Driving the Conversation About Yemen

29 المشاهدات· 24/07/31

Muslim Group of USA and Canada
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The Muslim Group of USA and Canada proudly presents its 35th Annual Conference | Negotiating Truth in the Age of Feeling

Register today at: Conference.TheMuslimGroup.org

It is our hope that this year’s Annual Conference will embody, in spirit and letter, a modest attempt at rooting our pursuit of knowledge in the sacred foundations of Islam by examining the demands that religion places upon the faithful, and whether the truths it articulates can be ‘negotiated’ or cast-aside based upon how one ‘feels’.

Please join us, that together we might explore what it means to renovate our own selves, and with the help of God, emerge with a better understanding of the roles that faith, reason, and feeling play in meaningful religious experience.

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[0:01]Robbi strongly Sadri we are silly unreal I looked at ami listen

[0:06]he of Coco Lee I began in the name of my Lord

[0:12]the most beneficent the most merciful the past few days we've all

[0:17]had this amazing opportunity to come to this conference and partake in

[0:26]discussions with our esteemed scholars our experts and even one another and

[0:36]we've gained this wisdom from all of this we've gained spiritual rejuvenation

[0:43]we've gained enlightenment to help us with our lives moving forward and

[0:49]so tonight let it be a night of taking all of this

[0:58]energy and putting it into action and I'm very very humbled to

[1:03]be in front of you here today to speak to you about

[1:11]this eras worst humanitarian crisis the Karbala of today which is Yemen

[1:21]so inshallah I will try to do justice to this cause and

[1:26]I begin with my story as a millennial was grown up in

[1:35]the post 9/11 era I too became jaded by the world around

[1:38]me though I studied political science and homeland security at university and

[1:47]excelled at it I felt as though my path had come to

[1:53]an end upon graduation becoming conscious of the fact that I couldn't

[1:58]understand the corruption of the world let alone try to change it

[2:03]it wasn't until a friend took me out for coffee one day

[2:12]and everything changed it was three years go I was content at

[2:17]my new work a young author trying her hand at illustrating and

[2:21]tapping into her creative side I was finally freed of the world's

[2:29]suffering and instead I got to live in my own imagination filled

[2:32]with colors and rainbows and everything one could ever dream of and

[2:39]then this friend ruined that at the cafe she talked to me

[2:46]about Yemen she scolded me for living in my own bubble and

[2:49]when I got angry about it she left me with three haunting

[2:57]words see for yourself that night I couldn't sleep I tossed and

[3:03]I turned thinking about what she said was it true where children

[3:08]really starving in Yemen was America responsible so at 4:00 a.m.

[3:16]that night I went on Google and I typed in what is

[3:19]happening in Yemen and as a force of habit I looked at

[3:26]what all the independent media outlets were saying about it and I

[3:29]was shocked I choked back tears I tried denying it I even

[3:39]justified what I'd found and then came the second guessing who was

[3:42]I to do this kind of work I'm a nobody I'm a

[3:48]simple person and even if I wanted to change the situation I

[3:55]couldn't do anything about it I had my own problems to deal

[4:00]with so this jungle went on in my heart for a couple

[4:03]weeks until I came across a video of Manara muha wish of

[4:10]mint Press news she was a young Muslim hijab' woman fearlessly talking

[4:15]about Yemen about Palestine about all the oppressed of the world and

[4:21]I felt absolutely embarrassed what am I doing with my life I

[4:27]thought for someone who has grown up a very shy student in

[4:35]the classroom grabs the corner seat of every room and can't make

[4:38]small talk for the life of her I couldn't understand what pulls

[4:45]me to the forefront what made me go back to school at

[4:48]Harvard what made me start my own media organization and what brought

[4:52]me to speak here today perhaps I saw myself in them in

[5:00]that I could have easily been born into their situation and that

[5:05]each one of us are put where we are for a reason

[5:12]and this is when I knew that my newfound path in life

[5:17]would not be easy in fact it would be uncomfortable it would

[5:24]be awkward it would be full of unknowns but it would be

[5:29]a compulsion a compulsion to speak for those who could not speak

[5:37]for themselves to understand what is happening in Yemen today we must

[5:42]go back to where the story begins in the 1900s the British

[5:46]were attacking Yemen long before the Saudi even got there which they

[5:49]did in the 1920s when they invaded Yemen's border and occupied its

[5:57]cities this was known as Operation decisive storm which then became listen

[6:04]to this operation restoring hope so in 1962 the country of Yemen

[6:11]gets caught up in a civil war which makes it the perfect

[6:14]proxy battleground for Arab countries and European allies here Yemen is getting

[6:21]infiltrated with al Qaeda Saudi al Qaeda and Isis fighters known as

[6:26]a cap al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula solo this largely foreshadows

[6:36]what is happening in Yemen today so local Yemenis by now are

[6:43]getting very very sick of all the foreign intervention the corruption the

[6:47]oppression the poverty and most importantly the extremist Wahhabi ideology that was

[6:53]being shoved down their throats and like this protests ensue and in

[7:02]2011 a major party known as the Houthis rise to power suddenly

[7:07]in March of 2015 Saudi launches their attack on Yemen with the

[7:13]support of eight Gulf countries the United States and the European Union

[7:18]here the United States was providing logistics and intelligence to help carry

[7:24]out these aerial attacks apparently the United States was told that all

[7:35]of this would be a cakewalk but they weren't able to defeat

[7:40]the Houthis and instead get involved in a myriad of war crimes

[7:44]against a very poor country and made them suffer the loss of

[7:54]over 60,000 civilians and put over 23 million people into starvation in

[8:00]fact 23 million people are said to die by the end of

[8:04]this year which is in the next five days so was all

[8:11]of this worth it for Yemen just as Moses overthrew Pharoah just

[8:23]as David challenged Goliath just as Imam Hussain stood up to his

[8:27]ease so too did the people of Yemen rise up against Saudi

[8:31]Arabia reticent of their oppression no more the question isn't whether all

[8:38]of this was worth it or not for Yemen to stand against

[8:43]the most powerful armies of its time rather it was an inevitable

[8:47]occurrence of a people rising against the tyrant Saudi Arabia we've all

[8:56]seen the images the images and videos covered with a crossed out

[9:06]eye warning that this image or video is too graphic a lot

[9:10]of these photos and videos of Yemen are also deleted upon being

[9:15]uploaded social media citing a violation of their standards as being offensive

[9:22]they say but isn't an offensive for us to withhold the sharing

[9:31]of truth isn't it offensive for us to wish Ashu paying tribute

[9:35]to those whose lives are unjustly taken and isn't it even more

[9:39]offensive that our government directly partakes in the genocide yet champions itself

[9:47]as the savior of democracy and freedom I'm not sure what is

[9:55]more laughable that these images are seen as offensive or that our

[10:01]government our government directly partakes in something and emerges as a moral

[10:15]hero after slaughtering innocent people the Saudi Coalition has intentionally targeted all

[10:21]of Yemen's food and agriculture supply blockaded all of its lifeline ports

[10:28]and made it impossible for them to get food clean water access

[10:33]to medicines especially in the face of a cholera epidemic in just

[10:38]August this year Trump signed a defense authorization bill and the Pentagon

[10:47]brought forth citations that they would investigate further to see if human

[10:56]rights violations occurred in Yemen so as bombs rain down on children

[11:01]in markets in hospitals and even on a school bus that was

[11:05]attacked by a guided Lockheed Martin missile and millions more we're gonna

[11:11]die from manmade starvation our government is going to investigate further to

[11:19]see whether human rights violations occurred in Yemen for the past three

[11:26]years my brain has been on overdrive trying to understand how and

[11:31]what is happening in here how is all of this legally sanctioned

[11:38]by our government who controls how people have to live and how

[11:42]people have to die now you must be wondering why our country's

[11:49]fighting over Yemen firstly Yemen has always been used as a proxy

[11:59]battleground for many countries so countries want a piece of it at

[12:02]the expense of the Yemeni people in fact the southern part of

[12:05]Yemen has been occupied by the UAE and United States troops have

[12:13]been training UAE troops there for over five years now where they've

[12:17]also set up sexual torture sites to extract information from people and

[12:22]reports have said that there are so many innocent people being held

[12:30]here second it's controlling a land into submission we've seen this time

[12:35]and time again where the West and its allies exert control over

[12:39]other lands they prop up dictators rigged elections carry out coos whenever

[12:46]it suits them and lastly location Yemen sits at the epicenter of

[12:51]the world's largest crude oil flow the bobbum and up choke point

[12:58]estimated to be at around 3.8 million and barrels per day seemingly

[13:05]it's only and most heinous sin in the eyes of the Saudi

[13:08]coalition in this regard Yemen's oil production should also not be dismissed

[13:15]although it's nowhere near what other Gulf countries are producing however in

[13:21]the world that we live in today even an ounce of oil

[13:30]is more valuable than a sea of human blood now let's go

[13:34]back to the Houthis you may have noticed how in Western mainstream

[13:38]media it is said iran-backed Houthis or Iran back to Yemen as

[13:49]if it was a well noted fact this is not accidental in

[13:53]fact it is a clever tactic framed by Saudi Arabia to D

[14:00]legitimize the entire Yemeni narrative in a recent thesis paper I read

[14:05]by Thomas Janu he proves that there is no logical link between

[14:08]Yemen and Iran because Yemen has always been a country that has

[14:15]been awash with weapons and Yemen's struggle has always been about internal

[14:21]grievances this is undoubtedly a propaganda tactic talking point used by Saudi

[14:29]Arabia and regurgitated by our Western media pundits and politicians who have

[14:37]latched on to this idea ever since they say if you keep

[14:41]repeating something you're gonna end up believing it the question is at

[14:47]what difference this detail makes it is to know that the Saudi

[14:54]coalition in our media mainstream media are arbitrarily lying to us to

[15:00]downplay the entire Yemen Yemen's cause so that people are not going

[15:07]to pay mind when savagely attacked another huge misconception is the current

[15:15]gains that have been in the talks politically with the current recent

[15:20]Bernie Sanders bill that was passed recently the truth is that this

[15:24]bill contains a huge huge loophole in that it allows the United

[15:28]States troops to continue staying in Yemen by slapping the al-qaeda label

[15:44]to any of their target areas this of course will be used

[15:49]for the United States to continue supporting the war on Yemen which

[15:53]is a huge paradox because Saudi is the one who created Isis

[15:59]and al-qaeda in the first place and used it to infiltrate Yemen's

[16:04]lands additionally even if this SGR 54 did not contain this perfect

[16:10]loophole it would still never materialize because Trump has time and time

[16:15]again expressed his undying support for Saudi Arabia because of its connection

[16:21]to Israel surprise surprise we must also recognize the media portrayal of

[16:37]Yemen in a negative light recent TV shows like Jack Ryan and

[16:42]Hollywood films like traitor all portray Yemen to be this hotbed of

[16:50]terrorism so we must be very careful thinking that a single bill

[16:53]or truce like the one that was recently negotiated in Stockholm Sweden

[16:58]which the Saudi broke the very next day when they launched many

[17:04]over 21 airstrikes into Yemen and killed civilians would solve the issue

[17:10]and we must be even more careful to paint the United States

[17:14]government as a moral hero when it has been fueling this genocide

[17:19]since 2015 and though this situation seems to be entangled into a

[17:25]million different complications there is always light at the end of the

[17:33]tunnel and where it all goes largely depends on us each of

[17:36]us have our own talents to offer it can be in the

[17:43]form of writing creating videos making art or even talking to people

[17:48]and our own families on our breakfast table activism isn't always blasting

[17:54]on megaphones it can be quiet and creative as well we also

[18:03]must know where our hearts truly like when we express solidarity with

[18:06]Yemen on social media are we just trying to make ourselves feel

[18:10]better or do we acknowledge that there is a person behind that

[18:15]story with real emotions with real thoughts with a real beating heart

[18:20]when we use hashtags to express solidarity only to forget about it

[18:27]when it stops being important isn't change because true change is consistent

[18:33]we must be the captain of our own fruits and not let

[18:38]trends shape our thoughts and our actions we can also try to

[18:42]understand how this military industrial complex thrives and how it has become

[18:48]the basis of this Western economy we must actively boycott these military

[18:54]companies who are shedding innocent blood and we need to stop working

[19:03]for them entirely and we can also support Yemen monetarily there are

[19:09]very good organizations such as the Yemeni relief fund and the women's

[19:14]march on the Pentagon which is different than the women's March who

[19:19]are doing great work on Yemen as well as in deep media

[19:23]outlets who have been giving us great news coverage on Yemen since

[19:30]the beginning of the war unlike mainstream media outlets who have just

[19:34]started covering Yemen after the death of one Saudi journalist Jamal khashoggi

[19:39]and lastly brothers and sisters most importantly we need to understand that

[19:44]the powers that be have done a great deal to tear apart

[19:50]the Muslim world they've used extremism as Massah nations to further us

[19:56]from one another and we as Muslims no matter what our sects

[20:02]we're closer to each other than our own Souls we must recognize

[20:06]this open our eyes and come together before it is too late

[20:10]unity is our only salvation and though I try to do all

[20:18]of these things I am still awash with waves of guilt I

[20:24]open the fridge and I have so many options to choose from

[20:27]I spend my days enjoying time with friends and family but I

[20:34]have these pings that never leave me the images that I've seen

[20:39]like the ones you've seen like the image of the father sitting

[20:42]next to his two dead children images that remind me of my

[20:50]own children they've changed me they've got it me they've broken my

[20:56]heart but all of this is necessary for revolutions to be born

[21:04]where we risk all that we love for what we hold true

[21:10]so that mankind can move forward today we're driving this conversation on

[21:18]Yemen but tomorrow we're acting we're liberating we're encouraging humanity to go

[21:28]further because after all what is an ocean but a multitude of

[21:31]drops thank you you

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Driving the Conversation About Yemen

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Driving the Conversation About Yemen

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