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Imam Tom Live
On the Gaza Ceasefire | Imam Tom Live
Join Imam tom and guest Dr Anas Altikriti as they discuss a recalibrated approach for a more sustainable and lasting peace in Gaza, and what are the specific actions we can all take to ensure we don't go back to the status quo before October 7th.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
So hit us up in the chat, let us know where you're watching from, and please, please remember throughout the program to send your questions. We will be taking your questions, whether they're questions for me or for our esteemed guest that we will have on shortly. Today
in the United States is an official federal holiday known as Thanksgiving, and we recently published a blog piece about the holiday of Thanksgiving and what it's supposed to commemorate
versus the reality of the experience of many indigenous people, or we could say most indigenous
people here in the Americas. And the blog piece connects a specific type of conquest that was experienced and is experienced, present tense, by indigenous people in the Americas,
and it connects it to the same experience of Palestinians across Palestine, especially in Gaza and the West Bank. And this is a particular form of conquest that is known as settler
colonialism. Now why is settler colonialism different and distinct and important? Settler colonialism is a process by which a foreign group of people come in and they dispossess
the original inhabitants of their land, and they use violence and terrorism and intimidation in order to take their land from them, force them off, sometimes corral them into open
air prisons or concentration camps or reservations, as the case may be, and take everything else from them. So this is something that even though it is celebrated as a holiday in the
United States, there's a lot of controversy over whether this should be celebrated at all. Is this something that we should be celebrating? Now, of course, there's sort
of a historical revisionist myth that is put to it, which has to do with giving thanks and how people helped each other and these sorts of things. However, it sanitizes and
it whitewashes what is, even if there were moments of perhaps collaboration, it sanitizes
and whitewashes what is almost entirely a history of brutal violence and domination of one people by another. And so many people reject the idea of celebrating this day, that
this day is not something to celebrate, that even if giving thanks, yes, is something that obviously is fundamental to everything that we do as a Muslim, that if you could perhaps
sum up all of Islam within one concept, we could say it gratitude. It is gratitude to Allah ﷻ, gratitude to everything that he has done for us and continues to do for us.
So it's not the problem of giving thanks or being thankful or gratitude, but rather it is what is the particular history of giving of this particular land, of the interaction
of the people that were coming from abroad, that were not indigenous to this land, with the people who were indigenous to it. This is something that unfortunately is erased
when we sort of only construct a holiday we call Thanksgiving, we get around and we eat turkey or whatever. And this leaves to the side the entire fiqh issue of the celebration
of the holidays of the kuffar and things like that, even if we were to say, just for a moment, put that to the side and don't consider it. Is this something that we should be celebrating
when this is sort of the history behind this day? So I encourage everybody, if you haven't already, to check out our blog post, you can find it on Yaqeen Institute's website, and look under the blog posts and give it a read and see how this is exactly the same thing
that is being experienced today by the Palestinians. And we have many people that are chiming in here, we have Salwa from Minnesota, mashallah, very nice, I've been to Minnesota multiple
times, a very cold place, but a very nice and beautiful place. We have Josephine from the Philippines. We have many people coming in. So again, mashallah, our audience is global.
We have Inisaya from Indonesia, salamat datang, welcome. So a lot of people that are watching
from abroad, they might not be. Aishi from KL, Kuala Lumpur, salamat datang. Selma from Portland, Oregon, I was able to visit Portland, Oregon, last year, a very, very beautiful
place. Ali from from Egypt. Mashallah, multiple people. Sunflower from Minneapolis. Welcome. We have a global audience and not everybody knows the dynamics of some of the things that
happen in the US, which is why it takes a little bit of unpacking. So when it comes to Palestine, wa'alaikum salam, Tariq from Al-Jazeera. And we have folks from the UK.
Our guest tonight is from the UK as well. And mashallah, it's very early for you, catching you after your tahajjud. Folks from Las Vegas, from LA, the West Coast, Denmark, mashallah,
Germany. Allah akbar. Dominican Republic, very, very nice. Bienvenido. And one of the things that I benefited from my Shaykh, Shaykh Abdullah al-Shanqiti in Medina, and this is
something that why, okay, you could say, wa'alaikum salam, Shafi from Florida, is to be concerned. And this is something that Sami Hamdi remarked when he was on the live stream some weeks
ago. From Virginia, we have mashallah, Seattle, inshallah, I'll be visiting Seattle before too long. Toronto, I was just, I was just in Toronto. Chicago, inshallah, heading to
Chicago in December. St. Louis, Missouri, Allah akbar. North Carolina, gracias de nada. Wa'alaikum salam. Plano, Texas, Indonesia. I love to see all the different places. Bakersfield, California,
Allah akbar. On the mowed trucking, Abdi Musa, welcome. Trinidad, mashallah, tabarakallah. So one of the things that we, that is important that I benefited from my Shaykh, Shaykh Abdullah
Shanqiti, is being concerned with the affairs of the Muslims, okay. And being concerned with the affairs of the Muslims means educating yourself about where they're from, the different
places that they're from, the different culture, right, the different foods, the different way of dressing, the different sort of parts of their land. Mashallah, we have lots of people from India,
Ottawa, Des Moines, Allah akbar. Lots of people. So this is something that honestly is something, it's an extremely powerful tool that can break down the barriers between us. When these days,
when we're thinking about how to feel as an ummah and how to act as an ummah and how to be united as an ummah, a lot of it starts with educating ourselves. A lot of it starts with
educating ourselves and talking to each other, right. If you meet someone from Bangladesh, to ask them, are they from Dhaka, are they from Silat, are they from this part or that part, most of the
time people will be amazed, wow, you know something about where I'm from, and automatically those boundaries start to drop in between you, right. If someone's from Malaysia, right, you're from
Kuala Lumpur, you're from Terengganu or Kelantan or from different parts, knowing something about, you know, we saw the Prime Minister of Malaysia had very strong words for the President of the
United States very recently, it inspired a lot of us. This is something that, this is something that brings us together. So knowing something about your brothers and sisters, where they're from,
where they live. Kent, mashallah, wa'alaikum salam, I know a brother who's from Kent, studied with me in Medina. So these sorts of things are, they're not just time fillers, they're actually very,
very significant to coming together as an ummah. Djibouti, mashallah, North Carolina, to educate ourselves. Lambak, mashallah, that's beautiful. To understand something about each other, to
understand, even like I said, if it's just dress or it's clothes or it's food or it's geography or it's language, right, being able to say hello or welcome in all of the languages of the ummah would
be a beautiful thing, and something that would go just a little bit further in uniting us. So when we talk about settler colonialism, right, so we're talking about this controversial holiday that
really has a dark history behind it in the United States Thanksgiving, and how it relates to the type of experience that, wa'alaikum salam from Pakistan, people from, people that are in
Palestine are experiencing right now, right, when it comes to people that are coming in, taking over their homes, kicking them out, dispossessing them from their land, right, taking over, herding
them onto, in the United States, we call them reservations. What is raza? But a reservation, or even let's bring it further, as other scholars have mentioned, a concentration camp, right? This
is exactly what settler colonialism looks like. Now, there's an important distinction to be made, and one that we have made elsewhere, especially in the blog post, which I recommend everybody to
check out, that settler colonialism is just one type of conquest. Not all conquests are examples of settler colonialism. And when you look at Islam, and how Islam spread, and how the original sort of
generations of Muslims expanded into North Africa, or expanded into other parts of the world, they did not conquer like this. They did not practice settler colonialism. They did not burn down
villages, they did not kick people out of their homes, that this is barbaric practices that the Muslims thankfully did not engage in. Rather, the Muslims, they set up garrison towns, many of the
famous cities, Kufa, Basra, Fustat, that we know of today were originally garrison towns that the Muslim conquerors, they set up to keep the Muslim population separate. So even though the
administration or the rulership would change, that the people were pretty much left alone, for the most part. And that the actual adoption of Islam was something that took a lot longer in a very
organic and non-coerced way. So knowing our own history, in addition to turning towards each other and educating ourselves about each other and understanding each other as an ummah, is one
important point. But also educating ourselves about our own history, right? Yes, Australia, from Victoria, we have a few people from Australia, Queensland. Australia is another very
striking example on the sort of American style settler colonialism with the Aboriginal folks of Australia know this very well. So this is something that we have to educate people because
these are deflection tactics. We've seen many people that apologize for the genocide that is going on to our brothers and sisters in Palestine. They say, oh, this is what everybody does. This is just history, right? Everybody, they conquer the same way. No, that's not true.
That's how you conquer. That's not how Muslims have conquered. That's not how Islam is spread. Islam is spread in such a way that it actually benefits and uplifts the people around it,
not subjugates them and makes their lives into a living hell. So that's a brief word about that. Now we'd like to bring on, Waalaikumsalam, Sister Fatima from Toronto. We've got,
mashallah, a lot of broad audiences always here. We're going to bring on a very, very special guest and his name is Dr. Ennis Attikriti. Now, Dr. Ennis is somebody who is based in the UK,
so we appreciate very much him tiring himself to join us on the program today. But Dr. Ennis is a person of long experience and a lot of very, very interesting skillset and activities. One of
the more important things is he's a founder of Cordoba Institute, which attempts to foster understanding between the Muslim world and the West. In addition to a ton of other initiatives, Dr. Ennis, Ahlan wa Sahlan, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
Hayyakallahu wa alaikum wa salam wa rahmatullah. It's a pleasure to be with you today, Imam Tom. I'm not entirely sure whether we should talk about Thursday or Friday.
It's 2 a.m. where I am today, but alhamdulillah, it's a great honor and privilege to be with you today. Barakallahu fikum. Either way in the Shari'ah, it's Jum'ah, so it's Jum'ah for us.
After Maghrib, it's Jum'ah for you, so alhamdulillah. So give us a little bit of background about the Cordoba Foundation and I also wanted to get into, there's been a smear campaign against the Cordoba
Foundation and yourself in a very similar way to our previous guest, Dr. Hatem Bazyan, with his foundation. So if you could enlighten us as to the work that you do and that the Cordoba Foundation
does and sort of the smear campaign that has been set up against you. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, alhamdulillah, wasalatu wasalamu ala rasoolillah.
Once again, thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you about an array of issues, obviously within the context of what's happening in Gaza, but your introduction is extremely
important in trying to outline something that we now know and identify as a settler-colonial project. But there's something which is quite important and it ties in directly to
what I'll speak about in terms of my personal experience as well as the experience of the
Cordoba Foundation and that is that this kind of project necessitates the dehumanizing,
dehumanization of the other, seeing the other as being less, as being of a second, probably even
third degree. And this started several centuries ago, probably in the 18th century,
when British colonialists actually formed this within an ideology that was to mark the next 200
years and that is essentially that it was the white man's burden to educate others. The white
man in Europe particularly saw himself as being higher, as being supreme, as being having attained
all the skills necessary to be called civilized and that all others, especially the black man of
Africa, of Asia, of Latin America, even North America, the indigenous populations of Australia and the such, were all of a lesser capacity and aptitude and they needed to be educated,
they needed to be helped against their own inclinations, their own ways and the such and
therefore it was termed the white man's burden and as you know is famous Rudyard Kipling's famous
poem about that very concept which led the way then to the various settler colonial projects, whether it be in North America, whether it be in Australia, whether it be
in South Africa for instance, which we saw the end of. Alhamdulillah, we saw for ourselves how that particular episode ended and obviously Palestine was supposed to be also another
series within that horrid chain. But coming back to the Cordoba Foundation, the Cordoba Foundation was established in January 2005, so it's been almost 19 years now and it was found at the back
of the enormous anti-war demonstrations that engulfed the entire world. I was one of the
organizers of the demonstrations around the world against the war in Iraq and previous to that, the war in Afghanistan. I was one of the chairs of the historic two million march which is still
till this day the biggest march and demonstration in the history of the United Kingdom and the thinking was, because if you recall or maybe you're too young to recall, but after 9-11
what happened was that there was a narrative that re-emerged and that narrative was something that was proposed by the likes of Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington in the early 90s
about the clash of civilization and their proposition was essentially that Islam was incapable of living with any other and that there was a necessity to clash
because of the intrinsic nature of Islam and that at the time wasn't really taken seriously but after 9-11 all of a sudden everyone returned to that ideology and thought well there we go,
that explains it. So we found it necessary to counter that by providing channels of information that are somewhat different from the channels available at the time and therefore the
Cordova Foundation was founded. Now you're absolutely right in terms of yesterday your guest Dr Hatem Bazian and many many others, countless others and I count myself privileged to be amongst
them and my organization to be amongst them. It's when you're impactful, when you're effective, it's when your work has a real effect and a real impact and you reach to other people and
people start to listen to what you have to say, all of a sudden it becomes problematic and therefore you need to be shut down and yes we have for years now, longer than I care to count
to be perfectly honest. We've not only been attacked and vilified by corners of the media but also you know practical terms like being debanked, you know having our bank accounts
closed time and time and time again and you know every single time we have an event, we have
something happening, we almost now know to expect exactly how it's going to play out and how we're going to be attacked but listen, alhamdulillah, you know I'd rather not talk
about that much simply because we have far more important things to do and the Cordova Foundation alhamdulillah by the grace of Allah is simply one cog within the machine of change, the mechanism
of transformation that the entire world requires starting from that very conceptual point of seeing the other as being less and less deserving and less human
onto you know creating an environment that is conducive to the very best of human aptitude and capacity. That's very very well stated and you're speaking my language entirely. You know
I kind of woke up on 9-11. I think that was an awakening for me. I was in eighth grade and it was sort of the beginning of my politicization and sort of my own intellectual
journey. I was able by the grace of Allah to figure out enough things to be against the invasion of Iraq even as a teenager and to do what little I could do as a teenager to participate
in whatever was going on around me at that time and since then it's been this for me, it's remarkable to see how everything comes full circle. This progression and this march where
everything that's happened since then, there's a unicity to it and to the point where in uni I did study post-colonial theory. That was basically what led me to Islam to give things
a very very short account but when you say seeing the other as lack this is exactly the language of the academy in which I was trained. The sort of the ideological anatomy like how could it happen
right definitely like post-colonial theory always looking for what makes the colonizer colonize. Why this type of brutality and this type of degradation and one of the useful
things that has entered into our lexicon since the escalation in Palestine in the last
month and a half has been this idea that every accusation is a confession and I think that when you're talking about Fukuyama and the clash of civilizations and this idea that Islam
cannot accommodate and if we know what we know about history about how Islam actually did accommodate very very well difference in a way that was superior to what the modern western world
has offered when it comes to accommodating difference. I think that we're on to yet another accusation that is actually a confession that the contemporary architecture of the international
world order liberalism whatever you want to put the whosever doorstep you want to put the blame on that the status quo cannot accommodate difference very well and I think in time so often in time
in terms of redemption about how Islam is I think a tremendous redemptive force and that it has the opportunity to actually educate people and show people precisely what you're saying which is that
difference does not have to be lack it doesn't have to be less that we can see the humanity and value the humanity of the other and that perhaps Islam is the best system to teach people how that
is to be done so that's very sort of I didn't prepare on to talk about that but you're speaking to my heart and so I had to comment on that I don't know if you had any other further reflections
on this. Well you're absolutely right and even you know the adoption of the name the Cordoba
Foundation Cordoba being the epitome of Spanish civilization and I mean civilization meaning the
very engine the geared Europe towards modernity as we know it today that particular time that in
Spanish historians language they call it the 100 golden years those 100 years ruled by Muslims
in which every single person every single citizen was part of making and shaping the cities and the
future and in fact we have records of Jews being ministers within the Andalusia within the
construct the political as well as administrative construct we have Christians we have so and those
were the years until today hundreds of millions from around the world flock to Spain to see the
remnants of to see the remains of simply because it was what started what really engineered the
you know the next you know three four five five centuries so you're absolutely right and and this this that you you ended off with and that is the fact that Allah created us diverse
created us different in order so that we mingle that we get to know each other that we exchange experiences that we get to know each other's perspectives is something which is absolutely
central to to the idea to the very concept of Islam in fact I would go further and suggest and
I'm no scholar of other religions but I know in Islam that we have in surat al-isra in verse 70
Allah states verily we have honored or we have dignified the people of Adam the sons of Adam
meaning every single one now I don't know of a religion a faith an ideology that states that every single human being whoever they are whatever they the a culture that they subscribe
to whatever their political dominion their dominion whatever their lifestyle is honored and dignified not by anyone's decree but by Allah's order and that is something which I
find is central to everything that we do and everything that we call for beautiful that's a very profound reflection I'd like to remind the audience to please send in your questions uh for
Dr Ennis while we while we have him I'll be asking my own questions then we'll be getting around to yours so please just type in your your questions to the chat and we'll leave time for questions now um another question I'd like to ask you so I was reading a bit about your your bio today
um for you were doing some work with the Muslim Association of Britain um and then there came this time where you left um and what I had read and you correct me if I'm wrong because you know
this is just you know from the internet but there was a climate after 9-11 where it was very very difficult for Muslims to continue doing political activism and political work and it seems like
many people turned away from that work and started going into maybe safer uh activities such as education or community development or things like that from what I gleaned and again correct me if
I'm wrong you chose to stay doing the political work and why I want to ask why if that's accurate then why and second why I'm asking you this question is because we're in a similar climate
today we're seeing the backlash we're seeing the doxxing we're seeing all these attempts to smear people I'm afraid that people are again going to shy away and try to go back into hiding
and not face this thing head-on what is the value of holding down the fort and standing up at this very very difficult moment and to continue doing the political work
um you're right in terms of your description of what's happened and I agree with you absolutely
that it's a question that's was and is being asked in probably all you know wherever Islamic
dawah persists whether it be in Europe in North America and Australia and and the such
and that is where do we focus where do we concentrate on at the time the time that you're talking about after 9-11 after the the marches that saw hundreds of thousands at one stage two
million people turn up in the UK there was this feeling that well we've done as much remember I
mean ultimately after all those I would suggest glorious events that the the Muslim community was very much at the at the forefront of achieving ultimately you know your president at the time
George W Bush our prime minister of the time Tony Blair took the world to war in Iraq and we know the catastrophe that has ensued since since then so there was this feeling of despondency
there was this feeling that all of this doesn't really have an impact doesn't really have an effect and therefore it's it's much much easier for people to find their comfort zones it's much
much easier to say you know what I'm just going to focus on my mosque because really you know my flock really need you know and my attention they need to learn Quran more they need to and we've
you know we've been on the streets for so long now for so many months and we've mingled with all sorts of people you know Muslims as well as non and you know maybe we need to go back to basics
and you know it's a narrative that very few people can actually disagree with because you know you're stating something which many people will find quite comforting and it'll give
you that kind of of inner comfort that well you know whatever happens with the world whatever wrongs that prevail in the world well you know what you're going to stay away from that it's much
much easier but the fact of the matter is that to me at least dawah itself doesn't work without you
being involved in every facet of life it doesn't work it can't be impactful unless you're engaged politically you're engaged with the business community and get in case you know if you're
not engaged with the artistic if you wish community if you're not every facet of life requires you to be absolutely engaged with everything every single cause that is the
the the root reason why people are suffering suffering economically suffering socially suffering from the security perspective suffering from the information overload or maybe misinformation
all of this requires your full attention and your full engagement you just can't say you know what i'm not going to touch this corner of my of the world that i live in i'm not going
to touch this sphere it doesn't work like that it doesn't work like that and therefore many of us i'm glad to say stuck through stuck with the roots and yes those hundreds of thousands turning up
every single saturday became tens of thousands sometimes became only in their thousands but we stuck the course and you know what once they were needed to come out for palestine all
of a sudden we have hundreds of thousands and we had last weekend another million so all of this is something that is having an impact we might not see it we might not feel it you know it's very
it's it's tiny steps it's very incremental but what's happening is a real transformation because now it's not only that a million people have turned up for instance in london hundreds of
thousands millions of others around the world including in the united states but what is happening is that people have a clearer understanding of what's happening and this is something that is
absolutely different from where we were 20 years ago and this is something that we need to latch on and it's something that we need to build with all our friends from across society and that is the
epitome of what dawah means dawah means to be at the very heart of things to be at the very center of at being at the people of at people's service you know whenever they have a question i'm there
to answer whenever they want to see an example i'm there to give that example whenever they want guidance whenever they want to have a discussion and chat i am there if i'm not there then i'm not
doing my job and i feel as muslims as people who claim to have this noble title of being duat i feel that this is where we need to be on the streets amongst people in the middle of our
communities and middle of our society at the service of everyone excellent well stated and very inspiring and i'm glad you said that because unfortunately a lot of people take it as a sort of false dilemma they feel like they have to choose between being on the street or being in
the masjid learning the quran or being active politically and i think what what you're saying and certainly what i'm saying is that no there there's no dilemma here that we actually need both
and in order to realize all of the guidance that allah gave us it has to be implemented and it has to be implemented around you in in the society that you live in and through representing and
being on hand manning your post uh as as we say uh that's fantastic i'd like to to switch now to a different sort of set of questions and i encourage everybody again who's watching to please send in
your questions um you you do hostage negotiations um which sounds pretty intense um and i'd like you
to potentially give the average joe a window into this world it's something that we read about obviously it's become very timely again with the prisoner exchange that is supposed to happen um
you know imminently hopefully um what should the average person maybe know that they don't know uh about how hostage negotiations work can you give us a window into that world
um it's a part of uh of my work that i don't talk about much for a number of reasons the first is i wouldn't recommend it to anyone to be perfectly honest
um it's it necessitates that you work in a very murky uh part of everything that's happening
it's very backdoor it's very secretive it's very confidential in in most cases in my case by the
grace of allah subhana wa ta'ala i've helped um with the release of 21 hostages till now
since i started by mere accident in 2006 um there are still some 11 or 12 cases that are still
ongoing um we ask allah subhana wa ta'ala to bring them to a satisfactory and good conclusion um in many of those cases i can't say a thing simply because you know victims have their
privacy they don't want people to speak of their plight and they've gone through horrific things and therefore it's not for me to sort of make a story out of their suffering but
basically i started as i said by mere i just stumbled into this in 2005 there was four christian peacemaker hostages that were taken in iraq
one who was a british and a friend called dr norman kember an american tom fox and two canadians
and i was asked if i would consider traveling to iraq and that would have been the very first time
in my entire life since i left iraq as a two-year-old that i went to iraq if i would go to iraq and make media appeals you know just so that maybe that the the kidnappers would hear that
these people are not occupiers they're not with the american forces they're not with the british forces they were there in order to help as much as they could the iraqi people so i was there
just to make a media plea but then that evolved into me getting some phone calls and meeting with
some people traveling to some areas being led on some wild goose trail regarding people claiming oh we have them and you know what are you going to give us in order to release them it turns out
they were false trails and that that was a very painful very stressful but very informative and
eye-opening process thankfully after about five or six months three of the four were released
tom fox unfortunately was killed just two weeks before the others were released when he tried to escape so i don't know you you tell me whether that was a success or not but that was but that
then brought up my profile where people started calling me and saying well we have someone in syria we have someone in somalia we have someone in libya we have someone and so on and so forth so
word of mouth and and that particular profile alhamdulillah if i've managed to help him that's that's from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala masha'allah so one of my reflections so this is the sort of
thing that i'm getting at here what i'm i'm asking maybe to a lesson learned or something like this you know you began by saying that this is something that happens in a very murky sort of
way is that because and this is my impression that oftentimes the people who are negotiating don't want to be seen as negotiating with each other and so they have to rely on sort of
back channels that they don't even acknowledge exists um is that accurate to say that's that's
part of it but also because in my case because i've made a name for myself that i don't negotiate money anyone who wants to talk about ransom money needs to talk to someone else i've made that very
very clear and i make it clear to everyone including the family of the hostages that i'm not going to negotiate on money simply because i find it unethical i can't i you know i can't
negotiate millions of dollars or whatever people might need however that means that the people that i negotiate with usually have political aspirations political ambitions and that involves
dealing with governments dealing with political agencies dealing with and i have to say that as
uh horrid and corrupt as some of whom i've uh i've had the displeasure of negotiating with the times
i have to say that amongst the worst are governments um the the backhandedness the
political interests that are put forward before human life the um the often revelation to the media of certain elements which scupper the whole deal for instance that's happened several times
so it's it's very very unpleasant yes i do deal with people sometimes you have some very skewed
ideologies and believe that they are doing this for some very higher um aspiration or goal and
the such they don't see the fact that what they're doing is harming and hurting innocent people
they have no inhibition in in doing the most heinous things or threatening at least to do
the most heinous things to their hostages and and thinking that they're doing something good i've
had those conversations but like i said it's the it's the murkiness and the bank backhandedness
of governments that has dismayed me more than most i have to say and that's that's a very important point i think for the average person to take away i mean we've seen that play out in real
time with netanyahu and how he has dealt or misdealt with the hostages uh that are supposedly his responsibility and that he at least pretends to care about and he's pursued pretty much every
single choice decision policy that endangers them uh as opposed to anything that's going to do
anything for them much to the chagrin and anger of many israelis um so those are exactly the types of reflections uh that i i think are are useful for the average person to kind of keep in mind
um and i if you wouldn't if you would permit just one last question on the sort of the hostage thing before getting into uh what's going on now and gaza and the ceasefire is you mentioned sort of
that you don't deal with situations where people are asking for for money a lot of people i think the average person would question like what are most people after uh when they take uh hostages
or prisoners are people usually after money are they you know usually after political ideals or something else what's the typical motivation or sort of the the main motivations that people even
purport to have the smaller organizations are generally after money and when they can't get the money or they don't have the capacity to do the negotiations
um they usually sell off the hostages to larger organizations wow now larger organizations um usually are after some political limelight either they want to show
that they have strength and power and they want to negotiate certain things maybe the release of their their comrades and friends maybe you know some laws locally that they need the change or
or the like um so um usually in my case i mean it's it's only happened three or four times that once the the group asks for for money and i i say okay i'm i'm stopping this here
i find out later on that they've sold on they moved on the hostages to someone who can actually engage in a negotiation of a higher scale which is of political interest and by the
way um those large organizations and groups um they are incredibly politically shrewd they
have built some political capacity they know what to talk uh they know how to talk they know what to demand they know when to demand it and they know their limitations also so in in the case of
several i could i could maybe count five or six um it was masterfully done by by the group um to release the hostages at a particular moment whereby if they had waited for a few more days
they would have been in danger but they assessed it absolutely perfectly and they released the hostages um as they as we had agreed um and and they had gained well probably they had gained
the kind of thing that they wanted in terms of the political gain the political credit the show of power don't forget i mean we're talking about conflict zones we're talking
about very unstable zones where these people operate as gangs i mean yes they might raise a flag saying la ilaha illallah muhammad rasulullah but in actual fact their demands
their expectations are are extremely mundane just like any other you know political group or
or gang or the such so um alhamdulillah it's uh uh it's something that i look back at with immense gratitude to allah subhana wa ta'ala um it's uh it's not something i would
wish to happen again it's not something that i would wish upon anyone i don't recommend it as a career path it leads to many sleepless nights it leads to many stressful uh settings with your
family where your mind is absolutely somewhere else uh but alhamdulillah in any case well thank you very much i mean i confess my complete ignorance about that entire uh world which is
why it's kind of fascinating to me and i appreciate you uh opening up a bit about it um so with that experience that you have when you've seen the last you know 45 to 50 days or so uh you've seen
how the hostages you know were were taken and then we had some of them released and now we have a ceasefire and supposedly a sort of deal on a prisoner exchange of sorts um could you give us
some reflections on how things have been unfolding in this conflict and the ceasefire that has
recently been agreed to well uh i mean this ceasefire is someone probably six weeks too late
but alhamdulillah we're here and it's good that we're not six weeks further down the line with
uh more thousands more having been slaughtered as we've seen unfold before our very eyes
um this uh in all honesty i mean for the israelis it's very very clear that the hostages were
an important factor but not the most important factor and that was what delayed the ceasefire
and and that was when governments such as mine in in london or yours in washington should have
stepped in far far earlier in order to prevent or to try to prevent the onslaught that was
unleashed by the israelis against the people of gaza um yeah the hostages are somewhat important but there is no question that the israelis had had no qualms about striking areas where they
felt the the hostages might be eliminating the hostages by the way and this is something i experienced on three or four occasions during my career eliminating the hostages might be the
easiest and the best outcome for certain countries and i was often pressed by official authorities
by embassies by certain agencies which i knew spoke on behalf of governments to identify the location for instance that i thought the hostages might be at and it was clear to me
that they wanted to contract groups that would you know storm the area and kill everything and
everyone that would have been far easier far less embarrassing you know how all countries say we don't negotiate with terrorists right i would suggest that every single country does actually
negotiate with terrorists um so it's it was clear that the israelis really in their estimation if i
was to state that they had four or five strategic objectives from their massacre against gaza i would say the hostages maybe were number three or four they weren't at the top of the list and therefore
they weren't keen on the ceasefire itself they didn't they weren't really that i mean the only
thing that netanyahu can get from the release of hostages is the hope of some political credit
which he has none of he's now absolutely running on fumes he knows very very well that if hostilities
were to stop from the israeli side today tomorrow he'd probably be marched to a court of law and
then maybe in in you know sent to jail so he's he's absolutely fighting for his life and the
hostages are merely one of the cards that he's hoping that would turn out in in his favor i see give us some insight from the side of the you know the palestinian resistance they they took
the hostages they took what what are they attempting to do when they do that is this something this is not a 50 discussion it's not a a moral approval or disapproval but from your experience
what are they attempting to do and does do you think that it makes sense or does it have they achieved their goals some people are pointing out for example that the ceasefire that
was agreed to now is largely the similar demands that were made weeks ago and so therefore this is something that indicates who's really got the upper hand here or who has sort of worn out the
other side could you speak to that a little bit well from us an absolute strategic point of view and like you said not engaging with the fiqh side of things um i would suggest that the past six
weeks have been an utter horrific failure for the israelis and as hard and as difficult to comprehend
an incredible victory and triumph for the people of gaza now how can that be when you have more than 14 000 people killed over 6 000 of whom are children the fact of the matter is when you're
under occupation when you're occupied when you're dehumanized when you're subjugated when all your rights are confiscated and in the hands of your oppressor
the only thing you can do is to be an irritant is to be there that is the point of the resistance
i find it extremely naive of of some who comment and say well in terms of numbers obviously
gaza has been obliterated obviously but that's not the point of what we call resistance which
is enshrined in international law to resist is to be there is to not be uprooted that is the point
of resistance an army the size and the capacity and with the international backing that israel has
has no other option but to try to uproot the resistance absolutely eliminate zero the resistance if it if it doesn't do that then it's lost from the strategic point of view
it has lost now the taking of hostages is a very important part of any strategic
sort of military action or act of resistance or the such because for every hostage for every hostage
you can then negotiate it's a negotiating card it's not only you know harming some artillery or
armored machinery or vehicles or the such it's actually that you have personnel who are vital and crucial at least in your thinking in your mind to your adversary to your enemy so it's a
negotiating power and therefore and this is something very very important for the people of for hamas for the resistance call them as you may a hostage is very very valuable and therefore
they will be looked after they will be cared for they will be they will be cared for even more
than the actual citizens of gaza simply because they provide cover for the resistance they provide
a negotiating card once you know the battle arrives at a point where people are sitting
around the table or talking at least about some sort of deal and therefore those hostages were taken by by hamas in order to negotiate more freedoms more rights more the breakout of this
prison that we call gaza this concentration camp that we call that we call gaza now the
from the other side we're talking now about approximately 100 probably 150 prisoners
held by the israelis released and 150 hostages israeli held by by hamas or by the by the elements
the resistance in gaza now the question that comes to mind and and because hamas has actually listed the names of the the prisons they want released and the question that i find i found
no one asking how is it that we have 13 year olds held by israelis how is it that we have young
girls young boys at school age that have been in israeli prison now for three four years how is that why why haven't we ever asked the question what are these children doing
languishing in israeli jails and by the way these are 150 from amongst more than 4 700 prisoners
many others of whom are also minors are women and by the way most of those have never been charged
and don't stand trial there are under what you call administrative detention and therefore they don't be they're not charged with any particular crime they're not standing before any any
particular court they're just held there and they could be held there for their entire lives we have on record hundreds of palestinians who have been in administrative detention for more than
18 years and no one knows when their time will come when they will be released so so this is
this is the the the situation that we are at i personally think that the ceasefire agreed and
the terms that are agreed are to the total frustration and anger and and in a quarrel
within israel especially the fact that the terms are that for five days they can't fly anything over you know the skies of gaza and that is extremely important obviously from the strategic
point of view because if uh if hamas is going to release its hostages it doesn't want israeli drones monitoring where they're coming from or how they're being moved or the such so from the
strategic point of view it just shows to be perfectly honest the fact that that term was set as probably the the second point it shows an incredible um you know nuance and and and
understanding of of the intelligence and security element on the side of hamas wonderful thank you so much for walking us through that uh really really amazing insights uh we'll move to questions
in just a sec but uh i want everybody who's watching to think about after hearing dr ennis talk about um you know we're talking about the taking of hostages and then the conditions of
administrative detention which is really a euphemism one would be entitled to ask what the difference is between the two right we have uh we have taking hostages on one hand and we call
something else administrative detention and they resemble each other uh very very closely um so it's that's an important thing a lot of the last month and a half has drawn attention to the naming
and how we name things and how there's always a media slant when it comes to the way that certain things are named well somebody can be picked up and social media has shown us now children as
young as five as young as two being abducted kidnapped um in this uh administrative quote unquote detention then what really is the difference um so with that said uh we do have a couple
nice questions here on astuya asks what would be a good starting point to educate or inform fence sitters who think the current conflict will either tide over like they have in the past
or those that feel that it's all pointless um well you know all of this to be perfectly honest you don't need to be a political scientist and you don't need to be some sort of expert on middle
eastern affairs in order to decide which side of the fence you need to be on millions of people around the world i would even go as far as to suggest billions of people around the world
and regardless of their faith regardless of their culture regardless of their race they have clearly identified the oppressor from the oppressed and the mere fact that there are
people that still fail to to see with their own eyes they you know they you know what i i often
advise my own family to watch the news but to do it on mute not to listen to the commentator not to listen to the presenter because the images are sufficient the images are more than sufficient
and um and to be perfectly honest i mean i you know when you have a conflict such as the one that we've seen and this has been ongoing now for decades but let's just take the last six weeks in
in consideration anyone who's watched any clip over the past six weeks and still feels that by sitting on the fence that they're doing they're in the best position or they're doing the right
thing i think that they need their humanity checked i think that they need their morality scrutinized and i think they need to ask themselves some very very um probing questions
brilliant brilliant response um we have several people who comment about lack of faith in the international institutions one person in particular mahrez asks why the un uh won't act in this
horrific situation uh we were witnessing things happening in ukraine not too long ago now even worse is happening and nothing's going on it's a very good question and i think it brings
to the fore the actual crisis that we find ourselves in as as human beings as a human population and that is that what we call the international community or the international
order doesn't seem to be working and we know for a fact now for many decades that in the case of palestine it wasn't working but even in proceeding you know proceeding to this um
you know events of horrific nature such as what happened in syria for instance such as what happened in various in kashmir in you know for the uyghurs for the for the you start to you know
wonder what use is the international community is the international community for the united nations security council and the such are these institutions fit for purpose anymore i mean the
reports are fine and proper i have to say that the initial statement of the un general secretary
was was something that we need to frame and hang on our walls um but okay to what end i mean and
that's why is it that we're governed by by statements by treaties by declarations that
read brilliantly yet in reality have absolutely no meaning when for instance the united nations can be pressured by the united states not paying its shares and therefore you know
basically being lobbied into towing a particular line um it's it's you know many many questions emerge as a result of of the failure of the international community and international
institutions and i fear for what that would mean because what's the alternative the alternative is well you know chaos is that everyone runs the shop just like they they desire or they see
fit and that is truly problematic the issue of faith by the way and i'm going to frame it
more accurately in terms of the issue of morality the issue of morality we have absolutely rid
ripped out of our governing institutions of our politics of our economics of our business of our
lives and that is all to the detriment of everyone and that's something that we as human beings
all of us need to ask once again because you know what in light of the incredible advancements that we're making on every single level communications finance industry everything
the fact of the matter is we have around the world far more depression far more suicides far more
conflicts far more family dissolutions far more breakups far more social strife far more wars far
more famine far more disease so all of these advancements it seems correlate somehow to more
depression more misery more suffering on behalf of human being and the reason i would suggest one of
the reasons at least is the fact that all of this has been taken away from the aspect of morality of ethics you can't bring
the world moral the word moral to any kind of conversation whether it be within a group or who run a business venture or amongst politicians or amongst strategists or the such
once you start talking about morality it's as though you're talking about you know something that is unseen um you know something that people just simply can't get their their their minds
around it's something that we need to address once again how do we restore morality in our dealings how do we identify what is right what is wrong that i i feel would restore a lot of
agency to agent to agencies that now have absolutely none fantastic um ruby k asks what are the chances that all palestinian prisoners will be released from israeli prisons um
uh not now uh but um you know i think that over the past six weeks we've been a trans we've seen
something of a transformative nature in the struggle uh of the palestinian people
um what the israelis have been dealt in terms of a humiliating defeat on the battlefield i mean
bear in mind this it took uh the united states and britain it took them something around 35 days
to absolutely take over all of iraq 20 years ago it's been now 45 46 days since one of the
most advanced armies in the world backed by the united states backed by britain backed by france
have been shelling this tiny strip of land which you can't actually see on the world atlas
with the naked eye for 46 days they've been shelling incessantly yet they haven't managed
to achieve a single and i mean a single strategic objective on the field so from the military military point of view they've been dealt a humiliating defeat from the media point of view
despite the fact that media outlets including our own bbc which only a few years ago used to be you know the sort of emblem epitome of media professionalism impartiality and as such
objectivity has rid itself of all of that have rid itself has never claimed that it is anything
but towing the the israeli narrative um even so the media war has been absolutely won by a
landslide by the palestinian side we've seen the emergence of brave young even jewish voices
from around the world that are not only criticizing israel for the genocide it's it's committing but calling israel by names which i personally never ever thought you know a jewish
american a young man and woman would ever call israel apartheid committing genocide committing
war crimes demanding that netanyahu and israeli leaders be uh behold before the haig and you know
all these this this um this six weeks as painful as it has been for the people of gaza and it's
been painful just watching imagine living there imagine those parents holding the bodies of their children you know their dead children it's it's something that the heart really you know breaks
time and time and time again um to the scene of but you know the fact is that we have just seen
a transformative moment what was before the 7th of october is definitely not what is coming after the 7th of october i think there are many many dynamics israel i you know besides the billions
and billions it's lost financially i think in terms of political credit within its own communities by the way within the jewish communities around the world i think it's
it's made losses that i'm not entirely sure that it actually can restore whatever however much it piles in in terms of monies or pr campaigns or as such one final question and we'll let you uh
proceed with your early morning uh lunar sky asks very similar question does a palestinian
state have a better chance now what happens after this war to gaza to palestine okay can if if it's
okay with you uh imam tom i'm going to depart a little from my political seat here and say something that might might be a little bit surprising i don't care for a palestinian state
i don't care for an iraqi state i don't care for a syrian state i don't care for an egyptian state
the states we have are failure they are you know they are failed entities they are elements that
subjugate that brutalize that suppress their own people we've seen how you know we're talking about the hundreds of thousands of people marching across the capitals of the world the cities of
the world but yet they're quite wanting where it matters most in the arab and muslim nations
the arab countries surrounding that's only a stone throw a stone's throw away from from gaza
where you know i'm not really worried about a palestinian state i think that the return of
human dignity of human freedom real freedom is what we should yearn for i'm looking for
um what happened 100 years ago at the hands of the brits particularly and also the french
and other colonial powers by shredding apart a nation that was joined by a language that was
joined by a faith that was joined by a culture that was joined by a way of life including by
the way muslims christians and jews we've all always we've always had christian and jewish
communities living within us my father tells me about their jewish neighbors about how when they were little and their parents needed to go out they would go and stay at their jewish neighbors
how the their children would come and they would play with each other in every single arab capital there is always a jewish quarter in cairo in damascus and beirut in iraq
in yemen in morocco that was never an issue that was never an issue the project that was
imposed upon this region was a zionist project in order to subjugate the entire region to steal its
riches it was a colonial project it was similar to the crusades by the way the crusades of many
centuries ago of 10 centuries ago started as the first modern manifestations of an imperialistic
colonial venture covered by the guise of religion you want to go to heaven this is the way you go
and you die in the holy land for the for the crucifix for you know for for our lord and that's how you guarantee your place in heaven otherwise it was pure imperialistic colonial
manifestations that that then developed into what we see today so my concern is not for a state that might be a step okay and it's in the right direction then it's in the right direction
if it's under correct conditions then that's fine but if ultimately we're going to create an entity that will be at the behest of the imf and then be ruled undemocratically by another
arab and muslim regime just like the ones that we have scattered across the region then i'm sorry then that's not what we're looking for we are looking for true human liberation and by the way
the palestinians are teaching us that lesson they are fully aware of this out of all of those the hundreds whom we've heard after you know their houses have been demolished their children have
been killed and slaughtered not one of them not one of them said my hope is that i will one day
stand in a free palestinian state a free palestinian state is not their objective their objective is
true freedom and liberation now this needs probably another conversation as to what we're talking
about but please let's not let's not reduce all this struggle all this sacrifice all this pain
and suffering so that ultimately we can come up with something that has a national frag a national emblem a football team and then call ourselves free that's not the real meaning of freedom
that's very profound and and very timely and i'm just going to just to repackage exactly what you said very briefly so that everybody in the audience is a crucial point that i don't want
them to lose or to misunderstand is that what we're after is so much larger than a state that we can't simply focus on this one thing which is a technology a state is a political technology
that is meant to achieve certain ends such as liberation such as justice such as equity such as you know all the meaning in our lives right if we only focus on the technology it might very well
come to pass that we might get that political technology we might get our state but it might have none of the things that we're hoping that we really want absolutely so we have to from now we
cannot simply box our dreams into or latch our dreams onto just that mere political technology we have to imagine the future in such a way that we're actually pursuing the things that maybe some
of us assume a state will provide such as dignity such as lasting peace equity all the things that we mentioned and so everybody has to this is really a crucial point that everybody has to
maybe i hope that you re-watch this if you're watching this now click rewind the last 10 minutes go over it again to really understand what we're saying here is that we can't get hung
up on just on a short-term goal or something that might not serve what we're really after and we need to start imagining the future from now because if we do not imagine the future and
how to get there from now then what is at stake and what could happen is the same thing that has happened to egypt the same thing that has happened to jordan the same thing that has happened to the
other nations where we get our state but it doesn't serve the people it doesn't serve justice it doesn't serve dignity it doesn't serve all the things that we're really after uh dr ennis this
has been a tremendous conversation i've benefited a lot and um inshallah i hope inshallah in the spring to to to be around the uk inshallah and i would love to pay you a visit thank you so much
for for joining us and uh we'll stay in touch and i i hope to uh to talk to you soon inshallah this has been fantastic and uh greetings to you and to all the brothers and sisters listening from or watching from around the world
and for everybody that's tuning in um we're just going to give five minutes because that was a very very thorough exposition five minutes if anybody has any questions for me or comments uh i know a
lot of people i i tried to repackage and retranslate what dr ennis was saying because i was fearing that maybe some people would misunderstand it he's not saying that we should not pursue a palestinian state but what we're saying is that we need to dream bigger than that
and not fall into the same mistakes that people before because this is if you want to go into history this is the post-colonial situation that a lot of the muslim nations have fallen into
where we thought coming out of world war ii we thought coming out of european colonization that this was going to be the end of our problems we get the state we get liberation that doesn't always
work that way that you can have a state and not have liberation you can have a state and not have dignity and if the powers that are dominating and subjugating us right now if they are preventing
us from dignity and and preventing us from a state if they can get away with just giving us a state in palestine and still not give us dignity make us make that state a slave to the imf a slave to
the international order a slave to foreign interests then they will do so if it means preventing us from true liberation and true dignity and something that allah subhana ta'ala
will be pleased with so we'll just again give just a few more minutes for anyone for questions um very very pleased thank you everybody for who interacted a lot of people are saying in the chat
was very enlightening conversation i agree completely um and may allah bless this gathering and make it a gathering that uh is pleasing to him and accepted by him i don't see any other
questions so we've already gone over time we'll wrap up for tonight we have many exciting guests coming uh in the following weeks we have people who have faced backlash when it comes to
uh being smeared uh either from zionist media or islamic folk islamophobic media uh we have people who are on the street uh participating in activism we have people who
are internationally very very well known who are going to help us sharpen our political analysis like we've been doing here today in the past several weeks so please everybody continue to
to think to educate yourself to spread the word and to tune in next week inshallah
