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That is complicating things for you to get home. So in Sha'Allah, let's try to keep this short and sweet in Sha'Allah.

When I was a teenager, long, long time ago, my first exposure to global Islamic activism was the Bosnian conflict.

Most of you in this room have just heard of it. Some of us live through it.

And it was my first time becoming involved in the global Ummah was 17 years old, because early 90s, right?

And the harrowing images that came of prisoners in concentration camps, reminiscent of World War II and the Nazis and atrocities, right?

And for those of you who are above the age of 40, remember, you know, week after week, day after day, there was no internet, there was no social media.

But we would get updates via stories of people, via, you know, we would have traveling Shuyuqam and tell us on the ground.

We'd have people who were actually there and then fundraise in American England back then it was legit, because this was a different world, pre-9-11.

That was a legit, you know, operation and a struggle, quote-unquote, the Arabic word for struggle.

That was a legit struggle that the West actually allowed.

So we would be raising funds and traveling and whatnot. And Subhanallah, I felt that there was a sense in my mind, at least, that once the world sees these atrocities, they're going to get involved.

Once we expose to the American public, once we show the UN, so I, as a teenager, would be actively talking about the Bosnian conflict.

I'm not a Bosnian, obviously. I never even knew there were Muslims in Bosnia before this conflict began.

I was writing letters to the editor. I still have a copy of a letter that I published in the newspaper. I was 17 years old.

I still have a copy of that that I wrote to the reality of the massacres taking place in Bosnia.

And we gave presentations, slideshows on campuses, comparing the Nazi images with the Bosnian Muslims saying, look, there's no difference.

You must do something. You guys told us never again, right? You guys said never again.

And that naive optimism of a 17-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, because the Bosnian conflict lasted all of those years,

began to become cynic.

I transformed from being optimistic to realizing that, frankly, the world just didn't care.

And the slogan, never again, was a blatant lie.

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