Omar Suleiman
speaker
1,922 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2023
last heard Feb 2024
Omar Suleiman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I think about what could have been all the time. You know, I actually mentioned this in the first DC protest. That I remember getting a notification, a news notification just prior to October with my name in it. You know, so I always get these notifications, right? If my name's been mentioned in an article. And so, oh, your name's been mentioned in an article.
And it was a 16-year-old Omar Suleiman who was murdered in the West Bank. He literally had my name, held up his picture. And I realized that could have been me. So I think of why God chose me to not be there. and hopefully him choosing all of us that are not there to be for those that are still there, to be their voices. I'm grateful, and I'm also in pain.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to speak on their behalf, but I'm also guilty that they have to bear the brunt of this evil hatred that unfortunately displaced our parents in the first place.
So I think that there's a powerful connection between the Palestinian people and the indigenous in this land and in other places. that have been wronged. We are living here in the United States on stolen lands that is drenched in the blood of the natives and that was built upon with the blood, sweat, and labor of enslaved Africans that were brought from overseas.
It's a great evil that we have to reckon with constantly. And so I think that's the power of solidarity. And if you look in Canada and you look in places like Australia, there has been a refocus on the crimes against the Indigenous of those places. I think that what makes the Palestinian plight
deeply painful and maybe where the analogy even doesn't do justice is that from the river to the sea is less than 500 times what the United States is in terms of land. It's not that big of a piece of land. And so the original lie was a land without a people for a people without a land. And the problem was that there were people on that land that were forcibly removed.
So I think that the sheer size, right, we're talking about a tiny piece of land and a lot of people that were removed forcibly from their land and that continue to be brutalized under those miserable conditions.
It's the land of prophets. It is a land that holds deep significance, obviously, to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It's the land of Abraham, peace be upon him. It is the land that has such a rich history to it that connects multiple peoples in multiple ways. It's precious.
I think that history, while it tells the story of tragedy and struggle over that piece of land, also tells a beautiful story of sanctity.
Well, Islam refers to this idea of submission to one God and attaining peace in the process and refers to the way of life that prophets have all come with, which is this idea of monotheism and serving that one God in the way that he commands you to serve him. So to us, as it says in the Quran that we do not distinguish between the prophets, all of the prophets came with one message, one mission.
There's a coherence in the creed. There's a beauty in the foundation of what would become the legislation of each of those prophets. And we see them all as siblings in prophethood. And so we say Abraham, peace be upon him. We say Jesus, peace be upon him. We say Moses, peace be upon him. We say Muhammad, peace be upon him. We believe that. Moses came to confirm what came from Abraham.
Jesus came to confirm what came from Moses. Muhammad came to confirm what came from Jesus. They upheld the same message. God did not change over time, nor did the centrality of his message of monotheism change over time. And so to us, it's one beautiful house.
There's a saying from the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, where he describes the house of prophethood, each prophet being a brick and him simply being the last brick of a beautiful house. And so we love the prophets of God and we believe that they each came with the legislation that was necessary for the time, but with the same message.
Yeah, you know, it's like when you talk about MLK and Malcolm to an extent. Except there was actually some difference, right, between MLK and Malcolm. You know, I just think that the difference is exaggerated between them. Right. I don't think that Moses didn't emphasize love, but Jesus emphasized love, and then Muhammad didn't emphasize love, peace be upon them all.
I think that they each emphasized the same attributes and names of God and ways of knowing God. But there were, of course, changes within legislation, changes within the divine law, but the divine spirit remained the same. And so I don't see them as being counter to each other, nor do I see that any prophet is. betrayed the message that came before them.
I think they're all part of the same beautiful message that we have to be at harmony with our creator and that we turn towards him for our guidance and that when we do so, we establish a greater existence here on earth. And so I think that that's something that's consistent throughout the message of all the prophets.
Complicated. Very complicated. And it's not just Muslims and Jews. It's also Christian Zionists. Christian Zionism is at the root of the problem, in my opinion, especially when we talk about what drives America's unshakable, unconditional commitment to Israel.
It's devastating, I think, to Palestinian Christians in particular, when Israel can bomb some of the oldest churches of Christianity in Gaza and kill Palestinian Christians, and Palestinian Christians are barred from going to the Holy Sepulchre or to their places of worship in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, and Christians here in the United States turn their back on them.
I think that it is particularly outrageous. So it's complicated. Look, I expect more from people in the face of a genocide. We don't have to agree on all the particulars, but we can agree that what is happening is morally outrageous. And so I think that... I've had a few people that have reached out and said, I wanna say something, but I can't.
And I've had to respond with, that's not good enough. So I think that we have a problem. And instead of focusing on that problem, I'd like to focus on the more morally consistent voices across faiths that have risen to the moment rather than those that have failed.
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