Omar Suleiman: Islam

Lex Fridman Podcast #352 – Omar Suleiman: Islam Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Imam Doctor Omar Suliman. He's a Muslim scholar, civil rights leader, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and he is a professor of Islamic studies at Southern Methodist University. He's one of the most influential Muslims in the world, and is a fearless, kind-hearted human being, who I am now proud to call a friend. As a side note, allow me to say a few words about Israel and Palestine. While this conversation with Omar Suliman was mostly exploring the history and beauty of Islam and the Muslim community, we did delve briefly into the topic of Israel and Palestine. This topic is an extremely challenging one and an extremely important one. It has deep roots and implications in U.S. politics, in global geopolitics, in military and religious conflicts, wars and atrocities, and basic struggle of all human beings to survive, to protect their loved ones, and to flourish as individuals and as communities. I did not want to cover this topic in a solely scholarly fashion. Much like with the war in Ukraine, it is not simply a story of history, politics, religion and national identity. It is also a deeply human story. To cover this topic in the way that my gut and my heart says to do it, I have to talk to everyone, to leaders and people on all sides, Muslim and Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian, from refugees to soldiers, from scholars to extremists. I am not sure if that's possible or wise, but like Forrest Gump said, I am not a smart man, and maybe you know how the rest of that goes. I just like to follow my heart to whatever place it leads. I ask the Muslim and the Jewish communities for your patience and support as I explore this topic. I will make many mistakes and I'll be listening to all voices so I can learn and do better. I've become distinctly aware that my approach of talking to people from all walks of life with empathy and compassion, but with backbone, can create enemies on all sides. I don't quite yet understand why this is, but I am learning to accept it is the reality of the world. Hopefully, in the end, whatever happens, whatever silly thing I do has a chance of adding a bit of love to the world. Thanks for going along with me on this journey. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got NetSuite for business management, Hassa Macadamias for a satiating delicious snack, and ExpressVPN for privacy and security. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. They manage financials, human resources, inventory, e commerce, and many business related details. There is so much stuff involved in running a business. This is something I think a lot about. Because of me wanting to work for a company, or me wanting to start a business, you know like a like a legit tech company that builds products that delivers products into the hands of people and hopefully brings joy to their life, hopefully adds a bit of love to the world. To do that, it's not just about the design and the engineering and the scaling of the compute infrastructure and even the hiring. You know the the hiring decisions, all that kind of stuff. 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A VPN is obviously really important, or maybe if it's not obvious to you, if you don't use a VPN, I think you should really be using a VPN for any activities you do. Protects your privacy. There is a bunch of features that allows you to do like if you watch Netflix and you want to get access to a geographically restricted content. It allows you to do that, but it's just a good tool to have in your toolbox if you are on the internet. And my favorite VPN by far, the one I always recommend is ExpressVPN. I've used it for many, many years. Makes me super happy. It works on any operating system. It's super fast. Click a button, pick a location. It just works. It does one thing and it does it extremely well, which is what I love from from software and from I don't know from anybody. I love meeting people that just are extremely competent and passionate about one thing and they do that thing better than anybody I've ever seen and that sort of fills me with joy, just admiring their excellence. And even more than that, just admiring their joy at the thing they're doing, their lifelong passion manifested in in this one very specific. Activity, I don't know, it's beautiful to see, and so ExpressVPN is in some way represents that for me. Go to expressvpn dot com slash luxpod for an extra three months free. This is the luxvpn podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Omar Suliman. Assalamu alaykum Omar. We've been trying to do this a long time. It's the world tried to prevent it through the the funny ways that the world does, but here we are. I am a huge fan of yours. It's a huge honor to talk to you. I appreciate it. Thank you for making the sacrifice and coming down for coming up. I guess I appreciate it. It's a short flight but a long journey. Let's start with the biggest question: Who is God according to Islam? God is the most compassionate, the most merciful, the creator of the heavens and the earth. He is one God. He begets not, nor is he begotten. He is unique. He is omnipotent. He is beyond the limitations of man. He is beyond the constructs of our imagination, but he is ever accessible through sincere supplication. When you call upon him alone, one God, he is closer to you than your jugular vein. The Quran tells us. He's known by many names and attributes, but his essence is one. He's one God. No human likeness. No human imperfection can be attributed to him. No partners, no image of him can be constructed, and that is God. So God represents he is a feeling of closeness that is accessible to every human being. Well, God's not a feeling. God is known by names and attributes. We call upon God, but there is certainly a feeling of closeness when you access him. And so I think the beauty of Islam is that, as perfect as God is described, he's also so accessible to the imperfect. And so the idea of sincere supplication and connection to him, we worship him alone. We call upon him alone. There is no clergy. There is no barrier between God and and us, and that encourages. A sincere devotion and commitment to him alone, and so he is certainly described supreme. And God speaks to us through the Quran, and we speak to him through sincere supplication. And his attributes are the furthest from us in terms of their perfection, but he is ever close to us through our supplication, through our prayers and through our connection to him. To open the door to that connection, to have a connection with God, how difficult is that process? How difficult was it for you? How difficult is it for the people that for the many, many, many Muslims that you've interacted with. Well, I think that there are different layers of difficulty, right? There is the personal difficulty submitting yourself to God. You know Islam requires a complete submission to him, and one of the things that happens is that if we. Project some of our bad experiences with authority onto our relationship with God, then we immediately perceive him in a certain way that might not allow us to gain a closeness to him because maybe we didn't have the best relationship with our parents growing up. Maybe we didn't have the best relationship with authority figures. In our lives, and so this idea of an ultimate authority to whom you submit yourself can be very difficult. You know Malcolm X, who was one of the most prominent converts to Islam in American history. Talked about the difficulty of prostration for the very first time—putting your head on the ground, putting your face on the ground, and praying to God—is a very humbling thing. Submitting all of your affairs to him is very humbling. And ultimately, you have to relinquish control, and you can't relinquish control without trust. So you have to learn to trust God. To trust God, you have to know him, and to know him is to love him. And so for me personally, you know growing up, going through certain difficulties. Having a sick parent who struggled in her life with cancer and with strokes, dealing with racism in South Louisiana, growing up. It was important for me to learn about God through my difficulties. For example, rather than let those difficulties turn me away from him. Many times people put a barrier between them and God because they can't make sense of the things that are happening in their own lives, and so they project anger towards God and at the same time. Deny their own belief in him and do away with this natural disposition that every one of us has to believe in him. So there are intellectual barriers, certainly there are experiential barriers. But I think that one of the beautiful things about Islam is clarity. There is an explanation for his existence. There is an explanation for our existence. There is an explanation for the existence of difficulties and trial, and explanation for. The existence of desires and distractions, and it all comes together so beautifully and coherently in Islam. And so I think that for many of us, we want to be our own gods. You know, and ultimately we create and fashion gods. In ways that allow us to still be the ultimate determiners of our own fate, of our own story, and that's very unfilling when you fail at your own plan. But when you realize that there is one who is all knowing, that there is one who is all wise, you actually find peace in submitting yourself to him and so submitting your will to him, submitting your desires, submitting your own fate to him. Becomes actually an experience of liberation because you trust the one that you are submitting to. You trust his knowledge over yours, you trust his wisdom over yours, and that gives you a lot of peace. And then you have direct access to him. You pray to him, you call upon him, you supplicate, and everything in your life suddenly has meaning. You know in our faith, everything is about intention, and there is an intentionality even behind the most seemingly most mundane actions. A morsel of food in the mouth of your spouse, your family, is looked at as a great charity. The way that you enter into a place and exit out of a place, what foot you step in, what foot you step out with, there is an intentionality. There is a word of remembrance that's spoken. There is a word of praise before and after you engage in any action. There are things that you say before you eat, before you sleep. There is meaning even to your sleep. One of the great companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said that I seek the reward for my sleep just as I seek the reward for my prayer. Because you sleep to refresh yourself so that you can once again do great things, and the intentionality behind that allows even the sleep to be rewardable. You eat to nourish yourself so that you can do great things. You seek to be in a position of independence and of being sustained so that you can sustain others. So the Prophet peace be upon him says, for example, that the upper hand is better than the lower hand. The upper hand is the giving hand, the lower hand is the receiving hand. So to seek a position where you can help other people, everything becomes intentional. And there is no such thing as you know something that is meaningless and without purpose. So every pursuit is ultimately a pursuit of God, and when you pursue God sincerely, then he rewards you not just with paradise in the afterlife, but he rewards you with a great sense of serenity and self satisfaction here. You mentioned part of the struggle growing up was having a parent, your mom, who was sick. What do you remember about your mom? What are some happy, pleasant memories? So my parents were well, my father, thank God is still alive. My mother was a pious woman, a beautiful woman, a righteous woman, a woman who was known for treating everyone with a great deal of love and respect. She was a poet. She used to write poetry about oppressed peoples around the world. From her homeland in Palestine to the genocide in Bosnia, she followed every conflict before social media, and poured her heart into it. She was a woman of great charity. So when I think back to my mom growing up, she was known for her smile. My mom was always smiling, and in fact, every picture of her, she smiling. And at her funeral, you know people talked about her smile that she would smile at everyone, and that was kind of her thing. So if you were left out of a gathering, she was smiling at you and she'd kind of welcome you in. I remember my mom to be content. She was a woman of prayer and a woman of contentment. So I used to see her in her prayer clothes all the time. In fact, when I think back to her growing up, I think of her more in her prayer clothes than her normal clothes because that's how often she was engaged in prayer. And I think of her making sure that everyone was included in a conversation. So she was very interesting. In that she had several strokes, and each one of those strokes impaired one of her senses to some extent. So she was partially deaf because of one stroke. And she'd be sitting in a gathering and she'd be pretty quiet with a big smile on her face, very serene. And she would tell me, you know alhamdulillah, which means thank thank God, all praise be to God that I can't hear because I can tell when people are gossiping when people are saying negative things around me about other people because she says even the look on people's faces changes. So it's it was really interesting because she was that spiritually rooted and and deep that she said like you could see on the looks and on people's faces when they started to speak ill about other people that their faces would change that the their demeanor would change and she said I would actually praise the Lord. That I couldn't engage in those conversations and that I wasn't sinful for hearing them, and what she would do is what what people said at her funeral, which was really beautiful to me and was very comforting to me, and I took it as a life mission. That if you were new to a place or if you were kind of in the corner and not not known to other people in the community and you felt left out, she was the one that literally would look around the room. And she'd see who was standing in the corner and who was new to the community or new to whatever place and she'd go and try to include that person in the gathering. So even when she had impaired speech and impaired hearing, with her smile and with her warmth, she was able to welcome people wherever that was. And so the amount of people that came. To her funeral and the stories that I continue to hear till this day, fifteen years later after her passing away, of people that said you know no one ever treated me the way your mother treated me, and she connected that to God. So that was actually part of my faith journey. When I think of great people, when I think of people of faith, she's the first person that comes to my mind because. Despite her challenges, she was always the greatest person that you would meet. Anyone that met her. And that knew her would say I'd never I've never met anyone that kind that was her reputation. And she was deeply empathetic. She would shed tears over people that she had no connection to. This is again before social media before, you know the the the heavy exposure that we have to people in conflict zones. She had to engage every single human being in her life, in a deep and profound way because she had a profound connection to God and she believed that that was her calling. And none of her challenges made her bitter. In fact, they only made her more connected to God, and they only made her a better person until the last breath that she took. Do you miss her? Yeah, there I mean yes, absolutely. But I I feel like everything I do is an extension of her. So you try to carry what she stood for. Absolutely, as part of yourself. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that when a person passes away, there are only three things that continue to benefit them that continue to extend them: a continuous charity, or a piece of knowledge that continues to benefit people, or a righteous child that prays for them. And I want to be that child that prays for her, but also does charity in her name. Extends her charity, extends what she taught me by being the person that she was to everyone around me. And there are some times where I don't feel like getting out of bed, sometimes where I don't feel like doing for myself, but I actually feel like doing for her. So everything in my life that I try to do, I try to make it an extension of her, and that's been my calling. And you know I believe I'll meet her again. I believe I'll be with her again. I believe that everything I do that is good will be of benefit to her, and I believe that it would make her proud. And so as much as I miss her, as much as I am fueled to do for her, and so I continue that and that's kind of become part of my life. It's been my life story. As a child and as an adult, it's been sort of the centerpiece of my life to do things that extend her and ultimately in the process hopefully benefit me because I I believe that she's a woman who I pray is destined for paradise and I want to do the things that would get me there too. What did you learn about death? About life from losing her. I feel like the facade of the material world was made evident to me at a very young age. You know most children grow up and their parents want to protect them from everything and and I felt that too. You know my my mother wanted to downplay her own tragedy so that me and my brother could live a fruitful and fulfilling life. My father wanted to protect us from the hardship of her life so that we could live fulfilling lives. He was he'd often be the only father on a field trip even though he was a distinguished professor. I mean he was a busy man. He he was a very busy man, but he tried to show up at a field trip and tried to make our lives as normal as possible. But in the process, we always understood that there was more to life than what other children were seeing it as, and now I know that as an adult there is more to life than what other adults see it as the material world. Disappointed early on so that we could see beyond it, and I often tell people that you know there are many that grow up in tragedy, orphan children, refugees that grow up and do incredible things because they immediately see past the facade. They see through all of the material promises of this world, the deception of it, and that you can choose to be bitter as a result of that or you can choose to be better. And I think that for me I had to consciously make that decision that I was going to live a life of prayer. I was going to live a life of charity. I was going to live a life of commitment, and in that process, invest in something that's greater, invest in something that doesn't disappoint. And so I believe in God. I believe in the hereafter, and I believe that God will not let any trial or effort in this life go to waste without it being repaid in the hereafter. And so I work towards that. And so life and death, I understood existence to be transcendent early on. That if I believe that there was nothing to life except for life, I would be a very bitter person. But because I know that there is more to it than this, I am able to exist in it without being depressed by it. Existence is transcendence. What happens after we die? After the material instantiation fades away. So the Quran tells us that God brought us from the darkness of the womb into this life. You were nothing but a dirty drop of fluid, and you became this fully proportioned human being from the darkness of the womb. You come into this life, you experience it, and then you go to the darkness of the grave only to be resurrected once again. And that we are souls with bodies, not bodies with souls, and there is a huge difference between those two things. This is the vehicle that contains us here. This is the material world that we encounter here, but we are not this and this is not our entire existence. And so the soul continues. This is a life in which we seek to worship him and seek to live in accordance with the purpose that he has set out for us. And after we pass away, our soul continues onwards either to reward or to punishment or to a mixture of both, but it's a it's a realm of accountability. And hopefully it's a realm of reward should we exist in a way that he wants us to exist. So you said that you can look to God for wisdom to make sense of the world. There is a lot of stuff to us humans that's difficult to make sense of, like you losing your mother. There is a lot of cruelty in the world. There is a lot of suffering in the world. What wisdom have you been able to find from God about about why there is suffering in the world, why there is cruelty? You know there is a saying that I wanted to ask God about why He allows hunger and war and poverty, but I was afraid He might ask me the same question. God has certainly given us enough food. There is enough food in the world for everyone to have a thirty two hundred calorie diet a day. God has certainly given us enough guidance for us to not inflict on each other the cruelty that we inflict. When we look to the world around us, first and foremost, we have to have a sense of accountability. We are accountable for our own actions. We don't blame God for the evil of man. That's one. But at the same time, we understand that God in His wisdom allows for certain outcomes that we cannot encompass with our own. And that to isolate these incidents and to try to make sense of them is no different than a baby in the womb that doesn't understand the world that it's coming into and trying to explain to that baby that hasn't yet developed its own senses and its own perception of this world. What is happening to it, right? You know I often think of the example of a child and you know having been at this point now through the experience of. Parenthood. I am still learning. I am just going into having a teenager, but three kids and being a softy for my kids. You know when you have to tell your child that they can't have something that they really really want. And that child thinks you hate them at some point, you know because why are you stopping me from putting this toy in my mouth and choking myself? They don't get it right, but at the same time you prevent them out of love. They're not in a position to understand that you are preventing them out of love. And to isolate these incidents with God and to say the wisdom, what's the wisdom? You are trying to make sense of a pixel when you can't see the bigger picture. Your mind is not at a place where you can make sense of the bigger picture. You haven't seen the bigger picture, and so for him to even explain to us every incident would completely defeat the purpose of putting your trust in him. So we believe in a God that is all encompassing in His knowledge and wisdom. That gives us an Islam is very you know specific by the way that there is what God tells us to do and there is what God allows to happen. So what God tells us to do in terms of the roadmap towards good and then what God allows to happen in His divine wisdom that no outcome can escape him, but at the same time we are accountable for our own actions and our own deeds. So when you come to someone and say you know why did God allow this to happen to this person, I can't rationalize that for you because my understanding is relegated to the immediate experience in front of me. But if I know God and if I learn about God, then I don't have to make sense of the plan, but I can tell you that I trust the planner. And I think that that's where peace is found. You know a lot of times you look for the light at the end of the tunnel. What's the light at the end of the tunnel? In Islam, there is emphasis on God and the hereafter because to try to make sense of divine decree and why certain things happen in this world. Without the existence of a God or without the existence of a hereafter, will always fail you. So the existence of a God that is all knowing what we don't know, I know what you don't know that understands what we don't understand, the existence of a God who is not subject to our constrictions. And the existence of a hereafter where all things find recourse where there is divine recourse allows for this world to be situated within the existence of something greater and not treated in isolation. So when you are trying to treat an incident of this world in isolation, you are going to fail and when you try to treat existence in this world and of this world in isolation, you are also going to fail and so the emphasis is the belief in God. A God that is not limited like you are and a belief in the hereafter that is not limited like this life, and so everything continues onwards and there is divine recourse for everything each and everything you know the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him mentions that. On the day of judgment, a person who lived the most difficult of lives will be dipped into paradise one time and will be told, "Have you ever seen any sadness any hardship?" Now when you think about the most difficult life, some of the commentators in Islam they said that this is perhaps referring to the Prophet Job a yub peace be upon him because Job lived obviously a life of great difficulty, but that a person who lived the very hard life would be dipped into paradise one time and just with a dip be asked, "Have you ever seen any hardship? Have you ever seen any misery? And that person would say, 'What is sadness? What is hardship? What is misery? Now if you don't believe in the hereafter if you don't believe in anything beyond this life then. The recourse has to happen in this life and because we see so many people pass through this life without recourse of cruelty without recourse of suffering, then we're forced to try to make sense of it and if you are someone who believes that this entire world came into existence through. Randomness that we're just an existence of random atoms that collide with each other and that all of this comes together out of nothing, then how can you put your trust in anything that is greater? So as a you know you ask me as a as a child of of a parent who suffered, I believe that every moment that my mother suffered, that she will be rewarded that she will be elevated that all of that. Made her or contributed to the beautiful person that she was and will contribute to the beautiful reward that she receives and the recourse is certain to me as a believer in that. So the right approach to making sense of the world, especially making sense of suffering and cruelty, is that of humility that we as humans cannot possibly understand fully. Absolutely, in fact in the Quran it's very interesting when God creates Adam, the angels say to God, "Are you going to create a race or a species that will spill blood and cause corruption? " and God says to the angels in response to that question, "I know that which you don't know. " So even the angels have to humble themselves for a moment. The angels who adore God, who love God, who worship Him, who obey Him unconditionally, they are told by God, "I know that which you don't know. " and what we extract from that what many of the early interpretations extract from that is that God knows that there are human beings that will come out of this enterprise of humanity. That make the entire existence of it worth it, and so just as yes there will be criminals and corrupt ones, there will be prophets and beautiful people that come out of this and sages and saints that come out of this that show that a human being. Who unlike an angel who has no choice but to worship God, an angel has no sense of will, no sense of choice, an angel is created to worship and has no desires. A human being who has the choice of desire and worship, the choice of righteousness and wickedness, that there are human beings who will choose worship and righteousness. That will choose charity over cruelty, that will choose service and choose dedication and devotion over death and destruction. That there are human beings that will in fact ascend the angels in rank because they will live lives where they choose that capacity that part of themselves. And they lean into that and worship God lovingly and obey Him. You see, in some of the sages in Islam scholars they describe this as saying that the human being has the capacity to be anywhere from an animal to an angel or even worse to be a devil you know to an angel not in the sense that we ever actually become angels or become animals but. That an animal you know for the most part seeks its desires over everything doesn't really think about you know many of the things that we are supposed to calculate as human beings doesn't think about which territory it's infringing upon or you know how much of its appetite it should fulfill it simply exists to fulfill its appetite and that many human beings simply exist to fulfill their appetite and they choose that over worship or reason or anything that is greater just. They they literally take themselves as gods in that sense and their selves have no limitation on appetite so they just keep filling that appetite and filling that appetite and filling that appetite whereas. A human being can also go to the extent of choosing something greater and disciplining their desires, disciplining themselves because they're seeking a greater reward. You know we know many people that achieve great things in the worldly sense because they choose to study over sleep for example. They choose to exert themselves towards their careers towards their education because they believe that ultimately the outcome of those pursuits are more rewarding than the immediate fulfillment of their desires. So as believers, we choose that love of God and we choose that outcome that we seek and we discipline ourselves to where we can even ascend past the angels in rank. Now of course I said we can go as low as an animal or even as low as a devil, and we have tyrants past and present and future as well. That can become satanic in their nature because they allow their desires to take such control over them that they not only worship them but that every other existing being around them. Simply becomes a piece of their own puzzle and pursuit of their own lordship and their own satisfaction. They will kill, they will discard not because you know I always say this it's not that tyrants necessarily like killing people it's that people's lives pose somewhat of an you know an indifference to them they're indifferent to people's existence and so you become. Either an object for or against me, and so they're willing to discard children, discard people, discard the rights of others because they ultimately have chosen that the greatest pursuit of themselves. Is the maximum position of power and a place to where they can fulfill what they want to of themselves without any limits and every everyone else becomes either a threat or an opportunity in that regard. So we can be devils, we can be angelic like, we can be animals. We're somewhere on that spectrum, and every moment contains a set of choices you can make. Absolutely, every single moment contains a set of choices, and that's where the intentionality comes in, right? So the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says that I saw a person strolling in paradise because he removed something harmful from the road. He tells us about a woman that lived a life in prostitution but that repented to God when she was thirsty one day and she saw a dog that was also thirsty and she said that I was thirsty and God gave me water so I am going to choose to give water to that thirsty dog and God enters her into paradise as a result of that. Sometimes the small moments with a small sincere deed can have a huge impact on a person's trajectory, so every moment is a moment of choices and when we choose. Belief, righteousness, a pursuit of something greater. Then we find ways to turn things that are otherwise mundane into miraculous acts, right? Where we can we can choose God over ourselves, and in the process choose a better fate for ourselves. How difficult is the process of knowing, understanding what is the righteous action of knowing what it means to be a good man or a good woman? Well, the truth has consequences, so don't seek out the truth unless you are willing to abide by what you find. So a lot of people want to mold their journey in accordance with a predetermined pursuit that they already have, and so when they approach religion, they approach it like another product. You know there was an article that was actually written by a rabbi. I've spoken about this in several sermons. It was called The Allure of Narcissistic Spirituality. The Allure of Narcissistic Spirituality, where he talks about you know how religion becomes just another product of your own self adoration and worship to where you only approach religion to the extent that it gives you. More happiness in the worldly sense, you only approach of it what is therapeutic, so it becomes just as secular in its nature as any other practice of meditation or whatever it may be or some other product, and it kind of mentions you know how. He he took that from a person that is praying in a temple, and a guy walks into the temple and bumps into him, and then he curses the guy out. So he didn't see his behavior towards that person as part of his trajectory of worship. He just saw his being godly. As the worship that he was engaged in, the truth has consequences. The truth has circumstances that are required of you, actions that are required of you that may be somewhat inconvenient. So you have to be willing to engage in a sincere pursuit of truth and look for truth for what it is. And not simply look for comfort and convenience, and when you engage in that journey of wanting to know, you have to engage it thoroughly. And sincerely, and try your best to remove any bias. I think that's what makes the the religion of Islam such a phenomenon for people that with all the Islamophobia and the bigotry towards it. Still the fastest growing religion in the United States and the fastest growing religion in the world. No that's not all birth rate. Yeah we have a lot of kids, but many people you know you met someone just before we started this interview. Many people in fact in a post nine eleven world. Saw what they saw of Islam in the media, and they actually you know went and checked out copies of the Quran and started to read about the religion and in their sincere pursuit of truth. Ended up embracing a religion that they believed was the greatest source of destruction in the world and now it's the greatest source of peace for them in their own existence in their own lives. And so you have to be willing to engage in a sincere pursuit of wanting to know. And then be willing to engage in sincere commitment after you know, otherwise the heart rusts. And so there is a process in the Quran talks about this