Good morning. I'm Ed McDowell, Councilperson for District 2. We gather here today to celebrate the memory, the legacy, and the passionate journey of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is our prayer and our thoughts that his dream of humanity and harmony might be a reality today in the lives of not only this city of ours, but for this nation of ours. Let us pray. Create a God for your love, strength, and peace that passes all understanding for the wisdom and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. We pause to give homage to him and what he gave to this world of ours. We would simply ask today that not only service be an agenda item for each of us, but not only just to whisper that word, but to let service be a real opportunity to do something, to realize something, to expose something. Allow us to sense your presence and allow the dream of Martin King to perpetuate in the souls of each of us. The manifestation of his dream can only become a reality when we are able to do what we say we ought to do. So bless us today, bless this city of ours, bless this nation of ours, as we struggle with the parameters of peace and justice for everyone. Allow the leaders of this city to feel the drumbeat of justice and social liberty throughout this city of ours. Allow the vision and those of us who share in this collaborative dream to be a part of this day, this time, and this hour. We ask it. We claim it in your name. Amen. First, let me express that I'm honored to be here with you today. This is a wonderful celebration of the life and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a long meaningful tradition for the city of Columbia. While we regret that we could not host an in-person celebration, the decision was made in the interest of the public. Due to the pandemic, a virtual celebration was necessary to protect the health and safety of our citizens. However, it will not limit our abilities to remind our citizens of his courage, his boldness, and his unwavering commitment to see the lives of our brothers and sisters change forever. Today, we express our gratitude and our gratefulness for his work and his spirit which lives through us even to this very day. Thank you so much for joining us today as we celebrate the life and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. God bless you. On behalf of our Mayor, City Council, our City Manager, Parks and Recreation Department, and the MOK Committee, we would like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who supported the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Dream Food Drive. We are grateful for all the donations that will be used to help those in our communities. All proceeds will benefit the Harpers Hope Food Bank. Thanks to those who contributed to our online virtual food drive and to those who participated in our drive-thru food drive at MOK Park. We look forward to serving the community for many years to come. Thank you so much, and God bless. Hello, my name is Alicia Yutzi, and I'm the Director of Public Relations, Media and Marketing for the City of Columbia. It is my pleasure to announce the 2021 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dream Keeper Scholarship winners. The Dream Keeper Scholarship Awards program recognizes exemplary displays of committed service to the tenants of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The ideals of social responsibility, political empowerment, diversity, racial harmony, non-violence, and unselfish service must be demonstrated voluntarily by the nominee in support of his or her community and fellow citizens. Numerous nominations were received for this year's Dream Keeper Scholarships program. The winners of the Dream Keeper Scholarships for 2021 are as follows. Our elementary school winner, first place for a $100 scholarship is Caden Young, who attends the Center for Knowledge. Our high school winners are as follows. In third place, winning a $250 scholarship is Jordan Milbaugh from Sumter High School. Our second place winner, winning a $500 scholarship is Sierra Sands, who attends Blythewood High School. And our first place winner, who will receive a $1,000 scholarship is Amber Burton, who attends Dreyer High School. And last but certainly not least, we want to thank each and every one of our sponsors for donating financial contributions for this year's scholarship program. The sponsors for this year's program are as follows. $500 was donated by the Alpha Psi Lambda Chapter and Omicron Iota Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. $500 was donated for the Josiah Caden Jenkins Memorial Scholarship. The donation was made by Chief Aubrey D Jenkins, who is our own Columbia Fire Chief. The scholarship was established in memory of his great-nephew Josiah Caden Jenkins. A $500 scholarship was donated by 100 Black men of Greater Columbia Incorporated. $250 was donated by the Cromarty Law Firm, LLC. A $250 contribution from Assistant City Manager for Operations, Henry Simons, with the City of Columbia. A $200 contribution for a scholarship was made by City Manager Teresa Wilson with the City of Columbia. A $200 scholarship was donated by Director Randy Davis with Parks and Recreation with the City of Columbia. A $200 combined scholarship for $100 per person was donated by Columbia Police Chief William H. Skip Holbrook and the Deputy Police Chief Melron Kelly. And $150 was donated collaboratively by the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation Committee members. Congratulations to all 2021 scholarship winners and a very special thanks to all scholarship sponsors for your donations to support the dreams of our young leaders of the future. Hello, Columbia. I am Teresa Wilson, your City Manager. It is a great honor that the City of Columbia welcomes this illustrious leader as our guest speaker for the 33rd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. Since being elected mayor in a record turnout election in April of 2010, Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin has made it his mission to make Columbia one of the most talented, educated and entrepreneurial cities in America. Mayor Benjamin was asked to speak at the 2016 Democratic National Convention where he talked about the importance of instilling in his daughters that they can do anything they set their minds to even becoming president of the United States. President Barack Obama's administration commended Mayor Benjamin on his work on behalf of my brother's keeper, MBK. The city's MBK efforts, in addition to Mayor Benjamin's leadership, have led to Columbia being seen as a nationwide leader in implementing and upholding the missions of the program. In addition to serving as Mayor of Columbia, Mayor Benjamin also served as the 2018-2019 President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and he served in other national positions including chairman for municipal bonds for America, a member of the Federal Communications Commission's Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, a member of the Accelerator for America Advisory Council and co-chair of the Mayor's for 100% Clean Energy Campaign. As our nation and our city continue to face the challenges of a national pandemic, Mayor Benjamin currently serves as the national chair of the Mayor's for Mask initiative. Co-chairs the Pandemic Resilience Working Group for America's mayors with former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. On a local level, Mayor Benjamin also formed the Midlands Coronavirus Task Force on March the 1st of 2020 and that task force has continued to lead efforts to keep our community not only strong but resilient during these challenging times. Mayor Benjamin is married to the Honorable DeAndre Gis Benjamin, Judge in the Fifth Judicial Circuit and they are the proud parents of daughters Bethany and Jordan Grace. Please give a warm welcome to Columbia's Mayor, the Honorable Stephen K. Benjamin. I would like to thank each of you for taking some time today to honor the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Especially today, it is crucial to recognize the importance of what his legacy of nonviolent social protest means and why his words and deeds reverberated across America during the turbulent civil rights era and also the profound change he sought to bring about in our laws, our minds and our hearts. Though spoken with the needed ferocity and passion necessary, the clarity of his voice and message communicated not only an urgency for change, but also that necessary beacon of hope that our divisions may one day overcome. While there has been real progress, there is abundant evidence there is much left undone. In short, we are seeing not just a continuance, but an apparent increase in incidences of violence and hatred motivated by the willful blindness and widespread intolerance of racism. Yes, still today, we are struggling as a nation to handle many issues that we thought we put to bed decades ago. Angry protesters weigh flags and swastikas that brave young men stormed the battlefield at Gettysburg, beaches of Normandy and the bridges of Selma to defeat. There are actually ongoing debates online about the morality of human chattel slavery, divisive ethnic racial and religious rhetoric. Not only hate speech, but deadly violence often co-signed from the highest levels of the Republic. This endless barrage of bitterness we watch on the news every night, the hate and vitriol flowing from what should be the world's first and greatest temple of democracy that is not the America we know and love and not the America that Dr. King envisioned. Dr. King knew this intolerance reaches across our country and touches all communities, writing in what is now a seminal piece of American literature from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, where he had been incarcerated for taking part in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation. Dr. King expressed, I'm cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  We're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Throughout last year we witnessed again and again this network of mutuality. Repeatedly and with seemingly inescapable regularity, the intersection of police with members of the black community equaled unnecessary and inexcusable death. By the time George Floyd was murdered on May 25th, he was one on a long and tragic list of names that have regrettably become a part of daily discussions in America. Protests followed across the country and even right here in our own capital city. Though there were some exceptions, in the spirit of Dr. King, the vast majority of protesters raised their voices and passion through the power of peaceful protests. These protests spurred necessary and ongoing conversations about justice and policing and the need for greater bonds of trust and cooperation between police and communities of color. We've taken steps forward and we know there's still much work to be done. In the year of incredible upheaval and societal anxiety, we also saw that systemic racism pervades beyond overt acts of violence or brutality. It also delves deep into the fabric affecting the health of our communities. The COVID-19 pandemic is a new international health crisis. An unheard of disease just a little over 12 months ago has transformed the ways we all live, work, worship, gather and leisure and friendship and the ways we educate our children. COVID-19 has openly revealed the systemic racial disparities in our health care systems. Consider that according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the only 27% of the state's population is black. African Americans make up nearly 46% of deaths related to COVID across South Carolina. Across the nation, black Americans are 1.7 times more likely to die from COVID at a rate of 134 people per 100,000. That's the highest mortality rate of any ethnicity or demographic. Black Americans are twice as likely as white Americans live in poverty and the working poor more at risk to exposure and infection because they're more likely to work in parts of the service sectors, putting them in close contact with the public, home, health aides, grocery clerks, restaurant workers and housekeepers. Poverty increases underlying health conditions like hypertension, diabetes, chronic lung disease and heart disease that puts COVID-19 victims more at risk of dying from the disease. Over the last year, as these systemic health disparities have become more manifest and evident, policymakers are becoming more focused on transforming these systems. This of course cannot happen quickly enough. The good news is that there are new vaccines and our collective responsibility is to work together to ensure that we use them to effectively address these pronounced disparities. In the meantime, we must maintain social distancing, wear masks and continue getting tested. When looking at the challenges impacting the nation, the state and our state of Columbia over the last year, we see not just one urgent crisis but an unprecedented confluence of three. The greatest public health emergency since 1918, the greatest economic disruption surrounding an election year since 1932 and the greatest social unrest around structural racism and systemic inequality since 1968. Each of these proved to be enormous concerns to overcome themselves, but they occurred several decades apart. Yes, last year, we experienced all of these challenges, compressed and overlapping in the span of a single year. 2020 may be over, but these issues are still pervasive. Thankfully, so many of you committed yourselves to do more than just endure the hardships of the previous year, but actively engage in helping others overcome them. I want to thank everyone who served in the cause of helping others. Our public safety first responders, our frontline healthcare workers, our educators, faith leaders, and those who ensure that the flow of necessary goods and services overcame the distancing measures and reached our homes. But this spirit of service to others must not diminish and be thought of as no longer necessary even after we emerge from the health threat of the pandemic. Going forward, I charge all of us in all of our communities to find ways to serve. A recent journal article on Black community involvement as a strategy for overcoming barriers states it with eloquent simplicity. Community involvement is democracy in action. Involvement, participation, and action yields outcomes. There's no better way and no more current example than the fieldwork we saw recently in Georgia. Regardless of party affiliation, we can see how activism in Georgia moved the needle to affect outcomes in the political landscape nationally, regionally, and locally, sending a black preacher from the pulpit of Reverend King's Ebenezer Baptist Church to the halls of the United States Senate. We saw great hardships, great tragedy, and great injustices throughout the previous year. But as we saw with the delivery of new vaccines at the end of the year, there's now a reason to find hope in the near future. Dr. King wrote, even from the despair of imprisonment, let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities. And in some not too distant tomorrow, the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Thank you again to each and every one of you, and I pray that we all keep the hope and dreams of Dr. King alive and continue to fight for justice and equality together. May God bless each and every one of you.


Hello, everyone. I'm Yamna. So in this talk, we're going to learn about Islamic art, math, and how to use tiling theory to make some pretty patterns. So before we get into the math, we need some historical and cultural context. So the rise of Islamic art began around 1300 years ago, as Islam was spreading throughout the Middle East and Europe. In general, Islamic art encompasses much more than explicitly religious art, as art that comes out of Islamic societies isn't necessarily inspired by Islam or created by Muslims. So early on in Islam, many Muslim scholars were worried about idol worship, and so they tried to strongly discourage the depiction of any living beings from their art. So that meant that art could no longer encompass or incorporate humans or animals, and in some extreme cases, even plants. So you think that banning living beings from your visual art would result in very boring art, but the exact opposite happened. Islamic geometric art and Arabic calligraphy rapidly became very sophisticated forms of art. And in fact, one interesting loophole that calligraphers came up with is that they'd shape their calligraphy in the shape of animals, so that then they could argue that they weren't actually representing animals, but rather that they were just some letters. So because the construction techniques were these very complex geometric pieces were considered trade secrets, the knowledge of how to make them was for the most part never made public. Thus we don't know how a lot of tidings and patterns from that era were constructed. We know that in general all they had to work with was a compass and straightedge, and that they had a solid understanding of planar geometry as was written down in Euclid's book, The Elements. But trying to reverse engineer their construction methods is actually still an active area of research. Anyway, oh wait, so this is from the ceiling of a mosque in Iran on the left and on the right, I have no idea where this calligraphy originated from, but it shows up in every talk on Islamic art, so I had to include it. And before I move on, I just wanted to point out that representing living beings in Islamic art is no longer mostly frowned upon in most cases, and that Islamic art is still alive and well, and it's awesome, and there's like tons of amazing Islamic art out there. So the kind of Islamic geometric art I'll be focusing on is what's referred to as star patterns, and these examples in green are star patterns. There's no precise definition for what a star pattern is, but they're said to be based on star polygons, which is just a fancy way of saying star-like shapes. And although there's no precise definition of what star patterns are, there are many, many ways to classify star motifs in the patterns they make up, and actually lots of rigorous math behind them that I don't have time to get into in this talk, that's like a whole other talk. Actually, if I'm honest, it's more like a 16-week lecture series. So what is tiling theory? At a very high level, tiling theory is the study of tiling the plane with certain kinds of shapes. I know that's really vague and we'll get more precise soon, but here are some examples of tiling you may be familiar with. So there's the very famous Penrose tiling. There's the recently discovered 15th pentagonal tiling that was in the news a few years ago, and then there's the coolest monohedral tiling that exists. This one's not actually famous, but I really like it, and I think it should be famous. So how do we precisely define a tiling? Well, here we have a definition, and on the left there's the definition for mathematicians, and on the right we have the definition for everyone else. So I'm going to read the one on the right. So there's only really four rules that tilings need to adhere to. So a tiling is a set of tiles with the following requirements. You can't have any holes in your tiles, and you have to tile the entire plane, and you can't leave any points out. Number three is you can't have overlapping tiles, and number four there are fixed upper and lower bounds on the size of the tiles, and I like to think of number four as the no fractals rule. So part of classifying tiling, we say that a tiling is vertex transitive or isogonal. If all of the tiling vertices are the same, and what that means is every vertex in the tiling is surrounded by the same kinds of face and angles in the same or reverse order. So we see this tiling on the left is vertex transitive, because every vertex is surrounded by a face of degree 4, 6, or 12, but that's not the case with the tiling on the right. And if a tiling is vertex transitive, we can give it a naming convention as follows. Where the naming convention is just the numbers, or just the degrees of the faces of every tiling vertex, so in this example it would be 312 squared or 31212. So how do we actually go from tilings to star patterns? Well there's a method called Hankin's Polygons in Contact algorithm, and as far as we're aware of it was first written down by this guy named Ernest Hanbury-Hankin in the 1920s. I don't want to say it was invented or discovered by him because we don't actually know how a lot of tilings were constructed historically. And one interesting fact about Hankin is that he was actually a biologist and he studied these patterns in his free time. And now where he did as a hobby has had a significant impact on research mathematics in this really specific field, which is something I like to keep in mind whenever someone comes up to me and is like, why do you spend all your free time reading math papers? So before we get to the algorithm, we need to familiarize ourselves with some notation. So pretend that this is an arbitrary tile in some tiling you're working with. So along any edge we have a midpoint M and from M we will have two rays emanating, the left ray and the right ray, and both of these rays will be separated from the edge of the tiling by a contact angle referred to as theta. Okay, so step one we have to pick a tiling. We're going to be using the honeycomb tiling or using the naming convention from before also known as 666. So we're going to be focusing on one tile for simplicity. So first we identify the midpoints of the edges of the tile and then we draw two rays eliminating from the midpoints. I only did one to keep the diagram simple and in this angle theta is going to be about 60 degrees. And so you would have been doing that from all the midpoints at once and then the lines are continued until they meet other lines of similar origin and then you stop when you meet the lines. And that's how you end up with this six pointed star. And then you repeat that for the entire tiling and then you remove your original construction lines and now you have a nice star pattern. So that's basically the algorithm. Okay, now we, so I have an implementation of this and I can't see. So here's the one I just showed you and we can remove the construction lines and we can look at other tilings. So here's 4612, which I think is a bit more interesting than 666. That's my favorite. So the algorithm that I described doesn't actually work for non-regular tiles reliably. So what ends up happening in this particular example is the lines end up meeting outside of the tile, which might be okay if you're just like implementing a visualization in JavaScript, but that's not going to be okay when you're hand painting clay tiles that you're going to use to decorate your mosque. So there's a really clever solution to this. So ideally what you'd want is something like on the right. And that solution uses like graph theory and exciting matching algorithms, but I don't have time to cover it. But if you're interested, I'd recommend reading this paper, Islamic Star Patterns and Polygons in Contact by Kraub Kaplan from the University of Waterloo. And by the way, most of the context in this talk is based on Kaplan's research and I highly recommend looking at his other research because he makes tons of really pretty pictures. So one interesting thing about Hankin's algorithm is that different base cut tilings can lead to the same result. So we see that we have this tiling on the left and this tiling on the right and they're different, but if you apply the algorithm with a contact angle of 54 degrees on the left and with 36 degrees on the right, you get the same star pattern emerging. And the reason for this is because there's a special kind of transformation between the tiling on the left and the tiling at the right because at a fundamental level, they have very similar symmetry structures underneath and that transformation is called the rosette transformation. I don't have time to get into it, but if you are interested, I recommend reading the paper I mentioned before. So another thing we can do with this algorithm is we can vary the contact angle at a linear rate across the canvas. And from this, we get what's referred to as Islamic parquet deformations. So a parquet deformation is a design which like smoothly evolves through space and parquet deformations were originally introduced as exercises for architecture students by the architect William Huff. And as you can see in this example, the contact angles peak in the middle, which is like why everything's a bit more angular. And so it goes up and then comes back down, which is why it's the same at the beginning and the end. And up top, you can see the individual tiles changing. And now that the idea of varying the contact angle has been introduced, here's an example where you can interactively vary the contact angle based on distance from a point and that point can be moving. And if I put my mouse here in the bottom left corner, you can almost see the original tiling in the top right corner. And this was made by someone who only wants to be identified as by, or use of X. So there's a lot of interesting physical art projects based on these ideas, like many more than I would have time to include. So here's an embroidery project I made a few years ago. It's kind of wonky in the center, but otherwise it's okay. And on the right, there's this piece made by the mathematician, Florence Turner of a beat Islamic parquet deformation called From Kepler's Star to the Night Sky. And that's all.


I wanted to talk to you about a woman actually that I am trying my best to model my life after, to be honest. When I read her story some years back, I just, I don't, you know when you have that, you know when you read something or you hear something about just like one particular person and you're just like, I just want to be her. Right? Like I just, even if I, even if I recognize that I can't be all that, right? I just like, give me, just give me a piece of it. And this is the great Nana Asma'u. So Nana Asma'u is the daughter of Shehua Uthman D'Anfonio, who was a great, a very great scholar, basically in the late 1700s. And long story short, he was not only, you know, he wasn't only a scholar. So when the West talked about him, they say he was just, he was the, he was like a fighter, that he was a strong fighter. But in reality, it was what is that he, that he was the Caliph basically of a very large Islamic empire that had been an Islamic empire actually, that point for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so we don't actually talk about Islamic empires inside of Africa. That's just a whole nother, you know, we just got to work on that. That's a whole nother thing. But what happened was, is that at that particular time, the, the base of the Sankhat empire, or the Caliphate, sorry, was actually closer to West Africa. But the encroachment of slavery, literally the, because slavery was introduced, of course, it was coming down through North Africa into West Africa, through the coast entire, basically entire villages, if you can imagine like entire towns. We think about villages, we think small. But in reality, some villages are very big. They're biggest cities that we know them today would be completely disappeared, right? Would be completely disappeared. So if we were to look at, let's say, in one year over the course of slavery, there's more, it's, it's recorded somewhere, somewhere into the tens of millions, right? Tens of millions of people came up missing. In one particular year, basically, let's say out of Gambia, about 2 million people came up missing. Now the entire population of Gambia is only 2.5 million people, right? So when we talk about the encroachment of slavery, what we're saying is, there are people who are stealing folks, kidnapping people in, in mass amounts and, and bringing them to the States. So at this point, there was also, I want you to, to understand what's happening. I want to give you a little bit of that historical context, because as a result, it's something that the Islamic caliphate said, we actually have to move the capital of the caliphate because of the level of, of harm and war that we're fighting on an ongoing basis. Sometimes we think of slavery, we think, oh, they distilled people, that was it. We don't know that there were actually people who were fighting on the forefront to do their best to kind of push back against it. And so they moved the caliphate and then there was also an internal conflict to be honest between, between the Muslims. And part of the internal conflict and just, you know, we have to tell us, is it okay if we tell ourselves the truth of our history? Is that okay? Okay, because then, you know, it's not usually my way to sugarcoat things. But so I want you to understand that the Muslims in West Africa are in a war against basically the, the Europeans from the Portuguese to the British that basically because of the encroachment of slavery. And then there's a war that's happening. We'll just say with some of the Northern tribes, not all, but some of the North African tribes against some of the West African tribes, because they were some of, we'll just say there were groups of folks that were, that were saying, well, you know, we were warring with you guys. It's okay to say, to sell you into slavery for a number of reasons. The details of that we can talk about later if you, if you want. But the point is, is that he moved the caliphate and there is a war on two fronts, right? Like we're trying to solve an internal conflict, right? While at the same time, we have a very large enemy from the outside. And the daughter of the, basically of the caliphate, once Shehua Uthman, who was growing up and when she began, she was in her young 20s. Basically, she herself was also half of the Quran. She was considered someone who was a master of Maliki Fiqh. She was also a poet. But she decided basically the way that these men are behaving and fighting amongst themselves, I've got no time for it. She literally started a woman's movement of her own. And this movement basically is, she decided, you know what? Because inside of that, so you've got this political war going on, inside of that, the Muslim community of some, not all, are debating whether or not women, because of, because of what's happening, should women go out? Maybe we should shut down the girls schools of, because at that time that they were very large institutions where women, when girls were memorizing Quran and learning Maliki Fiqh, there was like a push. It always happens during conflict, political conflict. It becomes a question, maybe we, in order to protect our women, we should keep them at home, right? That we shouldn't let them go out to the institution out of fear. None of Asma'u, may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la continue to just elevate her rank and expand her decided, I'm not having that. So basically, she began with a group of women in her area. And she said, what is that feedback? Right? That far? So basically, she started with a small group of women and she brought these women together and she was like, listen, this is what we got to do. There are number one, we have to make sure that women, no matter where they are, understand their Dean, that they understand their personal relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, that they don't become disconnected from the Quran and their spiritual tradition. We have to make sure that these women know their Fiqh because this is also, we're in spiritual warfare. This is not just a political issue. We're in a matter of spiritual warfare. We have to make sure that these women, that their prayers are accepted. On top of that, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, she said that what happens in the midst of war is that Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, the people that are most affected are women and children. So she said we have to make sure that these women also have their own means of economic empowerment and they have to know how to do it in a halal manner. They have to know how do they start their own businesses and have their own businesses and they're going to do it according to Fiqh, not according to we just got to do what we got to do, but they were going to know how to do it so that those women would have to Fiqh inside of their affairs. She also said, we know that Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, she said in some of these areas that people don't have, you know, people don't actually have access to water. We have to make sure that people always have access to water, that we want to make, we have to still take care of our people because when the caliphate moves, right, then basically it's like the capitals going, they, they, her fear was like, now the capitol is going to be that place where people, you know, the elite can also move, but everybody can't move. Everyone can't afford to move. Who's got a tissue for me? I don't have a tissue. Somebody have a tissue? It's okay, we know what's happening. Thank you. So she understood that everybody can't move, but also she understood that because of the encroachment of slavery, I want us to think about it for a minute. If you go into a region and you steal the most, you steal basically let's say those that could be the labor and the ones who were going to be able to do the work. And we're not just talking about the farmers, right? We're also talking about the muscle. We're also talking about the stealing of the army. We're also talking about the stealing of the teachers. We're talking about the stealing of the, of the builders of the craftsmen. We're talking about those who do construction. We're talking about the doctors. We're talking about the Quran teacher. We're talking about, we're not, sometimes we think it's just one class. If we say we're going to steal, right? Majority of this place, who's going to be left? The weak, the vulnerable. And so what she says is, you know, what happens in these situations is sometimes they won't have, they won't have proper access to food. We've got to make sure that these populations are still taking care of. And lastly, she said, of course, in these situations is that if, you know, if women are having babies, if people are getting sick because of not having clean water, they've got to have access to healthcare. So basically she started with a small group of women. And to make a long story short, every time she would go into a village and she would make sure that the, that village would have those five things. She would always come and teach sacred knowledge, making sure that they knew their Dean properly. They knew they studied Akida. They would study Maliki Fiqh. She would make sure then that they had some kind of economic arm by which those women would be able to sustain themselves. She would, so then she would also build a school and she would build a clinic. And she then trained a group of women who were in that village that she would train them to the point that now I can hand over this project to you. So you don't, if they tell you you can't come into the masjid, you don't have to worry about it because your job is to make sure that these women, the women in this particular area, know their Dean fully intact and that they are not dependent upon anyone economically because they know how to sustain themselves. That they have established their own businesses. When it comes to, she looked at, okay, who are the midwives and the conveyors one, right?  Then your job is to train somebody else and to get an apprentice. So then we're taking care of our own healthcare. She did that in over 800 villages.  So I'm like, wait a minute, first you didn't just train and in every, in every village she went to, she made sure she left a group of women who were basically who were at a scholarly level that they could then train the other women that they then became responsible to date. We still have the, we still have that definitely throughout Senegal, definitely throughout places in Nigeria and Gambia and Mauritania, you have places where women have their own centers, their own Qur'an memorization centers. They study Maliki Fiqh. They have their own, what they call it, they call it, even they call it a susu in terms of the way they support each other. I tell us this to say that a lot of times as women, I give you this story to, it's exactly what we're talking about when we talk about having a level of faith, right? And resilience and knowing what is, you don't actually need to know it all. And you don't actually need the support of every man in the Muslim. I know, please maybe, you know, so I'll close the doors because I don't want nobody to get mad. But in our, you know, sometimes we're so focused on, well, the men won't let me, you know, the men are holding us back or the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Whatever it is as opposed to let them run their affairs and let us run ours, right? That they are not basically look for the path of least resistance.  You're raising them. So if you want something different, then you make something different, right? You want a different reality for the next generation? You're the one responsible for that. Trust me. Trust me. So when I think about Subhanallah, us, like even, you know, all of you familiar with the Qubaisi movement, right? Inside of Syria. Yes, no. Alhamdulillah. What was it? It was a group of women who said, I don't know what these men are teaching. No, am I concerned? But I know where Subhanallah, the, if I, if we get to the root of all of them, if I get to the um of the umma, if I get to the root of this force, that's where the change is going to happen, right? That's where it's going to happen. And we Subhanallah in America, we've gotten it, we've gotten it so twisted that we're so, we're so busy and it's funny because on one hand, we understand it.  Well, somehow you're more concerned about the Imam than the people who are following him. When the Imam does not actually get any object unless the people, unless he has a Jama'at. And if you're contingent, you're, if you're in, contingent, making your deen contingent upon, you're in front, something like that. Okay. You know what I'm trying to say though, right? If you're just pinning your deen on this one person, when you yourself, right, and I see it, we're not knowledgeable about our own deen. So if the Imam makes a mistake and he, you know, he's, if he salams out in the third raka'at, and you know that therefore, but you don't know what you're supposed to do, you also have a personal responsibility to know your deen. We have a personal, and Alhamdulillah, you have enough teachers inside of your, I'm actually impressed with you to be honest. I'm very impressed with you in the Bay.  You can't cry that you can't make that claim. You wouldn't be able to say that and be accurate. Honestly, you have teachers who are, masha'Allah, organizing for you, calling me all the way from the Gambia. You have women who are organizers and your professionals, right? Some of you are entrepreneurs, have your own businesses.  We probably have about a hundred powerhouses in this room alone, but we have to act collectively. We have to be those women who are saying, I don't know what's going on out there, nor am I really concerned, right? That I know what's happening in here. I know what I'm, I'm, I'm concerned about making sure that we stay consistent. And yes, it cannot just be on the, you know, yes, it's on a religious standpoint. It's important. I want to talk a little bit about the way that we are addressing as women. I hope y'all don't get mad at me. If you do, it's okay. I love you anyway. How we as women are beginning to address the, what I would say, the incumbent, I don't know. My English is lacking these days. Make do after me. The encroaching threat, that's what I want to say, that we have a number of threats to you, to your, to your daughters, to your, to your most basic identity. But aren't we using the methods of Islam and the prophetic example and the teaching that we've been given in order to address it?  I wish it was funny, but it's not really. I was at a conference, let's just say in the conference, there was a moment of like difficulty. So there was a break and then it was like, okay, let's huddle up and figure out how are we going to address basically the, the conflict that happened in the session. So we came to convene and as we were convening, I wasn't in the session. I knew what the session was about. I wasn't in that session for a reason. But when it came to convene, they said, can you please come and you know, help us figure out how we're going to go back and to address the problem. So I said, Bismillah. In the course of that, someone who is a scholar graduated with many degrees in Islamic studies, also has multiple degrees, let's say in a, in the American, from an American academic standpoint, said to me, the truth is, is that we don't have any idea what you women are talking about. He said, I'm just going to be very honest with you. I said, please be. He said, when you women talk about that you guys get broken, he said, I don't know what that broken is. I literally was like, are you for real? He's like, I'm being honest. I don't know what you're talking about. In that moment, I said to myself, I actually then tried to explain it. Then I realized we're depending on someone to teach us the Islamic sciences of the heart that have no idea about, about not just the condition of your heart, but the anatomy of your heart. So we're expecting someone to do heart surgery on us that doesn't even know what is in your heart. What is your heart? How does it work? Immediately I said, at that moment, I need to call all my sisters who study, who are in this work and say, it's important that just for now, I don't mean this in a bad, I don't mean it in a badly. It's not a, it's not a discredit to them. That's, that's not my fear. I'm not worried about that. It's not about a discredit to them. It became a serious charge for us. Sometimes we're looking at somebody else's inadequacy when in reality you are the change that you're looking for. And so when I think about the story of Nana Asmau, she, there's something that you have been gifted with as women. It's a, it's a, it's like a gift that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala just adorned you with that other people just didn't get it. And it's, it's like the, it's literally the filament in a light bulb that Masha Allah, the casing, right? Right? It looks like it's out front. It looks like it's the light bulb, but really it's the filament inside that makes it work. That's what you are. And so I go back to say this, when we respond to our circumstances, our societal circumstances in a, with a philosophy or a methodology that is not consistent with the Quran and the prophetic example, number one, we lose credibility. That's the first thing we lose credibility. And number two, eventually it's going to harm our own selves. Let me give you an example. In the feminist movement, they rah, rah, rah and philosophize themselves out of their own identity. So the whole point initially was to talk about our empowerment as women and to talk about this is my place as women and to fight for the rights of women. That was the point, right? That was the point. But see, when you keep acting out of a way, that's not a straight path. Now you're not a woman. The one who was a woman is no longer a woman. She's a birthing person, a chest feeder. Anybody can be you. Actually your womanhood is not that, it's a commodity. We could just change some parts and then anybody can be you. Not only we just change your parts and anybody can be you, I could just claim it and you must call me that. And your rights that you had, that you fought for, whether it be in the sports realm or in other realms, you soldier, you said yourself, you were so equal, so same. We were the same, same, same, same, same. Then men say, well, then we're the same. So now we compete and we're the same. So now men who claim to be women can now compete with you and then say, well, you have no problem that you should lose because I'm a woman too. So going back to what I was saying as it relates to meaning that when we, you can, you can have actually a righteous intention. But if you don't have the correct methodology for how to address the problem, then you'll actually end up with a bigger problem than what you started with. So in our situation as Muslim women, what we did, they spoke to our pain. They spoke to certain injustices that were happening with us. They spoke to the, to the issues of gender injustice. But because they used a man made model in order to address the problem, literally in the end, it becomes something that by which we're almost becoming a renegade out of our Dean. So when we look at our, when we look at the likes of Nana, I smile what I love about her methodology. That's just so weird, right? But don't worry, we're going to pray. Right? Right. They definitely right. Okay. So the, the point is that in the case of Nana, I smile, what I loved about the way that she said, we need to address the problem is that the first thing is that these women have to know their Dean, right? Now at that time, there wasn't a question. And I actually find this beautifully and uncanny that there, there's something that you don't actually, you don't have to tell a woman who's raised in tradition about being a woman. Like the thought that somebody else can be a woman for her that's laughable. But the fact that we are in 2023, somehow thinking that now we are the first people to somehow come up with like this great idea is laughable. But we as Muslim women have actually began, right? To even start studying, taking up four or five years of study on something without first having a proper foundation and our Akida. What if I were to ask you from an Akida standpoint, who are you as a woman? Right? And if you tell me a mother, I'm going to shout from the top of my lungs. Because our mother, I inshallah was definitely a woman and she never had children. If we look at, you know, Queen Asya, the woman who raised Musa, who's known as one of the most four perfect women, right? She never had children. So we are that's the, my whole point is that we are, you know, somehow even like we're invested and we're following these and we're down for this and we're following this method, blah, blah, blah. That's the method I'm going to go. We have mistaken when we talk about resilience and resistance, we have come to a resistance movement, misunderstanding that our resistance is a resistance to Shaitan and the, and the Dijal and his army and their thinking and their ways and their methodology. That our resistance is a submission to Allah, no matter what, that's our resistance. That our resilience is to stand up for this is you won't, you will not encroach upon deem. And you as women, subhanallah, you're, you're, you are created to be hafidantin and ghayb, hafidantin and ghayb meaning that you are the preservers of the unseen. When we look, I want you to understand this about yourself because it's so significant. What does it mean for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to name you as the hafidantin and ghayb? The first thing is that I'll give you an example. And our mother Khadija, right? Or even in the, in the mother of Musa, in the mother of Musa, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is giving her in ham. He's speaking to her. That he's given her revelation that I'm going to inspire you and to protect something and you're the way that you're going to protect and guard over it. You have no idea this is, this is about to be serious. Like the mother of Musa is holding a big secret that we don't talk about. The mother of Musa is told my Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, don't worry. I'm going to return him to you and I'm going to make him from amongst the messengers. Is that not revelation? But this is this, this is the secret that she's holding and her job is to be a guardian over that which hasn't been told yet. About that which hasn't been revealed yet. When we look at our mother Khadija, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala anha and the way that she loves and takes care of and supports the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam, that Allah put her in that position because of her qualities, because of what she brings to the table. And I'm not talking about her finances. I'm talking about her character. What is she preserving? What is she protecting? She's protecting rahmat al alamin. We could go into some of, there's so many, so many aspects of what it means. But your, this is why even historically women were known to be the preservers of ahadith. They're known to be the preservers of the prophetic tradition. That's the role we've played in society until now. Right? That you are the preservers of prophetic tradition. That the way that someone, one of the key ways to know whether or not ahadith was sound was whether or not it was what, there's a woman in its chain because she's never known to be a fabricator, to fabricate ahadith. So I just want to say that as we're talking about this, you know, there are a number of enemies that you've got to be resilient over. And I'm sure you've heard it in this message. What are your four enemies? Shaitan, nafs, shaitan, or Iblis.  Let's first get to it. So dunya, hope of dunya, love of dunya. These are your four enemies. Iblis comes from the root word balasah, which means to be hopeless. So one of the biggest things that that how shaitan comes to you and whispers to you. Is that sense of it's not going to get any better. That sense of hopelessness.  They're not responding. They're not listening.  That's the actually that's the beauty of women having gendered spaces in Islam.   One of the biggest ways, and I want us to not think it's small. I'm just, I'm going to emphasize it in 10 different ways. Is that our resilience, how do you gain the confidence? You've got to study the women and how we're in within the prophetic tradition. Subhanallah. You guys are all familiar with Nusayba, right? To me, that's like that. I just love her. She's like one of my, you know, my great loves where subhanallah, she's, she's in the tent of women who are helping the wounded and the men subhanallah, the archers on the mound descend from their position, the battle of Uhud. And she can see the warring army coming from one side and the prophets on the line. It's not coming up on the other, right? And she doesn't say, stand there, come on, these men, oh my God, let me go running around and tell these men what they need to do. No, she just ran up the mountain, right? Stood between the soldiers and the prophets on the line. And she defended the prophets on the line and said, it even saves his life until they realize, oh my goodness, we need to go back to our position. Why did she do that? Because she's a preserver. That who we are is that we're someone who are preservers of this dean. And so we can't throw our dean behind our backs, thinking that we're, that Islam is that which will press us. And I've got to run towards some kind of anything, liberation of any type that's somehow going to set me free. Trust me, that's going to leave you with shaitan is going to put you in a trap and then sit back and laugh at you. I definitely, he's laughing at us in our current gender politics.  So it becomes incumbent upon us. Number one, I've already said it, like I said, I'm emphasizing it in 10 different ways. We've got to come together to study our own dean and become rooted. We got to know it, like know it, like know it, like know it, like know it. And then we've got to come together and build institution together. And we've got to make sure there's a, there's a care and concern that we have to have for each other on a regular basis. Do you need anything? I know you just had a baby, let's get this rotation going, make sure you have food. You know, there should be definitely, there should be no one in our, in our community. That's why I don't think nobody in the bay is hungry. No, there's a lot of people hungry in the bay. Yeah, MCC feeds 400 people. So Allah, that's, that's shameful. Like in a place so wealthy, like for there to be people who are, that's, that's shameful. That's shameful. Yeah. So we have to make, you guys are organizing, you're feeding people, right? There are people who are involved with that. You want to be involved with that. That's one of the first commandments that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said and gave when he entered into Medina. Give salam and feed people. Right. So you guys are doing that. But that's, I cannot say enough, enough, enough, enough, even when we're thinking about going into business, when we're thinking about organizing, you, you got to ask, what are the rulings on how do we, how do we do that? How do we do it so that we can be sure we're having Tulfiq with Afia and that we're doing it according to the way Allah and His Messenger have to create? What are the rules and regulations about that? So that we can have success if we're doing it when Ahirah. Testing, you know, testing on an individual level, that part is promise. Allah say, you will, you will, did you think that you will be left alone and not be tested? Saying you believe in not be tested? Of course you will. Like that's the part of the, you know, that's, that's a part of the process. You squeeze a lemon, what are you going to get? Lemon juice. If you squeeze an apple, what are you going to get? Huh? Apple juice. If you squeeze a moutain, what are you going to get? Don't tell me moutain juice. You should get, if you squeeze, you should get iman.  It should make you. It's like, oh, this is, this is who I'm about to become. I'm about to get to this next level. I'm about to, I'm about to rise to this next level. So it's, it's sometimes it's our trials that determine who we'll be. But let's not look at them as something that breaks us as opposed to the opportunity to rise up. So, So, thank you so much. Okay. Her question is like with the Kubaisi women, how do we start a movement? How do we do it? So the first thing, even like Nana Asma, they started with a small group of women and it's women who are committed. So, you know, what I noticed in these situations, like you say, okay, we're going to do a year intensive. And inside of that year intensive, we're going to study, we're going to study, we're going to study certain verses. Let's just say, I'm going to say some highlighted verses from the Quran. Then you train those women on those particular things. And those verses are pretty much connected, of course, to their Ibadah, but also connected to their circumstances. So you train those women. Now, you're going to start out with 40. In the end, you have about 10. This is the nature of it. Oh, I got this. This is why this is why that's, that's fine. That's, I'm always like, it does, it just takes a few to make a difference amongst many. So with that 10, once you train them, now they have responsibilities, right? Whether it be in a masjid or in a general community, and their job is they need to train at least five, right? Preferably those women are also from other places. So if you did it online, right, preferably those women are from other places. The other thing is, is that, so that's your women who are knowledgeable. You need to find out also who are the, who are the women in business? Who are the women in finance? Who are the women, who are the, who are the money makers in the community? And so really, those women have to also be committed. They should have some training as it relates to like, these are, like, these are the, so there's a really great sheikh male, love, bless him. But I think also, they have some, basically the rules around like non-profit work and, you know, things like that, that also related to business as well. And you start with them a social enterprise. And we say, okay, from these, from this group, and that may be larger. They say, okay, we give this much to get. So in the social, what they do, and for example, in West Africa, is the women say, we're going to support this particular business that's run by, that'll be run even also by the community. I'll give you a perfect example. You ever heard of an organization called 10,000 Villages? So listen, but 10,000 Villages is a group of women who go to different places in the, in the world. It's a little bit, they're Christian men and women. They're basically they buy different products, fair trade from different, that are used, they're produced by different people. They sell them in a store in America. They bought, they bought this for 75 cents. They sell it for $75. Just being honest. I've seen it. But they have a store. They use it actually to run their church. Most people don't know that they're, they're, they're men and I, they're, they're now also the women who work in the place are a part of that church and they're just volunteering so many hours or whatever a week. All right. And so then it, it becomes back recycled. Now I don't know if they use it for particular causes, but I say then we should use it for particular causes that are specifically related to women. So what are some of the initiatives you guys have in the community? Like that are specifically related to women. Yes. What was it? Oh, yes. Right. Like the domestic violence shelter and they always need funding. They always need help. So it's like, okay, this particular business venture that we came up with, whatever the model it is that we're selling, that the proceeds from it, at least, you know, of course you've got what you need in order to run it and to pay the employees. But then in, in addition to that, we can say this much 80% or whatever the profits or we can even say the 100% of the profits once we've taken care of the business side of it, then goes towards the domestic violence shelter and then repeat. Right. Then you do it as it relates to, to other things. Then you've got Mashallah. You guys have a portion of it already. Like this 10 year program, mentorship program that you guys have been doing here in this masjid with the young girls. Mashallah. Like that is, that's huge. Right. That's one of the things that also does it. But then you say, okay, they're a group of, there's some of them who are going to be, who have the aptitude to be who found. Right. There's some of them, Mashallah, who can, who can study some feqh and we can like really train them. So it's like, then we start training them because the truth is, and they can be small. Do you guys, you got right my foundation. So you just have a, have a, an Elm arm of it. Right. Yeah.  Right. So I heard that they're women who actually work together here in the Bay, but they're a part of different masjid. So now that one of those young women who've just finished, right. Now her job is she stationed at this masjid and she's going to run this young women's holoca, whatever, whatever, whatever for however long. And this one is not going to run this woman's holoca for however long. Eventually you have a women's movement, especially if every year you come together, let's say for a women's retreat, a women's conference, but spend those are the women who are running and they're teaching it. You have a, that's going to sprint pretty much. That's what they did to us. And today, like in the end, where majority, at least the ones who were in America, then you got like Macaulay, you got, what is it, Greensville Trust in the UK, they all end up going somewhere and establishing something. Resources, educational resources to learn more about this one. Oh no, no, I smart. There's a book that, you know, so sad. The first woman that is known in the, in the known, the more modern world to write a story about her was young, what's her name, Jean-Claude, something called the Caliph's daughter, the Caliph's daughter, Jean Boyd. Jean Boyd wrote a book called the Caliph's daughter. Gives her whole life story, masha'Allah. Rabata did, they have like a feature on there about her, like an article about her. But if you look her up, now she is something, it's amazing that now she's becoming more and more and more known. But her project was a very similar, the project that we have in the Gambia is called the Yantauro project. So Yantauro means met the blessed collective, and it was the collective of women. And so it's actually the Yantauro organization that actually is what, you know, so the collective also has a double meaning, also means the sisterhood. And so it's these women that, you know, would go and do these villages very similar to Yantauro. Even so, Yantauro, if we, with the organization, right, like we're talking about from the economic arm, if you start a business, whether it's an online business, Rabata Foundation, I'm just saying, Rabata Foundation decided they're going to sell hejabs online, right? So the proceeds from those hejabs that are being sold online will then actually go, meaning she, the message doesn't have to give money for that sister to go teach, right? The sisters who are part of that collective, they pay money for her to go teach, right? And could be somewhere else. Oh, wow. And it, yes, it can go to Chicago, like, okay, we're going to send you, you know, hopefully you should get married to my name, John, but it can be, right? The thing is, is that we, you know, so you guys are paying all kind of you paying the moms are paying. But if you want a women's, if you want women to succeed and to be able to have access, right, for daughters all over, because the truth is we need it. At this point, we need it.  I'm like, you have it. Yes, somebody had a question. Yeah, the Khalif sister. Thank you. So she was mad and for you. And that's very important when she was mad and for you. Rahm to Lale, when he passed away, Muhammad bellow became the Khalifa. Her brother became the Khalifa.  And she, you know, basically when he came to power, then she was like, okay, you run that politics. I got to make sure that we have that the women are taking care of. So this one is a tough one. Let me say this. When it comes to you studying, when it comes to studying, if your husband is not in alignment with you studying, the first thing is that you don't have a choice in that matter because it's a matter of your father lying. So it's your responsibility, it's your duty to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to go to study. Now we do have to make it easy for each other, meaning if your husband is like, I know you can't go to Tireem and go study. Right? I mean, that's not, that's a, in that case, that's, that's consistent with his right. Like I, you know, for my wife to go study somewhere in Tireem, why? Because I'm going to be away from you and I'm here and come, that's, that's challenging. No, subhanallah. But he can't say, okay, you want to go online and study with, you know, the Rabata or you've got a sister's Hanukkah or there's something, you know, there has to be some, it can't be just like, you know what, if you don't want to go with me to Tireem to study, that's it. No, come on now. That, but however, if it's, there are more resources that are accessible and available. Now, when it comes to, if you're not able to study, like for example, if there's, you know, Akita is not being taught in your region and you need to go to Minnesota, right? You need to go to Minnesota to take this class, you know, for a few months because it's not being taught. Okay, that's a few months, you can do that, you can go.  Number one, yes, I did that, but I'm also, I'm the only Muslim in my family, right? And I'm the youngest of eight girls. So there wasn't, there, there was no mahram, you know, that could take me, let me say that there was no brother, there was no uncle, you know, that was going to take me overseas. And at the time when I began studying, I was married. So I did have permission to go and study. So that's a different, that's a very different case that I had permission to go study. So Allah, your Hamal. Any other questions? Mary, let me also say this, there needs to be a lot of dua and in Qiyamul-Layn and Sujood regarding the marriages of our community. Pray for each other and each other's marriages because that sounds like you make dua for your sister.  It's also something that is a very, it's, it's a very difficult situation to be in where you feel like I want to study, I want to be more committed to my Dean, but I don't have someone who is supportive of that. And that's usually based upon either one or two things, either because that person is concerned and we have to, we also have to take on this concern, either that person is concerned that, okay, you're going to become knowledgeable and expose what, expose me for what I don't know. So there's an insecurity in your spouse. That's one aspect. The other thing is, is that there may be a fear that, and this happens, I've seen this happen. You're right. We have to tell the truth about this.  And then, you know, you're going home like, you don't know that. And you don't know your father and I.  Right. And so it's important that as we study and as where you cannot be studying, I'm going to be honest, whatever you're studying, that's, you know, to sew off and to ski has to be, has to be a part of that. Like a clock has to be a part of that. Because if, if, if, if Ilm made you arrogant, then you missed the point. Right. And so, and if, especially if that brother is financially supporting you, I don't know the case, right. I don't know the situation I'm giving generalizations.   Right. And law is just, but the hawk of Talak is with the man. So you chose that man. That was your, you know what I mean? You, you made that decision. So yeah, work that out as you can. Pray on that. Subber with that. You know, both people think I was, no, subber with that as the two, until Allah shows you, there's a beautiful ayah instead of Talak that I just found it so beautiful. InshaAllah my sister is going to recite it for me. Where is she? No, she stopped out. But I'm going to recite it, tell you in English. And like Allah talks about the patience. And when you have patience, right? Have patience into Allah subhan Allah gives you a way out. I remember when I, I find it amazing. Surat al-Toba. Surat al-Toba. Surat al-Toba. Sorry. Surat al-Toba. And it's about that. If you're patient that Allah subhan Allah will give you a way out and don't think that that means exactly. Don't think that that means like, oh, I'm glad to have, but don't think that means the divorce. No. InshaAllah, that means Allah will open up his heart.  May Allah subhan Allah make it easier on you. May Allah subhan Allah bless all of our sisters that are having, that are struggling in their marriage, especially that are, that are struggling in ways by which they want to be more committed to Allah. May Allah bless their husbands to be more understanding, more compassionate and increase them in knowledge and wisdom. Allah. Make dua for your husband. Please don't just, you know, we have enough divorces. Make dua for him. Allah'll give him hidayah.


I would like to request all of you to kindly join me in welcoming Simran Chane Gaglani, AVP Brand Solutions, YCOM 18 Sports with a huge round of applause on the stage. Hi, thank you everybody. I'm just waiting for my clicker, but why we wait for such interesting conversation about diversity in India, such a diverse country. But if there are any two things that bring India together, it's IPL and Big Boss, and thankfully I represent GeoCinema and GeoCinema has both. So today we'll talk about a little bit about IPL though. Can I get the clicker? There was a lot of conversation about diversity, equity, inclusiveness. However, I will first talk a little bit about another D, which is digital and the digital revolution that's happening in the country today. And specifically what's happening on connected TV. The reason why we thought it's important to talk about it is because really what we've seen on IPL this time has been a huge game changer for us. And I think, you know, as marketers, entrepreneurs, who are constantly thinking about ways to reach out to a premium audience, to a diverse audience, important to know what you can do on a platform like GeoCinema on connected TV.  Four 49 million unique users had been reached on IPL. We exited IPL with a 95 million daily active user base. I mean, that's actually larger than some, you know, a few of the countries of Europe put together, right? So at a daily active user level, you know, that's the number we exited at. And at a monthly level, we are at 275 million monthly active users. But more interestingly, while of course, you know, I think IPL viewership, since we made IPL free for anybody to watch this year, whether they are on mobile or connected TV or on the web, we always knew that we are going to do game changing numbers. But I think the one thing that kind of, you know, very, very pleasantly surprised us as well and kind of, you know, exceeded our estimates as well, was the number that we were able to achieve on the connected TV universe. So on GeoCinema for IPL 2023, we had 126 million users, unique users watching, which actually is ahead of all industry estimates. Actually, Google was actually estimating this number to get, you know, this audience to get to this number in 2025.  Given a few levers, if you can apply those as well, right? And I think the whole connection with diversity, equity, et cetera, will come when we talk about, you know, some of those levers. But the biggest one, of course, for us on achieving this number has been some of the strategic partnerships that we did strike with, you know, OEM operators and also with partners like a Google TV, Geo, Xiaomi, et cetera, right? So GeoCinema was available on all of these connected TV platforms leading to, you know, that spike in the number, right? And interestingly, actually, if you put this as a like-to-like comparison, connected TV versus high-definition TV, the connected TV audience today in the country, especially on IPL, was 4x the high-def audience. And that's the number that we have seen. Of course, the number here has been, you know, calculated by minusing the OH number that HD has also reported. The reason why we thought, you know, we should do that is because, I mean, all of us have seen IPL in a bar or in an outside environment, right? And we know that consumption of the tournament in either a bar, restaurant, airport, railway station scenario is probably a little more passive compared to the way you would consume it at home. And we thought, you know, probably it's not really the right comparison because when you're watching at home with your family or friends, you're far more involved and far more engaged with the tournament as well, right? So the right apples-to-apples comparison actually is to see at a household level. And at household level, actually, GeoCinema reached, you know, CTV on GeoCinema and IPL reached about 30 million households, whereas high-def television reached about 7.5 million households. So that's sort of, you know, the index between both the reach. And, you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, the reason why we were able to do this and so much of the conversation today has been about diversity. And I think some of the folks that were present here are also touched upon, you know, why are we discussing diversity only as a factor of gender? And at GeoCinema, we completely agree. Diversity in a country like India is also such a factor of language. It's a factor of interest. It's a factor of devices. And I think the reason why we were able to do what we did on IPL this year was because we a-serviced multiple languages. For the first time ever, IPL was available to view in 12 different languages to users. In fact, much to our delight, and I'm sure a lot of you would have probably even noticed the Punjabi and Bhojpuri language feeds actually kind of went viral because a lot of people were watching, you know, obviously it was the first time they were watching the game in these two languages. So many of the people were retweeting Ravi Kishan's quotes who was on the commentary panel. So many of the people were retweeting, you know, how the Punjabi commentators were talking about it. So bringing together the entire piece of language diversity and servicing probably those underserved markets by having language feeds. For the first time ever, you know, we were also, we also had four interest feeds.  We had an insider feed which featured, you know, some of the biggest stars of cricket, names like Brett Lee, names like Anil Kumbhle. That feed was geared more towards the core cricket consumers of servicing the absolutely passionate cricket consumers. And of course, the fanatics feed, which was for the first time ever imagined if a Mumbai-Bangalore game is on and you are a Bangalore fan, you can choose to actually watch commentary by fellow Bangalore fans. And obviously the banter, you know, that goes on in that sort of a scenario is very, very different from the slightly more uptight and professional commentary that you would otherwise have all become, you know, used to seeing for the last 30, 35 years. So these were innovations that we did. And of course, for our connected TV viewers, for the first time ever IPL was available to watch on 4K. So high definition, you could be, you know, you could be present in any of the metros and watch it in high def. We had a few other features like hype mode and multi-cam also available for, you know, connected TV viewers. So again, for the first time ever, if you really want to hear what's going on behind the stumps when Dhoni is, you know, wicket keeping, you could actually watch the stump mic camera. And, you know, really if you were lucky enough and you were watching the match at the right moment, you could probably hear what Dhoni's saying, you know, to his bowler across the other side of the wicket. Right? So some of these innovations, the good thing is digital allows you to do. It allows you to service diverse audiences in a very, very meaningful way and, you know, get your message to them in an environment where they are very, very engaged with what they are watching. And because of this, you know, whatever your audiences are, belief is that you can find them on connected TV. Today, we are at about 90% share of the smart TV market in the country. And our internal estimates are projecting that where we are at 126 million users today, next year IPL we will be at about 200 million users on connected TV only, right? Imagine, I mean, there is a huge shift actually that's happening in the country, you know, in terms of consumer behavior where people in not just the top six metros but probably the top 100 million plus towns are shifting towards consuming a large tent pole, you know, tournament like an IPL on the connected TV universe. And of course, the huge plus point of being present on something like this is 100% measurability that you have with doing a digital campaign as against, you know, any other medium, right? So on a parting note, this was a very, very quick one. We just wanted to kind of come and quickly touch base with everybody here. For marketers and entrepreneurs, you know, while of course you need to think about how are you going to service your diverse audiences and how are you going to bring in the principles of inclusion and equity into your campaigns, really nothing can take away from scale. And the beauty of a platform like IPL, meeting GeoCinema is that you can service all of your diverse requirements, you know, through multiple sort of touch points that we can provide for you and your brand. So, you know, me and my colleagues are here.  But yeah, I just wanted to leave you on this note. So thank you. Ma'am, I'll request you to stay back on the stage for just one more minute. As I invite on stage Mr. Gunjan Nagpal, Vice President and Head of Sales, Fashion Entrepreneur Fund to help us felicitate you for that fabulous and insightful session.


We had some property right off the bat that we had inherited from Carolin's folks. We had 25 acres and I didn't know what to do with it. So I decided I was going to plant a pecan grove on a lowland and on the upper part I'm going to plant pine trees. The pecan trees, it took me a long time to figure some of that out. Made lots of mistakes there. Once I got some of that behind me, I kind of learned how to, I didn't kind of, I learned how to graft. I should have gave up, but I didn't. You know, we started pecans in 1984. So the first field we planted, which is there by the house, my wife was pregnant with my daughter. So kind of been in the family, you know, since that very beginning. So this is my vacation. This is my happy place. I get to come up here with my family, get to participate in this. Even picking up the sticks, that's the hard work, you know, it's still fun. It's something different than we do. This time of year, it'd be in harvest time. If you've ever been around farming, there's just something about bringing the family together at harvest. I get to see all the family, nieces and nephews. Everybody comes in. It's just cool to be able to participate in that and be a part of it. When we first started this, you couldn't hardly sell a con. Nobody knew it was here. And word of mouth has worked out where over the years, we've got more business than we deal with. We have two daughters and one son, and our oldest daughter lives in Hot Springs, and our son lives in Little Rock, and then Sheila lives about two miles from us. And they all work. They come and work, and they all have public jobs. But when they get off work from there, they hear, I know on the weekends, they're here usually. And at night, it's like they need to be. And during harvest, they do, because they've been working every night. I'm not being able to work with my kids, all of them. They ain't lost, too. I love them all. You know, I think we're fortunate, you know, David's got younger kids right now. They're in high schools, big to the start college. Every one of our kids have been there and run the cleaners at night, run the crackers and the shellers. It's pretty cool to go in there in the evening and have his daughter, who's a senior this year, homecoming queen. Pretty cool to see her on the cleaning line, you know, just going wild. I think she beats us all on the speed. And then, you know, his son Dawson, a couple of years younger, you know, he's running the equipment, taking care of the trailers, you know. And he's on the cleaner, too, but it's pretty awesome to see that next generation in line. I'm 75 now, a few days ago, a month or so ago, I'm 75. But I've got enough people to help things, I'm going to carry them.


And it's about an actor who is aging and living in some sort of nursing facility. And he is reflecting on his life as an actor. And in order to sort of survive in this environment of being in a nursing facility, he develops this fantasy that he is on stage addressing an audience. He uses this experience as a way to try to explain his past, his career, and try to make sense of what acting is all about, what theater is all about. We begin with nothing, quite literally a whole or a space into which we pour this passion, this intensity, these feelings and emotions and thoughts and dreams. We create out of nothing drama. And these scenes are interrupted by members of the staff of the nursing facility who come to check on him and provide him with meals. And the conflict that develops between him and the staff over his desire to try to be alone and with this imaginary audience that he's created to try to sort of reflect on his life and career and the needs of the day-to-day of the facility.  And so, that's a big part of the conflict of the play.  Help me to feed you, perhaps I shall. We haven't done it in a while. Would you like that? We can try that. All right. Open wide. Here comes the little airplane into the hay. Look what you've done.  Pick that up. All right, that's enough. Go get them. Believe me, no choice, Mr. Horn. So it's called the idiot's tale.   And so, he uses that term to describe himself, and whether he actually believes it or whether he's using it ironically is not clear. You see, they don't know you're here, and I'm not actually alone. They think I'm all alone yet, but I'm not. I'm with you. They're wrong. And the joke's on them. I got you, and you got me. And if I were to leave right now and go play bingo with the rest of them, well, I'd be forsaking you, my audience, and then where would you be? Well, you'd be gone, wouldn't you? Yes, you'd just get up and leave, and then where would I be? Well, then I'd lose you, and I wouldn't like that, because then I'd have nothing. Nothing to live for. Bennett, just a joy to work with Bob. He is a wonderful actor, very, very talented, and he seems to have totally inhabited the role in a way that I—in a way that's teaching me about the role, in a way that I didn't know from even writing it. So that's a wonderful experience of directing in general, but directing your own piece, it's a magical experience.