Omar Suleiman: belief

Transcript context

…The following is a conversation with Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, his second time on the podcast. He is a Palestinian American, a Muslim scholar, a civil rights leader, president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and is one of the most influential Muslims in the world. Our previous conversation was focused on Islam. This time the focus was on Gaza and Palestine. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Omar Suleiman. What did you think, feel, and pray for in the days that followed October 7th? I think the first feeling was that there’s going to be a lot of death and destruction in Gaza as a result. We always kind of see this where one Israeli casualty leads to hundreds of Palestinian casualties, right? So, it’s a pretty familiar cycle in some ways where there are daily transgressions against Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza, the checkpoints, the aggression on Mosque Al-Aqsa, the settlements expanding, the stories of Palestinian death. And then you have rockets fired from Gaza, and that’s when the Western press catches up and starts to cover it. Israel responds with Hellfire missiles, white phosphorus bombs, and the casualties are wildly disproportionate. And so, I think that I wasn’t surprised. I prayed for the people that I knew were going to bear the brunt of this outbreak, but the outbreak was predictable. You wrote a statement on October 9th. I was hoping to read it, if it’s okay?…

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