news every day keep watching these
horrific videos of unarmed black people
being shot by the police by rising waves
of bigotry against refugees and
immigrants and poverty in levels that we
haven’t seen before it’s hard to not
feel like the very fabric of our social
experiment is coming undone we have just
wrapped up a nasty election year with
the victory of Donald Trump running on
the theme that he’s going to make
America great again when I take a good
and long hard look at us it doesn’t feel
like we’re doing so great I want us to
have this difficult conversation about
the greatness of America by keeping
track of two communities who today find
themselves under assault and vulnerable
black Americans and Muslim Americans
this conversation is not abstract it’s
not theoretical it’s deeply personal for
me it’s about my babies and your babies
it is about yes or Roseanne andia three
beautiful committed American citizens of
Muslim background who did everything
right they worked for social justice in
our inner cities they connected that
struggle to the suffering of people
halfway around the world and yet they
were shot and killed in cold blood in
the safety of their own
apartment less than 24 hours after they
were killed our University asked me to
stand in front of 10,000 students and
somehow comfort them by telling them
that this is still their home what are
we supposed to do when you’re not safe
in your own home what does it mean to
speak about the greatness of America
when for so many of us this country
doesn’t feel safe I want to take us back
a little bit to the funeral that we
recently celebrated of the great
Muhammad Ali not just great the greatest
of all time
Muhammad Ali who was the heavyweight
champion of the world back when boxing
was king Muhammad Ali who was the most
famous person on the planet Muhammad Ali
who was big and brash and poetic and oh
my god so beautiful and he would be the
first to tell you just how Purdy he was
Muhammad Ali who was hip-hop before the
word existed and Muhammad Ali who made
the same connection that I’m asking us
to make here today of the connection
between the struggle against racism here
at home – the struggle against
militarism abroad we celebrate Muhammad
Ali today he was not celebrated in his
own lifetime our government took away
the heavyweight championship belt from
him for three and a half years why
because he refused to go fight in a war
that he considered unjust he said and
famously why should they ask me to put
on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from
home
and drop bombs and bullets on brown
people while so-called Negro people in
Louisville are treated like dogs this is
the context that I want us to have a
conversation about our greatness a
greatness that perhaps has to be built
in our future and not to look to in our
past I’m gonna start with my own
community
Muslims virtually everything that is
said about Muslims is framed in the
context of Isis and let us not mince
words Isis is a savage barbaric and
brutal force of destruction the dogs of
hell we call them we should know because
we as Muslims are the primary victims of
Isis
whether it is in Iraq in Syria in
Bangladesh in Istanbul in Medina and
also in Brussels and Paris we see the
brutality of Isis everywhere the
question that I want to ask is a
reminder from the late and great Rabbi
Abraham Joshua Heschel who tells us you
are guilty all are responsible what is
our responsibility about Isis yes we
will denounce Isis with our last breath
when as Americans are we going to have a
discussion about our collective role in
having created the political instability
in Iraq through illegally invading that
country in 2003 until we invaded Iraq
there was no al-qaeda in Iraq and of
course there was no Isis President Obama
has asked us and rightly so
particularly for Muslim communities to
denounce Isis what does it mean when
every single significant scholar and
institution and
community from Muslim societies
continues to denounce Isis but the rest
of us sometimes act like we’re stuck in
some bad cell phone commercials can you
hear us now is it that Muslims are not
speaking or is it that we are not
listening what does it mean when our
great scholars unanimously denounce Isis
even the great Hamza Yusuf arguably the
most credible of American Muslims and we
can’t get a single mainstream corporate
media source to come and cover this but
on the other hand on those rare
occasions like San bernandino and the
assault on the LGBT Club in Orlando when
a Muslim commits an acts of violence
we have wall-to-wall coverage Isis comes
to America what is it about Islam that
produces violence like this well we have
daily mass shootings in America someone
like a Dylan roof walks into the
historic Amy Church in Charleston shoots
and kills nine unarmed black worshippers
after having put up a manifesto online I
hate black people yet there is no
collective conversation that we have in
which we ask the question what is it
about the culture of white supremacy
that produces mass shooters like this on
a daily level let’s come back to the
presidential cycle that we find
whatever this is it’s like watching the
comments section of YouTube come to life
and run for the highest office on the
planet now speaks about now we shouldn’t
really be clapping we should be weeping
and mourning what has happened to our
democracy he talks about shutting down
mosques shutting down Muslim immigration
to America speaks about Islam hates us
as if Islam is this thing this person
that wakes up in the morning brushes his
teeth and goes about hating Americans
and of course one thing that we know the
minute that a person closes their hearts
to one block of humanity they rarely
stop at one hate is contagious
so now we see him speaking in the same
way about Mexicans as being rapists
about physically disabled people women’s
rights groups poor people and so on and
here’s where I really want us to grapple
with this question are we great we are
left with this corrupt sold-out
two-party system where one person is
telling us that he’s gonna make America
great again and the counterpart responds
by saying no we’re not gonna make
America great again America has always
been great will we have the decency and
the moral courage to stand up and say
when we committed genocide against
Native American people we were not great
when slavery was legal in this country
for 245 years we were not great when we
had Jim Crow and Jane crow we were not
great the way that we treated Irish and
Jews and Hispanics and women in this
country was not great and
we have daily police shooting of black
and brown people in this country we are
not great a country that sees 20% of its
children living in poverty is not great
I love this country I ache for what we
have become I so desperately want us to
become great but we are not great what
do we have to say at a time when
President Donald Trump chooses as his
main advisor a person Steve Bannon who
had overseen a platform Breitbart which
is dedicated to a white supremacist
ideology and whose choice was applauded
by the KKK and American Nazi Party are
we a great nation when President Trump
and his first appointees advocate and
national registry for Muslims mass
deportation of Hispanics
undoing Affordable Health Care Act
dismantling what is left of our public
education and increasing militarism
abroad is this how a great nation
behaves towards the weak and vulnerable
in her own borders and abroad let’s
shift the focus away from the individual
politicians in a sense all that they
have done is to mirror and amplify the
racism and the xenophobia that’s been
part of our legacy as other people have
said it before let us remember that in
America the lynching of black people is
legacy is tradition oftentimes the
people that we see who are targeted are
the people who stand out as being
visibly other Muslim women wearing head
covering our Sikh brothers wearing a
turban and perhaps no place in no time
do we see the discrepancy
of this demon of white supremacy that
keeps us from being great more vividly
than the juxtaposition the daily assault
on black bodies in our cities you know
their names Michael Brown
tammer rice Trayvon Martin Sandra bland
Freddie gray and just recently Elton
sterling falando Castile black people
being killed by the very police force
sworn to honor serve and protect them
and on the other hand you’ve got white
militias showing up with semi-automatic
weapons white militias that oftentimes
have a KKK or white separatists leaning
demonstrating in front of mosques and
Islamic centers or taking over federal
buildings and the police response not by
shooting them but by saying we must
exercise caution and discretion I don’t
want our white brothers and sisters to
be killed and shot but I have to ask the
question what does a white militia have
to do to be treated the way that our
black and brown brothers and sisters are
treated every day on our streets that
discrepancy has a name and that name is
white supremacy and that is what keeping
us from being the great nation that we
think we are if you don’t want to take
my word for it go to the Southern
Poverty Law Center which maps out hate
groups across the country 892 neo-nazi
KKK neo Orion groups spreading like
measles across the country this is the
reality of who we are let’s connect as
Ali connected the racism at home to the
military
abroad we spend more on our military
than the next 12 countries combined we
are spending hundreds of billions of
dollars to build this Empire this
military industrial complex which is
killing and subjugating brown bodies
primarily Muslim bodies overseas and now
that same war grade machinery is being
recycled back into our inner cities to
police and subjugate primarily black and
brown bodies this is Ferguson and this
war grade machinery is what’s patrolling
our inner cities this is the context in
which we have an emergence of a black
lives matter movement with a simple
demand stop killing black people this is
where our people of color find
themselves confronting a militarized
police force over there is now over here
and that’s why sometimes you have to
look long and hard to figure out which
scene is Ferguson and which scene is a
Gaza in Palestine the same tear gas is
used on both communities but I’m not
going to leave us in an abyss of despair
and hopelessness if I rebel against what
we have become it is because deep in my
heart I do believe that greatness is an
option for us as a people the answer
begins with solidarity it shows up when
we are willing to link together our
resistance and our struggle by saying I
cannot be who I want to be until you be
everything that you ought to be it
happens when you see Muslim sisters
showing up in Ferguson marching arm in
arm with our african-american sisters
and brothers
the answer is love but love not as this
hokey commercialized commodified
signified emotion for Valentine’s Day
Hallmark cards love as that redemptive
divine force that disrupts transforms
and uplifts I will stand with you
because I love you we saw this love on
display in Muhammad Ali’s funeral as a
person of color as a Muslim who has felt
like America doesn’t feel like my home
in the last 15 years in Ali’s funeral I
saw in America that I want to belong to
and I know that that America that Great
America is not in our past that America
is not our present if we want to live in
that Great America we have to build it
it’s an America that we have to become
and we have echoes of this in our
founding documents We the People in
order to form a more perfect union
establish justice thank God it doesn’t
say that we are a perfect Union we
weren’t perfect during slavery we
weren’t perfect during Jim Crow
we’re not perfect today but if we can
reach out
hold hands resist and struggle together
we can build this more perfect America
I’m gonna give the last word to the
great bard of Harlem Langston Hughes and
his beautiful majestic poem oh yes I say
it plain America never was America to me
and yet I swear this oath
America will be thank you and God bless [Applause]