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Sahar Alsahlani, a member of The Community of Living Traditions at the Stony Point Center, discusses inter-faith cooperation and action for social justice and environmental sustainability. Sahar is a member of the Executive Council of Religions for Peace, on the Board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and is a Fellow of Green Faith – through which she works with all faiths (“from A to Z – Agnostics to Zoroastrians”) to help bring greater love, understanding, compassion, stewardship, and sustainability to our world. Having grown up a Muslim-American, educated in Catholic schools, and with friends in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood as the Tree of Life Synagogue with whom she often attended Jewish Community Center camps, Sahar brings a unique and powerful perspective of inter-faith and inter-personal peace and justice in the context of caring for our common home – planet Earth.
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Hi friends, welcome to today’s edition of the YonEarth Communities Stewardship and
Sustainability Podcast Series.
And today I’m so excited that we have with us, Sahar Alsahlani, Hi Sahar.
Hi.
It’s so great to see you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you, Aaron.
Thank you for being with us.
Sahar is an interfaith piece activist with a background in broadcast media and entertainment.
Most recently determined to pursue a path for social good, the Iraq-born Muslim made a life-changing
decision to move to New York and lead behind a successful career in Los Angeles, where
she had worked for many years as a television writer, producer, and editor.
Sahar’s various projects included productions for USA Broadcasting, Warner Brothers, Entertainment,
Fox, Paramount, the American Forces Network, and Discovery ID.
Now along with serving on the board of the North American Interfaith Network, Sahar
is a member of the Executive Council of Religions for Peace, USA.
The board of Council on American Islamic Relations in New York has contributed to the faith-based
outreach of the revived Poor People’s Campaign, a national call for moral revival, and is
a fellow at Green Faith and Interfaith Organization dedicated to climate justice.
Sahar has also served as a former co-chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA.
She is a member of the Community of Living Traditions at the Stony Point Center just outside
New York City, one of North America’s only intentional multi-faith communities intended
for studying the principles and practice of social justice, nonviolence, and radical hospitality.
The heart is such a pleasure to have you with us today.
Welcome, my friend.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much.
It’s always really good to see you, Aaron.
So, we love everybody out there.
Hi, everybody.
We met a number of months ago at an Interfaith Climate Summit that was being hosted in Colorado.
And we today have so much we can talk about and share with folks.
And really at this nexus of concern for environment, for social justice in communities all over
and how that relates and connects to our diverse faith practices is such a rich groundwork
for discussion exploration, for sharing.
And Sahar, I want to ask you to kick us off.
What is an Interfaith Peace activist?
What does that mean?
Well, anybody that follows any path of moral conscience, whether it’s following a particular code
of laws, a democracy, a socialist ideal, a path to a divine, is really a roadmap to justice.
Anyone of our holy scriptures is really a set of guidelines to conduct ourselves in a life
that is geared towards equity and balance for ourselves and for those around us.
And so, when you are an activist and you’re searching for justice and you’re searching
for balance, it has to come from something inherent within you.
And a lot of times it is from a path that guides you towards a path in a divine thing.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be, but there is something inherently that drives you to
do good.
And when you pursue that path and you have your conviction to work for justice, it can
only be amplified when it’s done collectively because then exponentially the results can
only be spectacular.
And I think that’s the movement that’s really had to happen in the last few decades in
this country because so many people have been fighting for the same things but have been
doing it in parallel tracks.
And only recently with the spread of television and radio at the mass level and now with the
internet, do we really see, oh wow, this group is actually asking for the same thing
virtually and they actually have advocacy organizations and they have lobbying and they do
feed the homeless and they do have jets that are ready to go and disperse at a moment’s
notice.
And that is really the power of what the moral conscious movement can do to mobilize
the political climate I think in this country and abroad.
Yeah, I was so struck when we first met and in the subsequent conversations and exchanges
that we’ve had that you clearly come from, act from your heart and a sense of love,
of compassion, of empathy.
And it seems to me that’s one of the keys to creating the culture in the future I think
we all hope for.
And I’m curious, share with us if you would.
How do you do that?
How do you cultivate that?
How do you come from heart like you do day in and day out?
Thank you, thank you, well it’s not easy.
I think it’s kind of twofold.
I think in any kind of moral tradition, there’s always a dichotomy if you will.
moral traditions feel that the concept of divine stems from an emotional love aspect.
And there are other traditions that stem from a rational aspect.
I know that Islam has 99 names of the divine.
One of them is love, one of them is justice, one of them is truth, one of them is reckoning.
So the concept of God is so up here that nobody really knows what the tangible concept
is.
Sometimes I have met people that claim to be atheists and what is this concept of love?
And I’m like, well, it’s also justice, it’s also true, it’s also harmony, it’s also accountability.
And so I happened to come from the Islamic tradition, but I grew up in Catholic schools and
I also went to a lot of Jewish summer camps.
So I’ve noticed that from the Islamic perspective, the first word that was revealed from the
angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad was the word Ekra, an Arabic alphabet, which means
to read, analyze, debate, argue, think.
So before God instructs the prophet Muhammad to believe in God blindly, he instructs them
to use the rational part and to seek for truth and to seek for knowledge and to understand
how the parts lead to understanding the concept of the divine.
And in Catholic school, I really learned the other portion of understanding the emotional
part of it.
The love unconditionally, and you kind of need both in life, which is kind of amazing
because the concept of God is really to be spiritually holy, you have to understand
any have to feel.
And I think that’s kind of where I cultivated from is to really understand what the fight
for justice is and then to feel in the heart what is right and wrong.
So I think that’s where it came from.
And I don’t know a lot of therapy too, and just life, you know, raising my children.
And I think understanding, you know, that it takes a lot of personal growth, a lot of
personal growth with struggles in life.
And you learn a lot and you see things in your perspective changes, I think, in life.
Absolutely.
This is one of the themes that we speak about in why on earth and through the why on earth
communities work, this notion that that personal healing and development and quest really on
some level is so essential.
And that really on in a certain light, this whole sustainability effort and work is an
insight out job.
And it seems to me that you really have embodied that and exemplify that in a beautiful way
and in the communities all over that you’re reaching and that you’re working with.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
Well, you know, and there’s, there’s the concept that every tradition has.
I know personally in Islam, we call it the jihad, which is the struggle for a personal
best.
And I know one of my favorite quotes from the prophet Laozu from the Taoist tradition
is to know, to know others is knowledge, I believe, but to know oneself is enlightenment.
And you know, a struggle for justice and truth in the outside world is a larger jihad,
you know, is a large jihad, but the knowledge of oneself and fighting that balance and
harbing and liberating any internalized oppression in here is the really actually the greater
jihad, the internal one, because if you don’t have any, if you don’t fight for justice
for your own soul and calmness and tranquility and fight the inner demons, there’s no way
that I can ever even talk to you about fighting for trees or fighting for clean water.
If I don’t have this all in sync, so it really does begin in here.
And I think a lot of activists, we need to forget about this part, you know, and when you’re
on an airplane, who do they tell to put the oxygen mask on first, you know, if you don’t
talk and everybody else around you is like, we’re not an ordinary thing.
So the important thing is really, really to work on it simultaneously, but it’s better
to work on this first, the internal.
What I’d like you to, I’d like to ask you if you would to expand a little on this term
jihad, you know, it’s one that I have found many of my friends, colleagues, family in
the United States, have a very particular, and I would even say negative standing of
what that word means because of the way it’s been used in popular media, et cetera.
And what you’re speaking to is a very different meaning about self-cultivation, self-awareness,
and I’m hoping would you expand on that for us.
I would love for our friends and audience to have a deeper and broader understanding
of what that means.
Shame, I’m sure, well, thank you.
The term jihad actually is such a holy thing, such a holy, precious concept.
It’s actually, it’s actually a personal, as I said, struggle, but it is a quest towards
the divine, a path that is never an easy path.
And if the divine encompasses the various attributes that go into the various nuances
of what the divine means to so many people, it never is an easy road.
So if we do want to find justice or righteousness or all these things for every living thing
on this planet, we don’t have a magic wand, you know, and that takes effort and that takes
enlightenment and that takes energy and that takes partnerships and companionships and
communication skills and, you know, management and organizational skills.
And that’s really what it means.
It means a struggle to do any job you do in the best way with the, using your resources
that you have and learning how to use those resources in the most efficient way.
And the energy how to solve this theme thing, what are the best techniques you have to
make the best use of your emotions and your insight and your attitude.
And yes, it has been hijacked.
It really has been hijacked.
I know that the term became synonymous with a holy war or crusade during the time of the
crusades in Europe.
So it became adopted around that same time.
And it is sadly not the first time another holy word has been hijacked.
I fear now for a lot of my friends who are evangelical.
And I’m the first person, I’ve been to a couple, a couple interfaith gatherings.
I mean, even when I did my work on the poor people’s campaign, I remember telling a lot
of my evangelical friends or even Christian friends, since one is spreading the gospel
ever been a bad thing.
And now a lot of people, you know, have sort of misused the word to evangelize.
It is really tragic when people take words and associate them with different political
efforts or different, you know, right wing or left wing.
So thank you very much for asking me that question.
But it is a personal struggle to do your very best on your journey towards the path, towards
the divine.
Beautiful.
Well, you know, as a writer, and I will also share as a student of Catholic schools.
I went to a Jesuit high school.
I am a total word nerd.
I love the history behind words, the etymology of words.
And it seems to me that part of the work we’re doing also involves reclaiming what certain
words mean and sharing and conversing and celebrating more like a feast in the richness
that some of these words and the traditions that they reflect can mean to us.
And so thank you so much for sharing that.
It is wonderful to hear that the quest toward the divine, what a beautiful, beautiful concept
and urge and impulse.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, so your background is so interesting.
It makes me think of a garden with many colored flowers, which is painting behind me.
And you know, you live outside New York City just north along the Hudson River, just a beautiful
part of the North American continent.
You were in LA for a while working in this, one of the global centers of media culture.
And you are from Iraq and from, you told me earlier, one of the oldest indigenous groups
on the planet known to be on the planet.
And my goodness, what a rich background and story and experience.
And I was wondering if you could just share with us a montage, an image, an impressionistic
view into what your childhood was like and what is there in your early experiences that
you’re carrying with you today.
Oh, gee, thank you.
Gosh, well, my mom and my dad are both Iraqi born.
I was born in Saudi Arabia.
I came when I was a month old.
My mom, she got a student visa.
She completed her PhD here.
So I was about a month old when we came.
I settled in Pittsburgh and I grew up in a very pluralistic, you know, Pittsburgh was
a very, very intellectually sophisticated town.
And actually, the synagogue, tragically, the synagogue that was attacked not too long
ago, I spent a large part of my childhood there because, honestly, we didn’t know who
was who in Pittsburgh.
You know, we had Hindu professors and we had Vietnamese, you know, immigrants coming
in and we had synagogues and we actually did have a mosque.
So we used to go to the Syrian Orthodox Church.
And so they would give us the keys for Friday prayer and I used to do JCC summer camps.
So I grew up in a very multi-layered, you know, pluralistic town.
Jewish community center, JCC.
Yeah, Jewish community centers, yes, at the church, you know, which was adjacent to the
tree of life synagogue that was tragically attacked last month.
And you know, actually, I went to about 11 botnets was there, you know, as a child.
And so those were really our houses of worship.
Mr. Rogers lived about six blocks away from me.
And so, you know, a Presbyterian mentality from the early ages and he taught us about
social justice.
He taught us to share our cookies.
He taught us to like, you know, have equal, even the neighborhood of Maple Leaf.
He used to go to the set of Mr. Rogers and the animals and the people, how had equal
power in the neighborhood of Maple Leaf.
Like in the 70s, everything was such a social justice, subtly infused, you know, area that
we just never even noticed.
Everything was anti-war, everything was begin.
I mean, so early in the 70s.
And so I finished elementary, middle high school.
I finished high school in college in Florida, I had my children and then I ended up taking
my children.
I raised my children in Los Angeles and I worked there.
I got a degree in public health.
After my children were younger, I went back to school for television and I ended up working
in Los Angeles for about 13 years, I raised them there.
I worked in the television industry and then I was actually an empty nester and a dear
friend of ours, Ralph Island and Gottlie, my children grew up in Islamic schools.
I grew up in Catholic schools, so I wanted them to do parochial schools.
So Ralph Island Gottlieb used to do these interfaith summer camps for children.
So actually my kids were like, Mom, you’ve got to get a life.
You’re by yourself now.
We’re out in court in college.
Ralph Island said, why don’t you come?
We’re doing this experiment just outside New York City where we’re getting together, a
bunch of Muslim Jews and Christians, we’re going to run a conference center and we’re
going to try this interfaith peace building concept.
So the rest of the history, I just packed up and moved out here and I’ve just the first
two years.
I just really had to learn how to live on a farm, I’m from LA, you remember, you know, and
I had to really study the different traditions including my own and just learn the verb age
because it’s a whole different game than television.
I mean, I had to learn the words like movement building and you know, just what is bearing
witness mean and what is feco justice because it’s such a whole different world than
what most mainstream people talk about, which is a shame, but it’s kind of a blessing.
It sounds so wonderful and so beautiful.
Will you share with us some of the specifics that you’re working on through these organizations
like Green Faith, where you’re a fellow, let’s maybe start with that when I know there
are several we can talk about, can you share with us some of the specific actions that
are being mobilized in communities all over through that organization?
Yes, yes.
I think Green Faith actually is probably the most precious organization to me, the organization
that I have learned the most from because I hadn’t, you know, everybody always talks about
wanting to be an environmentalist, you know, and when we’re children, we learn about recycling
and we learn about so many little things about being a, you know, green piece and a lot
of things, but it wasn’t until I started working on a climate march a couple of years ago,
as a volunteer, that I really understood what the intersection was between faith, moral
conscious and ecology, and as I told you, my master’s was in public health, my undergraduate
was in geography, so there’s always a little bit of excitement about the environment of the
earth, but never did I once ever think that my Islam had anything to do with the earth.
You know, even though hello, we come from dust, we shall return to dust, I mean our
symbol is the crescent, you know, like we just never put these two and two things together,
but it wasn’t until I learned from Green Faith in helping to organize all these faith
communities, we called ourselves A to Z years agnostic to Zara Astrian, and why it was
imperative in all of our faith traditions to mobilize from other earth, did it hit me
that it was such an important part? I discovered books that were like this thick and every
faith tradition, when I was recruiting Bahá’í, when I was recruiting the druids, when
I was recruiting, you know, the Buddhists, when I was recruiting the Hindus, I found
echo justice in the Sikh community, and every single scripture resonates with the earth,
and all talks about the concept of us being stewards with the earth, you know, for the
earth, and how we were supposed to walk gently on the earth, and how we are not dominant
with regard to the earth, how we are, you know, part of the big ecological myth, and how
it wasn’t a imperative, like a moral imperative, to respect the mother earth, and how ultimately
we are held accountable on the day of judgment for our ego, and how much we misuse the resources.
And then Lodato Si came, right around 2015, the Pope, you know, on a Catholic school kid,
so when the Pope wrote the book, his Lodato Si, the Pope also has a master’s degree in science,
so it’s wonderful to show people that science and religion don’t clash, but there is that intellectual
sophistication, and the moral part that really does jie, you know, that, you know, reason,
and, you know, reason and faith really do come together, and how we are held accountable,
how we misuse resources because of our greed and ego, and how it will be held morally accountable
to that, and what, what, since we are, you know, what, since we are committing by violating
mother earth and what ramifications we have to other creatures on this earth. I think that’s probably
what I learned most from Greenfake, and the projects that they do are phenomenal because they
really are geared towards houses of worship. So for example, we’re trying to start from the top,
like they’re trying to green the vacuum, they’re trying to green mecca, you know, like every house
of worship now, they’re trying to tell them, if you’re going to do Ramadan, don’t use plastic,
you know, don’t, you don’t use paper cups, recycle your woody water, every church, every
seat goodwara, every can be turquoise, you know, use, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables from
your local farmer, you know, teach your children at an early age, you know, that the earth is holy,
make sure that, you know, you divest, you know, a lot of the major denominations are divesting
from fossil fuels because, you know, at the end of the day, houses of worship have money,
they have voter registration hubs, you know, they do do major purchases. I mean, every Christmas
party, every each festival, every church social, you know, and it’s all conscience living inside
the lowest points, like your local house, like local house, not the lowest, but your most tangible
house, and at the hierarchies, you know, part also. So that’s really what Greenfake has been working on.
So beautiful, so powerful, so, so humble yet so far reaching in its scope of impact in my sense
with some of the different Greenfake leaders and projects I’ve been able to tap into just a little
that things are just really getting rolling and the momentum is building and it seems that more
and more is getting activated in communities all over, it’s amazing. Yes, yes, I mean, it really,
really has been like a chain reaction. And even when Lodatozi was published, it became mandatory
reading for a lot of youth groups, I mean, a lot of mosques, a lot of synagogues, a lot of
Sikh and Hindu temples, and a lot of pagan like mother grows. I mean, that was mandatory reading
for clergy and then abbreviated versions for the youth groups and for the children to talk about
the concept of our commonhold. And what moral sins we were, we were perpetrating because of our
greed and how we just kept digging into Mother Earth and abusing her. And one of my favorite sayings
that we taught the kids is there is no planet B, like where are we going to go? You know, we can’t,
you can’t go inward. And to show them that the correlation between today’s migration is really
very directly related to climate change. And you know, almost almost every, I was at the parliament
and I heard from one of the speakers that almost every single humanitarian crisis can be somehow
traced back to violation of the earth. You know, I mean, when a hurricane hits or when a flood hits,
that leads to migration, sex trafficking, kids pulled out of school, systematic violence, racism.
I mean, you name it. It just goes on, epidemics, epidemiologically, infections happen and water
sanitation. And it just goes on and on and on. And it all starts with how morally we handle
God’s resources and how we distribute them equitably.
Yeah, it’s amazing. Let me, while I’m thinking of it, let me just take a quick pause in our conversation
to share and remind with our audience that this is the why on earth communities stewardship
and sustainability podcast series. And today we are talking with Sahar Al Salani, an incredible
faith leader activist and ecologist social justice leader based out of the New York area.
And I want to make sure to mention if anyone would like to learn more about your work, Sahar,
they can find you on Facebook, Sahar, Al Salani, of course, that’ll be spelled out in the show notes.
And on Twitter, can find you as Iraqi sunflower. We’ll come back to that in just a moment.
And I want to make sure also to remind our audience if you would like to get any of the
audio book or e-book resources that we have available through why on earth. That’s why
on earth.org, letter Y. Please use the code podcast, the word podcast, to get a discount on any of
those that you might like. And so, Sahar, I have to ask, where did you come up with your
Twitter handle flower? I love it. So, sorry, you know, actually, my kids actually came up with it
probably about 20 years ago. And, you know, they actually started my Twitter account and it’s
sort of stuck. You know, all these young kids like you guys are so good with technology.
So, they started it. And I hadn’t realized that that was the Twitter handle they were using, you know?
And it actually wasn’t by accident that I sort of figured it out because I was in a podcast,
sort of similar to this. And there was this gentleman next to me. He was a little bit larger with
his big beard and our Twitter handles got swished. So, I had his name and he had adiratsy
sense. So, it was just kind of cute how it happened. That’s the story. Wow. Oh, my gosh. Well,
it is just beautiful. So, yeah, folks can find you. And I understand that early in 2019, you may be
launching a new project with a new website that will be announced probably through Twitter and
Facebook. Is that right? Is that how folks can keep up with with what you’re doing?
Yes. Yes. In shall I hope to God willing. I’ve been working on it. And I’ve been looking for
the best way to combine my my television experience with my passion of inner faith peace activism.
So, keep keep checking in and hopefully within the next six weeks something will something will
appear and we’ll definitely keep you posted. Beautiful. You know, I’ve loved it. I’d love to
ask you what’s happening with the efforts of organizations like the board of the council on
American Islamic relations. And I I understand you’re likely starting a new position on the board
of the North American Interfaith network. And you know, there has been so much
energy of divisiveness of polarization evident in the media. And there’s probably a lot of fear
out there among different groups. Of course, one of the great works we can do inside ourselves is to
work to transform that fear into love, into working our communities to transform conditions
for fear to conditions for safety and acceptance. And clearly, there’s so much work to be done
in this arena. And can you share with us some of the things these groups are doing right now and
ways people can get involved and help with this healing work? Yes. Thank you. You know, a lot of
these advocacy organizations are all really they’re all doing the same work and they’re doing
amazing work, but it’s parallel. It’s a lot of people, as I said earlier, do not know what others
are doing. That became evident when I was working in green faith. You know, we didn’t realize that
the Buddhist Global Relief was doing something very similar to the what the Mormons were doing.
pagans are doing very similar work and sending things to Puerto Rico when the Hindus and the
omnis are working together to send jets there every week. You know, and so there’s this huge amount
of faith-based activism that is is happening simultaneously. But there was just very little
communication, not intentionally. It’s just that people are so focused on their own work and
their little hubs. You know, so a lot of the the opportunities that a lot of these organizations
like religions for peace or North American and your faith network is basically sort of a resource
to say, hey, you know, we are doing the same thing and we don’t want to do for state efforts,
but we can help simplify your efforts if you want. You know, if you have, for example,
you know, like some of the Hindu temples, we have a lot of food. We have a lot of medical resources.
And then the Brutoroth first in common say, hey, well, we have four jets, you know, and so it just
shows that how the resources can complement each other immediately. But another major, major
important portion is that we really showed, and I know this is like the latest buzz word,
but intersectionality. And it’s really when layers of oppression overlap. Because a lot of times
we never realize where these layers do overlap. I mean, and I think if there’s anything that has come
up from the divisiveness of the last two years, it is the unlikely alliances that I have seen. I mean,
you know, and I think that has what scared a lot of people, but has also been really possibly the
most beautiful outcome of a lot of this, a lot of these tragedies is that a lot of people understand
that they are fighting for the same thing. Everybody wants clean water. Everybody wants a safe place
for their children to put their head on a pillow and sleep. Nobody wants to be discriminated against
because of who they are. You know, even if people don’t agree with what they are doing,
everybody agrees that they should be treated fairly under the law. And a lot of these organizations
are standing up for each other in times of need. When sometimes you don’t even have the energy
to fight anymore. And I think that has really, really proven itself.
Care, Council on American Islamic Relations, was modeled off of the NAACP. The NAACP, you know,
glad was modeled, you know, Gay and Lesbians, it was modeled off of the NAACP. But what’s happened
here now is we’ve seen how tragedies affect us. For example, if somebody in New York City gets pulled
over and he’s a young person, he’s African-American. His chances of getting pulled over are more
likely and getting harassed. If that young person happens to be Latino and African-American,
that chance rises higher. If that person is Latino, African-American and Muslim, then that person
that is triply increases the chances. If that person is Latino, African-American, Muslim,
and of an LGBTQ identity, I mean, then that increases it more. So we all have a vested interest
in helping other marginalized communities, because that affects us. And that’s where all of our
resources come together. And I’ve noticed that when we went to Standing Rock, I mean, every time,
every time you see a group of people of faith standing up at these rapid response, and honestly,
it looks like Halloween sometimes. I mean, you just get the whole inspector of, you know, you can
find the rabbi, you can find the hijabi, you can find the lich, you can find the indigenous,
you can find the speak. And I think that’s what really, really shocks people, because a lot of
allies, when you see gay pride, and you see a lot of these faith leaders, or when you go, I mean,
I remember the most precious example that I had was when the Muslim ban happened. And I’m pretty
fierce. I mean, you know, I find a charlotte. I stood in front of neo nazis with AK-47s. Okay,
I mean, I’ve been pretty fierce. But when the Muslim ban happened, you know, the very first time,
I think, like, about year and a half ago, right after the administration took over, I mean,
this side of my body was numb. I mean, I curled up in the fetal position and I was crying. Like,
I was bawling for about four hours. I felt so helpless. But boom, all of a sudden, I started getting
texts. And I started just getting texts from Standing Rock, from the Japanese in turn my camp, but I
had visited, like, two years before, from the Mexican farm workers that we had visited, like, six
months before. You know, all these drag queens and Dallas were, you know, shutting down airports,
saying, we love Muslims. They’re avais. I mean, people in Ferguson. And I guess for a minute, for a
minute, I knew how they must have felt when we showed up for them, because they were taking
care of it for me. And that’s the real beauty of intersectional work and faith-based advocacy work,
because you get hired. And you can fight for anybody else, but someone that really hits you,
you just, it’s hard to fight for yourself. And I think that’s really the importance of the
networking, these various organizations that I’m part of. It reminds me very much of what healthy
ecosystems look like and how they work. It is a complex web work of relationships and
interdependencies. And it is so beautiful to see that in the way you’re connecting with all kinds
of people and communities all over the place. And Sahar, my goodness, thank you so much for
being with us today. And for all the work you’re doing, I sincerely hope our audience will
connect with you on Facebook, Sahar, Salani, on Twitter, the Iraqi sunflower. Iraqi sunflower,
know the front of it, Iraqi sunflower. And thank you so much, my friend, for all that you’re doing.
Oh my gosh, no, thank you. And we’re very proud of you, Aaron. And you know, honestly,
we’re very, very proud of you and all the work you’re doing. Thank you for giving us a platform
to chat. Absolutely. Okay, my friend, take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.
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