Your Perceptions Were Intentionally Crafted

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;03;08 Ahmed Cheema Coming up on the Branding Deep Dive podcast.

00;00;03;10 - 00;00;38;03 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans One of the cool things about a brand is that a brand, a brand can intentionally represent the best of a people's aspirations. You know, it's almost like, you know, you know, a really effective act of branding is anytime you're in Egypt. And I think this is probably the case in a lot of Arab countries. People that see walking past a cafe or walking past a restaurant, they will often say to follow the to follow the man like have stopped.

00;00;38;06 - 00;01;15;03 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Now, they don't intend to actually dine with you. The same thing with the taxi driver who is saying, suddenly, I need a car. It's on the house. He doesn't intend to actually give you the ride for free. But in terms of generosity being an ideal of our people, these little seemingly empty pleasantries and practices keep that idea alive.

00;01;15;06 - 00;01;37;27 Ahmed Cheema This is an achievement. And welcome to the Branding Deep Dive podcast. If you're new here, this is a podcast where we have in-depth discussions about what brands are doing well to drive customer loyalty and how you can take those principles and apply them to your own brand. Today we're talking to stock. Obeidallah Evans Sadler is a resident scholar at the American Learning Institute for Muslims and teaches for numerous programs and organizations both in the Chicago area and nationally.

00;01;37;28 - 00;02;02;17 Ahmed Cheema In this episode, we dive deep into what shapes our perceptions. Why Southall Evans wears the clothes he wears, what brands represent to a people and much, much more. Even if you're not into branding, this episode is a must listen. Now here's the star to be Lavin's. Listen, I'm only going to say thank you so much for accepting the invite.

00;02;02;19 - 00;02;26;14 Ahmed Cheema We are honored to have you on the show. For the audience that may not be familiar with who you are. Your work for me, you're like, you're a teacher. You know some of my best moments in my in my life have been in your classroom, Right? And so for the people that have not experienced that, can you give them a brief introduction of who you are, your background and kind of what what you're doing right now?

00;02;26;17 - 00;02;54;18 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Bismillah. Amen. Rahim My name is Obey the Law. Evans. I am currently the resident scholar for the American Learning Institute for Muslims. In addition to that work, whose focus is mostly national, you know, a lot of the work of alum is, is national. But I'm also active locally teaching at a few local mosque, also with the inner city Muslim Action Network and also with the tentative collective.

00;02;54;21 - 00;03;08;10 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And besides that, I think Ahmed Cheema is just a cool guy. And I understand that tonight we'll have a conversation about branding and, you know, so two different things around that.

00;03;08;13 - 00;03;31;28 Ahmed Cheema Yeah. So to start off with branding, I think one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with you is, number one, people in your space, people that are seen as religious authorities, teachers generally don't wear the type of clothing that you wear. Right. And I know you have a video out there and I've seen it where you kind of explain your whole journey.

00;03;32;00 - 00;03;47;10 Ahmed Cheema But I want to I want to kick this off with that and really get an understanding of, like, why you wear the clothes. You were like, I was thinking about like as I was preparing for this, I'm thinking about, like, why am I wearing clothes that I'm wearing these these AR glasses. They're not even they're blue, my glasses.

00;03;47;16 - 00;04;07;02 Ahmed Cheema And I tell myself I wear them because I have a big screen, But in reality, I think I wear them because it makes me look smart. And then like I got this pullover on because I've gained a lot of weight this last couple of years and I want to make it seem like I'm athletic, you know? So just this want to get into your perspective on clothing and why we wear the clothes we wear?

00;04;07;04 - 00;04;35;27 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Oh, man. Mean you're really forcing some interest here. Is it because although clothing is a place of great intentionality, you know, for nearly everybody, I mean, we live in a consumer, you know, society and almost all of us have great choice and freedom when choosing our clothes. You know, one of the most insulting things I have ever heard said about someone's clothes is what you mean.

00;04;35;27 - 00;05;18;20 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You chose that. And there were other options, you know, But, you know, for us which which is which is which is, you know, not something that could be taken for granted in the past, you know, in a lot of previous generations, clothing was almost like a fact of life. It was just you know, these were the clothes of your particular trade or vocation or social standing or like this, you know, And maybe you had some choice in like the details in maybe the fabrication and maybe the color, but you didn't have a lot of choice otherwise.

00;05;18;22 - 00;05;51;05 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I think we live in a society in which these are totally open with regard to clothing. I mean, even like basic standards of dress have really faded away. One person said that I was lives is like a long running medley of like business casual, but there's like, there's never anywhere that you can't wear business casual, right? Whether it is a black tie event, whether it is an outing with your children, whether it is a sporting event.

00;05;51;08 - 00;06;33;19 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. So formal standards of dress have nearly faded, right? You don't have to dress any particular way out of fear of, you know, kind of the brunt of nonconformity. So I like everybody else. I choose my clothes very intentionally and I think this might be something particular to me. I try to choose my clothes rather carefully when I think about how I dress in particular, who, you know, you know, it's deep, because when you start to explain something, it takes all of the cool out of it, you know?

00;06;33;21 - 00;07;12;24 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, the best things are experienced and not explained. But I think I like classic menswear, You know, I think my dress style is kind of conservative, you know, you know, classic, you know, sportswear with sometimes an occasional, you know, Eastern flourishes here or there with maybe something North African, maybe something West African, maybe something from the Levant or Syria, maybe something from Turkey, maybe something from South Asia.

00;07;12;27 - 00;07;45;19 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But for the most part, I think I enjoy, you know, what you would call, like classy, you know, sportswear, but always with, I think, something of of an African-American, a black American cultural twist. And that that that that tends to be about not shying away from color, not shying away from more exotic kinds of fabrications, whether it's cashmere or certain animal skins on the shoes.

00;07;45;21 - 00;08;28;24 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Yeah, I mean, I think I think I think I wear, you know, like classic American sportswear. But in terms of my position as a teacher of the faith, I think I am very intentional in wanting to normalize traditions. And a lot of the, you know, I guess I would call it ambient culture, you know, you know, being a black American, you know, a lot of your experience is just coming to terms with all of the different historical phenomena that have shaped who you are.

00;08;28;26 - 00;08;58;02 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right? You can't really claim a kind of mythic authenticity when you're a black American. But if you attempt to do that, that sometimes feels a bit contrived. And for so if I, like, force myself into like a West African cultural paradigm that was like completely shorn of all Western, you know, European and American influences that wouldn't feel completely at home to me.

00;08;58;04 - 00;09;38;18 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Like likewise, there is a part of me that is striving to kind of reach across the Atlantic for something that speaks to my heritage, my history and who I am. So I think, you know, part of being black American is just embracing this crazy crucible of cultural influences that are as far afield as Europe, like England. I mean, of course, the English language hip hop music is from the English language, and that is, you know, maybe a derivative of blues music and rhythm and blues music, and that has kind of cultural antecedents in Africa.

00;09;38;18 - 00;10;08;14 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And then, I mean, so it's just it's crazy. It's all crazy. But I think that I want to appear someone who embraces that as opposed to someone who's retreating from that. I think, you know, for a lot of black American Muslims and I talked about this in the video that you that you referenced a lot of kind of your initial exposure to Islam, at least for me.

00;10;08;14 - 00;10;41;12 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And maybe this isn't the case for everyone. It's like you're in retreat from everything Western, everything, American, almost seeing that is like that's adulterated. That's not that's not pure, that's not real. And whether you gravitate toward the expression and culture of West Africa or the Indians, subcontinent or Arabia, it's still something that's usually in retreat from kind of the ambient kind of American culture surroundings that, you know, you grew up very comfortably within.

00;10;41;15 - 00;11;09;12 Ahmed Cheema I think one thing that I what I remember in that video is you mentioned that, you know, when you came to Harlem, you know, you were in that mindset where you had a jazz band and then you saw like Dr. Jackson, you're like, man, it was just like, So how did like, what was it that really sparked that transformation where you started realizing that you need to embrace who you are versus, you know, retreat from everything here?

00;11;09;15 - 00;11;35;22 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, I think I think, you know, Dr. Jackson was someone whose religious standing was indisputable. You know, when I met him, it was clear that this was someone that took Islam seriously, took Islam scholarship seriously. But he seemed very comfortable. I mean, he was just, you know, wearing like a basic tuba and polo shirt and, you know, a pair of chinos or something like that.

00;11;36;00 - 00;12;02;18 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But for me, it was almost oxymoronic. Like, you know, how can you be serious about Islam to such an extent that you learn Arabic, you've lived abroad, but you're dressed in like a two button shirt and chinos? Like how does that like, like it was almost oxymoronic for me. And the more I witnessed him just being comfortable in his own skin, the more I longed for a similar kind of comfort.

00;12;02;21 - 00;12;39;15 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And that's not to say that I don't embrace the cosmopolitan kind of internationalism that comes with wearing Juba's Angela bars and shalwar kameez. I think it's very cool that somebody born in America has exposure to those cultures via Islam. Like, Oh man, you know, I'm drinking Turkish tea and wearing an Indonesian sarong. I think that's really cool. But to do those things in a spirit of kind of cultural experimentation is cool.

00;12;39;21 - 00;12;49;06 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But to do those things while really retreating from who you are, I think, I think that that can be a problem.

00;12;49;08 - 00;13;07;06 Ahmed Cheema And then I'm going to go all over the place, as I mentioned before, really just have like a few notes and just trying to get through as much as I can. So one of the things I have written down here is a story of a barber when you're in Egypt, and I wrote this down as like a main point, but I can't remember what the story was.

00;13;07;06 - 00;13;10;25 Ahmed Cheema So I feel like there's a really good point here. If you remember what what that's.

00;13;10;25 - 00;13;36;25 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans About is that it's not hard to cut my hair, but I'm still very particular about the way my hair is cut. And it's usually for me about how hygienic the barber is in his practice. Is he disinfected? This is pretty cool, but this is how you prevent, you know, razor bumps and other kinds of, you know, you know, skin conditions and stuff like that.

00;13;36;28 - 00;14;01;00 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So I'm watching, is he changing the blade? Is he disinfecting the clippers, etc.. And so this guy was good. And I knew that I wanted him to shave my head. So I started trying to speak in an Egyptian dialect. So it was to, you know, a void, the inevitable price increase, if you learned that I was American. Right.

00;14;01;03 - 00;14;24;18 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But after a while, kind of the very heavy, very formal classical Arabic that I'm much more comfortable with, it just started like coming out. So he knew that I wasn't Egyptian. So when he asked me, Where are you from? N7 in Fe, I was like, Oh, like I knew that my cover had a blow. So I just asked him in completely classical Arabic.

00;14;24;18 - 00;14;52;19 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I said, Come in, which means you guess where I'm from? And he said, Oh, I know where you're from. And if I know where you're from, I said, Where? He said, Senegal. I and I said, No, I'm from somewhere west of Senegal. And he said, There's something. What's the facility like? He couldn't believe that there was a world west of Senegal.

00;14;52;22 - 00;15;16;27 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And when I told him that I was from America, he said, America Chica Beach, which was like a line from like a old Egyptian movie. But then he got really serious and he said, if you're from America, there's something I have to ask you. And I got really scared because, like his, his tone became like, very grave. I'm like, What?

00;15;16;29 - 00;15;42;28 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans He's like, Obama. This is when Obama was recently inaugurated as president. He said, Obama, Muslim said Obama, Is he Muslim or not? And I said, Obama is is a Christian that, you know, by his own. You know, I mean, this is what this is how he identifies himself. And he said, what, like this Hussein when his name is Hussein.

00;15;43;05 - 00;16;12;01 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans MATTHEWS Let's make this messy. Hey, this is some Hussein There's no such thing as a Christian with an afro. Say, okay, he's how did he get that name if he's not Muslim? And so I began to tell him that President Obama's father was born into a muslim family in Kenya. But even his father, after some time at university, initially became a radical socialist and then became an atheist, right?

00;16;12;03 - 00;16;36;13 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Usman Shuja, a young woman like what he did, he became a communist. And then after that he became an atheist. And he looked at me and he said, Atheist. What is an atheist like? He had never heard that before. Like, this is just like your proverbial Egyptian man in the street and he had never heard the term bullshit.

00;16;36;16 - 00;17;03;22 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So when I explained to him what that was, he said, Wow, I can't believe that there are actually people that completely deny any metaphysical reality. I can't believe that. And his concern wasn't like salvation. His concern was social. Like how do they what do they do when a baby is born? How do they get married, what holidays they celebrate, etc., etc..

00;17;03;24 - 00;17;30;26 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So when I started explaining to him, many people identify as atheists, especially in Western Europe and America, increasingly here in the Arab world, he was like, Supermodel glory to God won't be subtle. Harlequin, my Lord, is the best of creators. And I thought to myself, That's a really strange pivot, right? And I said, What? What, what? You know, what caused you to say that?

00;17;30;29 - 00;17;58;29 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans He said, I mean, if God can create and sustain and show mercy to people who deny his very existence, he must be a magnificent God. And I thought to myself, Wow, here is a man who just encountered something for which he had nothing in his frame of reference, but he had no analog for that. But it didn't make him insecure.

00;17;59;01 - 00;18;30;13 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans It didn't even make him feel like he has to find them and change them. It actually was something that confirmed his belief in what he believed in, the fact that somebody could be so radically different. Right. It was something that in a sense, kind of sparked his his religious imagination. It sparked his curiosity, like, wow, like how great is God that he can create and sustain people that I didn't even know existed up until this point?

00;18;30;16 - 00;18;40;13 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Wow. And I thought, like people in America that deem themselves sophisticated don't have that deep appreciation for difference.

00;18;40;16 - 00;18;41;20 Ahmed Cheema Hmm. Hmm.

00;18;41;24 - 00;19;07;20 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans That's spiritual appreciation. Like, whoa, that's deep. Wow. Marcia love. You know, And I thought to myself, if I could get to that place with a lot of things that are strange to me, like, if I. It doesn't mean that you don't take a moral position on them. But if you could first have just some wonderment like the are people who do what.

00;19;07;27 - 00;19;43;00 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So Pamela creates all sorts of things that I have no whoa and then begin thinking about them. I think you would think about them a little bit differently. Right. And I mean that across the spectrum. It's like, what kind of relationships? What I've never heard of. Wow, that's that's different to me with sort of love. That, too, is something that God decreed doesn't mean that I don't have a moral position on it, but still recognized that it only exists because God wants it to exist.

00;19;43;02 - 00;19;56;28 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. And its existence, no matter what our moral position on it, is the existence of this or that is a confirmation of just the creativity of God. That's amazing to me.

00;19;57;01 - 00;20;22;06 Ahmed Cheema Yeah. You mentioned like the lens at like, you know, something that he encountered, something that's completely outside of his frame of reference and, you know, the way he views the world. And that's kind of where I wanted to pivot the conversation and moved to do your like, I think this is a Dr. Jackson story that he mentioned, but I think he was at like a convention where they're talking about like Mozart and how great of a, you know, his memory was and all this stuff.

00;20;22;08 - 00;20;29;23 Ahmed Cheema And then I think he mentioned the story of, you know, Buhari and like someone remark like it's not possible.

00;20;29;25 - 00;20;30;20 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans It's not possible.

00;20;30;22 - 00;20;51;23 Ahmed Cheema Right. And so there's a lot of like wanted to really just dive deep into like what like the way we view certain things and the lens we wear when we're looking at things, right? This is clearly like, Oh, he can't because he's a muslim Arab person, right? Mozart can do all of this because he's a European male, you know?

00;20;51;23 - 00;21;01;14 Ahmed Cheema I mean, like, so where do we get that? And like, how do we recognize these biases and things that cloud our vision?

00;21;01;16 - 00;21;34;11 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, men in Islamic law, there's a foundational legal principle that says, look, Malala, she goes on. And so worry that your judgment concerning something is really just an extension of how you conceive of that thing. Right. And I would add to that, you know, and I would I would add to that saying how you conceive of something is really just an extension of your experience with that thing.

00;21;34;14 - 00;22;13;05 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. And you're not always in control. Sometimes the experiences that you have with something are very, very intentional. They're very, very intentional. You know, I remember reading Edward Says Orientalism, and in one passage he was talking about the British Imperial Raj, right when the British ruled India, and he was saying that they would make officers retire from active service at the age of 40 because they wanted their brown subjects to always see white men at their peak.

00;22;13;07 - 00;22;36;02 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I mean, I don't want like I want you to almost see us at our very best, at our fittest, at our most capable, because I don't want you to see even just the natural kind of cycle of, you know, you know, human peaks and then, of course, the inevitable valleys. Like, I don't want you to see me in a natural way.

00;22;36;04 - 00;23;05;24 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I don't want you to see me like, Yeah. I mean, at one point I was stalwart and young and sharp, but now little bit, little bit away, a little slower, beginning to lose some of my mental acuity, like the fact that they were intentional. I don't want our subjects to see us in that way is that they were intentionally trying to create a certain image of whiteness.

00;23;05;26 - 00;23;34;02 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right? And likewise, we have imbibed a lot of images of brownness or indianness or blackness or out of myths or, you know, I mean, even within whiteness itself. I mean, this is a win that we depict people from the rural south. There's a way that we depict people from England. There's a way that we pick people from California.

00;23;34;10 - 00;24;11;07 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Now, what I think many of us aren't aware of is how deeply these depictions and this this image creating enterprise has saturated our minds, right? Even those of us that feed ourselves, you know, pretty self-aware, right? So that, you know, when a black man in a professional meeting is speaking, we find ourselves listening very closely for solar systems, like we're listening very closely for grammatical mistakes, right?

00;24;11;14 - 00;24;45;25 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans If he says one subject that doesn't match this verb, that's it. It's affirmative action. I know that. You see, whereas of whites bigger, particularly like a British speaker, may commit the same exact grammatical mistakes. But we are so convinced of the sophistication and intelligence of white British people. So it doesn't it doesn't even set off the saying. It doesn't even start off the same bells.

00;24;45;28 - 00;25;23;14 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. It'll go right past you, right in the same way that a person said if you enter a job interview, even if you are a scientist of the highest caliber and you speak with a Southern accent, people will assume you are not quite as intelligent. MM Right. Because there's something we attach to that drawl, even if you're saying all of the same words and the speech is just a sound grammatically in terms of standard English, the something we attach to that, that drawl, there's an image that we don't connect with intelligence, right?

00;25;23;16 - 00;25;54;16 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So it's, you know, the human mind is always forming those connections, but with, I think, still conscious people or self-aware people have to do is just to be aware of it. But I think like we are all subject friends, right? Which is, I realize is the main focus of our conversation. Branding is happening whether we know it or not, and we're all affected by it.

00;25;54;19 - 00;26;21;29 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And it's okay. I mean, if you enjoy a little romance, it's okay even to to play into certain narratives sometimes. But I think I think it's important to know that you're leaning in in that way. It's important to know that you're leaning in in that way, and that the subsequent judgments that you form on the basis of those opinions could be completely inaccurate or even baseless.

00;26;22;02 - 00;26;55;13 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right? So, yeah, I think for the last 400 or 500 years, to your direct point, European and by extension America and genius is something we just, you know, we believe in almost wholeheartedly, you know, even even to the point that, you know, when I was in Egypt, I noticed a lot of establishments from nurseries to daycares to schools to grocery stores using the term modern.

00;26;55;16 - 00;27;29;11 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans This is a modern daycare. This is a modern preschool. This is a modern grocery store. And, you know, I think it was clear that they had some self doubt about the modern ness of this. So they said, you know, I think I think that much was clear. Right. What I found interesting, like an interesting parallel. Americans very rarely use the term modern to describe anything in American society.

00;27;29;14 - 00;28;06;28 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans It's almost taken for granted that this or that thing is in vogue in America. Of course, his mother, even though when compared to like Japan, America is a technological dinosaur, right. And nearly as advanced technologically as some other places in the world. Right. But Americans are convinced of their modernists. They're convinced that, oh, yeah, sure. Right. Even even even the way that Americans deploy terms like freedom, oppression, justice, etc., progress.

00;28;07;01 - 00;28;38;04 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I don't consider myself a philosophical progressive or even a political progressive, but if we're judging progress by the standards that people who identify with those labels do, the Nordic countries are much more progressive than the United States, but much more. But Americans are convinced of, you know, their commitment to freedom, their commitment to justice. So a lot of this is just really effective branding.

00;28;38;07 - 00;29;15;15 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, is this really effective branding? And when you see people who believe so wholeheartedly, they're so credulous like that, it just makes you think, what are the things that I believe in wholeheartedly in that way? You know, maybe I try to watch myself with regard to like, you know, something as obvious as like the Mozart story. But to your point, I mean, if I want to be completely honest here, straight up real, one place that I do lean into, some of that is like German engineering, a German cause really better than Japanese cars.

00;29;15;17 - 00;29;47;08 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Probably that I mean, just to me. I mean really. I mean really probably not. But for me was, oh man, you know, they build these, you know, Germans, man. You know, Germans and engineers, you know, you know. So, you know, I'm aware that this is a perception that has been created, has been nurtured. And, you know, I choose to attach some value to it, but least I can see what I'm doing that.

00;29;47;10 - 00;30;04;05 Ahmed Cheema When we talk about, you know, actually crafting and taking control of your brand and creating your own perception for your people, I think there's a lot of lessons we can take from from the nation. I have some notes here. I can read up some of the bullet points or if you want to just go off the dome on that.

00;30;04;07 - 00;30;07;19 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Whatever you prefer. So a couple of things. My favorite topics, actually.

00;30;07;23 - 00;30;24;26 Ahmed Cheema Yeah, So a couple of things. And this is from for the audiences listening. This is from I was thought to be the last class on the history of Islam in America at all. And just a couple notes that I took, and I'm not the best note taker, so please forgive me. But so nation took elements of elite white culture and made it black.

00;30;24;29 - 00;30;54;21 Ahmed Cheema So the note I had here is I think you mentioned a story of someone that you asked and you said what made you join the nation? And the response was, I was walking past a temple and I heard a new car door slam. And then there's the concept of like self economics. And then this is the real thing that I think that is is the meet here is like they succeeded at creating an identity perceived as being Islamic black, and it empowered them to change their lives.

00;30;54;24 - 00;30;56;15 Ahmed Cheema And so.

00;30;56;18 - 00;31;34;24 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I mean, I think you're a great note taker. No, I think, you know, one of the cool things about a brand is that a brand, a brand can intentionally represent the best of a people's aspirations. You know, it's almost like, you know, you know, you know, a really effective act of branding is anytime you're in Egypt. And I think this is probably the case in a lot of Arab countries, people that see walking past a cafe or walking past a restaurant, they will often say two fold.

00;31;34;25 - 00;32;10;10 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans The the whole the manner like have stopped. Now, they don't intend to actually dine with you. The same thing with the taxi driver who is saying suddenly, I need a car. This it's on the house. He doesn't intend to actually give you the ride for free. But in terms of generosity being an ideal of our people, these little seemingly empty pleasantries and practices keep that ideal alive.

00;32;10;13 - 00;32;30;19 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. And I think that has great utility that even though I don't intend for you to actually eat with me. Right. But saying have some is just a way of reminding each other that generosity is our brand, right. As most of all Egyptians or Arabs. This is just this is just our brand. This is this is what we do.

00;32;30;22 - 00;33;11;21 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. Similarly, I think the Nation of Islam, what's really special about the Nation of Islam, among other groups that participated in the Black Freedom movement, is that for black people in America, authenticity and I would call it having an enabling culture have always ran on different axes, right? You can do something that's very that makes you feel great authenticity, right?

00;33;11;21 - 00;33;47;03 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, there's different kinds of religious expression, cultural expression, political expression, and you can definitely feel in those things a deeper, stronger, more prominent connection with your blackness or with your African ity or with your heritage or with your culture. Those things, those expressions of culture have always struggled to also be enabling meaning like, you're okay, that's good.

00;33;47;03 - 00;34;31;00 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But we really do need better jobs. We really do need community development, we really do need professionalism. We really do need scholastic excellence. But we actually really need those things. And so people that have focused on the other acts, you know, like, let's say black conservatives, right, focused on education, focused on professionalism, focused on, you know, amassing, you know, political power, usually not grassroots political power, but engagement with the two party system in America that has not always resulted in a great feeling of authenticity for black people.

00;34;31;03 - 00;35;02;15 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans So being able to converge those two axes, one of authenticity and one of producing a very enabling culture and only mobile culture, a culture, a culture that can see itself as refined, as dignified and actually make some substantive difference in, you know, a lot of the social and cultural maladies that that have plagued black America traditionally very hard to do, though, simultaneously.

00;35;02;18 - 00;35;31;05 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And I think that the Nation of Islam created a brand that effectively, you know, that effectively fuzed those two areas of focus. And I don't know any group that has done so as effectively even today. Even today, you know, usually the groups that are regarded as very authentic, their footprint, their impact in terms of substantive change is is minimal.

00;35;31;07 - 00;36;07;27 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right. But they are regarded as very authentic. And likewise, groups that that focus on like substantive change. Right. Which usually involves money involved education, they're not always regarded as authentic. Right. They're seen as sellouts. They're seen as, you know, folks that, you know, do the bidding of white communities or tokens. Right. You know, this person is position. They're as a token.

00;36;07;27 - 00;36;21;00 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans But, you know, the racism that we really deal with is, you know, still alive and very present. You know, So joining authenticity and effectiveness is the challenge of black America.

00;36;21;02 - 00;36;28;23 Ahmed Cheema Is it possible for another movement to combine both these spectrums and really create a movement like that again?

00;36;28;26 - 00;36;59;01 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I think I mean, of course, I mean, I'm a must of but I'm hoping that some kind of commitment to the son of the Prophet Muhammad, at least that was allowed to can be a catalyst for that kind of cultural movement. You know, because one of the you know, whatever I'm thinking about this, one of the words that that comes up quite frequently is respectability.

00;36;59;04 - 00;37;32;11 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Right? A lot of people denounce respectability politics. And I and I understand why. I mean, it's the idea that one has to engage in some kind of extraordinary shows of respectability to thwart the would be negative consequences of racism. That is quite a silly notion. But to have something independent that you appeal to your belief or a commitment to prophetic conduct through which you aim not to be respectable but to be righteous.

00;37;32;14 - 00;37;41;06 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I think that's a very, very important contribution that Sunni Muslims have to make to kind of, you know, some of the intramural conversations about race in the black community.

00;37;41;14 - 00;37;51;23 Ahmed Cheema Is there anything else you want to touch on them or share with the audience on anything like how to find you or anything like that? You're not on like social media or anything, are you?

00;37;51;26 - 00;38;14;24 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I'm not. I'm not on you know, I'm not I'm not ready for social yet. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I got to go back and prepare, but I. I want to thank my brother Ahmed Cheema for giving me a space and allowing me to come on. And, you know, this, this topic. I really think that we've only scratched the surface.

00;38;14;26 - 00;39;12;07 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans You know, we've only scratched the surface because, you know, so much of branding and this is what you want us to converse about, you know, involves, you know, how we see ourselves and how we see others. You know, and to recognize that both of those how we see ourselves and how we see others are sometimes the product of great intentionality that you have people feverishly working to to shape, to mold our self perception and our of others, you know, to to certain, you know, very specific contours should just make us, you know, careful, you know, about about about, you know, the images that we that we accept.

00;39;12;09 - 00;39;37;26 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And it doesn't me I mean, again, it's inevitable. It doesn't mean that, you know, I think, you know, when someone says such as coming from a good family, that is a kind of branding, right? It's a it's a shorthand, meaning I don't know them as an individual. I've never had an experience with them. Well, they come from a good family or such and such, graduated from this or that school.

00;39;37;29 - 00;40;10;15 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I can't really confirm on the basis of experience that she's intelligent or that he's intelligent. But I mean, she went to the University of Chicago. That's branding, right? Or he went to Harvard. I guess he would know something about Islam, maybe. I don't know anything about it. So that's branding. But to to recognize the difference between the brand, which again, I, I think this topic is deep actually and I actually don't have a problem with.

00;40;10;18 - 00;40;43;27 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I think branding is inevitable, you know, but recognizing that brand and merit are not the same thing. You know, even a, you know, quick, quick example, you know, even like with like street cred. Like street cred, you know, when when a certain area gains reputation for something like, you know, these guys are tough for this, this or that thing, when someone says they're from that place, you just associate them with that brand.

00;40;43;29 - 00;41;17;10 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Oh, man. From this place. Oh, they're from that place. It does It doesn't mean that they actually live up to whatever the brand is. And so I guess to put a cap on this, I heard Dr. Cornel West say about this topic. But speaking about colleges and universities in particular, the question is not whether or not you went through Harvard, but does the best of Harvard go through you?

00;41;17;12 - 00;41;39;13 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Mm hmm. That's the that's the question. So the question is not did I go through as heart. That's not the question does go through me. Hmm. That is the question. You see. And that's that. I think about that statement whenever I think about branding.

00;41;39;16 - 00;42;00;12 Ahmed Cheema So initially I was planning on recording a separate segment, talking about how you can sign up where all details are. But after we recorded Meta Saw, the Beatles actually talked a little bit about alums. So I'm going to share that with you before we get into the key takeaways from this episode. Anything else you want to touch on before you wrap?

00;42;00;12 - 00;42;07;05 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans Oh, this, that the I'll just want to invite people to the honor program, because if I don't do that, Shereen Khan will kill me.

00;42;07;07 - 00;42;12;08 Ahmed Cheema I'll make sure I put that in there. Don't worry, I'll do it for us all, for the links.

00;42;12;08 - 00;42;34;27 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans And everything is there. The program is July 16th to August 7th and we're back at Benedictine in Lisle, which is about 35 minutes outside of Chicago. It's a transformative, life changing program. I recommend that everyone who can attend, attend they won't regret. It is very special.

00;42;35;00 - 00;42;44;18 Ahmed Cheema It's great. Like I went there and I think it was 2015, not 2016. And under I'm got I still have that time.

00;42;44;18 - 00;42;46;23 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans What I've seen so much more recent than that.

00;42;46;25 - 00;43;03;29 Ahmed Cheema I know, I know. And honestly, I still have like my entire notes and like every once in a while I'll just go through and it's just like, like some of the words I don't even like, I have to look up the dictionary because like when I was there, you guys are all using these big words and I got to use it day.

00;43;04;02 - 00;43;25;12 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans That's not a that's not a merit. That's a demerit, though, to impact the speaker, not just as Dr. Omar Farooq Abdullah used to tell me. We don't speak just to fill it with sound. These are you know, we see we speak to affect people. So if I was using words that you didn't know, I got I got to go back work on my speech.

00;43;25;16 - 00;43;42;02 Ahmed Cheema No, no, no. I was not like that. I was just I was saying, like, everyone's vocabulary level, I think went up a notch because you're around so many academic people that are and then like, you start to lose some of those words because you don't use them as much. But when you're in that environment, you know, you pick up on it.

00;43;42;02 - 00;43;42;18 Ahmed Cheema It makes sense.

00;43;42;18 - 00;43;54;15 Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans I think I'm like every time I hang out with Sam Jackson, when I pick up at least 1015 words.

00;43;54;17 - 00;44;19;17 Ahmed Cheema If you enjoyed this discussion with Talib Evans, I'm sure you will love the other summer program. Registration is now open. Check out the links in the description for more information and to sign up today. Now here are my key takeaways. Number one as a solid, the elements in your judgment concerning something is really just an extension of how you conceive of that thing and how you conceive of something is really just an extension of your experience with that thing.

00;44;19;19 - 00;44;38;17 Ahmed Cheema In the branding space, there's a lot of debate about what the actual definition of branding and brand is, but a lot of the definitions are pretty similar to this. It's about shaping a person's perception about a company or a person by being intentional about the experiences that they have with the branding. And number two, branding is happening whether you like it or not.

00;44;38;19 - 00;44;53;13 Ahmed Cheema The perceptions we have were carefully constructed by someone else. It's important to understand and be aware of that, and that is all for this episode. If you enjoyed this discussion, please consider leaving a review and sharing with a friend. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.