Transcript
Speaker: Before this whole latest atrocity against Palestinians, I was involved with environmental activism and knowledgeable about it. And when the genocide began, an appalling violation of human rights, and it moved me so much to see the fate of the Palestinians, despite the horrors that they were going through. What are the positives you've seen in terms of social media allowing us to communicate your message directly to your fellow Americans widely in an instant?
Speaker: Social media can exaggerate or can mislead. It also gives you the opportunity to interact directly with the victims themselves, you can hear directly from the voices of Palestinians what is going on. well To your average American, what would your advice or encouragement to them be just to open their mind a little bit to the possibility that maybe they have been subconsciously force fed some nonsense. Once you open their minds and hearts to the truth, that in and of itself, I believe, makes them more open to the possibility that maybe they've been misinformed about Islam as a whole.
Speaker: Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulullah. Assalamu alaikum, may peace be upon you. Welcome everyone to today's episode of Care On Air, Beyond the Courtroom and Behind the Headlines. I'm your host today, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Deputy Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, our nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
Speaker: Again, thank you all for joining us. Very excited about our guest today. Many of you know her simply as Hillary. No, not that Hillary. Hillary of Opening My Heart 24.
Speaker: twenty four We're going to be interviewing her today, and I'll tell you a bit about her before we do. ah Hillary is an activist, writer, social media influencer, who runs the account Opening My Heart 24 on Instagram. She accepted Islam back in 2024 and has been a fierce advocate for Palestinian human rights and has been um a vocal American trying to educate the public, and the American public, about Islam, about Muslims, and answering their questions. ah She's also ah done a lot of work and commentary on issues of metaphysics and Islam. Very fascinating stuff. And so many people, many, many people have been following her page, hearing about her, learning from her, and we're very happy to have her here with us today. Hillary, assalamu alaikum. Welcome to the program. How are you doing?
Speaker: like i' slo I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. No, no. Very happy to have you. So, um you know, Hillary, a huge number of people follow your page and know all about you already. But I'd love to start, you know, for those people who don't already know about you and the work that you've been doing, the commentary you've engaged in. Keith, tell us a bit about who Hillary was. ah before the Gaza genocide, before you you know you learned about Islam.
Speaker: Tell us a bit about yourself before that and and what you knew about Islam, what you knew about Gaza, Palestinians. Just give us kind of a look at what your life was like before all this happened. um before Before October 7th, before this whole latest atrocity against Palestinians, um I was involved with human rights. I was involved with environmental activism and knowledgeable about it. um ah But Palestine wasn't the focus of my attention at that time. And when the genocide began, ah like many of us, I was... ah
Speaker: i was what I watched basically everything that happened to the Palestinians on social media. And, you know, it it it was, the as as most of us understood it to be a an appalling violation of of human rights.
Speaker: And it moved me so much to see the faith of the Palestinians, despite the horrors that they were going through. and And prior to that, while I had known about Palestine, it wasn't at the forefront of my of my activism. But after that, it became my number one issue that i that I wanted to address. And I was inspired to begin reading the Quran because of the Palestinian faith.
Speaker: And I had known about Islam prior to that. I had studied um a bit about it in college. ah I was familiar with it um I understood the Islamophobic tropes and how wrong they were.
Speaker: um But I hadn't ever read the Quran. So I was inspired to begin the Quran because of the Palestinians and the depth of their faith. You know, so've I've heard that from quite a few um people, um activists and people who weren't activists at all. But when they saw, you know, Palestinian men, women, children being slaughtered and their surviving relatives responding by praising God or thanking God or falling down in prayer instead of, you know, collapsing, you know, in in sorrow and hopelessness, as many people would understandably ah do, that that has been an inspiration to people to go, huh.
Speaker: you know I'm curious, you know what what is the the reason for that? What could make a people you know who are going up against a very powerful military, no one is coming to help them for the most part, you know what could make them so resilient in the face of losing their children, their parents, their siblings? What what could give them hope? So you picked up a Kron like others did. And you know what was that experience like for you? What came next?
Speaker: Well, and I also wanted to mention that one of the one of the things that drew me particularly to ah the Palestinian faith was how ah different it was than the Christianity that we see promulgated in the United States today, which to me, while it's not the base of the religion itself, seems to have morphed into a sort of um nationalism and hardline radical approach to to what it means to be a Christian. And when I saw the faith of the Palestinians, I thought, well, this is a very different approach to faith.
Speaker: This is a an open-hearted approach to faith. it's not a it it it doesn't attempt to vilify or demonize anyone else. It's just a faith that that lives in their heart. and So when I began reading the Quran, I came at it with an open-hearted perspective. And that's why I like named my account what I did. Unbeknownst to me, that heart is the center of Islam at the time.
Speaker: And as I began to read the Quran,
Speaker: it's hard to explain because, um I didn't comment it with any sort of baggage, familial cultural baggage. I came at it from a very um sort of an ignorant ah but open-minded perspective. And as I read it, um the beauty of the Quran, even in English, which again is not it's not the the revealed language, but even in English, you could see that it contained something ineffable and something, something, ah
Speaker: divine. And probably within a couple of months or a month of beginning to read it, I knew that I was going to convert to Islam. But i didn't I didn't do it. I took my time because for me, I'm a very um pragmatic person.
Speaker: And I wanted to understand what I was, so to so to speak, marrying into, you know, even beyond marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage this would be a fundamental change in my life and would require things of me that the prior 50 years had never had never demanded. So I wanted to go into it with my eyes open and make sure that this was not something I took lightly.
Speaker: It wasn't a spur of the moment decision. It was a very well thought out. And it took me probably five months after beginning to read the Quran when I convert it back to the but converted back to the religion.
Speaker: Hillary, you're giving me flashbacks. So, you know, my background, just, you know, my father is a Muslim, a convert to Islam, be converted in college. My mother was and remained a Christian. So growing up, I was exposed to both Islamic Christianity. And I had very close friends who were actually Jewish. And so growing up, I was kind of a a floater. I would say I believe in God, but I don't think Jesus, peace be upon him, is God. And that was kind of I split the difference. And but I get it stayed away from religion in general. And I read the Koran, picked up a Koran by myself and started reading it for the first time. And somewhat similar to you, but somewhat different. I actually put it down at 50 pages because it it scared me because I felt like I was reading something that clearly was divine. it felt like it was speaking directly to me in a way, questioning you, prodding you, threatening you, encouraging you. And I was like, I can't deal with this because if I accept I'm going to have to change my life. And so I literally it it' scary it's ibery put it away for a while. And then, yeah you know, thank God, Alhamdulillah, I came back to it. but It took time. But so, all right. So, you know, fast things for Alhamdulillah. Um,
Speaker: the palestine the Palestinian people, the activism for that in this intersection with you know learning about Islam. So you know once you kind of decided, all right, I'm gonna take this this jump, this leap, um you know what happened next? Do you go to a local mosque and do it? do You just do it by yourself? What was your experience of action actually- I actually converted, ah reverted online. and And I debated whether to do that. um the The woman who gave me my Shahada is was also a convert and we discussed whether that it was appropriate to do this online.
Speaker: And her perspective was, i think you should do it online to show that Islam is not a religion of the Middle East. Islam is a religion that can be accepted ah by anybody, whatever the color of their skin, um whatever their gender.
Speaker: And I think her perspective was, ah this will give people a deeper understanding of the religion just by converting in a public space. So that's what I did.
Speaker: And, um, at that point I, I threw myself into Salat. I thought, okay, here we go. Five days, five times a day. I'm going I'm going to do it without fail.
Speaker: I slowly, I realized I was going to have to ease myself into it, uh, as opposed to just jumping in, you know, wholeheartedly, because again, it's ah it's a long journey, you know, and, ah From my understanding, the the followers of the Prophet tellly buelm took 20 years you know before they really came into their own as Muslims and followed all the salat. And I thought, okay I can give myself a little bit of time.
Speaker: And I was encouraged by by Muslims who said, you know, when you're introduced to Islam as a child from your parents, You're not expected to do so a lot, you know, at five years old um all the time. so I said, OK, you know, I wanted to make sure that I cultivated the the spiritual and emotional and heart centered approach as opposed to just following the rigid rules, although the rules are very important. I wanted to make sure that they didn't precede my, my longing to pray. I wanted the longing to pray to come organically, which it did over time.
Speaker: And I didn't want to feel as it was if it was a chore, which was very important to me because if something is a chore to you, then it begins to feel like there's a resistance. I didn't want that resistance. And I knew that if I opened my heart, that I would be drawn to Salat, which is exactly what happened. So as i you know,
Speaker: began to read more and study more ah and make more dua, my movement towards you know Salat became stronger. And with regards to Palestine, I met a woman whose family lives in Gaza and we corresponded quite a bit.
Speaker: And she asked me to begin fundraising for members of her family, which I have been doing ever since. um Alhamdulillah, we have a fundraiser going now for her sister-in-law who is seven months pregnant with twins in Gaza.
Speaker: And obviously giving birth in a war zone is, you know, not safe. ah And for twins, it may not even be possible without any hospital care, doctor care, e etc.
Speaker: So inshallah, we will be able to help her. um and I also use my platform to educate people about what's really going on in Palestine. I threw myself into deeply understanding the Palestinian plight right away. You know, I really wanted, I didn't want to speak on anything I didn't fully understand.
Speaker: So I spent a lot of time reading books, history um about the region and came away with a, what I believe to be a reasonable grasp of what the situation is there and began educate people in my immediate environment as well as online.
Speaker: um Many, many Americans don't understand what's going on there, at least at the at the beginning of the genocide. When I converted, I had liberal friends say to me, why would you revert to a religion like that?
Speaker: And I was shocked. you know I didn't realize such biases existed even amongst liberal you know Americans. um And they weren't overt. you know They weren't, oh, Muslims are bad people. It was more like a Why would you choose to enter a religion where women are subjugated? So there was an opportunity there. There's always an opening to educate people.
Speaker: And alhamdulillah, these people were educated and they did begin to understand. And inshallah, I can do the same thing online, you know, opening people's heart to the beauty of Islam, you know, not the rigidity, not the fundamentalism, but the beauty, which I believe is fundamental to the religion.
Speaker: What kind of reaction have you received from you know people who are not Muslim, number one? sounds like you had somewhat a positive reaction there after you got some time to explain things to people. But also from the Muslim community, um you know what kind of reaction have you seen there from your work? Primarily positive. I mean, i I've heard horror stories from other other influencers, so to speak. i I don't like that term, but who have experienced really quite negative feedback from the community.
Speaker: on Not always, but certainly from a subsection of the community. um you know You must wear hijab from day one. You must stop listening to music day one.
Speaker: You must you know not paint pictures day one that know that represent ah living forms. And I never had that. I was i was lucky, alhamdulillah, not lucky, but blessed to have a community online who very much supported me.
Speaker: And I'm not sure and whether that was the algorithm or what, but i I generally don't get negative feedback. In some of my later posts about Ibn Arabi and the metaphysics of Islam, there are some people who push back, but it's a dialogue.
Speaker: um it's It's nothing, you know, strident. You know, it's it's a dialogue where we can continue to speak about the, our differences of opinions, which is why I began my sub stack because Instagram is a difficult, uh, medium to convey deep thoughts. You know, you only have three minutes or so to capture the audience's attention.
Speaker: So I began a sub stack so I could explore these issues more deeply, which Alhamdulillah has been a real blessing because it's allowed me, i use it as the way I explore and then I just convey what I've learned. Um,
Speaker: So it's ah I am always a student, never an expert. Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, I think, for many of us who accept Islam is that we learn so much so quickly and we start to become, all now let's tell the world, but we don't realize there's so much more to learn. And extreme caution, we have to take more explaining Islam because of the depths of it. So that humility that you expressed there, I think, is important. Yes, absolutely. And respected. So um the issue of ah Palestine, you know,
Speaker: 20 years ago, if the exact same thing had happened, the genocide, American public opinion but could have been very, very different because of the lack of social media, because we would not be able to see for ourselves what was happening in Gaza. We would not have been able to see for ourselves what Israeli officials were saying.
Speaker: about why they were doing this, their genocide remarks. Because of social media, everyone could, you know, turn off CNN or Fox News and see for themselves children being murdered every day. could see for themselves Israeli officials saying, yeah, we want to cut off electricity, fuel food, fuel, because we're fighting human animals. But we can all see it for ourselves. And so tell me about, you know, social media obviously has all sorts of ills and negatives to it, but you know, what are the positives you've seen in terms of social media kind of allowing us to get away from, you know, the filter that often exists in mainstream media and allows you to communicate your message directly to, to your fellow Americans widely in an instant. yeah
Speaker: um You know, and again, social media, like you mentioned is you have to straddle um the idea, the, the, the you know, meta tick tock these are evil empires these are evil evil corporations um and i'd left ended up leaving tick tock when it was acquired by larry ellison because the zionist content was overwhelming and i left 150 000 followers behind but i you know i ended up moving to instagram i was already on instagram but it wasn't my primary medium um with hesitation you know because i
Speaker: like Like many you know companies, they're owned by people who clearly don't have Palestinians' interests at heart. um But I decided that it was the lesser of two evils. I'd i'd like to be on there because I believe it is a platform where you can convey the truth. And um because mainstream media really doesn't show this stuff at all.
Speaker: So I think there's been a shift certainly over the last two years of people understanding that mainstream media doesn't present the full truth. And while social media can exaggerate or can mislead, it also gives you the opportunity to interact directly with the victims themselves. you can hear directly from the voices of Palestinians what is going on. You can see directly what is going on. And we we're beginning, I believe, to trust our own eyes as opposed to trust what we're being told to believe.
Speaker: um Alhamdulillah.
Speaker: And I do think that people's people's understanding of what's going on ah has deepened. And that is completely due to social media, ah or primarily due to social media and exposing the truths.
Speaker: You know, i think the importance of social media is exemplified by the fact that, as you said, um you know, the Israeli government's enablers have spent so much time and money trying to either silence um or censor social media or buy social media companies to then manipulate what people hear. And they wouldn't do that if they didn't realize that social media matters, deeply matters to American and global public governments.
Speaker: opinion So as you said, TikTok is you know now owned by the Ellisons. They're on the verge of getting hold of CNN. um By the way, TikTok, you know I don't hear about it much. I never use it personally. But tell us about, did was there really a radical change? Like, were you being, were your was your availability visibility suppressed? Like, tell me a bit more about what happened. Not particularly because the pre the most the majority of my posts were on the religion itself. um And indirectly on the genocide. um And I think that's what helped me not get suppressed. But the videos that I made that were directly on the genocide, fundraising requests, um ah and things of that nature were suppressed.
Speaker: um so But in addition, I think primarily it was that I didn't want to be on a platform and be generating cash for individuals whose who I completely opposed. I wanted to not be on a platform that that made that made the pop the platform more popular because of my presence in any small way. um And that was the reason I left. And I'd also heard from a lot of other creators on TikTok who were getting suppressed. And that you know that was that's unacceptable to me.
Speaker: To be putting money in the hand in the pockets of Zionists was never my plan. You know, the Ellison's, you know, for for those who don't know, you know, not only, in you know, obsessed supporters of the Israeli government, but literally Mr. Ellison Sr., donator, a donor to Friends of the IDF. So literally a supporter of the Israeli occupation forces.
Speaker: And in charge of seeing that CBS, they put Barry Weiss, who's very hostile to Palestinians. And so, yeah as we said, very concerted effort to You know, you can't win the argument. Clearly, you can't win an argument trying to justify genocide. So the best you can do is try to silence those speaking up against it.
Speaker: Absolutely. Hillary, final question to you, you know, to your average American who... As you said, you know, may say, you know, I believe that that Muslims have the the same religious rights as other people. got no problem with that. But I really I'm afraid of Islam. I don't like Islam. You know, there are even you know people who call themselves you know liberals who have this feeling and they have every right right to it.
Speaker: um What would your advice or encouragement to them be just to open their mind a little bit to the possibility that maybe they have been. you know, subconsciously force fed some nonsense. Is it pick up a Quran or is it no, no, no, visit a mosque? Is it read about a biography? Like, what's your advice? Because different people, you know, might approach it different ways. What's your advice to someone who, you know, might um you know I've had this question from from in some of my DMs from from people saying, you know I have this person who is curious, but, you know, is biased ah against Palestine and I want to educate them. What do I do?
Speaker: um My first suggestion is always study the history. It's always to study the history of what's happened in that region and to understand the forces that have driven of Palestinians into such despair. And, ah you know, many of these people who request information, they're sympathetic to the concept concept of colonialization. They, you know, that that resonates with them. And so when you when you ah allow them to explore the history of the region, um sometimes and often a light bulb goes off in their head they say, well, this is this is not what I thought it was. you know Many people have never heard of the Nakba. So when if someone is actually genuinely curious, I do think learning the history of the region can be that spark that makes them think, have I been fed a lie? have I been fed something that isn't true? You know, I i see this in in individuals whom I recommend to read People's History of the United States, the Howard Zinn book. And when they read that, they're like, this is not what I learned in school.
Speaker: And I think the same thing can be applied to the plight of Palestinians. You know, once you open their minds and hearts to the truth, that in and of itself, I believe, makes them more open to the possibility that maybe they've been misinformed about Islam as a whole.
Speaker: um so that and that And it's often a less, um you know, I'm not saying go read the Quran, which I think for many people, say well, I'm not going to do that right now. But these are people who perceive themselves to be educated.
Speaker: And when they read something about the history of the region, they think, well, maybe I'm not quite so educated. And that provides a bit of a spark for them to their curiosity, I think.
Speaker: Gotcha. so maybe start with ah a suggestion of a history book rather than a book of religion as a more. Right. um Because the history books inevitably have the religion woven into it. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Taylor, want to thank you so much for your for your time. Thank you for having me. I know you're still on this journey. We all are.
Speaker: But we look forward to to following your journey. And and may God, may Allah guide us all. A right and grant a success on on that journey of of life. And we look forward to having you again in the future, inshallah.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. You too, inshallah. As-salamu alaykum. And all of you, thank you for joining today's episode of Care On Air. We greatly appreciate it. And we look forward to seeing you next week, inshallah. Until then, assalamu alaykum. May peace be upon you.
