Marium Uddin (00:00)

Dr. Imam Omar Suleiman is the founder and president of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, a Dallas-based scholar, civil rights activist, and one of the most prominent Muslim voices in America on faith, justice, and the intersection of religious life and political engagement. Sheikh Omar, as-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu and thank you for joining me on this episode of Witness.

Omar Suleiman (00:19)

Wa alaikum as salaam wa rahmatullah. Thank you for having me.

Marium Uddin (00:22)

What misses the mark about you in other people's understanding, in my opinion, is that behind this larger-than-life stature, you're an incredibly gentle, shy, pious person, someone shaped profoundly by adversity, and someone who is actually highly uncomfortable with praise, celebrity culture, and fame. Chat GPT told me that that was a hagiographic introduction, but is it fair to say?

Omar Suleiman (00:43)

I hope some of it's true. I mean, I definitely hope that I can achieve a higher level in terms of piety. But I I yeah, I'm certainly uncomfortable with a lot of a lot of what comes with the public platform. It it is what it is, and I definitely am shaped by adversity.

Marium Uddin (01:03)

Let's talk about the cause of prisoners. I wanted to start off with that.

The cause of prisoners and the oppressed has been central to your work. Why is it central to you? In other words, where does it come from? Not asking for the theological answer, but the personal one.

Omar Suleiman (01:19)

So there are a few reasons why I think I've cultivated a connection to this particular cause. One of them is I think my hatred for abandonment and no people feel more abandoned than them. It's actually crazy that you can't make the excuse of proximity. For example, even though it's not an excuse, you can say the people of Gaza are very far away.

The people in the Muslim world that are getting bombed to pieces are very far away. You can't say that they're not close enough. They're literally right here. You also can't speak about them and unfortunately we do like the dead where you drive by a graveyard and, well, they've already passed away. So I think that there's just something eerie about it all. And I also think that it's the nature of abandonment.

It feels incredibly painful to think that we've abandoned these people who have gone to these prisons because of serving their community. And so the community turning its back on those that are imprisoned because they serve them is probably why it it speaks so deeply to me. There is a whole theological framing to that when it comes to how we're supposed to treat the prisoner and how we're supposed to

look out for our prisoners. But that's a huge part of it. I I also think that once you know one person who's been imprisoned, like personally, it changes your outlook on everybody else. It's sort of like once you've experienced death, the death of a loved one, then suddenly death feels different. Suddenly the graves feel different once you've put someone you love in those graves.

Marium Uddin (02:55)

Let me follow up on that specifically. I know that Aafia's case means a great deal to you. Can you tell me why she matters to you so deeply?

Omar Suleiman (03:03)

So Dr. Aafia, I've never met Dr. Aafia. I've only seen the videos like so many other people. But I would say that once I met her sister, once I got to know more about her kids, then it started to feel even more personal. So definitely the cause of Dr. Aafia in and of itself is such a noble cause. And just the nature of the injustice towards her. You see, the abandonment is

very much so nefariously tied to post 9/11 tactics of intimidation of the Muslim community. The fact that this poor innocent woman, who's very sweet, I mean the testimonies of her character are consistent, who was doing humanitarian work, charity work, who did everything the right way, I don't believe was guilty of any wrongdoing whatsoever. This isn't even like a, you know, she did something

that was wrong and she was punished more severely. No, I think that this entire case is baseless. I truly do believe that from the bottom of my heart. And you see her sister and you see her kids, like I've had the chance to talk to her family. They just want their mom, they just want their sister back. And at the end of the day, it also pains me more that she's like right here. She's right in Texas. And

in this huge community of Muslims in the DFW area where, you know, people boast about the Dallas community and talk about how wonderful it is, how great the infrastructure is, how big the masjids are, how many schools we have, and these things types of things. That, with Dr. Aafia in our backyard, we usually can't get a hundred people to go out to a protest for her. That to me is an indictment of the community.

So it's not just an indictment of the nefarious political tactics that have been employed against the Muslim community in in a post-9/11 world because who wants to be associated with Al Qaeda? Right. They always frame the prisoner with some sort of, stain that if you come near that prisoner, then you too are guilty of the same thing that they've been accused of. And so

in a post-9-11 world, who wants to be associated with Al-Qaeda? So Lady Al-Qaeda. I mean, it's so disgusting in its nature. And I think that it also speaks to, in my opinion, the community's idea that if we if we back off or if we let this one go and we kind of just stay out of trouble, then hopefully that'll calm things down. And that hasn't worked for over two decades. It's not going to work.

Marium Uddin (05:15)

Well, let's take the inverse of that for a moment and speak into the framing, the injustice, and the abandonment. I want to talk about Marwan's case, Marwan Marouf. In terms of the larger story around him, my experience was that he became a vessel for accumulated grievance, fear, betrayal, rage, and historical memory.

And that changes how communities behave. In his case, we had a number of people come out in support at press conferences and informal gatherings. Expectations, though, mutate. Obviously, you know that well, especially public expectations when there's prolonged injustice. And his case became emotionally enormous for many people. Not only because of who he was personally, but because people connected it to this much longer history that you're describing of HLF, post-9/11 prosecutions, Palestine

surveillance, all of it. And I think that created a situation where people were carrying expectations that no individual legal case could fully bear. You knew him personally and loved, you know him personally, and you loved and love him personally. I was litigating the case from the inside. What did you learn from watching how the community carried that case?

Omar Suleiman (06:24)

You know, it it kind of fit how people were reacting to Gaza, where when we'd go protest after protest, no one was expecting it to prolong the way that it did. And you could see that a considerable amount of the community sort of faded into the background and was just highly demotivated and hurt. I think we were all hurt, but could not find

unfortunately the persistence that was necessary to continue the political pressure to try to do what we could. And you know, this is sort of a faith framing that's very important that you do your part and you leave the rest to Allah, but you have to make sure that you keep doing your part and leaving the rest to Allah. So the initial reaction to Marwan, it was

definitely greater than any other case we'd seen in the community. But I think that the expectation was he's going to come home next week. He's going to come home next month. And so when one month became two months and two months became three months, you started to see that same despair sink in that you saw with the looming background. I don't even know if you could ever call Gaza background, right? But the looming tragedy and genocide of Gaza, right? That people kind of despair.

As it's not changing. Why isn't it changing? Why haven't things gotten better? Why are they still being massacred? Why are they still being starved? So why is Marwan still being held? When's he coming home? And so what it taught me about the community is I think definitely it took it took someone so beloved, so involved in the community to bring certain people out

to his protests. I remember one brother who came to me and said, This is the first protest I've ever attended. And I was surprised because of who that brother was. And he was like, I just don't believe in protests. But for Marwan, I couldn't not come out, because of who he was, right? Who he is. taught me, yeah, I'm saying it taught me that the community will come out for someone that they love, but it also taught me that we still have a long way to go

when it comes to staying the course for a person that is so beloved to our community and staying the course for other individuals. And that, you know, we can be overwhelmed, unfortunately, to a place of complacency, not acceptance, but complacency. And I think that that complacency is what I fear. I think it's exactly what our enemies count on. Not that we become apathetic. I think people still deeply care about Marwan. I think people still deeply care about

many of those that get held, but I think they kind of just tap out and just accept that this is the way it's going to be and resign themselves back to, their daily lives while if anything, just praying for better.

Marium Uddin (09:11)

Marwan was and is special. I know you had also hoped for his eventual release. Did you ever expect it?

Omar Suleiman (09:21)

Yeah, I mean I would say that

I always operate with this, hope for the best, expect the worst, and be unsurprised by anything in between. Maya Angelou's motto. I always operate with that and of course there's a spiritual framing to that, which is Husn al-Dhann and just having a good expectation of God. But I think in the initial days, I did expect that, especially with the political power that we thought we were able to pull, that Marwan, who was never guilty of doing

anything that should put him in this situation would just on the basis of that political clout and power be released. Look, at the end of the day, if you were to take Marwan's case and you know this, if you talk about Democrat and Republican support, now some of the Republicans

that were supporting were doing so very quietly. Some of the Democrats,

candidates, and others were saying, we'll do our part. The community statements, the interfaith statements, the city statements, just all the testimonies to his character. I thought that all of that, from a

practical perspective would culminate in his release. Of course, only Allah is the One Who who sees and can do on the basis of His Divine Wisdom and He sees the whole picture while we only see a pixel. But I did think that, at some point in the early part of that case especially, that that would culminate in his release. I would have thought it was like a Salah Sarsour situation, right? So Salah did come out.

and may Allah protect him and protect all of those that have gotten out and keep them out.

Marium Uddin (10:58)

I I think it's important to recognize the differential between how these cases, these ICE pickups are processed, because of course Marwan's basically began and ended in immigration court without the benefit of fully having had a habeas petition heard. And the judge that was assigned to Salah Sarsour's case was an exceptionally strong judge who had

issued favorable rulings previously, which speaks to the differential in our judiciary and what it takes when it's so personality-driven.

Marium Uddin (17:35)

You're a well-known admirer of Malcolm X, and I wanted to ask you what it is about him that speaks to you. And who among contemporary or recent world leaders across traditions do you admire in a comparable way?

Omar Suleiman (17:56)

I think Malcolm was incredibly unique because Malcolm

both matched political and religious convictions that I have and I admire so much in him. His sincerity, his willingness to grow, his willingness to challenge and be challenged, the courage to match his convictions, the way that he was able to anticipate things and then take very unpopular positions that turned out to be true. The way that he was always on the side of his people, right? So he never was co opted.

He never became a tool against his people, but he always was a sincere advocate for his people, from his people. So his evolution is purely out of sincerity, not out of political pressure, not out of opportunism. And I think that that's exactly where we should all try to be. And his willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, which is with his own life. He knew he was going to be martyred.

He embraced that fate, he embraced that reality because that's what he believed was true. He had to continue to grow in a way that was going to continue to alienate him, not just from the political arenas that he could have had much mobility had he relinquished certain positions of his, but even from those that were

within his closest circles. He was willing to take stances that would further alienate him because he believed that that was important. He was willing to even take on other causes: Gaza in 1964, Vietnam. He was willing to speak to the most unpopular causes at the time because he believed that it was truth. And so I think that just his

orientation in accordance with the truth, that truth was was his guide in how he made his decisions. And sincerity was his fuel. And he had courage. And it all came out so beautifully to where even his political opponents at the time could not help but admire who he was, or at least acknowledge his sincerity. Now

was he slandered? Was he ostracized? Was he unfairly treated? Absolutely. But I mean, building on the previous conversation, Malcolm also refused to let his community be taken advantage of by those who spoke to the community under the guise of the lesser of the two evils. I think that you have to have that moral conviction, you have to have that current in your community that says

we're just not going to be taken advantage of anymore. So to me, Zionism is Zionism, liberal Zionism is evil because Zionism is ethnosupremacy. If you dress it in a way that it comes off as more benevolent by continuing to throw platitudes or or talk about some two-state solution while every prime minister and every administration, every current in this apartheid state is

openly and actively moving towards the full erasure of the Palestinian people - that doesn't make me feel better. Like I'm sorry. That does nothing for me. If you turn this into a Netanyahu problem and you want to bring Yair Lapid in, you're still the problem. So I think Malcolm just loved his people so much that he didn't want them to be taken advantage of. And there were some within the community that were frustrated by that.

Told him he's being unreasonable and told him that he needs to stop making these types of analogies and stop talking about the liberals that were abusing the black community in their own ways as well. No, if you speak for your people, you speak for your people. And you have to do so with with courage and you have to do so with conviction, you have to do so with sincerity. And even if that's going to cost you certain spaces, it's okay.

Marium Uddin (21:01)

Do you see someone on today's world stage that embodies those characteristics?

Omar Suleiman (21:08)

This would sound really bad because it would sound like I'm putting other people down, but I think it's just because I think Malcolm set a standard that I don't know that anyone has reached on the world stage today. I think there are people that will embody certain elements and people that will be admirable. I hesitate sometimes to name because then they'll take a position that's like, Oh, God, right?

So I think let's just leave it at that. Let's say that I don't think anyone has has matched Malcolm's

purity. Not in terms of their their intentions. I can't judge people's intentions, but the purity of his approach. And I know that purity tests are used in a way that are not necessarily favorable, but I think even if you look at Malcolm in his last year,

did Malcolm reconcile himself to Dr. King's approach? There's a great book by James Cone called A Dream or A Nightmare. I think it's important for everyone who is involved in America's complex political mammoth to read. It's called Malcolm and Martin. The late James Cone wrote about their difference of approach.

Malcolm was moving closer to Martin. Martin was moving closer to Malcolm. There's no doubt that that was happening. Malcolm in his last year spoke favorably about Dr. King. He offered support to Dr. King, but he still disagreed with Dr. King's approach. Like, let's make no mistake about that. Despite his disagreement, he still went to Selma, Alabama. He still wanted himself to be the scary alternative to Dr. King so that Dr. King could get his agenda across. So he said, Let me be

the person that they'd have to deal with if they don't want to deal with you. So he was willing to be the martyr for Dr. King. You go ahead and and and you keep moving things in Selma. Let me be that scary alternative because they'd much rather deal with your politics than deal with my politics. I mean, that's incredibly noble. And what you'll notice is that Dr. King reconciled himself to Malcolm's approach. And an honest political historian would say that King

between 1965 and '68, sounded a lot more like Malcolm. He took on a lot of Malcolm's burden. It's often positioned as Malcolm was the pessimist, this disagreeable, angry, just destructive voice in the movement that could never see the good. And Dr. King helped him see the light.

But it's really quite the opposite. If you look at the positions that Dr. King ended up taking on Vietnam, especially, and breaking the silence on that, and how he even spoke about white America, he sounded a lot more like Malcolm after Malcolm was assassinated. And that has to do with why Dr. King would be assassinated at the time that he was as well.

Marium Uddin (23:32)

Every answer that you give embeds Gaza. I don't think it's possible to have a conversation with you without that being raised. You

didn't go to Gaza.

Did you try to go? Did you have an idea that you would simply be denied permission?

Omar Suleiman (23:45)

I tried to join. There was one doctor's group that eventually was able to get permission for a chaplain type figure so I tried to join that group of doctors and I was rejected by COGAT so didn't go well.

Marium Uddin (23:59)

Have you seriously considered living in a Muslim majority country permanently?

Omar Suleiman (24:05)

I don't see myself permanently in any country in the sense that I believe that as American Muslims and as activists especially and thinkers, it's important to broaden our scope, to broaden our perspective. And so when Malcolm said travel broadens one scope, I think in this day and age, especially where we're seeing just how

destructive American exceptionalism has become, American Muslim exceptionalism also is destructive when we don't think about the world outside of us. And so for me, it's important to spend time in different parts of the world, to connect with people in different parts of the world, to just think about how we move things forward at the global level, and not just speak about this cutouts. And I think that that's one of the reasons why

we've suffered so much, both as Americans as a whole and as American Muslims specifically, is that we don't think beyond our borders. And so Islamophobia is only deeply a problem when it comes to our local mosques, when we have San Diego type situations, right? That to me is a problem. So what when it's our tax dollars that are funding the dropping of bombs on on mosques

whether in Gaza or in Afghanistan or in Yemen or wherever it may be, why is that not a problem? I I did a video. It was provocative.

But it was like, why do Muslims hate America? And obviously we don't hate America. We hate injustice, but that was the point of it. If you search it, it's the question, Why Do Muslims Hate America? It's like, well, let's think about what Muslims actually do hate and why you don't hate that, right? And let's talk about America's foreign policy. And then you can identify the connections between foreign policy and domestic policy. The way that the IDF or the IOF treats Palestinians in the West Bank.

Those tactics are now being used by police departments here at home. They've been used. It's important for you to recognize the knee on George Floyd's neck as the knee that's been on multiple Palestinian necks in the courtyard of the holy places in Jerusalem and so far beyond. So it's important for Americans to think about the world beyond them, and it's important for American Muslims to think about

the world beyond them as well. Connect to the ummah, connect to humanity, go beyond. So I always see myself as someone that advocates for something far greater than what will touch us within our borders. I want to see a better world. I don't think that Allah has made us simply caretakers of one land, but people that are to be witnesses for humanity.

And so that to me is something I think of. And I also view myself as a stranger, as a wayfarer. That's what the Prophet peace be upon him said. You don't view yourself in this world as being of it. You view yourself as being in it. You are a stranger. You're a wayfarer. And so I try not to get too attached to geography, but instead to mission. So all of that to say, I don't ever see myself forsaking all that we've built, all that we've done here in

the United States and in our communities. At the end of the day, I want my three kids to know a world beyond the U.S. as well. I want them to know that there's something so much greater than what's within the borders that we live in.

Marium Uddin (27:04)

I'd like to spend our last few minutes

kind of diving deeper into who you are. To begin with, what is most difficult about the kind of celebrity that comes with your position in this community? Is it hard to give up your privacy?

Omar Suleiman (27:18)

Very hard to give up privacy. It's very hard to put up boundaries. I struggle with that greatly. I am a very shy person, so I find it extremely difficult to say no. And unfortunately, family pays the price, so I I'm trying my best to figure out boundaries. I think that that's something that very few people in the community could probably

appreciate how someone like yourself or anyone that's in a caretaker role, when they wake up in the morning and they open their phone, you're at least reading 20 messages. I need to talk to you right now. I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you. So every morning when I open my eyes, I've got, you know, and it's become 15, 20, 100, 200, 300 messages because every community I go to and I interact with new people.

Somehow things get around. And so I have to prioritize which emergency I'm going to tend to every day. Which emergencies I'm going to tend to every day. And there is no exception to that. There's not a single day that we're not putting out some sort of fires. Right. And so that's everything from another domestic violence case to someone whose kid wants to commit suicide to

community scandals and tragedies to someone else being picked up by ICE. Every day it's yeah.

Marium Uddin (28:39)

you this because I know that we've spoken about the infrastructure question and you've raised it with me about what the community owes its leaders. Mental health services, pastoral care. Are the youth programs and marriage counseling just not enough? And if you could build one thing tomorrow that doesn't currently exist to help this community, what would it be?

Omar Suleiman (29:00)

Case workers. We need more caseworkers. We need caseworkers for refugees. We need caseworkers for our homeless populations. We need people to follow up with those that have these emergency situations within their families. There's a lot of hand holding. At the end of the day, our programs and our classes speak to theory that seems to fall apart

once someone is already in crisis and we just don't have crisis management infrastructure in our community. And then everything ends up getting dumped on those that are the most visible representations of the community leadership to the community. And so the imams have the greatest trust from the community, so it all comes back to them. And sometimes I can funnel and I can send them to certain organizations. Sometimes those organizations don't exist. But even

the referencing, the initial conversation and referencing people to where they need to go becomes very overwhelming. Because I can't talk to 400, 500 people in a single day. I just can't. Right. So, and I'm not just saying this because I'm quote unquote a celebrity imam. I'm saying this at the end of the day, I choose to be a volunteer imam in my community. I'm a volunteer at Valley Ranch. I'm not, you know, in any way employed.

But I want to be amongst a community, my community. And people are looking for anyone that can help them in their time of need. They're so desperate that they will simply knock on the door of a person whose door they know. And we just need we need the ability to be able to have the inbound and the continuation for

people of different needs and I just can't I can't even begin to express how bad it is right now. It's extremely bad right now. Family counseling, refugee needs, the Gaza families that exist in our cities, the ICE detainees, their families. It's just a whole lot right now.

Marium Uddin (30:51)

gifts to our community is your educational series. I appreciated your Ramadan series and your beautiful dua'a. I wanted to ask you what the inspiration behind those dua'a is. It's not ChatGPT making dua'a, right? And in your privacy and solitude, do you make dua'a in Arabic or in English?

Omar Suleiman (31:06)

it's not ChatGPT made.

Both.

Marium Uddin (31:15)

What was the inspiration behind the Ramadan series this year?

Omar Suleiman (31:18)

So believe it or not, the dua'a part was actually not initially part of the plan. It was something that just kind of got tacked on the very end. And it was like, you know, let's just make dua'a with these names of Allah and see how it goes. So it was like, let me just think about how I would make dua'a with each of these names. Some of them were personal dua'as that pre exist that that

that already existed before the Ramadan series. excuse me. So there are preexisting dua'as that were brought into the Ramadan series. But ultimately, I think it's important for people to know that you can call upon Allah in your language using His names, that He is accessible to each and every single one of us, that you don't have to be poetic, that you don't have to rhyme, that it doesn't have to be in a particular language, but you need to learn how to talk to

Allah. Just talk to Allah. And that will cause you to find a sweetness in your dua'a that will serve as a launchpad to future du'as and words that otherwise you would not have been able to find.

Marium Uddin (32:22)

I appreciate that. And I want to ask you about another aspect of who you are that is known commonly to be a big part of who you are. And that of course is your Mom. I think anyone who has heard you knows how much reverence you have for her, and we all kind of feel like we know her, her battles with illness, her partial deafness that protected her. I loved the story of how she didn't understand the exact nature of what was being gossiped about. Her coverage of the Quran during Ramadan, and and so we know that she's your greatest

human motivator and that the loss of her has shaped you profoundly. From my perspective, It seems it would be a foregone conclusion that there's a sadness your children did not meet her. What are the stories about her that you tell your kids?

Omar Suleiman (33:06)

I find myself telling my kids about her pretty much every day. So, anything that allows me to introduce another dimension of her to them, I do. So we'll talk about just her funny moments, we'll talk about jokes that she used to make, we'll talk about her perseverance, and I I try to make sure that they

see her as someone who's deeply present in their lives and present in their current struggles and and present in shaping their current perspectives on life. And the benefit of that is that when when my kids will go through, at least the older ones, when they'll go through tribulation, they'll remember her tribulation, they'll remember her struggle. It'll actually come from them now, as if she sat them down at a breakfast table and spoke to them

about how she got through some adversity in her in her life. And so I'm starting to see that now, especially with my my older two and you know, especially with my oldest in fact. and that's that to me means the world. You know, So at the end of the day, like it's one thing is visiting her grave and having conversations about who she was. Another thing is, you know, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, my father being here to tell other stories and you know, speak about her over

lunch like we did yesterday and talk about some things that we didn't know before, or some conversations or debates, or some of the inner struggles. All of that just helps shape perspective. I You know, I I love biography in general. I love biography. I teach biography. I It's my favorite genre to read the biographies of heroes and villains, people that are way

in the past and people that are still very much so present. And at the end of the day it helps us tap into our own humanity and the best version of ourselves and also avoid the worst version of ourselves. So, when when you're talking to your kids about their grandma who they've never met, and they say it feels like we've met her, it feels like we've known her, we can't wait to meet her, then that's something that's that's extremely important to me

to convey and to continue with them.

Marium Uddin (35:26)

Thank you for answering that. And a question for you to close us out with. And that is if you could say one thing to the Muslim Americans who may be listening to this, not a platitude, but something true and specific in this moment, what would it be? And can you center it around the thing that gives you genuine, non-performative hope?

Omar Suleiman (35:53)

I would say your political prisoners and your refugees, if you gain closeness to your political prisoners and advocate for them, the freedom of a single political prisoner feels like breaking the shackles off of an entire people. And if you deeply connect yourself to the refugees in your midst, then you'll have such a closer connection to the places that they came from that you claim to care about.

It's easy for us to speak about persecution over there. It's much more difficult to deal with the persecution that is right in your backyard. And so I would say if you could dedicate yourself to those two causes, then do so. And the hope is that look, we we have won quite a few battles that seemed impossible. It's really interesting because like

you asked about you know, Marwan and this is Allah's Qadr, Allah's divine decree at the end of the day, and I'm sure that Allah has a plan for Marwan that is far greater than had he been released here in the United States once again. I'm a hundred percent sure of that. I have zero doubt in that, full certainty in that. But like if you would have asked me between Marwan and some of those that did get out, right, who I thought would have gotten out

it it went the other way. But at the end of the day, Alhamdulillahi aalaa kulli haal all praise is due to Allah in every situation, every circumstance. There's a wisdom in it all. But just really focus, focus, focus on the things that are closest to you because the deeper you get into those causes, the more that it's going to inform and shape the way that you dedicate yourself to global causes that can otherwise feel distant.

Marium Uddin (37:45)

I want to thank you. To say that you're a special person is one thing, but I ask Allah to deem you special in His Sight, to elevate you for the work that you do. I also want to thank you for bearing witness on this episode. As you know, the the behind this is for us to document our stories. It's people of conscience and courage who have collided

Omar Suleiman (37:53)

Right, I okay.

Marium Uddin (38:06)

against systems of power. You're inextricably intertwined in that narrative. And so again, thank you for joining me today.

Omar Suleiman (38:15)

Thank you so much for having me and thank you for all that you've done to fight for our prisoners and everything else that you've done for the community. We really appreciate it as a whole and I pray that Allah rewards you and all of those that don't get enough credit for the sustained work behind the scenes.

Marium Uddin (38:33)

JazakAllahu khair. Take care. As-salamu alaikum.

Omar Suleiman (38:37)

Wa alaikum as salaam wa rahmatullah.

Marium Uddin (00:13)

There is a question that sits underneath every conversation we are in this season. How does this keep happening? Not why people suffer. History offers too many answers to that, but how in a world with international courts, human rights law, congressional oversight mechanisms and First Amendment protections, the architecture of accountability seems to bend so consistently away from the people it was built to protect.

Noura Erakat is one of the most important legal scholars writing on Palestinian rights and international humanitarian law. Her book, Justice for Some, is the most rigorous account we have of how law has been used against Palestinian rights rather than in their defense. Lara Friedman has tracked U.S. congressional dynamics around Israel-Palestine more closely than almost anyone else. She has also documented in granular and authoritative detail what may be the most consequential domestic legal story of this moment.

The systematic legislative effort to redefine antisemitism in ways that suppress Palestinian rights advocacy, silence campus speech, and threaten the tax-exempt status of civil society organizations. I want to understand the architecture of what has been permitted to happen. I want to understand what law can do and what it cannot. And I want to understand honestly whether there is any realistic path to accountability. Thank you both for joining me this morning. It is an honor to have you on this episode

Witness. To begin with, both of you have spent years examining the distance between what institutions promise and what they actually deliver. What was the genesis of the draw for you to this work? And Noura I'd like to begin with you

Noura Erakat (01:46)

Thank you, Marium. Thank you for having me alongside Lara, who I have collaborated with, but also grown with across the years. And so I think that that's been the greatest indication of how much change we are experiencing personally and in the world, which is, as Octavia Butler reminds us, the only thing that stays the same. And thank you, Marium, for your efforts here. I love your framing of this as bearing witness and us providing that testimony. I understand your question in two parts. One is the attraction into

right into the lion's den of confronting power and the other one of the work on Palestine. So I'll answer both somewhat briefly. I'm Palestinian. I'm born in the United States as a first generation immigrant where English is my second language and I'm first politicized as a girl in the world. I have three brothers

in a Muslim Palestinian household. And it was through the lens of being a girl in the world and words I didn't know to give it like feminism that allowed me to see the inequality and the way that we were constantly told that some things are just natural or meant to be, that I knew very much we had constructed as humans. And it was that lens that then enabled me to understand myself

as Palestinian, to see what Palestine was, to even understand racism, poverty, and so on. And by the time I got to college, I was absolutely committed to a lifetime of advocacy and struggle. But my commitment to Palestine in particular didn't happen until after my first semester as an undergrad at Berkeley, when I actually white lied to my family

and used a scholarship that I had received for academics to travel to Palestine and volunteer in Dheisheh, a refugee camp. They, as immigrants, the last thing they wanted for me is to go back to Palestine. The vision for most immigrants is you come, you do great in all of your wealth and success, you offer, you offer something to Palestine, but you never go back. And so on that trip, I was able to see the disparities, not just between

Palestinians and Zionist settler sovereigns, but also to see the difference internally among Palestinians, class, racial, and otherwise. And when I got back to university, I looked around and thought there's a lot of people working on all the other issues I deeply, deeply care about. I'd always seen the world as interconnected, but I also looked around and thought, my goodness, there's so few doing this on Palestine. We're the ones we've been waiting for.

And so stepped into that. In terms of why then step up to confront power, it's been iterative. I begin as an organizer, grassroots organizer first and foremost. You know, launching the divestment campaign at Berkeley, the first one on the second election of Ariel Sharon, February 6, 2001. I had been studying at Hebrew U. The second intifada starts, I'm forced to leave.

I come back to Berkeley and with the first SJP, which had been established there in 1998, in fact, we then launched this divestment campaign. And so I started as an organizer. I finished law school and still planned my first job to sue Israeli officials and to plant BDS campaigns around the country. It was a two-part job. So we planted seeds at Stanford, we planted seeds with the

Presbyterian Church USA, we were going against Caterpillar in the shareholder meetings. I'm an organizer at the same time that I'm working in the law. All of this is iterative. Before I throw myself directly into the work and work in Congress and then work within the UN system and human rights advocacy, all of it is iterative until I hit a wall that basically

I need to answer the question, why is the law not working? What is the relationship between law and power? That drives me back to the academy. And here I am trying to do this work where I think, I rely most heavily on people power and political work and grassroots organizing. It's bottom up for me all the time, first and foremost. That's power.

And I do feel that how we then alter the structures of power really depends on how we've organized ourselves locally and grassroots-wise, including in the law, at the UN, in our legislative work.

Marium Uddin (05:56)

I have follow-up questions to how you've presented the answer to that, but hopefully we'll go through them step by step. So Lara turning it over to you. How would you describe your genesis?

Lara Friedman (06:07)

Thanks. And I want to echo Noura's appreciation for this interview and the framing around Witness. And I will say that I'm deeply humbled to be on here with Noura, who is one of my intellectual heroes and teachers throughout my process of getting to where I am today. I'm going to steal Noura's framing because it's so brilliant on the first why Palestine and then why stepping up.

My story is really also undergraduate story. I never really thought about Palestine very much. I'm Jewish American. I came from I think what is a very typically sort of conventionally Zionist home, which is we weren't really Zionists, we didn't really talk about it, but it was a default kind of of course we love Israel. Of course I've got a Coca-Cola sign in Hebrew that somebody brought me back from Israel on my wall growing up. Never really thought about it. And I never really thought about the sort of narratives that I was taught.

Whether they were true or not, I just assumed they were. Until really I got to undergrad. The most important thing in undergrad, and this is why people who want to teach their kids to not challenge orthodoxy really don't want their kids to meet anyone else who doesn't agree with them. I went to a big school, University of Arizona, that's where I'm from, and I immediately met people from all over the world, including a lot of Lebanese. It was during the Lebanon Civil War.

And a lot of Palestinians. And I discovered very quickly, mostly arguing with people over games of pool, that I didn't actually know enough about anything to defend what I thought I believed and what I thought I knew. And that was intellectually deeply dissatisfying. I grew up in a family where, I was taught that our values and our intellectual integrity are key. Intellectual integrity is consistency and honesty and integrity.

So that led me on a path of taking classes and learning a lot more. So that by the time I graduated and then went to graduate school, I had already moved a great distance away from knee-jerk sort of pro Israel narratives that I grew up with. And then I joined the Foreign Service out of graduate school. And I went to Jerusalem on my first tour by accident. It wasn't my desire to become someone focused on the Middle East or Palestine. I'd actually intended to go to Africa. And in Jerusalem, I lived in East Jerusalem.

All my neighbors are Palestinian, all my friends are Palestinian. It was just after the end of the first intifada, and I spent all my days pretty much in the West Bank dealing with settlers and settlements. And it is a brutal reckoning to suddenly see things on the ground. For all the things I thought I knew, the reality of the West Bank, the reality of the IDF and how it treated me when I was in a car with Palestinian friends

or what we saw with settlers and settlements and the friction doesn't even begin to describe it. And these are settlers who today are my contacts in the settlement movement then, you know, the ambassador to Washington was one of my contacts then when I was the consulate. And they were unabashed in their philosophy and in their dehumanization of Palestinians. It was a very steep and brutal learning curve for me. And it

changed my entire interface with the world because more than anything it brought home to me not just the deep injustice, but the deep hypocrisy that pervades every conversation about Palestine. and it really brought home to me a sense of responsibility as someone who is Jewish, as someone who is American, for the role that we as

Jewish Americans and the United States play in that. And that's sort of unbearable. Once you know that, you can't unknow that. So when I left the Foreign Service, I came back to this. And, the question of iterative, when I came back into this after the Foreign Service, I came to the American arm of Peace Now, American sister organization to the Israeli peace movement, which is a liberal Zionist organization. And while I was there and

I think my friends in the broader movement who know me and have watched my evolution can attest - I really wrestled with the whole concept of liberal Zionism and trying to define it in a way that aligned with my views in a way that reflects integrity. and I remember once talking to an Israeli friend of mine and describing how I made my peace with the word Zionism, and his response was, Well, that's great and what you described is liberal, but it has nothing to do with Zionism. And I'm like, No, you're wrong.

It's been a journey for me. Where I am today, I absolutely would not describe myself as a Zionist and my focus really is on doing all I can to try to really achieve justice and and integrity across the full range of policies and issues. Which then takes me to stepping up and confronting power, which I like the idea of again iterative. When I came to Americans for Peace Now,

I sort of dove in and started trying to look at all the legislation that existed because I don't like to answer questions unless I really know all the facts. And that's when I started to realize there were so many inconsistencies in the current law. There is absolute outright hypocrisy in the way the law is interpreted and implemented. Things like anti-BDS legislation that started in 2016 or so, and then the antisemitism legislation that started a few years later.

I never set out to become the person who obsessively tracks these trends and documents them. But I kept getting questions about them and I kept looking at articles and thinking this is not being dealt with in a way that is is accurate. And fact should matter. Law should matter. I know these normative statements about what should matter. It should. And at the very least, if I can't force people to make it matter, I can at least force them to face the hypocrisy

of what they're saying. And I can empower the grassroots to have the facts they need to call out the lies when they see lies and to call out the hypocrisy.

Marium Uddin (11:21)

I want to take some of what Lara has said, Noura, and sort of flip the script because a lot of how you answered the first question was anchored in your Palestinian Muslim identity. And I want to ask you, what unique value do you ascribe to our allyship with people like Lara with their

sincere and fierce outspokenness and advocacy for Palestine? Are they still outsiders looking in, or have they become so integrated that we are now one with them?

Noura Erakat (11:49)

Great question. You know, I was thinking about this as Lara was speaking, right? And I was thinking about how even, at some point we were thinking about, in work that I had written about, how is it that we forge a shared and collective future? I've changed a lot. And I've changed a lot in the course of struggle, and a long time ago to understand that this is just squarely and fundamentally a Palestinian liberation movement.

That those who benefit from the supremacy of that structure and the privileges of that structure - the right to violence, the right to life of that structure - also have a lot at stake to become liberated from it. But it is not their liberation struggle. It is our collective liberation, but it is primarily a Palestinian liberation struggle and one in which I think that our allies have to fundamentally understand themselves as allies -

which means deference to Palestinian visions, strategies, tactics without dictation. And this is something that's come up a lot in movement where, those who want to be involved with Palestinians somehow want to then tell them, hey, hey, we agree with everything that you say, but that slogan is just like a little bit too much. It's not up to you. You haven't endured this violence.

If you feel like it's too much, it's because you haven't lived this, right? Or thinking in another way about all the times I've been on television or at universities or in communities, where in order to have me speak, I had to have someone who identified as Jewish or Israeli to speak alongside me so that they can rubber stamp what I'm saying. One, to make me a trustworthy interlocutor, but also two, what's suggested here

is that what Palestinians want for their future has to be contingent on what might be amenable to would-be Israelis? Would-be, because the Jews who live all over the world have the ability to settle in Palestine and to acquire citizenship through territorial accumulation, which is contingent on the dispossession of Palestinians. And here we are placed in a condition where that person

has to explain that go ahead support the Palestinian because we're okay with that, right? And what's the structure there is that - and this is what you know, similar maybe Lara, to the way that your home was just by default Zionism - Zionism is so racist and supremacist as an ideology that it frames without us even knowing Jewish life as superior

wherever it is and Palestinian life is inferior, so that that act that question actually matters. So that I, for example, can be on a television program on the day the first the first bombing of Palestinians in Rafah in tents, where they are burned to death, where their skin melts off, where they're suffocated in plastic tents. And I'm talking about you know a future without Zionism.

And the host wants to ask me, but how does that make Jewish people feel? In the moment that Palestinians are being burnt to death, And so I just want to speak really, really plainly. We are all in a collective struggle for liberation. All of humanity is. But that has to be led by those who are

at the greatest harm, even in human rights. even if you take a very doctrinal human rights approach, there's a hierarchy to human rights. Territorial and bodily integrity are the top. Okay? Your feelings are the bottom. And so, you know, in the vision, I I still very much believe that we are in this to co struggle, but I also think it's very important for us now

to be able to separate, to extricate, the Jewish question from the Palestinian question. Jews obviously have a question to settle about confronting antisemitism that cannot be wrapped up in Palestine. And that has preceded and has exceeded Zionism. But Zionism, at least since 1942 and the Biltmore Conference, has been the primary way that people have understood Jewish liberation, and that's the work here.

We have to take it back to the Enlightenment. There's been unresolved questions about Enlightenment Europe and how that produced Jews as exogenous from the human. Let us resolve that question. Let us speak about the externalization of Jews and the evacuation from them of European citizenship. Let's talk about it within a U.S structure and Western society. But the imbrication of it somehow is tied to Palestine, and now we have to find a happy medium

Is not going to work. And we've witnessed this in the course of genocide. That should no longer be the answer. And it's incumbent on those of us to really lead that call and to give folks the language and the confidence to be able to say what they feel. Because after you see genocide and you see an Israeli society that believes they have the right to do it and to do it again, right? Enough. Enough. That's when let's think about our collective humanity.

Using your language, Lara, let us have integrity on how we approach that and defer to Palestinians in their liberation struggle.

Marium Uddin (16:47)

Noura, let me follow up on that with two questions specifically, please. I'm going to ask them in tandem. So the first part of the question is that we know many Americans at this point have become hyper focused about our democracy at the fault lines. Do you see a connection between the erosion of due process and student protest cases and immigration enforcement and in the framing of even Iran policy?

And if so, what is that connective tissue? That's my first question. My second question is when you look at U.S policy over the last twenty years, do you think it is more accurate to understand it as support for Israel, opposition to Palestinian self determination, or something else entirely?

Noura Erakat (17:29)

Let me answer the first question rather briefly, and it's something that came up a lot in the 2024 election, where folks were framing almost existentially, it's either Americans, you know, and primarily black Americans and other racialized communities who will survive or Palestinians who will survive, right? Because the Biden administration

had overseen a genocide, and so now this became again a mutually exclusive question about only one community can survive, and so we all have to, you know, align behind a genocidal president in order to save ourselves. With zero irony, right? With zero irony, even though there was, even though he was removed and there should have been another candidate.

And obviously this was the moment to shift course and polls showed us otherwise. And so I just want to say that in that moment, I think it was a missed opportunity to and now we're seeing increasingly illuminated that the U.S.'s borders far exceed the continental United States and its, you know, colonies, be it Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or otherwise, our U.S. geography is global

because of our militarism and imperialism and the wars that we wage abroad in order to enrich the United States, in order to maintain military superiority, in order to maintain some hegemony. I think that's crumbling, that's crumbled even. That enrichment we take for granted in the United States because we can't see past our own borders.

In fact, we can't even see within our borders. We don't understand the U.S. as a white settler colony, or the fact that there are indigenous people being removed, that the enrichment of so many is about about white supremacy as a central organizing principle in the United States. And so here I just want to emphasize that state violence, connects violence abroad and violence at home. They are imbricated.

It's what Aime Cesaire would describe as a boomerang, but even preceding that, we are basically producing that that violence is co-constitutive. Julian Go, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, examined how the U.S.'s first imperial war beyond the U.S., when the U.S. defeats the Spanish in 1898 and comes to occupy the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and all these Spanish holdings.

That's when we see the U.S. military transform from a military that was protecting itself. For example, it might be defensive and in engaging in expansion in the United States and, you know, the American frontier, a settler frontier, to now one that needs to maintain its colonial holdings. And there we see the army transform to become racially profiling, mounted units.

That directly impacts the way that U.S. policing is then reformed in the early 20th century. So many people trace the militarization of U.S. police to the Vietnam War, but Go and others will show that it far, far precedes that moment. And so in this moment, there's no way to understand what's happening in the United States if you can't see what the United States is doing abroad.

You just forgave Biden, but Biden and Trump the same, expansion of police powers, lying under oath in front of congressional hearings, the dismissal of jobs, the weaponization of student protests, the infringement on academic freedom without understanding how people have given them a pass in Palestine and beyond.

But I'm using Palestine here because genocide is so central. And so here I would just say state violence is entwined. And in order to be able to defeat fascism at home, we have to be able to defeat at minimum, genocide abroad. And now we're seeing the future of that in the seeds for the BOP or the Board of Peace. On the second question,

look, I think that the U.S. policy has been consistent since 1967, at the time of the mandate, at the end of the First World War, was seen as an alternative for the Palestinians, seen as alternative to the British. By 1948, the U.S. is voting to recognize Israel, but is not an ally. And in 1967, the U.S. under Lyndon B. Johnson, becomes the primary ally.

To Israel, providing it both its qualitative military edge, which means it could defeat singularly or collectively all of the Middle Eastern countries, and ensuring that it is beyond multilateral reach, meaning that international law will not impact it and instead the outcome will be determined by political negotiation only, which means power will prevail, which means, if the U.S. is behind Israel, here we have U.S. global superpower supporting.

That has been the policy since 67. The things that have changed has been how honest or not U.S. administrations have been about this. I just want to be clear on this. What has changed is how the U.S has been honest or not about this. that the Obama administration, for example, has seen as more favorable to the Trump administration on the question of Palestine, belies the fact that the Obama administration used its first veto

in the Security Council against a resolution on the illegality of settlements. What's changed is public opinion. What's changed is that people have made their own decisions. Public opinion is unequivocal, that there is far more support for Palestine. People understand Israel

as a genocidal state, as one that acts outside of the bounds of international law and its war of aggression on Iran, for example, as its outright desire to settle its territorial ambitions in the south of Lebanon, as the circulation of its weapons globally, its entwinements with U.S police forces. People see Israel as a bad guy and a bad actor. It's cringe, so to speak.

Young people refer to things that they think as cringe is so Israeli, right? There's a major cultural shift. That has changed. That has not translated into political power. But we see the six new pro-Palestinian candidates who have been elected in one in their primary elections, that too is changing.

Marium Uddin (23:03)

Thank you, Noura. I also would like to ask Lara in response to what Noura has shared, how do you carry what she has said? Is it entirely resonant for you? Are there areas that you would push back on?

Lara Friedman (23:16)

Thank you. I always love listening to Noura. I feel like I come out smarter and more articulate just for listening to her. So on the first question you asked, Noura, I agree with everything she said. Look, it is not the Palestinians' problem that Jewish people like me are wrestling with what being Jewish means in an era when Judaism is being redefined or there's an effort to redefine it entirely in terms of a political project that I reject. That isn't Palestinians' problem.

And to the extent that you know I want to to do something about a project that is being done in my name that I disagree with, my role, and I've certainly evolved in how I think this role is best enacted, but my role is to be an ally and it's to exploit the privilege that I have, and I recognize that I have privilege here, but it's to exploit it in order to do everything I can to strengthen, amplify, back up what Palestinians are doing, what Palestinian leadership

of the movement wants to do and not to tell people what they can and can't do. And I say this from also the painful experience looking back of being part of a very well-intentioned peace industry, which did exactly what Noura said. For years, if we wanted to organize an event where we had a Palestinian speaker, you also had to have a pro-Israeli-Israeli speaker. You couldn't have a Palestinian voice just speaking.

I was always uncomfortable with the, you know, you shouldn't use this framing. But I think I was uncomfortable with it at the time, more of, my argument being people keep telling you it's not effective, but what they're saying is more effective hasn't worked. The point is we shouldn't be telling Palestinians what to say, what language to use. But let's also be clear, all of the well-intentioned liberal Zionist framing that's been pushed on Palestinians for decades didn't work either. In fact, all it did was normalize

a political paradigm that has kept Palestinians, a so-called peace paradigm, that's actually kept Palestinians shackled to occupation, to apartheid, and now to genocide. So I mean, my goodness, grow some empathy, and grow some some humility. As if you somehow think you're wiser than the people who actually are at the the forefront of trying to fight genocide. Enough. I mean, it's been enough for a long time.

In terms of how I behave in the world and the model that I try to give to other people in the sector who are maybe similar, is it embodies that as best as possible. And I know that I can rely on Palestinian allies and friends to tell me if I'm not, and I appreciate that. So there's that. I will say on the fighting antisemitism piece of it,

this again goes to the question of it is not the problem of Palestinians to solve that there is rising antisemitism, most of it coming from the right, from the traditional sources that we all know. It is our problem to solve. And the fact that there is a political program that seeks to subvert an effort to fight actual antisemitism and turn it into a Zionist program to suppress and delegitimize and perhaps.

punish and criminalize Palestinian movement for lives and rights is outrageous. And again, that isn't Palestinians' problem. But it's always made Palestinians' problem because every time there's an effort at fighting antisemitism, like the IRA definition or even the more well-intentioned Jerusalem Declaration, these are well-intentioned efforts to not have the antisemitism fight turned into a cudgel against Palestinians,

you still see it framed like the whole idea that antisemitism needs to be understood and defined in any way in opposition to Palestinian language, Palestinian rights, Palestinian movement, is ridiculous and that has to be challenged. On the question of whether it's anti-Palestinian or pro-Israel, I would argue that in the post-'67 era in which we all live, that is a distinction without a difference. If you listen to people in

Congress,

it's not just anti-Palestinian, it's anti-Arab, it's anti-Muslim. The language in Congress for my entire lifetime, the legislation, the resolutions, all of that, it is clear for political purposes, anything that humiliates, shows contempt for, sanctions, pick your word, Palestinians in particular, but also Muslims and also Arabs, is considered the pro-Israel place to be politically.

It's completely indistinguishable. And the question of whether, how this is changing, and what Noura said about, the sort of evolution to Obama and where we are today. I mean, I did an analysis during the Obama era about UN Security Council vetoes and UN Security Council resolutions. People think Obama, the most pro-Palestine president.

Obama vetoed everything related to Palestine except that very, very last one, at the very, very last moment when it clearly wasn't going to have a lot of impact, and he spent some political capital weirdly there. But if you go back before him, every president before him since '67 had actually voted yes or supported things the UN Security Council that he opposed. It was actually an evolution towards Obama being more hardline,

just iron wall, no we will not show any difference with Israel politically. There is no daylight. And some of that is because that's sort of where the lobby went. He was accused before he was even elected of being anti-Israel and that he would be the first president to ever betray Israel's Security Council. That was a narrative that everybody bought. we heard it constantly. We saw it in media. I actually did my research

because I found myself saying once, maybe he'll be the first president to vote against Ezra at the UN Security Council. And then I thought, wait, that doesn't sound right. This is me thinking facts should matter. And I did this giant database-like project and discovered that not only would he not be the first, he actually, for his first seven and a half years in office, was the first one to veto everything and set a new standard. That's the evolution. I would argue that the evolution, as Noura said, is more honesty.

But I would argue it's more than that. there has been a greater sort of arrogance and a greater greed politically to see how much further Congress can go, how much further Congress should be pushed in terms of creating these absolutely unchallengeable, entitlements in U.S. policy and law for Israel,

where to the point where under Obama and then Biden, of course, now Trump, it's an interesting moment. We see a paradigm of U.S.-Israel relationship race relations that goes so far beyond anything before that. And it's seen now as the standard that it would be antisemitic and anti-Israel to in any way move away from. And that's what's now being profoundly challenged by what Noura was saying, the changes at the grassroots, which are

profound and they're bipartisan and they're multi-generational. And also we have a really historic presidency in the sense that this president no one knows what he'll do and he's not accountable to the normal forces that limit what a president will do. So we don't know.

Marium Uddin (29:43)

I want to just shift us geographically, Lara. I want to talk about people like Ben-Gvir for a moment, a person who expresses extreme inflammatory anti-Arab racism.

But then we see him being championed for it among legions of followers in Israel. And his hawkish positions on Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran reflect a growing entrenched ideological current within mainstream Israeli politics. I had mentioned that we all know Americans invested in this space are looking to a change in the current administration to alleviate or create some sort of damage control.

How much of the future do you think actually depends on political change inside Israel itself?

Lara Friedman (30:22)

It's a heck of a question. I think the first thing to say, and I don't take it for granted that everyone who's paying attention today has been paying attention as long as I have or Noura has. I think it's important to say that Ben-Gvir is not a one-off. It isn't like he suddenly got thrown up by the political moment. Ben-Gvir is part of a trend in Israeli politics that dates back to forty-eight. It certainly dates back to sixty-seven. He is a Kahanist, he is in the mode of Rabbi Meir Kahane.

You can read Kahane's books. He was an American citizen, a rabbi in New York. This is the undercurrent of just absolute overt dehumanization, racism, Jewish supremacy. I see this in Jewish media, U.S Jewish media, Jewish supremacy is an antisemitic term. I learned this term from Israeli analysts. I understand this. This is in a proud way, right? This is a proud idea.

There's nothing new here. What is new in the current moment is it's more than a decade old. It really dates from the Gaza disengagement and the period where you had a almost rebirth of the normalization of the hardest line racism in Israel. So you had had it before Oslo.

This is what I grew up with. You know, Palestinians are terrorists, they're antisemites, they're like Nazis. There's just no space at all for the humanization of Palestinians. You then have the Oslo process, and you have a lot of Israelis, many of them I don't think made a huge journey towards humanizing Palestinians, but suspend disbelief. We have this process, at least we have to pretend that we believe this is possible or pretend you know there's negotiations, things are different. The

Oslo process is incredibly problematic for many reasons, but one of them is exactly this. It didn't actually change how Israelis feel about Palestinians. And what we saw with the end of the Oslo process, as it was losing all credibility, and as soon as sort of there's a moment in Gaza disengagement for a lot of people is that moment, you basically have a resurgence of this, let my most racist anti-Palestinian flag fly. And

post-October 7th, we saw this instantaneously. I mean, the distance between, I'm not a leftie to just turn the place into a parking lot. it was a matter of seconds. And, for folks who don't understand how broad base this is, look at Israeli polls. And I'll remind people, and who knows what will exist on the internet years from now, the fact that Israel today is a, I would argue, a pariah state, it's not just that

it's cringe, Israel has become for the grassroots internationally a pariah state, largely because Israel's own soldiers spent months and months live streaming genocide from Gaza. And Israel's own citizens spent months and months live streaming videos of them mocking and showing absolute contempt for Palestinians as they're being genocided. it's unreal. Those of us who'd been following the arc of Israeli politics this whole time,

we're not surprised. We are the ones who are saying from October 7th forward, pay attention to the voices that are saying, turn Gaza into a parking lot. These are not marginal voices. Pay attention to the people who are dehumanizing every single Palestinian man, woman, and child. These are not marginal views, and they are not marginal today.

Change has to come in Israel before Palestinian lives and rights can be achieved. I've always thought that that was a fantastical notion that was really about kicking the can down the road and avoiding holding Israel accountable for its crimes, holding it for its contempt for international law, holding it for its contempt for international norms. We have elections coming up in Israel. If Bibi loses, and no one should take that for granted - he is the ultimate survivor -

if he loses, whoever replaces him is not going to be more moderate on Palestinians. Maybe the next government will be more rational and moderate on Iran. Maybe. But on Palestinians, there is broad consensus of, how do we fight to be more hardline than the other guy? And the only thing that's going to change that is consequences for Israel.

Marium Uddin (34:08)

I do want to ask a follow up question, although I can feel through the screen that Noura has maybe a lot that she

would like Yes.

Noura Erakat (34:14)

I just want to add

a couple notes. I'm so grateful for Lara's analysis and how closely she follows this. I follow as much as possible their channel 13 and surveys and whatnot. And so I just find it so laughable when folks want to say Israel's not an apartheid state. Except if you ask any Israeli, they would be offended

If you told them that Palestinians were equal to you, I just find it so laughable that we struggle with Zionism racism, where the whole ideology is prefaced around the right for Jews to survive above all other people. And first and foremost, Palestinian people, Like genocide now becomes a policy option.

If that's what makes people feel safe, right? The Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel did a survey, I want to say in 2020. And this is before 2023, okay? Before the October 7 attacks. So I know that there has been a major shift since then, where anybody who was kind of on the line, suddenly flipped

and saw their lives as mutually exclusive with the ability for Palestinians to survive. So it's okay, just get rid of all of them. Yeah, maybe save some of their lives and move them to other countries, but they can't be here anymore, right? But even in 2020, the survey showed that of the age ranges of who is the most religious, extreme, chauvinist, racist, violent,

that survey showed that the most extreme were those aged 18 to 25. That means that Israel's future is even more violent and racist than this present. So for us to then wait on Israelis who literally live in a bubble, who are on the beach, okay? Summertime vibes, as Gaza is being incinerated, and families are being incinerated, and they still feel

that they are the victims, right? In need of yoga retreats and people's sympathy to support them in genocide. We can't be waiting on them to change the future. And if you want to wait on them to change the future, my God, make it a price for them to pay. But we haven't even exacted a price. And so, you know, this is not new to Palestinians. It's not like the United States had this

wake-up moment and said, Hey, we've really messed up. Black people are human. Why would we enslave them? Right? And then and even blackness is a construct. But like Africans are human. Why would we enslave? Nobody had that moment. It took struggle. It took price, an exacted price. It took an international movement. It didn't even begin in the United States. It was global. Or even to think about equal juridical equality, right? So for anybody who believes that,

Israelis need to do something, then make it a heavy price. Make it a heavy price. But the fact of every time we went on television to make an argument of just end the genocide and the response from these anchors, well, Israel doesn't think it's a genocide. Israel doesn't think it's apartheid. Who cares? Right? And so here, just an emphasis, and I say this because for the listener, I think we tiptoe too much

around saying the wrong thing, about there's been punishment exacted and people losing their jobs and folks being labeled. And I just want to say this just to emphasize, we're right. We're right. We just have to to keep on pushing and make it okay for other people to see that and say that. That's all. And yeah, arrest Ben-Gvir when he comes to New York.

Marium Uddin (37:35)

Mamdani's town. So Lara, Noura had mentioned the cost that we've got to attach a cost. There have to be consequences. What can be done

to end - not just curb - but end settler violence. And from your framework, were U.S. sanctions ever enough?

Lara Friedman (37:52)

So I appreciate the question, but I'm going to challenge it. Settler violence itself is a problematic framing. settler violence, which is a term that for many years, the Israeli left has really rallied around because it separates the bad guys with like the bad apples, right, from the rest. You know, the settlers are crazy, the settlers are extreme. There really is no distinction between settler violence and state violence.

That has always been the reality. B'Tselem the Israeli Human Rights Group has been saying that for years. That's been one of their slogans. It is indisputably true from the perspective of Palestinians on the ground. It was true before October 7th. Since October 7th, it is manifestly true because you simply can't tell who is IDF and who is a settler. At this point, they're inextricably linked. The fact is, the settlement movement, since its birth, is an Israeli government project

of both the right and the left. Every government in power in Israel, either party, any party, have always supported the settlements. And they've done it financially, they've supported them politically, they've supported them legally. There's an entire area of Israeli law which is basically designed to enable the settlement movement, despite the fact that it's not legal under international law, and much of what they do is illegal even under Israeli law.

If you push hard enough that there might be accountability, so we'll change the Israeli law. If necessary, we'll change the entire judicial system. There's simply no distinction. So if we're looking for ways to stop settler violence, that goes back to what does it mean to put real pressure on Israel. The idea that sanctions on individual settlers is going to make a difference. I mean, I get it, it feels good. I'm certainly not someone who opposes, singling out

a bad person or a bad set of actors or a company that's deeply complicit in international violations of international law. And maybe, let's be clear, maybe 25 years ago, that actually would have meant something because then it would have been a signal to Israel that it doesn't enjoy impunity and that there will be an escalating set of tactics. And maybe that would have made a difference. Today it has not made a difference. The Israeli government, much like the U.S. government when it comes to like, BDS, the Israeli government,

basically, will use all the tools of government to ensure that those sanctions don't have any impact. And they will essentially treat it as leverage, proving to the world whoever does this is antisemitic and anti-Israel that it doesn't matter. We have to be looking at real sanctions. Israel is effectively now a pariah state internationally. It is effectively a pariah state for a large part of the U.S. grassroots, the electorate across the country. Again

bipartisan, multi-generational, if there is ever a moment to say, what does it look like to put real pressure on Israel? Pressure that can get them to stop committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank using settlers and the IDF together as their tool. To stop committing a new genocide and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, which they literally, they're taking the tactics of Gaza. I lived in Lebanon for two years. I know Lebanon well. They are erasing parts of Lebanon. If people think that they're going to get out

of those areas that they're erasing and not try to keep them completely empty forever is either to reoccupy with IDF like they're doing in South Syria now. People are paying attention. It takes real pressure and real pressure can have impact in Gaza, in Lebanon, in the West Bank for Palestinian citizens of Israel who have never been treated as full citizens and absolutely are facing the worst crisis of any time since '48.

It can affect all those things, but it means actual real pressure. And then the question is, where are those pressure points? and the answer is there are too many to even begin listing here. The U.S. relationship with Israel is so broad and so deep. If there is an intention to actually do real pressure that Israelis will feel and cannot not take into account, the opportunities are just a matter of creativity and a matter of political capital. How much do you want to spend?

But going after the sort of thing where you pick out the low-hanging fruit. You know, Jerry Nadler has had an amendment offered to a bill I think last week on settler violence. I'm sorry, it's too easy. Why are you not having a resolution that calls for U.S. sanctions on Israel if it doesn't let humanitarian goods into Gaza? Like there are real things you could be doing. This isn't real. I mean, it feels good.

And it's a low hanging fruit, I think, for a lot of the sort of liberal Zionist community, but it's twenty five years too late.

Noura Erakat (42:05)

I'm just going to add to that real quick why these members of congress that are otherwise stalwart zionists are

moving. Because people are moving. Everybody has moved the needle. They're moving to catch up and they're not catching up enough and they're just doing enough where they can protect Israel and the status quo without changing anything. Just building on that, I love the breakdown of the lack of distinction because

it's a settler state. The project of it is settlement. Zionism is a race-making project that created a new Jew, right? A new category of not even Israeli, because the Israeli you have Israeli citizenship, but you're not an Israeli national - but it created this new category of Jewish national that's contingent on territorial accumulation. And there is no territory without dispossessing other people.

Let me come to this new section 224 in the National Defense Authorization Act, which folks are referring to as the merger of Israeli and U.S. military. Now there's not going to be a merger literally, but what the merger is, is making more concrete the integration and the cooperation between the U.S. and the Israeli military industrial complex.

It's joint research, it's joint exchange, it's on weapons technologies, the exchange of technologies, military carceral technologies and weapons. But even that move, we've even heard Netanyahu say it. We can't be dependent on U.S transfer of weapons. The writing is on the wall. Americans do not want to give Israel their weapons anymore. And so, instead, now they're creating other means by which they can say we're not.

"There's no transfer." Or this other language. We saw Rahm Emanuel say it recently, the former chief of staff for Obama, who says, Yeah, I'm going to run. And I don't think that we need to be giving Israel any more subsidies for weapons anymore. They should just be allowed to buy it. All of this language is a smokescreen. Israel should not be allowed to buy weapons from anyone. It is a genocidal state.

And if we needed yet another we have that in the ICJ decision of 2004 not to advance the wall. We have that in the ICJ decision of July 2024 on the illegality of Israel's presence in the territories. We have that in the plausible genocide of the ICJ - the three provisional measures that basically said you cannot enable Israel to continue. And now the UN Commission of Inquiry, the most recent one, that said that there is a systematic targeting of children,

which is part of a genocidal project. And one of its recommendations to the Security Council is complete sanctions on Israel. No two-way exchange. So just, to echo you, Lara, that what they're saying is a smoke screen to maintain the status quo, but nothing less than absolute sanctions in this moment. It's not that Israel should be allowed to buy weapons. They have to be cut off

from buying these weapons per law, per morality, per the political tendencies right now.

Marium Uddin (44:57)

The place I would like to end us today is more personal in terms of what has the cost of carrying this done to you?

What has stopped you dead in your tracks where you thought that you couldn't get up the next day and do this again? And what helped you reverse course and say, no, I'm I'm back in the fight, come hell or high water.

Noura Erakat (45:16)

The first time I retired from activism, I was a junior in undergraduating college. And then, you know, I was just like, it's too much. I'm tired and burnout is a real thing.

And it's really hard to figure out how to balance when you care about something so much. And it feels like we're in crisis mode because when is it not a crisis, especially when it has been a crisis? And so, I have many times, many times hit rock bottom. And the most recent time that was the hardest was probably in May 2025 when Israel resumed the attacks on Iran. And I thought,

Yo, this is a slam dunk. Iran restrained from fire the previous November, that's a sovereign state, its right to self-defense is not in question. Israel has five war fronts open. Like surely people are going to take it to task. And to watch media and pundits basically respond and normalize Israel's attack and to villainize Iran again was when I started to really become deflated that there probably is a secret society that has a suicide pact.

And what are we doing on the outside? Now, we've seen the Epstein files, we've learned of, you know, Peter Thiel's gathering of these societies, So maybe that's not far off, but that's really, really deflating. The thing that has eventually got me up and out, has been manifold. The most significant has been looking to Palestinians in Gaza who have never surrendered.

Who have still not surrendered. Palestinian mamas who have continued to make and nurture life, even though there's a direct attack on reproductive genocide, and no guarantee of their future. Children who innovate and learn, even though their schools have been destroyed. Palestinians who make music, like Ahmed Abu Amsha, who's turned the hum of drones into songs for children. That first and foremost.

When I look at that and I think, if we have learned nothing in this moment, then we must learn that Palestinians have shown us how to survive, how to fight, how despite a hundred years of imperial collusion, they have not been defeated. And so the least I can do in the comfort and the privileges that abound relative to those conditions is to not surrender.

Marium Uddin (47:22)

Thank you, Noura. Lara for the last words on this.

Lara Friedman (47:26)

I'm so inspired by what Noura just said. I mean, I don't even have to add. I mean, look, these are incredibly demoralizing times. In terms of a price paid like with the Jewish community, you know, really whatever. I mean, certainly it has made some things challenging. I remember we're an interview that Mohammed Al Kur did, Jewish people saying it's so hard to talk about this at the Shabbat dinner table and he's like, Imagine how hard it is living it. You know, having the

ability to recognize that whatever challenge this poses personally in that sense, it is nothing compared to actually living through this and you have to stand up for what you believe. I'll say that, particularly since October 7th I and everyone I know struggles with, just profound demoralization. We've gotten all very good at compartmentalizing. Immediately after October 7th, I mean, I it would just hit me.

And everyone I know, you just sort of suddenly find yourself crying. It's just absolute, just unbelievable demoralization. I think we all compartmentalize. But when the demoralization becomes too heavy, you look to community and you look to other people who are standing up and you find strength from that and from people who understand what's going on, and you find strength from knowing that as Noura said, we're right. There isn't an alternative to standing up.

Literal genocide is happening as we speak. It is that there's not an alternative to not try to do something. And frankly, I feel like for me it's incredible privilege that I have something to do. So I want to lean into that. I think it'd be far more miserable knowing all this and not doing something and not trying to to make a change and at least contribute to what is a positive change at the popular level.

I mean it's extraordinary and to the the fact that you know people like me and Noura have an ability to weigh in and bolster that and fuel it just like, hey, I've got another database so you can know more because when you know more and we are right, it will make you stronger in making your arguments. You don't need to hear from me, they need to hear from you. Don't credit me, just use the data. That's awesome. it's an incredible privilege and that strengthens me every day.

Marium Uddin (49:17)

I was very privileged to host both of you today. I'm very grateful. Thank you both for bearing witness and for being a part of this conversation.

Marium Uddin (00:00)

One of the things that has defined my civil liberties work is representing people who were targeted, not for what they did, but for what they said. It was a privilege to represent Sami Hamdi, a journalist known across the world for his political analysis, who was detained by ICE in October of 2025. What made his case extraordinary wasn't simply the detention itself, it was everything that came before it. The reporting, the criticism, the public voice that many believe made him a target. Muhammad Jalal has spent years building one of the most respected intellectual podcasts in the world

and has devoted himself to surfacing objective truths spoken by esteemed Muslim thinkers and actors. Jalal was in the figurative room when we first heard the news of Sami's arrest. Sami and Jalal join us from across the Atlantic Ocean. This conversation isn't only about immigration law or free speech, it's about what it costs to keep speaking when the consequences become personal. I'm honored to welcome Sami Hamdi and Muhammad Jalal on this episode of Witness. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.

Sami Hamdi (00:52)

Wa alaikum as-salaam.

Muhammad Jalal (00:53)

Wa alaikum as salaam.

Marium Uddin (00:55)

I'd like to begin with you, Jalal. On October 26th, you were leaving the US to catch an international flight. It was the same day Sami was detained. We were in a Signal thread together. What was going through your mind?

Muhammad Jalal (01:06)

Well, subhanAllah, jazakAllah khair, thank you for your kind introduction and jazakAllah khair for inviting us onto this really great platform that you're creating. Now, you brought me back to October the 26th. Well, we just finished a session, Sami and I, believe it or not, at the IHOP, which is a phenomenon, I think. mean, Sami insisted that I attend this IHOP. It was midnight

and we bought pancakes and things like this. And then Sami had to drive off to his airport destination. And so, I think it was Fajr time when I woke up in my hotel room. I was planning to leave the country in the morning and I woke up to a message that someone sent me asking for clarification as to whether...

Sami had been arrested at the airport. The first thing was just utter, you know, I just couldn't believe it. Was shocking to hear that Sami had to be detained by ICE at the airport. Now, of course, Sami and I had spoken about the possibility of that. But for that to be realized, especially as he was on an internal flight, I think you were flying to Florida, Sami, it was pretty shocking.

We contacted CAIR in California I think you guys convened a meeting very quickly on the phone. It was great to see that within hours of Sammy's arrest, there was a call that was arranged with quite a few of us.

I know Sheikh Omar was on the call and a few others and we were all very concerned You asked me the question, what was going through my mind? Actually, the first thing going through my mind honestly was just I was very saddened. I was actually in tears when I heard the news initially because you wouldn't expect someone to be picked up at an airport in America, in the West, a journalist.

Marium Uddin (02:49)

You said that you had spoken about it briefly in the past, so you had touched on the possibility that would it would happen. And at the same time, your statement just now was we wouldn't expect it to happen. How do you reconcile those two? Talking about something that you don't expect to actually come to fruition.

Muhammad Jalal (03:04)

Yeah, that's good question. It was the day before we were at a CAIR event, weren't we, Sami? And I remember quite vividly, we were finishing off a panel discussion. It was just a discussion between Sami and I. And I was wrapping up the conversation and Sami said, look, I want to take the microphone. I want to make a comment. And he then gave this very, as Sami does,

very, very succinct speech, let's say, on the politics and on where Muslims should go in the coming months and election time. And at the end, Sami said, I worry that

Sami Hamdi (03:38)

he's

Muhammad Jalal (03:40)

this may be my last opportunity to speak to an American audience for some time and so I wanted to get everything out. And so we had a very brief conversation about how we knew that Laura Loomer and Amy Mek and others were talking about Sami but we didn't really take it so seriously. But of course, I think, Sami, you felt that there was something coming.

I think that's how I reconciled it. We never believed it will happen. But we also knew that these social media influencers who are obviously very partial and backed by foreign governments, they do have some level of attention when it comes to the State Department and various administration officials.

Marium Uddin (04:18)

You're speaking in terms of your concern for Sami. Did you have concerns for yourself that you also would be picked up?

Muhammad Jalal (04:23)

I mean, that came up in the conversation. I do remember thinking to myself that I'm just doing the interviews, right? I didn't really feel that my situation would be of great concern in comparison to Sami's. Sami's the person who's doing a lot of the advocacy work. I just asked the question.

I remember some of the lawyers on that call suggested that I don't fly that morning. And I made the decision that it doesn't matter. If they really do have my name on some list, then it's a stay of execution if I just wait it out. So we decided to fly. And actually,

I think that was a good decision, you know, in retrospect, and I appreciate why the lawyers said what they said. I should mention that the Brother from CAIR who was with us was very diligent in accompanying me to the airport. Not only did he accompany me, he booked a ticket so he could walk through to the departure lounge and stuck with me to the very end.

Marium Uddin (05:17)

Sami, that's an attestation to how much people love you. Tell us what the experience of detention in the U.S. told you about the United States.

Sami Hamdi (05:25)

First of all, thank you for having me on this and it's good to be with Jalal on a different podcast. And, of course with you, Marium, who was integral in getting me out as one of the legal team. My mother was with me in the U.S. up until two days before my arrest. And I remember she was telling me every single day

I feel like you're not sleeping. I feel like you feel like there's something hanging over you. And I wasn't sleeping well. I could sense something was coming. I even told a friend of mine, Sheikh Mazen Mokhtar who was with me at the time. We were sitting together in California. He said to me, Sami, just checking in on you, is everything okay? I told him, Wallahi Mazin I feel like there are clouds swirling around me and I can't for the life of me understand why I'm feeling like there is something that is coming.

And remember he said to me, listen, whatever's going to come will come, but Allah has never abandoned you. You'll get out of it fine. And I remember also Sheikh Yasir Qadhi had called me and said to me, Sami, I see that Laura Loomer and these others are after you. Don't underestimate the the influence they currently have in this current administration. Be careful where you're traveling, be careful where you go, because this may be difficult.

I'll say something that for some viewers might seem quite strange. I also saw a dream that I had parked a Bentley and entered a building. And when I came out of the building the Bentley was gone. I don't own a Bentley and I don't have any dreams of owning a Bentley. But when I got arrested and they told me my visa had been taken, I realized in the dream that the Bentley was the visa, that it had disappeared after I had parked it. So the sense of foreboding . . .

when I was actually arrested, my initial reaction was, this is it. This is what I've been expecting to come. I didn't actually think in America it would happen. When the Young Turks did the wonderful feature about what had happened to me, Ana Kasparian starts with a podcast me and Jalal actually did in California, where I begin the podcast with, I'm grateful that we're in a country like America or in the UK where we have freedom of speech.

So Ana Kasparian takes that clip and she goes, Those were his last words before he got arrested. What shocked me about the detention was you feel like there's no law throughout the process. It was very difficult to get to a lawyer, it was very difficult to reach out to the family.

They wouldn't make things easy. They didn't explain any processes. They would throw you in a car with dark tinted windows. They won't tell you where you're going. They throw you in the cell. They try to make you sign confession documents. You tell them I want my lawyer present. I'm not American. I'm a British citizen. I've committed no crime. I want to ask a lawyer before I sign anything. And they very angry just took the paper away, threw me in the back of a van, and ended up driving me four hours or five hours to the middle of nowhere,

I'm telling them, guys, I need to speak to a lawyer. And each time, it's like they're dismissing it. And you're like, this is a land of law. I want my lawyer. I want my rights. So all of that disappears. Even when you enter the facility itself, you're just followed by these guards, and these guards are on these power trips and they're almost trying to bully you into signing this confession form. And even when I had to make the phone call, I had to use the payphone because

it's not like you have the right to the phone call. One of the inmates allowed me to use his card in order to make that first phone call to my wife Soumaya. I don't know what's going on over here, but find me. I think it was Zahra Billoo

who had told Abdullah to say, because when I called Abdullah, he picked up and he went, Alien number, alien number. Sami, I need your alien number. And I was like, alien number, alien number. What's alien number? I don't know what an alien number is. The point here, Marium, is this: they told me I was in McFarland. I didn't tell them I was in McFarland.

To show you that nobody was giving us any information in terms of what was happening.

I know this sounds naive to say, given U.S. records on treatment of prisoners but it was quite shocking that this was happening in America. And it was very shocking that it was happening in a country that prides itself on the rule of law, or that prides itself on the idea of constitutional freedoms, that prides itself on freedom of speech. What was fascinating, and I like telling this story because

many people, talk as if they have no power. I actually always reference this as an example of how ordinary people collectively can demonstrate power. On the 7th day, when they were taking us to the Fresno facility to try to make me sign another confession form, when they lined 15 of us against the wall, they were cuffing everybody's legs. And then they got to my legs. So when they cuffed my legs, of course it's ridiculously tight. And then

I'm thinking, my God, here we go again. Like this is really bad. They throw you in a cell, they leave the lights on, the lights are glaring on you, there's nothing to sleep on. You sleep on the floor, it's very hard. You're sleeping with fifteen people. Some of them have committed felonies, and you're all in one room all together. So they're cuffing my legs to load us onto the van. But when he cuffs my legs, the guard goes, sir, is that comfortable? And everybody went, who? what?

what do you mean? And the guy next to him was like, Amigo, who are you? Like, what do you mean? Why are they asking you if it's comfortable? And before I could answer, the guys loosened the cuffs. And then he loosens them again and brings me bigger cuffs. And then when it comes to the handcuffs, he loosens the handcuffs and then says, You know what, you don't need them really, and he takes them off. When I came back from the office, the warden says, shouts my name and goes, Hamdi, the famous one.

And that's when I realized the impact of what all of you guys were doing outside. Because what ended up happening from eighth day, ninth day, tenth day, and going onwards, the guards would be like, Hamdi, I'm not one of the bad ones. I I didn't do anything to you. Hamdi, when you write, don't write too harsh about me. Hamdi, you okay? You sure? I remember the guard would come and be like, Hamdi, you alright? You're okay? And the inmates would come and say, You know, you're getting out quick. You're gonna be out soon. I said, how'd you know I'm gonna be out soon? You're gonna be out soon because no one's forgotten you.

But they've forgotten us, so we're staying in here. And I'll never forget the journey to the airport after you and the other lawyers had done your negotiations with the US government. The ICE officers spent two hours and a half telling me how hard their lives are, how hard their lives are, how hard their work is. And you know, we're not really bad people. And you know, when you go and speak to the media, you know, like go go easy on us. You know, hey, you're the journalist. Yeah, you're the journalist. Meaning they knew that what they were doing was wrong. They knew that how they're operating

is contrary to what the law allows. But the moment they found that the community would lash out against them or they'd raise their voice, they started treating me very differently. And that's why I argue that there are two phases of my detainment. There's the one in which they thought they had all of the power and there's one in which the community that mobilized created such immense pressure that even those in ICE were sort of like, we'll bully everybody else. But bunk four, bunk four, be careful. That's the journalist. You gotta be careful with that one, because he might be getting out very soon and he might

ruin all of us.

Marium Uddin (11:25)

How did that disparate treatment affect your view of prisoners who didn't have the same access to counsel or resources or privilege that you did?

Sami Hamdi (11:32)

It broke my heart. Marium, you will know as well that I had a list of all these inmates that I handed over to the lawyers afterwards and said, guys, please can you cover these cases? What was heartbreaking was they made me very aware of my privilege. I had a a star-studded legal team. I had the media constantly talking about me. I'll never forget there was a man who'd been in the U.S. for forty-seven years, married to an American citizen. His kids are American citizens.

And he just never bothered to get his citizenship. So I was out on Tuesday. The previous Wednesday, I'm walking around the facility. So it's like a big hall. There's like a hundred bunks in it. So I'm walking around, you know, just pacing. And there are windows. So there's B one, B two, B three, B four. These are four units. And each one, there's a window where you can see into the other.

So I'm walking by and then I notice in the window that in B1, there's a gathering of inmates. They've all gathered by the window and they're all hitting the window to try to catch my attention. So I go around once, I go around again, then I see there's a big crowd. So I turn around to look through the window and they slap a USA Today article. The double page spread that the DHS ended up responding on Twitter when they said, as a foreign alien, I have no rights. And then you, Marium, and the others, you took that to the courts and

the judges ruled in my favor and the American government panicked and they came and offered the deal. But when I bumped into the guy who had the the article, I said to him, How did you get it? Because the day the article was published they didn't bring us USA Today. So they used to bring us USA Today every day. When the article about me was published, they didn't bring the paper into the facility. And they didn't stop bringing USA today.

I said, How'd you get it? And he said, Dude, my wife came to see me and she said, You got a famous journalist in here with you. And she brought the whole paper spread here. I was aware of how the inmates, and this is probably what broke my heart, they weren't jealous or envious. They were very happy for me. They said, Listen, we're a miserable lot, we're forgotten, but you're gonna be okay. Listen, you're gonna be fine. They were trying to reassure me.

And the guards would treat me differently from how they treated them. And to be honest, that broke me inside.

I remember even some of the Muslim inmates, they hadn't done Juma'ah for a year. And when I'd asked them why, they said the chaplain only comes once every three months, whereas the priest for the Catholics comes every week. Little things where you feel the neglect of what they're feeling. I made a passing remark to the inmates when we were lined up in the corridor, and I said,

they think they have power, but God has the power. And one of the inmates turned around said, God doesn't exist here. Like this idea, there's no law, there's no God. And I realized in that moment that I could believe in God because my ummah was coming out for me. But for them, and some of them are still there, it's quite a tough moment. To end on a positive note, I'm sorry, Marium, I took up your time on this. Some of those names that I gave to the lawyers when I came out.

They ended up coming out, alhamdulillah. And I remember because when I was leaving, everybody's taking Instagram accounts, like, when you get out, message me. You know, when you get out, we'll get together. Hey, amigo, when I'm out, I'll take you to my restaurant, or whatever. So every now and then, like every couple of weeks, I'll get, you know, a message on my Instagram. He'll be like, hey, Sami, I'm Bunk 16. I just got out. You know, like, where are you? You know, like let's go meet up. And it's beautiful when you hear that.

All it needs for a lot of these inmates is a decent lawyer and a community willing to back them and you find that the courts rule in their favour, but ICE gambles that these people will never reach the resources that I was lucky to have.

Marium Uddin (14:34)

Your hardship through the arrest and the detention has enriched your life. Ironically, the adversity has actually given you even more firepower.

It goes without saying that you've not once regretted your outspokenness or advocacy for Palestine. So I want to shift to that for a moment and talk about a post that I saw you make yesterday on Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's case. I want to ask how that puts your own experience in perspective. From my my point of view, the plight of the Palestinian prisoners is the worst on earth. It almost makes what we experience here in terms of hardship and adversity

negligible and I hate to say that because I'm not trying to minimize anything that you've experienced. For the listeners who don't actually know who Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is, he's a Palestinian pediatrician and neonatologist who directed Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, one of the last hospitals still functioning in the north before its forced evacuation. He also served as Med Global's

lead physician for Gaza. During the siege of his hospital, his son Ibrahim was killed in a strike at the hospital gate, and Abu Safiya buried him in the hospital courtyard rather than leave his patients. On December 27, 2024, just to give listeners a timeline, Israeli forces evacuated Kamal Adwan hospital and took him into custody. Footage showed him walking toward an Israeli tank after assuring soldiers no fighters remained inside, and he was held incommunicado for 45 days and then formally detained under Israel's unlawful combatants law. Unlawful

Combatants Law permits indefinite detention without charge or trial. His detention has been repeatedly renewed by Israeli courts. As of recent reporting, it's set to continue until at least October of 2026. And he was transferred among several of their more notorious prisons. I think they're all notorious, but Sde Temain in particular. Multiple sources have described his solitary confinement, beatings, and denial of medical care.

Sami Hamdi (16:15)

I was with somebody who had campaigned for the release of Salah Sarsour. He's the head of the the the Milwaukee Islamic Center. So I had messaged him and I told him, you know, I'm glad to hear you're out. And he replied and he said, Alhamdulillah, you know I'm out.

When he got detained, it really hurt my heart because I know him quite well. The irony is that when he came out, I spoke to him and I said to him, How was it? And he said, Look, I'm not going to say that it was easy in the ICE facility, but he says, You need to remember, I was also jailed by the Israelis when I was young. And I know how the Israelis treat their prisoners, I'll tell you there is no comparison whatsoever. I'm not trying to belittle what ICE do to their inmates, but

they did nothing compared to what the Israelis do to their own prisoners. And therefore, I won't dare make my own experience the center of it. And that's how I felt as well. This idea that when I came out, everyone's like, Sami, it must have been really bad. Sami, it must have been really horrible. It's true. I hated it. And it's true that for two months afterwards, I couldn't keep food in my stomach because of how badly I became sick when I was in that ICE facility. And it is true that I hated being cuffed.

I had the hope that I would be out. Many Palestinians of those prisoners don't have the hope that they would be out. I mean, in my case, within like 13, 14 days, Marium, you and the rest of the team were able to establish a team specifically for my case, whose task was just to make my case go away. So you had some leverage with the negotiations.

Many of the other inmates and many of the people don't have that. Jalal himself asked me when I came back on the podcast do you feel bitter? I said, I don't really feel bitter. And the primary reason for that, I mean, the answer I gave Jalal was, I don't feel bitter because, you know, at the end of the day, we're winning in the overall tide. But the real reason I don't feel bitter, aside from that, is I'm not the center of the story, neither should my experience be the center of the story.

With the likes of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who tells his lawyers that you might not see me again because they brought me here to kill me. And what he means is they've transferred me to this new facility to ensure that they kill me. And somebody who's there without due process, where he doesn't get to go see a court. I mean, at least two federal judges were able to comment on my case and issue rulings that scared the American government. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya doesn't have that. And I think that's why, when people say,

did the experience make you stronger? I think making stronger is the wrong word. I think it put into context that I had it far better than others.

To put it simply, yes, it was hard, yes, it was tough, but nothing in comparison to what's happening to those Palestinians.

This is the point you made. Many people don't know the story. Marium, I'll tell the story. So when my lawyers I'm now speaking to the viewers and and not to the both of you. So to the viewers, when the deal was on the table and my lawyers were trying to discuss with me whether I should take the deal or not, the discussion was whether to reject the deal and go through the federal courts or to take the deal and go home. And everybody was a bit torn about it. Why? Because people thought we had a good federal case.

I was like, it's not as bad as Florida and Texas as long as we have the injunction where I don't move. Maybe I can survive. We're trying to weigh how far we want to take this fight. And then we finished talking for an hour, then Marium comes with this 25 minutes, I'm telling you, 25 minutes, very super eloquent speech, effectively saying in a very nice diplomatic way, Sami, don't put yourself at the center of the story.

Rather, look at the bigger picture here. One, look at your family. Two, look at the morale of the community who want to see you out. Three, consider the the benefits of getting your voice back when you go out. And I'm telling you, Jalal, if you saw my face while she's talking.

The podcast version of Marium is not the like the lawyer Marium, I'll tell you that. But the point that I'm saying here is that speech shook me and I told the lawyer team, let's meet in one day or two days' time, because I seriously now need to think about this.

The reason why I say this is that I am frightened these days of the questions that center my own experience in ICE. Because the reality is that I'm a minor side story and all that unfolded. And in reality, what happened to me, I now view it in this perspective of it shows how desperate the other side is that they had to go after me. They didn't go after me because I was some sort of influential voice. They went after me out of desperation.

Because they thought we're losing this narrative battle. We can't get Omar Suleiman. We can't get Yasir Qadhi. We need to find somebody because the courts aren't letting us deport Mahmoud Khalil. The courts are not letting us deport Rumeysa. They're not letting us deport Mohsen Mahdawi. They're not letting us stop these encampments taking place at university. They're not allowing us to denaturalize Mehdi Hasan.

It was a desperation that made them go after somebody like me. And I think when you recenter the Palestinians and everything that is unfolding, I was grateful that if Allah was going to test me with it, he tested me with it in California.

Marwan Najar was the last person to see me before I got released.

From San Francisco, AI expert, phenomenal, genius individual. Marium, we discussed this when we were in the - I don't know how much I'm allowed to say - but we were discussing the idea of if I take the deal, is it a win or is it a defeat? And the consensus was it's a clear win. And I remember Hassan Ahmad told me that Laura Loomer and Amy Mek had tweeted, very, very upset that the U.S. government had offered the deal.

But I asked Marwan Najar, How is it perceived that I'm now going home? And he said something to me. He said, actually, what's fascinating is I'm getting WhatsApp messages from people who are despondent who are now saying, we did it. We got Sami out. We as a community, we did it. And Marwan would reply and say, I don't understand your point. We actually managed

to get Sami out after he was detained for criticizing the Israelis. That's wild, they said. That shows how much the tide has shifted. And that overall is what made me proud because it wasn't about me. And this goes back to the point about Jalal, the point I wanted to make when he said, Do you feel bitter? And I said to him, I don't feel bitter, I feel vindicated. I argued that we had the power. I argued that as a community we could make change. I argued that we ordinary people

could shift the global powers and in my case it was shifted so much that I was able to leave. I came back to Europe. I'm travelling across Europe fine. The message is still the same. And alhamdulillah wa shukrAllah maybe after the midterms or under next administration, I'll be joining you in America again.

Marium Uddin (22:03)

I agree with most of what you've said. I disagree about the part that you were targeted as a person who is not influential. The success that you're seeing with everything that has happened post-release is due to that influence. Also, you are the most stubborn client - the most cheerful

and also the most stubborn. We had never actually been asked, how much longer can I stay because I want to maximize the impact of my detention?

Jalal, I want to speak to you about Dr. Abu Safiya again, please. As of July 5th, his lawyer had warned he is in critical condition, reporting difficulty breathing, visible injuries, and a statement from Abu Safiya himself that he doesn't expect to survive. IPS or Israeli's Prison Service has denied allegations of abuse or medical neglect. Groups that have come out for him include the Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Amnesty International, both calling for his release. And PHRI actually explicitly warned his life is at risk.

UN Special Rapporteurs and Ben Saul called his detention flagrantly arbitrary. He was granted honorary citizenship by the city of Lyon, France. I mention all of this context because many of us are aware of your recent travels to Syria. And I want to see what the throughline is for you when you're seeing the historical torture in the case of people who were arrested in Syria.

And the second part of that for me is if the kind of pressure that I just mentioned on this case can't change Dr. Abu Safiya's fate, what do you think is actually left for people like us to do other than just bearing witness to his tortured existence? So to recap, if you could describe what you witnessed of Syrian prisons and whether or not history is just repeating itself in Israeli prisons.

Muhammad Jalal (23:36)

Yes, subhanAllah, jazakAllah khair. Thank you for giving me the time to talk about my trip to Syria. So we visited in particular, Sednaya prison, of course, on the outskirts of Damascus. It was a towering presence in the history, I suppose, of most Syrians. I met families across the country. We visited five separate cities across Syria and every Syrian

had a story and so many Syrians who had family members who were arrested and detained, those members ended up somewhere in Sednaya and very few people were released from Sednaya prison. So we visited Sednaya, which is now just a derelict site. It's a sprawling prison capacity. has underground cells, it has various tiers. You

smell the stench of prisoners still in the facility one and a half years after the liberation. We met with prisoners who had been released and they talked about the appalling conditions they found themselves in. You know, there was one instance of a couple, a parent, a mother and father who we met in Aleppo and their child,

who was around 18-19 years old, was arrested and sent to Sednaya prison. He was arrested for a protest back in 2014 and he ends up in Sednaya prison and he's there for eight or nine months and they finally got to see him after eight months. Of course, the Assad regime was clamping down on all protests and protesters at that time.

He was a fraction of his former self. I saw the picture of him, he was a very muscular boy. When they saw him, he was thin and gaunt and really the signs of torture were on his face and his body. And he said to them, don't visit me again. And we learned later why he said that because...

someone who had experienced it and had told us that it was those prisoners who had visits from outsiders who would be executed first. Unlike the situation Sami found himself in, outside attention would bring a favorable outcome for you. For them, it was too much attention. And so he asked his parents, please don't come and visit me again. And true to that story,

within a month, they received a message saying that he had been killed in prison, he had been executed in prison for his crimes. They've never been given back his body. And of course, there are mass graves still being dug up across that region by Sednaya. You know, subhanAllah, his parents were the embodiment of the Syrian spirit. They were calm, they

they remained steadfast in their belief in their Islam. In fact, the father said to me that when they heard that message that he had been killed, it actually brought a lot of relaxation to their heart, a lot of contentment to their heart, because in their minds, they felt that the tyrant Assad no longer had control over their child. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala now had their child. And so they felt quite content when they heard that he had been

executed rather than he had been in a constant state of unease and torture within prison. And you just heard these stories everywhere all across Syria, people who had family members missing, people who frantically after the liberation, they went from prison to prison, they went to Sednaya hoping that maybe they would come across their son. I met an author, who at the time his way of showing resistance

was to write novels. So he was an author of fictional books. And he told me that he used to write these allegories of life under tyranny. But he wrote it about a fictional world. It was a fairy tale world. But of course, anyone who read between the lines would know that he was talking about Assad and he was talking about the tyranny of the regime around him. And this guy, he wrote a book in the final two years before liberation.

And he titled the book At the End of Nothingness, meaning that things that got to such a level of despair for him, he felt that it was just nothing left. Assad was going to be here for another generation and we had no hope any longer. And subhanAllah, he was amazed when the liberation happened. So he wrote another book. And again, true to his theme of

writing in allegories. He wrote a novel and I think it was titled Seeking Ferdous. Ferdous is a term he used for liberation, seeking liberation. We asked him to read a paragraph of his book and he talked about a man who had been in Sednaya.

And he had languished in Sednaya for 20, 30 years and he knew nothing of the world outside. And then one day, you know, from his surprise, out of his surprise, he's released from Sednaya and he gets to breathe the fresh air of freedom and he dies. And the author was trying to make the point that this man had a moment, just a moment where he tasted freedom. And that was enough for him. You know, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala had

given him the perfect death. He had found a way out of his dungeon. So subhanAllah, I know a number of people who are conducting projects where they're trying to unearth the extent to which the Assad prison system operated, but it's very clear that Assad really worked under Israeli standards when it comes to

how they treated their prison population. What you said about our Dr. Abu Safiyah, it is a heartwrenching story. This is a man - again, an embodiment of that spirit where he walked into danger. And of course, the Israelis now out of spite for him want to make a point of saying that that level of obstinance, that level

of standing up to our aggression is not going to be accepted by us. They're trying to break the will, like Assad was trying to break the will of his people. They're trying to break the will of any resistance against them. But what they don't know is that these are people who have resistance within their bloodstream. And I saw that in Syria writ large. I witnessed immense bravery from the most ordinary

person. And it's that type of spirit that exists in Gaza and West Bank and so many places where we see Muslims and others who are beleaguered, who face this level of oppression. So there is a link. The only contrast really is that despite all that we say about the Trump presidency about the way the West is turning towards a very awful turn

when it comes to civil liberties and when it comes to the treatment of what they term to be non Europeans or non Americans. Even then there is a there's a level of work you can do like we did with Sami like you did with Sami and others to obtain their release and unfortunately, you know, with the Israelis with some of these corrupt dictators, it sometimes is the opposite. That doesn't mean we don't keep trying.

And we need to keep

trying. I'm just, sorry, I'm now being like Sami, just one last point. Dr. Aafia is obviously languishing in prison in Texas. And subhanAllah, when we had Clive Stafford-Smith on the program, who's her lawyer, he made a point which at the time just sounded like a very small point, which is you can write to...

Dr. Aafia. So I jumped on that. So what do mean we can write to Dr. Aafia? Nobody told us we can do that. He said, yeah, I can take with my lawyer's case any number of letters. So we started a letter writing campaign and know, masha'Allah, she received just thousands of letters from all around the world. And it made a big difference to her conditions. It made a big difference to the way the prison guards treated her because now they had a prisoner who wasn't forgotten.

A prisoner who was actually cared about and it made a difference to her psychology. She realized that there were people outside of her prison and outside of her family that really did care very deeply about her. So we have to keep trying and you know as Sami always reminds us, it's actually about our conscience. It's about you know when we meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we want to be absolved of the sin

that is present, of staying silent. And we want to at least experience some of the fruits of resistance.

Marium Uddin (31:38)

It's a really beautiful story that you shared. And I always thought that as hard as it is for the prisoners themselves, it's just unbearable to think of what their family members are going through. And I agree about this

undeniable spirit of resistance that we're seeing across the board. I did want to mention about Sami as well as I said, he's one of the most cheerful prisoners you can imagine. But one of the things that was really difficult for me was actually watching him on video as he saw his small kids through the video at at the detention center. You could see that they seemed happy and almost unaware of kind of the physical and political

punitive crossfires that he was at. And with that, Sami, I want to definitely take a moment to mention that the people who were holding things together, you've spoken about your lawyers and the community, but your family, especially your mom and your wife, were carrying such a heavy burden alongside you, and they were phenomenal, masha'Allah. They are truly your greatest gifts.

Jalal touched on the politics just briefly in his last answer, and I want to build on that. I want to ask you, Jalal, what does America look like from the outside? I almost feel that we've become a pariah state ourselves, and that was implicit in our conduct over post-October 7th.

How do other countries view us post- October 7th and post-January 20th?

Muhammad Jalal (32:56)

These are two very important points. Let's take post-October 7th first. I think the mask has come off. For years, the West sold itself as the custodian of the rules based international order, where they promise international law and human rights and the sanctity of civilian life. And I think Gaza has really exposed all of these to be pretty hollow and how the West has selectively

depended on these concepts only to sometimes defend its own interests in the world. So the first thing to say is that it's a continuation of a process of weaning ourselves off this sort of Western exceptionalism, this European exceptionalism that we've been accustomed to for a very long time. It goes without saying that in the global South in particular,

there is a very clear divide between the ways in which the global South countries, Muslim and non-Muslim, view the West today, partly as a result of Gaza, or quite a lot as a result of Gaza, but just as a result of the last 20 years of the way in which the West conducts itself. Solidarity is given to Ukraine, but the same level of solidarity is not offered to Gaza.

Veto after veto, billions given in military aid to Israel. This shows us that there are clear double standards and so many of us outside of this sort of Western exceptionalism have woken up to just the inequalities of the world, but also woken up to how we need to be instrumental in offering alternatives and offering ways of resistance

that allows us to show a different way by which we can conduct international affairs. So I think Gaza has really exploded the myth, let's say, that there was some sort of consistent standard, some civilizational standard that we should all aspire to, which came from the leading country in the world, the United States. And it's not just Muslims who are saying this, you just have to now listen to a slew of

left-wing and right-wing commentators, even in America, who all recognize that empire has been bad for America. And you ask, also, of course, January the 20th, 25, when Donald Trump came to office. Donald Trump is not an exception.

It's sometimes easy, in particular for the left, to exceptionalize Donald Trump. He's a president who, if only he

is replaced by someone else, then things will be business as usual. And I think that facade has been lifted. There has been a steady supply of American presidents who have conducted horrific campaigns all across the world. Barack Obama is lauded as some sort of liberal president. But of course, you and I know that Barack Obama was one of the bloodiest presidents with these

drone campaign in the way in which he used the American military in a backhanded way to kill people. And he hasn't ever shown remorse for the way in which he conducted his foreign policy. So I think Donald Trump is really a continuation of that rather than a break to that. I get the impression that the world is now managing.

a new type of America, an America which is moving beyond even the pretense of international order. And I think that's a good sign for us. The recent Iran war was a wake up call for the Arab states.

There can never be any security guarantee they can depend on when it comes to Israel and its interests. I've traveled across the Muslim world in recent months and the bigger picture is that both of these events tie very well together. They tie into building this case that there is a

slow, steady decline of the West around the world. And it's not just America, it's Europe. And of course, like all forms of decline, what we're going to see is in these countries will be, you know, pretty horrific. We're seeing the rise of the right, or a particular type of right across Europe, which is deeply xenophobic,

deeply angry with migrants, angry with what they perceive to be people who come to the country who try to better their lives. And so we're going to see a disintegrated West in my mind for years to come. And I think for us, as Muslims, we've just got to remain calm and remain ready to offer alternative ways of thinking

and show that our community isn't going to be provoked by these incendiary claims that come from Amy Mek and the others who of course would like to do the bidding of Israel.

Marium Uddin (37:21)

Thank you for that, Jalal.

Sami, one of the things that I remember vividly is watching a fierce video clip of you that was widely circulated where you said Americans who would re-elect Biden or Kamala would be stepping on the bodies of children who had been killed in Gaza on their way to the ballot box. Having been a victim of Trump's policies, do you stand by that?

Sami Hamdi (37:43)

Of course, hundred percent. I don't think that anybody really in their hearts miss Genocide Joe. I don't think they miss Genocidal Democrats. I don't think they miss Brett McGurk. I don't think they miss Jake Sullivan. I don't think they miss Anthony Blinken, who told a group of Palestinians in November 2023 who had come to him and said, Mr. Blinken, this is getting really bad. This is a genocide and it's going to be even worse. And Blinken said, Yeah, well, it's going to get worse before it gets any better. That's what he told that closed door meeting, as related to me by somebody who was in the room.

I think that when you look at the shifts that are taking place in America itself, whereby now you have Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker now in disarray and in a panic that the Democrat base is now revolting against them, having realized that genocide doesn't win, they're now voting for anti-genocide candidates, Chris Rabb, anti-AIPAC, winning in Pennsylvania, Adam Hamawi anti-AIPAC winning in New Jersey, Analilila Mejia winning in New Jersey, beating Malinowski and beating other AIPAC candidates. You have now, for example,

Abdul El-Sayed running in Michigan for the Senate. You now have those who have won with AIPAC money switching sides. So Maxine Dexter took two million dollars to win in Oregon. She goes to Congress and compares Gaza to a Holocaust. She later apologizes, but then puts her name down on a bill for Rashida Tlaib when she calls for the recognition of the genocide taking place in Palestine. And when AIPAC reminds her that she took two million dollars from them

to win her race, she goes on Zeteo with Mehdi Hassan to say that AIPAC are toxic. I will never take money from AIPAC again because she believes to win her seat requires her to be anti-genocide and requires her to be pro-America and anti-foreign government, in this case Israel. You have Chris Menefee who when he won his seat in Congress, AIPAC tweeted and said that his victory demonstrates that to be pro-Israel is good politics. AIPAC celebrates this congressman's win.

He goes to Congress and signs on to the Block the Bombs Act, which is an act in order to stop the weapons going towards Israel, because he realizes what a pariah it is that AIPAC has become and he doesn't want to be associated with them. Graham Platner in Maine, Mamdani in New York, running against Cuomo, Trump, and Chuck Schumer, who all found themselves in the same camp because they wanted to stop Mamdani from winning because he said that he wouldn't visit Israel.

All of that is coming about because the Democrats are now in a soul-searching whereby they realize that vote blue, no matter who, even if it's a genocide, quite simply doesn't work. Ta'Nehesi Coates has an extraordinary essay in Vanity Fair that has some gems in it. He describes an incident where he was invited to a Palestinian woman's house, I think in Texas, and he was going on the basis that despite the tragedy, they might vote Harris because she's the better of the candidate. Or rather, he was going to argue that Harris is better.

He said, I entered the house, I sat down. The owner of the house says to Ta'Nehesi Coates, Thank you for being here. I lost 200 members of my family in this genocide. And Ta'Nehisi Coates writes that to convince her to vote for Harris, these are his words, not mine, you would have had to give up your entire humanity to convince that person to go and vote for people who had just butchered her family. And as an African American, it really gives a pause for thought about where do our moral boundaries lie?

When we are asking another group of people to tolerate a massacre of their families for the sake of what we believe to be other issues that are more important. I don't think there's anybody who regrets what happened. The reality is that when you look at Tucker Carlson now coming out and saying he would not vote for the Republican Party anymore because of their complicity not only in the genocide, but because of their preference for Israel over America. When you see Marjorie Taylor Green saying, I don't recognize this party anymore

and the party is the problem. I think when you see Candace Owens and all these others coming out, there is a huge shift that's taking place. And here's the reason why I think it's happening. It's happening because once upon a time, these grievances would never manifest politically. There were grievances that we held inside, but we never dared to manifest it politically because we feared what the greater evil might do to us. We feared how bad it could possibly get. And then for the first time,

a community, Muslim and non-Muslim, I'm talking about the anti-genocide community here, decided to stand up and say, you know what, it could get worse. But how can it get worse than genocide? I'm going to make sure that a party cannot win on the basis of committing genocide. Because of that translation, from emotion to politics, from that grievance to manifesting it at the ballot box and effectively saying to people, yes, it might get worse, but I will never allow it to be said,

that you can commit a genocide and win, we're seeing these tectonic shifts that are taking place in America that are quite simply, Marium, you know better than I do, you're there, but I think they are unprecedented. We see it even here in the United Kingdom. Marium, we have a prime minister who won a landslide election two years ago, who's just been unseated because of council elections, because he can't keep his party in check. And according to polls, supporting genocide was one of the reasons that almost 50% of people left his party

left because of the genocide that he had committed. And now you have the reflection taking place in that party where now it's becoming a litmus test. I need to know where you stand on genocide first and foremost. Marium, you can see how AIPAC Tracker is now being hunted by AIPAC and these others who are saying, why is it these guys don't leave us alone? Because according to journalists, if AIPAC Tracker endorses you or it condemns you, that swings an election. That swings a vote. You see the likes of Hassan Piker coming out.

New generation Democrats who are openly now, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker, these new candidates who are winning in the primaries are their worst nightmare. And now you have a situation. Because you punished genocide the first time, Harris now, who refused to allow a Palestinian to speak at the DNC even for two minutes, and that Palestinian, Rua, was going to go on stage to say we support Kamala, we just want you to say we're human. Axios is now reporting that Harris

in her bid to run for 2028, is now reaching out to Mamdani and reaching out to the Palestinians saying, I don't want to make the same mistakes that I made before. I learned my lesson from last time. If I want to win, I have to listen to the base. I can't take them for granted anymore. And possibly one of the most extraordinary things is that when you look at all of this that is unfolding, all of these changes that are happening, look how rapidly it's happening. It's in less than a year, less than two years, we're seeing these shifts take place.

And I think this is the irony of what could happen. I remember once Jalal asked me in a podcast, Sami, is this a strategy or is this emotion when you're telling people that they should punish Harris? So there is a clip somewhere, somebody reminded me of it, I had forgotten I'd said it, where I was telling him the first year Trump will come after us legally. He will try to silence activists, he will try to get people deported. And it's up to us to prepare the lawyers in order to make sure that we're able to win those cases because

I believe in the courts in America - that they will uphold the law as they did in my case, as they did with Leqaa Kordia, as they're doing with Mahmoud Khalil and hopefully Supreme Court will do so again with Mahmoud Khalil. The courts will protect us. The second year will be midterms. And I said to him, those midterms are the year of reflection. And here's the irony of what could happen, Marium, in these midterm elections. Democrats may sweep up and take both of the houses, but Chuck Schumer, Corey Booker, and Hakeem Jeffries

will be so furious at taking back the houses because the representatives coming into Congress are not the Democrat representatives that they want. They're the Democrat representatives being delivered by a new generation that says no to genocide. Meaning at the time when everybody wants to swing the houses, you're not even going control the houses because the Democrats that will be within your party are not the Democrats that you want. And that's why you have that article now:

Chuck Schumer endorses, Mamdani endorses, Mamdani's endorsement wins. Hakeem Jeffries endorses, Mamdani endorses, Mamdani's endorsement wins. Bernie Sanders now winning more candidates here and there, albeit still his stance upsets me sometimes. But the point that I'm saying is that that doesn't happen. This is my humble opinion. That doesn't happen without the translation of this grievance at the ballot box in a presidential election. It doesn't happen without

people saying that this genocide means so much to me that I am not going to vote for you.

You mentioned Hussam Abu Safiya. So for example, Hussam Abu Safiya, if I just share the screen, we'll just go a bit like wild on this one. I just want to show you this for a second. You look at Hussam Abu Safiya, you can see here that

in the space of two days, more than 272,000 emails have been sent to the representatives here in the United Kingdom and in Europe calling on them to stand up for Hussam Abu Safiya and demand the Israelis release him. And I want to show you this tweet that came out as a result. There's a tweet that emerged. I want to show you this one to show you why this genuinely matters. I just want to open it here because I retweeted it literally today.

This is a good example of how these things make a difference. So this is one of the people who we were emailing. This is Hamish Falconer. He is the minister for Middle East and North Africa. Two days after we've been sending these emails, so 272,000 emails in their inbox, and he tweets that he's now raised it with the Israeli authorities.

Now I'm not saying that this means he's going to get Hussam Abu Safiya out. I'm saying this is an example of when people move, they can make that impact. In my case, Ro Khanna's office reached out to me when I was in the facility and they said that he's asking permission to raise your case in Congress. And I said, why? They said because he's got so many emails about you. He's got so many emails about your case in terms of what's happening. And the reason why I answer your question this way is that with all of the things that are happening under Trump,

and Trump is not the easiest president to handle at all - there is definitely a rise in this fascist sentiments that are being expressed - but at the same time, the courts are holding. At the same time, American public opinion is shifting. At the same time, AIPAC is weakening. At the same time, you can see that the norms of politics have now changed because we demanded that it should change. And this was my argument that I consistently made and that I still make, which is that yes, the road is harder. Yes.

The path of justice is harder. But we will survive it. And this is the point Jalal was making earlier. The idea that I was sitting there in the ICE facility hoping with good cause that I would be out sooner rather than later. Many people don't have that, like Hussam Abu Safiya all these others, they don't have that hope. Why? Because we're not moving enough for them. But when people decide that enough is enough,

they have the power to change those norms of politics. They have the ability to change the rules of the game, whereby now you have political, New York Times, all of these major papers saying that being pro Israel is now a liability, even in New York, which was considered an AIPAC stronghold. And the final point, I promise I'll make make this final point. When you consider what AIPAC did, they spent 14 million to topple Jamal Bowman, and they did. And they spent eight million to topple Cory Bush and they did.

And they spent 30 million to topple Thomas Massie and they did. But when you look at the overall trajectory, the more they spend, the more they seem to be losing the primaries overall. And that is because, and this is where I say, you know, when you ask Jalal the perception of America, you know, from the outside, as somebody who went to nearly every state in America except New Hampshire, I love that particular phrase, but in it, someone messaged me from New Hampshire and said, For God's sake, just come. But anyway, I grew to realize that there is good in the American population.

That if you can tap into it, it can shift the goalpost of politics. It can shift the goalposts of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And I think that when you ask me, Sami, do you still stand by that message? The message was not punish Harris because she committed a genocide. The message was believe in your power to make change. Believe in your ordinary power to make extraordinary change. Believe that the status quo doesn't need to last.

Believe that you should not be asked to tolerate genocide because somehow things will get worse. Believe there is a third way. Believe there is a third vision. There is a third option. There is an option where America wakes up. There is an option where American public opinion shifts. There is an option where AIPAC becomes toxic.

The Democrat Party is changing completely, and even the Republicans are now shifting in that regard. And that doesn't happen without those brave Americans who said to themselves, My life might get harder. Sami might be detained. And I'm not underplaying the impact this has on families. I'm not underplaying the impact it has on Salah Sarsour's family. I'm not underplaying the impact it had on Marwan Marouf, who was ill and his illness wouldn't allow him to stay in the ICE facility. I'm not underplaying the impact it has on Yaakub Ira.

I'm not underplaying the impact it has on any of those inmates. What I'm saying is you ask any of those individuals that when you look at the trajectory their things are going, do you regret being in that facility? And I don't think Salah or Marwan or Yaakub or myself, any of us will say, we wish we could have had genocide Joe so that I could go to America and enjoy myself in those big houses in Dallas and that I would be able to enjoy myself at the expense of the Palestinians. Everybody is proud of that sacrifice and America is changing accordingly.

Marium Uddin (50:22)

You define yourself as a journalist, but I think you're a storyteller.

Sami Hamdi (50:26)

This is how it was done. So Leila's I feel like sometimes the heroes are not the ones that people love listening to on the screens, because when those on the screens end up in the facilities, it's those heroes that people don't know much about who are the ones who really make that difference. And that's why it's funny when people ask me who are the most impressive people that you met in America. And they expect me to mention the speakers that everybody knows. And they are impressive.

But I always tell them it's Hussam Ayloush CAIR. They'd be like, Who's Hussam Ayloush? I'd be like, That's the worst part, you don't even know who he is. It's Marium Uddin. It's Hassan Ahmad. It's these people because when it comes to the action that really shook the government into getting me out, these were the people who Allah chose to manifest His power.

Marium Uddin (51:04)

You are really generous. You've always been generous, even when you were in handcuffs, but

we feel inspired by you. I'm going to ask Jalal to close us out. I know you're embarking on a trip to Turkey for storytellers, and of course you've become a quintessential storyteller yourself. When you started The Thinking

Muslim, did you envision the success that you would have today? How do you view its impact?

And the very last question I would really like you to answer for me in our time together today on this podcast is: since you've spent your career deciding which stories deserve to be told, as I begin this podcast, what's one mistake that I should avoid if my goal is to honor the people who trust me, as you and Sami have done, with their stories?

Muhammad Jalal (51:46)

I think both of those questions in a way tie into a singular answer. As you embark on this journey to start this podcast and may Allah (SWT) give you barakah and allow you to have the maximum success not only in this life but in the hereafter. When I started my podcast, I made a very conscious effort to not...

compromise on the quality of the guests that I bring on and to always seek out experts and seek out those people who've got something very productive to say to the Muslim community rather than those who may be able to gain a very quick number of views for you and a quick number of subscribers. Everyone is chasing the algorithm. Everyone is chasing the metrics. And I would say that the metrics which sometimes is lost

in that very dunya type of endeavor is the metric of seeking the barakah and asking Allah to give us His reward and to give us His hand when we are failing and we don't have the resources available to us. So my advice is, and this is something which I always, I have good people around me who constantly remind me of this -

that the original intention was to try to curate a message that will enable and allow as many people to listen to inspiring voices as possible so that this Muslim ummah and community can find itself in a better position. And that often is in conflict with the algorithm and it's often in conflict with seeking a greater number of views and hits.

So I wouldn't concentrate on that. I think if you've got something valuable to say, which alhamdulillah you have, and you've got an amazing background and your work in civil liberties and your work as a lawyer, I think is in itself inspirational. And of course, lots of people who are able to communicate through various ways, the sort of causes within our Muslim communities.

I think it's worth just focusing on that, the value of the guest, the quality of the guest, as you are, and not worry too much about how many people view it. In the first couple of programs we had, we started off as audio. I think we had like a couple of hundred viewers, and most of them were my family and people who felt that they needed to encourage me. So they pressed on play and went on doing the household chores

I came back to at the end.

But I felt, there's brothers like Sami, there's so many others in our community that really needed a platform or a platform is required for them to voice their well-deserved and well-crafted opinions. So if we show sincerity, insha'Allah ta'ala, may Allah (SWT) give us that. And if we show

good intention and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will reward us for our work and give us and even if we don't, know, we know of the countless numbers of prophets who weren't able to count very many followers beyond, you know, the fingers on their one hand, but Allah subhanahu ta'ala rewarded them daily. So I think, you know, as you embark on this journey,

just focus on the quality and seek Allah's help in every turn and ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to guide you to a better guidance every time you've got a decision to make.

Marium Uddin (54:59)

JazakAllahu khair. Your advice was really beautiful. And both of you are so inspirational. I can see the chemistry between the two of you, the yin and the yang, like Sami is fire, Jalal is water. It works. I feel very fortunate and blessed to be in this space with you. I during our time.

Muhammad Jalal (55:16)

I should say,

Sammy's culinary tastes are so off.

Marium Uddin (55:20)

I thought

Sami Hamdi (55:20)

In 'N Out, yeah.

The

thing is Jalal likes this like, you eighty percent dark chocolate stuff. You know the ones that don't taste like chocolate anymore. Like audhubillah and he offers it to you like it's a genuine gift.

Marium Uddin (55:29)

I remember that almost every conversation with Sami revolved around food in some way. You know, it was like I can't wait to get out so I can have you know, name the food, right?

Sami Hamdi (55:34)

Yes, yes. Especially in the ICE facility.

Marium Uddin (55:38)

Ha ha

subhanahu doing.

Sami Hamdi (55:38)

Thank you

very much, Marium Take care of yourself. Stay safe.

Muhammad Jalal (55:40)

Thank you.

Marium Uddin (55:40)

As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.