and welcome to our show we're going to have an exciting show for you today this is really a part to be a host brother benjamin boss and a very special and honored guest is rather dr lieutenant colonel the increase as a knowledge i mean i me so the last show we talked a lot about how you your education and how you became muslim it is so for military college the bus is a native of alexandria louisiana he also holds a ph d at higher education administration from try to university international honorary doctorate of ministry from north texas theological seminary a tyler texas for his work in a faith communities he holds four masters degrees from claremont university in a faith actually hard for seminary comparative religion d biology he currently serves as a dissertation chair tried an adjunct professor at claremont lincoln university lesley he studied arabic at the university of jordan in amman jordan chaplain lieutenant wow interesting so i was searching because i wanted a name that started a new beginning for me and so in to look at the etymology of the word khalid it means not only a friend but one whose ideas live forever so i thought to myself i want to start a new family that was muslim because the name should means as a persian name is actually not an arabic name is a persian name that means an eagle there flies above the eagles and so for me again it was like  no matter how you feel inside no matter what journey your own you can make it no matter was what what whatever happened to you prior to is not indicative of who you are now you know there's an old saying i says until you change the way you look at things the things that you look at will never change my job as a educator my job as a mom my job as a  so if i could get them to look at themselves and say if i faced this difficulty there's going to be easy on the other side of that now once i get them to see that knock and tell my story about molestation about being shot in the back about being beat w shelve about being thrown out of school i can make them see that i am no different than them i can help them to say help them to see not only am i no different from you i'm going to attach myself to you as your parson no mentor because in this world is heart with education without it you absolutely cannot make it come to the love there and a dane i have shell man two highways all right and so as as educators as people who have been endowed with this message it is our job to not be role models for them to be but to be real models like you just said you know they need to see people not just telling them about how real education is they need to see people who look like men who talk like them who speak like them who also have a that level of education when i meet young people they have no idea who i am and what i've accomplished i'm just talking about you know we have a term in the military saying we meet people where they're at and so when i'm talking to  mom just doing the little silly stuff that they do now you know i have achieved a level of offended he would know he's cool he's a good guy and now because i'm cool i'm a good guy now once you see the level of attainment you're not afraid of me and you can use me as a resource i was reading a book just on yesterday on the post traumatic slave syndrome so one of the things that dr joy was talking about she said wow children don't achieve in school is  because their teachers don't relate to them in the sense of liking them she said in an africa and old traditional trial when a young man walks up to another young man a young female walks up to another you're  female the words that they use is i see you i see you which in side of you all of us want to be seen all of us want to be recognized she used as as a parallel to the educational system where she says our kids want to be seen they want to be noticed they want to be liked she says the most common statement that our kids come back when they come back from school is school well in school they say my teacher don't like me the teachers haven't made the correlation that our students learn based upon the offended east that the student has for the teacher now because they have offended he now they can speak into your life so that's that's what i do i want an affinity for the young people and then once i get the fenty they know that i care about them and they like him now i could know one of the things that i incorporated at least in mt elam i can't change the whole world one of it one of the statements i used to make to my family is you know sometimes we are planning flowers out in other people's gardens and we growing up in our own house and so one of the things that i did other communities all of the communities in the world besides the african american community have rites of passage ceremony so for my young son you know i gave him a rites of at the conclusion of that ceremony we flew his grandfather down and his grandfather gave him some words of wisdom that my wife song the black national anthem i wasn't a dry eye in the house and then i gave him we took him from where his friends were standing in a group and then made him go and stand with the man and this is at fourteen years old so he knew at that time that he had the opportunity and the obligation to be a man decisions like the koran says again why dana will not today now to desist decisions are only knew what you do with your life is all you because as a father i have given you everything to get to to get yourself from one place to another but some symbolism is important and i don't think as african americans we've done a good job and bring in those symbols to our homes we it's been a chaplain for about seventeen and a half years great journey i mean honestly i have a chance to meet people from all different walks of life one interesting things the base doing that time but ninety nine point nine percent of the interaction i have was would not muslims and so you have an opportunity to be an ambassador for religion you have an opportunity to offset was on c you and i've heard so much about you the i'm thinking to myself wow great preachy a tin and then he says i've been reading islam about islam for about four or five years and now like my head is like whoa how do we go from you being happy to meet me to now you interest in islam he said i've always been interested in islam but it's counterculture but now i'm strong enough i want to become muslim and i'm looking at him like mosque so i could become muslim say well you have to wait and wait until next friday so that next friday we went down he became muslim you know met the community hoed everybody never seen him again and i've been here three years but you know if this is like that they actually quite common now not maybe we caucasian americans but young african americans all the time i see they they want a piece of your piece you oughtn't to city and they say whatever whatever is making you be like you are i want to piece of that and so that they come down to the mosque all the time and come in they listen they get what they need and some of them you religion and so the brothers after two years gave me to spread a plaque and said you know they were so grateful for me being and being a mom and helping them with their faith because you were in war and so x to go down to be an adviser to the general on all islamic affairs in guantanamo bay  ramadan and all that for all the muslim soldiers in the theater at the time of war so the brothers back at the base say you know you mom you know i know we're kind of selfish but we wish you were here all the time but so no this is the other side so all the muslim brothers who signed it at the base that i was the mom at and this coin is from the first cavalry brigade out of fort hood and so that was  chaplain he took it off his neck and he put it on my neck to symbolize that now i'm the spiritual paid for his fourteen thousand soldiers so so all religious support plans i managed him america retreats spent here with our brothers and sisters of the muslim community and those who are watching from other communities make us strong going to keep us containers and our effort to uplift humanity i mean me for the jury we got we got ten seconds