh hatred towards..."

"uh is incredible and so it's a gift from God and it is an obligation it's something that we have to do as Muslims but if you actually learn its Essence then it can feel more like a joy than it is an o..."

"so you're probably more cranky but um the happiest people in the world are the people that stand up in that last start of the night and pray I mean there's a deeply meditative contemplative aspect to ..."

"sleep good for your mind I think the mind one is is there really one we've been talking about and that's really really the really the big one and in the in the small day-to-day psychological sense in ..."

"Islam you see people from all over the world people that don't speak the same languages people from all sorts of backgrounds and they're all doing the exact same thing and in a matter of seconds when ..."

"worship if you could just Linger on it a little bit I think you've mentioned that Malcolm X has been in part misunderstood um what are some aspects of him that are misunderstood well I think reading h..."

"goes through multiple phases so Malcolm dies as an orthodox Muslim who does not believe in the superiority of One race over the other finds great Tranquility in the practice of the Hajj um great clari..."

"American Muslim from America because you maybe make a few comments as an athlete yourself uh what impact uh did uh Islam have on Muhammad Ali's life and what and vice versa what impact did he have as ..."

"wasn't satisfied at any point in his life would simply being a boxing great a boxing champion he uses it for so much more and so he goes down as one of the most famous Americans period of the 20th cen..."

"um and you know when I went to his funeral and it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen because everyone in Louisville Kentucky had a story with Muhammad Ali right the guy that he saves f..."

"pray that it's a good place for him so Muhammad Ali is probably one of the great 20th century representatives of Islam um for me personally at least my bias one of the great modern Representatives is ..."

"uh you know attachment to his religion it really is inspiring growing up we had Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1990s basketball who's fasting in the NBA I think Habib was is that for a lot of people a lot of ..."

"so I think sometimes athletes are able to demonstrate some of these beautiful values of Islam in a way that the world can maybe see them in a different light the values of humility and the values of l..."

"that's actually I think the most beautiful part when I met him um I found him to be as humble as he is on screen and that's always very endearing and all the stories of the people that have been aroun..."

"absolutely so it's part of our tradition that when we say the name of a prophet at least the first time in the conversation we say peace be upon him and then afterwards it's still praiseworthy to say ..."

"prophets are exemplary human beings and this is where we kind of sometimes maybe have um a difference you know someone will say well you know Noah did this and David did this as Muslims we don't belie..."

"until the end of time so Muhammad if I may peace be upon him uh is is really the yeah like you said the manifestation the thing to be the example of a good man yes example of a good human being is the..."

"memorized and so it was memorized from the start committed to memory in the time of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and preserved in writing and passed down and memorized by millions and millio..."

"tell people this all the time that you know the prophet Muhammad peace be upon Him introduced uh Jesus peace be upon him and uh even Moses peace be upon him to much of the world there are Muslims arou..."

"articles of faith in the pillars of Islam so the articles of Faith are six articles of faith and this kind of lays the foundation for the Creed of Islam so belief in God belief in the Angels belief in..."

"encouraged to fast a few days of the year as well outside of the month of Ramadan to keep that connection what are the hardest parts that maybe for people outside of uh uh the Muslim faith um yeah we'..."

"that play some people like you who is a religious leader who is somebody who teaches who grows who cares for the community for the Muslim Community but actually for all people well I think what that m..."

"of Muhammad Ali talking that man out of committing suicide off the roof and I showed them the YouTube video my wife pulled it up on her phone kids were sitting in the back seat we talked about that th..."

"a rabbi and his congregation taken as hostages and go to this Facebook link and it was the feed of the synagogue and you could hear the gunman shouting and it became apparent um very early on that it ..."

"a different type of situation but my first instinct was like all that happened this morning was not random so I told my wife and I told my kids I'm gonna go down there uh it's a Colleyville um she was..."

"I called some of the faith leaders in the community to see if they could put me in touch with those on the ground so that I wouldn't get shot when I showed up there and eventually I had to wait out ou..."

"and I think that you know looking back on that day like my wife actually asked me I said would you have done it differently and I said no I really wouldn't because I think that that things happen some..."

"what I could do to just help what are the lessons now a year later that you take away from that day and the day so many lessons just don't be indifferent don't be indifferent to the suffering around y..."

"you know we're living in a climate where there's a lot of that right so how do you how do you actually uh get through that and actually not allow yourself to succumb to that and be another voice in th..."

"conflicts absolutely look when you talk about a group like Isis Islam has been in Iraq for a very very long time Iraq has been bombed by now five consecutive presidents or four it's been bombed into t..."

"now I often talk about Dr Martin Luther King Jr his progression as a faith leader in America as a political leader in America Dr King was deeply unpopular when he took a stand on Vietnam and he mentio..."

"ourselves in their place uh it's impossible not to feel hate for America for everybody I mean I I visited Ukraine and spoke to a lot of ukrainians and they said um you know there's there's loved ones ..."

"with how we treat the rest of the world right so I'm an American I I think that I'm responsible to the extent that I have to critique these policies and I have to try to you know challenge America to ..."

"and Jews in general here in Dallas and across the world uh what is the difference to you in that part of the world between politics and religion so in this case Zionism and Judaism uh both terms broad..."

"now that the world can see what is happening in what is happening in Jerusalem what is happening with these expanding settlements everything that flies in the face of any claim to wanting a peaceful s..."

"accountable for apartheid with the Palestinians it's impossible for us as Palestinians to Simply say that we should give up on this cause all the odds are stacked against us but when you have you know..."

"American government could say was if it turns out that it's indeed Israel that Israel is responsible for the death of an American journalists then we will hold them accountable nothing not a peep it w..."

"population of the Palestinians where you know you have quote unquote Muslim regimes making peace with Israel and that's being used against the Palestinian people who are only further disenfranchised f..."

"and that is the removal of a people uh forcible removal of a people because the government knows that the United States support is unconditional gave hope that Jews Muslims and Christians in this land..."

"Christian there are many Palestinian Christians that are also being denied entry into their historic churches and that are completely bewildered or or uh absolutely lost in regards to why American eva..."

"ground read the reports stop letting these commentators and these uh these companies that are able to generate propaganda own the narrative there are objective standards here there are objective measu..."

"normal right and so I think that if people take the time to read people take the time to investigate then they come to this conclusion themselves that this is unacceptable and that you can't put and t..."

"Lina Lina abacla who has been who was extremely disappointed and let down when Joe Biden went to the region and did not take her calls did not meet her which was an absolutely disgraceful move he shou..."

"you're a very sincere person uh I think you're gonna you're gonna do your best uh I'll be praying for you some of these such things are harder than others but yes I feel like we're in the middle of a ..."

"suffocating voices for justice laughs he said hope as a man of Faith you have hope yes what gives you hope about this part of the world and our world in general when you look across and see so much co..."

"tell you actually a story that I remember the first time went to Syria Syrian refugee camps and you deal with people and this deeply human way uh for me the most clarifying parts of the world are the ..."

"least in movement in prayer thank you so much I appreciate you coming down it's been an absolute pleasure [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Allah Allah Allah all right so much I'm sure you don't want to..."