I’m pausing my ongoing series, Surviving is Thriving, for a special post.
I’d been planning to share a formal version of the halaqa curricula this summer, but I can’t in good conscience not share what the high school halaqa has covered over these last few weeks. Even if it’s rough draft stage. In response to student protests and the frequently hypocritical, all too often heavy-handed responses to these, the high school halaqas have changed.
They’re become much more interactive, much messier, and focused a lot more on teamwork even while they push for argument and debate. We’re exploring what it means to be Muslim in this very moment. God willing, sharing this, even in this rough draft, will help us all find ways to empower our kids and strengthen communities.
Artwork by @henryjgarrett (for Instagram). Shared via @MuslimsOfThe World (Instagram).
This is About Gaza, Not Columbia
When Columbia University’s President Nemat (“Minouche”) Shafik sat before Congress some weeks back, she should have known what was coming. She had to answer questions from elected officials who would only accept answers that conformed to their preset categories. Instead of standing up for academic freedom or asking why these officials (or, indeed, the university itself) didn’t likewise care about months of doxing, harassing, abusing and attacking students who stand up for Palestine, instead of asking why slogans were a more serious crime than, you know, funding actual war crimes, she utterly and completely caved to a bigoted agenda.
It's hard to imagine a more craven performance. And a more instructive moment. Undergraduates with plenty to lose, and apparently little to immediately gain, showed more courage than America’s elite, who have—in dramatic numbers—utterly failed despite greater numbers, resources and, allegedly, “expertise.” Sometimes you hear people say that they want to make money and then they’ll help their community. They just need one more promotion and then they’ll take a stand. But they never do. What’s the worst that could’ve happened to Minouche Shafik—she’d be forced to resign? She showed no spine and, worse, loosed a series of brutal assaults on her own students.
As an alumnus of Columbia University, I’m especially appalled. But while there have been some good analyses of why this happened, I want to ask another question for my readers here and what we’re probably all sitting with.
Why are so many powerful people so embarrassingly cowardly? Armchair analysts ceaselessly complain about how “unrealistic” and “extreme” students are—although, of course, shipping weapons of death to a violent regime is, of course, “reasonable,” “prudent,” and can always be “contextualized,” but hey, we draw the line at language. These same self-appointed experts who always insist they know best do next to nothing. They punt, like they did the never-ending, interminable, ineffectual, insincere peace process, which at best proposed Palestine become a colony with a flag.
At the same time, you’ve got wealthy, influential Muslims across the Muslim-majority world who are utterly silent while Gaza endures a merciless war unlike any in recent memory, which beggars the mind and horrifies the heart. Meanwhile here in the United States, our President cannot be bothered, halfheartedly gesturing at empathy while funneling ever more lethal munitions to a state that refuses to acknowledge any culpability for anything except in the most insincere ways. But even if our democracy is proving discriminatory and depleted doesn’t mean I’m down on democracy.
I’m down on the discriminators, the deficits, the disappointment. Our task as parents and teachers, as Muslims, as Americans, as mature human beings includes holding those in positions of power to account. And ourselves, too. I’ve got almost two dozen high school students in the halaqa. We’ve paused on Imam al-Ghazali. We have to. We’ve been talking about this. We have to. I hope you too have been talking about this. You have to. And in sharing what I learn, let me begin with this: I’m not interested in lecturing at our kids. I’m more interested in engaging and empowering them, pushing them to think harder, to understand what it means to balance principles, piety, and being part of the world.
To prepare them for what’s just a year or two away—the right to vote. College. Careers. Kids. Our ummah has failed too many times. Our country is dominated by a sclerotic elite, mostly talking to itself, more scared of young men and women protesting occupation and devastation than, you know, the actual deaths and destruction, to say nothing of the chaos they’ve unleashed, the way they’ve destroyed our moral capital and long-term influence, and for what nobody can say except that if our biases are reinforced, somehow the world will be alright. They might be failing. But they are not our models.
How do we make sure our kids are ready for the challenges and responsibilities that await them?
How do we speak to them in a moral emergency, a national crisis, a global shame?
That is what inspired these past few weeks. Outrage, yes. But a principled outrage. Even if Joe Biden doesn’t care how the absolute sham he’s made of international law will create a wave of radicalization, that’s not what I want—or any believer should. We stand on right and wrong. We are judged not for what we bring about, but what we intended to, where our hearts were, and we cannot cross red lines, no matter how sincere we believe ourselves to be. Killing the innocent is wrong, always. I can’t stop people out of my control. But I can demand my resources aren’t so spent.
What We Did
A more formal version of the below will appear in weeks to come. For now an outline.
Here’s what I’ve had the students pursue these last few weeks. If you’d like to follow along, start here, with a class of kids old enough to debate and discuss politics, culture, history, and agency. You’ll need at least six students, but under twelve (otherwise it gets unwieldy—though if you’re creative, you can adjust.) Take a world event, a political event, a policy question, some significant public reality underway and then have groups of them randomly assigned play the parts of the major actors involved. Ask them to make a sincere effort to fully embody the role they’re assigned, not because they should or will agree with the role, but so they can think it through.
This is an exercise in thinking individually and collaboratively. Thinking through hard questions. Realizing the nuances and immensities of the world we live in. And finding clarity in and through that.
For example, for our frame, let’s take Columbia’s calling in heavily armed cops to go after students they negotiated in bad faith with. Who are the major actors here that you’d randomly assign students to play the parts of? Assign a minimum of two and a maximum of three students to play the role of as many actors you can fit in, even and especially actors they’re unlikely to like. They should learn about the stakeholders involved, the constraints, fears, and aspirations of the different actor, to see through the eyes of others, to adjust approaches accordingly (if they deem necessary).
After they learn about their actors, ask each group to develop a consensus. What does your actor want? If, for example, one of the roles is the head Muslim chaplain of a university in a moment of crisis, what might you hope to bring about? What are your strengths? What are you capable of—and what aren’t you? Who funds you? Who are you responsible to? Then, pick another actor. For example: How might the President of a Muslim students group interact with that chaplain? What about the Dean of Students? And if they don’t know these positions and roles, get them to learn!
How are these positions funded? How are they structured? Send them reading material and ask them to reconvene at your next session. There, have the different groups start talking to each other. Or maybe refusing to talk to each other! Can they negotiate their way to a better outcome—or maybe some of the actors will behave in underhanded ways, backtracking and betraying their interlocutors? If it gets messy and uncomfortable, well, that helps them see how the real world can and can’t work, how intentions and assumptions overlap and obstruct.
The goal here is to begin thinking hard, thinking analytically, strategically, and uncomfortably. How to anticipate what drives institutions, empowers institutions, and even troubles institutions. I can’t be clear enough: This isn’t so that they decide one course or another, or privilege one part over another, but so that they learn how to operate in a complex, fluid environment, learning how to analyze, build consensus, anticipate, adjust, and determine what their principles are and then ask what the consequences of principled action are. Even what principled action should look like.
We’ve done several versions of this including, most recently, asking them to break into groups and make the case for different Presidential candidates before a hypothetical American Muslim audience. This helps them think about diversity in their community, the complexity of motivations, the way political arguments are framed, and even what their own considerations should be as they mature into adulthood. Each time I’ve done this, they negotiate, debate, dissect, and argue. They get intense, pushing and prodding each other, more alive than most halaqas.
And I’m impressed and excited by their energy. Our kids know a lot. Give them chances, connected to things they care about, to build on that. To learn what civic engagement and moral agency mean.
Because this matters, especially now. These skills are vital to American citizenship and Muslim life. Afterwards, when I asked them if this exercise helped them look at news differently, the answer was a definite yes. So ask yourself: How often do our kids get to do that? And shouldn’t they, before they go off to college, have to build or join communities, make hard political choices, even decide how to raise kids and where to live? These are the kinds of skills they need. And too few Muslim spaces teach them.
Why We Did That
I’ve tried to make these classes as interactive, interrogatory, and open-ended as possible. A lot of times we teachers think halaqas are our chance at the mic—we tell students what to think, they parrot answers, future outcomes guaranteed. But real life doesn’t work that way. Learning is empowering your students to think more critically, learn more voraciously, and build more resiliently. Not what to think, but how to think. What universities are supposed to do. But it’s not just about what you know—I’m sure, or at least I hope, Columbia’s senior leaders know a lot.
But knowing also demands acting and acting courageously, and courage is a virtue many in Columbia’s leadership apparently never chose to cultivate or decided to forfeit. Here are five principles that should guide your teaching. The fifth is more for us than our students, even as they should learn it, too.
First, religion means responsibility. We have to answer to God for what we knew, what we could have done, and what we should have done. Note that this means a good-faith effort in the absence of decisive information about the future. If I sincerely believe a course of action will lead to a good outcome, but it does not, that is not a knock on me in the afterlife. We make the effort, Allah SWT sees to the results, in this world or the next. But we can’t sit on the sidelines in the meantime.
We aren’t a thoughts-and-prayers kind of community.
Second, courage is an underrated virtue and a vital quality for us individually and institutionally. We often become too timid. We may have no realistic chance of changing the outcome, but that doesn’t mean we sit there uselessly, maybe debating to no end, either. For our own consciences, for our own humanity, and for the world around, we have to take stands. And here’s the thing: Your risks as an adult aren’t going to be the same a college student might take. That’s fine, after all. Different stages of life open different possibilities. Still, take a stand.
At the very least we have to model ways forward, ways that are compelling, reassuring, and meaningful. Part of the problem here is the so-called adults in the room have been so shamelessly complicit in war crimes or so entirely paralyzed as to be effectively complicit. Many of our elites look aghast at students gathering and venting their outrage, looking down on them while never looking at themselves, neglecting their part in producing this perilous moment.
But if we could show our institutions work, that we are willing to make an effort, students would not have to take such measures. If we find ourselves condescending to students, stop and ask first—what are we doing to help?
Can we point to anything we’re doing?
Third, we should be there as a community for each other.
I’d like to see Muslim alumni of every academic institution in America build cohesive and focused organizations, which can direct funding, mentorship opportunities, professional development and other resources, as needed, to current students and fellow alumni. We should and must be there for each other. A lot of this happening, but this better not be a I’m-there-in-a-crisis-and-then-see-you-next-crisis. We need to have serious presence, not least for administration to notice.
And then connect these organizations, learn from each other, creating enough flexibility to reflect the different circumstances of different types of schools, but enough common ground to come together when there’s a cause we need to get behind: Academic freedom. Religious freedom. Equal enforcement of policies and procedures.
If powerful, pro-war donors are leaning hard on Columbia, as clearly they are right now, where are our powerful community leaders, ready to weigh in, too? And for students who are doxxed and blacklisted—and these are smart kids, after all—are there jobs and resources waiting for them on the other side? We should have more entrepreneurs. More of our own businesses. Control the capital in our communities. Direct investments for our communities. Here I’ll take a moment to recommend Strategic Sunnah, a Substack that teaches these lessons in tangible ways.
And I’ll cheer Mehdi Hasan for building Zeteo, which we should all subscribe to. More such efforts! Not because we fear engagement, but because we cannot reduce ourselves to merely relying on others. And even if we won’t agree on everything, that’s fine. Keep building. Create space for diverse perspectives rooted in principle. On many questions, I’m probably a lot more conservative than many around me, but that hardly precludes my commitment to seeing our country build alliances with countries that share our values, don’t undermine our interests, and act in positive ways.
I want universities to be space for debate. For raucous debate. For the messy and the hard conversations. For the uncomfortable ones.
Fourth, for families and communities, learn together! Watch some news together. Read resources together. Recommend them content. But also ask them what they’re watching. Most of our kids don’t watch what we watch. It can’t hurt, and only helps, to be aware of what’s in their queue, what’s in their feed, who they follow, and what they’re learning. And take them places. I am glad I got a few students to head up to Columbus some weeks back to hear Josh Paul speak—the man who resigned from the State Department, who showed some spine, who should be a model.
And fifth and finally? This is a lesson for the so-called adults in the room.
President Biden’s response to the October 7th attacks has been a master class in absurdity. Anyone with half an ounce of institutional experience could tell you that a completely one-sided, short-sighted, feckless stance, such as our government has taken right now, seemingly helpless and powerless, will only lead to chaos abroad and chaos at home. If our own youth sincerely believe we do not care in the least for them, if our allies and enemies see us as empowering chaos (or unable to stop it), we open the door to agitation, aggravation, and alienation. In whose interest is that?
And if President Biden doesn’t care, if President Trump doesn’t care, if too many university Presidents abdicate their responsibility and cave to grandstanding politicians for whom there is no right answer, we still have to stand up.
If the adults in the room aren’t adults, if they’re busy excusing war and constructing ridiculous justifications for undermining freedom of speech and debate, then we don’t have to follow in their footsteps. Because we’ll all inherit the consequences.
Here in the US, we saw a pro-war, pro-Israel mob attack a peaceful encampment overnight at UCLA. (But by all means let’s focus on divestment campaigns—that’s the real threat to democracy, students debating where their universities invest!) This is not the worst it can get, either. People tell me, “if not Biden, then Trump!” But it’s leaders like Biden, who have no consistent moral compass, who have selective empathy at best, who think playing with fire in the nuclear age is a good idea, who enabled Trump. If we don’t all stand up now, we leave our country worse off.
Courageous students have taken a stance, yes. Whether or not you agree, they’re modeling the intensity and messiness of democracy. But when every powerful institution has decided they would rather America’s institutions crumble than Netanyahu be forced to face any meaningful accountability, they would rather America lose allies and alienate the world than ask Tel Aviv to make even a few compromises, then we are in for a rough ride. The least of our problems is Morningside Heights. That hardly absolves the Muslim world either.
But where too many in power have failed, the rest of us have a choice.
Do we try to build back better? Do we have to be so afraid?
If we think, as so many insist, students are unrealistic and extreme, then prove there are realistic and relevant routes to peace, dignity, and justice. And if we don’t know what to do, if we cared we’d still sit down and think that through. Start where you can. Do so with your kids. Find ways forward. Even small efforts, multiplied many times over, bring about progress. If enough of us do that, if we draw a line and insist that our institutions are not the property of plutocrats and partisans, that our country is more important than the second term of two very old, bigoted, uninspiring electoral legacy admissions, then maybe we can begin to fix the problem.
Don’t think that, because you’re a parent, because you can’t protest in certain ways, that you have no part to play. You can do far more than you know.