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“I guess extremest have rights too.”

- Seminar Attendee

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This statement explains why its not that easy combating “recruitment” from extremists.

About a month ago Farhad Chowdhury from M100 Foundation sent me an invite to attend a seminar organized by New America Foundation in Washington D.C. hosted at Google’s office

The intent of the seminar was to train leading Muslim non-profits in the tools and processes of online marketing, covering tools provided by Google, YouTube and Facebook as a means of combating increased extremist online activity.

A big part of being effective in marketing online and building a loyal following has to do with continuously giving value to the community you’re targeting.

The challenge with combating content posted/uploaded by post-prison Anwar Alawlaki fans is that they have the same rights and privileges and access that we all have.

Anwar Alawlaki is one of those individuals who has plenty of beneficial content from his pre-prison days that continuously builds social capital. So if someone were to post a video of him saying attack certain people and how its an obligation for all Muslims, it has potential of pulling some people in the wrong direction.

Muslims here in the west have the interesting challenge of not only having to combat religious extremists, but also combat extremists on the other side of the spectrum too. The likes such as Robert Spencer, Asra Nomani, Irshad Manji, Daniel Pipes, Newt Gingrich, Pamela Geller and others.

People on both sides of the spectrum are using online marketing practices to get their message across quite effectively.

The thing with Muslims in the middle is that they have a lot of beneficial content to share but don’t understand technical tools or practices of getting their message out and its for that reason this seminar was held.

One of the prime examples that a Google instructor presented was MPAC. When you type “MPAC” into Google, you don’t find MPAC. Instead you find either a “performing arts center” in some city or you find content written by right wing extremists. If you’re going to search for your name on Google, YOU should come up. If you don’t then you’re not marketing yourself appropriately.

MPAC also has a decent YouTube page with over 100 videos, but due to bad SEO, no one gets to see it.

The following is an outline of what Google presented to the seminar attendees.

Some of these tools are quite powerful if you know how to use them. I was intrigued to find out that Google has a program called “Google Grants” where if you’re a tax excempt 501(c)3 while not being either a political party or a religious institution such as a church or mosque, then you can be eligible for free Ad Words credits between $100 – $10,000 a month.

In addition to Google, YouTube and Facebook were there presenting their systems too and how to effectively read the metrics they publish for their users to reach out to specific target audiences. Below is the YouTube insights view.

Personally, while most of the stuff was a refresher, some of the Google content was new.

I personally don’t like to get into the politics of extremeism. However, I do find that the content presented in the seminar can be useful in dawah and depolarization of views on Islam.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Go ahead and post comments of what you’ve learned.

Some gems from the conference:

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Brands need to UNDERSTAND & RESPECT Islamic values and demo it in their communication and behavior. Be sharia friendly. Have values like humility. Brands also need to have Fearless PUBLIC SUPPORT for these values. If a brand takes our side, we’ll need to take theirs too.

- Nazia Hussain (OgilvyNoor)

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How we engage the western media has to change. We need to re-present Islam. The commercial arena will allows us to do this.

In the mainstream perception, “halaal” and 9/11 have a very small gap. The fact that we have to defend this position is a loss in perception for us. “Terrorism” and “barbaric” aren’t part of our language. When they make negative statements about us, they automatically put themselves in the “good guy” position. If we follow the sunnah, we will claim the moral high ground.We need a proactive language. The truth is Muslims need coaching on how to talk as well as coaching PR.

The marketing language that will emerge from the western world will have ripples around the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche said God is dead. He meant that Christianity failed to give Europe what it needed. We need to approach Economics and Business from the Quran and Sunnah to be the commanders of this market.

- AbdalHamid Evans

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If you want people to commit to your brand/character, you have to connect with them on a human level. If they dont believe in your humanity, they wont believe your fantasy.

- Farhan Tahir – Actor (Iron Man, Star Trek)

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In the US you have fear due to ignorance but its not like the Netherlands where a political party comes to power due to islamaphobia.

Globally Muslims are a 1+ trillion market. We cannot ignore it. The values of Muslims (Sharia) needs to be embraced by brands: transparency, sincerity of intent, humility,  modesty, ect.

For Muslims to be recognized they need to be strong in art and design. It does well to diffuse fear because art connects at an emotional level. Muslims today aren’t known for art of design. Brands are an emotional thing owned by the customer. Products are owned by the company that sell the emotion.

Muslims need to understand that halaal is a brand ingredient, not a brand itself. We need to find a narrative and define the emotion, imagery and design that goes with it.

- Miles Young, CEO of Ogilvy

The following video of Adnan Durrani with some advice for aspiring entrepreneurs – recorded by @SaadMalik

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the treats of AMCC for me was meeting actor Farhan Tahir (Iron Man, Star Trek) and learning about the entertainment industry from his perspective.

One of the advices he gave me was:

Hollywood is a cut throat industry and it isn’t for everyone. You cannot have a glass jaw. People will hit you hard and knock you down. You need to have some sort of support system of buffer you can fall back on so that you can get back up and keep moving forward. Without that buffer you won’t be able to continue. You need to decide or find what your buffer will be.

Farhan will be starring in a few upcoming films in the next year, one of them being a movie titled “Jinn” – one of the lead actors is this film is Ray Park (Heroes, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, X-Men)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photos from the conference The following photos are from last year’s AMCC (courtesy of @SaadMalik). This year’s haven’t been uploaded yet. Will post it when its up.

I spent seven hours in Charlotte before I caught a flight. Most of my time was spent checking into places at the airport via Foursquare, unlocking the “adventurer” badge and watching movies on my Droid.

I arrive at Orlando near Midnight to be picked up by Faheem Bacchus, the coordinator for the Orlando AlMaghrib student body.

Really cool guy. Turned out he had a short stint at New York Film Academy a little while back. He dropped me off to my host’s home where to my surprise I met this handsome young man – Rajan (pronounced Rayyan) Lufi:

Rajan happened to be chilling with my host. I met this gentleman in Staten Island, NY last month for one of the Back2School Giveaways that ICNA finished up recently.

After I settled in, I was given a cozy screening of a short documentary by Abdullah Zafar Sabawai, an Orlando Muslim student did of my host, Ahmed Salih.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you can see, Millionaire Who Went to Jannah is LIVE. I’ve got some special news for you.

For everyone who buys from me, I’m giving away over $100 dollars in bonuses.

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It launched at $197.00. Today it’s $97.00. But with the Millionaire who went to Jannah, its yours free.

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It’s basically our story of spending time in Vancouver, Canada – one of the most beautiful places on earth. This documentary is a not a public YouTube release. See the man himself, when he’s not teaching!

– –

Not only will you get the benefit of learning how to master your money, but you’ll also be able to use video and marketing tools as taught in Message Mastery to promote your business. At the same time, the movie above lays down some real important principals when it comes to getting what you want to achieve. as well as an insight to who Muhammad Alshareef is.

All of the above for $247

Last week I got back from my trip to Los Angeles and it’s been really busy since.

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WHY DOES MY VOICE SEEM WEIRD?

For starters, you may notice that some of the audio sounds sort of weird – like cheap dubbing in the videos. The reason of that is because I ended up doing ADR – Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording – for some segments.

The wind was crazy up there and it totally drowned out my voice from the mic, even though I had the wind resistant padding on it.

I figured after seeing the tour of ToddAO and Warner Bros. post production studios I wanted to give ADR a try. I’ll tell you that without ProTools it’s messy business.

If it’s not automated and you’ll have a bit of difficulty getting into the same mood and emotion to sync the audio and video together.

A pain in the butt really.

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MY PLAN TO A SUCCESSFUL STUDIO PRODUCER

My plan is to simply exhaust all routes until I get to where I want to go. The way I see it, its going to take a lot of hard work and sweat.

What better fuel for that than passion?

One of the routes I’m in the process of initiating is starting an internship. Basically take in and train focused and dedicated individuals on producing content with Leechon.

I was hoping to launch this initiative in October, but client demands, seminars, classes, and being married it taking its toll.

My objective is to launch this internship initiative before the end of the year, no execuses.

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SOME PHOTOS YOU MIGHT ENJOY FROM THE TRIP

View from the hotel I stayed at

In our attempt to find a Chase bank, our GPS led us to Disneyland with fireworks!

Griffith Park Observatory from the observation deck

Griffith Park Observatory - I think Charlies Angels was filmed here

Parked on Mulhollard Drive

Santa Monica Beach

While she hung out at the Bayyinah Tajweed classes taught by Wisam Sharieff, I attended a low-budget film financing seminar conducted by Suzanne Lyons, an independent producer.

I met Suzanne in April when she spoke at Film Specific’s Going Global Bootcamp. It was there I learned out about this particular workshop that I attended.

Outside of all the technical factors of financing and getting investors, a few points I took away from the class,

• Be selfless and inspiring - To be a successful producer, you have to be more than just a leader. You need to do more than just influence those around. Be able to put yourself aside and genuinely care for all of those you’re working with. Your very being must inspire excitement and enthusiasm for the work at hand. If you can’t do that, don’t be a producer.

• Make your movie for less – If your budget is $200,000, cut it down to $180,000 and get ready to work your butt off. – You’re better off than the people trying to sell their films today. It’ll take you about two years before your feature is done. By then the market will have picked up again – hopefully.

• Be unique in your movie – Don’t be a Slumdog Millionaire, Paranormal Activity, or Blair Witch. Be your own thing that the market wants to enjoy. Be the one to be copycatted.

• If you have a niche audience, truly consider developing your own distribution channels and systems.

One of the guest speakers – a sales agent – used an interesting analogy when talking about taking on the entertainment industry.

It’s like an Olympic race.

Are you getting up early every morning to run around the block while others sleep? Are you training yourself to be the best in your neighborhood, town, city, state and region?

Are you working to be the best in your country? Are you working hard to represent your people?

If in the end you make it into the Olympics will you really win the gold medal? That Oscar?

That is the reality of the business

Not everyone wins the Oscar, but many people have careers. Some just race. Others become trainers and mentors, but very few get the gold.

Out of 100 ideas there are 100 scripts. Out of 100 scripts only 10 movies get made, but there is usually one success.

My thoughts to all this: Dream bigger dreams, work smart and leave the results to Allah.

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Next up,

My meeting with some of Hollywood professionals.

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The following message is an excerpt from an email I received recently from SaqibSaab on the image of AlMaghrib to the masses.

The IlmSummit videos. MashaAllah the experience of the ‘ilm and the summit was beautifully portrayed and I was glued to updates that came almost everyday, jazaAllah khair to the players involved.

At the same time, a lot of the image of AlMaghrib offering an incredibly high caliber retreat was put side by side with some “fun” scenes to show the great time everyone had.

I laughed and enjoyed them personally, but a brother once wrote to me:

I don’t think AlMaghrib adopts cheap tactics, overall they are slick with their stuff but sometimes things get out of hand.

The only thing I disagree strongly with AlMaghrib is the videos, and I don’t just mean the beat-boxing.

I really think some of the Ilm Summit videos will do a disservice to AlMaghrib. That is supposed to be the intense 2 week academic seminar. It just bugs me when the cheesy experience is sold instead of marketing.

It’s so weird to see Yaser Birjas talking about qawaid al fiqhiyyah in one video and then cookie monster and dinosaurs in another. Or see Wisam doing an AWESOME recitation, for it to fade out and into a groggy brother being woken up by 3 people.

If you’re wondering what this message is all about, you probably haven’t seen the videos.

You can view all the Ilm Summit videos via the index thread on the AlMaghrib Forums.

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TO THE ANONYMOUS PERSON who sent the email to SaqibSaab:

I respectfully disagree with you.

The videos were produced to tell the story of the students at Ilm Summit and what they experienced. Fundamentally it is part of marketing that these stories be told. However, the purpose of the video’s wasn’t to directly sell AlMaghrib or Ilm Summit.

The videos communicated exactly what was meant to be communicated, which is the atmosphere and environment of Ilm Summit. Not only on the side of brotherhood and sisterhood but also the academic side of things.

By far, everyone I’ve spoken with and my wife has spoken with who’s attended Ilm Summit 2009 agree that the videos communicate accurately what was seen and felt by the students.

You’ll notice that first week of videos contain a mix of the academic and the fun while the second week of Ilm Summit videos are much more academically inclined.

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The purpose behind me going to Ilm Summit 2009 was two fold:

• Gather footage that can be used in an AlMaghrib promo documentary laying forth the academic nature of the institute.

• Produce short “GemReels” for every day of Ilm Summit 2009 that tell the story of the people attending and also show the academic nature of the retreat.

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WHO’S IDEA WAS IT ANYWAY?

The idea of producing a daily video came about as a discussion between some of AlMaghrib’s HQ people and myself at AlMaghrib’s Ilmweek that took place in Toronto in May 2009.

We figured the idea is great especially since no other Islamic organization has really pulled off daily video blogging in an effective manner. The idea certainly gave me butterflies since I personally never produced so many videos back to back.

I’ve always wanted to do something like this ever since I saw Kevin Sites do it back in 2006 with Yahoo’s “Kevin Sites in the Hotzone.” — I just never realized how much work was in store for me.

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WHAT WENT INTO PUTTING THESE VIDEOS OUT?

One of the lessons I’ve learned from past projects is — In order to meet deadlines you need to set a time limit for how much footage you’re going to gather.

I set a time limit of maximum two hrs of footage to edit every day into less than five minutes. A 24-hour turn around time sounded reasonable considering my current skill level and experience – until I got down to editing.

Sleep literally went out the window. I remember having slept only four or five times in the 16 days I was there, and it was only out of exhaustion that I slept. My body would simply shut down.

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CHALLENGES THAT MADE ME YEARN FOR SLEEP

In an event where there is going to be filming, the attendees are usually notified.

During registration they’re suppose to be given release forms to fill out or at least have a sign saying “filming in progress” or something.

It’s been done past events that I’ve filmed at, but for some reason it wasn’t done at Ilm Summit.

For the first five days or so I was able to keep to my 24-hour turn around time schedule.

People were being cooperative and others were quite enthusiastic to be in front of the camera.

However it only took one sister’s complaint for me to receive an “executive order” to re-edit or completely take done some of the videos.

This basically led to a meeting with the heads of Ilm Summit where we decided on the policy of what to film, how things had been going thus far and how we wish to move forward.

Yasir Qadhi made it a point to announce the fact that there is filming and I’m not that hard to miss. Therefor if anyone doesn’t wish to be caught on camera they should stay behind my “contraption” and at the same time I would be making the best effort to keep certain people out of specific shots.

One of the other issues we addressed in the meeting was that not enough of the academic nature of Ilm Summit is being put out there.

The “academic nature” of “What Is Your Story: Ilm Summit Day 08″ and the latter videos was a direct result of that meeting:

From this point forward I was constantly playing catch up, however the videos that came forth were given more exposure for the academic nature of Ilm Summit 2009.

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Next post will be address some personal reflections I’ve had as well as what’s to come next with the Ilm Summit and AlMaghrib stuff.

You may or may not heard about the buzz about Ilm Fest 2009.

Whether it be that Baba Ali is going to be there, or the topics being covered are very contemporary, or you’ll have the opportunity to meet a lot of the AlMaghrib instructors, or the fact that you’ll be chilling with some cool cats like Haytham, Ammar, Amir, Adib and for the sisters Egyptian Gumbo – just know that now you’ll have one more reason to be at Ilm Fest:

I’m hunting for talent.

Of course it’s not the ONLY reason I’m going, but it’s certainly ONE.

One of the strategic objectives I’ve set for this last quarter – expect a post on quarter 4 goals soon - is to totally systematize the production of video and content for social media and offline marketing within the active AlMaghrib community.

My hopes are to seek out about five people from Qabeelat Nurayn who are dedicated to learning not only the craft of producing video, but also the vision of what AlMaghrib has to offer to the world.

The idea is to train the individuals in the processes of producing specific types of content and the processes of distributing them out there for maximum impact. – Think of it as the beginnings of a decentralized studio system inshaAllah.

First step is to get the right people on the bus. – If you feel you’re a super star and want to be on the team, hit me up at Ilm Fest. I’ll be actively checking my twitter >> @khanb1

I’m probabaly sitting on a plane at this point in time waiting for it to take off so I can be on my way to Houston, TX for this years Ilm Summit 2009.

First of all -
I’ll be doing daily video blogging from Ilm Summit. Basically everyday put out a short video featureing some of our very own AlMaghrib instructors, faculty, students, and more. More Smack Talk. More Fun. More Class. More Character. More Gems. More Inspiration over all that hopefully will make you go “WOW!”

If you want to keep yourself updated on the daily videos I suggest you seek out the following social media outlets and subscribe to the ones that work best for you:

• Leechon YouTube Channel
• GemReel.com – That’s where I’ll be posting the videos everyday inshaAllah.
• AlMaghrib’s Twitter

I’ve got a sneak peak pic of the schedule for Ilm Summit 2009 – just to tease you with what you’re missing

Second -
I’m planning on taking PLENTY of pictures. If you’re a Facebook Junkie or a Twitter Addict – you’re more than welcome to get your fix with me

• My Personal Twitter
• Personal Facebook

Third -
Look forward to a short documentary on the happenings of Ilm Summit – to be released soon