24: Mutual Aid in Islam w/Mona Haydar

24: Mutual Aid in Islam w/ Mona Haydar. Matthew Remski: Hello everyone. This is Matthew Remski with episode number 24 of Antifascist Dad Podcast: Mutual Aid in Islam with Mona Haydar. Mona Haydar: We have mandatory redistribution of wealth. Mandatory. We call it zakat. It's a practice that is commanded by God to redistribute wealth from those who have to those who do not have for any reason. For whatever the reason their poverty exists, we're not meant to ask those questions. The poor are the poor. And if you are not of the poor, you are entitled to the wealth that is commanded by God for those who have to give to those who do not. Matthew Remski: So that's Mona, the chaplain. [Mona Haydar rapping: "All around the world love women every shade... even if you hate it I still rap my hijab, rap my hijab, rap my hijab, rap rap my hijab."] And that's Mona doing hip-hop. For housekeeping: you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I'm on YouTube and TikTok as Antifascist Dad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast, where subscribers get early access to every second part of these main feed episodes, including this one. And also in the show notes you will find a pre-order link for my new book, coming out April 26th: Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. Please pre-order. Apparently that's a big deal. A few weeks ago I spoke for probably too long on why I personally think that not only is it strategically wrong to exclude spirituality and religious traditions from antifascism discourse and organizing, but also that the radical flank of any religious movement is going to probably offer tools of self-regulation, prophetic hope, and practices that prepare people and communities for a post-capitalist world in which we have to dig deep to positively adjust to conditions of collapse — or the long and probably boring and irritating work of redistribution. That's why I've been so interested in liberation theology. You can check out my interview with Father David Inchauskas in episode seven. David, by the way, has been extremely active in the media in condemnation of the imperialist attack on Iran. He was actually on Morning Joe the other day, so that's really cool. It's also why I've been interested in anti-Zionist Jewish practice and also things like the Ambedkarite Buddhist movement that built its reverence around communist principles. I know very little, however, about the radical flank of Islam, and I feel a little bit shameful about that. I live in Toronto, in the Upper Beaches, and just to the northeast of us, a large percentage of the 10,000 Muslim neighbors in my district live at the Crescent Town public housing complex. I don't know enough about their politics or process. I know their food. I hang out with a number of those guys at the gym and the sauna. We talk about geopolitics a little bit. There's an older man who tells me about his daily schedule that I really envy, because he's up at 4 in the morning to go to mosque, and then he gets home and has his breakfast while he watches Premier League soccer beamed in from England, where he spent some of his time in his world travels. So I'd say I have a little bit of cultural fluency for a white guy, but I wouldn't say that I understand the politics or the process or any of the mutual aid ethos that I know is very strong in these communities. I want to learn about that, and I want to learn about it at a time when there is a new wave of Islamophobia rising here — exemplified by our Premier Doug Ford, and by my own City Councillor, Brad Bradford, seeking a court injunction to cancel the permits for the recent Al-Quds Day rally. They did it by smearing this entire population as terrorist. Here's Bradford: Brad Bradford: I'm calling on the City of Toronto to file an injunction to stop Al-Quds Day, planned for this weekend. Al-Quds Day is the product of the Ayatollah in Iran. It has been an event that unfortunately has been associated with hate and potentially violence for many years, and we just cannot afford that in the city of Toronto right now. Safety of our residents — all our residents — is paramount, and it's time we take urgent action to protect everybody. Matthew Remski: So it's Ayatollah Brad, and it's now a global event. And you know what doesn't keep everyone safe? Telling disgusting, bigoted lies about our neighbors. Thankfully, Justice Robert Centa saw through this, and in his ruling he said the right to assemble and speak freely must be maintained in times of global conflict — perhaps at no other time is the protection of our civil liberties more important. There is no evidence in the record that there were criminal charges arising out of last year's Al-Quds rally in Toronto or at the rallies in any of the prior 30 years. There is no evidence that participants at last year's rally incited hatred or engaged in hate speech. And so the rally went forward as it always does, with families listening to prayers and speeches and music and opposing imperialism in the Middle East — lots of moms with strollers among all those terrorists. It seemed they were pretty safe. Brad Bradford is making a run for mayor here, and I'm not going to let him forget what he's done. More broadly, my conversation with Mona about the radical redistributive politics of the Islam she practices arrives at a moment when the American right is aggressively weaponizing anti-Muslim sentiment as part of its broader authoritarian project. There are ICE raids targeting Muslim communities, travel bans are coming back, and we have the normalization of surveillance and deportation as governing tools. Haydar's on-the-ground experience of Muslim life in America is directly relevant here: how do ordinary people resist fascism, and where do they find the resources to do it? I believe that the framework of Islamic mutual aid that Haydar talks about here — this notion of mandatory, religiously obligatory wealth redistribution — offers secular leftists and Marxist-adjacent listeners a model of sustained, theologically grounded resistance that doesn't depend on electoral cycles or institutional legitimacy. It's precisely the kind of durable infrastructure that antifascist organizing could often benefit from more of. You'll also hear that the conversation challenges one of the right's most effective propaganda tools: the construction of Islam as incompatible with Western democratic values. Haydar dismantles this not through liberal assimilationist argument, but by showing that Islamic practice is at its core a system of anti-capitalist mutual care with very deep roots. So here's my conversation with Mona Haydar, recorded during Ramadan. Mona Haydar, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Thank you so much for taking the time. Mona Haydar: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Matthew Remski: I wondered, just to begin, if you could walk me through a few basic Muslim greetings and what they mean. Mona Haydar: Sure. The way that we greet each other as Muslims is assalamu alaykum, which means "peace be upon you" — "may peace be upon you." And the response is wa alaykum assalam: "and peace be upon you as well." So it's a prayer. We pray for each other as a greeting. Matthew Remski: I grew up Catholic, and there is one moment in the mass where we do something similar. It's right before communion, during the offertory when the gifts are being brought up to the altar, and we're invited to turn to each other and share a sign of peace. We turn to whoever is around us and say "peace be with you," and they say "also with you." That sounds like there's a connection there, but it's only something we do in church. I kind of wish there was a more common greeting. Mona Haydar: Yeah. It's actually something I really love and appreciate about being Muslim — that whenever we see a fellow Muslim, we are required to pray for one another. Matthew Remski: So it's a requirement. Mona Haydar: Yeah, definitely. Not everybody fulfills it — some people will just walk past — but the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said "spread the peace amongst you," and it's one of the ways that we build community. Matthew Remski: And it's Ramadan right now. How do you do with fasting? Mona Haydar: That's a great question. I personally am not a great faster. I have low iron, so it's not that easy. But it's beautiful because we have dispensations — those of us who are ill or pregnant or have to take medications are actually exempt from the fast. This year I am fasting. My health has been a lot better, so I have been fasting, and it's been incredible. I feel so grateful to have good enough health to be able to fast and to partake in this holy month. Matthew Remski: Is that up to the individual's discretion — if they realize they have a challenge, they can choose not to participate? Mona Haydar: Yeah, exactly. It's a requirement — the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said it's a requirement upon all of us, just like it was a requirement on people who came before us. It's been a requirement since early humanity, when God first sent the first human to earth. It's something that's been a part of human culture for all of eternity, so it's not new to Muslims that we fast. We make those individual choices based on our unique individual lives and needs, but the collective carries it on. It's not based on the one; it's based on the community. Everybody carries it, so it feels very light, it feels very easy. The traveler doesn't have to fast. The nursing mother doesn't have to fast. But the rest of the community carries it on. Matthew Remski: Is there a sense that if the traveler can't fast, you're actually doing that for them? Mona Haydar: Yeah. It's like: if many carry something heavy, it becomes light. Ramadan can be described as physically difficult. It's something that God asks us to do that is not necessarily the easiest thing — to go without food and water during all of the daylight hours, from sunrise to sunset. That's something a lot of people feel bewildered about. Matthew Remski: Not even water. Mona Haydar: Right. No food, no water — it's called dry fasting. No gossip, no sex, no anything. Even something that has a very strong smell is not prohibited, but it's not recommended. Even swimming, for instance, because your body will absorb some of that water, unless it's necessary. Matthew Remski: Oh my gosh. Mona Haydar: Yeah. So Ramadan is really beautiful because it's not just about going without food and water. It's about building a sense of community, building a fabric with one another that lasts for the rest of the year. But it's also about discipline. It's about coming together to collectively say: we can do this. We have solidarity with one another. We can do this hard thing together. And from there, from those sharper senses — because we're not thinking about food, we're not consumed, we're not consuming — we are instead noticing the small subtleties, paying attention to what's going on within our heart, within our consciousness. And that builds something called taqwa. That's the purpose of the month. It's taqwa. Matthew Remski: How does that term translate? Mona Haydar: I think a good translation is "reverence." Some people translate it as "consciousness" — like an all-permeating consciousness or awareness. But the way my teacher translates it is "reverence," because it inspires awe at the beauty of creation, the beauty of our bodies, the beauty of our abilities, the beauty of what we're capable of — our capacities and our incapacities as well. Matthew Remski: Is there some part of Islamic socialism that also says this is a way of withdrawing from or not participating in capitalism or consumerism? Mona Haydar: Yeah, there's definitely a recommendation to be so generous during this month that you're meant to not just abstain from food and water and all the other things, but also to avoid extravagance. Some people fast and then they splurge and create huge feasts — it's like they're making up for the day of not partaking. But the advice is actually to limit what you consume so that you're able to be more generous, to give food, to feed those who have none, to distribute wealth in a way that is equitable in society. If you have, you must utilize what you have for those who do not have. That is our job as believers. That's our job as people who say they submit to the One. Matthew Remski: I don't know if there's any etymological overlap between Arabic and Sanskrit — probably not — but the term I'm familiar with that comes up in relation to austerity or fasting is tapas, which comes into the yoga tradition. All of the same principles apply: because you've withdrawn yourself from material concerns and from consuming things, you become more aware of a kind of internal fire that would normally be hunger. You would normally feed that fire with Cheerios or whatever, but when it's isolated, it becomes a doorway to something else. Is that part of the idea as well? Mona Haydar: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's a portal. Spot on. It's a portal. It's something that calls you, beckons you into something greater — greater than this body, greater than this dimension — and it draws you to what is beyond. Matthew Remski: I'm going to reference that I grew up Catholic again. By comparison, Lent is pretty lightweight in general. It was almost like: well, you probably should figure out something to give up — like one thing. And the liturgy is about penitence and preparation for this death event that's supposed to be transformative. So we could give up treats and movies out of a sense of penitence, or identification with the suffering Son of God. There was no sense that I was also supposed to invoke clarity, or identify with the poor, or be provoked toward generosity. That just wasn't there. I'm wondering — there must be Muslim communities where there's a similar flattening of a very sacred thing, where it's all normalized and not really thought about much. But it sounds like you've really found community, or had a practice, where you've been able to fully plunge into it. Mona Haydar: Well, first I'd recommend that you read the writings of someone called Thomas Keating, if you haven't. Matthew Remski: Yeah. Mona Haydar: Oh, you know Thomas Keating? Matthew Remski: I do. Yeah. Mona Haydar: His teachings around the Desert Fathers are just so beautiful. And he does call Christians and Catholics and followers of Christ to that deeper dimension of why we do all that we do. He's actually somebody I met and sat with, so I feel very grateful to have had that connection. But you mentioned something beautiful — that true observation that not everyone cares to develop that greater awareness, to perceive the depth that is actually there. That's what this is for. And that's a real problem in our community as Muslims, especially in certain cultures where affluence is a real disease. We see it as a blessing, but it becomes a kind of spiritual blindness where people become obsessed with the material world instead of seeing it for what it is — signs all around us pointing to something much greater. So we suffer from the same problem. And if Muslims properly practiced our faith, our traditions, our rituals, our commandments, we would see no poverty in this world. The zakat alone — 2.5% every single year by every single Muslim who is eligible — we would see no poverty. Matthew Remski: Like, in the globe. Mona Haydar: Yeah, I think so. And historically, at least in the Muslim world, we've come very close to zero poverty in different khalifates, when they held that rule of law very strictly and the Muslims were very devoted to those commandments. We saw incredible societies built around these commandments — which are about mutual aid, which are about making sure that your neighbor is never hungry, which are about making sure that if you have, you're supposed to give. Not just supposed to have. Hoarding is a real problem in the world today. Matthew Remski: With regard to the normalization and flattening of the prophetic call — I have a view of it, which is that people can get handed religious traditions that have simply absorbed themselves into whatever governmental structures, or especially in the global north, whatever liberal democracies are supporting them. It's not like I grew up in a Catholic Church that was in any way challenging the society that was feeding it. It was there to sort of make people's lives easier or more understandable while they were within capitalism. I never had the sense that I was being asked to be transported out of that world entirely. Part of what I did with that frustration was seek out monastic traditions. By the time I was a teenager, I would be riding the bus to the canton east of Montreal and staying at a monastery there, trying to think about what I should be doing. But in my Catholic world, that opportunity for feeling yourself apart from the unending roll of capitalism just wasn't a big feature of what we were doing. Mona Haydar: I think Muslims suffer from that as well. It's a shame, because we have the tools, we have the resources, we have everything we need to establish the truth of justice in this world, and we choose other than that. We choose capitalism for some reason. I don't know that we all buy into it necessarily, but we all buy into it to some degree — with our tech and our consumer choices. And I feel like there is a kind of call to wake up. I feel that, especially in this younger generation. Matthew Remski: I think that's what made me reach out to you — that you're really trying to make that happen. It was because I saw a short reel. I kind of want to call it a sermon, but I'm not quite sure that's the right word. You're speaking to a community and calling on your fellow Muslims to mobilize resources and sanctuary spaces against the violence of ICE. It made me realize I just don't know any of the Islamic concepts of protection and mutual aid and community, and where they come from. Can you give an overview of the mutual aid and community obligation concepts? You've said a little bit about it so far, but what more can you say? Mona Haydar: We have mandatory redistribution of wealth. Mandatory. We call it zakat. It's a practice that is commanded by God to redistribute wealth from those who have to those who do not have — for any reason, for whatever reason their poverty exists. We're not meant to ask those questions. The poor are the poor. And if you are not of the poor, you are entitled to the wealth that is commanded by God for those who have to give to those who do not. Sadaqa is another kind of mutual aid — voluntary charity. And sadaqa is beautiful. I wish I could properly describe these words to you, because the words in and of themselves contain immense meaning. Zakat is the obligatory redistribution, the mandatory redistribution of wealth. That word doesn't just mean purification, which is how it's usually translated. Zakat is the function, the way by which something grows. Zakat is a purification for sure — it's like that fire you mentioned earlier that burns, cleanses, purifies. But zakat is also the way that you grow. You have to burn away that which is holding you back, that which is not allowing you to ascend. And once you do that, you can actually properly grow your taqwa. Matthew Remski: So those are just intrinsic terms. Mona Haydar: Yes. Yes. Matthew Remski: They flow together. Mona Haydar: Yes. Zakat is what we are called upon. The word is used in the Quran for the idea of the redistribution of wealth, but we're also commanded to do zakat of our souls. Matthew Remski: Oh. Is that proselytization? Is that informing other people? Mona Haydar: No, it's the process by which you grow your soul. You refrain, you hold back from the things which grow your roots into this world, and instead you allow your branches to reach into the next world. It's about inviting you into a deeper way, a higher way. And sadaqa — the voluntary charity, the voluntary redistribution of wealth — comes from the word sadaq, or truthfulness. Matthew Remski: There must be etymological overlap with Sanskrit, right? Mona Haydar: Yeah, I do believe so. Matthew Remski: Sadhaka in Sanskrit is the seeker of truth, right? Mona Haydar: Sadhaka. Exactly. My teacher is a linguist — his name is Imam Fodeh Jameh. He studies languages; he speaks, I think, 15 languages. This is his specialty, and it's something I also love as a poet, but he would be able to tell you more than I am. I do know there is overlap, and there is a linguistic theory that all language emerged out of one language — the original language — versus the more modern Western belief that all languages erupted locally out of each community's needs and culture. Instead, it's a common shared culture of language, and then we developed our uniqueness slowly over time, and those became the languages we know today. The fact that Arabic and Sanskrit and Hebrew and whatever other language may share roots — for me, that is the linguistic theory I believe in for sure. Matthew Remski: Growing your soul — and how it ties into voluntary redistribution of wealth — like, I'm going to take some of my possessions and say these are best in other people's hands. Your soul grows. But what does that mean? You have more capacity for relationship? More awareness of the interconnectedness of things? Mona Haydar: It's an enlightenment process. The greater capacity your soul has to contain light, the more you become aware of the subtleties of the universe, the more awakened you are to the enfolding of all of time and space within you yourself. Ali — who was the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and the third Khalifa — said something so incredible. I'm going to get it wrong, maybe we can search it and read it, but he said: "You are the universe, but you perceive yourself to be a small entity. But within you, within the microcosm of you, is the macrocosm." So within each one of us is enfolded all of time and space, all of history, every soul and every creation. And that is what we become aware of — our interconnectedness. The false fabric of separation, that veil falls away. That's what happens with zakat. That's what happens with growing your soul. It's an enlightenment process that brings light to the darkness where before you couldn't see, and now you can see. Matthew Remski: I have this feeling that this kind of theological sophistication is very much rooted to the very strong advances that Muslim culture made very early on in the sciences. Mona Haydar: When you are divinely connected, enlightened, you're able to perceive subtleties that other people simply cannot. One of the real challenges we face is that not only are we caught up in the material world, we deny the existence of the subtleties. We live in a culture that is hell-bent on being godless. When you say you live in a godless world, everything seeks to prove your assertion. You continue to walk in darkness and you don't see the interconnection. And then you can hoard, you can keep for yourself, you can build bunkers underground just for you and your buddies, and you can abuse people at your will. Because there are no repercussions. There's nothing more. You're not going to be held accountable. You're not actually doing anything wrong, because in your head you are a kind of god. We worship intellect; we worship our own desires at that level. And we lose sight — we actually become blind to the reality of interconnection, to the reality of what is beyond. And that is why we are living in late-stage capitalism and experiencing the death rattle of the United States and the death rattle of Western empire. That is why we are seeing war being waged — we can talk about Vietnam, the Iraq war, Afghanistan. All of that stems from this lack of awareness that those people over there, that's my family. Even if I have no relationship or connection to them, we don't speak any of the same languages, we don't have any shared culture — but they're my family. We're connected. Matthew Remski: And if you had the chance, you would probably have an incredibly great time with them. Well, backing up into your history a bit — and to bring up the geopolitics that I think is always in the background — what has been your experiential arc growing up as a Muslim in America, from post-9/11 to the current day, with threats from ICE and now Tehran on fire? Mona Haydar: 9/11 was a real turning point, I think, for a lot of Muslims globally, but especially in the US. I was definitely old enough to experience the shifts in my neighbors' behavior towards us. Something happened during that time where we were suddenly called on as a Muslim community to be — it was almost like we went from a kind of hidden, small population of Muslims to suddenly having to be ambassadors of the faith, because there were supposedly people doing heinous things in our name. So we had to show people what real Islam is and was. There was this feeling of a burden or a weight on our shoulders that I think we hadn't felt before. But for me, looking back on that now — the loss of life is never something to celebrate — and yet I feel like 9/11 called on Muslims to actually become who we said we were. To look at our faith suddenly, to study it seriously, to act on it, to hold ourselves to a moral and ethical standard that before maybe we were getting away with not doing and not being. And suddenly people's eyes were on us — being surveilled, literally being surveilled. It forced us to look at ourselves in a new way. And I think a lot of good came out of that for us, because it caused us to look inward for a moment, to try harder, and to be what we were supposed to be. And so during that time, conversion to Islam was like a huge wave. People were becoming Muslim in droves after 9/11. Matthew Remski: Really? Mona Haydar: Oh yeah. It was one of the largest mass conversions to Islam after 9/11. We're experiencing the same influx to Islam now. It's like anytime they seek to attack Muslims and Islam — they being empire, the capitalists, the globalists, whatever you want to call them — there's this ricochet effect where we are suddenly welcoming droves of people into the fabric of the faith. And it's incredible. Matthew Remski: It's so interesting, because it's almost like it's one of the forks in the road that people could take that would lead them away from fascism during a capitalist crisis. The Marxist theory is that capitalism goes into crisis and the fascists are there like attack dogs to protect things — and you would funnel yourself there as a working person, as a common person, if you'd been successfully propagandized by the scapegoat theory, by anti-Semitism, whatever it was. But it sounds like your community is experiencing conversions in crisis periods as well, involving people who are going the other way. Mona Haydar: Yeah, it's really immense. And for me it feels ironic, and at the same time it shows me that not only does God have a wonderful sense of humor, but also that he's so wise. People are always asking: why does God let these things happen? How is God allowing these terrible things to happen? And the question isn't how or why. The question is: am I putting myself in a position where I feel like I can actually see and know what is real? Because when I hold myself up and actually look at my knowledge, it's very small, it's very limited. I don't know a lot about anything. I'm very comfortable saying I'm ignorant about most things. Matthew Remski: For the listeners at home, I just want to say that Mona is coming to me sitting in front of a library of — it's got to be 500 books behind her. But I take your point. Mona Haydar: But it's true. I don't claim to know or have a lot of knowledge. And I do know that God knows what he's doing. I trust that he knows what he's doing. And that, for me, is peace. It's safety — to say I don't know, I don't have that answer of how or why. But I know that every time they try to say that we're bad, that Muslims are bad and awful and violent and whatever it is they say about us, that's when people start reading the Quran and becoming Muslim in droves, in waves, in huge numbers. Matthew Remski: You're speaking of a kind of reckoning that 9/11 forced upon a population — you're drawing some lemonade out of it. Like: we really had to focus on our values, we really had to show ourselves for who we were. Now Mahmood Mamdani has this great book called Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. I'm sure you're familiar with it. There's a similar structure to his argument, but he really evokes the pressure that's involved in that reckoning. He says that post-9/11 US discourse just sorted Muslims into good guys and bad guys — the good ones were modern and secular and westernized, and the bad ones were politicized, fundamentalist, resistant. Is that double mind familiar to you? And is the reckoning you're talking about a kind of third way out of that? Mona Haydar: Yeah, I don't think he's wrong, but I think it's deeper than that. 9/11 definitely did something psychologically to Muslims especially — we felt that pressure. We held ourselves to be suddenly friendly, suddenly patriotic, suddenly non-threatening. We had to make sure people around us knew that we were safe, we were the safe kind of Muslims. It does something to you to have to project that all the time. And at the same time, I feel that what that has carried us over into is something remarkably beautiful — what they want to call a trauma or a psychological split. Like, suddenly we had to compartmentalize, and it hurts us to have this trauma. I actually believe that this is something which woke us up in a big way. We did have to go to our texts, we did have to study the scripture, we did have to live the way we're supposed to live. And the performance of being Muslim — being a so-called good Muslim — I think that has since fallen away. Now we are asking ourselves as a community to instead be authentic. No performance, just authenticity. Just practice what we're meant to practice, do what we're meant to do. And that's enough. So that schism definitely happened, and at the same time I can see the benefit. I see the way that I have grown as a result of that fracture. And the poet Jalaluddin Rumi said that the fractures are the place where the light gets let in. Matthew Remski: Everybody thinks that's Leonard Cohen, but Rumi came first. Mona Haydar: That's Rumi. The places we break — that's where we can grow. And so I feel like 9/11 broke us, but it's mending. We're growing as a result. Matthew Remski: So Part Two with Mona Haydar is now up on Patreon. We talk about the pressure of the forced paradox of the good Muslim/bad Muslim — the demand to perform as safe and secular and unthreatening to American imperialism. But Mona still holds to the notion that the post-9/11 reckoning drove communities toward a new authenticity that goes deeper than, or can undermine, that paradox. We also trace Mona's political awakening through hip-hop and spoken word in Flint, Michigan, where the Black community encouraged her to use her voice against racial and economic injustice. We talk about hijab, which Mona reframes as a rejection of capitalist objectification — a demand to be met as a soul before a body. And we close on secular left and Islamic solidarity: shared justice goals don't require identical metaphysics. I think that Islamic practice, as Haydar represents it — including its ritual memory, mutual aid obligations, and orientation toward an unseen but trusted future — offers sustaining energy and infrastructure that leftist organizing can always learn from. That's it for this week. Everybody take care of each other.