Berkley Center

Azman: Khalafalla, How do you describe your faith?

Khalafalla: We're always required to pray five times a day. We're required to fast the month of Ramadan, pray the congregational prayer of Jummah on Fridays, but that's not what faith is. That's just the actions. Islam is our lifestyle. Islam is honoring your parents, honoring your neighbors, treating your friends properly with respect, making sure that you don't take out your anger at someone when you're having a bad day for example. These are all qualities that the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. These are what he valued and that's what our lifestyle is supposed to exemplify. We're supposed to follow this.

Azman: What lessons how do you feel like your religion has taught you? And can you tell me about some of them?

Khalafalla: I was actually doing a sermon at the U Albany Muslim student association's congregational prayer, the Jummah. The message of my sermon was to not act ignorant in the face of ignorance and to follow the true meaning of Islam, which is acting merciful because Allah is the most merciful and we won't be given mercy if we're not merciful on the people that we meet every day. Right. I wasn't wearing traditional clothing.

Azman: You look like a Muslim.

Khalafalla: Yeah. I looked very obvious that I'm a Muslim.

Azman: Very traditional. They can point you out in a crowd. Like, that's that guy?

Khalafalla: Exactly. So the same day I was chilling with my friend minding our own business. Right. Random guy comes up to me. He greets me with profanity. Right. I can't even say what he said. Right. I smiled back. I was like, Oh, Hey bro, why are you acting that way? This was the same time as the Garland, Texas shooting unfortunately. He's like, you hear about what happened in Garland? And I said, yeah. And he said, your people's time is coming. Right. And he's walking away. And my friend stands up very heated, very angry, wanting to fight this guy. And so I hold him back. I was like, nah, man, we can't act ignorantly in the face of ignorance.

Azman: My next question was about Islamophobia. And like what people think about Muslims and what it actually is.

Khalafalla: Islamophobia, Azman.

Azman: What does that mean? What does that mean to you?

Khalafalla: What does Islamophobia mean?

Azman: Yeah.

Khalafalla: It means the fear of a very beautiful religion.

Azman: Sounds weird.

Khalafalla: People-

Azman: Fear of a beautiful religion.

Khalafalla: I know. How could that be right.

Azman: How can you fear a beautiful religion?

Khalafalla: A lot of people misunderstand Islam, right? Yeah. There's a lot of misunderstandings.

Azman: There's a lot.

Khalafalla: Islamophobia in America, skyrocketed ever since 9/11, but you know what? After people started questioning our religion, criticizing our religion, we went back to the mosques and the scholars taught us what our faith was. And we benefited, we realized these guys don't know what they're talking about, but also we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't appreciate the religion we were brought up on. I feel like we've taken things for granted and Islamophobia has awakened us.