Bayan on Demand offers a growing library of courses taught by highly regarded scholars and practitioners, designed for meted board members, school administrators, imams, chaplains, youth workers, parents, and more With classes on Islamic theology, adolescent development, non-profit management, and the history of Islam in America, and more Bayan On Demand provides accessible knowledge for just $10 a month. Join our growing community of learners today and support the work of Bayan Islamic Graduate School and the Moham Ali Scholarship. Go to bayan online.org. That's B-A-Y-A-N online.org to get more information. As Salaamu Alaikum, may the peace that only God can give be with you. I'm your host, Imam Tariq El-Amin and welcome to the American Muslim Podcast presented by Bayan on Demand. On today's episode, I am honored to have with us Kalia Abiade She's the Executive Vice President at Pillars Fund, a national nonprofit dedicated to amplifying Muslim civic and creative leaders to advance opportunity and justice for all. With nearly two decades of experience at the intersections of media policy and philanthropy, Kalia has long been a powerful voice for racial equity, religious freedom, and immigrant rights. Her work at Insights have shaped national conversations and have been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and Beyond, originally from California. Ah, such wonderful weather there. Welcome to the American Muslim Podcast, my sister.

Wa Alaikum As Salaam Thank you so much.

Well, I appreciate you, uh, taking the time, you know, out of your, I'm sure, which is a quite weighty and busy schedule to have this conversation with us when we'll first start by saying, we always invite our guests to be as open, as vulnerable, as transparent as they are comfortable being and sharing, uh, their story, right? Because there's certainly, obviously just in the little bit that I've shared about your, uh, your, your bio, um, there's value also in what brought you to where you are today. When you look back on your early life in California. Are there any formative experiences that stand out as having, shall we say, planted the seeds for your later work and justice and advocacy?

Wow. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me and I love talking about growing up in California You know, in my child mind is such a magical time and I was surrounded by so many family members and people that I loved. Uh, love, love, love, love. So I would say there's so many moments and you know, of course as an adult I've been able to reconstruct, you know, just as, and especially as a parent, like what are the things that I wanted to take from my own experiences growing up. But the thing that really sticks out to me, I think are, are kind of two things. One is just like my better understanding of stories of migration. Um, Isabelle Wilkerson's book, the Warmth of Other Sons, like Truly Yes, changed my life and the way I understand my own family's stories. And so my mom's side of the family is from the Philippines and migrated in the 1920s and the 1940s to the Bay Area. Bay Area ish. And my dad's side of the family is from Corsa, Texas and migrated around the same time in the 1940s to the Bay Area. And in many ways their stories were so, so parallel because they left home very young, um, never to go back. Right. It was just that one way MI migration and they landed in the, at the time you weren't calling a move from Texas to California migration. Right. Until we understood it as the great migration. But understanding how these stories, how my grandparents' lives intersected without even knowing it. How that ended up with my parents meeting one another and then living here in Chicago now and being the site, you know, such an important site of the great migration living, you know, in a neighborhood that is just foundational in that story. I've been able to like recreate like a better understanding of all those small moments that did make this up. So sometimes this was spending time in a Filipino community center in Stockton, California, where there was dancing and food, but also labor organizing that I didn't realize was happening. Right. And these moments of mutual aid where I just understood this as people sharing what they had or sending things back home. But now I understand I have different vocabulary to put around that. And the same thing on my dad's side of the family, knowing that my grandmother moved from Corsicana, um, to live with a family that we only understood to be like Big Dad, big Mama. We didn't know their names right? I was big dad. Um, but knowing that that man actually was pivotal in, um, the Pullman Porters Union and some of the organizing that was happening there and understanding that there was labor organizing happening on both sides of my family and that my dad before he went to college. It was sort of, you know, wayward, uh, Berkeley High graduate and just like living his best life in the 1970s, right? As a young black man in, uh, in Berkeley. And his family was like, young man, you are going to be a Pullman. You're gonna like ride the that car from Oakland to Chicago. That's your route. And he got to a place where he was like, I don't necessarily wanna be shining white man shoes for the rest of my life. This is a really powerful space for organizing and these people are doing really dignified work, but I understand what my family's doing. They want me to find my way and do something different. And so there, I just knew these stories growing up, right? I didn't know them in these contexts of what it meant to grow up in the sixties and seventies in the Bay Area, or to take that trip from Oakland to Chicago and how important that was or to, you know, make these trips overseas from, um, the Philippines and other places, you know, outside of the country or over land. But I just lived that every day and getting to see these examples of how people came together, how people organized around labor, how people supported one another, but also did it with such a joy and dignity. Um, I think those are the things that I think about when I think about home.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Do you feel a particular connection to the California area that is different than your connection being rooted now with your family, you know, here in the Chicagoland area? Uh, is is there a difference

besides the produce? Because I can get really mad grocery shopping in Chicago. You know, I like when I'm at my parents' home in California, there are these plums that like, they just fall off the tree. They're so ripe. I saw them the last time I was there a couple weeks ago, and they were green and they're getting ready. They're about to fall off that tree and be so juicy and they smell amazing. And when my youngest son, who's now seven, he was there, you know, just before he was two. And he would just, every morning would eat like four or five plums juice, like dripping all down his face. And I came back to California, to Chicago and they smelled like water. I was like, these plums don't have a taste or smell, they're just red water. Um, so besides that, 'cause I can really, really talk about that at length and I think it's important. It's not just, it's something I joke about, but it was a connection to the land in a way that I don't, I have to seek out here. Um, and it's a connection to this understanding of what we may need to survive

mm-hmm.

That we don't know how to do anymore as a people. Right. Like, we don't know many times how to grow our own food or to cultivate land in that way and be connected. In that way. So there are some differences because I just was surrounded by it and I didn't realize how much that abundance of like actual physical food was so important. Mm-hmm. Um, but I'd say the differences, I, I, I don't think, I think we're, I'm my husband and I, and you know, uh, my husband, we're constantly trying to create community and a sense of home for our family. And that's the most important thing. I feel like I, um, my roots are for sure in California and I have a deep connection to Florida after spending, uh, more than a decade there. But this is home for us and so I like to go back there to visit, but for my kids, um, seeing it through their eyes like they are Chicagoans and that really means a lot to me. So knowing that both my dad had that connection of Chicago, but my grandmother from the Philippines also did, she came here and worked at Michael Reese Hospital. Um, as a young Filipino nurse. So I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be and yeah, there are differences for sure, but the similarity is that like we are really trying to cultivate a sense of home here and belonging.

So you mentioned there's also a connection to Florida having gone to school there. Can you see what each space that you've been able to spend time in, how it has impacted you? I mean, I guess it's pretty obvious with, with California, you know, with the grapefruit and you know, home, you know, but, but as these other places that you've been to, are you able to identify the imprint that they've made on you?

I keep going back to Isabel Wilkerson and I've met her once in person here in Chicago and I had to stop myself from just like overdoing it. And you meet like a celebrity like Michael Jackson or something. I was just like, you changed my life. But, um, moving to Florida as a 14-year-old from California was a culture shock, to say the least. I thought it was moving to like Miami Vice, you know, like just right. Disney World, something like that. But I was moving to the south and like that's what I didn't understand and I got off. Um, my family took the train from LA to Palka, Florida, which is just a little south of Jacksonville, pretty small town. And we were just in New Orleans when we stopped there. We stopped for a few hours, you know, you get out, stretch your legs in Palka, the train stopped. You took your train, your bags off the train and then it left. And we were just standing in the middle of a forest and I was like, what have you done? Parents, like, where are we? What's going on? And I think the way that that shaped me was understanding my family's story. No, my family wasn't from Florida. I mentioned Texas and Alabama, uh, South Carolina. But understanding myself as a product, like my connection to the south and how, what it looked like for people whose families didn't migrate right. For people who stayed and what that looked like. To have that connection, to be able to trace your family back 3, 4, 5 generations to the same plot of land. Mm-hmm. My friends had these deep, deep roots there. And I thought that was so special and something that even though I like had, you know, connections to my family, I didn't have connections to my family in Texas and Oklahoma in that same way. I didn't have this connection to that land in the way. I was definitely a guest I felt like, but it was so. Special to think about what it looks like to have that. And so that's one piece that I felt like a reclamation, I guess, of my identity and like a sense of who I was. Mm-hmm. But I also became Muslim in Florida. Um, I got met my husband in Florida. Um, experience, you know, had my first real job as a journalist in Florida, um, in the months after nine 11 as a new Muslim, as the only Muslim, um, working in the newsroom in the newspaper. The world changed, you know, at that time. And I was in Florida as it changing. And as you're watching what's happening in Florida now, there's so many parallels, right? The government really, um, cracking down on just free speech and any semblance of what we think of as progress or what I think of as progress. Being really intentional and seeding it. Like in the universities when I was there in college, um, was one of the first attempts at rolling back affirmative action. Mm-hmm. Right. These are things I experienced as a young adult. And so just having that attunement and like, like I said, finding my like, spiritual sense of self in Florida, it's a really, um, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was just a really important time to, for me to be there.

Mm. From a journalism standpoint, being in the room, as the culture shifted as, as looking back and realizing that a lot of what was presented to the American people was spurious, um, outright lies. Um, so when it comes to journalistic integrity, right, this idea of vetting sources, vetting information. How do you think the erosion of that has impacted, um, the work that you do, the rooms you know, that you're in? How do you deal with that?

Oh, how do you deal with that? I mean, I see your shirt, right, right, right. In this education, I think of a time when I was in J school and one of my photojournalism professors was talking about his experiences traveling the world as a photojournalist. And in my. Very naive, wrong but loud era, you know, um, I have really bought into this idea of objectivity in journalism, right? That journalists are objective and you know, we have to not put our opinions or perspectives or life experiences on the table to be a good journalist. And you're just reporting the facts, right? Like this, just, that's it. And my, I remember this, uh, photojournalist professor, he was looking at me like, have I taught you nothing? Like, what is wrong with you? And he couldn't believe how loud and wrong I was being in a public setting. Like it wasn't in class. This was like at a public conversation where there were people from outside of our institution there. And so I'm glad, I'm glad that he, you know, he called me in, I would say he was questioning me in the moment, but we had a deeper conversation about this and continued to, and like nobody is objective, right? And I think a lot of us have bought into this idea of objectivity, whether you're in academia or philanthropy, the field that I'm in now or in journalism, that you don't bring your full selves to the work that you're doing. And I think we're more honest. Um, we can be more honest about the journalism that's happening. When you do talk about where you're coming from, why you ask, the questions that you ask, why you go to the, the sources that you go to, whose voices get privileged over others. When we start to have a better understanding of like where we're coming from, we can filter information differently. But I think a lot of us have been taught to believe that there's such thing as like fact even in research, right? Like this is fact based, that there's no, um. You know, subjectivity in here and, and my husband's in the hard sciences, right? He's an engineer and material science scientist. And I, I've learned a lot from watching how he teaches, right? How he talks about ethics in science, especially as technology is the technology is evolving. How he has to build in lessons on engineering ethics. When we're thinking about who's gonna be creating our self, like our self-driving cars, or even who created the sensors like in washroom, right? Where like, whose skin tone is recognized under those lights for the water to come on and the soap to dispense it really matters who's designing, um, the tools that we're engaging with. And so I, there's no such thing as objectivity, right? We have to be transparent about where we're coming from. And I think that has gotten us into a lot of trouble. Um, just in terms of like what journalism is considered the standard, who's. Journalistic voices are perceived as acceptable. Um, I've talked with so many Muslim journalists through my work at Pillars Fund, who feel like they have to hide certain parts of themselves when they're reporting on their own communities. And like, who better to report on a community than somebody from within it who can speak to the nuance and do it with compassion versus like always having to have an objective outsider come in that objective outsiders often like white and or male. Mm-hmm. Coming into communities of color or communities overseas and being like, I'm bringing you the like fair and balanced perspective. Like, who says that that is more fair and balanced, right? What, what are the biases and the blind spots that are being brought in, um, into that? So I think as audiences, we obviously have to get a lot more critical. About what we're consuming and take off, you know, this notion that objectivity exists, but also hold our journalism institutions to higher standards, whether that's through what we subscribe to or what we read, what we click on, but also support these like really amazing and emerging, um, platforms, podcasts, uh, you know, are obviously having a moment right now that's such an important way, but so many different types of, um, you know, new and emerging platforms that are really like old, you know, old models. We've always had these in our communities, right? Yeah. Like I live down the street from the Chicago defender. Like,

yeah,

that emerged for a reason. Right down the street from that is Ida B. Well's home, right? Like, we've always had these, so the ways that we can get back to telling truthful stories, and I think being more critical is supporting institutions like that, supporting more people from our community, um, to do this work and having more media not cracking down on what exists. Mm

mm. So you mentioned Isabel Wilkerson and I, I love that, uh, book as well, the Warmth of Other Sons as well as, uh, what is it? Uh, cast, uh, origins. Yeah. Uh, cast, um, you know, so yeah, she's, uh, phenomenal and I see this and, uh, serving the ends of sensitizing people, um, giving people a, a window into an experience that they may actually be embedded in but not understand how they got there. So when you talk about migration, you know, like, like we, we didn't call the folks that came up from the south refugees.

That's

right. But they certainly would've fit the criteria, and that is what they were a lot of, they were refugees. Right. They really, a lot of 'em had to steal their way out of, out of the south. Um, so I, I, I don't wanna go off on a tangent, but what I'm thinking about here is the opportunity to introduce new thoughts or reinforce thoughts that kinda get, uh, glossed over or, or, or hidden the work that you do. Now, is there an element of, or there's an intentional element, right, of sensitizing people, right? As a, as a means of institutional thought leadership. Can you talk about how, how you go about that work and what you hope people, um, what type of sensitization you hope people come away with or is increased in their proximity or, you know, um, awareness of your work?

I love that. So I mean, as you know, a Pillars fund supports a range of Muslim leaders in creative and civic spaces, um, and work get to work with just these incredible partners in and alongside of our community who are just so brilliant and creative and thoughtful and critical. Um, it's such a privilege to be able to be in conversation with people that I've held up as heroes for a really long time and just to like have a normal conversation with them, just like, you are so smart, you know, and I just wanna collect all of these folks. And so I think the first task that we have, and we did this with a program, um, at Pillars called the Muslim Narrative Change Cohort. And so this was just before COVID. We were thinking about, okay, what do we, what kind of cultural interventions do we wanna do? For a long time we've supported, um, community based nonprofit organizations, legal organizations, and. Health clinics, mental health, you know, work, research, all really, really important. But how are we gonna really, really shift this landscape? Right? Like at a sort of like a little bit more upstream, like how do we change the actual pervasive narratives that are undergirding so many of the challenges that we're having? So we assembled this crew of incredible people who were just thought leaders in their own right at the time, right? People like Dr. Saad, Abdul Zahir, Ali Omar fdo, um, Dr. Hussein Rashid, Dr. Crystal Truscott. I mean, it was like a dream team of people. And I'm leaving a few folks off, but like, these were people whose work I had been familiar with and, uh, this other brother, Rashid Chaz, who's, you know, been, he runs an organization called Critical Minded and. We were trying to do our work, we were trying to understand this work through the lens of some work that already existed, right? Like there was some neuroscience work happening around, like how do audiences react to certain stories that they see? There was a lot of work happening around fandoms, um, and how like masses of people like, you know, go be like, become like a fandom, right? Like how does something like for the Marvel universe or whatever, right? There's this whole universe of fans and so we're trying to understand all these things and kind of put existing models onto Muslim communities and think about like, okay, how do we understand this? Through this existing neuroscience worker, through this existing model on fandom. And those had limited application. They were good, they were useful. But what this, this really incredible crew, the Muslim narrative change cohort helped us think about was just like, what models already exist in our community? We do not need to use other people's models to tell us what we should think about ourselves. To understand what moves our communities. And, um, Rashid Chavez, he asked a question in this, in this room the first time we gathered, which was what, um, would not exist if not for the presence of Muslims in the United States, right? Hmm. And we just got to open that up and there was a silence in the room that existed at first, right? 'cause we, we hadn't, it's a simple question on its face, but it wasn't one that we had actually contemplated, like, what in this country would not exist if not for Muslims? And we're not talking about like math and, you know, those kinds of things that we hear. There's obviously a lot of like those contributions, but in the cultural landscape, and you're just in the fabric of what this nation has become. And I think it just allowed us to ask different questions, but also most importantly, change our audience. So a lot of times what I think people do is try to reach a dominant audience. And it's not just Muslim communities, right? Many people do this like, well, we need, we're being harmed by this dominant group, so we need to convince them that we're good, we're acceptable, we're safe, we're just like them. All of these things, right? But what you do sometimes in that is you skip your own people and don't realize that we need to be telling ourselves stories. We need to be reinforcing these stories for our own communities. We need to be preserving our family and community stories for ourselves and trust that if these are good and compelling stories, which they are, they will resonate with the outside audience. And we have all these examples of this, right? I more recently, some kind of pop culture examples come up like Black Panther, um, insecure. These are people, these are stories that were not necessarily created, insecure, especially, it was not created for a white audience. Even though it exists on HBO, it was created for. A set of sort like millennial black audiences. And so some of the jokes, if you're not part of that community, you might not get right. But it doesn't matter, they don't stop to translate. They're just like, we're going, we're going, we're going. And so we were like, we can do this too. Um, and so I think thinking about our own people as our audience first was the biggest shift that we've done and has changed the way that we've done all of our work. Whether that's grant making to community-based organizations, supporting journalists, supporting emerging Muslim filmmakers. It's like, do you prioritize Muslim audiences? What does that look like? Are you speaking to my children? Are we speaking to your children? Right? Like, are we speaking to, um, you know, maybe thinking of the Issa RA's work, are we also speaking to like the late 20 something early thirties, something black Muslim woman who's navigating our professional life, not only as a Muslim person, but just like as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, as a cousin, right? Like. Just existing in the world. And I think again, that's the been the biggest shift we've been able to make is like thinking about our audiences first, and trusting that these authentic, nuanced, kind of messy stories will, if they resonate with us, they will resonate with broader audiences.

Hmm. You know, that takes me back to, uh, the idea of, of this false understanding of objectivity. And you know, how it often leads to a pandering or a, uh, an erasure because you turn, you, you basically give the microphone to somebody who doesn't understand, uh, context, doesn't understand culture, and they arrive at, um, they, they arrive at conclusions that are incomplete and skewed and sometimes harmful. And it's, it's unfortunate. It's not until. And we find this in scholarship, in academia, the idea of ethnographic research where you are able to embed yourself into your research and you, you own that, right? So, I mean, that's what I'm hearing. I think that's one of, one of the things that I'm much more excited about is that people are owning their perspective and coming at it from a position of, there's value here and I don't need you to tell me that there's value. I know there's value here. Right? So when you think about the, the diversity of the Muslim community and being able to, I guess being, being in all of these, these different rooms, right there, there're not many of us who get the opportunity to see the different corners. Right. Um, but what has that experience done for you in terms of, I don't wanna say a HA hierarchy of. Of how those voices are presented, but maybe the, the, the tonality in terms of how they, how they work together so that it's not just noise, but as, uh, I was talking to Preacher Moss, but as it's, it's sound. Right. Um,

Ooh.

Well, it might feel a little noisy still. Yeah. It might still feel a little noisy, but I think that's okay. Um, I, I feel really fortunate at Pillars. We've been able to, I'm not gonna say we've always gotten it right, 'cause we certainly haven't, and there's always something to learn. And every time we do anything, whether that's a grant cycle or a fellowship cycle, or even programming or even a small gathering, right, there's always something that we're like, okay, like here's what worked and here's. The shifts that we're going to make and need to make. So there's constantly a fine tuning on that, and that includes compositions of rooms or groups or, you know, just whose voices are, are included or louder. I think one thing that we did really, really early that I'm super grateful for is just think about, okay, who has historically been excluded from within the Muslim community in some of these spaces? What are the ways that we might be as a community, as a, as a set of communities? I will say, right? We've one said we're not of monolithic community. There's no one Muslim community. But as a set of communities, how might we, how might we be replicating, um, external patterns of harm or behavior, you know, that prioritize certain voices and exclude others. Initially the first, um, and clearest way to think about this was the way that black Muslim communities have been foundational to American history, but silence in a lot of Muslim spaces like that was just the, the first and easiest way to like, where we turned our attention to. It was also, if I'm being honest, like a relatively easy way to track if we were changing that or not. Right? It was real, like in the early years it was like, okay, if we have 20 grantees, this many are led by black Muslims done, right? Like it wasn't that simple, but it was an easier sort of thing to be like, are we actually hitting this just from a purely like non-profit, you know, industrial complex kind of way of measuring. That's not the whole story, obviously. Um, but it was a place to start. And so I would say it's still, um, I don't know if we've like. I think it's been really important for us to not try to make all of the voices to think of it maybe like as a mosaic or like fabric. It doesn't need to be like seamless, right? Like these things, like different elements of our community can coexist and maybe it will sound noisy at a time. When you think about like an orchestra and when they're like warming up and it's like, like all of the like sounds, and then there are moments where they come together. Then there are moments where it's like scratchy again. I really love that. Um, I'm gonna be thinking about that a lot. The, the difference between noise and sound. And also, um, URA Yusef talks about that too, right? How she, she will ask where the singers or sing, there's no, you know, she's such a beautiful singer and I'll be like, I cannot do that. And she's like. You just sound, you don't need to sing. Just sound like we, we'll, we'll sound together. Right. And it's just a really beautiful invitation to join this thing without needing it to be perfect. And so I think we've really gone for, yeah, some kind of like harmonizing that doesn't need to be like totally, totally like on the money all the time, but it's really difficult and you have to, I think we've had to resist, um, some of the urges to go that nonprofit industrial, like the, the census counting of like who's there, but also think about like, uh, what are some stories? So I'll give a a more concrete example 'cause I am all over the place and you've made me really think about this. Um, we have among our, so we have this program called the Pillars Artist Fellowship. And it's emerging Muslim filmmakers 10 per cycle. They are writers like screenwriters and directors and just. So funny and sensitive and brilliant, all of the things, right? And so sometimes that people make pretty big assumptions like, okay, we've got documentary film, we've got TV writers, we've got maybe some folks who are working in like, you know, sort of coming of age stories. This past year in our, our cohort that just closed, we have this Bangladeshi filmmaker who is into horror. Now, that is not my thing. I'm terrified. Like even watching his samples, I was like, ah, like, it's so terrifying to me. But he's, you can tell when you watch his stuff that he is brilliant, right? Like you can, you can see it jump off the screen Now, who would think of like a Muslim director engaging in like horror film, but he weaves in familiar Muslim stories, right? Like commentary on the spiritual life and like the earthly realm, right? It's all there. In a way that I would say like, you know, not, not to make this direct comparison, but like in the way that people who watch Sinners might experience like, Ooh, this is hard, but it's making me engage with like my spiritual self, my sense of self in community, my sense of self over time, right? And so I think of New Hash, this is this filmmaker's name, his work, he just, he premiered a film at, uh, south by Southwest. He just won this really big award, um, in the Bangladeshi film, um, you know, space. And he spent a good amount of his, you know, uh, time in Texas. And that's, you know, the kinds of stories that it's not just a tick box, right? Oh, we've got this type of director. This, it's like, what, how creatively is he approaching this way to tell Muslim stories? What does it mean to tell a Muslim story? Is there one time type Of course, no, there's not one type of Muslim story, right? But we can really, really get into the layers and I think for. Uh, for me right now, like his work represents like all of the messiness and the nuance and the discomfort that I personally have with like, the genre of horror. Mm. But the way that it reaches people and the way that it reaches audiences and the way that it's resonating with people who don't even know anything about Bangladeshi culture or language or Muslims or anything, you're drawn in because he's such a, a creative and magnificent storyteller. And I think that's the kind of stuff that I want to, like uplift even more, even if I can't watch it. I have not seen sinners, by the way. 'cause I'm so scared you haven't of stuff like this. I know. I feel like you gotta go feel, it's a hard thing to admit.

Well, I, I would certainly encourage you to see it. And it's not, it, even though it's listed under the horror genre, it is not a horror movie at all. There's a, there's a little bit of suspense. It's not a lot of gore. It's really, really, it's not

okay. It's not, I mean, I might just think about it. I respect it. I respect it.

Yeah. You said, but I don't know if I wanna go see it. I'm so

scared. I watched New Lash's work because I like was contractually obligated and it's brilliant. It really is. But I am like this and, but yes, I, I will take that into consideration. Okay.

So, uh, I guess as you were kind of talking about his work, I was thinking about how, you know, as I mentioned in your bio, that your work, your voice has contributed to, uh, to this narrative about, you know, Muslims in America, you know, right through, was it the New York Times and NPR and to some other outlets. Um. What are, and the work that you're doing now with pillars and like you said, raising up, um, you know, facilitating the work of a Muslim filmmaker, a Bangladeshi horror, uh, director. Right. It's not what jumps to the front of your mind when you think about Muslim contribution and involvement in the arts, right. And media. So it does speak directly to that. There are gaps that are there and sometimes we don't recognize what those gaps are. So as you've, uh, uh, in your experience and, um, what are some of the other gaps that we might not be even thinking of? Because like I said, who would've thought Muslim Bangladeshi horror, uh, uh, film director. Right.

I think going back to, you know, what we were talking about earlier about. Reclaiming stories and sort of this, you know, the stories that have kind of been lost along the way. I'm really grateful, and I know you've experienced and, and watched at least some of the episodes from the American Muslim documentary, but I think of that as an example of gaps for a couple of reasons, right? So this is a, a documentary that's been platformed by PBS, um, executive produced by a man named Graham Judd, and then Zahir Ali and Dr. Meha Al Hassan. And just the people who appear in this six series documentary are just like a, who's who of, you know, like American Muslim scholars, um, just incredible historian, sociologists, anthropologists. The stories that they lift up are really deeply, it's a, his, you know, it's supposed to be an epic. Story of American history and the Muslim's contributions in it. And one thing that Zahir, one of the EP says on this, um, in all of his work, but he talks about the ways that Muslims have shaped America, but in the ways that America has shaped Muslims, right? So it's this interplay that we are mutually exchanging and contributing and it, these, these six episodes that exist right now start, um, in early American history and kind of end in the 1930s. And so it seems like, okay, we have a lot written about, you know, our communities. There's a lot of scholarship that exists. So it doesn't necessarily seem like a gap. I think what the gap is, is the personal touch that's put on each of them. So in each of these six episodes, there's one person, right? Well, there, there's a couple. It, it's merging time. 'cause each of them is, um. There's like a lead interrogator, which is a current, the contemporary American Muslim journalist, which is a really amazing way to go about it. I think you have this seeker, this person who's going after this story and uncovering, but then they're connecting with one person from history who is an like one person that exists in that story. So we're not uplifting these, you know, uh, sort of exemplars. We're not uplifting these people who stand alone, right? They're ordinary people. And I think sometimes that's what we miss is that we miss the ordinary stories of the people who have been in, you know, in, in some of these like capital H history stories. There's, there's people there. And so when I was telling even my own family stories about like labor movements and all of these things that I've read about, I can see myself in those. I can see my family 'cause I understand how my family was a part of these. So it doesn't feel so abstract. I think that's one thing that's been really special about this series is that. You start, especially the Chicago episode, which is the last one, right? You start to see this woman, Florence, and the way she navigated Bronzeville, a neighborhood in Chicago, the way she was kind of traveling and commuting up to Evanston. This is her daily life. But in that, you get how she became Muslim, what was happening. You start thinking about what was happening with the Muslim community in the 1920s and thirties in Chicago specifically. You start thinking about what's happening with the economy. Like it was hard, right? There was, we're in between wars and there's the Great Depression, and you just start thinking about these like really personal ways so it becomes less of like bullet points and memorizing dates and these facts about like when this, you know, when this particular mesh should, was erected or when this sort of thing happened in history. But like this must have been really hard for her to get from Bronzeville to Evanston every day. Or once a week, what was happening with her children? How did that strain her relationships? What did that mean for this community of Muslim women that she found and felt so close to How important must they have been in her life to be a source of strength and even a place event in the way that I do with my friends here in Bronzeville? Right? And so I think that's the gap, is that that personal connection, not that these stories don't exist and that we don't have these dates on a timeline, but that we don't know like the intimate lives of the people who live those stories, even within our own families. And I think those are the things that come out in creative storytelling or some of the journalism work that we're getting to support are some of these new platforms where people are actually, like journalists are using WhatsApp. To source their stories and to, you know, share them. So, yes, a, a news article is appearing on a website or in print, but it's also being shared in WhatsApp. Right. Or like, that's the way that people are connecting with their sources, their aunties and uncles. They are interviewing them on WhatsApp. Right? And so there's this intimacy that's coming through, I think, in the storytelling that I think for me, that's been the biggest missing piece in a lot of our storytelling.

Hmm. What was the, uh, the thing that inspired you to pursue journalism at the, at the outset?

Well, I definitely thought that I, I had really believed in the black press. I had these really great stories about that, and I was really inspired by that. I also just thought I was going to convince people through my objectivity, right? I thought if you just give people the facts. Yeah, they will change their mind, right? Like that's all you have to do is just show them the truth. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that. And I was on the copy desk, so I was like editing people's stories primarily and doing page design. And a lot of that time there was like wire copy coming through and as I mentioned, it was in the months. My first job was in the months after nine 11, I was a new Muslim new journalist. It was shortly after the election of 2020, I mean 20, not 20 anything. 2000, which is like the hanging chads, right? Yeah. So I'm in Florida hanging Chads election in the balance, um, new Muslim war on terror. Just wild, wild times. And I truly thought if we just can make a few tweaks here and there, if we can tell people, you know, what's really happening, things will change you, pros and cons of that approach. I learned a lot about the business. Of media. Um, the jour, the newspaper that I worked for no longer exists. It was a small regional newspaper. Part of the New York Times group. The New York Times sold off all the regionals. It got bought by somebody else, by somebody else until it just no longer existed. And so I think, yeah, that's what initially brought me to it is I still believe in the power of storytelling. I still believe you should be truthful in your storytelling, but I don't think that facts alone are going to like, make the change. We've gotta be really, really strategic in how we share information, uh, what truths we believe about ourselves, uh, first and foremost, you know, how we're training ourselves and our children to be like more media literate and critical, but also to be creators and owners and authors of their own stories. Um, so yeah, I guess it was a little bit of, uh, just a naive worldview, but also extreme optimism and, um. I think seeing how people, like I mentioned like Ida B. Wells had been able to use journalism as a really powerful tool, um, to actually affect change. And I still believe in that. I just don't necessarily think that legacy media will always be the way to do that or the only way to do it. I think it needs to be part of like a mosaic of other sources.

Alright. And would you say that that, uh, boundary, that legacy media exists in is primarily due to its profit model and that truth is not for the sake of liberating or in really truly informing people, but it is information for this, for the purpose of, um, getting people hooked on your information.

I mean, especially now, right? With like the way that digital I. Media works and algorithms and how we have to like, keep people coming. So, I mean, yeah, there's always been really great people inside of these institutions and I don't wanna lose sight of that, right? There are really, really, really powerful things being done inside of some of these institutions and using that tool for what it is, which is a tool, right? It's not a tool of necessarily, of liberation, but it can be a tool of enlightenment or, you know, just exposure or accountability. And so, yes, but I think it just, it really speaks to the importance of like, what, what do we own? What do we, what do we want to prioritize? Do you know what I mean? Like, how do we wanna share? Actually this conversation has been coming up a lot lately. Um, a lot of people are talking about. Document retention and data retention. Right. Especially maybe I'm saying too much for the masses, but in, in higher ed, in nonprofit spaces, in philanthropy, any place where people are fearful of what's happening with the current administration, people are talking about, okay, what do we save? What information do we save about our work? And what information do we not save? And what are we legally obligated to save? And like what is protective and not protective? And just these conversations about like the intricacies of like law and risk mitigation.

Mm-hmm.

And um, I was talking with a poet recently who was just terrified of, um, I'm going on a tangent but just stay with me for a second. So she was talking about how nerve wracking it is to take things off of her computer and save them on hard drives. Right. Her work or stories or even. The way that she and her communities have organized, right? Like we rely so much on the written word to do what we do. And um, and we were being advised that, you know, maybe there are other ways to communicate and preserve these stories. Like does everything have to be written down all the time? Historically, as communities, how have we preserved our stories? Have we always written them down? Especially when our safety was on the line, right?

Mm-hmm.

I think about the Underground Railroad, there was no, I have not found, correct me if I'm wrong, no written strategic plan for how we are going to carry out the Underground Railroad and be successful at it.

Mm-hmm.

That information had to be shared in a very different way, a creative way, many creative ways. It had to be passed down through oral history. The same for Muslims. How do we get, how do we have this revelation that we have today? Right. It. Now it's been written, but initially it was oral transmission. So many things, right? So if we go back to these like it's, it's not, then it's not ownership, right? It's like how do we preserve this as a community? How do we preserve these stories as a community? Some of this stuff will end up in traditional media or legacy media or our institutes of higher education or research papers and things like that. But so many of these like recipes will be shared in a very different way. And that only can be done through community, right? That can only be done through knowing people from building trust. I still don't have a good bean pie recipe, and I'm fine with that, right? Like I am, okay, come on now with that, because I trust there are people preserving that and that is sacred. And if somebody entrusts that, you know, that guidance to me, at some point I will gladly receive and take it. In the meantime, I'm happy to eat everyone else's bean pie and know that this is being preserved. But the moment I start seeing, right, like Martha Stewart has a bean pie recipe on her website, that's terrible. Do you know? And plus it looks, it does not look like the real thing. Like I'm like, I wouldn't make that. Yeah. So I don't think we need to rely, I'm saying all this same, we don't need to rely on legacy media or traditional media or dominant sources of media. We have to think about what are the ways that we wanna preserve stories, our community legacy. Some of that will be in writing or recorded, but some of it will just exist person to person, because that's the best. And most traditional, most sacred way of preserving it. And philanthropy is not the only field, you know, going through this right now, we're seeing it in higher ed, how people are navigating, who owns what information, what's being prioritized, what's being said in, you know, quiet rooms. Corporations are doing the same thing. Everyone's figuring out the best ways to preserve, uh, their legacies, their stories, their ways of being in the world mm-hmm. That don't rely on these outside sources.

Yeah, yeah. Um, from a leadership standpoint, I'm thinking institutionally, are there particular lessons that Muslim, uh, led institutions should be observant of, or should, should learn from? Well, we'll use the model, we'll, we'll use the, the media as a, as a placeholder, right? Not specifically just the media. Um, actually what came to mind was the NAACP right. Uh, the idea that you have a financial interest at, at its, at its core, you have a financial interest in inequality and the persistence of inequality and, and racism. And that your job is to go out and fight it. Now, we know, I don't wanna take too much of a detour, but for the Muslims who are listening, and even those who are, who are not, you know who the devil is, right? So from our standpoint, we say, uh, Satan Shaan has, is an avowed enemy that his job is to oppose us at every, at every turn. So we know there will always be resistance, but is there a, a sense of complicity in facilitating the, um, the resistance because it serves our own financial, our financial, uh, ends right? Yeah. This is what I gotta do. Are there, are there any part, I hope, I hope I'm making that I'm, I'm saying that clearly,

I'm not sure which piece to pick up on. Maybe there's

for, for Muslims, are we afraid of, I guess I can say it like this, are we willing to work ourselves out of a job?

Right? Yeah. Yes. So in terms of what, yes. I mean, good news, bad news. There's a lot of work to do.

Mm-hmm.

So everyone's gonna have a job for a little while.

A long time.

Bad news. That's bad news, right? Yeah. But I think I, I was, um. Part of a, I think, a really special conversation recently where, uh, you know, it was with Ta Hasi Coates and a group of Muslims who were grappling with our role in this moment. Um, and what's our responsibility for the effort that we're putting in versus like, the outcomes.

Hmm.

And so I think this was, this is really important conversation that we need to be having. 'cause especially for Muslims who are working in certain fields, many fields, we often feel a responsibility for the outcome of what's happening. But I think if we get back to it, we're, we're not responsible for the outcome. Right. We're responsible for our efforts. That's right. And what we're putting in and trusting in God that there will be a resolution. And that our role is not to see what that resolution, you know, not to see what that outcome is, but to put forth our, you know, purifier and our intentions and put forth our best efforts to get to that just place. And that means like doing our own work also so that we're not contributing to harm. And that I think is like, I don't know if it's a lesson that it's not unique. I'm not like coming up with this, right? This isn't my own thing. But there's two things. One is just speaking of like shades on like this, um, resistance or resistance to despair. First of all, we have to be faithful. We have to believe that another reality is possible, which is why I love working with storytellers because they can imagine something different. And that's an act of faith is imagining what's on the other side of all of this and believing that there will be an other side and believing that there's good for us on that other side and that our job. Is to not despair and to keep working toward it and then to do that. And I think that's been a huge lesson for me getting to work with creatives and even like civic leaders who wouldn't consider themselves artists, but who are actively creating these ideas of what's possible and not losing sight of this. And no matter what field we are as Muslims, it's our responsibility to not despair, not give up and have faith in God that something better is coming. And so, again, I can't take credit for that lesson, but that's one that I've learned along the way over and over again, and I'm reminded of and getting to work with such incredible artists and creatives and colleagues every day. And one that I'm happy to pass along.

Hmm. Well, uh, I don't think you have to be the author to share truth and share good news, so thank you for that. Uh, how do you stay inspired and focused as a leader?

Well, I mentioned these awesome creatives and my colleagues. They're amazing. Um, I also think about my own, like just family histories that we've talked about a little bit that they put in so much. And actually, I joke about this, but, uh, anyone who's lost a parent, because this, I don't mean this to be light or flippant or anything like this, it's quite heavy actually. But I was having this moment where I was feeling very, very frustrated. Like extremely frustrated about having to have some conversations around. Equity like over and over and over again with one particular person. I was just like, I, I don't know what else we're gonna do. Hmm. Like, I don't know what else I can say. This is so aggravating to keep having these conversations. Like what? I kind of got to the point of what I just warned myself against, right? I was like, you're not despair. I was like, what is even the point? And my husband reminded me that my dad worked in higher ed administration for 40 years and his whole purpose in doing this explicit implicit everything was to get more first generation and more black students and more students of color into college and out of college, right through. And he saw a lot, he saw repeals of equal opportunity programs and affirmative action, these ebbs and flows. And he, until the day he died, he was still talking about this work, right? He had retired, but he was still doing it. And so in my moment of just like, ah, I can't do this anymore. My husband pulled the dead dad card on me. He was like. Like, how could you possibly, he was like, you saw what your dad did for four decades and he never gave up. Like, what raid do we have to quit now? And I was like, I have no answer to that. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? 'cause he was completely right. And so those are the things that keep me going is understanding how many people that one man who I got to see work every day. Like how many people he influenced and whose lives he impacted. And hearing those stories and knowing those people, but then also like my own kids will not, um, let me do nothing. Right? They, they, they will humble you. You know this, you're a parent. Children will humble you very quickly. Like you are not special. Yeah, I love you. Yeah. But like, can I have $10 or Right. Can you take me? So I think having both ends, right? I like this beautiful legacy that I have the privilege of referring to and with concrete examples. And also these young people who are looking to me to make sure that it's not the same for them when they go through.

Mm-hmm. I, I got one more question of you. And this really open-ended. Okay. Open-ended. Just finish. Finish the sentence. Take a second to think about it if you need to. If people remember one thing about how I've showed up in my work, I hope it's,

I hope it's in a connected way. I really value my, uh, connections to my family, to my friends, to my colleagues, but also I. To these stories that exist, you know, in the past and the ones that we don't know yet. And so I hope that, yeah, connection is the word that comes to mind that I hope is what I can leave behind.

Mm. Wonderful. I think that's a great way for us to, to close out. Um, I wish we had two hours, uh, but thank you so much. Uh, family. Our guest has been Kalia Abiade She is the Executive Vice President at Pillars Fund. Uh, you can check out their work at, well, you know what we'll do, we'll put their link. In the show notes, uh, but I'm sure it's probably something like pillars fun.org. Ah, there you go. That's great. Wow. Alright, family. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the American Muslim Podcast. If you found value in this conversation, if it gave you direction, if it sparked inspiration or simply affirmed what you already knew to be true, then we ask you to do two things. First, subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and share it with someone you care about. We also invite you to deepen your journey by joining our growing community of learners. Head over to bayan online.org and get your all access pass to over 30 dynamic courses taught by some of the most respected Muslim scholars and practitioners in the country. New content is being added all the time. And finally support those who are serving our communities. Over 70% of Bean students receive scholarships to continue their work in chaplaincy education, nonprofit leadership, and just about any area of community involvement and support. So contribute to the Muhammad Ali Scholarship fund@bayanonline.org. Invest in holistic community, wellness, leadership, and care. That's it for now. Until next time, I'm your host, IAM Terry. Klain, I leave you as I greeted you. I said Ium made the peace that only God can give be upon you.