Ep 177. - Why We Must Be Radical - Professor Butch Ware
The US elections are nearly upon us, and we have all be subject to the empty words and rhetoric of of the two main political parties. The Green Party has gained a lot of traction, especially amongst the countries small but very important Muslim community. I have already interviewed the leader of the Greens, Dr Jill Stein. But Today I have the pleasure to speak with Professor Butch Bilal Ware, its Vice Presidential nominee. Professor Butch Ware is a lifelong activist and educator specializing in the history of empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution. For the past two decades, Ware has put scholarship in service of the people, especially in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as the George Floyd murder in 2020.
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Transcript - This is an automated transcript and some of the language may not reflect the actual conversation
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somehow you're watering down your radicalism but wear is too radical for the green party
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I was stopped for driving W black 17 times before I reached my 18th birthday an officer
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drew his service weapon and pointed it at my face so we need to In This Moment organize for maximal
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political power we never condemn the resistance of occupy people to their occupy in your mind
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AA we has been persecuted there has never been a more dang dous dealer of death than the American
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Empire we destroyed Iraq we destroyed Afghanistan destroyed Palestine we are the Dutch star these
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so-called leftists apparently have never read any books on the subject nor have they had any
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conversation with actual weers and it is better for these people to have a red fascist than a blue
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fascist the US elections are nearly upon us and we have all been subject to the EMP
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words and rhetoric of the two main political parties the green party has gained a lot of
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traction especially amongst the country's small but very important Muslim Community I've already
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spoken to and interviewed the leader of the greens Dr Jill Stein but today I have the pleasure to
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speak to Professor Butch Bilal we uh its Vice Presidential nominee Professor Butch wear is a
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lifelong activist and educator specializing in the history of Empire colonialism genocide and
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revolu ution for the past two decades Professor wear has put scholarship in service of the people
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especially in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as the George Floyd murder in
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2020 professor butam alayum and welcome to the thinking Muslim it's an honor and a privilege
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I'm overdue I'm but glad I was able to make time in the midst of a busy campaign to get this in so it's great to talk to you no I really appreciate your time and I know you've probably
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got a punishing schedule at the moment so jazak thank you so much for joining us precisely the
Embrace Islam at 15
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yeah punishing it's punishing I I I watched a really great interview uh between you and the
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Ansari on the Ansari podcast and I was surprised to hear that you had become Muslim at the age of
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15 um before we begin with the politics and with you know the many questions I have about the green
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party can I just ask you I mean it's very rare for someone to embrace Islam I think anyway at the age
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of 15 like what brought you to Islam at that age yeah um so uh I read the autobiography of Malcolm
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X um cover to cover in one night when I was 15 years old um and I I remember that night like
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it was yesterday I mean I could not put that book down um you know Chang positions on my bed a few
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times sat in the corner on the floor for a while but I read it cover to cover I couldn't put it down reread certain portions of it um I wanted what MTH had at the end of that book Malcolm
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um like me had been in a lot of dark places in his life I was raised in uh extreme poverty um
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very difficult circumstances in Washington DC my father had a sixth grade education my mother was
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15 years old when she was pregnant with me was told by her high school guidance counselor to get an abortion um you know I I came in to this world under difficult circumstances as Malcolm
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had um and what I saw in that book was that you know no matter how dark the places um you know
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you might have uh seen uh may be that the light of God could find you there and lift you up to
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the highest of all stations so I went to my school library the next day after not sleeping that night
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and I checked out an English translation of the Quran wow um yeah and I read that cover to cover
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the next night so I had stayed up you know for two consecutive nights without sleeping and I actually when I finished the Quran in Translation I fell asleep and missed my school bus and and slept
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through school that day so you know nakum and and and and and the Quran made me a truant um but but
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I hadn't taken my shahada before the end of the week I told my mom that day that I'm Muslim um and and that I and I looked up in the phone book for the where the nearest mosque was to go to go
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make my shahada I had also got a couple of books that were like instructions on how to pray and how do you you just something simple I think that um it was one of U maud's books was actually also
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at my public um you know library at that time I grabbed a copy of that and just learned the basics
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we didn't have the internet back then so I had to look these things up in books um and yeah I I my
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mom I told her I'm Muslim and um and I said I want to go you know make my shahada at this mosque and
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she was like that's wonderful honey but gonna have to wait till the weekend because I have work you know so so we waited until the weekend and then we drove out um to the Islamic uh uh uh Islamic
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Center in Fridley Minnesota I was living on uh in Minneapolis at that time I I made my Shada then
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really wonderful to hear it's inspirational and and I want to pick up on the Malcolm X connection
Malcolm X and radicalism
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there because um Malcolm X was a radical and he fused his radicalism with Islam and in many ways
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Islam is a radical Faith uh it's it's a faith that requires us to call for justice uh and against all
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the odds and so in many ways you know we are all responsible for speaking out against tyan
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tyrannical rule oppression genocide is in the case of Gaza how important is that melding of
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radicalism with Islam in in your philosophy for and for me so just to be clear reading those two
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books uh consecutively on back-to-back Knights um they were a single argument for me right one was
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an autobiographical narrative about how to triumph over both internal and external oppressors and
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then the other was a universal narrative the Quran was a universal narrative about how to
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triumph over internal and external oppressors and when I read the Quran even that first time
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the the the Anti-Imperialist nature of the Quran the radical IM manatory liberatory message of the
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Quran was apparent to me right because why well where do we find IIM face Toof face with Nimrod
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the most powerful Emperor and Tyrant on the face of the Earth in his where do we find Moses and
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Aaron M and Har we find them T toes down face to face with the most dangerous tyrants and Emperor
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on the face of the Earth in their time where do we find Yahya where do we find ASA uh peace be upon
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all of the prophets we find them being persecuted by the Roman Empire why because the people of God
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always stand against the fundamental form of Oppression in their time that's what makes them
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the people of God if you have genuine comp passion for the children of Adam um and in many ways the
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quran's most radical argument is also its simplest right you are all the children of Adam and it is
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from dirt that you were created your nobility lies in the Divine breath that is breathed into
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you that caress that makes you right the human being is not made in the Quran just through a
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simple Act of speech no God asked inad to why did you not bow to that which I made with my own hand
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and then in two separate eyes of Quran God says and when I have fashioned it and breathed into it
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of my spirit then fall down before it prostrate so the human being is this sacred creation um indeed
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I enbl the children of Adam um so so uh for me the struggle to keep harm and oppression from reaching
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the children of Adam that was wired into my understanding of the Quran from the beginning and
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it was clear from Malcolm's experience that he was carrying forth that radical emancipatory Legacy in
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his age last thing that I'll say in response to this people that don't know my academic work before I got pulled into politics um my scholarship is about the history of West African
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Muslim Scholars who from the rise of the Atlantic slave trade itself also Drew on this emancipatory
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um uh potential of Islam to struggle against the fundamental evils of the age right they organized
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resistance to the r the Atlantic slave trade they organized resistance to um French to Dutch
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to British Imperial occupation Spanish imperial occupation um the the these African Muslims like
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an African-American Muslim like Malcolm or myself were people who read the Quran as as as a radical
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Manifesto of resistance to white supremacy um and so in that respect um you know I I I I feel
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quite comfortable in point of fact in this new position different from my academic life
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because I feel like I've been tagged into a fight you know that that that Malcolm took up in his
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time and that the great Scholars that I've written about in my work took up in their time um is your
Sufis and being radical
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radicalism shared by many Muslims in the United States I mean I I note that I read somewhere and forgive me if I if I read it wrong but you are uh from a Sufi tradition or you Embrace a Sufi
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tradition and in in a West African Sufi tradition and in uh the United States we associate a lot of
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the time at least from the outside side uh Sufism uh with quietism with an apolitical Islam that
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tends to be in cahoots with dictators and princes around the world um maybe I'm I'm exaggerating a
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bit for effect here but um you know how does it's not a caricature by any means yeah go ahead right
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no I I I just want to understand so how does your Sufism uh uh interact with your Islam
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and your radicalism yeah I mean so for me so i' for people that have been knowing me you know as
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an intellectual in the Muslim Community I've been trying to persuade people that Sufism isn't about you know uh polite middle class tea parties in the suburbs um and chanting di that the real Sufi
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the people like um you know for example abdad jir Abdul Kad you know at age 19 he was crowned with
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the ceremonial turban that made him the greatest living heir of adby in his time okay and at age
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20 he was organizing armed resistance to the French occupation of Algeria right um Abdul Kad
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Khan Kad Sufi himself in the 1770s um abolished not just the international slave trade as it was
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being conducted in in the senar river valley but he abolished the institution of slavery itself
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with a a an Emancipation Proclamation he said that that not a single verse of the book of God should
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ever be held in bondage so that anyone capable of reciting so much as a single Ayah of the Quran
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that was in his territories was to be immediately freed and just to be clear an ay of the Quran like
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is an Ayah of the Quran and he he said he said that the Muslim that should be protected from the indignities of enslavement is the one that says even if she pronounces it in other words
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he took the the legal exemption of Muslims enslaving other Muslims as a way of creating
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a blanket emancipation Pro Kad Sufi right and I wrote about him in my in my first book the walkin
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Quran shman Dano Kad Sufi also Northern Nigeria organized resistance to the Atlantic slave trade
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elaj maral Tani Sufi organized resistance to French occupation sh Ahmed Amba creator of the
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Tarik moradia spent 27 years of his life under house arrest because of his resistance to French
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colonial rule so the Sufi tradition that I know is one that tethers together spirit uality with
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social justice and it is a it is a Sufi tradition and this is important especially for this audience
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to understand that it is a sober Sufi tradition it is a Sufi tradition that is rooted in Quran and
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Sunnah and nothing else the idea behind the West African Sufi tradition is and always has been that
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the traditional branches of the Islamic religious Sciences are three that we have um the and they
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correspond to the Hadith of jel where the Prophet Alat was described to to was asked to describe
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the contents of the religion Islam Iman for in response to Islam he named the five pillars in a
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a response to uh to Iman he named six articles of Faith it's belief in God his books his angels his
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Messengers decree and the hour and in response to the to question what isan he said it is worshiping
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God as though seeing him and if you do not see him knowing that he sees you and the way that this has
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been understood in a West African context is that this is to put a 24hour surveillance camera not on
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your Deeds but on your intentions on why you do what you do um and that this is the the the the
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path of asan and so these are Sufi Scholars who why they did what they did was to try to keep
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needless harm and oppression from reaching the most precious thing that God created the children
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of Adam now you're starting as VP of the green party and uh I've received the occasional message
Diluting radical tradition
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I think it's it's uh uh it's certainly not in plurality but there's an occasional message I received from Muslims in America and elsewhere which suggests that in a sense what uh by joining
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the green party and by uh fighting uh within the political process you're somewhat diluting that
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radical tradition because it's a secular it's a corrupt political process and it's better
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to fight from outside then join it fine you're not joining it by you know by embracing it but
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you're joining it by fighting this election and how would you respond to accusations that somehow
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you're watering down your radicalism yeah I mean it's a it's a wonderful question so was Malcolm watering down his radicalism when he created the organization for afroamerican Unity an explicitly
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political organization no he was not was huie P Newton founder of the Black Panthers um watering
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down his radicalism when he ran for elected office not once but twice was huie P Newton some kind of
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sell out was quame T stokeley carmichel um a sellout when he advocated for organizing what
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what quami Tor said and by the way people don't know that stokeley carmichel petor was a direct student of of of Malcolm X Malcolm said we are not outnumbered we are out organized Malcolm
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argued explicitly for political organization as the basis of empowerment um for black people for
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Muslims for all colonized people and he was a supporter of those political movements that
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embodied that so what stoley carmichel did with this U with Malcolm's insights about organizing
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he said people usually mobilize around issues but revolutionaries organize against systems let me
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repeat that people usually mobilize around issues revolutionaries organized against systems so as a
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historian myself it is claim that successful modern revolutions always contain a kernel
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of political party organizing within them and the reason is is that no party is bigger than
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the movement the movement is bigger than any party but political parties allow um movement
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energy to be galvanized towards organizational and institutional expression it allows you to leverage
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power and you mentioned in the introduction that the first time I got on social media is true I
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didn't have an open a social media account before George Floyd was murdered um you know so the hund 40 whatever thousand followers on Instagram that's all since you know since 2020 well what
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happened in 2020 there was a mobilization around an issue and it swept the whole globe whole globe
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but no organizing against the system so then what happened the system responded to the fact
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that this was a moment and not a movement by more repression than before so police have killed more
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people in every subsequent year 2021 2022 2023 now 2024 they're they kill more people every year
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and now the cops that used to just beat up people like me and by the way I was stopped for driving W
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black never ticketed 17 times before I reached my 18th birthday an officer drew his service weapon
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and pointed it at my face on 36th and 10th on the south side of Minneapolis a few blocks away from
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where George Floyd would eventually be choked a couple decades later so I know the carceral state
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uphand on my own flesh and the reality is is that people did not organize against the system so now
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the brutality that used to be exercised just against people like me is now being extended to middle class kids on college campuses right because this police state is now defending the
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Imperial fascists abroad with Imperial fascism at home so so what do we think is going to
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happen as Muslims in this moment where Gaza has people on fire if do not have an organizational
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institutional structure for our resistance when these white liberals stop seeing babies blowing
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up on their phones do you think that they're going to be interested in divesting from the apartheid state or Palestinian Liberation no so we need to In This Moment organize for maximal
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political power and that means uh yes you take electoral Avenues but it also means that you
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do not foreclose on non electoral Avenues such as direct action boycotting divesting and sanctioning
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and of course as is plain I have made it plain I I said this in an interview on Middle East eye
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we never condemn the resistance of occupied people to their occupi somebody asked me um
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uh um uh uh how would Malcolm have responded you know to to our current moment I said we know how
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he would have answered the question do you condemn Hamas we know how Malcolm would have answered that
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and and and I'll just you know make my position plain I have said at countless times that that
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resistance on the part of occupied people that that's enshrined uh as a right in international
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law our obligations go beyond this because um we are it is not a right to resist um occupation it
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is a responsibility to resist occupation you are not permitted in our Dean to have someone
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if someone wants to enter your home and kidnap or violate your family members you are not allowed
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to just say um I have a right to resist but I'm going to forego that right to resist you have a
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responsibility to resist and the the jurist the the scholars understood this so that they were
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they only considered themselves absolved of that responsibility if certain formal requirements were
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met if you were outnumbered more than two to one on the field of battle or if casualty ratios were
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in that then you had an option where you could sue for peace or negotiate but below that threshold
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you are required to resist now that's really really good to hear actually it's really um
Green Party and Liberals
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reassuring to hear I uh I was speaking to a friend of mine he's a historian and uh he said something
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to me he said that but wear is too radical for the green party um think otherwise go ahead yeah well
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we we've got an equivalent we've got the we've got a green party I know they're not connected we've got a green party here and uh I spoke to a Muslim who's a member of the green party and he
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said you know it's full of uh you know well-to-do uh well healed white liberals who tend to not want
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controversy uh how much is the green party at the moment restraining your radicalism in no way is
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the green party restraining my radicalism when they when they made this invitation I said you
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guys do know who I yeah I said I said listen I'm going to give you 24 hours to reconsider
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this offer I need y'all to go ahead and run as much tape on me as you can um and you know good
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friend of mine hus jafer I did Instagram live live with them you know also uh you know a UK guy um
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he he he said you know we thought that when you got pulled into the politics we were suspicious because we thought you might mellow out and I'm like mellow out what like what what would I look
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like you know uh you know trying to embody the the legacy of Malcolm if I now turned around and and mellowed out so the first thing to say is that is that when I said this I said you guys better run
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tape on me they were like the campaign manager Jason call um Jill St he said he said no we know
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that's why we brought you on the campaign and Jill Jill said Jill Stein said absolutely and so Jill
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has been you know like um you know completely locks up and she also said if there are places
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where our platform does not go far enough then you let us know right so they've been open to you know
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to to to being responsive both to the concerns of the Muslims and to the concerns of those of
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us who are you know committed Anti-Imperialist I just have to say Dr Jill Stein is a committed Anti-Imperialist like in the best radical tradition I think that that the way the only
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way that I would argue um so I don't know about the green party in the UK but the green party in
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in the United States has almost no liberals in it um it has a lot of white progressives it has
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a lot of white um environmentalists white radicals the the older generation of green party leadership
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you know I think you know still reflects that demographically but politically it's not a party that has liberals in it um so that part we haven't had to do a lot of house cleaning in that in that
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respect because we know what Malcolm said you know about white liberals Malcolm said that the white liberal is a is a is a fox um you know that it that it Hunts by guile and cunning it Bears its
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teeth and you think that it's smiling but you are on the menu um so we have not had you know too many uh you know liberals white or otherwise to deal with in the green party so the green party
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has has really embraced um you know and and and has been willing to be pushed um and and
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just to be clear like the green party has run on a platform of reparations for the black community since 2012 the green party has run on a platform of full Liberation divestment um you know uh from
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from the aparte state in uh in in Palestine since 2006 um so so with respect to these major policy
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you know points of both domestic and um you know foreign policy um I I was actually surprised
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myself when you know because I knew about the green party uh growing up um one of my closest
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friends was a green party elected official in the City of Minneapolis so I knew about its local politics I did not understand the extent to which the green party was already standing at The
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Cutting Edge of Anti-Imperialist work that's really really reassuring to hear again um so
Green’s and social issues
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let's talk a little bit about uh the green party and the Muslim vote at at present um I think it's
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fair to say that you have captured the majority of Muslims it seems to me at least the active Muslims
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uh and I anecdotally I'm just picking that up for conversations I'm having through comments on my videos through uh through various means it just seems like Muslims are moving in the green
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Direction and we'll be voting green uh I do often get uh a response from Muslims who are voting
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green that they're ready to do so but they don't agree with all of the policy platforms of the
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green party and they tend to site more often than not the social platform of of the green parties
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can you address that for me please yeah yeah definitely I mean so so I had similar questions until I read the platform and that's that's when I realized that that that we didn't have a problem
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so so the first thing that I'll say before I get to the question of social issues is to talk about
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how consonant the green party platform already was with core Islamic ethical and spiritual values so
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at the end at the bottom of every poster you know Green Party will say people Planet peace right and
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the the formal platform of the green party since its foundation 40 years ago mallister College 1984
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in in uh in in minneap in Minnesota um you know next to my hometown second Hometown in Minneapolis
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was to they literally described themselves as stewards of these three things things the
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people the planet and the peace now in my online community spiritual intensives where I've taught
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from the West African uh Sufi tradition about how to tether together spirituality and social justice
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I have been teaching for the last four years without having any awareness of the green party platform about the notion of KFA stewardship in Islam and the principal things that we are uh uh
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uh question about our custodianship these things are the rights of the people the sanctity of human
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life the sanctity of the rights of human beings the planet like the the the Abomination that is
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the Saudi State we can talk about that in another you know uh uh place um but all of these you know
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Gulf polluters have been you know um what's the word um disavowing this fundamental responsibility
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that Muslims have to be stewards of our shared home as human beings our natural environment
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and especially as stewards of the peace and what because what we have is essentially the
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United States Empire which is the most dangerous Imperium ever to exist in human history I mean if
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we talked about Nimrod and pharaoh and the Roman emperors they would have all wet themselves at
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the prospect of surveillance capacity and death dealing capacity that the American Empire wakes
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up with every morning so so just to be clear um our responsibility our values as Muslims are first
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and foremost to be stewards of these three and those are precisely the core values of the green party so at the highest of levels there is direct consonant now with respect to the question that
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you asked about social issues and this is where I think people have a huge number of misconceptions
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in part because the green party is usually uh thought of as a party that is to the left of the
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Democrats to the left of Team blue and therefore thought of as on social issues then also being to
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the left of of Team blue whereas in point of fact the green party has played precisely no role of
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any kind in the culture war between liberals and conservatives as it has unfolded over the last
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30 plus years in American politics you can just look that up we're not there having an argument
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about lgbtq rights versus religious rights and the reason is is that the basic principle of
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the green party is that at age 18 when a a person that has political maturity in the United States
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of America they can live their life by whatever code they choose to live their life by and there
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is not a moral argument that you are supposed to be you know um accepting the way that someone else
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chooses to live their life as a core tenant of your value as a human being Muslims should choose
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to live their life by the code that they choose Christians should choose the Life by the code that they choose atheists agnostics whoever that is and that the role of of an actual uh de uh democracy
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the leadership in an actual Dem democracy is not to stoke Warfare in order to site fear between
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people that choose to live their lives differently but is to create a safe space in the public
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environment for everybody's choices on how they live their life to be respected and for no one
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to get prejudicial treatment one way or the other and when I want to put a fine point on this to the musl Muslim Community I just often point out that from from the standpoint of you know uh of certain
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secular humanists right there is a demonization of the institution of polygamy correct it it can be
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represented from their standpoint as deviants they can frame it however they want the green party um
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is there to protect the rights of people who will live by whatever code that they have chosen for
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themselves and to not impose that on other people so when Muslims sometimes get exercised about lgbtq issues I remind them of a few simple facts the first is is that non-muslims are not required
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to live by the Sharia of Islam so what non-muslims do in their bedrooms is none of our damn business
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that's number one two no sin puts a believing person outside the fold of Islam therefore if
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you are a person um who constructs um homosexual uh Behavior as a sin according to the tradition
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kind of Juris Prudential rulings of Islam and I'll be blunt about this I will be explicit about this
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is that I have never come ac across a plausible juristic ruling that suggests that the sin of
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the people of lot is anything other than what we presume it to be but at the same time as all of my
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teachers my West African teachers have taught me no sin puts a believing person outside the fold of
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Islam therefore it is not our position to chase such people away or any other such thing rather
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it is to create an environment that that Fosters safety for for all so mus non-muslims are not a
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problem and now the Muslims are also not a problem so then the question becomes do you want the state
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probing into your private bedroom Affairs in your polygamous household or in your monogamous
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household for that matter well then stay out of other folks bedrooms too that that is the basic
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you know position and when you understand that the green party has played no role in stoking
30:32
this culture War you realize that you are actually being a given a vehicle that allows you better
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expression of your values and ethics as a Muslim and more importantly a vice presidential candidate
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that has sat with Scholars I do not advertise this this fact but I have traditional authorizations
30:52
from Scholars for texts I don't run on that basis that's not the basis on which I would
30:58
govern but the point is is what is better to have someone in a position of power that is capable of
31:04
understanding and defending Muslim sensibilities or to have someone who uh in in power who has
31:10
no even awareness of the intricacies of those I know that not everyone is going to have the same
31:16
understandings of you know Islamic jurist Prudence that I have been trained with both as an academic
31:21
and as a as a student of knowledge but the prophet Alam is reported to have said dis agreement in my
31:28
um is a mercy from God so I'm there to defend those that might see things otherwise and to
31:34
create a public space wherein the rights of all people of faith and people of conscience
31:39
are respected um and to contribute in no way to this toxic environment of a culture War and the
31:45
last thing that I'll say on that is that so many Muslims do not understand the way the extent to
31:51
which their Consciousness has been poisoned by right-wing rhetoric yeah that's I think that's a
Uyghurs and foreign policy
31:57
really comprehensive answer jazak thank you for for answering it in in that way can I then ask you
32:03
about foreign policy positions now you said that Jill Stein and the green party have a very strong
32:08
Anti-Imperialist uh history and they take very strong positions on on imperialism in particular
32:15
American imperialism but does that commitment to be Anti-Imperialist and anti-American foreign
32:21
policy or anti-empire does that commitment come at the cost of sometimes siding with
32:28
groups and countries who are persecuting Muslims I mean I I think I got a satisfactory answer on
32:33
the Syria question from Joe Stein but the oers I mean there was a an interview that went around of
32:39
course Medi Hassan sent it around because it it it uh it corroborates his agenda his pro-democratic
32:46
agenda for sure but nevertheless his Pro his Pro he Med Med Hassan believes that you that you can
32:53
oppose a genocide and support the genocider which is which is which is a kind of Madness that I
32:59
have no ability to Fathom but go ahead continue sorry yeah no no I I I completely agree but it's
33:04
illogical completely illogical but let's just talk about the Wagers um in your mind uh are the Wagers
33:11
being persecuted you know or even genocided I I would suggest and are they been placed into
33:17
concentration camps or is this some sort of CIA plot uh to you know to to restrict the uh the
33:24
appetites of a rising power China yeah so so I'll go back to the beginning of the question and then
33:30
and then answer the final part so so the overall framing of anti-imperialism is crucial before we
33:36
get to the second part of the question I'll just say this um before I was brought onto the campaign I hosted uh Dr Jill on an Instagram live that I did and I asked her specifically I said I'm not
33:45
gonna ask you questions about Palestine because all of my Palestinian colleagues both in AA the
33:52
West Bank abroad here in the US have been pushing me towards East I'm not going to ask uh sorry
33:57
about that I'm not going to ask questions about about that I want to ask you about overall view for American foreign policy and her answer stunned me she said my view for American foreign policy is
34:06
to dismantle the American Empire great and I said yeah you better hurry up and do it quick
34:12
before somebody does it for you right that that if you take those $1.3 trillion doar that are now
34:18
spent annually on the War Machine and instead put that into housing Affordable Health Care all of
34:23
the social programs that Americans need you can cut Americans taxes and still give them better
34:28
social programming than before you can build not a Utopia but a functioning Society whereas if you
34:35
continue to squander that wealth on dealing death throughout the Imperium then somebody bricks for
34:44
example um is going to take your Empire away from you and and that can lead to a kind of collapse
34:51
into fascism which we are witnessing under both teams blue and team red so the first thing is just
34:56
to say and to affirm that there has never been a more dangerous dealer of death than the American
35:02
Empire and that our aim is to is to dismantle that Empire so that the American state survives and so
35:10
that the resources of the American state can be put at the disposition of the American people and that the globe will become a safer place when the United States is no longer the Death Star because
35:21
that's essentially what we are we point beams and Destroy whole worlds we destroyed Iraq we
35:27
destroyed Afghanistan destroyed Palestine we are the Death Star and if you have responsible
35:34
moral adults with intelligence and integrity then you can dismantle that weapon of death
35:39
and instead put all of those resources towards the construction of life and livelihood now to the question with the Wagers yeah this is a a an issue it is not a fundamental issue inside the
35:51
green party it is more of an issue that affects the the Socialists and the Communists because
35:57
there is a strong authoritarian tendency they're glossed sometimes as tankies um and it's it's a
36:04
reference to you know whether you agree with the the decision I think that Stalin made um
36:10
to to to use tanks against his own citizens to put down a popular Uprising um these are people
36:16
that will defend um authoritarians as long as they happen to be socialists or Communists as long as
36:24
they happen to be anti- capitalist um and opposed to us Empire so the first thing to just to say is
36:31
that I'm not going to waste my time arguing with Tanki so let's put that part aside right the the
36:37
the the question about weager specifically is uh one of those situations where both things can be
36:44
true and and some of the so-called leftists refuse to accept that something can be blown
36:51
out of proportion and weaponized um by CIA intelligence and Cor corupt liberal press and
37:01
also be true on the basis of facts on the ground those things can both be true at the same time
37:07
and in fact they often are but the unfortunate logic is that people are uh concluding that the
37:14
enemy of my enemy is my friend therefore I have to treat but whereas in in reality sometimes you
37:21
got two enemies right the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend and as somebody that has lived in Africa for extensive periods I speak the wallof language fluently speak the
37:30
colonial language of of of French fluently um and and by the way sagol where I did most of my field
37:35
research and have lived for years is a socialist country and they will be the first people to tell you that Chinese Capital while not violent in its domineering nature is nonetheless capitalist and
37:47
extractive in the way that it engages with the African continent Chinese are not infallible the
37:54
Chinese Communist party is not really communist it is capitalist in the way that it organizes much of
38:01
its activities at home and abroad last thing to say with respect to the Wagers we as Muslims all
38:07
know Wagers who who who who will tell us directly face Toof face their experiences of persecution
38:14
their experiences of being oppressed whether you call it um in a genocide in the the post that that
38:21
got the tankies mad at me was that I referred to to to the Wagers in the overall context of
38:27
genocidal oppression and I think that that is a fitting um you know title for what weager face and
38:36
by the way this is not a controversial position and it is not drawn from any Western sources I've never read any of those media accounts nor those CIA statements they inform my opinion and nothing
38:47
I'm an academic I served on a search committee where we hired uh uh historian historians of
38:53
China so and they were all Chinese candidates by the way those Chinese candidates write and talk
39:00
about Han Supremacy Han Chinese Supremacy as being more virulent and dangerous in China than white
39:07
supremacy is in America and the reason is that on an ethnic basis thead make up something like 91%
39:14
of the total population of China so that both the wayy and weager Muslims as well as Tibetan
39:20
Buddhists and others that don't conform to the kind of or in the case of the Wei they conform
39:25
to the ethnic basis but not the religious BAS basis of the kind of uh normative um identity
39:31
of the state that they are always living under circumstances of persecution and that by the way is a matter of fact simple academic conclusion that these so-called leftists apparently have
39:42
never read any books on the subject they nor have they had any conversation with actual Wagers as
39:49
Muslims we all have and as an academic I've read multiple Works including doctoral dissertations on these subjects is not a controversial from uh statement for me to say that Muslims have
39:59
been systematically disadvantaged and oppressed and subjected to genocidal practices for over a
40:05
thousand years yeah no I think that's a really clear answer um actually as you were talking
His political leanings
40:12
there I was I was thinking I mean you you've talked about the tankes and the leftist so where do you fit in terms of your politics like would you self-describe as someone who
40:21
is a socialist or is a leftist like how would you describe where you are my entire life I have been
40:28
an anti- capitalist um from the beginning um you know I organized a Pana africanist reading group
40:35
at the University of Minnesota when I was 18 or 19 years old um called Africa's progyny for Global power that this would I mean literally from the beginning and I was we reading Walter
40:44
Rodney um I was reading um you know the the the um African socialists you know quame and kruma seur
40:52
and others I I I learned French early on and read the French revolutionaries in their um in their
40:57
original languages whenever I could for me I don't so just to be clear about this and
41:03
this is I think why people find me difficult to place if you read my first academic book the walkin Quran you will find not a single reference to any Western theorist in the book
41:15
I do not take my categorial thinking from white supremacist categories at any level I refuse to
41:23
so I actually do not in my own thinking situate my own politics on a left to right political Spectrum
41:32
Malcolm didn't think about it or talk about it that way he never used that language he talked about liberals and conservatives he did not talk about left and right okay um for specific reasons
41:44
and though he has been claimed by many um you know socialists Communists marxists Malcolm
41:51
was not in point of fact a socialist communist or Marxist he was explicit in his rejection of
41:57
that framing as descriptive of reality because I think that Malcolm was similarly ideological res
42:04
ideologically resistant to the idea of taking some white European man as the the the founder
42:09
of his his way of thinking so for for my own personal politics have always been radically
42:16
anti- capitalist but as a believing and practicing Muslim I I and I use by the way the analytical
42:22
tools that come from marxian analysis all of the time especially when they come from colonized and
42:28
third world populations but I never consider that the kind of um doctrinaire Marxist positions as
42:37
being foundational for me in in any way um I I find a basic flaw actually um in much of the
42:46
articulation and as as a Muslim it's a relatively simple and straightforward one so linguistically
42:53
and analytically uh the anti antithesis to a thing must always contain the thesis antithesis right so
43:03
the the thing is is when you craft an antithesis you have to respond in the terms of the original
43:10
argument otherwise you do not win the original argument and what we often find in Marxist
43:16
analysis is that the values of capitalism are deeply threaded within them they're just simply
43:21
inverted they're turned into an antithesis and that's the reason part of the reason why what
43:27
we often find is uh that so-called socialists or so-called Communist States actually end up with
43:36
capitalist structures under State control rather than under control of the Bourgeois so that's a
43:45
a structural problem and it inheres in the kind of dialectic relationship just of of these are basics
43:51
of philosophy right that the thesis the antithesis must require must also contain the thesis secondly
43:57
because the thesis of marxist capitalist analysis is uh um it is it is materialist and what I mean
44:07
by that is that it has no metaphysics it takes as real only that which is empirically verifiable
44:16
and as Muslims we must therefore reject it as the basis of our ontological understandings we
44:23
can use and I encourage us to use it's analytical category for thinking critically about capitalism
44:30
but no system that is purely materialist as a philosophical system is capable of actual um
44:37
metaphysical Transcendence meaning um so so the and by the way stokeley car also quame T pointed
44:45
this out quame T said that when Mark said that religion is the opiate for the masses that was
44:51
only he said this that was only accurate for Europe he said that throughout the indigenous
44:59
World throughout the African World throughout the Asian world that the the spiritual traditions of
45:05
those places were emancipatory Radical tra uh uh traditions and that the struggle against
45:13
imperialism and against capitalist exploitation in the non-european world was always a spiritual
45:20
struggle not just the material one and that that way of thinking is much closer to my own personal
45:27
thinking now again at running for the executive branch my own personal thinking informs the way
45:34
that you approach policy but it does not determine it because it's not your personal thinking that you are there to represent you're there to represent the interests of the the people and of
45:44
the collective but when asked what my own personal thinking and approach is that is you know in in a
45:50
in a five minute sketch the kind of philosophical basis of it do you think Muslims in America could
Can Muslims work independently
45:56
organize themselves independently around this philosophy I don't think that it's necessary
46:02
that we do so I I think that that part of what the green party is offering is and let's just be be
46:09
clear about this and explicit about this um the green party is providing the the material based
46:16
the the the the increase in fundraising capacity organizational capacity political prominence that
46:22
the green party is experiencing in this electoral cycle which will exceed any electoral achievements
46:29
even in the nater era for sure that is all being bullied by the Muslims and with a Muslim as the
46:36
VP and a very particular kind of Muslim as the VP like a a Muslim that is steeped in the black
46:41
radical tradition and I think that it is partially because I am both very Muslim and very black and
46:48
very radical I sorry I said both but I'm all I'm all of those things um that it has helped to
46:54
crystallize what is going to happen in this moment in the next moment which is that the Muslims don't
46:59
have to create their own we have organizations we have care we have you know and we have
47:08
others what we are being essentially get given an opportunity to do is to have Islamic ethics values
47:16
and Leadership provide the driving force for the third largest political party in the United
47:23
States of America the Muslims are being handed the keys and and and let me just make this clear the
47:31
Muslims are also being presented with exactly the same crisis therefore exactly the same opportunity
47:38
EXA exactly the same dilemma that the American Jewish Community faced after World War II how
47:44
do you respond to a genocide against your people and they they responded in an insular way driven
47:52
by ethn religious nationalism to Say Never Again to my people right and they responded with APAC we
47:59
do not need a Muslim version of APAC what we need is Muslims providing ethical leadership spiritual
48:08
leadership moral Clarity um in a cohesive movement of Anti-Imperialist forces that are actually about
48:17
restoring representative government to the people make America work for everyone um and
48:25
so the Muslims have this incredible opportunity now right to provide moreal leadership and we are
48:31
providing that like we you mentioned the numbers it's not just the plurality it is now a majority
48:38
of American Muslims that say that they're going to vote are saying that they're going to vote for the green party and what it means is that this is the First Community in uh in the United States of
48:48
America to say no in coin of fact genocide is our red line and everyone that wants to follow us that
48:57
build community with us um and and we are going to you know to to bring in those progressives those
49:03
radicals but I've made it this explicit we are now in two separate polls we are pulling more Trump
49:09
voters than we are uh Harris voters I mean most of our voters are going to be people that wouldn't
49:14
have voted at all but we are now pulling more Trump voters than than Harris voters according to to a number of measures and the reason for that is is that all of the issues that the green party is
49:24
running on are 7030 or 80 twit 20 issues for the American people so the last part of my answer to
49:29
your question is that when I see the future of the green party I do not see a leftist party on this
49:36
you know kind of Fringe left what I see is two separate framings if we were to borrow Malcolm's
49:42
framing I see liberal extremists on one side and conservative extremists on the other side and I
49:48
see a green verdant path right down the middle on 70 30 80 20 issues that are of concern to
49:55
all of the American people see the green party as a Centrist movement not in the compromising
50:04
way that that term is usually used but if you are responding to to to the the concerns and questions
50:10
of 70% of the American population that want to C Spar then you are in the middle now if we wanted
50:17
to borrow instead of Malcolm's you know kind of non-denominational you know framing if we wanted to use this left to right Spectrum we're still centrists and and the reason is in that framing
50:28
both the Democrats and the Republicans are so far to the right that they're off practically off the
50:35
scale entirely I mean just think about the fact that Ronald Reagan in 1982 racist devil that he
50:41
was remember he said that a that he he he was caught on tape talking to Richard Nixon about African uh dignitaries that visit visited The Wine House he called them monies and
50:50
said that this was the first time they ever wore shoes and Suits but and that blackhearted devil
50:57
nonetheless knew to call monam Bean in 1982 and he called what the the Zionist entity was doing
51:04
in Lebanon a holocaust explicitly comparing it to the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people and
51:11
within 24 hours that Holocaust was ended because Reagan didn't just threaten an arms embargo he
51:18
threatened to cut off relations that was Ronald Reagan he's a monster that Joe Biden and kamla
51:28
Harris 40 years later have let a genocide linger for a full year they are incapable of even that so
51:35
that means that Reagan was here and now today's Democrats and Republicans are literally off the
51:41
map to the right we're still a Centrist party because the green party is responding to what
51:48
every American wants none of them want their tax dollars to use to be used to blow up babies they
51:54
all want those tax dollars to be used instead to lower income tax provide affordable housing
52:00
Health Care they none of them want corporate uh domination in our politics none of them
52:06
want money to determine who wins elections these are all right down the-middle issues and and you
52:13
know I've already made this clear that now that I've been tagged into this fight with the green party I'm not coming out of if we don't land that knockout punch I am running immediately for the
52:23
nomination in 2028 for for to to run at the top of the presidential uh ticket and running for
52:29
governor of the state of California for for in the midterms in November 2026 I am not letting the Muslim Community or this Coalition that we have been able to build I'm not going to let us
52:39
stop organizing because I know what is going to happen if we stop organizing fantastic um I have
Voting for Trump
52:47
come across Muslims who are with you actually in punishing the Democrats you've made it very clear
52:53
that uh voting for the Democrats is untenable it's unacceptable and I completely agree with you what
52:58
would you say to those Muslims who are teetering they're thinking about voting for Trump just to
53:04
uh solidify that anti-genocide vote because of course when you vote for Trump you've got two votes right you've got you're taken away from the Democrats and you adding to Trump whereas
53:13
when you vote for the green party you've basically got one vote because you're taken away normally anyway from the Democrats and you're add in it's the I think it's actually the opposite of the way
53:22
that it's normally framed and the reason is is that if you vote for Trump you just get thrown with the racist and the Rednecks to be perfectly honest about it um whereas if you vote for the
53:32
green party you can actually begin to develop the institutional strength in the third party
53:37
alternative so let's say you're not persuaded by the way that I just laid out the green party platform and its consonant with Islamic values and you still think that a conservative quote
53:46
unquote option is the better option for you 70% of American Independents 53% of American
53:53
Democrats 40% of American Republicans say that what we need is an independent third
53:59
party because teams blue and team uh teams blue and red are so bad at their jobs so the way that
54:06
you can actually create change is by investing in the the the the growth of that third party
54:11
which is us we are the only third party that is available as an option to voters for 95% of the
54:18
voters in the United States of America we're the only one that's actually capable of reaching the
54:23
5% threshold in this upcoming election which would guarantee us uh perhaps as much as $60 million um
54:31
in order to to to to run the next election in 2028 it would um guarantee us ballot access
54:37
across the country not in every state but in the overwhelming majority of states to this point in time almost half of our budget in the first 10 months of running just came to try to secure a
54:47
ballot access so it would allow us to clear the Batton access hurdle right from the beginning and here's the best part it would give us a debate I mean IM imagine you know imagine it's 2028
55:03
um and they let you know um either Dr Jill Stein or myself um anywhere near that stage and I mean
55:10
I'll be blunt about this we don't talk about this a lot it's it's not appropriate to talk about it before the election but Dr Jill came out of retirement to run this cycle we've had these
55:20
conversations it's very unlikely that she would run in 2028 unless she's running for reelection
55:27
right now that that is a very different Prospect but what that what that means is that that the
55:33
and and I've heard this from you know green party you know organizations on the ground that you are
55:38
right now talking essentially to the presumptive nominee of the green party for 20128 which means
55:43
that they gonna owe me a presidential debate and man they do not want no part of that presidential
55:49
debate and and the reason is is that the American people are not fools the American people have been
55:55
fooled right they have been conditioned to think that there are only these two choices
56:02
when and that's the reason why they've you know attacked Dr Jill tried to smear her that that's why they're now trying to smear me is that there is a marked difference between candidates with
56:14
intelligence and integrity like us and corrupt mediocre politicians because let us be clear
56:22
Donald Trump is Donald Trump could not pass any class that I have ever taught at any University he
56:29
is dumb as a box of sticks okay and that's just obvious JD Vance in uh insanely mediocre as a
56:38
human being because privilege protects mediocrity Kam Harris as well what has K Harris ever won
56:46
she is a miserable ineffective candidate she's a joke Vatican smoke signals went up anointing her
56:56
her she did not win a single nomination for that office so these are fraudulent flawed candidates
57:06
and if they had let Dr Jill on a debate stage during this cycle which they were terrified of
57:12
she would have been able to say this one here team red is a domestic terrorist and a convicted felon
57:22
this one here is a war criminal because the ICC and icj concluded that that the aarid state of
57:30
uh I won't even call it Israel Israel is a name of Honor in the Quran the Zionist entity is an
57:36
illegal apartheid state conducting a genocide in the midst of an illegal occupation um anybody that
57:42
provides material support to such is actually in point in fact a war criminal and they want no part
57:50
of us having the the ears of the American people which is why they tried to sue to keep us off the ballot the the crazy part is is because I was in the academic world and had no interest and in the
57:59
community teaching world and had no interest in politics they never saw me coming they did not ban Tik Tok fast enough and they did not you know get to my social media account fast enough
58:10
because now that I've been tagged into this fight especially in a position where I can represent
58:15
the values and aspirations of both the Muslim Community and the the the the community that is
58:20
anti-colonial Anti-Imperialist and has longed for you know Liberation for five centuries now
58:26
I am not putting down this sword I'm going to keep fighting until we get to Freedom can I turn to um
George Floyd
58:33
George Floyd I remember um Yahya senoir in fact he drew a parallel between George Floyd and the
58:41
Palestinians I mean did that resonate with you and the in particular the black community there
58:46
in the United States 100% um I posted you know um a graphic and I'm forgetting the name of the
58:53
incredibly talented artist that did this um but he essentially you know uh uh ju the pose image
58:59
of a American police officer in blue with his knee on George Floyd's neck um with an iof um you know
59:06
soldier with his knee on a Palestinian neck um and you know we know that it's not just that
59:12
the that our you know um police state repressive police forces here in the United States of America
59:17
are often trained by the the Israeli occupation forces but it has always in point of fact been so before it was Israel it was South Africa um and that the the the the apar state of South
59:29
Africa trained a lot of the police and tested a lot of the weapons that were then used on black communities throughout the the the 80s so there was been there's been a profound resonance um in
59:39
that and you've seen black people um not just people of color generally black people at the
59:44
Forefront of a lot of these campus protests at the Forefront a lot a lot of this movement there
59:49
has been a rift you know essentially because KLA Harris's campaign is attempted to try to
59:54
weaponize Black black Ness um in support of a white supremacist genocide um and I've spoken
1:00:01
about the the kind of massive betrayal that is not just of the black radical tradition but of
1:00:07
Blackness itself because African-American identity black identity comes into being in response to
1:00:15
white supremacist domination I mean you got to understand as a historian I've studied this you you're talking about people that spoke of hundreds of different languages coming from you know many
1:00:25
were Muslims many were um there were congales Christians many practitioners of traditional African religions speaking hundreds of different languages on plantations throughout the US South
1:00:35
but also in Northern cities people forget that slavery was widespread throughout the northern colonies until the American Revolutionary War and it died out slowly thereafter all of these
1:00:44
people coming from different backgrounds united only by the slur you know of you know negro negro
1:00:53
you know I won't say the other one you know on on on on this CU I I don't I want you to be able to
1:00:58
to keep up your monetization you know on your YouTube channel because if I say the other one they you know they they they'll cut it right but that's what we were called and never before in
1:01:09
human history had people that came from so many different backgrounds united only by this system
1:01:16
of Oppression made themselves into one people Blackness is in and of itself a miracle and it
1:01:24
is a miracle that was defined in opposition to white supremacy so what could be more perverse
1:01:32
than now having Blackness weaponized in service of white supremacy and and if we have any questions
1:01:39
about Zionism as being white supremacy in its foundation brilliant doctoral dissertation by
1:01:45
MAA alhassan was the one that taught me this is that she she actually went through Malcolm's field notes and and after he had spent time in Palestine hunas and other is he wrote in his
1:01:57
notes he said this is a white Jewish population being empowered by white imperialist authorities
1:02:03
to move Brown Arabs off of their ancestral lands nakum said in in so many words that Zionism is
1:02:11
white supremacy and if you understand Zionism as wank Supremacy then you understand what we
1:02:16
are actually all struggling against my my wife for examples Mexican Amer um the IM immigration
1:02:23
policies of the United States of America are white supremacist uh policies um and her people
1:02:30
um have to fight back against white supremacy as my people have to fight against white supremacy is your people as any apostate as any you know light-skinned quote unquote white apostate from
1:02:40
white supremacy also has to fight back against white supremacy as well when you understand that
1:02:45
our shared enemy is white supremacy imperialism fascism capitalist exploitation then we are so
1:02:53
much more numerous than our opponents are and and I'll end that you know kind of discursus with this
1:03:00
point from Malcolm what did Malcolm say he said two things he said never let your enemy tell you
1:03:07
how many of you there are never let the man you are against form your opinions for you we have
1:03:17
internalized this idea that we are friends that we are weak that we are small no we are not weak
1:03:24
we are not few in number we are definitely not outnumbered we are out organized and my goal is
1:03:30
to do everything that I can to bring this you know power Coalition um into being uh of course Barack
Fascism in US
1:03:37
Obama uh made a comment the other day about Muslim voters and the consequence of voting for Trump or
1:03:44
voting for a third party and enabling Trump to come to office and he painted a picture of a
1:03:50
world which would be far worse uh the Democrats that have banded around the fword a fascist
1:03:56
were describing Donald Trump I mean how would you respond to these claims that U life will become
1:04:04
far more Fierce and difficult for Muslims for black Americans if Donald Trump comes to power I
1:04:10
mean so there's there's two sort of basic you know um uh answers to this the first is to just debunk
1:04:16
the basic premise of the question so the first thing to understand is that the Democrats have
1:04:22
already lost the election and they know that they have already lost the election you're confident about that no they they know that it's happened so they know that we are not taking votes away they
1:04:32
know that unless you elect the green party Trump has already won and the reason is is that when I joined the campaign I immediately got access to a bunch of polling information that I didn't have
1:04:42
access to before and it's clear that that as as early as January of 2024 the Democrats knew that
1:04:49
they were going to lose the election and here's how they knew is that Institute for social policy
1:04:55
and understanding named Dalia mahad presented me with the data as soon as I joined the campaign in August in 2020 Joe Biden in the swing states of Georgia Michigan and Pennsylvania and those three
1:05:06
states by the way demographically with respect to the African-American population Muslim population and so forth are basically the same state they have the same kind of basic demographic makeup
1:05:16
so Joe Biden in those three swing States and he needed every one of them you know to win um
1:05:22
he got 65% of the the Muslim vote he was ping at 12% in the Muslim Community in January 2024 wow
1:05:30
dead man walking and they have known at least since January that they were never going to be
1:05:37
able to reassemble the Coalition that got them the that election and that's why they've been coming
1:05:42
after black voters so aggressively um because they know that they have no hopes of putting
1:05:49
that Coalition back together but they forgot that black Muslims are the largest single ethnic group
1:05:55
in the American Muslim Community so that that that you are never going to get black Muslims
1:06:01
on board with this genocidal uh um you know um campaign so just to be clear the most recent
1:06:09
data from yaken Institute you know shows what what um how much worse things have gotten for
1:06:14
them um this was almost a month ago now where they were showing that 53% of the Muslims they
1:06:20
surveyed were planning on voting third party with over 80% of those coming to us 14 15% for Kamala
1:06:26
4% for Trump so the reality is is that listen Jews don't vote for Nazis and Muslims are not
1:06:35
going to vote for Democrats you don't vote for the people that Holocaust you and so that and
1:06:41
that's the reason why the Democrats have made this last second appeal to try to get Republican voters on board with people like Dick Cheney and L Cheney and so forth because they know
1:06:52
that they have no hopes of any kind of winning this election with the Electoral constituency
1:06:59
that they have before they're dead um so the first part of the answer to your question is
1:07:05
you can sleep comfortably at night knowing that they caused their own demise and you did not
1:07:11
you should vote your conscience vote for where you want your name on the L because understand
1:07:19
that if you choose to write your name next to the party that genocided your people you have
1:07:25
in Essence signed your name next to Pharaoh well what happened to the people of pharaoh the people
1:07:32
that stood next to him were washed away with the flood but Pharaoh was a hereditary Monarch the
1:07:38
people did not elect him and yet just by standing next to him they were destroyed what will be the
1:07:44
Fate on the day of Judgment of a people who enter into a Ballot Box and positively affirm that they
1:07:51
choose the people that slaughtered bear brothers and sisters in the third holiest place on the
1:07:59
planet for Muslims it is a catastrophic decision from a religious standpoint every single human
1:08:09
being that has been maned or lost their life unjustly in that war now has a potential claim
1:08:16
against you on the day of judgment because you have participated in whatever crime was
1:08:22
committed against them because you have positively endorsed and affirmed it and you've said more
1:08:27
please now with respect to the Spectre of so-called fascism and Trump fascism is already
1:08:36
here these are democratic Governors Democratic Mayors Democratic cities that have been building
1:08:42
these cop cities and sending Riot troops in the hundreds to suppress your constitutionally
1:08:49
protected rights of speech and assembly fascism is here and it is better for these people to
1:08:59
have a red fascist than a blue fascist because at least when there's a red fascist the Liberals are
1:09:05
afraid when there's a blue fascist the Liberals will cut your throat and tell you it's for your
1:09:14
best because those other guys are dangerous it is a kind of collective Madness if we want to
1:09:21
make it quranic cuz we're on the thinking Muslim how did F keep the people under control he had
1:09:29
magicians that had them Spellbound well who are The Magicians that have the people Spellbound
1:09:36
AB accepting these absurd arguments they are the media companies MSNBC running cover and carrying
1:09:44
water for team Blue Fox News running cover and carrying water for team red CNN running
1:09:50
cover and carrying water for the 1% as a whole and they tell you over and over again that the
1:09:55
despite the fact that all the American people say that we need a new third party you can't vote for
1:10:00
them they might not win it's a kind of collective Insanity because we've been propagandized over
1:10:07
and over and over again to just accept these two corporate murderous parties as the only
1:10:13
option that we have the reality is is that they're both the same party they're just they're purple
1:10:19
fascist they're a mix of blue and red they they have 99% the same name donors APAC and the war
1:10:27
machine there is a 1% marginal difference between the the Christian Evangelical nationalists which
1:10:35
support team red only and lgbtq U extremists that want to indoctrinate everyone with their
1:10:42
own philosophical um uh Moray as the the the supporting the other parts so there is this
1:10:48
Skirmish between these two identity camps Each of which is trying to propagandize the other
1:10:55
no you have to accept a Christian definition that life begins at conception which by the way
1:11:01
no muslim jurist ever believed no mus it kills me when Muslims get Tethered to these uh right-wing
1:11:10
Christian talking points about life beginning at conception when every single Muslim jurist that
1:11:16
I've ever read said that the insulants of a human being takes place after 120 days and that the the
1:11:25
the jurist used to say about this question of abortion which was known that uprooting a dates
1:11:33
a seed is not the same as uprooting a date palm I've got one final question for you um uh Dr we
1:11:40
and that's really about the American Empire I mean today we've spoken a lot about dismantling the American Empire dismantling this Imperium and of course um Muslims around the world have have
Dismantling Empire
1:11:52
feared very badly uh with this Empire and its its propensity to deep militancy to violence um we saw
1:12:02
over a million dying in Iraq and War on Terror and we we're seeing that continuing in in Gaza
1:12:07
and in Palestine and if this is all connected to the American Empire are we ever going to see the end of this Empire like will we see the end of this Empire In Our Lifetime like how how
1:12:18
realistic is it to to dismantle this Imperium so so across all of our Fai and philosophies
1:12:26
as human beings there is one universal truth that unites them all all Empires fall all Empires fall
1:12:37
right go to the end of Sur and God asked this you know question of qu have you not wandered in the earth and seen the ruins of those who were more more exalted in power and wealth than
1:12:47
you were do you see any sight of them now or hear so much as a peep from them it's a Stern warning
1:12:55
and that is also true across secular philosophies no Imperial power can with uh can uh retain that
1:13:03
power where are the Builders of the pyramids now where are the Builders of the Roman Coliseum now
1:13:10
so the the problem that we as you know Muslims and we as formerly colonized people have is that we
1:13:18
have internalized the chains of our oppressors we struggle as though defeating the the Empire
1:13:25
is impossible whereas in point of fact the fall of the Empire is inevitable inevitable the most
1:13:35
important question is what will replace this Fallen Empire and that's why I'm always focused
1:13:40
on those social policies and leading with our ethics and our values rather than Vengeance and
1:13:46
retribution because I'm thinking about the kind of society that we want to live in post American
1:13:51
Empire in the world of language they say the child of Adam not release what their hand is holding
1:13:57
until they're reaching for something better right we have to be reaching for society that's better
1:14:03
than this Imperium because this Imperium is in point of fact doomed it is not uh impossible
1:14:11
it is inevitable so the then the question then becomes well then how do you usher in this new
1:14:17
age what what do you do well Dr Jill Stein has already talked about this there are 800 military
1:14:23
installations of the US Empire throughout the globe 700 of them serve no tactical or strategic
1:14:30
function they are just you know artifacts of Empire that continue to antagonize the world
1:14:36
with the marks of American imperialism right she said that within the first year you can get 700 of those out that leaves a hundred that have strategic importance and you make the world safe
1:14:49
um you know from us and for us um you know by by by phased negotiated withdrawals from those
1:14:57
places to create a multi-polar world the truth is is that I think part of the reason why we're
1:15:03
drawing more Republican voters than Democrat voters and according to some uh polling now is
1:15:08
that the so-called conservatives already perceive the futility of you know wasting money and you
1:15:17
know American lives trying to fight fruitless Wars in foreign countries as they would frame it around
1:15:25
the the the the world um that those get Americans killed and they don't do anything except make the
1:15:30
shareholders at halberton or Ron or Lockheed Martin or Boeing or General Dynamics richer um
1:15:39
so the the the end of this Empire is is within sight and the last thing that I'll just say
1:15:45
about this as as a historian right why has the Middle East you know and the broad Middle East
1:15:52
you know stretching from West Africa through North Africa into East Africa the lands of the Muslims let's just be blunt about this lands of of Muslim majorities from the time that Columbus first set
1:16:04
sail people forget that Columbus's first Journeys were off the West African Coast before he sailed
1:16:09
um West to go East they were trying to find a way around the Muslims so that they could control what
1:16:17
had always been the most lucrative sources of Commerce in human history those they connected
1:16:23
the Muslim world and for 500 years a white supremacist imperialist capitalist system has
1:16:30
kept Muslims and the globe under its subjugation first dominated by the Spanish then the Portuguese
1:16:39
then the Dutch then the French then the British and then after World War II by the United States
1:16:44
of America five centuries of white supremacist global domination that era is over it is finished
1:16:55
a new day is Dawning and America will either be um an irrelevant I hate to say this um you know
1:17:05
former you know uh uh Empire you know still drunk on its past Glory the way that Britain
1:17:11
is I mean I I I saw an epic take down you know of of of you know Britain by by Chinese Diplomat he
1:17:18
was like why would we think of them as equals like like what why who wait are you're talking
1:17:25
about the United king United Kingdom like who are they like have them talk to my door man
1:17:31
is basically the way that that that that China did and that is what is coming for the United States of America unless its leadership Embraces the idea that it still has if not the first then
1:17:45
at least the second you know largest and most powerful economy still has this incredible you
1:17:51
know military capacity that could be used to keep the World safe and secure as it withdraws from
1:17:57
its previous imper those are tactical chips that you can use to keep people safe from the other
1:18:04
Mad Men in the world right because we do have other people with you know crazy imperialist
1:18:09
aspirations you know through throughout the globe the United States of America just by withdrawing
1:18:17
from its Imperial fantasies and instead using its resources to actually meet the needs of its people
1:18:25
could provide a model for all of humanity and with me in the white house either as vice president or
1:18:35
eventually as president and preferably both you have my word that if they put the sun in my right
1:18:43
hand and the Moon in my left I would not desist from my lifelong mission of trying to live true
1:18:50
to the values of this religion and true to the values of the black liberatory and emancipatory
1:18:56
tradition which has brought so much to the Muslims who have always you know looked up to Muhammad Ali
1:19:03
who have always looked up to Malcolm X and to be frank about this the Muslim immigrant community in
1:19:08
the United States of America is largely present because of the 1965 Immigration Act which was
1:19:14
born through the Civil Right struggles of black people this is a way for our community to become
1:19:21
whole to get free and to help set Humanity free so if your people did not know who I was before
1:19:26
this interview um they need to start reading up because that's what I'm going to be on for these next you know few years and make you know God protect us all from you know from from the
1:19:34
enemies that seek to keep that from happening and may God give us Swift Liberation in our lifetime
1:19:40
not waiting to pass this on to our children five centuries of white supremacist Empire is enough
1:19:45
Professor but where it's really been a pleasure speaking to and I think I I speak for much of my audience um we've never really come across uh your writing and your um uh your videos before
1:19:57
but I think um alhamdulillah I think we'll be following much more of what you have to say in in the months and years ahead inshah thank you so much for the opportunity to to talk to the people
1:20:09
thank you very much brother please remember to subscribe to our social media and YouTube
1:20:15
channels and head over to our website thinking muslim.com to sign up to my Weekly Newsletter