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Executive director of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad introduced in his August 30, 2024 Friday sermon at the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas a plan to create scholarship for Muslims in the fields of journalism, law, political science, and history. He said that the uncommitted movement was not enough to change the policies of Vice President Kamala Harris, but creating an "army" of 50,000 journalists, lawyers, and members of the academia, who will potentially run for public office, can create 40-50 Muslim members of the U.S. Congress in ten years. Awad claimed that Islamophobia is deep-rooted in American culture, in Hollywood, and literature and that this influences public policies. He shared that CAIR has been working to eliminate and change textbooks in public schools that portray Islam and the Prophet Muhammad negatively. Awad said that the Muslim community "is ready to move to the next phase." The sermon was streamed live on EPIC Masjid on YouTube.
Nihad Awad: "The uncommitted movement sent a powerful message, [so much so] that even the tone of the vice president has changed, but did it change enough? It did not. Did it change the policies? It did not.
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"There is Islamophobia [in the U.S.] that is so deeply rooted in the culture, in academia, in Hollywood, in the portrayal of Islam. For hundreds of years, Islam has been denigrated, the Prophet has been smeared and defamed in books and textbooks that were taught in public schools, that Allah be praised, we have been working to eliminate and change.
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"The Muslim community – Allah has blessed us, including you – we are affluent, we are vibrant, we are educated, we are well-to-do, and we are ready to move to the next phase.
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"We have to dedicate professional resources to inform the public systematically about this faith. Imagine if you are a CEO of a company, you will have a budget for marketing."
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"Brothers and sisters, Islam deserves more from us. Islam deserves a scientific approach to inform the public about Islam.
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"Hollywood has produced over 1,000 movies scientifically designed to portray you as the villain, and it impacted the attitudes of many people in our society. Look at the books, look at literature. We have a mountain of things that we need to confront.
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"I call upon our Muslim community to be as scientific. The Muslim community today is not scientific in designing its future.
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"If we commit to do this, four years from now, the Muslim community will have 4,000 new journalists, we will have 4,000 filmmakers, 4,000 lawyers, 4,000 students of political science, 4,000 students of history. The next year we will have another 4,000.
"Fifteen years from now, the Muslim community will have 50,000 an army of these people. They will design our image, they will protect the truth and the news, most likely many of these people will run for public office and they will become lawmakers.
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"We can have in ten years, at least 40-50 members of Congress, in the U.S. Congress."
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