رحلتي إلى الإسلام: إبراهيم هيويت - My Journey to Islam: Ibrahim Hewitt

[Music] [Music] we are here in Leicester to meet Ibrahim Hewitt's I've known Rahim for nearly 30 years I never asked him how he made his journey to Islam I'm going to do this today so please come with me [Music] you my brother brain we've known each other for more than 30 years probably yeah come to life but I don't remember ever having heard from you how your journey to Islam really was made suppose it's time tell me now how do I make that journey bismillah right it's it started I was actually on a holiday in South Africa with an Indian Muslim family who had met some of the members here and we went up there they invited me to go on a holiday in South Africa this was in 1979 during the height of apartheid mmm I had to get a special permit to stay in a non-white Township and everywhere I went I saw white only non-white Sonia I couldn't so not only coloreds and blacks were not allowed into white areas whites were not allowed into color than you could but you couldn't steer that you weren't supposed to stay there because I would like lead to mixing and this was the this was against the law so everywhere we went we had problems because they take immediate from jo'burg went to Durban went around doing all the tourist things and we want to go and eat somewhere where do we go and eat you kind of go into a non white restaurant because I'm with them we kind of go into a white restaurant because they're with me so you had the problem yeah when it was sandwiches all the time everywhere you know and even goes to go for a swim in the Indian Ocean I couldn't go on the white Beach because they were with me all the beaches were segregated everything was segregated for their life yeah except the mosques and this really struck me very deeply because they took me to a new mosque which had been designed by an Englishman so thorough okay and I went in there they take you as English design mosque and it must have been enough the McRib and there was like a curfew once this dark you had to be in your own Township type thing unless you are white and then you could move around easily but non-whites those like that and I noticed in the mosque that there was African Muslims and Indian Muslims praying side-by-side now this was in a Township an Indian Township just across the way from Soweto the African Township this struck me : all this apartheid that I've seen all this division according to race what's it about Islam and the Muslims that brings the people together so when I came back after my holiday I bought two or three books from forces the students organization in North London I was living down south of that time and started just to read a translation of the Quran and a couple of other little books over two years Holly not worth was is somebody give me a leaflet and it had they said that they sell books about Islam on the back I told her where I got it from Allah here I don't know where I got it from maybe one of the family over there hood because he'd studied here I'm not sure but I ordered it by post and it came and so I started reading about Islam and although I wasn't a particularly strong Christian very weak Chris you know probably more of an agnostic didn't I believe but didn't know what I believe and I'd always had a problem with the Trinity you know the father the certain the holy course no wasn't elected and when I started to read about Islam Allah Allah heal Allah I thought öland Old Testament first commandment the LORD thy God is one in the New Testament here o Israel the Lord thy God is one lalla hey Lala it's the same okay that figures and then when I read about rasool allah allahu allah assalamu articularly this the the story of when the Quraish offered him wealth power influence to be the king no give me the sun in my right hand moon in my left hand you know I won't stop until all those messages clear so the prophets allow Aslam clearly wasn't doing this for his own benefit he could have had everything worldly he could have had that but he didn't so he start a thing okay this this this man was real this man was genuine so I started to read deeper and then thought okay prohibition on pork and alcohol and he said I just got things out bit by bit by bit you started by yourself yeah yeah yeah I'd had no contact with Muslims back in this country at all and so I started doing this and it made perfect sense I remember one day I came home from work I was a Salesman at the time for an insurance company and it was having a bad day one of those days when nobody wants to see you and you know he said I came home and it was raining and it was dark whose middle of winter you know so I just put my sock down and I was reading and I just put my head on the floor and I said yeah I don't know if I said yeah Allah oh god please help me you know I was living all the Lord 200 miles from home and just ask for help and then that was that and then after a while I had to go on business up to Kilburn and that was not my area I never went a bit to Kilburn on business my neighborhood yeah exactly just up the road from you yeah and it was the old national Westminster Bank on Kelvin high rollers closed now us yes those no I was there a couple weeks ago they moved it to the other side okay so I went in there and I saw I was coming back driving back to Watford where I was living at the time driving up shoot uphill I thought this students place is just around the corner let me go and see if they got 90 more books fauces forces so I went and knocked at the door and there's a Sudanese brother Hassan Hamid bless him he answered the door so I come what's he saying you know I want some books yeah come in come in come in come in come in he put me down give me a cup of tea and then he told me afterwards that he went straight on the phone to a man called Mohammed John Webster I don't know if you remember my Mohammed John come quickly there's an Englishman here 90% is going to become a Muslim I heard the buy some books 90% is going to become a Muslim Mohammed John came round and he was telling him in front of you oh no no he told you afterwards so we sucked and me talking there and then the I was explaining to him what I'd been doing and reading and some more books and we just got taught in was a Friday morning and they said well why don't you come to the mosque with us and see what's happening okay so I had a company car we all piled into my car we went a Regents Park and rather than they drive you you draw I drove them to the I think they already asked me to get a lift to the mosque maybe alone and we went to the mosque yeah that was but you might was packed I was standing watching them they showed me how to make wudu and then I was standing watching them praying as well you know all this business and then afterwards we went in sat in the main hall and it's another Sudanese brother called dr ali al-taher it was a student at the time doing his PhD and I made sure Hara somehow Allah I haven't set out like there to become a Muslim I hadn't intended to become a Muslim at all Allah answered you prayer so here it's so true you ask them to guide you yeah it's fun and you know I've never seen so many hands and people coming up to congratulate me suddenly I have this whole new family and friends and this whole new network and I was remember driving back to - what funny thing it's so freeing I got but Allah made it so easy for me now how about the aftermath I mean it's embracing Islam affects your relations with your own family your acquaintances what happened to you well that was hard because I was living in a way as I said my family from Newcastle I was just outside London and Jodie is from Newcastle young alcohol plays a huge part in your life yeah I remember my days in Sunderland yeah it's it's the big thing if you don't drink what's wrong you know there's a problem if you're doing if you and I remember about three weeks after I become Muslim my cousin in Scotland got married so I went up there for the wedding and a Scottish wedding is even more than a meal anyway and I see what you're drinking I said a cork please white you know the thing I was like come from outer space or something the funny thing is my my older cousin there he asked my my brother said what's wrong with Brian he's not drinking and my brother tero said oh I don't know maybe he's become a Muslim or something he said that will lie on Allah he didn't know I hadn't told anybody I haven't told anybody but the thing is it was funny because where I was working my boss hated beards and I remember one guy started to grow a beard and mr. Cuellar he was name was David Quiller he said no take it off yeah they believed that in the in the PR business you know yeah so I he was on holiday when I became Muslim and by the time he came back you had a beard I starting to grow the beard come here what's this and I told him I become Muslim and this is the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW Islam okay no problem oh he tolerated you no problem he he used to leave his office let me pray in his office in the winter if I'm honest took on a phone call this microbead walked past me and he's going look at the time your prayers it remind you it's so easy for me but then the big thing was to go tell my parents and that's clear it didn't affect you work didn't affect my work at all other than that I was selling life insurance and it was all to do with Reba and again my boss I explained to him the situation and they made it possible for me to not be a Salesman to come in as an office manager so I didn't have to try and sell something I didn't really believe it well he was mobile gyein he was very you is a very good man very good man okay your parents yeah so my parents it was coming up to Christmas and you know when you become Muslim sometimes yours it's like a pendulum you're way off on that side and you become Muslim just swing all the way to that side so it's very sort of hardcore in many ways and I didn't want to get involved in Christmas now looking back I can say mmm shouldn't have done that maybe I should have been more inside yeah should it be a softer but that's not the advice I was getting but that's the human nature when you shift from one situation to another you become initially a some sort of a radical well it was everything was so clear mmm and this was the beauty of Islam for me that I was supposed to be Christian before the Church of England in this country it's so wishy-washy I was there was an issue I was actually brought up and christened as a Methodist in the Methodist Church not the Church of England because there was an issue there so as if things were all very different and wishy-washy but Islam was very clear and for me it was like black and white there was no gray areas in that sense it's it's comforting it was comforting because there was a foundation a solid foundation to build everything on I wasn't sort of lost and drifting or anything it was solid foundational hamdullah but how they go and tell my parents so I drove up to there and I shot them down one that's a look mom and dad there's no way other way to say this but I've become a Muslim you can hear a pin drop they went silent yeah so my mum bless her you know the both passed away now so my mum said or to go to some kind of church or something I said I go to the mosque and my dad jumped up said you don't need a mosque you need a madhouse hey I'm going out 20 minutes you better not be here when I come back oh so I'm sorry the theater anyway he went out so I explained to my mom I said don't worry everything will be fine and it did I used to meet my mom at my brother's house after that my dad was really remain like that no I'm the love I got a phone call one day about 18 months later and his fullness is that here your mom's seriously ill in hospital you better come home so I went home and we and it was started to build and rebuild the relationship and I'll hamdulillah over the years I mean my mom told my my wife that's he's a much better person as a Muslim than he was subhanAllah she said so yeah yeah never told me she never told me but she saw a difference in my attitude my the way I spoke to people we had dealt with people she saw a big difference and for her it was very much an improvement on what it was before now unlike some people who convert to Islam you from I guess from the beginning you became active you did not just keep it to yourself or am I wrong because at least since I've known you you have been active uh-huh well it was I suppose it depends who you're with when you become Muslim I mean I very much the first few weeks and months I used to be at forces every you know every week and Mohamed John Webster is great guy and we'd be sitting having dinner with about people from 20 different countries now for a lot from Newcastle like me who for the first 20 years of my life 21 years of my life I never spoke to anybody who wasn't white and English or Scottish it just didn't happen there was nobody around and where I lived so moving to the south was one an eye-opener so it wasn't just a new religion it was a completely new environment culture everything and I remember sitting with Mohammed John and all these brothers was from Sudan from North Africa from Malaysia from Middle East from Pakistan all these and Mohammed John Webster who was sit there and he said listen to this and he'd make some outrageous statement and then he just sit back while they all start arguing you know and it was brilliant like that because you start to see and it was very much that they were their loss showing me different opinions and stuff like that but then after three weeks I remember going up for Juma I didn't know that it was a mosque where I lived in Watford there was sort of we got that going me kick-started them but I remember going for Juma again at Regions park with Hassan Hamid with Hassan the brother had seen originally good for sis and the advance started and I turned straight away in that synthesis Yusuf Islam he was giving the event was given me a van here cut Stevens voice clearly yeah you're organizing from his voice voice yeah so we met him I introduced myself afterwards and so he said sonic um how are you brother hamdulillah nice to meet you are you married I said no I'm not married very important you get married yeah okay yeah so that was it but that says now that was his Dalia and so I actually started to go to the Islamic circle with Yusuf and he and I became and remained very very good friends so hamdullah so I have worked with you surf and active as his personal assistant and then as involved with the education side of things that he's involved with so this sort of spreading and it was through Yusuf that I got involved with Palestine so that reminds me of of this of this community the community of converts talking to some people you have you get a sense from them that initially they feel lonely they feel isolated some of them were warmly welcomed by the community by the Muslim community others feel that they were not sufficiently curd for okay I know I've seen a lot I think it started the individual I certainly didn't feel lonely and like I don't have a problem with loneliness because you started with forces yeah I was there straight away and it was those plenty of people to meet and know and but I I enjoy my own company anyway now I'm gone comforted with Who I am and I can spend time on my own even at that time I've heard this before you know the the Muslims don't do enough for the new Muslims okay that's that's true to a certain extent but it's a two-way street you know we wasn't walking into a mosque and assumed they'd look at me I'm a new Muslim everybody must come forward and do something for me and greet me and I mean yeah I remember going to the mosque early on in Watford and places of East London even and you'd walk in and everybody look at you so if you've got two heads or something you know because it was strange then this was the early 1980s 1981 it was very strange to see an English Muslim or white Muslim they were there people are around I mean people like that would rush out and and you know the lots of being Muslims from the 60s and 70s but it was unusual mmm even when it went for Hajj first time 1984 it was the Iron Curtain was slow down so you didn't get all the European East European Muslims that you've seen now the Bosnians and less well you didn't get that so remember being on Arafat and yomel Arafat you from everything and as brother came up to me and it's alarm started speaking to me in Turkish he thought I was a jerk yeah and those days even the Turks were generally the older middle-aged and older when if I didn't know you I would mistake you for a Turkish earth so I started to talk to me in Turkey Turkish and I said sorry sorry sorry English English you English so yeah are you a Muslim and then he laughed and we did and we sat down we had a little bit of chat in and the thing in as much as the English that he had and I have no yeah I think most Muslims associated Islam with a culture rather than with humanity yeah yeah although although as I said I was sent to a line I mean yeah but this is what this is what we find now is that the you know there are so many more non-traditional Muslims if you like and so it's not such a big deal now but it's it's at that time I don't know if you know yeah we can always do more to help people but it's a two-way two-way street and I think if we just isolate ourselves and expect to be treated very differently that's not always going to work depends where you are and who you who you're with blow the sale handle I mean I was always in this sort of environment where people were active so the activism was there from the beginning I was there by default and I got involved and you get known and just talk isn't you Muslim your fluster go and give a talk somewhere or you want to visit a school just to speak to the kids about your faith why you've become a Muslim and it would break the the mold if you like to see it seeing here at Geordie accent the white man going in to speak about a faith which most of the people associated with Pakistanis or Indians or maybe Arabs but not even Pakistanis and Indians because that was the the community that they saw well for people like me people who were born and raised as Muslims it is really very important when we become acquainted with people like Ibrahim and his brothers and sisters we embrace Islam because it reminds us of something we keep forgetting about Islam that Islam is not for the Arabs it's not for the Pakistanis or the Indians of the Africans Islam is for Humanity yeah well I still always think this is important and I was used to point out to people and I remember doing something in in Dublin once I was there doing teacher training with a wonderful brother a wonderful friend Muhammad Akram Khan Chima who was a great educationist and very active and he he and I were doing some teacher training and then the evening the community asked us to speak to the parents and so we were talking and after the education bit and brother Brahim when did you become Muslim inevitable so I said hamdulillah I became Muslim in 1981 when did you become a Muslim brother and when did you become a Muslim sister well we were born with me don't give me we were born Muslims you are born into a Muslim home you are given a head start over people like me in that you grew up hearing allahu akbar allahu la Souris l'm you you grew up within an Islamic environment but when you were old enough to think for yourself you have to decide to be to be a Muslim yeah after all this land is based on free choice you have to make sure harder you have to be a Muslim yourself you have to make a conscious decision that I want to live my life as a Muslim because you one day mom and dad are not going to be around to get your first of all during Ramadan they're not gonna be around again your facility get to the mosque no you have to do this yourself so it's it's it's just did every every Muslim has to have gone through the same journey but just by different routes that's all now the years since you've become Muslim here in Britain as well as in the West in general Islam has repeatedly been under attack has this affected the way Westerners perceive Islam or or has there been an increase in the number of people who convert to Islam well it's sort of paradoxically there's I think I don't know statistics there are no accurate statistics to show how many people have become a Muslim but from what we hear when people hear all these bad things 9/11 the Rushdie time people went out to buy a copy of a translation of the Koran to find out what it's all about and then they become Muslim so it's it's you know it depends on the heart if you've got the an open heart and an open mind then you're going to understand that there are different ways different approaches and that basically although they wouldn't know the terminology that Judaism Christianity as it was and Islam this earth so it's all al-khattab's all people of the book and it's all from the same source so there's a natural progression and so it shouldn't be unusual and a lot of the times when there's people who are anti Islam it's more to do I think with racism with ignorance because Christianity didn't originate in London or England or Canterbury where the Archbishop of Canterbury is head of the Church of England it's a Middle Eastern religion not far away from that guy yeah exactly exactly so you know this this sort of things a lot of ignorance and so that the attacks on Islam you know the prophets all Islam had attacks on him so we shouldn't be surprised about that Shaitaan told Allah support Allah I'm going to try and divert the people away so we shouldn't be surprised at that yeah there was one time I remember I was invited to go and speak to a gathering of monks and priests Christian priests at Burford Priory which is near Oxford and it was about Islam and people of other faiths so I wrote a nice academic paper and I got there and I looked and there's a whole group there and including a few bishops okay I just want to remind you I'm a Muslim the shadow Lila Hill Allah shadow no water swirl there's no god but Allah and Muhammad is the message of Allah and I invite you all to become Muslims for your salvation and there's silence don't come to me and running to me on the day of judgment they said nobody told you about Islam and they all started laughing just like that and once they started laughing that broke the ice and we started to be able to get it really good and in the afternoon I prayed outside lifty day I was praying on the grass outside and the afternoon though the the abbot had had guide the police came and asked me if I would recite some Quran for their community they all lived there the the monks so they took me into the chaplain or in the middle of a service it was a proper service they press like seven times a day if that one's service is in there and he said okay so this is the order of service this is where you speak here what do I do sorry sighted from surah saff about SLS alarm asking the Hawaiian - Aria Aloha right who's the witch amongst you I'm gonna do the help of a lot and now did it in the translation in English and they were crying really they were crying they didn't realize that is all Islam is mentioned in the Quran even the disciples are mentioned in the Quran Allah Akbar so this is the way you know you get the people's hearts by telling the truth we don't have to shy away from the Quran let people hear the Quran that people understand the Quran know what's in there it's not just all about chopping hands off in heads often flogging people and listeners know Islam is about development it's there to enrich society it's there to take people forward Shariah to take people forward to Jenna and Shana so this was this was beautiful for me it was brilliant but it was you know how long ago was that Oh about 20 years ago now that was really really good [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Al Hiwar TV قناة الحوار

Views: 603,679

Rating: 4.9033313 out of 5

Keywords: قناة, الحوار, رحلتي إلى الإسلام, اعتناق الإسلام, التحول إلى الإسلام, دين الإسلام, الشريعة الإسلامية, من الضلال إلى النور, دين الرحمة, رسول المحبة, رسالة الإسلام, القرآن الكريم, قصص, قصة إسلام, عزام التميمي, رحلة, مسيرة, الله, Alhiwar TV, Al Hiwar TV, My Journey to Islam, Azzam Tamimi, Converting to Islam, Muslim Convert, Convert, Story, From dark to light, Prophet Muhammad, Allah, God, Islam, Religion, Mosque, Trinity, Islamic, Sharia, Ibrahim Hewitt, إبراهيم هيويت, انتربال, Interpal, FOSIS

Id: HeUyp2wiyxk

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020