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An outcome tells you what happened. It doesn’t always tell you why. When we treat the present as though it has no history, advantage can look entirely earned, disadvantage can look entirely deserved, and inequality can look natural. Context doesn’t erase personal responsibility. It helps us make more honest judgments about what we’re actually seeing. Before we explain the outcome, we should understand what helped produce it. Today’s Word & Lesson: In medias res. Full episode on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #InMediasRes #AmericanHistory #HistoricalContext #Inequality CriticalThinking TariqElAmin

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Where we begin the story determines how we understand what we see. If we start too late, conditions can look like choices. Disadvantages can look like failures. And advantages can look entirely self-made. Historical context doesn’t excuse everything that happens in the present. But without it, we risk explaining the present without understanding what helped produce it. Today’s Word & Lesson: In medias res. Full episode available on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #InMediasRes #AmericanHistory #HistoricalContext #CriticalThinking HistoryMatters TariqElAmin

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A small reflection on yesterday’s khutbah/sermon. Regardless of how well you think you’ve explained a point, you never know who’s going to need a little more support. The khutbah/sermon satisfies the obligation. Taking time to talk with people, after it’s over fulfills the responsibility.

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The limits of our experience don’t have to become the limits of our concern. We can care about what we haven’t experienced. We can listen to realities we don’t fully understand. And we can resist the temptation to make ourselves the measure of what’s real. That may be where empathy begins. Full Word & Lesson available on YouTube. Link in bio. #Solipsism #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #Empathy #Perspective #Community

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Our experiences shape the way we see the world. But they can also limit what we’re able to see. There’s a difference between saying, “I haven’t experienced that,” and deciding, “That can’t be true.” That difference matters. Today’s word gives us a way to think about why. Full Word & Lesson available on YouTube. Link in bio. #Solipsism #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #Perspective #Empathy #CriticalThinking

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Labels help us organize information. But people are always more than the labels we use to describe them. There’s a life behind the category. A story behind the statistic. Relationships, responsibilities, plans, and consequences that don’t fit neatly into a headline or a data point. The language we use can bring us closer to the human story, or create enough distance that we forget there’s a human story at all. Today’s word: Abstraction. Full Word & Lesson available on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLesson #Abstraction #WordsMatter #HumanDignity #CriticalThinking

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The words we use can determine how close we remain to the human beings we’re talking about. A person can become a worker. A neighbor can become a consumer. A family can become a statistic. None of those descriptions is necessarily false. But something can be true and still leave out much of the human story. Today’s word: Abstraction. Full Word & Lesson available on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLesson #Abstraction #WordsMatter #HumanDignity #CriticalThinking

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It was good to connect with Alexander Massad over lunch today at Let’s Eat to Live. He’s an Assistant Professor of World Religions at Wheaton College, and I left our conversation encouraged by the work he’s doing and look forward to supporting the work of his department. One of the things that hit home with me is his commitment to preparing new thinkers within his own faith tradition, who can engage it deeply and critically, while also developing the capacity to engage substantively with people rooted in other traditions. That’s extremely important to me. Imam Warith Deen Mohammed gave us the language of “shared freedom space.” I’ve come to understand it as both an aspiration and a goal: creating and cultivating spaces where we can bring the best of our respective traditions into relationship with one another. We don’t have to uproot ourselves in order to engage someone else. In fact, we should encourage one another to go deeper, to interrogate our traditions thoughtfully, to draw from their best, and then meet one another in the space created by the values we share. That’s shared freedom space. And we need more people committed to cultivating it.

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We tend to measure education by credentials, degrees and graduation rates. But those things tell us what people completed. They don’t necessarily tell us what education produced in them. Can we examine an idea beyond whether we agree with it? Can we recognize when we’re being informed and when we’re being influenced? That may tell us something more important about how educated we really are. Today’s word is INTERROGATE. Full Word & Lesson of the Day available on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #Interrogate #Education #CriticalThinking

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We know how to interrogate the other side. The harder question is whether we’re willing to apply that same scrutiny to ourselves. Not just: What do I believe? But: Why do I believe it, and what would cause me to change my mind? That’s where critical thinking begins. Today’s word is INTERROGATE. Full Word & Lesson of the Day available on YouTube. Link in bio. #WordAndLessonOfTheDay #Interrogate #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy