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Dear John,

As my team and I are busy preparing for our first in-person Convention since 2019, I’m reminded of a powerful and timely message CNN Contributor Van Jones shared with you and the entire American Muslim community at our 2016 Convention.

It beautifully embodies the premise of this year’s Convention and the role you and I play in the future of our great community and nation.

I’m including it below for your reading and reflection.

In peace,
Salam Al-Marayati
President, MPAC

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CNN Contributor & political commentator, Van Jones, at MPAC's 2016 Convention.

Sometimes God picks a people and puts a burden on a community. Not to destroy them but to develop them. So that they can do something magnificent in His eyes.

The American Muslims have been called to save a great faith and a great nation. At the same time.

The founding reality for America was ugly and unequal, according to Jefferson himself.

If you were to go to Washington DC right now, and go to the Jefferson Memorial, and if you were to climb the steps, you would see in marble and stone, Jefferson’s own reflections on the founding of the country.

What Jefferson said about the country was this: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

That’s not ‘we did it.’ That’s not ‘we’ve achieved perfection.’ That’s Jefferson reflecting on the enslavement.

When he thought about the shortcomings. When he thought about the founding reality.

And if that’s all that America was, this ugly founding moment with the enslavement of human beings honored in the document, women left out of the document, Native Americans considered savages and left out of the document... If that’s all that America was, it wouldn’t command the love and respect of nations.

Yes, America was that founding reality, but there was also that founding dream.

This founding reality that was ugly and this founding dream that’s about equality. The most beautiful dream in the world.

Who are we? What is an American? What makes us Americans? We have every color, every faith, every gender expression, every sexuality, every kind of human being ever born is right here in one country. We makes us Americans?

God would not ever choose a people unworthy of this burden.

So don’t go out of here feeling other than blessed by God. You are our best community. You are! It is undeniable! Nobody can hold a candle to what you have achieved. That’s how great this responsibility is. God chose our strongest community. God chose our most beautiful community. God chose a community that all the other communities aspire to be like.

You with your faith, with your family. With your education. With your entrepreneurial zeal. With your respect for each other.

You have been chosen because you have the strength to do it. Because you have the dignity to do it.
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