Understanding Sharia & Islamic history with Faizan Syed.

Faizan Syed is the executive director of CAIR DFW (Council of American Islamic Relations).

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host, George Mason. And I'm delighted to have another episode in our continuing series called Good Politics. Our guest today is Faizan Syed, and he is the executive director of CAIR DFW. That's C A I R. It's an acronym that stands for the Council of American Islamic Relations. And Faizan, it's so good to have you with us.

Faizan Syed:
I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

George Mason:
Well, you're welcome. Well, let me give you a little more biographical background on you. Born in Pakistan, and raised in the US, in actually St. Louis area, and educated in Iowa, and has served in this advocacy work, promoting understanding of Muslims in American society and in communities, and trying to work for the common good, and also to defend the Muslim community against misunderstandings left and right that occur as well. So is there anything else that you would like to say about CAIR and your particular sense of calling to do that kind of work?

Faizan Syed:
Well, let me try to paint the picture. So, when I was in college, I was studying astronomy, physics, and mathematics, like a good Pakstani Indian. And then I found my true calling in 2008. That's when the presidential elections were going on. Iowa being the first caucus state of the country, we had all these presidential figures coming to our state, including like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Ted Cruz, the first time around. And even a young African-American Senator from Illinois, had no chance of winning, Barack Obama who'd come to our university.

Faizan Syed:
So that's when I switched to politics and history and that's what I graduated in. And then of course, afterwards, when I was a graduate from college, shockingly there's not that many jobs for like political science and history majors and physics, math, astronomy minors. So I found my calling with CAIR because at that time there's the ground zero mosque controversy that's happening in New York City, with the Park51 building that's being built several blocks away from where the twin towers had collapsed.

Faizan Syed:
That created nationwide controversy. So that's when I first learned about the work of CAIR because on the news, you had all these CAIR representatives coming on, speaking, not only defending the right for that center to be built, but also reminding Americans that we are a country of religious pluralism, that we're a country that welcomes different faith traditions, and to stand against hatred and things like that. So that was my calling with CAIR. I applied and I've been working with Cara sentence.

George Mason:
Well, you mentioned Cordoba House in New York that was trying to build that community center in the shadow of the twin towers and all of that. The irony about that whole thing, actually I think, goes to the challenge you have in your work in America overall. And that is, this is a particular group of Muslims that was drawing upon the sort of medieval, beautiful of period of time in Spain and the city of Cordoba, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians were all talking with one another and working together in this absolutely remarkable period of interfaith relations and intellectual stimulation and all of that.

George Mason:
And so here's a group of Muslims trying to drive toward that unity, but their very presence, their very presence was deemed to be a threat and insensitive. And so overall here you find yourself in this work, and as a Pakistani who is also, by the way, married to a Jordanian. So there's a Middle Eastern connection too for you. You are in school in Iowa for heaven's sake. You can't be more white Christian, middle America than that. And here you are, right? A Pakistani, dark complected, with a dark beard and a Muslim. Oh my goodness. You're all the things that make people scared, right? And yet you move toward this calling, toward understanding. What does that feel like on a day-to-day basis? What is the ongoing challenge of that to you?

Faizan Syed:
It's an extremely awarding calling to be in, because America has always had really amazing ideals, a nation where all men are created equal. Of course, that excludes women, but getting to the idea that all men are created equal, that people have certain inalienable rights that are enshrined from a higher power, higher perspective.

Faizan Syed:
So that's the calling of our nation. However, America's always struggled to live up to that calling, whether it's with dealing with African-Americans with the three-fifths compromise that actually happened in St. Louis, Missouri, believe it or not. Or a women's suffrage movements, or the internment of Japanese or things of this nature. How every generation of Americans fought, struggled, whether it was unfortunately militarily, or protesting on the streets, or petitioning the government, to expand the tent of what it means to be an American.

Faizan Syed:
Today in the 21st century, we are now living in one of the most unique times because America for the first time in our history is going to be in the next few decades without a majority, an ethnic majority. And as that happens, there's a lot of fear that's drawn up by politicians, by individual groups, and folks who feel that theY'll be left out. And that fear is then exploited.

Faizan Syed:
However, what we try to do, and I think what every previous generation tried to do, is that to be an American is an idea not an ethnicity. And that idea itself is wide enough that anybody can be American regardless of your immigrant status, or where you came from, your ethnicity or things like that. And that challenge, to try to educate others, and to build a nation that's built off those ideals is something that I continue to fight today. And what better cause is there than that?

George Mason:
Well, I'm sure that there 9/11 things have gotten even more challenging for the Muslim community. And I imagine that there is also a kind of temptation to sort of hide your particular faith in a way in order to be fully American, right? And this program, Good God, is going in the absolute opposite direction. And that is to say, we want you to bring your faith into the public square. Tell us who you are, what motivates you, those sorts of things.

George Mason:
And so, when you find yourself engaging in local politics and state, and national politics, that sort of thing, tell us about how you bring your faith in this more volatile place. Because, yes, you're right, we're called on to live up to these ideals. But there's still a sort of default Christian culture that is wary of other religious convictions, and what they might mean for our future public life.

Faizan Syed:
Of course. And the reality is that after September 11th, as a nation, we saw an increase in anti-Muslim bigotry and hate crimes. [inaudible 00:07:54] tracked these incidents, and we saw within one year after September 11th, that hate crimes actually went to pre-September 11th levels, which is really astonishing as the nation.

Faizan Syed:
However, in 2007, 2008, we saw a spike and that spike continues to this day. So now anti-Muslim discrimination hate crimes are actually at three times the level they were even after September the 11th. So intuitively you might think, well, why is that happening? Because every day you go past the initial incident, you would think people would forget, it would go into collective memory, and people would not be as riled up. However, what we saw happening in 2007, 2008, is you saw the politicization of Islamophobia as a tool in order to win office, in order to actually drive campaigns.

Faizan Syed:
And that specifically started with Barack Obama. So when Barack Obama was elected as president, A: it was a shock to a portion of American society being the first African-American, very Black president, right, whose name is Barack Hussein Obama. But the other issue is that there were attacks against him. Now in this nation, racial attacks are really frowned upon. So nobody can politically do racial attacks. People can't go there and be like, "We hate this guy because he's Black." So instead it was like, "We hate this guy because he's not American. He wasn't born in America. Actually he's a secret Muslim. Actually, he has an agenda," and these type of things.

Faizan Syed:
So it was only after the election of Barack Obama that we saw. So the birther movement started this idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim. And then the politicization of Islamophobia as a weapon that's being utilized. And that of course still exists to this day.

Faizan Syed:
To address your question specifically about how we navigate a political sphere specifically, it's definitely a challenge. So integration of Missouri, which is where I'm from, or as we call "Missoura," right. You know, the Missouri legislature is very heavily Republican. And of course, as CAIR we don't support Republican or Democrat, but talk in policy terms. So it's a very heavy Republican state. It's two thirds majority, and things of that nature.

Faizan Syed:
So in that state, they also introduce anti-Sharia legislation and anti boycott divestment and sanction of Israel legislation. So when it comes to the anti-Sharia legislation, we had to figure out how are we going to make sure that this legislation doesn't get passed in Missouri, even though it basically got passed in every other Midwest state and about 35 states passed it. Missouri didn't pass it actually.

Faizan Syed:
And the reason is because in Missouri, we've used a campaign where we would target very rural elected officials in very rural Missouri, right? Because they're small Muslim communities there. There's small Islamic centers there. There are butchers there. And I'm talking about 30 families, 40 families. So what we would do is we would actually invite these officials to the local Islamic center. In Ramadan, we would invite them to the Iftar, the breaking the fast meal. They toured the center. They learned from the community. And just with a small connection with their constituents, these officials, who are Republican, were the few that actually vote against it, and that's what killed the bill from passing.

Faizan Syed:
So it's one of those situations that I really like what you're doing because in America what we do is we actively vilify others, right? There's a whole industry based off of that. How your neighbor is basically like devil incarnate and they [inaudible 00:11:06] everything about you. And we fail to find the humanity in others. I don't just mean in faith tradition. I mean political traditions as well.

Faizan Syed:
So for us, we have this choice. All right, these guys in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, there as whatever, any type of stereotype you want to give them. However. The stereotype that we gave them is that their tradition is that they're very hospitable, that they care about their neighbors and they care really about their community. So once we were able to utilize that, introduce them to their local community, introduce them to their neighbors, they were able to take political risks. And that is one of the reasons why Missouri never passed these bills.

Faizan Syed:
And I really urge your audience, be careful of thinking that you're so righteous and others are not because that's what perpetuates, I don't know, like just discord and basically like evil in society, right? When people really look at each other as villains, rather than looking at each other with the humanity that they have.

George Mason:
So the cost of not doing this work is also something to be considered. And just before our podcast, we were talking actually about a period of time in the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, when you've been sort of paying attention to history and how there were other moments like the one we are in maybe now. Tell us more about your study of that and what was taking place in Turkey during that period.

Faizan Syed:
Well, I'm a student of history. I'm actually writing a new book or a webinar series about Islamic history because a lot of it isn't really well known by Muslims, let alone people of other faiths. So one of the interesting things about Islamic history is that Muslims have always governed fairly large empires that were always multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and really very, very diverse, right? Especially compared to societies we have today.

Faizan Syed:
In the Ottoman Empire, after the Spanish Inquisition happened, Istanbul or Constantinople historically, was 35% Jewish. To put that in perspective, in America the African-American population is 10% of the population. So there was a large population of Jews, a large population of Eastern Orthodox Christians, a large of populations of Greeks, Armenians, and other folks as well. And what happened is that in that multi-faith society, the Ottoman Empire was part of the millet system.

Faizan Syed:
The millet system, we don't need to get too much into it. Basically it's a system where every ethnic and religious group is basically put into a category and they're allowed to create their own religious courts. They're allowed to have their own religious freedom. But from an American perspective one step higher, in that you can actually go to court and say, the Bible, or the Torah, the Koran says this. Therefore the court, which is a secular court, will actually rule in favor of religious law, right, if you're part of that. So it's a very unique system.

Faizan Syed:
So even though you had 35% Jewish population, even though you had about 22 or 28%, especially in Istanbul, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims, people lived bubbled lives. And what I mean by that is even though they all worked together, even though they all went to the marketplace together, they did not learn about one other's faith traditions or their cultures, except on a very minimal level, right?

Faizan Syed:
So there's not a lot of scholarship or interfaith dialogues happening at that time. There's not a lot of scholarship on this type of communication that we're having right now. And what ended up happening is that system worked very well because it allowed all these faith traditions to believe that the Ottoman system is great. Everybody's welcome. So they supported it. However, when the Ottoman Empire begin to collapse, there's a nationalist fervor and other fervors as well. These societies, the communities who lived next to each other for really hundreds of years, they began to create mobs and they actually began to, unfortunately, attack one another. And this is sort of part of the Ottoman breakup.

Faizan Syed:
So there's real consequences to not really finding humanity in others, learning about other faiths, other communities, especially in a diverse community, such as the United States. An example of that is what happened just recently with the Capitol insurrection that we saw, when you had many people who went to the Capitol and those people now have attorneys, so we can hear about their psychology. So they said that they thought what they're doing is right. They thought they were protecting America. They thought that what they were doing was in the interest of keeping freedom and justice for all people.

Faizan Syed:
However, in hindsight, after the incident happened, they realized the crime that they were doing. So the reality is that this type of division is being exploited in America today. There are politicians, individuals, media outlets, and others who financially benefit, or politically benefit from it. And unless the population understands that, there's no reason why what happened in the Ottoman Empire can also not one day happen in the United States, where literally neighbors might attack one another. Where you might see political division get so entrenched that it can lead to really a situation that none of us want to be a part of or live in.

George Mason:
Right. So as you do that, work promoting understanding, and having dialogues, and engaging with people of other religions and explaining Islam to them in these ways, there are also moments in part of CAIR's mission and yours is to engage in advocacy work that touches on public policy, on laws and on rules that are taking place in school systems and those sorts of things. So I think it would be interesting for people to know, how do you view the role of advocacy within the Muslim community and as part of CAIR's mission? What are some of the things that you all are looking at and engaging about as advocates? And how do you engage in defense of the Muslim community and also at the same time to promote the common good?

Faizan Syed:
That's right. So let me give you a little bit of history about it. You know, by and large, the Muslim population that we see in United is fairly recent, right? But there have been historical African-American who convert to Islam, the Nation of Islam. You also had migration of Muslims historically. But the big chunk of the Muslim community that you see, the big Islamic centers that you see across the country happened in the last 30, 40 years.

Faizan Syed:
A lot of that is because of the 1967 Immigration Rights Act, that changed sort of the quota system of who could come to the United States. And really in the '80s and '90s is when we saw larger immigrant populations come into the US. So that's a little of our history. We're a very new community because that political activism and advocacy really didn't exist in the psyche of the Muslim community until after September the 11th. And moreso after the election of president Obama, we saw the mainstreaming of Islamophobia inside the political sphere. Examples. President Bush, he actually said there's a difference between terrorism and Muslims. And that was kind of the mainstream narrative in the United States. But after Obama got elected, that kind of went out the window.

Faizan Syed:
Our activism really started on national level because the anti-Sharia movement. So there's a movement inside the United States that basically said that Sharia law is trying to take over the United States, that the Muslims are the fifth column in the country, and they can't be trusted. You can't trust them as much as you can trust an Irish person 30 years ago. Right? So it was that type of language that we saw. So because of that, that's when Muslims for the first time in this nation's history started to really do Capitol Days.

Faizan Syed:
So in Missouri the first Capitol Day we did was we brought 200 Muslim from across the state of Missouri to Jefferson city to meet the elected officials for the first time, was in response to the anti-Sharia movement. And of course within the Muslim community, if we would have gone to them earlier and been like, "Hey, we should go to the Capitol," people would go like, "Why? We have a good job. Our kids are getting educated. What's the point?" Right?

Faizan Syed:
So it was in response to those attacks that Muslims started to doing that. And then there's also response to the second wave, which is sort of the anti-BDS bills that are introduced. So these are bills that basically outlaw the right to boycott, [inaudible 00:19:42] the state of Israel. So I don't want to talk necessarily about that issue, but particularly those bills would target the Muslim community because they would create frivolous lawsuits based on the fact that you're Arab, like the fact that you're whatever it is, right. So that's sort of the underlying ideas of these bills.

Faizan Syed:
So there was a second wave of activism that happened. So it was really the community thing targets so we have to respond. After that happened, now there is more of a mainstreaming of activism within the community, that the larger Muslim community understands that their role is that they are Americans. They have to advocate for issues not only impacting Muslims, but also impacting the larger society. A lot of that is because, again, most Muslims came in the '80s and '90s like my parents.

Faizan Syed:
My father, and his generation, they're just trying to survive. So they're not really caring about America and the larger issue that are happening. Their children, though, are. Right? And they're the ones that are now going on the streets and advocating for these different issues and causes. Some of the issues that the community advocates for is now becoming more mainstream.

Faizan Syed:
So for example, in Texas we just had our most recent Capitol Day, which was virtual. And in that Capitol Day we weren't talking about Muslim-specific issues like we historically did. We focused more on the George Floyd Act, to basically hold police accountable and to end a certain series of things that would actually address racial injustice. We also focused on voting rights and expanding voting rights in the state of Texas. And then the third one is, believe it or not, Texas has right after Martin Luther King Day, they have Confederate Memorial Day in Texas. So we also advocated that we should probably get rid of that holiday as well.

Faizan Syed:
So now activism is moving in that direction. I think all faith communities should be involved in activism and advocate for issues and causes that they support, but move beyond the notion of what are the issues that I care about because the Quran says something, but issues that as Muslims we care about feminists in society. We care about justice. We care about these things. So try to find those issues and advocate for those types of causes.

George Mason:
Terrific. So you mentioned Sharia and it is an ongoing matter of misunderstanding, I think, among Americans generally. Sharia is about the application of Islamic law in everyday life, right? And this is not terribly unlike the Jewish system of halakha, which is also a system of regulating Jewish behavior in law in an everyday way. So what would you want to say to people who are unfamiliar and who are worried that Sharia will become something that overcomes civil law in the US when, as I understand Sharia, it's always supposed to be subjugated to, in whatever culture you are, the prevailing systems of law, and is instead only to be practiced within the community in a sense. So tell us a little more about what we should know when these issues come up.

Faizan Syed:
Right. I'll focus on two things. First and foremost, the vilification of Sharia has nothing to do with Sharia law. That should first and foremost be understood. Nobody cares about Sharia law in America. Even the [inaudible 00:23:13], when I spoke to many of them, they don't know what they're doing. Their whole idea is to treat the Muslim community as communism was treated in America as well, which is this notion that there are these undercover communists who are trying to overthrow the capitalist democratic system in order to apply communist whatever, whatever type of thing.

Faizan Syed:
So that's the idea. You just replace the word communism, and you replace that word, McCarthyism and people being secret communists, with Muslims and Sharia. So that's the notion. It's to create a fear-based society that can then be exploited in order to win an election, in order to win votes, in order to push a specific type of agendas. It has nothing to do with Sharia or things like that, and it has everything to do with that.

Faizan Syed:
And the same can be said when President John F. Kennedy was elected that there was a mainstream fear of Catholics taking over America and the pope being the secret leader. Same thing with Japanese, that they're secretly going to follow the emperor of Japan and be a fifth column. The same exact fear is happening, and now it's Muslims. Of course, now that China's rising, we have other non-mainstream political threats. The whole idea of Sharia and Muslims as a threat is really diminishing in the country. It has nothing to do with the fact that we were good at educating populations. It's not that the US has different threats that they're focused on.

Faizan Syed:
Getting to Sharia specifically though, Sharia law is everything that has to do with Islam. So believing in God is part of Sharia. Being good to your parents is part of Sharia. But that is also a civil code. So, for example, when I get got married to my wife who's from Jordan, I didn't go to a church and make my vows in that sense. We did a sort of like the Islamic way of getting married. And of course, we also got like a court document that said we're married as well.

Faizan Syed:
One thing that folks have to understand about Sharia is that Sharia is not designed to impose itself on other communities. It really is a holistic, and I would argue a very secular basis of law. Because again, Muslims have governed large populations of multi-religious, multi-ethnic communities. In most of our history, the people who are not Muslim make up the majority of the society versus the Muslim population.

Faizan Syed:
So Sharia from the beginning has been, I would argue, fairly secular in its overall nature. And then it creates things like the millet system in which other faith traditions can have their own courts and things of that nature. So that's something that I'd really want the audience to understand is that Sharia in its very nature is everything has to do with the religion. It includes how we pray, how we worship, how do we do these things.

Faizan Syed:
And the part where Sharia law meets the actual law in the United States has to do with a few things. Number one, halal meat. Right? So for example, there's an effort in the United States to basically get halal meat recognized as kosher meat, so that the federal government protects it just like it protects kosher meat. And also there's effort that says, when a person gets married in the United States or overseas, they do, what's called a Nikah rather than maybe necessarily like a typical court-appointed document. So that's kind of where some of these issues come into play.

Faizan Syed:
Long story short though, I'm sure the audience that is watching this, they probably already believe this. There is not sort of a global conspiracy by Muslims in the United States to implement Sharia law. Even if there was a global conspiracy to do that, we have protections in the United States. One of the protections is called the Constitution of the United States, which is what prevents the majority of the US population who are, of course, Christians. You know, there is not an effort, or there's no fear that Christian religious thought is going to take over the US Constitution. Why? Because we have protections already in place.

Faizan Syed:
So those are some things that I would definitely encourage the audience to be aware of and to really consider as they're trying to understand Sharia and its implications within the United States.

George Mason:
Well, Faizan, it's been delightful to hear from you and to get to know who you are and what you are up to in our community and in our state. So thank you for your work, for your witness, for being a good neighbor. And we look forward to knowing you more and working together in the years ahead. And thanks for being on Good God.

Faizan Syed:
Thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

George Mason:
You bet.

Speaker 3:
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