The Bridge From Selma to Salaam Part Two

The empire has trained you to believe that civilization equals state. You understand that civilization is country. it's an empire. It's capital city. It's treasury. It's an army or what have you. So if constant Constantinople is gone, if Bahad has fallen, if the Khilafa was abolished in 1924, then the civilization must be gone too. That's not what civilization is. That's what empire is. That's what state is. That's something completely different from civilization. But the people who run empires, the people who run states, they want you to confuse those two things because if they confuse if if if if you confuse civilization with empire, then you can be made to believe that without empire there's nothing. Without your empire there's nothing. And that if you have an empire then you must have civilization. No, civilization is not state and state is not civilization. state is just political tool. It's just political expression of civilization. civilization is what is inside the people. It's belief. It's mentality. It's conduct. It's the way man speaks to his neighbor. It's the way woman raises her children. You understand? It's the way that money is handled when nobody's watching. When no one is when there's no authority looking over your shoulder. It's the way that you treat the sick. It's the way that you deal with the poor. It's feeding orphans and so forth. It's how you treat the weakest. The moral architecture inside of the human being. That's the civilization. Empires rise and fall over the course of time. Civilizations are much deeper than that. They stay if they're strong, if they're rooted, if they're sound. Islamic civilization exists right now in every single Muslim household in the world. Every in every household where the fudger prayer is prayed as family or even individually before the sun even comes up. It exists in every Muslim community where zaka leaves the hand of the rich man and finds its way to the door of poor man with no receipt, no bureaucracy, no election, no fuss, no nothing. Islamic civilization exists in every Muslim heart that refuses to lie, that refuses to lie when they do business, that refuses to take, refuses to take interest, in every Muslim who who refuses to abandon their parents in their old age, who refuses to leave their neighbor hungry when their own family is eating. You understand me? two billion people in the world on every continent of this earth from the countryside of Indonesia to the to the streets of Cairo and to the burrows of New York City. The civilization is here. Islamic civilization is here. It's never been interrupted. It didn't need government to authorize its existence and it doesn't need government to continue its existence to maintain and fortify its existence. See this is the part that the west their entire intellectual apparatus they've never been able to comprehend this because civilization and power are connected for them. This is why they keep being surprised by us. This is why they keep being surprised by the Muslims. They keep waiting for for for Islam to collapse into you know personal private in your house preferences the way Christianity did in Europe. They keep predicting our our disappearance. They keep announcing the death of religious civilization. Yet every generation, alhamdulillah, the numbers just keep growing and the practice keeps deepening. And the thing that they thought was dying turns out to be very much alive in places that they were never even looking that they never expected to see it. Why? Because the internalization of the law, that's everything. Muslims don't refrain from wrongdoing because state is looking over their shoulder because the government is looking over their shoulder or the police are looking over their shoulder. They refrain from wrongdoing because they're accountable to Allah because they want to be good. You understand me? You don't need state to enforce that because our inner state enforces that. That's why it survived for 14 centuries. 14th centuries of empires rising and falling, dynasties rising and falling, colonial occupations, crusades, mass slaughter, every conceivable attempt that you could think of to uproot it. But you can't because it doesn't live in institutions. It lives in the people. You can't bomb that out of the people. This is civilization that doesn't believe in the supremacy of any race. By the way, there's no such thing as white Muslim or black Muslim in the way that America understands those categories. No, we determine value exclusively on the basis of piety. On the basis of piety and actions, your deeds and your knowledge. That's the civilizational template in Islam. Not race, not wealth, not bloodline, not ethnicity, not language. The template is tawa, God consciousness, piety, and righteous action, good action, good deeds. The Quran says it as plainly as anything has ever been said. Allahh said that the most honored among you among the humankind among many Adam the children of Adam in the sight of God is the most conscious of God. Whoever is the most conscious of God. That's the supremacy that Islam recognizes. That's the only supremacy that we recognize. Not white supremacy, not Arab supremacy, not the supremacy of capital, not the supremacy of the dollar, not the supremacy of the empire that has spent the last 20 years bombing your fellow human beings while telling you that they are the the moral leaders of the world. The supremacy of God, the supremacy of God, the supremacy of decency, the supremacy of the righteous act. That's the supremacy that we believe in. And the brotherhood, the brotherhood that we have in Islam, the ummah, the brotherhood, the sisterhood. This isn't theoretical. You could take Muslim from any part of the world. You could be Muslim from any part of the world and be from any so-called race, any so-called ethnicity, and you will feel welcome and you will feel familiar in any other part of the Muslim world. And you'll feel that way instantly. Alhamdulillah. See, you, this woman who wrote the email, you're standing inside of contracting empire and you are attached to political ritual that the data shows doesn't represent you. And you are asking me who's pointing out to you, a400y old civilization of two billion people. You're asking me what can offer you. You understand? The question isn't what I'm offering you. The question is, what have you been talked out of seeing your whole life of being able to see? I'm not asking you to convert. That's between you and Allah. I'm not asking you to convert. have no business in this that type of situation. That's between you and God. But I'm just asking you to see. I'm asking you to see that the choice in front of you is not Democrat or Republican. The choice in front of you is not even American or non-American. The choice in front of you is whether you are going to spend the rest of your life inside of frame, framework that was always and only ever designed to keep you small, keep you domestic, keep you manageable, and keep you powerless and degraded? Or are you going to try to lift yourself up, lift your eyes and recognize that there are entire civilizations on this earth that have never accepted the terms that you have been told are the only terms available by your country. Think it through. You know, you asked about Islamic civilization 100 years from now or in 100 years. Well, like say, we're here now. We've been here. We've been here for 14 centuries and we're going to be here for another 14 centuries or until the last day or whenever Allah decides. But Muslims aren't going anywhere. We're here right now. But where is your so-called American civilization going to be in 100 years? That's the question. Not the land of America. The land is going to be there. The mountains will be there, the rivers, the cities, the whatnot. You know, the the the fruited plane and so forth. The physical land is going to still be on the map. I'm talking about the civilization. What do you think is going to become of your so-called civilization? What is where where is it going to be in 20 2126? Cuz I'll tell you what see. In 100 years, American civilization as any sort of coherent project will not exist. It will not exist. Like say, the land will exist. You might still have elections. They'll be even less relevant 100 years from now than they are now. You'll still have some form of government most likely just to police you, but the civilization will be gone. It's already going. You're watching it go in real time. There's no question about this. If there's if you can't see it clearly, then it's only because you're actually inside of it and you you don't have proper view of what's going on. Listen, like said before, I'm not gloating. I'm trying to just diagnose to tell you what's happening. 40% of American children are born to unmarried mothers. You understand? The rate among black Americans, African-Americans, is over 70%. I'm I'm saying this as structural data point about the dissolution of the family unit in your society as as civilizational unit. The family is civilizational unit and it's dissolving and it's happening in the African-American community more intensely than other communities which should let you know that you're targeted. Marriage rates in America are at historic lows across all racial groups. Everybody, nobody's getting married. Birth rates are below replacement levels and falling. Loneliness in your country is classified now as public health epidemic by the surgeon general himself. You understand? Opioid deaths, subhan Allah, killed more Americans per year than the entire Vietnam War every year for years running now. Like said before, suicide is rising, particularly among young people and middle-aged white men. Depression, anxiety, that's for for just for teenagers. That's at clinical emergency levels they say. mean look at the symptoms. Read the symptoms of failed civilizational model. It's everywhere you look. That country is running on fumes. And the people can feel it. People can feel it. This is why the rage is so high. This is why the politics are so toxic. This is why the despair is so widespread because people can sense it. Even if they can't name it, even if they can't explain it, the myth that used to hold their lives together is no longer believable. No one's even trying to believe it anymore. And there's nothing has come to take its place, the place of that myth, except for shopping and scrolling. I'm telling you, the center of gravity for the average American's mental life is now their phone. And their phone, their phone is run by small number of corporations whose business model whose whole business model is the cultivation and the sale of human attention. Children grow up inside this. Their nervous systems, their nervous systems are formed inside of this. You understand? Biologically, they're being formed by this. They're being raised by algorithms that are designed to optimize engagement, which is to say, optimize outrage, optimize comparison, optimize sexual stimulation, and optimize despair because those are all emotional states that keep their little eyes, their children's eyes, locked on the screen for the longest amount of time. I'm telling you, there has never in human history been civilization, Subhan Allah, that handed the formation of their children's souls over to private companies whose explicit goal was to addict them. And that's what America is doing right now. That's what your That's what your country is doing right now. That's what the next generation is being shaped by. You can't fortify civilization on top of that. All you can do is watch it disintegrate. That's all you can do. Look at the elderly in your country. You know, civilization is at least partially measured by how they deal with their old people. In Islamic civilization, in Confucian civilization, the fact of the matter is in most genuinely civilized civilizations around the world, old people are kept at home. Old people are kept inside the family, inside the conversation. You understand? Until the day they die. They're honored. Their grandchildren know their faces. But in American so-called civilizations, subhan Allah, the old are warehoused. You just send them off to warehouse. They die alone in facilities that are staffed by underpaid workers who don't even know their names or care about them in any way whatsoever. The pandemic exposed that with undeniable clarity. Old people dying in nursing homes alone. And I'm telling you, this is not coincidental. Your elders are the most experienced people that you could potentially learn from. So, of course, by all means, stuff those old people, stuff those elders out of sight into warehouse to die. That way, you can make sure that your children don't ever get raised. They just get processed. Mental health crises in your country begin at age 12, age 13, age 11. Pornography on your phones, on your children's phones, by the age of 11. that's the average. 11 means many even younger than that. You understand? And I'm not saying all of this for the sake of condemnation. I'm saying it again as data point for you to understand the dissolution of your society that's underway. mean, think about it. Why is it why is it that you cannot mention almost any data about American society except that it immediately sounds like an indictment? It immediately sounds like condemnation. You understand? civilization that cannot get from one generation to the next intact has by definition no hundredyear future. Not at all. It has at most whatever it can hold together until their children can stop even being able to function at all until the wheels come off. Well, that's what's happening now. The wheels are coming off. Okay, this is all territory that I've covered many many times. don't want to repeat myself. But if you have any sense whatsoever, then this all of this should be actionable for you. You understand? You should take the principles that your grandmother had and apply them according to the structural realities and the structural conditions of America as it exists today in 2026. So my civilization is going to be here in 100 years. 2 billion people probably three billion by then, maybe more, maybe 5 billion given the current demographic trajectories. three billion, four billion, five billion people, praying five times day, fasting Ramadan, giving zaka, honoring their parents, getting married, having children, raising those children inside of moral framework, solid moral framework that hasn't changed in 1400 years, honoring our elders, honoring our parents and our grandparents, and burying our dead with dignity. You understand? Following the same rules, three, four, five billion people following the same rules and the same principles that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam taught us 14 centuries ago. But yours, your so-called civilization on its current trajectory will not be here. It won't be here. The civilization, the thing that your grandmother, the thing that your grandmother thought that she was claiming her place inside of when she walked across that Edund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that thing is on its way out. That so-called civilization is on its way out. And the political ritual that you are being asked to perform every two years or every four years isn't going to save that isn't going to stop that. Nothing about that ritual addresses the actual disease. The question I'm leaving with you is not whether you become Muslim or not. I'm not asking you to become Muslim. Like said, that's between you and Allah. But the question is whether or not you are going to spend the next 40 years of your life being loyal to civilizational project that the actual data, the demographic data, the social data, the political data, the spiritual data, the economic data, all of it, all of it says that it is in terminal decline. or whether or not you're going to start asking what your grandmother's deepest aspirations actually pointed towards, what she was actually trying for, and whether those aspirations of your grandmother might in 2026 point towards something other than what you have been told they point towards and and and different from what they pointed towards in 1965. She marched for dignity and the country that she marched inside of, the country in which she wanted dignity is losing the capacity to even confer dignity on anyone of any race. You understand me? You're not going to be saved by being more included in something that is itself dissolving. You're only going to be saved by recognizing what is dissolving and refusing to dissolve along with it and finding wherever you find it. don't even care where you find it in whatever tradition you find it. You have to find something that can actually give you dignity. Something that can actually validate your innate human value, your human worth. belief system that can actually help you raise child properly. belief system that honors parents until the day they die and then remembers them, continues to remember them every day forever after they die. You understand? That's the question for you. That's your question. It's not my question. It's yours to answer, not mine. Like said, I'm not here to make transaction with you. I'm not here to make all sorts of pretty political promises to try to win your support or change your mind or convert you or anything like that. No one has to give you any answers. You have your grandmother's example, and by that mean you have what your grandmother actually wanted, what she wanted for herself, what she wanted for her children, what she wanted for her grandchildren. And you can want that same thing for yourself. and for your children and for your grandchildren. And you can do what she did, which is, like say, to make serious evaluation of your real situation. Make an evaluation of your conditions and your circumstances, and make an evaluation of the system that you are actually in, the society that you are in, the so-called civilization that you are in, and determine for yourself, the reality, that you are not going to get the thing that you want for yourself and for your family by voting. You're not going to get it from any of your institutions, from cooperating with any of these institutions. You're not going to get it by the system that itself deprivives you of what you want. The system that excludes you, the system that marginalizes you and that keeps telling you that if you just subscribe to the system, if you just buy into the system, all your dreams will come true. You understand me? That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. The condition for entry is self-identification as what they call you. You understand? What they want you to be, what they see you as. That's the condition for membership. Look at the paradox. Look at the paradox. The condition for membership is that you accept that you will never be member. Once you accept that, you're in. Once you accept that, you're in locked into that identification as minority, dehumanized, marginalized, racialized, neutralized, and tranquilized. They put you into sinking boat precisely to make sure that you would never be able to swim to safety. And this is the trick. They make you think that if you turn your back on the system, then that means that you're turning your back on your grandmother and you're turning your back on everything that she fought for. Never mind the fact that even making you think that your grandmother won that fight, that in and of itself is betrayal of the reasons why she fought. Because you still do not have you still do not have what your grandmother fought for you to have. Listen, you have conflict in America. You have conflict. You have contradiction. Every American needs to recognize this. You have you have two definitions of patriotism in America. One is where you understand patriotism as being loyal to the principles, loyal to the values that your country claims to be based upon and claims to stand for. And the other definition is where patriotism means loyalty to the state, loyalty to loyalty to the institutions and the power structure of that country. These are the two definitions that you have. These two definitions obviously are diametrically opposed to one another because if you support the institutions then you must oppose the principles that those institutions claim to stand for but don't. You understand me? And if you support the principles if you support the values then you inevitably end up opposing the institutions that do not in reality stand for those principles while claiming that they do. And I'm telling you only one of those definitions is actually patriotism. Only one of them is patriotism. And that is the unconditional support for the institutions of the state. That's what patriotism is. That is real patriotism. That is loving your country. You understand? You have to put the state and the institutions above the principles. And if you're person with any sort of conscience whatsoever, obviously you cannot do that. Obviously you cannot do that. See, this is why you have people in that country saying that the ones who really love their country, the true Americans, the true patriots, are the ones who who want to see their country actually live up to the values that it advertises, the the the what they claim to believe in, you know, the dissident and the critics and so forth. And then you have the other side that says about those people that they're unamerican and what have you. They say that they're enemies of the state and so forth. And I'm telling you, the other side is right. No, the other side is right. Because you cannot love America and also love the principles that America advertises. You can't. No, you can either be patriotic or you can be principled. You can either be pro-American or you can be moral. You cannot be both. And you have to decide for yourself which one you are. And you have to decide for yourself which one is worth fighting for. And I'm telling you, your American passport is not guaranteeing your entry into the gates of heaven. know you might think it is. No, you cannot flash your your blue passport on judgment day and get waved through the line. No. So, I'm saying like to this sister who wrote the the email, do you believe in the principles and the values that your grandmother believed in or do you believe in the institutions of America? Or put it another way, put it another way that most Americans could understand. Think about it like this. your mother or your father stood outside of the mall, outside of store on Black Friday, they stood outside for hours before the store opened and then they fought fought like crazy to try to get you this or that toy or this or that device for Christmas, right? When you were kid, I'm saying, say they got you an Xbox or something. So, okay, now do you have to now get an Xbox for your kids when you become parent because that's how you're supposed to carry on the legacy of your parents? No, obviously not. It's not about the Xbox. It's not about the Xbox. It was about them loving you and about them wanting you to be happy. And it just happened to be the case at that time, at that moment that getting you an Xbox would make you happy. So, you will look at your own child when you become parent. You look at your own child and you will love them and you will want them to be happy just like your parents did with you. Okay? Like said, your grandmother did not fight for the vote. Your grandmother fought for better life for herself and for her children and grandchildren, for her progyny. She fought for the principle of dignity and respect as human being. So the question is, are you now going to focus on the vote, focus on the institution, focus on the state, or are you going to focus on the principles of dignity and human respect the way that your grandmother did? Do you understand me? Because I'll tell you, only one of those is actually worth fighting for. Only one of those is worth fighting for. And I've said this before, America has sabotaged elections all around the world. Do you understand me? They have overthrown democratic systems in country after country. They have installed and they have backed and supported and funded and armed dictators in country after country after country. They have tampered with elections. They have interfered with elections. They have assassinated leaders. They have overthrown leaders. They have killed leaders. They've jailed elected leaders, murdered elected leaders. Okay? No one no one has undermined democratic systems around the world more than the United States of America. And that's fact. But subhan Allah, somehow you American citizens, you imagine that they will allow democracy for you. Well, don't even know how you convince yourselves of this. don't don't even know how you could possibly convince yourselves of such completely irrational idea. I'm telling you, the suspension of disbelief is absolutely breathtaking. You actually imagine that they're going to entrust their population with choosing the leaders and choosing the legislators of the country that they're actually based in when they don't allow that in countries that are thousands of miles away where their stakes are even lower. Do you understand me? They've got hundreds of billions of dollars on the line in that country. And you think they're going to entrust that to you, to your decision-making power, to your decision-making authority? Well, what have they ever done to make you think that they have that kind of high regard for you, that they trust you that much, that they think you have that kind of wisdom, that they think that your interests and their interests actually align to that extent that they can actually feel confident in how you will vote in the decisions that you'll make in the election booth. Why you must be out of your mind? Don't you see how they treat you? Why anyone in the world can see that they have nothing but contempt for you? See, this woman in the email, she's talking about her daughter's education, talking about how the Republicans are coming after her daughter's library books and whatnot. The Republicans coming after her education and so forth. Well, let me ask you, tell me, what sort of an education has that been up until now? What sort of an education has that been? No. If you are an adult in America, if you're an adult American in 2026 and you can actually read and write at an adult level, then it's going to be in spite of your education system, not because of your education system. It it can only mean that you took it upon yourself to read. It means that you took it upon yourself to become literate. It means that you took it upon yourself to become articulate. Because if the schools had their way, you would never have learned anything in school but the pledge of allegiance. And you would have only learned how to recite the pledge of allegiance. You never even would have understood what the words meant. No, I'm telling you, if you're principal person, genuinely principal person, moral person. If you believe in human dignity, basic human dignity, then that's what you'll fight for. Not for some institution. You won't fight for some state. You won't fight for some system because what? you need that system or you need that state or you need that institution to reflect your values because that system and that institution and that state taught you miseducated you into thinking that the system or the state are supposedly based upon those values in the first place. That's what they made you think. So now you think that you're supposed to try to make the state live up to the values that it allegedly is based upon but never has been. No, it was never based upon those values to begin with. It was never based upon those values and it has never applied those values and in fact it has consistently opposed those values decade after decade after decade and generation after generation after generation. So if you actually believe in those those sorts of values, those sorts of principles human dignity, respect, material well-being, safety, security, health, intelligence, education and so forth. welfare well-being. If you believe in those values, then you will stand up for those values and you will fight for those values for yourself and for your family. You understand? By constructing your own system, not by trying to make the system that never subscribe to those values in the first place try to make the system change to those values. said you're either patriot who defends the system and defends the institutions of the state or you are principled person who defends himself and defends herself and defends their family against the system and against the institutions of the state. You can't do both. You have to do one or the other. And you don't defend yourself against the state and against the system by fighting it. This is also what you have to understand. You defend yourself by detaching from it and trying to connect yourself to everyone else who has done the same thing, who has also detached from it both inside your country and in the global south. You know, you talk about this woman talked about what the Republicans what she thinks the Republicans are going to take away, what they're going to take away from her, take away from her family, right? Like said, the Democrats, in fact, actually the Democrats don't even need to make promises. was talking about how they they make these pretty promises and IUS they give you, but all the Democrats actually have to do is make you fear the Republicans. You know, every Democratic party platform for the last for my entire lifetime, every election cycle has always been the same thing, which is we are the lesser of two evils. The Republicans are coming to get you. Good cop, bad cop. That's all they're doing. Good cop, bad cop. They've been running that con on you for 60 years or more. Well, let me tell you something. as former prisoner and you should be able to relate to that because you're in the same position. Truth be told, you're in the same position. You're not citizens. You're inmates of that country. As former prisoner, you learn that they give you things in jail so that you will fear having them taken away. Yes. They give you bed. They give you access to the canteen. They give you phone calls and so forth. They let you maybe wear your own clothes instead of the prison uniform, right? They give you access to the telephone. They give give you access to the yard for exercise and so forth. They give you all of these things as leverage over you so that you'll behave yourself because you don't want to lose those privileges. You see, and the state does the same thing. Well, when was in prison, gave away my mattress. slept on wooden plank. gave my mattress away, my pillow away. wore the prison uniform. exercised in my own cell. You give me the yotter, you don't give me the order. It doesn't make any difference to me. didn't want to get used to anything that they let me have because didn't want to fear them taking it away. You understand me? started taking cold showers, only cold showers because that was something that they used to use as punishment for prisoners, as discipline disciplinary measure against prisoners. As much as could, as much as possibly could, tried to neutralize as many levers of theirs that could that they used to control behavior. Do you understand? Self-sufficiency. This is what I'm telling you. self-sufficiency. That's what you need to be working on. That's what your values and your principles should make you fight for. That's what your principles and values should make you struggle for. Do you understand me? Your grandmother crossed the Edund Pettis Bridge or tried to cross the Edmond Pettis Bridge trying to make her way into the system. But now in 2026, you need to cross that bridge to get yourself out of the system.