Seminar: "I Can’t Breathe" with Dr. Osman Latiff (2021-06-10) #

0:00:17 uh
0:00:18 welcome alhamdulillah on this uh very
0:00:20 important presentation called i can't
0:00:21 breathe
0:00:22 uh i am dr osman native and this is with
0:00:25 sapience institute
0:00:26 uh this is in fact i think one of really
0:00:29 one of the most important topics for all
0:00:31 of us to consider
0:00:32 we are of course when we consider
0:00:34 ourselves as human beings we are of
0:00:35 course able
0:00:36 uh to perform amazing acts dizzying
0:00:39 dazzling acts of of goodness of kindness
0:00:42 and we in fact we see them we
0:00:44 feel them we experience them like on a
0:00:46 daily basis we see
0:00:47 love we see mercy we see kindness we see
0:00:50 attachment
0:00:51 we see comradeship we see all kinds of
0:00:54 beautiful things in our relationships
0:00:57 but we also have you know a a darker
0:01:00 potential a darker potential
0:01:02 that human beings have and i think one
0:01:03 of the worst kinds of
0:01:06 those um dark potentials of human beings
0:01:09 is to otherize other people what that
0:01:12 means therefore
0:01:12 is to uh subjugate is to relegate is to
0:01:16 marginalize
0:01:17 other people so that we tend to believe
0:01:20 that the kind of basic rights or we
0:01:22 should be afforded as human beings or
0:01:24 the ones that we love should be afforded
0:01:25 as human beings
0:01:26 is not the same as those others over
0:01:29 there
0:01:30 and this therefore when it becomes
0:01:31 unchecked leads to even worse
0:01:34 uh mechanisms like the human nature
0:01:36 we're going to cover all of these
0:01:37 inshallah
0:01:38 today in our presentation so therefore
0:01:40 this is called i can't breathe
0:01:42 now that statement i can't breathe
0:01:46 um i think it relates to all of us i
0:01:49 think all of us know something about
0:01:51 the context of that statement i can't
0:01:54 breathe in fact it's a declarative it's
0:01:56 a declarative
0:01:57 i can't breathe that statement
0:02:00 declarative i can't breathe in fact
0:02:02 became
0:02:03 in 2014 one of the most
0:02:06 notable quotations in the yale book of
0:02:09 quotations in that year
0:02:12 and we're going to go through the
0:02:13 context of that statement
0:02:15 the victimization of people of course
0:02:18 who whose final
0:02:19 last words was that declarative
0:02:21 statement i can't breathe
0:02:23 and then look at the the the way that
0:02:26 uh people in human history and today of
0:02:29 course
0:02:30 uh have been are being authorized and
0:02:33 the dangers that this leads to we're
0:02:34 going to look at things like social debt
0:02:36 social dying
0:02:37 we're going to consider historical
0:02:38 examples uh
0:02:40 current contemporary examples also uh
0:02:44 and then look at the the worst
0:02:46 constructs of dehumanization
0:02:48 and genocidal tendencies emerging out of
0:02:51 uttering and dehumanization as well
0:02:53 and then think about the islamic
0:02:56 response the islamic solution
0:02:58 looking at the quranic narrative looking
0:03:00 at the prophetic example
0:03:02 and how uh othering and dehumanization
0:03:04 was understood and how it was
0:03:06 uh put in its right place and how it was
0:03:08 you know um
0:03:10 uh it was challenged and it was dealt
0:03:12 with uh in in those traditions so
0:03:14 we're gonna begin inshallah in the name
0:03:15 of allah subhanahu wa to allah i can't
0:03:17 breathe
0:03:18 here we are so now
0:03:21 we have we can't breathe and and why
0:03:24 that's important
0:03:24 is because uh there is something that
0:03:26 that does target our collective human
0:03:29 conscience and i think that
0:03:30 if we think about and and i think it
0:03:33 could be quite true that we
0:03:34 if we think of those murders of these
0:03:37 individuals eric garner 2014 david
0:03:40 dungay 2015
0:03:41 adam matr 2016 most recently george
0:03:44 floyd 2020 um
0:03:46 in some ways uh they they come to
0:03:49 symbolize
0:03:50 kind of a watershed moment or moments
0:03:53 for us in human history
0:03:54 um and why that is because you know
0:03:57 watershed moments
0:03:58 don't always have to be grand events it
0:04:01 could simply be
0:04:03 times of um
0:04:06 you know narrative changed it could be
0:04:09 times of paradigmatic changes in human
0:04:12 society
0:04:13 and it's also true that those are going
0:04:15 to be felt by some
0:04:17 maybe more than others uh the family
0:04:20 members
0:04:20 the the ethnic communities might be
0:04:24 might feel those more than others but i
0:04:25 think that there is a kind of a tugging
0:04:27 at our collective human conscience
0:04:29 uh when we saw what we saw most recently
0:04:32 in the tragic killing of george floyd in
0:04:35 2020 but also in fact an
0:04:37 air gun in fact sticks in my mind a lot
0:04:39 and in fact aragon is something i
0:04:41 discussed in my book
0:04:42 uh on being human how islam addresses
0:04:44 othering demonization empathy which is
0:04:46 available for free download
0:04:47 at sapience institute website um
0:04:50 and so therefore think about that the
0:04:52 idea of our collective human
0:04:54 consciousness meaning that we're all in
0:04:55 many ways speaking the same
0:04:58 languages we're all feeling the same
0:05:00 kinds of things
0:05:02 the the way that empathy of course is
0:05:04 constructed for everything one of us is
0:05:06 different um because we have different
0:05:09 social human life experiences
0:05:11 uh but the point is that we do feel and
0:05:13 that's the whole point that we do feel
0:05:15 this
0:05:15 amazing account of and i discussed this
0:05:17 again in my book
0:05:19 um of um of viktor frankl
0:05:22 in his book command search for meaning
0:05:24 of course viktor frankl was a
0:05:25 auschwitz survivor holocaust survivor
0:05:28 but he described this really
0:05:30 uh remarkable scene haunting but
0:05:32 remarkable as well that he's in his
0:05:34 carriage with some other
0:05:36 um auschwitz uh you know prisoners
0:05:39 and they're being transported to another
0:05:42 prison um and what happens is he
0:05:45 describes this moment
0:05:47 in the carriage there's only a few of
0:05:49 them there being transported
0:05:51 and there is of course uh okay as a slit
0:05:54 a gap
0:05:55 uh in the doors of the carriage and
0:05:57 they're able to see where they're going
0:05:59 remember of course this was
0:06:00 the homeland homeland for many of these
0:06:02 people in poland
0:06:04 many people lived in fact in those areas
0:06:05 or news or they knew in fact
0:06:07 uh the landscape of where they were and
0:06:10 so
0:06:11 uh what makes it so interesting this is
0:06:14 again the power of empathy
0:06:15 but also the uh in some respects the
0:06:17 limitations of empathy is because
0:06:20 viktor frankl was was the one who was
0:06:22 asked to go and check and see
0:06:24 if they could see where they are right
0:06:26 if they could recognize
0:06:27 uh you know buildings and and the
0:06:30 landscape and
0:06:31 sites of significance and and as they're
0:06:34 passing
0:06:35 and as they're passing through they see
0:06:37 that they're passing
0:06:39 par they're going past uh another of the
0:06:42 the death camps
0:06:43 that had a kind of a horrific reputation
0:06:45 of course they were all
0:06:46 gruesome but but he describes this
0:06:49 moment
0:06:49 and he says that when they passed it he
0:06:52 says the sense of jubilation
0:06:54 that they felt um at that moment in time
0:06:57 knowing that they're not going to that
0:06:59 one
0:07:00 was something any even fact he says that
0:07:02 no one could have
0:07:03 known what we had felt at that moment
0:07:06 unless you were in the courage with us i
0:07:08 said the whole point is
0:07:10 is that um empathy is so powerful
0:07:13 but empathy breathes from an individual
0:07:17 human life experience all of us feel
0:07:20 different things because of who we are
0:07:21 where we've been what we've seen
0:07:23 what we're seeing that has a bearing on
0:07:25 how we feel about those things
0:07:28 but in a generalized sense uh we simply
0:07:32 feel that's the whole point so therefore
0:07:34 our collective human conscience can be
0:07:36 tugged
0:07:36 at moments like this and of course there
0:07:39 is a media
0:07:40 narrative around that story that's
0:07:42 played you know and we see that often
0:07:44 and so on and so forth
0:07:45 um now i want to in fact start with uh
0:07:48 well if you if you first think about
0:07:50 these individuals eric garner 2014 david
0:07:53 dungay 2015
0:07:54 adam a trot adama troll in fact was a
0:07:58 a french malian um victim
0:08:01 and he was put in police custody and he
0:08:05 was apprehended by the police
0:08:06 and his final words were adama troy uh i
0:08:09 want to read for you something that his
0:08:11 sister in fact
0:08:12 said uh she said that uh his sister asa
0:08:16 asatro said about her brother that and
0:08:18 and she spoke about
0:08:19 her brother adamatro and george floyd
0:08:23 in the same kind of context this is of
0:08:25 course later after the the the killing
0:08:28 of george floyd
0:08:29 she said that they died in this exact
0:08:31 same way
0:08:32 they carried the weight of three cops on
0:08:34 them
0:08:35 they had the same words and that was the
0:08:38 end of george floyd and that was also
0:08:40 the end for my brother but it is in fact
0:08:44 uh what really struck me with with what
0:08:46 she said is the word
0:08:48 the weight it is the weight so therefore
0:08:51 the physical bearing the physical weight
0:08:54 the physical
0:08:55 pressure that led to these victims to
0:08:59 gasp in their final moments those
0:09:02 final words of i can't breathe meaning
0:09:05 the
0:09:06 the suppression of breath the inability
0:09:08 to breathe
0:09:09 to breathe uh to have lack of access of
0:09:12 air of oxygen that would of course be
0:09:15 the necessity
0:09:16 of life itself um is is understood
0:09:20 in this sense i think when we look at it
0:09:22 also figuratively metaphorically what
0:09:24 what does weight actually mean and what
0:09:27 does weight mean
0:09:28 really in our collective human
0:09:30 conscience all right
0:09:32 to to what extent do we feel that sense
0:09:35 of of burden
0:09:36 the burden of weight of responsibility
0:09:40 right that might breed what we call a
0:09:43 a witness empathy in all of us or any
0:09:45 any of us right it could compel us
0:09:47 propel us
0:09:48 to do something to change to alleviate
0:09:50 uh the suffering of any people
0:09:52 right all depends in fact on that weight
0:09:55 on our human
0:09:56 conscience right um and so therefore
0:10:00 we're gonna start with this poem this
0:10:03 poem is called
0:10:04 the haunted oak paul lawrence dunbar is
0:10:07 probably the most
0:10:08 uh celebrated of all african-american
0:10:10 poets it was young in fact a remarkable
0:10:12 poet
0:10:13 and uh the poet that i want to discuss
0:10:16 or
0:10:17 some of the poet of the syrup on the
0:10:19 poetry of the poem
0:10:20 is called the haunted oak now this poem
0:10:23 in fact has a con this was published and
0:10:24 written in 1900
0:10:26 it could have been based in fact on on
0:10:29 any of the dozens of lynchings uh
0:10:32 in that year but in fact this this poem
0:10:35 the haunted oak has
0:10:37 has a narrative has a context and and it
0:10:39 says that
0:10:40 uh that once paul laurence dunbar was
0:10:44 passing through
0:10:46 a village and he met a man from alabama
0:10:51 and he was complaining or he was
0:10:53 speaking
0:10:54 to dunbar about the fact that his nephew
0:10:57 had been lynched
0:10:58 on this oak tree and he said that now
0:11:02 this
0:11:02 oak tree it shrivels and
0:11:06 it becomes yellow and and the leaves
0:11:09 fall off it withers away
0:11:11 and it's withering away he's saying
0:11:12 because of the fact that this oak tree
0:11:15 experienced what it experienced in
0:11:18 having this innocent
0:11:19 african-american victim lynched on the
0:11:22 oak tree
0:11:25 there's a lot in fact about this uh when
0:11:28 i was in auschwitz but canal some years
0:11:30 ago i
0:11:30 i remember asking in fact the tour guide
0:11:33 that
0:11:33 because there's trees of course in the
0:11:35 in the perimeter
0:11:37 of the camps and i and i asked the tour
0:11:40 guide
0:11:41 were there trees uh you know during the
0:11:44 years of the holocaust were there trees
0:11:47 and she said uh she said yeah and they
0:11:49 were the first witnesses
0:11:51 and that really struck me in fact i was
0:11:53 almost anticipating her to be honest
0:11:55 i was almost anticipating that she would
0:11:56 say that because that's exactly what i
0:11:58 was feeling at the same time that they
0:12:00 were the first witnesses to this
0:12:02 um meaning first what she's trying to
0:12:04 say therefore is that they were there
0:12:06 right uh before and after and during
0:12:10 uh what the victims of of of auschwitz
0:12:13 birkenau
0:12:13 experienced um allah says in shaheed
0:12:17 allah is a witness over all things
0:12:19 um and so therefore uh this is part it's
0:12:22 a longer poem
0:12:23 the haunted oak and i and i have much
0:12:26 more of the poem in my book
0:12:27 on being human um but this is a line
0:12:30 that sticks out for me
0:12:31 uh now of course in this poem
0:12:34 the the oak tree is personified the oak
0:12:38 feels what this victim feels the oak
0:12:42 experiences what the victim experiences
0:12:44 the oak feels
0:12:45 that sense of pain you know because of
0:12:49 the proximity the closeness the anguish
0:12:52 of the victim and in this line it says i
0:12:55 feel the rope against my bark
0:12:57 and the weight of him in my grain i feel
0:12:59 in the throat of his final woe
0:13:01 the touch of my own last pain right so
0:13:04 think about that look at the words that
0:13:05 the
0:13:06 weight of him the weight of him the
0:13:09 throw
0:13:10 in his final woe the touch of my own
0:13:12 last pain there's a kind of a
0:13:14 coalescing there is a conjoining there
0:13:16 is
0:13:17 a merging together of the the tree
0:13:21 and the victim in that what the victim
0:13:24 experiences
0:13:25 the the tree has a feel of that
0:13:28 in that there is a sense of dissipation
0:13:30 as that as the
0:13:31 life of that victim is being drained out
0:13:35 of that person
0:13:36 there is a dissipating in the life of
0:13:38 the tree
0:13:39 the tree therefore uh is dying as
0:13:42 the the lynched victim is also dying
0:13:46 right so therefore and the idea is that
0:13:48 the personified tree is an
0:13:49 active uh intimate um
0:13:53 witness as opposed to being a spectator
0:13:56 or a bystander
0:13:58 the tree here in fact is a is a witness
0:14:01 and it's
0:14:02 unable to withstand the memory of the
0:14:04 horrors that the tree
0:14:05 uh witnesses so therefore the idea these
0:14:07 themes of witnessing of burden of weight
0:14:10 and our collective human consciousness
0:14:12 are very very powerful there so
0:14:14 therefore we're looking at
0:14:15 these examples of arigana devadungi
0:14:17 adamandez of course so many more as well
0:14:20 george floyd i can't breathe meaning we
0:14:23 can't
0:14:23 breathe just like the tree um that's
0:14:27 in the frame of human
0:14:30 life and death experience of the victim
0:14:34 that poor lauren zanbar writes about
0:14:38 just like he's of course unable the tree
0:14:41 is unable to
0:14:42 to uh to cope or unable to withstand the
0:14:45 horrors of that
0:14:47 there is a sense of kind of a
0:14:48 collectivizing then the collectivising
0:14:51 in the collective pronoun the plural
0:14:52 pronoun
0:14:53 we can't breathe so the individual
0:14:56 personal pronoun
0:14:57 i mean that's a human tragedy connected
0:15:00 to
0:15:01 that human individual and
0:15:05 they you know you can't we can't have an
0:15:07 exactness of empathy here
0:15:09 why because everyone is in their own
0:15:12 human
0:15:12 just like the example of viktor frankl i
0:15:14 mentioned being in that carriage
0:15:16 uh as they're passing through uh and and
0:15:19 he's seeing from that gap
0:15:21 in the carriage that they're not they're
0:15:23 not they're not stopping
0:15:24 at the death camp that they were worried
0:15:27 about
0:15:28 but they're still in that experience of
0:15:31 horror and tragedy that is the holocaust
0:15:34 but he said just a sense of jubilation
0:15:36 that experience he said that unless you
0:15:38 were there in the carriage on that day
0:15:40 at a specific point in time
0:15:42 you could never have felt what we had
0:15:45 felt
0:15:45 so therefore i can't breathe must remain
0:15:48 i can't breathe
0:15:50 for those victims but we can't breathe
0:15:52 the the the plural prone and the
0:15:55 collective pronoun hair becomes
0:15:56 more um more understood or more
0:15:59 acceptable
0:16:00 in a sense that the understanding that
0:16:03 there is a burden
0:16:04 there's a human burdening there is a
0:16:06 kind of a tugging at the human
0:16:08 collective conscience
0:16:10 that we all should be experiencing and
0:16:12 that's really one of the great points
0:16:14 of this um presentation to begin with
0:16:16 what does icon breathe
0:16:18 really mean for us as human beings in
0:16:20 this context that we're
0:16:22 living in and that we might continue to
0:16:24 live in you know in the future also that
0:16:26 we turn the icon breathe into a we can't
0:16:28 breathe if we understand it
0:16:30 from the point of uh the the
0:16:32 collectivized
0:16:33 burdening the collectivized weight of
0:16:36 human responsibility
0:16:38 and that's really i think coming through
0:16:39 quite strongly in the poem of
0:16:41 paul lawrence dunbar so therefore the
0:16:44 weight as you can see
0:16:45 the weight the feel and the touch the
0:16:47 oak experiences symbolizes
0:16:49 the burdens we confront um you know in
0:16:52 in our world
0:16:54 now over here
0:16:57 yeah we confront from the other eyes or
0:16:59 other victims
0:17:00 of our world all right so what is
0:17:04 othering then so what is it so we're
0:17:05 speaking about othering
0:17:07 or other rising the other what exactly
0:17:10 or who exactly is
0:17:11 that other um now the other is or the
0:17:15 other ring is a negating of another in
0:17:17 another's
0:17:18 individual and social work as i
0:17:20 mentioned it is
0:17:21 it is to believe that uh another person
0:17:25 uh outside of us they could be
0:17:28 culturally different they could be uh
0:17:32 different in terms of look they could be
0:17:35 uh physically away from us um
0:17:39 but we but we could run the risk of
0:17:42 othering those people
0:17:44 if we tend to believe that those others
0:17:47 or that other is undeserving of the
0:17:50 basic
0:17:51 human rights uh that we believe
0:17:54 are afforded or should be afforded and
0:17:56 to us or the ones that we
0:17:58 actually love um now i've put her social
0:18:01 death and dying which i think is really
0:18:03 important
0:18:04 um the there's a really interesting book
0:18:07 by
0:18:08 dave grossman called on killing it's a
0:18:10 psychological effects
0:18:11 of of killing uh and war and
0:18:14 he makes his point and he says that the
0:18:16 closer a perpetrator perceives
0:18:19 of a victim it's like any of us really
0:18:22 the more we perceive
0:18:23 of others the closeness or the distance
0:18:25 by which or through which we're
0:18:26 perceiving of others
0:18:28 has a bearing on our attitude towards
0:18:30 those people
0:18:31 and he has a section called altitude and
0:18:34 attitude
0:18:35 and he says altitude because he gives
0:18:37 these examples of
0:18:39 uh you know of let's say soldier
0:18:42 soldiers or army personnel uh uh
0:18:46 in their fighter jets and they're so
0:18:48 high up in altitude and they drop
0:18:50 bombs on on civilian populations who of
0:18:53 course end up being killed in these
0:18:56 um but because they're so far up they
0:18:59 don't see
0:19:00 what they're what they're doing or they
0:19:01 don't have a that sense of distance
0:19:04 uh is a detachment emotional detachment
0:19:06 that they have towards
0:19:08 the victims that they're actually
0:19:10 killing they don't see the horrors they
0:19:12 don't see the anguish they don't see the
0:19:13 blood they don't see the decimation
0:19:16 of of landscape and town and village and
0:19:18 city they don't see that and so
0:19:20 therefore that
0:19:21 sense of indifference is with them
0:19:23 because of the ultimate attitude but if
0:19:25 they're
0:19:26 closer down if they're down with the
0:19:27 victims
0:19:29 then of course they'll see more of that
0:19:31 and there's so many examples of these
0:19:34 um and and of course the same is true in
0:19:36 the holocaust and in
0:19:38 all examples of human genocide um uh
0:19:41 the fact that the perpetrators would say
0:19:43 these kinds of things that you know when
0:19:45 we were up close
0:19:46 uh we could see the horrors on the faces
0:19:48 and it's a very good book called time
0:19:50 for machetes
0:19:51 um by john hatzfeld which again is
0:19:54 discussed in my book on being human
0:19:56 about the genocide of rwanda um and it's
0:19:59 written by
0:20:00 perpetrators you know of of that
0:20:02 horrific genocide in april
0:20:04 to june or july 1994. um
0:20:08 and so therefore what happens is that
0:20:12 the victims uh they experience a social
0:20:15 death or a social dying
0:20:18 and this happens when when the victims
0:20:19 are kind of pushed to the margins
0:20:21 of what's socially acceptable
0:20:24 excommunicated
0:20:25 from what we believe to be standard
0:20:28 and normal for all other people uh
0:20:30 what's normal and moral in society it
0:20:32 simply doesn't apply to them
0:20:34 anymore and this of course is discussed
0:20:36 like i mentioned
0:20:37 in in dave grossman's book on being
0:20:39 human um
0:20:40 now what happens in addition to this is
0:20:43 that
0:20:43 if a group of people are socially
0:20:46 death dead in society meaning
0:20:50 because they're not given consideration
0:20:53 worth value uh there's no sense of
0:20:57 you know uh merging of of societal
0:21:01 identities together
0:21:02 uh they're kind of marginalized they're
0:21:05 ostracized they're
0:21:06 they're they're kept in their own places
0:21:08 um
0:21:09 it's not just that they experience
0:21:11 social death but what social dying
0:21:13 therefore means
0:21:14 is it means generational death it means
0:21:17 generational change it means that
0:21:20 not only have those individuals now died
0:21:23 because they've been uttered right
0:21:25 they've been castigated
0:21:26 away from everybody else the norm but it
0:21:30 means that
0:21:30 their descendants will no longer be able
0:21:33 to
0:21:34 uh live uh you know in as
0:21:37 as normal uh not functioning but
0:21:41 acceptably functioning members of
0:21:43 society because of the fact that their
0:21:46 uh parents or their ancestors sense of
0:21:49 social worth was
0:21:50 decimated in the first place uh this in
0:21:53 fact is quite interesting because of the
0:21:55 ethnic of the idea of ethnic cleansing
0:21:58 so if you think therefore about the
0:21:59 events of 1948 in palestine the
0:22:02 the nakaba the catastrophe ethnic
0:22:04 cleansing
0:22:05 so in the words of ilan pape in his book
0:22:08 at the cleansing of palestine and so
0:22:09 many others also
0:22:11 um the ethnic cleansing was in fact
0:22:14 a precipitating of a creating of of
0:22:17 social death and social dying
0:22:19 so the the the inhabitants of the
0:22:22 five 600 villages that were uh
0:22:26 destroyed from the 1948 nakaba and even
0:22:30 in fact before that as well
0:22:31 um meant that there is now going to be a
0:22:34 sense of invisibility
0:22:36 in those landscapes or new landscapes
0:22:39 meaning invisibility
0:22:41 as per the previous inhabitants
0:22:44 of those villages and so ethnic
0:22:47 cleansing therefore meant not just
0:22:49 the forced expulsion of the inhabitants
0:22:52 from their homes and their villages but
0:22:54 it means that the new
0:22:56 uh villages have to look different they
0:22:59 have to have different names and they
0:23:00 have to have
0:23:01 um you know there has to be a sense of
0:23:04 invisibility about the
0:23:06 previous one so constructing like let's
0:23:09 say
0:23:09 car parks was one was one tactic or city
0:23:12 parks was another one or even
0:23:14 planting forests was a very common one
0:23:17 and if you plant a forest it means that
0:23:18 you can't see
0:23:20 what was there once before uh and that's
0:23:23 kind of how
0:23:23 what happens in ethnic cleansing and so
0:23:26 social dying therefore it's not just
0:23:27 about
0:23:28 the fact that uh people in their
0:23:31 experience of being
0:23:32 othered uh have like in the sense of
0:23:35 social death
0:23:36 because of the fact that they're just
0:23:38 not included with everybody else and
0:23:40 they're marginalized ostracized but it
0:23:41 means that
0:23:42 the the generational change is going to
0:23:45 take place because
0:23:46 the ones that they leave behind are
0:23:48 unable to
0:23:50 reconnect to what once was and that's
0:23:53 also true in fact with
0:23:54 with the crisis of refugees expelled
0:23:57 from their homes who don't have a
0:23:58 return and they can't in fact reconnect
0:24:01 to that landscape
0:24:02 anymore um so what happens therefore
0:24:06 let me give you a few examples here one
0:24:08 example in fact or is from
0:24:10 primo levy primo levy in his book um
0:24:13 survival surviving auschwitz i mean he
0:24:15 his book was also called if
0:24:17 is this if this is man uh or is this is
0:24:19 this man you know
0:24:21 um and it's an interesting title in fact
0:24:25 because
0:24:26 the man here the noun of the man
0:24:29 becomes so um
0:24:33 so powerfully symbolic uh in the social
0:24:36 experience
0:24:37 of not external social social experience
0:24:39 of the victims
0:24:41 of that time because there was a sense
0:24:44 of
0:24:44 demasculinating uh those victims right
0:24:47 so
0:24:48 a sense of you know you're not a man
0:24:51 you're not man enough you're not manly
0:24:53 enough
0:24:54 uh um you know and so uh the idea is
0:24:58 well then is this man who would do that
0:25:02 to another human being right that's kind
0:25:04 of man's inhumanity towards man
0:25:07 and likewise in the experience of the
0:25:09 african americans in their struggle and
0:25:10 civil rights struggle from the 19
0:25:13 i mean 20th century even before that
0:25:15 time um
0:25:17 uh one of the things you might see or
0:25:20 you might have seen pictures of
0:25:21 is of marches uh marches of
0:25:25 uh african americans holding
0:25:28 placards and banners saying uh i am a
0:25:31 man
0:25:32 and i am a man you know and so the idea
0:25:35 is that i'm not a boy
0:25:36 that's the idea i'm not a boy you know
0:25:38 so i'm not the one that
0:25:39 you you subjugate and you diminish and
0:25:42 you demean
0:25:43 and you regard as unworthy and
0:25:46 uncivilized and savage and so on and so
0:25:48 forth
0:25:48 i am a man it's a declarative it's a
0:25:51 statement
0:25:52 of truth meaning this is who i am so
0:25:54 therefore uh prima levy's book
0:25:56 was also called you know is this a man
0:25:59 uh but also called
0:26:00 uh survival in auschwitz um and so
0:26:03 therefore he makes this observation and
0:26:05 he says
0:26:06 i'm gonna read this to you slightly
0:26:08 because i think it's important um
0:26:10 he says that uh this is the idea of
0:26:12 social death and social dying he said
0:26:14 nothing belongs
0:26:15 to us anymore they have taken away our
0:26:17 clothes our shoes even our hair
0:26:20 if we speak they will not listen to us
0:26:22 and if they listen
0:26:24 they will not understand they will even
0:26:26 take away our name
0:26:28 and if we want to keep it we will have
0:26:30 to find in ourselves the strength to do
0:26:32 so
0:26:33 to manage somehow so that behind the
0:26:36 name something
0:26:37 of us of us as we were still remaining
0:26:40 this is so
0:26:41 it's actually very emotive uh to read
0:26:43 this
0:26:44 it's very emotional but it's um very
0:26:46 powerful and read the last line again he
0:26:48 says
0:26:48 to manage somehow so that behind the
0:26:51 name
0:26:52 something of us of us as we were still
0:26:54 remains and that's
0:26:56 that's what social debt and what social
0:26:57 dying actually is there
0:26:59 um now the second blue point is othering
0:27:03 is
0:27:03 in grouping and out grouping so
0:27:05 therefore in order to create
0:27:06 the other uh you have to have of course
0:27:09 the in
0:27:10 group and the in group in fact is the
0:27:12 result of the out group or vice versa
0:27:15 so the out grouping is the is is the is
0:27:18 the other one
0:27:19 and in order for that to uh exist in the
0:27:22 first place there has to be
0:27:24 an in-grouping right so kind of the self
0:27:27 versus the other uh and the way that the
0:27:31 self in fact
0:27:32 uh the way that the other is created is
0:27:34 through the self that's the whole point
0:27:36 in the first
0:27:36 i mean it's through the self so it's
0:27:39 based upon
0:27:40 a human being or human beings people
0:27:43 society you know groups gangs
0:27:47 cults believing themselves to be so
0:27:49 worthy
0:27:50 of of human privileges and rights and so
0:27:53 on and so forth that they believe that
0:27:54 the
0:27:55 owl group then are those who are uh
0:27:58 not the the humans that the uh
0:28:02 in group are or not the worthy the
0:28:05 other becomes the unworthy the
0:28:07 uncivilized and then the savage and so
0:28:09 on and so forth and so
0:28:11 this could be based on many factors one
0:28:12 is disability
0:28:14 so you could i mean people could look
0:28:16 towards disabled people as being
0:28:18 so inherently different to the healthy
0:28:21 bodied ones
0:28:22 um that they don't have a place uh in
0:28:25 the world of the healthy bodied ones so
0:28:28 therefore healthy what the ones could be
0:28:30 a grouping in and of themselves or even
0:28:32 if we don't think of it like that
0:28:34 psychologically uh that could exist
0:28:38 right or subconsciously it could exist
0:28:40 so subconsciously you might think well
0:28:42 my my my uh my company
0:28:45 my pairs in society are the ones who
0:28:49 uh don't have impediments of
0:28:52 let's say walking for example are not uh
0:28:56 are not wheelchair bound for example
0:28:58 right so
0:28:59 the way you could look at the wheelchair
0:29:01 bound once that's so
0:29:02 far removed from you and your
0:29:05 living experiences that you you simply
0:29:08 don't see them
0:29:09 as as part of you or part of your human
0:29:11 society
0:29:12 anymore and that's a tragic example in
0:29:15 fact of of uttering
0:29:16 based on disability there was a a man in
0:29:19 the in the time of
0:29:20 of the prophet sallam uh and he this man
0:29:23 in fact was blind
0:29:25 he was blind and the prophet would say
0:29:27 to his companions
0:29:28 uh he would say
0:29:32 he would say that come and let's go and
0:29:34 visit the one who has vision
0:29:36 who has vision and insight even though
0:29:38 the man
0:29:39 was blind the prophet sallam did not
0:29:42 typify him as a blind
0:29:44 person per se right so his own blindness
0:29:47 of course was his own challenge
0:29:49 in in life but the prophet taught that
0:29:52 in
0:29:52 in the way that he supposed to be
0:29:55 understood
0:29:56 in relation to us and we in relation to
0:29:58 him
0:29:59 is that we do not demean or belittle or
0:30:02 look down upon him
0:30:03 based upon his disability uh but the
0:30:06 fact is
0:30:07 there is a greater conferring of honor
0:30:10 upon him
0:30:11 uh on the fact that he has uh he has
0:30:14 faith he has belief he has
0:30:16 character and so many other things and
0:30:17 he would say therefore let us
0:30:19 go and see the one let us go and visit
0:30:21 the one who has
0:30:22 vision you know he has vision and
0:30:24 perception
0:30:26 uh and this beautiful beautiful
0:30:27 demonstration of how the prophet sallam
0:30:29 taught us to
0:30:30 engage with other people and then of
0:30:32 course number two race and that's one of
0:30:34 our of course main discussions today
0:30:36 about the element of race um which is a
0:30:38 very common one
0:30:39 you know the the complexion of a
0:30:41 person's skin
0:30:43 uh becomes therefore the identifying
0:30:45 marker
0:30:46 by which and through which we see social
0:30:49 acceptability
0:30:50 by which we see uh acceptance worthiness
0:30:53 unworthiness and so on and so forth and
0:30:55 socioeconomic status as well
0:30:58 and i had here a very famous poem that
0:31:01 you guys might remember doing
0:31:02 if you if you did your gcnc's maybe some
0:31:04 years back so
0:31:05 it's called two beautiful people in the
0:31:07 mercedes do two scavengers and drunk
0:31:09 it's by lawrence fernandetti if i
0:31:10 remember
0:31:11 again this poem is discussed uh in my
0:31:14 book on being human which you can
0:31:15 download for free on the sap institute
0:31:17 website and
0:31:18 and and you can clearly see from the
0:31:20 title itself to beautiful people in the
0:31:22 mercedes two scavengers in a truck
0:31:24 the juxtaposition there the contrasting
0:31:27 there
0:31:27 um of uh of people who are
0:31:30 beautiful and inner mercedes and then
0:31:34 the others who are
0:31:35 scavengers um and are not afforded an
0:31:38 adjective had to describe them really in
0:31:40 any in a sense
0:31:42 and they're in a truck as opposed to the
0:31:44 mercedes uh but the poem is interesting
0:31:46 because it
0:31:47 what it shows is that um so these
0:31:51 two sort of in the poem you have the the
0:31:53 people in the mercedes the man and the
0:31:55 woman
0:31:56 who coming from their architect's office
0:31:58 uh
0:31:59 they they uh are seen by
0:32:02 the two people in in the
0:32:05 uh in the garbage truck right
0:32:09 uh because it's because it's a red light
0:32:11 they stop at the traffic lights you know
0:32:13 and it says it's only the red light that
0:32:15 holds these
0:32:17 these two couples together for um for an
0:32:20 instant
0:32:20 for a small moment and it says that
0:32:22 they're hanging on i remember reading
0:32:24 and it says that that the two men are
0:32:26 hanging on and looking down
0:32:28 but even hanging on and looking down
0:32:31 are our metaphoric you know our are more
0:32:34 symbolic
0:32:35 of life itself you know hanging on this
0:32:37 hanging on
0:32:38 hanging on to life and looking down
0:32:41 and looking down in fact could be the
0:32:43 inverse it could be that
0:32:44 the people in the mercedes might be
0:32:46 looking down on the others
0:32:49 um but looking down could also could
0:32:51 also be
0:32:52 a way of i don't know now when i think
0:32:55 about it is it is it a way for us
0:32:56 is it a way of offsetting uh the idea
0:32:59 that we're
0:33:00 creating these altitudes we're creating
0:33:03 these heights
0:33:04 and they're so superficial right so
0:33:06 who's looking down
0:33:08 on who who's at the height the garbage
0:33:10 man interestingly ironically
0:33:12 are at the height looking down on the
0:33:14 people in the mercedes
0:33:15 um and even though we know what it means
0:33:18 uh
0:33:18 in the poem hanging on and looking down
0:33:21 but maybe the poet had it in his mind
0:33:23 that we're supposed to be seeing it
0:33:25 the other way around as well maybe but
0:33:28 of course poetry
0:33:29 is is poetry um it's an interesting poem
0:33:32 therefore and then he says that
0:33:34 and he speaks about the the high seas of
0:33:36 this great gulf
0:33:38 of our democracy and it's speaking about
0:33:40 the fact that even though
0:33:42 we're together in reality we're not
0:33:45 together
0:33:46 right because we can use the
0:33:48 socio-economical economic status of
0:33:50 others um
0:33:52 or of ourselves sorry to create these in
0:33:54 groups and out groups
0:33:56 that we just simply hang around and
0:33:57 stick around with those
0:33:59 that way that we that we know are
0:34:01 wealthy
0:34:02 as we are you know uh and we should
0:34:05 never ever do that
0:34:06 should never ever do that the example of
0:34:08 the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi
0:34:10 is that he would be and this is in fact
0:34:12 the example of prophets prophets were
0:34:14 with those who were on the margins of
0:34:15 human society prophets were with those
0:34:17 who are on the fringes of human society
0:34:19 the prophet says that the best marriage
0:34:21 is that you invite the poor to your
0:34:23 to your wedding you know you don't
0:34:25 simply have a a wedding ceremony and
0:34:27 only the wealthy ones are invited but
0:34:28 what about the poor people who are never
0:34:30 invited why didn't you invite those
0:34:31 people and
0:34:32 and and the problem you know would take
0:34:34 the hands of poor people
0:34:36 in fact a man once came and he said he
0:34:38 said it says
0:34:39 in hadith it says he says a man
0:34:42 came complaining about the hardness of
0:34:45 his heart
0:34:45 and the prophet says to him that's do
0:34:48 you want that allah
0:34:50 you know softens your heart
0:34:53 and allah fulfills your needs and the
0:34:54 man says indeed i would love that or
0:34:56 messenger of allah
0:34:57 and the prophet then says
0:35:04 and if you want that to happen then have
0:35:06 mercy on the orphan
0:35:07 and feed him from your food and allah
0:35:11 will
0:35:11 soften your heart and allah will fulfill
0:35:14 your needs
0:35:14 right this is why and wipe over his head
0:35:16 with this kind of symbolic gesture of of
0:35:18 of mercy and kindness
0:35:20 and feed him from your food and that
0:35:21 love will soften your heart fulfill you
0:35:23 on it so therefore it's beautiful
0:35:24 so therefore also othering is to
0:35:26 generalize right what does that mean
0:35:28 that means that in reality what is
0:35:30 society society is a complex measure of
0:35:32 human beings individuals
0:35:34 the example i've just given you of
0:35:35 viktor frankl and the others as well
0:35:39 are simply stating the obvious point
0:35:41 that every single one of us is an
0:35:43 individual
0:35:45 and so therefore if we're seeing others
0:35:48 groups people as a kind of a uh
0:35:51 as a kind of a generalized you know mesh
0:35:54 of people um that they all must
0:35:58 think the same they all must believe the
0:36:00 same they all must
0:36:01 have same value judgments in life that's
0:36:04 the way that we would otherwise
0:36:06 those people right because the opposite
0:36:08 is true the idea is that everybody in
0:36:10 fact is an
0:36:11 individual with different thoughts and
0:36:13 values and beliefs and
0:36:15 feelings as well uh so therefore
0:36:18 uh othering is to generalize is to
0:36:21 marginalize and therefore
0:36:22 this leads to uh discrimination we're
0:36:24 going to go through some
0:36:26 uh accounts now of of the kind of
0:36:28 discrimination this would result in
0:36:31 um now othering in fact is also a false
0:36:35 creation right it's something that's
0:36:37 that's not true
0:36:38 it's a characterizing of another a false
0:36:41 creation it obscures
0:36:43 it obscures the true identity the true
0:36:46 worth and the true value of another it
0:36:49 demoralizes
0:36:50 of course it does of course it does it's
0:36:53 going to demoralize
0:36:54 right so if a person knows
0:36:57 that they're being perceived of as less
0:37:01 valuable less worthy less important by
0:37:05 others it's going to demoralize them
0:37:07 right it's going to make them feel as if
0:37:09 well they're not
0:37:09 good enough they're not good enough
0:37:11 they're not acceptable enough right
0:37:14 to be with the company or with the group
0:37:17 that's the dominant group in society and
0:37:20 it generates an irrational affair of
0:37:21 another
0:37:23 right so by by castigating by
0:37:26 marginalizing by removing
0:37:28 uh some people out of the dominant frame
0:37:31 by which we look at the world
0:37:33 uh makes us makes us
0:37:36 fair those others as if they're um
0:37:40 as if they're you know not fully human
0:37:43 as if they're sub-humanized entities and
0:37:45 this of course is exactly what happens
0:37:47 and is happening and has happened in
0:37:49 examples of of mass conflict mass
0:37:51 killing human genocide as well
0:37:53 right an irrational fear of another
0:37:55 leading to hatred abuse and
0:37:57 savagery um now here we have an example
0:38:01 of
0:38:01 uh of emmett till emmett chill might be
0:38:04 a name that you might be familiar with
0:38:06 maybe not but it's very again it's kind
0:38:09 of uh
0:38:10 it's it's like a whatsapp movement
0:38:12 really i think in the civil rights
0:38:13 struggle because of that key year 1955
0:38:16 it was the same year in fact that rosa
0:38:18 parks made her defiant
0:38:20 uh decision to remain seated
0:38:23 on the bus uh in montgomery um
0:38:27 you know and this then that of course
0:38:29 led to the montgomery boss boycott for
0:38:31 381 days
0:38:33 uh and it had a kind of a big effect on
0:38:35 on the economy
0:38:36 and it kind of galvanized the spirit of
0:38:39 uh of african americans and also with
0:38:41 whites as well
0:38:42 who had the solidarity with with the
0:38:44 african americans in the struggle
0:38:45 but remember of course it wasn't had to
0:38:47 begin with it was also claudette
0:38:48 colville
0:38:49 claudette colvin sorry um who also who
0:38:52 was only 16 year old but also refused to
0:38:54 give her place to the white man on the
0:38:55 bus
0:38:56 as well but rosa parks becomes really
0:38:58 paradigmatic influential
0:39:00 in the same year therefore we also had
0:39:02 the slaughter of emmett till
0:39:04 um emmett till was a i think 14 15 year
0:39:07 old boy he was in fact from chicago but
0:39:09 he persuaded his mother maya till uh
0:39:12 to uh to allow him i think him and maybe
0:39:15 another sibling
0:39:16 to travel down south to alabama um
0:39:19 when it was alabama yeah mississippi uh
0:39:22 to spend time with his cousin his mother
0:39:25 may until initially resisted
0:39:27 the idea but then she gave in to his
0:39:29 demand and then he goes there and
0:39:31 and then he's um i mean there is of
0:39:34 course
0:39:34 um there is a dominant narrative uh
0:39:37 which has been in fact challenged in
0:39:39 some in some
0:39:40 in some reports as well uh but in the
0:39:43 dominant one it says that he was
0:39:47 in a sweet shop and a white woman came
0:39:50 in and he apparently wolf whistled
0:39:52 and then she informed her husband the
0:39:54 husband that night together with his
0:39:56 friend or his brother
0:39:59 went to the home uh that he was staying
0:40:01 in you know with his cousin and the
0:40:03 cousin's grandfather i think it was
0:40:05 and he was beaten beaten to death he was
0:40:07 taken to
0:40:08 the tallahatchie river in mississippi uh
0:40:11 beaten to death i mean
0:40:12 so horrifically uh and killed and then
0:40:15 dumped in the river
0:40:16 um and and then you know
0:40:20 of course he was reported and and then
0:40:22 when they interviewed
0:40:24 uh the um the cousin
0:40:27 and the grandfather who informed them
0:40:29 that that night they came and they took
0:40:31 him uh him and they and they killed him
0:40:34 uh
0:40:34 when the the body was taken out of the
0:40:38 river
0:40:38 it was so badly disfigured uh that
0:40:42 they they they they enclosed it in a box
0:40:45 and they sealed the box and they tried
0:40:47 to convince the mother may tell not to
0:40:49 open the box
0:40:50 right because uh you know you don't they
0:40:52 don't want to see what was being done to
0:40:54 her son
0:40:54 and she said no she said this is my son
0:40:57 and i want to see my son
0:40:59 um and then uh
0:41:02 you know on in the in the funeral of
0:41:05 emmett till
0:41:06 it says around one third of all people
0:41:09 uh
0:41:10 in in the church that they fainted when
0:41:12 they saw what they did
0:41:13 to to that young young child um
0:41:16 now i want to read this this is uh and
0:41:18 just pay attention a lot to
0:41:20 what's uh in red as well because i
0:41:22 thought that's really important
0:41:23 these kind of ideas the mother mayor
0:41:26 tells says that we buried emmet
0:41:28 the state of mississippi said that that
0:41:30 was not ahmet
0:41:31 they said that it was impossible for a
0:41:33 body to deteriorate that much
0:41:35 in that length of time but what they
0:41:37 didn't say they didn't bring out that
0:41:39 the body was badly beaten
0:41:41 that the river water had burst the skin
0:41:43 and it had peeled off the body
0:41:45 the water was hot the beating was brutal
0:41:48 then to beat him they didn't hear his
0:41:50 cries look at that they didn't hear his
0:41:52 cries
0:41:53 you know that's a very powerful thing of
0:41:55 course for a mother to say her about her
0:41:57 son
0:41:58 uh it's almost it's almost as if it's
0:42:00 saying
0:42:01 had they heard his cries wouldn't they
0:42:04 have stopped beating him i mean had if
0:42:07 they heard his cries wouldn't that make
0:42:09 wouldn't have that have made them stop
0:42:11 beating him if they'd heard his cries
0:42:14 right
0:42:14 because in reality when we speak about
0:42:17 empathy
0:42:18 right and of course she's alluding to
0:42:20 this and what she's saying is that
0:42:21 empathy is really to be alert to our
0:42:23 human codes of recognizability the fact
0:42:26 that we can recognize with other people
0:42:28 because of the fact that we our human
0:42:30 codes are
0:42:31 same or similar if not identical we all
0:42:35 cry at times we all
0:42:36 laugh at times we all feel sad at times
0:42:38 you all feel
0:42:39 really happy at times i mean all of
0:42:41 these are simple codes of of
0:42:43 understanding who we are and simply as
0:42:45 as human beings and she said they didn't
0:42:46 hear his cries they didn't touch
0:42:48 them whatsoever this one little colored
0:42:51 boy that did hear them
0:42:52 said that he heard screams coming from
0:42:54 that barn about an hour
0:42:56 and a half he cried for god he cried for
0:42:58 his mother
0:43:00 look at that he pleaded with them but
0:43:02 they were having such a good time
0:43:04 so they didn't consider that he was a
0:43:06 human being and look at that
0:43:08 look at that last line having such a
0:43:10 good time so they didn't consider that
0:43:12 he was a human being
0:43:14 i mean you know i mean this is this is
0:43:17 it
0:43:18 right they didn't consider he was a
0:43:19 human being right so therefore
0:43:22 in in their minds this emmett till has
0:43:24 become
0:43:25 the sub-human you know he's become the
0:43:27 sub-human he's become the
0:43:29 uh he's become the uh you know the
0:43:32 ubermensch he's become the
0:43:34 the ones he's become the uh the
0:43:37 marginalized and he's no longer
0:43:40 part within that human frame and what
0:43:42 that human frame really means
0:43:44 in reality is that the perpetrators
0:43:46 believe themselves to be
0:43:48 so um honorable or so deserving
0:43:52 because of the color of their skin and a
0:43:54 metal
0:43:55 because of his skin was therefore
0:43:57 undeserving
0:43:58 right of all the things those moral
0:44:02 rights those human rights that human
0:44:05 beings are
0:44:06 afforded meaning basic rights of decency
0:44:09 basic rights of being treated with
0:44:11 respect and on and so on and so forth
0:44:13 um but because he was
0:44:17 he was an african-american a complexion
0:44:19 color was different
0:44:21 they didn't see that he was a human
0:44:23 being so it's a very tragic account
0:44:24 there of
0:44:25 from the mother of uh emmett till maya
0:44:27 till
0:44:28 and here's another example
0:44:36 in this example um
0:44:39 again is to do with um the idea of color
0:44:43 and complexion this is from john howard
0:44:44 griffin
0:44:46 uh now join our griffin in fact this
0:44:49 again is to do with
0:44:50 the struggle of african americans
0:44:51 particularly in the 1950s
0:44:54 uh john howard griffin was a white
0:44:56 individual who decided to
0:44:58 have his skin color black and he
0:45:01 describes it here
0:45:03 so that he could experience what
0:45:06 black people are experiencing of racism
0:45:09 in their towns and villages and in
0:45:11 cities and he writes this and he says i
0:45:13 learned within a very few hours that no
0:45:15 one was judging me by my qualities as a
0:45:17 human
0:45:18 individual it was in red there by my
0:45:20 qualities as a human
0:45:22 individual right so therefore the
0:45:24 contrast here is between
0:45:26 the value what's valuable is it going to
0:45:28 be
0:45:30 the superficial color of our skin or
0:45:32 something that's more transcendental
0:45:35 more intrinsic more powerful um
0:45:38 and that is of course the qualities we
0:45:39 have as human beings and everyone was
0:45:41 judging me by my pigment he says
0:45:43 as soon as white men or women saw me
0:45:45 they automatically assumed
0:45:47 i possessed a whole set of false
0:45:49 characters this is why it's of course
0:45:50 the characterizing like i mentioned
0:45:52 false not only to me but to all blacks
0:45:55 and i think this is so powerful so
0:45:57 powerful let's read that again
0:45:58 as soon as white men or women um
0:46:02 saw me they automatically assumed i
0:46:04 possessed a whole set of
0:46:06 false characteristics false not only to
0:46:08 me
0:46:09 but to all black men meaning it's a
0:46:11 complete
0:46:12 it's a complete fictitious
0:46:15 characterizing meaning it's something
0:46:17 you're
0:46:17 cr that's been created imputed upon them
0:46:20 from their imagination right uh and that
0:46:23 has no truth bearing
0:46:25 at all they could not see me or any
0:46:27 other black man
0:46:28 as a human individual because they
0:46:30 buried us under the garbage of their
0:46:32 stereotype view
0:46:33 of us this is it's so powerful what he's
0:46:35 saying here they could not see me or any
0:46:38 other black man
0:46:39 as a human individual because they
0:46:41 buried us under the garbage of their
0:46:42 stereotype view of us
0:46:45 the human being therefore does not
0:46:47 emerge they saw us as different from
0:46:49 themselves
0:46:51 in fundamental ways we were
0:46:53 irresponsible we
0:46:54 were different in our sexual morals we
0:46:56 were intellectually limited we
0:46:58 had a god-given sense of rhythm we we
0:47:01 were lazy and happy-go-lucky we loved
0:47:04 watermelon and fried chicken
0:47:06 how could white men ever really know
0:47:08 black men if on every contact the white
0:47:10 man's stereotype view of the black man
0:47:12 got in the way
0:47:13 i never knew a black man who felt this
0:47:15 stereotype view fit him
0:47:17 always in every encounter even with good
0:47:20 whites we had the feeling that the white
0:47:22 person was not talking with us
0:47:24 but with his image of us i think this
0:47:27 this account of john howard griffin
0:47:30 is is so powerful and so representative
0:47:34 of what othering really is and also what
0:47:37 other ring
0:47:38 really does um the falsity
0:47:41 the falsity of of kind of a
0:47:43 pseudo-creation
0:47:44 really a characterization of somebody
0:47:47 else that's an untrue representation of
0:47:49 him or her or them
0:47:51 of those people because
0:47:55 because it it breeds and it now it has
0:47:58 existed
0:47:59 it's going to create this sense of chasm
0:48:04 difference and binary distinction
0:48:06 between
0:48:07 those two sets of people one of course
0:48:10 is going to be vilified victimized and
0:48:13 other would be therefore the dominant
0:48:14 perpetrator
0:48:16 inflicting on cruelty inflicting cruelty
0:48:19 and uh you know and injustice uh
0:48:22 abuse torture terror murder uh on that
0:48:26 other
0:48:26 you know and then that's kind of i think
0:48:27 what we're seeing here uh so i want us
0:48:30 to really think therefore about
0:48:32 what is it what is it what is the
0:48:34 culture what is the climate that would
0:48:36 lead to
0:48:37 uh those horrific deaths of the
0:48:39 individual we mentioned the beginning
0:48:41 uh uh you know and george floyd for
0:48:43 example and
0:48:44 why is it that he would have a police
0:48:46 officer with
0:48:48 his knee on that individual's neck for
0:48:50 so long
0:48:51 and he's pleading for his life i can't
0:48:54 breathe you know and sometimes you've
0:48:57 been calling out to his mother mama
0:48:59 he's saying that and think about the
0:49:02 fact that you know what
0:49:03 um we just read about uh
0:49:06 about emmett till not emma till yeah
0:49:09 emma till it was
0:49:10 right that he's he cried for his mother
0:49:13 right cried for his mother
0:49:15 right i mean that's a human human thing
0:49:17 there you know
0:49:18 we all have mothers right and so uh
0:49:21 we're seeing that here
0:49:24 now what is it in fact that we're seeing
0:49:26 we keep saying that we're seeing what is
0:49:27 it are we seeing so who and what do we
0:49:29 see
0:49:30 if we look at this uh this watercolor
0:49:33 painting here
0:49:34 this is called surrounded by torturers
0:49:36 he cannot see
0:49:38 see think about it who can't see who
0:49:41 now he this uh individual
0:49:44 in this in this painting who has his uh
0:49:47 head covered in in a hoodie
0:49:51 right he's surrounded by torturers but
0:49:55 he can't see them
0:49:56 right just just take it take a few
0:49:59 seconds to look at it we're going to
0:50:00 talk about it in a second but just look
0:50:02 at it
0:50:03 look at it this is from image custom of
0:50:05 the rehabilitation and research center
0:50:07 for
0:50:08 torture victims copenhagen denmark okay
0:50:10 so look at him
0:50:11 look at what he's wearing look at that
0:50:13 blood mark on his shirt
0:50:16 look at his clothing look at his feet
0:50:18 look at
0:50:19 the hood on his head
0:50:23 and look at what that hood looks like
0:50:26 okay look at those guards behind him and
0:50:30 look at what they look like
0:50:32 look at the halo around him and think
0:50:34 about what is that halo
0:50:36 what is that symbol what does it
0:50:37 represent how is it created how is it
0:50:39 there
0:50:40 all right so once you've seen it we're
0:50:43 going to move on
0:50:46 here we are juxtaposed observation so on
0:50:48 the one hand of course we saw that halo
0:50:50 what does it mean what does it represent
0:50:51 is it a halo
0:50:53 now it all depends what we're looking at
0:50:55 because it could in fact be that the
0:50:57 guards have a
0:50:58 as a torch and they're shining the torch
0:51:02 behind him and then that creates a kind
0:51:04 of halo effect
0:51:05 around him but perhaps we're supposed to
0:51:08 be
0:51:09 we're supposed to see him as if there is
0:51:11 a halo
0:51:12 around him why wouldn't there be that's
0:51:14 a question to ask isn't it
0:51:15 why wouldn't there be or why shouldn't
0:51:18 there be
0:51:19 see it's about sometimes we have these
0:51:22 false assumptions
0:51:23 of other human beings it could be that
0:51:26 you're looking at somebody and you're
0:51:27 thinking
0:51:28 uh you might not be thinking the best
0:51:30 about them
0:51:32 but the kind of things that you might
0:51:35 because remember the othering is about
0:51:37 what you believe to be so good in
0:51:40 yourself
0:51:41 you don't believe that to be in somebody
0:51:43 else right
0:51:44 uh and then what it creates it creates
0:51:46 this kind of an arrogance or
0:51:48 pride about you uh because you're seeing
0:51:51 yourself as
0:51:52 superior and others as inferior um
0:51:55 and so therefore think about what a halo
0:51:57 that halo which might not be a halo
0:51:59 uh but perhaps it should be a halo why
0:52:02 shouldn't it be a halo uh
0:52:04 what it should represent in our life
0:52:05 right what is the halo that we
0:52:07 create should we create halo around
0:52:10 the people that we're observing and
0:52:12 seeing in our world today
0:52:13 and what that could mean is a bit like
0:52:15 what the prophet says about the man who
0:52:16 was blind
0:52:17 that's going to visit the one who has
0:52:19 vision and can see it's creating
0:52:21 something giving that that individual
0:52:23 the goodness
0:52:24 uh the ingredient of of kindness and
0:52:27 mercy and goodness
0:52:28 that all people should be afforded what
0:52:31 about the swollen feet
0:52:33 or if you go back and see this word and
0:52:34 feet there
0:52:36 what do they represent now of course
0:52:38 there could be swollen feet because
0:52:40 they've been beaten
0:52:42 so because they've been beaten but the
0:52:44 sword free could also represent kind of
0:52:45 a stamped
0:52:46 presence maybe this one if he in fact is
0:52:49 his sense of defiance and dignity
0:52:51 maybe they represent his courage and
0:52:53 bravery maybe they represent this kind
0:52:55 of internalized authority
0:52:58 right uh what about the hood now the
0:52:59 hood in fact is almost important because
0:53:01 the hood is
0:53:01 is bear-like right so the
0:53:05 the the other the otherized individual
0:53:07 who's
0:53:08 going to end up being dehumanized is is
0:53:10 precisely that
0:53:11 is dehumanized and so one of the the
0:53:14 first things that
0:53:15 you find you see is a very common thing
0:53:18 in
0:53:19 examples of human genocide and and in
0:53:21 great injustice
0:53:22 is that the other victims uh dehumanized
0:53:25 ones are given these
0:53:27 um animalistic animalistic
0:53:31 you know labels like their beasts is
0:53:34 another one you know bears could be
0:53:35 another one
0:53:36 cockroaches vermin rats you know as
0:53:39 an infestation that has to be removed
0:53:42 but the behavior
0:53:43 is a symbol of course of this man's
0:53:46 defiance
0:53:47 uh of his maybe it's his defiance
0:53:50 that ends up here him being a prisoner
0:53:53 here in the first place right um
0:53:56 but the hood but because he's made to
0:53:58 look bear-like
0:54:00 right i think about what that creates in
0:54:02 the minds of those
0:54:04 of those gods behind him as if he's some
0:54:07 kind of
0:54:07 a spectacle in some kind of a zoo as if
0:54:10 he's a captured
0:54:11 animal you know uh it heralded because
0:54:14 he's captured now
0:54:15 you know for the wall to see it's a very
0:54:17 good book to read called
0:54:18 the spectacle it's called the spectacle
0:54:21 the tragedy of ota benga
0:54:24 and this in fact i also discussed in my
0:54:25 book on being human which you can
0:54:26 download for free
0:54:27 on sapience institute website at the
0:54:30 tragedy of ota bengal who in fact was
0:54:31 put
0:54:32 you know with um you know with uh with
0:54:34 monkeys in fact in in bronx zoo uh
0:54:38 in the beginning or and end of the 19th
0:54:41 or beginning of 20th century
0:54:42 um it's a very good book to read in fact
0:54:44 is by i forgot the author's name but you
0:54:46 can see the reference in my book
0:54:48 anyway so you can see therefore what the
0:54:50 what the hood represents there
0:54:52 uh the bear-like right the bear-like the
0:54:55 animal-like
0:54:56 animalistic you know wild connotations
0:55:00 of savage and wild and brutal
0:55:02 right unlike of course the gods behind
0:55:05 him right so therefore on the one hand
0:55:06 of course you also have here the hands
0:55:08 and the hands of course are unseen hands
0:55:09 could represent power
0:55:11 could represent uh you know uh
0:55:14 authority but the hands are hidden so we
0:55:17 can't see them
0:55:18 and think about the juxtaposing here of
0:55:20 isolation and togetherness
0:55:22 the pack predator prey irony so of
0:55:25 course the ones at the back are the ones
0:55:27 who are
0:55:28 uh together and he himself is isolated
0:55:32 so
0:55:33 so where you might you might think about
0:55:35 the uh
0:55:36 the the uh you know the animal
0:55:40 that operates uh as a pack uh
0:55:43 in this case it's the the juxtaposition
0:55:46 of the gods who behind him in fact who
0:55:48 are as a pak
0:55:49 and he himself is the isolated one over
0:55:52 here
0:55:53 right so he is therefore the prey
0:55:57 and then they happen to be the predators
0:55:59 and not the other way around
0:56:02 think about worry and pain defiance and
0:56:04 strength
0:56:05 so the worry and the pain that we can't
0:56:06 see on on the person's face because his
0:56:09 face is concealed it's hidden from view
0:56:11 it's invisible right you can't see the
0:56:14 pain there very good book to read is
0:56:16 called kiribati
0:56:17 this is by s yizhar published in 1959 if
0:56:21 i remember
0:56:23 and this is a book that details the
0:56:25 tragedy of the nakba 1948 written by in
0:56:27 fact by
0:56:28 israeli or this is a historic science
0:56:30 fiction of what actually happened with
0:56:32 the dispossession of homes and the
0:56:34 um the the fact that you know you have
0:56:36 settler colonialism here because these
0:56:38 new settlers are coming in and
0:56:40 taking the homes of of uh of the of the
0:56:42 native inhabitants
0:56:44 of of that land of palestine um but
0:56:47 kiribati is very powerful i think one of
0:56:49 my i'm going to read and shall inshallah
0:56:51 something you know from it
0:56:52 that i think was really really important
0:56:54 um
0:56:56 so uh yeah the worry and the pain so
0:56:59 what's hidden there for is
0:57:01 very keen defiance and strength and then
0:57:03 of course the clothing
0:57:04 is very key here also between the civil
0:57:07 and between the savage and so therefore
0:57:09 the the uniform of the gods comes to
0:57:13 connor and represents symbolize
0:57:15 civility order right
0:57:18 uh everything looks neat everything
0:57:20 looks good
0:57:21 they all use uniformity because they're
0:57:24 all wearing the same uniforms but the
0:57:26 the but the prisoner here who is the
0:57:28 victim
0:57:29 isolated a victim here who is made to
0:57:33 look like a beast an
0:57:34 animal um is uh
0:57:37 is seen represented as savage because of
0:57:40 his clothing his torn and so on and so
0:57:42 forth
0:57:43 um there's a beautiful example in the
0:57:45 quran
0:57:46 in circle yusuf and in surah yusuf it
0:57:49 says that
0:57:50 you know when when when yusuf al-islam
0:57:53 was thrown in the well
0:57:54 allen quran says and then these these uh
0:57:57 these caravan people came and allah says
0:58:03 that they sold him uh for
0:58:06 uh for a small price you know you can
0:58:09 count
0:58:10 on your fingers uh and and they didn't
0:58:13 think much of him
0:58:14 you know even though he he was the
0:58:16 prophet yusuf the the boy at that time
0:58:18 yusuf alayhi salam
0:58:20 but it's all about our perception what
0:58:22 we're seeing of others and
0:58:24 based upon that perception of others
0:58:26 it's what we're going to afford them or
0:58:27 not afford them
0:58:28 of of social space in our social spaces
0:58:32 of worthiness of goodness and so on and
0:58:35 so forth
0:58:36 and so therefore who and what do we see
0:58:38 now this in fact is from ktudor
0:58:40 understanding empathy transactional
0:58:42 analysis journal
0:58:44 um and he says is that when a torturer
0:58:46 looks upon his victim he can it
0:58:48 he can certainly directly see agony in
0:58:50 his face
0:58:51 and humiliation in his posture
0:58:55 the problem though is the light in which
0:58:57 he sees it that's very powerful
0:58:59 actually so on the one hand of course we
0:59:01 had
0:59:02 uh dave crossman in his book uh
0:59:05 on killing right and the idea of
0:59:08 altitude and attitude
0:59:09 but harry is saying that when a torture
0:59:11 even the torture is of course
0:59:12 in not an altitude he's in proximity
0:59:15 with his victim
0:59:17 it's the problem is the light in which
0:59:19 he sees
0:59:20 that victim it is not a matter of the
0:59:22 torture needing to infer a little
0:59:24 further to another
0:59:25 more inner realm in which the moral
0:59:28 properties of the other situation will
0:59:30 be revealed it is a matter of how he
0:59:32 sees the other's condition
0:59:34 what are we seeing of other people right
0:59:37 what did those policemen not see
0:59:40 of george floyd what they what could
0:59:43 they not see
0:59:44 of arigana as he's pleading you know
0:59:46 more than 25 times
0:59:47 i can't breathe i mean that's a lot of
0:59:49 times to say one thing
0:59:51 25 times i can't breathe i can't breathe
0:59:54 i mean you try and say it 25 times you
0:59:57 know i can't breathe
0:59:58 i can't breathe i can't breathe i can't
1:00:02 breathe
1:00:03 i can't breathe i can't breathe
1:00:07 i can't breathe i can't breathe
1:00:12 i can't breathe i can't breathe
1:00:16 just try and say that try and say that
1:00:18 25 times
1:00:20 in the different intonations you could
1:00:22 use to try and stress on the same
1:00:24 message again and again and again try
1:00:28 and do that
1:00:29 all right you know it's a lesson of
1:00:31 empathy just try and do that
1:00:33 you know you're thinking you're trying
1:00:35 to say the same thing
1:00:36 in the hope that one of those attempts
1:00:39 you're making
1:00:40 would be felt by the perpetrator that in
1:00:43 his inner conscience he could
1:00:45 be able a sense of emotional bearing
1:00:47 with that person with a victim
1:00:49 but of course it didn't work and it
1:00:50 wasn't there that means that
1:00:52 there was you know lack of empathy lack
1:00:55 of empathy lack of humanity you know
1:00:57 in that in that and what happened so
1:00:59 therefore uh
1:01:00 it's a matter of how he sees each
1:01:02 other's condition the torturer has the
1:01:04 reality of the other suffering
1:01:06 squarely in front of him under clear
1:01:08 light but that light is somehow wrong
1:01:11 look at that
1:01:12 the light is somehow wrong
1:01:15 look at that you know the light is
1:01:18 somehow wrong
1:01:20 we're using the wrong light we're using
1:01:23 the wrong lenses by which we're seeing
1:01:25 and appreciating others around us
1:01:29 we're not affording people what they're
1:01:31 supposed to be afforded
1:01:33 because our light is wrong right so it's
1:01:37 about the light by which you see
1:01:39 it is a peculiarly cold and harsh light
1:01:41 one that flattens and exposes the other
1:01:44 cuts and holds him open all the better
1:01:46 to prove and toy with him
1:01:48 what is needed is a different line this
1:01:50 is so powerful and it's so true you know
1:01:52 and so i would argue that for the light
1:01:53 that we need is is is the light of islam
1:01:56 to look upon the world with the light of
1:01:58 islam with that with
1:01:59 the mercy that islam mandates upon us as
1:02:02 human beings to consider
1:02:04 so dehumanization therefore is a
1:02:06 relegating of another to a distance some
1:02:09 other
1:02:10 it is a seeing in the other much less
1:02:12 and sometimes a complete absence
1:02:15 of what one sees in oneself all that is
1:02:18 morally reprehensible is defined
1:02:20 in that other so therefore you're
1:02:22 imputing the worst of whatever's in you
1:02:25 your cruelty selfish your self so
1:02:28 selfishness your arrogance your pride
1:02:31 your evil
1:02:32 your now imputing upon somebody
1:02:35 else and that's what dehumanization is
1:02:39 now what what it is really is this is a
1:02:41 stripping away
1:02:42 right this is stripping away uh of the
1:02:45 moral
1:02:46 human code which bonds us as human
1:02:48 beings
1:02:49 the kind of social vitality behind the
1:02:51 person or group is stripped away and
1:02:53 this
1:02:53 defacing precedes any physical injury or
1:02:56 death
1:02:56 inflicted on that victim right so we
1:03:00 spoke about therefore the idea of social
1:03:01 that social
1:03:02 dying and this of course is going to
1:03:04 lead to
1:03:05 the dehumanizing of of the people who
1:03:07 are the victims of
1:03:09 of social death and dying but this
1:03:11 really begins on our mental canvasses so
1:03:13 we just
1:03:14 we just read from tudor about the idea
1:03:16 of the light by which or through which
1:03:18 we're seeing people
1:03:19 uh this begins uh in our mental health
1:03:22 all of us have a mental canvas um but
1:03:26 if on mental canvases that dehumanized
1:03:28 other is painted with
1:03:30 broad strokes and wide brushes meaning
1:03:33 that there is no
1:03:37 there are no identifications no fine
1:03:39 lines no nuances no grays no colors no
1:03:42 subtle outlines
1:03:43 all we're left with is this generalized
1:03:46 mesh
1:03:47 you know of of just nothingness
1:03:51 you know i have a chapter i have a book
1:03:53 being published now inshallah it's
1:03:54 called
1:03:56 it's called uh navigating war descent
1:03:59 and empathy
1:04:00 uh in arabia's relations seeing our
1:04:02 others in darkened spaces published by
1:04:03 springer inshallah coming out next month
1:04:05 um but i have a chapter in that book
1:04:09 called landscaping otherness and
1:04:11 challenging frames of
1:04:12 nothingness in contemporary palestine
1:04:15 right so frames of nothingness
1:04:19 you're creating a sense of nothingness
1:04:22 about others because you're disallowing
1:04:24 those finer lines as finer
1:04:27 identification points
1:04:29 right those points of beauty right
1:04:31 points of beauty and handsomeness and so
1:04:33 on and so forth
1:04:34 and goodness um because and that's
1:04:36 therefore created
1:04:38 you know from our in our mental cancer
1:04:39 it's about therefore the light by which
1:04:41 we're seeing people
1:04:43 and the colors with which we're using to
1:04:45 paint people
1:04:46 what we're drawing of people in our
1:04:48 minds right
1:04:50 and how we're painting them really with
1:04:52 what strokes
1:04:53 and with what kinds of brushes as well
1:04:56 uh historical example the untorment
1:04:58 was the uber mensch right the the the
1:05:01 under men
1:05:03 you know and then the upper men the
1:05:04 under men as in the gypsies as in the
1:05:07 victims of the holocaust the jews even
1:05:09 the mentally handicapped remember as
1:05:11 well we spoke about
1:05:13 dehumanization and othering in terms of
1:05:16 mental
1:05:16 of disability but also mental disability
1:05:20 it could be therefore that you're
1:05:21 looking you look look upon people who
1:05:23 have
1:05:23 illnesses like autism or asperger's
1:05:25 syndrome for example are
1:05:27 as so far removed from your kind of
1:05:30 social
1:05:31 realm or your social world that we kind
1:05:33 of castigate them as
1:05:34 as others and of course we should never
1:05:36 do that um
1:05:38 so the but that's what the nazis also
1:05:40 did
1:05:41 they also of course uh killed off the
1:05:44 mentally handicapped children
1:05:46 as well and so therefore the ontario
1:05:47 mensch versus ubermensch
1:05:49 the under men versus the the upper men
1:05:52 and upper men would be the able-bodied
1:05:54 one
1:05:55 you know the the lightest skin the aryan
1:05:57 rays for example
1:05:58 um who were kind of believed to be the
1:06:02 best of
1:06:03 all humans and that's of course the
1:06:05 tragedy and the language of humanization
1:06:07 we've discussed this in fact before
1:06:08 about the way that the dehumanizers are
1:06:11 always
1:06:11 the kind of the cockroaches and the
1:06:13 vermin uh
1:06:15 are always the the rats you know always
1:06:17 the
1:06:18 the kind of the savages and so on and so
1:06:20 forth and this is a very typical
1:06:21 language of
1:06:22 demonization um but also in in others as
1:06:25 well so for example
1:06:27 uh like i mentioned the ethnic cleansing
1:06:29 of palestine so the kind of things that
1:06:30 you you might find there in fact you do
1:06:32 find that
1:06:33 in the accounts of the refuse nics who
1:06:35 are ex-idf soldiers
1:06:37 and that they say that the kind of
1:06:38 language we use for palestinians is that
1:06:40 palestinians are the unemployed
1:06:43 palestinians are unemployed you know
1:06:46 they are the ones who are lazy
1:06:48 you know they are uh erratic arabs are
1:06:52 erratic unemployed lazy
1:06:55 um you know violence for example and so
1:06:58 these kind of these typifications carry
1:07:01 through are carried through
1:07:02 a lot in social life uh in in
1:07:05 discussions
1:07:06 in media on movies in television
1:07:10 in news framing for example good book
1:07:13 called
1:07:14 real bad arabs real as an reel that are
1:07:18 by jack sheehan
1:07:19 where he he examines uh
1:07:22 american movies you know for like a
1:07:25 hundred years i mean
1:07:26 going through movies and where arabs are
1:07:29 presented
1:07:30 uh and by and large always presented as
1:07:34 the uh you know as the as the other
1:07:37 you know as the one who is irresponsible
1:07:40 as the one who is a womanizer as the one
1:07:42 who
1:07:42 is a terrorist as the one who is a cheat
1:07:46 you know as the one who is uh
1:07:48 duplicitous you know all these negative
1:07:50 troops imputed upon
1:07:51 uh and therefore what it does is it
1:07:53 builds up this mental
1:07:54 image of who the arab actually is then
1:07:58 um i i discuss this at length in fact in
1:08:00 my book and about the way that it makes
1:08:02 empathy
1:08:03 far more difficult because you have to
1:08:04 unpeel layers and layers and layers and
1:08:07 layers of stereotyping
1:08:09 that's built up for a very long time
1:08:12 and part of this is connected to the
1:08:14 language of dehumanization here
1:08:16 now what is the quranic solution what is
1:08:19 the quranic outlook towards all of this
1:08:21 the chronic paradigm
1:08:23 um undercutting and offsetting binary
1:08:25 distinctions fueled by hate
1:08:28 um very powerful how we do that so let's
1:08:30 look at it like this today for allah in
1:08:31 the quran he says
1:08:33 another of his signs is the creation of
1:08:35 the heavens and the earth
1:08:37 and the diversity of your languages and
1:08:39 colors
1:08:40 there truly are signs in this for those
1:08:43 who know
1:08:44 allah is saying there for the diversity
1:08:45 here in people's languages
1:08:47 and colors is not a cause for them
1:08:51 to hold others in contempt and to
1:08:54 disregard others
1:08:55 and to make these binary distinctions on
1:08:57 the contrary
1:08:59 allah saying it's a cause for us to
1:09:00 marvel at the majesty of allah subhana
1:09:02 wa
1:09:03 how allah created with such perfection
1:09:06 different things
1:09:07 different colors of plants different
1:09:09 colors of you know flowers different
1:09:11 colors of things
1:09:13 and different colors of human beings all
1:09:14 these truly alliances are signs and this
1:09:16 for those who know
1:09:17 the other verse in the quran from
1:09:20 chapter 49 verse 13
1:09:21 people we created you all you all from a
1:09:24 single
1:09:25 man and a single woman and made you into
1:09:27 races and tribes so that you should
1:09:29 recognize one another
1:09:31 in god's eyes and allah's eyes the most
1:09:33 honoured of you are the ones
1:09:35 most mindful of him and of god allah is
1:09:37 all-knowing and all aware and this ayah
1:09:39 this verse is so powerful really you
1:09:42 know
1:09:42 it's uh one of the verses that was
1:09:44 reflected upon by malcolm x in fact in
1:09:46 the autobiography and in his experience
1:09:48 of the hajj
1:09:49 this is one of us that he mentioned that
1:09:51 this is a solution
1:09:52 to racism in america if they knew what
1:09:55 islam
1:09:56 says about the togetherness of that
1:09:57 human spirit
1:09:59 and human in the human beings uh
1:10:02 that races and tribes have no i mean
1:10:05 there's no bearing in the sense that
1:10:06 these are not
1:10:07 for the purpose of setting up walls and
1:10:10 boundaries and barriers between us but
1:10:12 it's simply for us to recognize
1:10:14 who each person is but then to also
1:10:16 remember that it is
1:10:18 not on account of the race to which you
1:10:20 belong or the tribute you belong that
1:10:22 it has any sense of measure on your
1:10:25 nobility or your greatness and goodness
1:10:28 but in fact uh the most honored of you
1:10:30 with allah
1:10:31 are those who have the most piety are
1:10:33 the ones who are the most mindful of him
1:10:35 and that's what the most important thing
1:10:36 is and therefore
1:10:38 god man and the pursuit of human dignity
1:10:41 look at the verse in the quran adam we
1:10:45 have certainly
1:10:45 ennobled and honored the children of
1:10:49 adam there is a general a general
1:10:52 nobility
1:10:53 unto human beings and of course whatever
1:10:55 they do later on is
1:10:56 is there doing right you could you could
1:10:59 reach heights
1:11:00 amazing heights of of goodness and
1:11:02 excellence
1:11:03 and you could also you know fail in that
1:11:06 and and bring yourself into into ruin
1:11:09 uh by by your your behavior your belief
1:11:12 in your attitude towards other people as
1:11:14 well but but at the baseline
1:11:17 the the basic state of man is simply one
1:11:20 of
1:11:20 of of being honored as being the
1:11:22 children of adam
1:11:24 and the closest then to allah would be
1:11:26 those who have the most closeness
1:11:28 in their hearts towards him and their
1:11:29 actions towards him
1:11:31 and not on account of the superficial
1:11:33 outward
1:11:34 uh how tall or how short you are how big
1:11:37 or how thin you are or how
1:11:39 uh you know how healthy or how sick you
1:11:42 are
1:11:42 right how light or how dark you might be
1:11:46 all of these things are just simply uh
1:11:49 the fact that we're human beings and
1:11:50 human beings are different
1:11:52 and it's not about picking on
1:11:53 differences so that we
1:11:55 create these antagonisms between people
1:11:57 but it is about
1:11:59 you know re marveling in the splendor of
1:12:02 allah's creation
1:12:03 allah created differently but allah did
1:12:05 not make those differences
1:12:07 a benchmark by which we see and value
1:12:10 other people
1:12:11 it's not like that but it's about the
1:12:13 fact that the benchmark is always going
1:12:14 to be
1:12:15 how close we are with allah and that's
1:12:17 the matter of the heart to begin with
1:12:19 anyway so
1:12:20 and again undercutting of setting one
1:12:22 distinctions fueled by hate
1:12:24 uh the chronic paradigm is about
1:12:26 principles of justice to counter
1:12:28 in-group biases so
1:12:30 we could run risk in fact of having
1:12:31 in-group biases because
1:12:33 we create in groups or within groups but
1:12:36 then because we're looking at the others
1:12:38 with that false
1:12:39 light with the wrong light as we learnt
1:12:42 from tudor and others
1:12:43 um we could have we could act on
1:12:47 impediments of love and hate there's two
1:12:49 very key verses in the quran
1:12:51 about that in fact one of them says when
1:12:53 allah says oh you who believe
1:12:55 be upright witnesses to justice you know
1:12:58 for allah
1:12:59 even if it's against yourselves
1:13:03 orifice against your parents whether
1:13:05 they're wealthy or poor
1:13:07 allah is saying don't let the impediment
1:13:08 of love
1:13:10 right make you unjust
1:13:13 right because you could you could refuse
1:13:16 to be just because you love somebody or
1:13:18 something so much
1:13:20 and there's also another verse in the
1:13:21 quran like the first verse but it's a
1:13:23 small difference in it it says oh you
1:13:24 believe
1:13:25 be uh upright you know for allah
1:13:29 this time allah comes first as witnesses
1:13:31 to justice
1:13:32 um and don't let the hatred you might
1:13:35 have for a people
1:13:36 swerve you from being just be just
1:13:42 closer to piety right so therefore um
1:13:46 be beware of that uh look at the bullet
1:13:48 points here allan quran says
1:13:51 they're not all the same not nobody in
1:13:55 fact is all the same
1:13:56 no no two people are the same so how can
1:13:58 the whole group in fact be
1:14:00 all the same no two people are all the
1:14:02 same no two brothers are the same no two
1:14:04 sisters are the same
1:14:05 you know everyone is different they're
1:14:07 not all the same allah says so you might
1:14:09 even find her disbelievers
1:14:11 if you look at even the disbelievers in
1:14:12 the prophet's time
1:14:14 uh there were disbelievers in the
1:14:15 prophet's time let's say the early
1:14:17 mukkan stage people like abu jahl
1:14:19 uh who were like staunch enemies
1:14:23 of the prophet but you also have people
1:14:25 like abu talib who was not a muslim
1:14:28 never embraced islam but he was a a
1:14:31 supporter of the prophet's cause salah
1:14:33 sallam
1:14:33 therefore they're not all the same imam
1:14:36 adi is another example
1:14:37 was of the mushrikeen he died from the
1:14:39 mushrikeen
1:14:40 but he was a supporter of the prophet he
1:14:43 gave help and assistance but therefore
1:14:45 the example is they're not all the same
1:14:48 and then of course the same verse here
1:14:49 we've enabled the sons of adam from
1:14:51 chapter 17 verse 17.
1:14:53 um now therefore othering now versus
1:14:56 bridging so solutions there for othering
1:14:58 is the constructing of radical
1:15:00 differences
1:15:02 uh in groups and out groups uh we spoke
1:15:05 about our mental canvases before
1:15:07 let's take a look at the prophetic
1:15:08 principle here now
1:15:10 the prophet in his final sermon he says
1:15:12 that there is no superiority
1:15:14 for an arab over a non-arab right
1:15:18 and for a non-arab over an arab
1:15:21 or for white over the black or for the
1:15:24 black over the white
1:15:26 except in piety so therefore the the
1:15:29 racial
1:15:30 differences mean nothing right mean
1:15:33 nothing
1:15:33 no superiority to do with those things
1:15:35 except in piety
1:15:37 then he says indeed the noblest amongst
1:15:40 you
1:15:40 is he or she who is the most pious right
1:15:43 the most pious
1:15:45 right that's that's the scale that's
1:15:46 what allah is concerned with
1:15:48 and your piety is reflected in many
1:15:50 things your belief
1:15:52 right your belief about allah your
1:15:54 religion but also reflected in your
1:15:56 character
1:15:56 how well you are towards other people is
1:15:58 a reflection of your piety how well
1:16:00 spoken you are how kind you are consider
1:16:02 how merciful you are
1:16:03 how charitable you are how forgiving you
1:16:05 are how forbearing you are all
1:16:07 all of these are reflections of of a
1:16:09 person's piety
1:16:10 um the sec the next the collapsing the
1:16:13 collapsing of bindings therefore
1:16:14 where you might have people who succumb
1:16:17 to this
1:16:18 uh the creating of these binaries uh in
1:16:21 the prophetic exam we have a beautiful
1:16:22 account of the collapsing of these
1:16:23 binaries so
1:16:24 very famous story of bilal and abu dharr
1:16:27 allah be pleased with them both the
1:16:28 prophet's companion so once
1:16:30 abu dharr said to and by the way these
1:16:33 were you know new
1:16:34 converts to islam or didn't know that
1:16:35 much all the time but
1:16:37 he says to bilal who was abyssinian
1:16:39 slave
1:16:40 uh he says who then became muslim he
1:16:42 says to him yamanas
1:16:44 o son of a black woman right so he had
1:16:46 an argument with him and
1:16:48 he said these words to him bilal was so
1:16:50 offended
1:16:51 and he thought well that's so counter
1:16:53 and contrary to the islamic
1:16:55 ideals by which we're being taught by
1:16:57 the prophet he went and complained to
1:16:59 the prophet about what abu dhabi just
1:17:01 said to him
1:17:02 and the prophet was very upset with the
1:17:04 buddha and then came later to prophet's
1:17:06 house
1:17:06 and you could see the prophet was not
1:17:08 happy with them and then he realized
1:17:10 bilal must have come and told him the
1:17:12 story
1:17:12 and so the prophet says to abu dhari
1:17:14 says did you say what you said to bilal
1:17:17 he said to him in the fight you are a
1:17:20 man you still have ignorance inside of
1:17:22 you
1:17:23 that's still old that's like pre-islamic
1:17:27 before islam that's how people would
1:17:29 value
1:17:30 each other based upon the color of their
1:17:32 skin he says we're not that
1:17:34 that's finished with islam islam has
1:17:37 finished that
1:17:38 you know so he says that that's not the
1:17:40 way that we act and abu dharr was so
1:17:42 saddened i mean he was so remorseful uh
1:17:45 that he sought to you know
1:17:47 make amends with bilal and it's
1:17:49 beautiful this sense of
1:17:50 um companionship between them even
1:17:53 thereafter with a newfound kind of
1:17:54 respect
1:17:55 for one another um in that so therefore
1:17:59 othering versus bridging
1:18:00 bridging allows us to open spaces to
1:18:03 foster understanding communication and
1:18:05 enhancing of the collective human now
1:18:08 othering
1:18:09 disallows all of that othering disallows
1:18:12 opening spaces disallows understanding
1:18:14 this allows communication disallows
1:18:16 enhancing
1:18:17 collective inspiration all of us is
1:18:19 disallowed but bridging
1:18:21 in fact allows these new spaces to be
1:18:23 open to first understand understanding
1:18:25 communication
1:18:26 and the best of course that this comes
1:18:27 from dawah comes from calling others to
1:18:30 allah calling others to islam
1:18:32 right with that sense of great respect
1:18:34 that whatever
1:18:35 i as a human being i am seeking in terms
1:18:38 of knowing who my lord is
1:18:40 worshiping him the way he wants me to
1:18:42 worship him following the best example
1:18:44 that allah gave us to follow
1:18:45 and of course having a hope for allah's
1:18:48 mercy
1:18:49 and then a beautiful abode in the next
1:18:51 life in heaven
1:18:52 then of course i would wish the same for
1:18:55 for other people
1:18:56 as well to do that of course you have to
1:18:58 be recognize your own human
1:19:00 potential your own human weaknesses your
1:19:02 human transitioning
1:19:04 navigating journeying in life as that
1:19:06 human being is transitioning navigating
1:19:08 and journeying in life
1:19:10 as well again human codes of
1:19:12 recognizability that's the whole point
1:19:15 um and then of course bystanding versus
1:19:18 rescuing so one of the things that you
1:19:19 might have
1:19:20 i was very happy in fact i was i was of
1:19:23 course the whole george floyd thing was
1:19:25 really really troubling
1:19:26 it was very upsetting uh but the fact
1:19:28 that there were people who were trying
1:19:30 to um you know to uh
1:19:34 to shout at those police officers and to
1:19:37 record what was happening and
1:19:39 and began to uh you know even insult
1:19:42 them sometimes about just
1:19:44 stop doing what you're doing um means
1:19:46 that in life i mean whenever we have
1:19:48 examples of injustice you're going to
1:19:50 have you're going to have perpetrators
1:19:52 and victims and
1:19:53 bystanders and rescuers and bystanding
1:19:56 versus
1:19:57 rescuing now you could have for example
1:20:00 a situation in any
1:20:01 need to play in a workplace in a school
1:20:04 environment on the streets
1:20:06 where somebody is is a victim of racism
1:20:08 where bad words are used where insults
1:20:11 are made
1:20:11 on the bus is on the coaches trains any
1:20:14 it could happen this happens all the
1:20:15 time
1:20:16 but you have a responsibility in that
1:20:18 sense you have a response because
1:20:20 remember we spoke about the burdening
1:20:22 the weight
1:20:23 right that the tree felt you know when
1:20:25 when it
1:20:26 when when it had that uh that lynched
1:20:28 victim on it on itself
1:20:30 you know that burdening remember i can't
1:20:32 breathe and we
1:20:33 can't breathe on the person and the
1:20:35 plural pronoun of that collective human
1:20:38 tugging at our consciousness so
1:20:40 therefore think about injustice the
1:20:41 prophet said it's
1:20:42 beware of injustice injustice will
1:20:45 appear as darkness on the day of
1:20:46 judgement
1:20:48 fair ever is it destroy those before you
1:20:50 and cause them to shed one another's
1:20:51 blood
1:20:52 and to make lawful what was unlawful
1:20:54 right so be aware of
1:20:55 injustice and remember your role is a is
1:20:58 a rescuer not a bystander not
1:21:00 not somebody who sees the racism and
1:21:03 sees the hate
1:21:05 uh and simply bystands and walks away
1:21:07 and has this indifference no
1:21:10 we have to have empathy empathy over
1:21:13 indifference right
1:21:14 empathy of indifference and and that's
1:21:16 going to be really the
1:21:17 the place of of the rescuer and then the
1:21:20 final points for us are these
1:21:23 um to focus on individuals and not
1:21:26 peoples because people generally
1:21:29 are not all the same as allah said and
1:21:31 we've discussed that before
1:21:32 othering is a self-effacing what does
1:21:35 that mean that means that
1:21:37 when you authorize somebody
1:21:40 you're ruining something of yourself
1:21:43 right
1:21:43 because remember it's imputing something
1:21:46 evil of yourself unto another
1:21:48 but to do that of course you have to
1:21:50 ruin something in yourself to begin with
1:21:53 first so it's a self-effacing the
1:21:56 prophet says that the believer is
1:21:58 a mirror to his brother meaning what we
1:22:00 see of others
1:22:02 is what we have in ourselves right what
1:22:04 we see of others
1:22:06 is what we have seen in ourselves what
1:22:08 we see of others
1:22:10 is what we're going to see of ourselves
1:22:11 in ourselves therefore
1:22:13 we're all human in that sense but the
1:22:15 other is to self
1:22:16 a face it is to ruin something in
1:22:20 oneself
1:22:21 before it's ruined in another just like
1:22:23 the way that
1:22:24 this is a very good book called um a is
1:22:27 for ox
1:22:28 by barry sanders it's it's american
1:22:31 author so they say
1:22:33 arcs so this is what a is for arcs but
1:22:35 uh but it really taps into this idea
1:22:38 um about the way that it speaks about
1:22:41 gangsters in america in the 1990s and
1:22:44 and about the way kind of the importance
1:22:47 of literacy and so so
1:22:48 but it has this kind of idea uh you know
1:22:50 within that book about
1:22:52 othering is this idea of self-effacing
1:22:55 remember
1:22:55 what what hate can create hate creates
1:22:58 what does he create think about that
1:23:00 you know what we just uh saw uh
1:23:04 or heard about uh in in canada
1:23:07 you know just a few days ago with that
1:23:10 individual who
1:23:11 who ran over that muslim family
1:23:14 you know four members of one muslim
1:23:17 family
1:23:18 were killed in that and one child
1:23:20 survived you know
1:23:22 but just think about that and it's
1:23:24 fueled by
1:23:25 hate by islamophobia right that's four
1:23:28 members
1:23:29 of family just powered that is just
1:23:31 killed
1:23:32 right and what is that i mean what was
1:23:35 that for
1:23:36 what hate can create right creates
1:23:40 evil creates murder creates
1:23:44 terror creates genocide you know hate
1:23:47 creates
1:23:48 genocide you know uh
1:23:51 so that so the starting point therefore
1:23:54 is
1:23:54 is othering because you're separating
1:23:57 excluding
1:23:58 now from the human frame others who are
1:24:01 not
1:24:02 who you think are not like you they
1:24:03 might have one small difference
1:24:06 therefore that small difference it
1:24:07 becomes now the mountain
1:24:09 that you would use just like for example
1:24:11 genocide of rwanda
1:24:13 you know you have the hutus and the
1:24:14 tootsies and and one group had
1:24:17 more pointed noses other ones had
1:24:19 chubbier noses one group were thinner
1:24:21 the group were a bit more plump
1:24:23 uh but these small differences and one
1:24:24 group was lighter and the group was
1:24:26 darker
1:24:26 the belgian colonizers used this thick
1:24:29 the complexity of people's skins
1:24:31 as a way of uh of other rising
1:24:34 because they gave privileges to the
1:24:36 lighter skinned ones and not the old
1:24:38 dark skinned ones they gave better homes
1:24:39 but the jobs
1:24:41 to the light skin one not a darker skin
1:24:42 one that therefore this carried through
1:24:44 than in kind of retaliatory uh evil
1:24:48 violence in those tragic 90 to 100 days
1:24:52 in 1994
1:24:53 and so therefore to think about
1:24:56 injustice beware of injustice as the
1:24:59 prophet said
1:25:00 um the importance of diversity uh those
1:25:03 verses in the quran are people we
1:25:04 created you
1:25:05 all of you are and so therefore in the
1:25:07 prophetic final sermon the prophet also
1:25:08 said
1:25:09 kulukum in adam adam in torah so when he
1:25:12 says therefore that
1:25:13 the black isn't better than the white or
1:25:15 the white over the black
1:25:16 he says all of you are from adam and
1:25:18 adam was from dust
1:25:20 so powerful kulukum and adam will add
1:25:23 them into
1:25:24 all the way from adam and adam was from
1:25:25 dusk meaning you know be humble in life
1:25:28 um the prophetic hadith love for people
1:25:30 what you would love for yourself
1:25:32 it's been raised by bukhari love for
1:25:35 people what you would love for yourself
1:25:37 or no one wants to be demeaned
1:25:39 don't wish others to be the mean no one
1:25:40 wants to be ostracized and secluded
1:25:42 separated
1:25:43 don't wish that for somebody else
1:25:45 therefore no one wants to be
1:25:47 uh you know felt as if their inferior
1:25:51 social outcast irreprehensible
1:25:54 evil ugly therefore don't wish that for
1:25:57 anybody else that's the lesson and
1:26:01 allows you to remember that a person's
1:26:02 character and not his race or ethnicity
1:26:06 in fact is a reflection of his or her
1:26:09 goodness right so therefore the the the
1:26:11 heart of a person
1:26:12 is simply the heart of goodness the
1:26:14 heart of heart of a person is a measure
1:26:16 of that person's goodness
1:26:17 and so therefore i hope this short
1:26:20 um you know reminder here has been
1:26:23 helpful
1:26:25 in understanding you know what i can't
1:26:27 breathe
1:26:28 should mean for us now moving forward
1:26:30 looking ahead in our world
1:26:33 in our towns villages communities
1:26:36 that i can't breathe really becomes a
1:26:38 collective we can't breathe
1:26:40 and we can't breathe as a reflection of
1:26:41 that sense of burdening we feel that
1:26:44 burdening
1:26:44 right because of the fact that we were
1:26:46 supposed to be
1:26:48 conscious human beings with a sense of
1:26:51 alertness towards injustice
1:26:53 um and that allah made us you know
1:26:55 responsible in that sense and so
1:26:58 uh we ask allah for success in all
1:27:00 things we ask allah to
1:27:02 rid us of these evils of
1:27:05 um of racism and discrimination
1:27:08 and dehumanization towards other people
1:27:11 uh i'm going to check and shall if
1:27:12 there's any questions that you might
1:27:14 have inshallah so
1:27:16 uh let's just have a look inshallah and
1:27:19 see
1:27:20 there we are and it's time to pray
1:27:23 margaret
1:27:23 challen but i'm going to quickly have a
1:27:25 check in charlotte and see
1:27:26 uh the question so
1:27:49 uh question so what's the central idea
1:27:51 of the poem doc
1:27:53 uh yeah the the idea of the poem was
1:27:56 that the uh
1:27:58 if it's the poem um if it's a haunted
1:28:01 oak poem then that would say that would
1:28:02 be about the fact that
1:28:04 uh paulo and sanbar encounters this man
1:28:06 who writes about the fact that his uh
1:28:08 i think it was his nephew who was
1:28:10 lynched on the tree
1:28:11 and then the tree becomes this uh
1:28:13 witness to that but the idea would be
1:28:15 therefore
1:28:16 that uh you know the uh
1:28:20 that the the the element of empathy
1:28:24 in emerges even from the tree uh
1:28:28 the idea that uh the tree has a sense of
1:28:31 feeling
1:28:31 for the victim in our kind of you know
1:28:34 social living
1:28:36 uh the power of empathy is is very is
1:28:38 very
1:28:39 is very is very meaningful it's very
1:28:43 essential
1:28:44 uh in in therefore offsetting these
1:28:47 cultures of of uttering and hate and
1:28:50 and so on and so forth um because
1:28:53 otherwise
1:28:54 uh you know we won't be able to feel
1:28:56 what an other person is feeling so
1:28:57 therefore i think there's a strong power
1:28:58 of empathy
1:28:59 uh in that poem uh but you can read more
1:29:02 of it inshallah in my book on
1:29:04 on being human there's a lot more
1:29:06 discussion inshallah
1:29:07 in that um
1:29:18 all right so um
1:29:34 yeah so you're making you're making good
1:29:36 comments uh in your in your
1:29:38 conversations on the chat um
1:29:41 i i hope inshallah you guys uh you know
1:29:44 took some good lessons
1:29:45 from there um
1:29:50 all right hamdulillah exactly here to
1:29:52 you also uh for your comments
1:29:56 exactly here to you also tom tanks and
1:29:59 the others as well
1:30:00 um
1:30:05 yes a question like what are
1:30:06 similarities between uh pre-islamic
1:30:09 arabs and the nazis or why the
1:30:10 similarity between well
1:30:12 it's not about the why the element that
1:30:14 as human beings of course are going to
1:30:15 act out in different ways in human
1:30:17 society
1:30:18 and they're going to be and there's
1:30:19 gonna be some correlations of course as
1:30:20 well the pre-islamic arabs
1:30:22 uh in the way that they treated women
1:30:25 for example isn't one idea the
1:30:27 where they treated uh the the darkest
1:30:29 skin and by just irony by the way and
1:30:32 even in abu dharren bilal's
1:30:35 exchange in that narrative the irony is
1:30:37 that abudhar himself was very
1:30:39 dark-skinned
1:30:40 and the scholars they say it wasn't
1:30:41 therefore only about
1:30:43 the fact that he's speaking
1:30:47 negatively about uh bilal because he's
1:30:50 because because he's darker skinned but
1:30:53 because of his the fact that he is a
1:30:54 non-arab because abu dharr himself
1:30:57 happens to be very dark-skinned if not
1:30:58 even maybe more dark-skinned than
1:31:00 bilal himself so that's but the other
1:31:03 thing of course is about treatment of
1:31:04 children treatment of women
1:31:06 um treatment of girls for example is
1:31:09 another thing and
1:31:10 so all of these things in fact they tap
1:31:12 into the idea of
1:31:14 of othering and dehumanization so uh i'm
1:31:17 going to end it
1:31:18 now because you know we're going to get
1:31:19 very late for margaret michelle i want
1:31:20 to thank all of you again for your
1:31:21 attendance
1:31:22 may allah bless all of you and please
1:31:24 follow the work at sapiensinstitute.org
1:31:42 foreign
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