How I Came to Islam - LECTURE - Abdur-Raheem Green

Hey II here Hey here big he Hey hee hee Hey heeey Hey here Hey oh no me la mina sh-shaytani r-rajim bismillahi rahmani raheem bother of Lahani me know moon and ladina moon feel fall a team cause your own moon one latina who mani love we more goon one Lavina whom lizica Tifa alone one loving a homely for holding him half ago in Allah as watching him Ouma mana cat a man in LA as watching him oh mama da cat a man phenom phenomenal Oh me family meant ahora Chanukah phaona in Kahoot module one latina who meymaneh to him wanting more on one loving a woman and fauna wanting him your half ego on Ola ah I came home on wari soon and levena original finding Shaboom FINA holy dune one upon a hornet wanna in San emile zola Latin Queen Dominic wanna know no confetti on Finn Corinne McKinney Sumalee wanna know confettis in Corinne McKinney wanna wanna wanna wanna know confetti on a cotton fell on upon an apple fell on upon an Idaho demo boy down south wanna finally move move on Tommy woman song we wanna mention a new honkin Ajo fat about rockin Lois Einhorn et Fatima rock amano-san oh no funny thing Zuma in a combat death an economy a tone Suman nikomia home alone Tiamat Tito Bethune hamdulillah nammed who honest a new Anastasio now of the balaji mirchi Lori Ann frisina women saya Molina Mia hallo ho Palermo Delilah well my youth lil fella her doula ashhadu an la illaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan abduhu Vasu begin by praising Allah we praise Him we seek his help and we ask we ask for his forgiveness and we take refuge with Allah from the evil of ourselves and from the evil consequence of our evil actions whomsoever God guides no one can misguide and whomsoever Allah leaves to go astray no one can guide and I testify that Allah alone is worthy of worship and the muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is his servant and his messenger my first talk tonight is about why I came to Islam yeah ok so let me introduce a little bit about myself where I come from I'm my I was born my mother christened me Anthony VAT suave Gavin green now what soif is a strange name in England anyway because it's not an English name it's a Polish name my mother is polish actually completely polish and when she was I don't know two or three years old the second world war broke out and she had to leave Poland and from Poland she emigrated to Iran and from Iran to Kenya and actually my father was a colonial administrator who was not long ago that Britain of course had one of the biggest empires of the world has ever seen they said as they said the Sun never set on the British Empire and now look at the British Empire yeah all we have left Hong Kong went back in nineteen where I was is 1999 or 1998 and now only have is a few islands in the Atlantic where there's more sheep than people the Falkland Islands we have a big battle over that some sheep you know that's it but you know that's that's one of the signs actually from God in the Quran Allah says travel the earth and see the end of those people who rejected faith see the end of people whose power and strength was actually greater than yours more numerous more powerful their buildings were more magnificent but you can travel earth and you can see the ruins of those civilizations and see what has become of them this is the reality of course that civilizations come and civilizations go but there are some truths that always endure so anyway my father was a colonial administrator in Tanzania it's in East Africa or and that's where I was born in 1964 in Tanzania I don't remember anything of Tanzania but I was born in Tanzania and Doris Salam now when I was young very young then we moved when I was two years old we moved to UK because Tanzania got its independence and my father then began to work for Barclays Bank International Barclays Bank International and he used to travel the world and when I was ten years old we moved to Cairo and my father was sent there in order to set up barque his bank in Cairo so that's a little bit about my background so when I say I come from you know the upper-middle class this is a type of thing when I was 10 years old I was sent to boarding school boarding school is a place you know some people like it some people don't I I didn't like it I never liked boarding school but that's where I went when I was 10 years old and that's where I spent most of my life for the next 10 years until I was 19 and except for my holidays which we used to spend in Egypt so my father also spent a long time in Egypt a lot longer than most people normally spends that stay abroad as expatriates we lived in Egypt for 10 years so Egypt was my home and my school was this place called amplified college ampere 4th college is a very famous monastic boarding school that is run by Benedictine monks so my mother being polish she's Catholic and she brought me up to be and my brother to be Catholic although my father is actually and still is an agnostic as an agnostic he says you know I don't know if there is a God or not so he doesn't say I believe there's not a God he just doesn't know if there is a God or if there is a religion or anything like that so that's my father that's my mom that's a little bit about my early life now before I was sent to school we however we don't live any religious household my mother was never really taught me much about Catholicism I never really learned much about religion in fact the only person who used to take me to church was my mom's was my art we knew her as aren't zojja and she used to take me and my brother to church regularly but my mother never bothered and so that's all we got really but I remember the first sort of piece of information I ever really got about religion and was when my mother obviously thinking was about time she taught me something in order to prepare me to go to this school of this monastic boarding school she decided to teach me one of the Roman Catholic prayers it's called Hail Mary the Roman Catholic prayer they have two main prayers one is you find it in the gospel or in the Gospels which is called the Our Father and the other is called Hail Mary so she teaches me the Hail Mary and as far as I remember it goes something like this Hail Mary Mother of God blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus now when she got to the bit Hail Mary Mother of God as an eight year old and I remember I remember thinking to myself mother of God what's that mean God has a mummy I'm not thinking in my head God has a mum see well I'm thinking God is supposed to be eternal without beginning without end and God has a mummy how ok I didn't really get that but then you know when your mum tells you something of that age I mean you believe it absolutely you don't question what your mum tells you because what your mum tells you you just accept it so instead of you know I mean I just said well I figured it out in my head I said well if Mary is the mother of God the only way that can work is she must be a bigger God than God to give birth to God she has to be a bigger God than God so everything ok you know so I just put that that was actually my first question the first question that came to me and it still remains as valid today in reality was that first question and it wasn't the end of my questions and people often ask me you know if you didn't hate your school so much do you think you would have become Muslim well I don't know if hating my school had anything to do with me becoming Muslim but it certainly had a lot to do with me questioning the paradigms or the the things that I was being taught at that school and I have to say I didn't really enjoy school I never really quite understood why I had been sent to this monastery you know perched on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors this desolate place in the middle of nowhere and this is why where I had to spend most of my life here I could never really quite understand that and actually that caused me to question a lot of things now some of those things are to do with what we call religion and if you came to my talk yesterday you'll you'll remember how I challenged the whole concept of what religion is that from in reality a person's religion or Deen their way of life is more than just what we normal to be religion in the narrow sense but what was my religion was obviously I was a Christian and I was a Catholic and there were things I went on to question more and more of course the issue of the Trinity was continually perplexing and I was always trying to find out and think about ways to make sense of the Trinity and of course there are a whole load of examples that are given to you the Trinity is like for example water you know water is ice and water is steam and water is water but you know this is all water but they are in different sort of States and they say well that's the Trinity or you know like a human being you have a mind body and a soul or the egg you have the shell of the egg you have the yolk of the egg you have the white of the egg all right I remember once I was my mother had a candle stand with three candles and I thought okay maybe this is like the Trinity okay three candles in one candle stand right so I I myself as always trying to find ways to make sense of the Trinity but in many different ways you realize that none of those examples actually can really apply and in fact it's interesting if you actually study Christian theology you will find that all of these type of examples are heresies they're all heretical beliefs because none of them actually accurately represent the Trinity at all okay because God by definition is a being that contains all the attributes of God you can't give some attributes of God to one thing and another attributes of God to another yeah and give the other attributes of God to something else because what we call God contains all the attributes of God right so you can't have God the infinite God the eternal God the Creator and that's one God and then you have got the loving God the merciful God the forgiving as another part of God because God to contain all of those attributes that's why the example of water doesn't work why because steam is hot and steam rises and so the steam has different attributes from the ice which is cold right and the other the another water in its normal state has different attributes but God is the one that contains all of the attributes simultaneously so anything we describe as God has to have all the attributes of God not just some of them so you look in the example of the egg of the human of the candle or whatever you think you see none of them actually apply but these are things that people just try to imagine to make sense of something that actually does not make sense and the most knowledgeable monks they would say listen this is a mystery and you just have to believe it that's really what they would say they said there is no logical explanation this is a mystery and you just have to believe it but really I think you know for most of us just have to believe it it just doesn't you know as we say it doesn't cut the mustard it's not something we can really accept in a day in an age where we are constantly taught to question things and so on and so forth just believe it certainly didn't really go down well with me and there were other things that are specific to the Catholic Church for example I could never really understand why I had to go and confess my sins to a priest right and I think most of its most of us at school couldn't understand that either because we lived with the monks we live with them every day so we realize that these monks were just just like us human beings they made mistakes in fact in reality we realized that most of them had big problems in fact we reckon that a good number of them became monks because they just wanted to run away from the world they didn't want to deal with things so we found that really these monks were not these holy people and this is not something my mother could never understand this when I used to complain about my housemaster she would say yeah well he can't I don't believe you he's a priest so what do you mean I'm telling you no a priest priest don't do things like that and really that's the attitude the attitude of your average average Catholic is like that the priests can't do anything because he is you know he is almost some holy person and why shouldn't he be because what is the priest doing I mean this priest gets a piece of ordinary bread yeah and he gets some wine and they do this ritual called the MAS right and at the end of this ritual called the MAS the bread is transformed into the body of Jesus and the wine is transformed into the blood of Jesus and by the way not symbolically when you eat the bread and drink the blood you have to believe as a Catholic or you had to in my days that you are literally eating the literal flesh of Jesus and the literal blood and drinking literally his blood okay not symbolically literally and even an ex-priest he confessed right but mentally of course and Jesus is God right so you're eating and you're drinking God right seriously but as a psychology the priest believes that he is consuming God and therefore God and He is the one who has the power you know through his ritual not himself of course but it is the ritual that he does that causes this transformation to take place right now we used to ask awkward questions like okay we eat you know the flesh of Jesus and drink the blood of Jesus but you know when it comes out as poo and we do we pou Jesus and we Jesus is what well that's the sort of questions we would ask you know we we weren't holding anything back right and I don't know if they they just used to say you can't ask questions like that you know it's not you know which is I mean I suppose from a point of view they said fair enough you know you don't think like that about these things right and then the confession but the confession was one that really used to you know it really used to disturb me most of all because most of us at school were up to a lot of no good we were doing a lot of you know certainly forbidden things and the idea that I had to go to one of the monks who run the school and to confess to them about all the things I've been up to it made it sound like some psychological spy system right that here they were you know you did all of these things then you have to go and tell them what you were doing and it was like you just must be joking I'm not going to tell you all the things I used to be doing so we actually used to make up stuff we used to say like you know I lied three times this week and you know you know I I was rude to you know such-and-such and you know I I felt jealous because you know this guy had a better stereo than me you know and you know and forgive me Father for I have sinned you know this is my son say three Hail Marys and five our fathers you know and think deeply about the bad things you bet I get yeah all right and the other thing I didn't get is the forgive me Father for I have sinned because I didn't just get why I have to tell the priest this is what I really didn't get why do I have to tell and I actually went I went to the Abbott's to the Abbott he's the top guy you've really embraced the top dog right they were a dog collar right they call it the top dog yeah and you say and you say you know I said to him listen why do I have to come and confess my sins to you why because you know what's so good about you I have to confess my sins to you why can't I just ask God Oh God I've been really bad please forgive me he said yes you know you can ask God if you want to but if you just ask God you can't be sure that God is going to forgive you and again I don't I didn't say anything to embarrass ooh that's God's gonna forgive me but I can be sure that he's going to listen to you right I'm saying no because I know between you and me there's no difference there's nothing that makes you more holy than me right now in the meantime I want to say something else that is going I am experiencing something else in terms of religion and what I'm experiencing is something dramatically different now in spite of the fact that monks take vows of poverty and chastity poverty because they don't own any property every piece of property that they have any gift that someone gives to them actually belongs to the monastery it does not belong to that monk so they take boughs of poverty right and they take vows of chastity which means they never marry okay and so they live actually you know in spite of these vows of poverty and chastity they lived very very comfortable lives in fact right and the whole church and the rituals of the church are really surrounded by a paraphernalia of rites and rituals I mean if you've ever been to a mass right you there's the singing and there's the chanting and there's the incense and you know I used to be the altar boy you know you have to hand the bread and the wine and you have to cover everything has a little you know you have to you have the chalice and I Coromant what you've yet to cover it this and you have to move it just in a certain way you had to turn the cup one third of degree you know I remember explaining all of this stuff to a friend of mine a Muslim friend of mine and actually we were up in the forest in the nighttime he said I think is we better go back to the car now because I'm scared it sounds like some cannibalistic voodoo ritual right and you know the funny thing was is that when he said that right when he said that you know I thought to myself you know it really does I never thought of it before right but there's all this ritual and then I'm going to Egypt now Egypt of course is a Muslim country right and in our house we have we had a very very nice lifestyle right we had a driver to drive us around we have a su froggy to tidy up the house right we had a cook to cook our food anyway I want to focus on the cook ibrahim this is Eva ham is really one of the most beautiful people I have ever met okay and he used to pray five times a day and this is the thing that immediately I want to focus on that impressed me about Ibrahim the prayer you see there am I going to this Catholic monastery dealing with all of these things and then I would come home and what would we do we'd find Ibrahim the time will come for prayer he would pray his prayer mat down in the kitchen and he would just start praying and sometimes we'd go in the kitchen and you know we want to drink and oh no we can't go do just wait for five minutes because Ibrahim is praying and I remember looking at Ibrahim one day he's wearing these simple clothes you know this gel abiy as they call it used to wear this gel to be a very simple very humble man always humble I never heard him shout ever once I never heard him shout and then this prayer you know I remember just watching him praying and just thinking if you want to see someone who is worshiping God the way God should be worshiped this is the way not the way they did it back in my school here is a man he is just standing simply bowing standing prostrating quietly silently his worshipping his creator and it had a very very powerful impact on me the comparison between this and that and the comparison by the way was not only in religious terms you see going to Egypt was a really big shock in my life I mean obviously any third-world country compared to life in the West okay is you know dirty chaotic you know confusing from many different angles you know it's quite scary okay you go to a third world country the way people drive you know we used to have a job that the horn the hooter right you know it's more important than a car engine yeah you could push the car along but if you didn't have a hooter it was just you know you wouldn't survive you know and you know it was like that you know really crazy and the life in so many ways was crazy and I have to say for the first two years I hate it I couldn't stand it I couldn't stand Egypt and then you know something happened you know so I got a bit older settle down you know I began to see what was going on and and then as I suppose I moved in my into my teenage years and you know I'm a sort of person who at that time used to think a lot and very deeply about all types of subjects all types of things and so one of the things I began to question and I go back to my life in this monastic boarding school is why am I here now the question why am I here initially was a question why am I here at the school but then it soon moved on to a question as why am I here on this earth what is the purpose of my life what is the reason for my existence and I used to think about that and then I figured thinking about my school and what am I doing here and what am I supposed to do with my life I sort of came to I figured it out I said okay I'm here at school so that I can work very hard and get good results for my a-levels so I can go to a good university preferably Oxford or Cambridge you know but if not you know one another one okay and then I can get a good job now when I get a good job I can earn enough money to send my kids back to and forth College so that they can study hard and get good results so they can go to a good university so they can get a good job and they can go back and say they can earn enough money to send their kids back to ample fourth college so that they can work and I thought my god my existence is only to perpetuate the Roman Catholic middle class you know section of British society I thought is that the purpose of my life that's what it's for if it was really depressing and I thought to myself no this can't be the purpose of life this can't be the reason for our existence and so I there was two things going on here actually what I was doing was I was fundamentally questioning the whole premise of Western society because ultimately basically that's Western society it's just to work hard you're just a cog in the machine that's all you are you no you're just a cog in the machine as those days Pink Floyd used to sing all in all you're just another brick in the wall and it was so true I recently watched that the film the wool by pink for it well recently two three years ago I know it's got music in and this and that but I remember that that film was something that track was really transformative because that film was so aggressively attacking actually the funny thing about that it's even that film is even critical about the whole music industry if you ever seen the film you'll realize that even the whole pop music industry the rock star everything it is fundamentally questioning those things and those powerful images of school kids going on this conveyor belt and then going into this mincing machine and there's just coming out as mince right and it was like that's just what you felt I'm just part of the Machine right just part of the Machine I'm just being processed and is this really that's what life is about that's what we're for this is the purpose of our existence I said to myself that I am sure there is something more profound more deep and there is a deeper meaning to life than that and and really that's where the the searching started and I began to look through many different religions so one of the religions I looked through and very soon I looked at was Buddhism and Buddhism I'm uh you know one of the brothers he said you know why don't you talk more about Buddhism because I was a Buddhist for three years when I say I was a Buddhist for three years I didn't shave my head and put on saffron robes right okay and have a statue of Buddha and worship you know that's actually by the way only a form of Buddhism Buddhism has many many different forms okay but actually if you teach if you actually sorry excuse me if you actually study what Buddha taught Buddha didn't really teach a system in fact it's arguable that you could be a Buddhist and follow different religions because according to some Buddhists you know Buddhism is not a religion right it's more like a philosophy okay and anyway the Buddhism that I was the reading abouts was a very open type of Buddhism the guy who wrote the book he was a Buddhist monk he used to be a he used to be a Christian priest he became Buddhist and you know his basic idea is you take good from wherever you find it and it was also to do with yoga so it was a form of Buddhism that was still really based around you know the practice the practice of yoga and basically outline the fundamental principles of the Eightfold enlightened path of Buddha and basically Buddhist philosophy is that you should try to fill your life with goodness okay so you are thinking good thoughts you are looking at good things you are hearing good things you are doing good things you are eating good things so on and so forth so the whole purpose is to be good and to be compassionate okay but ultimately what one is seeking to achieve is a state of Nirvana now Nirvana does not mean paradise and it doesn't mean enlightenment those words are not correct translations of Nirvana nirvana actually means annihilation it means annihilation in this respect it means annihilation of the self because according to Buddha the cause of all suffering in the world is the self is the ego right all the problems that we have individually and collectively according to his teachings are a product of the self right so if you annihilate yourself if you destroy your ego totally then this is the stage or this is the type of enlightenment okay which actually makes Buddhists almost like empty well I mean it's it's an idea by the way that is very very difficult to accept in the West right because it seems that individualism or individuality is that there is no room for that at all right any type of individuality or individualism there's no room for it right hey there's no room for the life and onenote there's nothing that marks him out that's why it's very difficult to write any biography of you know a Buddhist leader because there's nothing to write about because their whole life is not about doing anything really it's just about that because there's no end of jool or there's no self to focus on that's why the Dalai Lama he's a paradox you know the fact that he's a personality right actually is paradoxical in Buddhist thought now why did I give up Buddhism actually I have to say I'll be really honest and I wouldn't be anything else hopefully that Buddhism of all the religions I studied all the philosophies I studied was really the one that was most appealing was very appealing to me and it still has many many aspects to it that still I would say are definitely things that are true many aspects to it but the problem with Buddhism in my opinion is that I believe that Buddha's fundamental premise was wrong his fundamental in outward was his fundamental premise life is suffering that's his fundamental premise he says life is suffering and the way to escape the suffering of light and the cause of suffering is the self and the wit so therefore the way to escape okay but what if your premise is wrong what if life is not suffering and I'm sure most of us would agree that life is not suffering yes there is suffering in life right but you couldn't say that life is suffering because there is joy there is love there are so many very positive things that happen in life and you couldn't describe those things we might describe some asked for certainly love you might describe some of that suffering there's no doubt about that right and I'll get onto that in a little bit as well okay but what I'm saying is there many things in life that are really very joyful and very positive and therefore to say life is suffering is wrong and also I don't believe that the ego or the self is the cause the self itself the self itself is not the problem in Islamic terminology the nafs actually even in the Quran for example you will find the nafs is always referred to from a negative point of view yeah but actually in reality the nafs is essential the nafs is essential in its raw quality the ego or the nufs is essential because it's the nufs that makes me drink water it's my desire the feeling that I have I am thirsty and that is the nufs the nufs drives me to drink the nufs drives me to eat write the drafts the nufs drives me to anger anger is essential by the way in order to protect yourself right jealousy is essential within some context of the family and so on and so forth right so the the problem is not the nufs no the problem is not the nufs the problem is when you go beyond the limits right when your desire for food is transformed into gluttony when your feeling of anger is not controlled and it goes beyond the bounds and it leads to excess and so on and so forth so the problem is not the nufs so it is not right to annihilate yourself you're not supposed to destroy totally your nuts but actually what you need to do is control that now I'm saying that in retrospect as a Muslim because that's what I believe is a Muslim what we have to do is we have to aim at controlling ourselves right it's actually controlling our desires not annihilating them anyway I hadn't figured that out at this at the stage when I'd come to Buddhism I'm just jumping ahead of it okay but the point is I felt that there was something not right this was not quite actually right okay and another thing that happened I suppose and you know you could say well maybe if you take in Buddhism a little bit further you wouldn't have reached this conclusion but after about three years of you know practicing various forms of Buddhism I came across instant Nirvana it's called marijuana yeah yeah marijuana spliff whatever they call it now these days right or actually in Egypt there was a marijuana it was hash okay quite widely available and I had always assiduously avoided these things and you know my parents good parents warned me you know against drugs and getting into drugs and you know even if you take this soft drugs it's only a root to hard drugs but anyway I don't even remember how it happened my brother quite to my shock started smoking first my brother started saying he's younger than me so that's why I'm shocked by it and I was too what my brother was a real straight-laced guy okay there he was puffing away and was like what are you doing I'm smoking what man you know and then along came this this hash stuff right and anyway hash yeah it was like man's instant nirvana you know I am annihilated and remember I was talking about yesterday I'm stoned I'm wasted yeah that the state of absolute intoxication is actually describing a state of self annihilation when you you literally have annihilated yourself and there is that feeling then when you annihilate yourself of a type of you know escape a type of you know whatever okay now that maybe is not an entirely undesirable emotion to feel right but drugs you see is you know they are a very very dangerous mistress because in the beginning when you start smoking and you start taking the drugs and you start doing those things yes in the beginning you feel very euphoric and maybe even for a year right you know you feel very euphoric and you know the drugs make you feel good but you'll never really feel as good you know the fifth or sixth and seventh time as you did the first time or the second time what you find is that you're always chasing the high you're always trying to get back fantastic you feeling you had when you begun but what happens is your body builds up a type of resistance okay and then you need to smoke more to get the effect that you used to have when you started until what happens ultimately is that your life simply becomes an obsession with obtaining drugs in order to get that high and you're spending more and more money you're spending more and more time you spend all the time trying to get drugs and being high and you even reach a stage when anyone who's a drug taker will know they're not even enjoying it anymore they're not they don't actually get enjoyment from it but what you are addicted to is the process you've become addicted to the process and you're still trying to chase that high and that's by the way often when drug takers move on to harder drugs because harder drugs offer them something of the experience that they had before but actually it is totally destructive it destroys your body it destroys your mind it destroys you as a person it destroys families it destroys societies but you don't think about that when you start taking it right you don't think about that when you begin all you're experiencing is the high like I said instant Nirvana so I started to play a little bit around with these drugs and stuff like that and it really was a type of spiritual experiment it was a another dimension it was trying to find out something about my mind about myself a different dimension of my being maybe drugs could unleash that dimension and I could begin to experience something different in my life so initially it wasn't just pure hedonism I was not driven by that at all just a desire to get high and have fun that was not what I was driven by it wasn't that okay it was really initially a type of seeking of some type of spirituality in it and actually even with the smoking of marijuana you know you actually have a religion let's go around it rest effort although I know wrestlers would argue that not all wrestlers believe if that's true but there's a whole section of the Rastafarians that connects you know taking smoking marijuana with this okay so you this whole type of even spiritual sign connected to it however you know still this state had not answered my fundamental questions and this is the other thing with Buddhism I still didn't really know why am I here what is the purpose of life what is it all for drug-taking had not answered those fundamental questions I had experienced different states of being but I still haven't understood why am I here and what it's all for and so that question is still ticking away in the background anyway this I guess this is from the time when I am you know I don't know the age but these things are going on from the age of like 15 I didn't start taking drugs then that was later but these processes are going from the age of 15 to about 1920 and I was at the same time studying different religions psychosomatic yoga magic I studied quite a lot about magic for example okay and interestingly enough one of the things that really interested me was the Kabbalah and and and interestingly enough as well the Kabbalah because it's a Jewish book of magic actually contains a lot of monotheism in it and I found that that aspect very appealing but of course the whole magic thing really lager and stolen storing me that it's it's installing beer lover instant so I found ya so I was looking through all of these different religions now what happened is that I reached the stage where what I had done is I had invented my own religion so what did i do as i got bits and pieces of all the different you know bit of christianity bit of buddhism but a psychosomatic yoga bit of you know these New Age philosophies you know I got them bit of rest of stuff you know and I mixed it boom junker and stuff like that right mummy mixed it all up in the big mix Mun right I mean man that sets me on ready jam yeah so I got myself our own religion actually still someone have the book where I'd sort of started to detail its principles and it was I mean you know if I tell you you probably love it I preform at a sex actually I could probably do it a cult it'll be quite easy early look a bit like Jesus you know so I could do the old and it was it you know it was really typical right it was like oneness peace love that's what it was right oneness isn't that so nice see oneness peace and love so it's all about you know peace and love and oneness and you know chilling out and we all love each other and listen that and smoke some weed in here let's you know let's get down with it and you know okay so there was my religion that I'd have vented for myself and this went on for a very short time because I soon realized that this was the worst of all I mean of all the things I've been through my own religion was absolutely atrocious right and it still hadn't answered the questions I still didn't have an answer to the question why am I here what's it all for what's your all about still there the questions unanswered so I had not found the answer to this question and then that's when I gave up that's when I said forget it forget religion forget all of this stuff maybe there is no answer maybe there is no answer maybe the reality is what I was taught from day one wealth equals happiness right and maybe the reason I'm not happy is because I'm not rich enough maybe I don't have enough money that's my problem right maybe the things I need and the things I want I just can't access them with the money I've got at the moment no I can tell you that at the time the pocket money the pocket money my dad used to give me was more than lots of people's wages right so I had a pretty you know I had a pretty good life right I never had to steal anything to buy any ganja right you know I never had to do anything I had you know I had a pretty financially I was pretty well-off right you know skiing in San Moritz club you know holidays in club méditerranée you know specially victor tellegio the GM enter to the show since eternity okay and so I had you know we had a good luck good life cooks a fraud the servant driver I mean you know what how much more rich to you so I tell you it did give an idea of how rich I thought I needed to be I'm thinking private jet yacht private island right that's the type of rich I'm thinking I need to be in order to be happy so I start thinking okay in order to really enjoy my life to the maximum right what I need to do is get the most amount of money with a minimum amount of efforts right so why do I want to work hard for my money because that means I'm going to spend all my time working instead of my time enjoying so that's a waste of time so what I'm starting to think is I start to first so I my analytical mind starts kicking and I start thinking okay let's let's look at history now who are the richest people in the world right and who did the least amount of work in order to get their money right so I started thinking right let's start with England good old England British Empire Industrial Revolution fifth and richest country in the world oh man that's just way too much hard-working revolution capitalism industry listen that conquest and you know Empire and forget that man Germany oh my god the Germans they work hard and Japanese all they do is work forget the Japanese right Americans the American Dream you know what's the American dream you're a self-made millionaire you know but you have to rise from the gutter and you make it for yourself and again it's just through a hard work and then it hit me oh my god those Saudi Arabians they've been sitting on their camels right I love walkabout right praying to Allah right and they got all that wealth and all that money in all they were and they did nothing I said that's the one maximum money minimum work I like that ice ice we're brothers and sisters I swear that's the truth all right and I said right okay Saudi Arabia okay let's find out about these guys is something got something right that's not coincidence I don't believe that they got that oil just for nothing there must be a reason that oil is there so I started thinking okay Saudi Arabia what's their religion Iceland yeah I know that I know its name a little bit about Islam right Koran I know that's their book so write down I went down there and you know I picked up the Koran yeah anyway I can say I picked up a translation of the Koran in English okay I started to read it okay I started to read the Quran in English now um I used to be pretty still am a pretty fast leader I can read but the reason is because when we lived in Egypt you know the TV was so rubbish right it was so bad right in fact the TV set had this thick dust on it right it didn't get turned on it didn't get used it just used to sit there because we never used to watch it and there's a family what do we used to do we did a lot of reading a lot a lot of reading all right just to give you an idea how fast I can read there's a book called roots heard of that book roots Alex Haley someone's shaking his head you know old school brother there I'm little roots is a big thick book you know Harry Potter sighs right okay it's a bit heavier than Harry Potter you know I read like three-quarters of roots in half a night okay yeah okay I admit that I had just finished Carrie by Stephens King and I was sold terrified I couldn't sleep right and I had to read through roots just to take it out of my head but I could still read that fast right now the Quran in terms of the actual words it is about that you know it depends how you count the words actually but it's about 100,000 words long now that is not a lot that's not a lot 100,000 words is not a lot it is about the size of a you know me him too small size novel these days in terms of actual words right two weeks after picking a Quran up I was still reading it and I still hadn't finished it it was a book unlike I had ever read before I mean first of all it doesn't have any structure that we used to write it begins you know with sort of a Fatiha and then it goes you know to talk about in surah Baqarah it talks about the hypocrites and who are these people who they say they believe and then they don't believe and then it goes to talk about Moses and you know the cow and you know how the people said you know the Moses said slaughter a cow and this in which cow and then it's like then it goes on to something else and then the table you got did you know you got the next sewer which is like full of you know there's no consistency it's like that's the first thing it doesn't follow like what we used to you know we like in the beginning this happened and then in the end that happening right but there's no beginning and ends right there's no beginning an end to the Quran right because actually you know there's a reason there's no beginning and end and so I'm reading through it and I keep having to go and you know because I really wanted to understand it wasn't just about about reading it I really wanted to understand what the Quran was saying what was this all about and so I had to read and reread and go back and I get so far and go back and check something else that was from before and so I was taking me a long long time to get through the Quran but what was happening at the same time is my brain was being put into it was working was like those old rusty cogs and it was making me think in a way that I'd never think thought before and I remember until this day I remember very clearly that I was taking the train to work and I worked in the city at the time as a Life Assurance salesman so I was traveling from my home at the time and I was traveling to work and I was literally I was I remember very distinctly this epiphany you know this moment where something hits you and I was sitting in the train I looked out the window we're just crossing the Thames the River Thames I look back and I said to myself if I have ever read a book that's from God this is the one and I remember that day that was the time when I thought yes this is the one this is if I've ever got my hands on a book that is from God it's this remember that night I went back home and I was thinking okay you know I need to start praying the Quran talks about prayer but actually the Quran doesn't really tell you how to pray it just says to pray it gives you a few details and you know I used to remember okay had an e-brake in Prague I remember used to stand and bow and prostrate I didn't remember how much you used to do but you think about five ten minutes you know so I went there and I just do these things local and describes about watching your hands and you're washing your arms and your face so I used to wash before I prayed each time every time you know and this went on like this I would pray in the morning I pray in the evening you know I wasn't even sure how many times I was supposed to pray because again it's not actually detailed clearly in the Quran so I was doing these things and this went on for a couple of weeks and then it happened that I had to go to a part of London I was not used to and you know it's one of those things I came out of the to the underground station and I was supposed to turn left I didn't turn there I just happened to turn right and I walked along and there was a bookshop and in the bookshop were all these books in Arabic and English and they were about Islam they were about you know so I thought all that that looks I have to come and have a look at that so I went off to do what I had to do went back the other way I went back the other way and I said I came back and I went in the you know I went in the bookshop I want to tell you something I looked pretty much the same then as I did now right so I was a bit thinner okay I was quite quite a lot thinner actually okay but I had long hair and I had a bit as I was a bit of a hippie remember okay so I said into this you know this one you know one lover from this and that okay so there I was but the difference was I was a hippie wearing a pinstripe suit so I had my suit and you know my time my briefcase there I wasn't so I went inside this bookshop was looking all these books and all these books about Islam and Mohammed and you know my eyes are going over Wow right this is looks fantastic so I'm standing there and someone comes up to me and says excuse me are you a Muslim so I said what do you mean Muslim said I don't know about that I tell you what I tell you what I believe there is only one God which is Allah and I believe Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah he said you're a Muslim I said oh thank you very much and he said and he said is that what you know that's intested you're overstating or so right so he says why don't you come and pray so you know it shows me how to make wudu and you know what so you know I'm making will do and then I go and stand and pray I think was actually Friday it must have actually Friday because the mosque was full right once is only full on Friday right okay so the MAS was full and there was prayin whatever I was doing you know I was like yep oh okay skip this right you know I you know I got the basic idea but it was not like what you know I didn't know that the order of stuff right so but I do remember you know I did anyway after the prayer I think I took sure harder with the mm I I don't really remember it's all a bit of a blur to tell you the truth and I went downstairs afterwards and I was fantastic every Muslim brother wanted to teach me the entirety of Islam in five minutes right and they would give me the same brother they literally gave me bits up they were writing the prayer out for me right and saying here here's this listed here's this and they give me I had all these bits of paper with me about how to pray and this and that but I mean I do remember that everyone was just absolutely fantastic they were so nice I have to say it was more or less an Arab mosque and the Arabs mashallah they tend to be very welcoming like that okay and really they treated me really fantastic you know I remember coming out of that feeling like I got this shower from the inside I was feeling really good really fantastic and I said man this is I'm feeling high man forget this marijuana stuff this is y'all this is whoo you know this is good right anyway two weeks I'm going back and forth I'm sort of right I'm running to the mosque I'm really trying to get to that mosque as much as possible is the only mosque I knew about was actually quite far to get to but you know I went there and I was making friends and listen anyway the time came that to see my girlfriend that's I haven't mentioned my girlfriend yet okay but she gets to mentioned now right okay you know um what can we say she was studying in a university that was quite far away from from London and I used to go and visit her quite regularly and you know I was working in the city in London so he said was about times going to go and visit so what I did one on the train went up to Bristol down to Bristol actually went to you know some met her at the train station went to the house and you know when went into the bathroom right okay made will do she didn't see that and I just sort of thought okay so I pray right so my girlfriend sitting on the bed right I finished my prayers I turn around she says what are you doing I said oh yeah I became Muslim yeah what exaggerate I'm exaggerating a bit there okay but she did scream she did scream she didn't scream yeah she screamed enough and and she was upset enough for something to happen which was in many ways a very important thing to happen in my life a very sad thing but a very important thing I'm sure any one of you which I hope you know the Muslims I do not wish this upon anyone I do not wish upon my sons or my daughters or any Muslim to get into this whole girlfriend-boyfriend rubbish because it is rubbish right it is heart rendering its soul destroying right there is nothing nice about it except perhaps the sex right okay but all the other stuff that comes along with it right the jealousy that I'm just being honest sorry if it embarrassed anyone you know the jealousy the stuff that comes with they're all I mean it's just terrible it really is terrible okay and I don't wish that upon any human being in fact you know what I wish upon human beings is that they do what is right the right thing to do and that's to get married right if someone cares about you you should get married and you should live together and you should share a life together and that's what you should do right and that's something that God has given blessings to right results for this girlfriend-boyfriend stuff you know anyway so what happened was I stopped practicing as well because I was afraid that if I kept practicing Islam I would lose her and at the time really in reality she was probably in terms of my personal relationships the most important human being to me in my life and we had a truly amazing relationship you know the other thing which I haven't discussed of course like I suppose any thinking teenager will think a lot about love and what is love and what does love mean and that was another thing I was totally obsessed with and I thought I found love with her you know I want to go into it but it was very intense and we were very very close and so when she freaked out it was like okay I'm gonna have to put this on the side and so now and whatever and anyway I just gave up practicing Islam I didn't say I wasn't Muslim anymore in fact I remember that once I was at a party and I was so drunk and I was sitting there talking to people about Islam there's this group of five or six people I was seeing those are five or six people and I was telling them you know Islam is really good you have to read the Koran and this and they were going yet tell us more right I was saying I can't just do drunk as you read the Koran is good you know all right that's that's that's what my life was right my life was really like that so I still believed in it and I would even talk to people about it but I didn't practice I didn't do anything but in reality that was the worst state I had ever been in because the worst condition you could ever be in is when you know the truth and you don't live according to the truth that's the worst thing right that's worse than not knowing the truth when you know it and you don't live it that is the worst and that is when I started to take more and more actually this is the time when I really could to almost became a junkie because the reality was that I you know I really literally new every morning I wake up I say I have to pray I have to pray but then I was running away from that right and what also happened was things began almost from that time to deteriorate between me and my girlfriend things got worse and worse and worse okay so I'm taking more and more stuff and I'm trying to live in this cloud because that's what I'm creating for myself a bubble I don't want to face reality my relationship with my girlfriend's getting bad anyway this goes on for two years two years right now two years everything comes to a head right my girlfriend is in Spain because she's studying Spanish and she has to go to a spanish-speaking country and I know there's something going on between her and some other guy I know it but I'm not ready to face it I don't want to face up to that you know I'm just hiding away from it and I know something's going on anyway in my life is a mess my parents retired in Portugal they left Egypt they went to Portugal they retired they're not put you that they went to retire there so I thought forget this okay I'm going to Portugal I'm going to stay with my parents I'm going to get away for this you know my all this confusion in my life and there I am and my girlfriend is supposed to join me and two weeks pass and heard nothing not a phone call nothing right I don't wish this upon anybody it was it was terrible right and what am i doing I'm working in the garden right doing some stuff for my mum two weeks have passed I don't hear and again it's one of those moments those epiphany in all those moments when something happens and I'm working in the garden and I'm just thinking you know what you know why your life is a mess you know your life is a mess because you know that Islam is the truth you know you should be praying five times a day and you're not doing it that's the only reason there's nothing else that's why your life is a mess so hi I made this prayer I said Oh God oh Allah please let my Gulf I didn't see my girlfriend mention her name of course but I'll not mention her name but I said let my girlfriend fall just let her phone please if she falls today I swear to you I swear I will pray five times a day I don't promise I can stop smoking spliff or having sex or there but I swear I will pray five times a day I swear promise please right so anyway I'm making I made this prayer right so anyway I go have lunch come back in the garden and working away and my dad comes he says aunt was wasted call me aunt right it's you know my girlfriend was my girlfriend on the phone right so Wow I dropped the Spade I went upstairs you know the funny thing was I don't even remember what she said I'm just going yeah yeah that was I think I have to pray now that's all I was thinking as to what I was thinking so I put down the phone I put down the phone I went I took a bath I took a listen and brothers and sisters that's when I started praying five times a day and I handle illa from that day until today except you know if I overslept or something I've only missed I will confess I'm once I miss my prayer on purpose I could have prayed but I didn't okay what happened I was very early on but hamdullah part may Allah forgive me for that but apart from that I have never on purpose missed one of my five prayers and that was twenty to twenty something two years ago now al hamdulillah so no brothers and sisters I know the brothers saying it's Maghrib and this and Apple we're nearly finished okay so we have to finish this inshallah there's a few things I want to say before we go and pray inshallah brothers and sisters one of the things I want to say right is that really the difference between being a Muslim and not being a Muslim is really praying five times a day it really and that's why I count my becoming Muslim not from the day I when I was 18 or 19 when I know it's the day when I started praying five times a day that is the day that I became us and the other thing I want to say is listen Allah has given us in Islam a program I mean literally all you have to do is follow the program and your life will change when I started praying five times a day it changed my life prayer when you do it with understanding and when you do it with so sure with or and reverence before Allah it will change your life it that's it should change your life and it did it changed my life right I gave up things I gave up you know I had the hash there it was I threw it in the garden I throw in the garden right because you know what I used to do I didn't know that was Haram I didn't know it's forbidden but I did come across this verse that said they don't approach prayer when you're intoxicated so you know what I used to do I used to pray the night prayer YCJA right early as early as I could roll ups and spliff gets stolen this and that right over there ads go to sleep wake up in the morning so I wasn't you know still wasted in the morning right of course what happens is you smoke later and later and later and then you know you and then I started realizing wait a minute there's just no way I can do both there's no way I know I've made my promise to a lot that is I'm not going to break it so that's when I just Chuck I just gave it up because I knew the two things I didn't need I didn't even notice how long I just knew that you can't really be following Islam and taking this stuff at the same time and you know what my girlfriend she eventually she came because she she came you know I said listen I sat down with had her long talk with her said listen I've taken this religion seriously so you're gonna sleep in that room over there I'm gonna sleep in this room over here even my mum came up to me said what are you doing my mum's a Catholic and this is that you know I said no that's it I said you know the only way is you marry me that's it you know we get mad I'm not going to marry you unless you become Muslim and you're serious about it you're not just doing it to marry me right so anyway brothers this is a lot more I could say alhamdulillah about where my journey went from there okay and there's more things I could add about you know the question what if my parents say about all of this okay that's another story okay by a child a brother and sisters that's a little bit about my journey to Islam and I just want to finally say brothers and sisters I truly have to say that I don't know what I did to deserve to be Muslim I don't know Islam is such a blessing how do I feel you know how could you feel if you are dead and then you are after that alive how would you feel if you're walking in entire darkness and then suddenly the lights are switched on and you could see everything around you this is the difference between being a Muslim and being outside of Islam being guided by the guidance of God and being outside of that guidance and all praise is due to Allah alhamdulillah who guided me to this beautiful religion of Islam which is Alcala her Salaam aleykum you you that's a very good question brother and mail or would you so much for asking that question a question is to repeat it what what does it actually take to be Muslim and you know it's true that there are people who want to become Muslim but they get scared because they think that becoming Muslim is going to involve like some I don't know some weird ritual right you know like I don't know getting you know submerged in water and I don't know this and I don't know what they think you know they might get quite scared thinking about it right okay but it's actually very very simple okay becoming a Muslim is very simple you know being a Muslim fundamentally is that you accept something you accept that there is one God who has created the heavens on the earth right and then you should only worship the One God and if you accept that Muhammad is the Messenger of God simply that is it right if that's what you accept and that's what you believe to be true right then simply all you do is you testify to that in front of some other Muslims and you do that simply by repeating in front of some other Muslims some witnesses a shadow and la ilaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan rasulullah so the most difficult bit is trying to say the arabic right but apart from that you're just saying you testify there is nothing worthy of worship except the one God and Mohammed is a Messenger of God and after you say that you have entered into the fold of Islam of course once you have taken the Shahada you've taken the testimony of faith right then it is recommended that you wash yourself you put on some clean clothes and certainly you need to start learning okay to pray five times a day of course you can't just pray automatically like that and learn everything takes time but you start to try praying five times a day and that's really it that's all that it takes and as you find out and as you learn as you go along you do your best to practice what you can you know as much as you can as much as Allah Allah Allah permits you to do so it's really that simple you don't think I have to know all of these things and do all of these things you don't you just need to follow the steps so alhamdulillah design sir the question brother did I do something else I think that is basically really what it is very very simple and of course if anyone does feel like becoming Muslim I have done that tonight I will be fantastic as well shoulder don't feel shy you know you never know how long your life is going to be you know so don't don't delay just believing problems before they have to start practicing okay it's a very good question in reality in Islam when we say Iman when we which we translate Iman as faith right but the problem with translating is that often you lose the meaning of something but actually Iman is defined as the belief in the heart the profession of the tongue and the action of the limbs it increases with obedience to God and it decreases with disobedience to God so this is the definition of Iman right so faith is something that if you have faith truly and you truly believe in God then that belief must manifest itself or it must be present in some way in your actions yeah so therefore let's go back to something you've already heard me mentioned today when the Prophet Muhammad said he swore by Allah he is not a believer the one who's neighbor is not safe from his mischeif so the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasalam he is indicating that a person who believes cannot have this characteristic in another narration the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said the believer could steal the believer could drink alcohol the believer could be a coward the believer could be a miser but the believer could never be a liar yeah meaning there are some characteristics that it's not possible that someone who has faith they could have these characteristics in another narration the Prophet said whoever the signs of the hypocrite are for when he speaks he lies when he makes a promise he breaks it when he is trusted with something he betrays it and when he argues he is rude so whoever has one of these has a characteristic of hypocrisy whoever has all of them is a complete hypocrite now a hypocrite is someone who what they say they believe but in their heart they don't believe yeah so a person could say I believe and Allah but in reality what we mean in Islam is that the belief in God the true belief in God must produce some actions if it doesn't then that belief is not true it's a hypocrisy you are claiming something that is not true and I will give you an example yeah if one of the brothers how do you say fire in Norwegian whew just guessing is it yeah how do you say fire fire um grunts yeah branch broke grunt yeah good yeah if someone comes in running Brunt month yeah and you just sit there ah right you think either the guy is a joke yeah it means you don't believe him right if you believe the man was saying fire fire fire what you going to do you're going to run yeah this is the reality belief must translate itself into action right now if there's something that prevents you right you're tight you'll see or you know or whatever that's different right but if you really believe you must have some action and this is why according to many scholars the person who does not pray five times a day when they leave prayer it is like disbelieving it's actually like this it's like they've said I've left this land and this is based upon what the Prophet said but prophet muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam said the difference between shook and coffer and iman is a Salah is the prayer so whoever abandons it then that person is a disbeliever yeah and it means either they truly are a disbeliever or what they have done is so bad they might as well be a disbeliever right so this is the reality is that and you see there so there are so many people saying I'm mostly my Muslim my Muslim right but when they say I'm Muslim what do they mean many of these people they mean that's my culture right they say I'm Muslim like they might say I'm Pakistani or Somali Oh Bengali or they like eat a certain type of food or whatever that's all it means to them so how do I remember in but this is Ju gonna you know you probably won't laugh now that I said you're gonna love right but you'll laugh at this right okay I remember watching before you won't love my name as you laughing now okay I remember watching this documentary you remember Bosnia what happened in Bosnia yeah the Bosnians by and large very few of them were practicing Islam right I remember an interview and there was an interview with some members of the Bosnian army and one of them was a Muslim she's saying I am a Muslim but I'm a theist I don't believe in God now you did laughs yeah but what she meant by Muslim is that's my ethnicity I belong and I come from those group of people who call themselves Muslims just like it's I don't know some ethnicity right and of course there are Muslims who are dealing in drugs and who are doing many bad things okay and they call themself Muslims some of them may even have beards or even wear hijabs sometimes right you know sometimes people do that because it's their culture it's the culture to grow the beard it's the you often hear about Saudi women the moment they get on the airplane to England off comes the Jam then the carb and everything of it comes and if you ask them to just say well this is our Saudi dress they don't they probably don't even know about what islam teaches about hijab they just it's they're just their culture you see so yes there are many many Muslims they use this name Muslim they may even say I am proud to be Muslim and this than that but really for them it's not to do with faith it's not to do with belief it's really a cultural thing yeah so I hope that answers that question and my question to you is what do you think is the most important thing in our relation if we don't include the operator in here I'll wrap it it's a point well taken right is that you know even myself here I'm saying the prayer and I use the prayer as an example right but if you in the context I hope of everything I've said today you will have also picked up that I emphasized when I was talking about my own story the importance of prayer with understanding and with kosher right so I emphasize that because a prayer that is without understanding and the prayer that is without sincerity and humility to Allah is not going to change anything about your life actually it will probably make your life more difficult right because you just be thinking oh I have to pray and this and that and it does nothing what you don't get any feedback from that right so yes the inner dimension is really really important and it is something that we have to develop this is the beautiful thing in my opinion about Islam many religions you will find either emphasize almost totally on the inward dimension you know love and compassion and this and there and how you actually worship God physically with it does not matter you can clap you can sing you can sit in your home you can do whatever right it doesn't matter right so there are some religions that just concentrate on these inner dimensions and other religions okay it's just an externalities as long as you follow the law you do the things you follow the rituals you follow the things that's what's important bit by bit that's and what it means it's irrelevant yeah but Islam and these are both important actually the ritual and the inner dimension are essential for the complete religious experience it's maybe only Islam maybe there are other religions that really brings these two together right but it is a tendency for us to concentrate only on the external aspects and leave the internal development is very very important yeah but I would not say I think it's a mistake to say either/or that's a mistake actually it has to be both internal and external at the same time that is the right way Allah knows best and my dog at least and you know before Islam I had some fun with them but when I came to Islam they are too much against me they don't want to have fun with me they don't want me to leave them and in Islam for being created own yeah what should I do how should I do okay how long has this been one year okay let me tell you something about my story yeah okay okay that the question was the sister says I have been Muslim she's been asleep now for a year we found and her parents don't talk to her and she has been even she can't live with her parents that I wanted to live in the house okay so what shall we do what shall I do I'm not allowed to live alone no you can sister first of all you are allowed to live alone it's no problem you can do that handle that's not how long okay but let me tell you about what happened to me right when I became Muslim right you know when you go back to my story remember my girlfriend she came over and my mum said why are you staying here and yes and that right okay so from there if we pick it up right so I now beginning to any you know I'm talking to it you know I I what you know I feel so good about subhanAllah praying and following Islam you know what I think all I need to do is explain this to my parents and they will accept it because who could not want to follow this beautiful way of life right but anyway my parents didn't take it very well you know when I start explaining to them and I'm not eating you know I only halal food now maybe I'm gonna take over the house maybe I don't know okay so I only I say I can only halal food you know and this and that and you know so many things I can't drink alcohol and you know I don't go to the parties and you used to be such a good dancer you know they say to me you know such a shame so all of these things so you know you know my mom she comes to me she says to me you know and if you want to be religious why don't you go and live in a monastery once you give you live in a monastery I said this is not Islam see in Islam we live in the world we work we live in the world we do jobs we and we still try to worship God we don't believe that in our religion you run away and live in a mountain or this and that so it's not it's lab right so anyway I've come here to tell you that since you hate us so much and since you hate everything about us so much we have instructed the solicitor's to take you out of the will yeah meaning you will not inherit anything from us anymore okay so it's like thanks mom I didn't say that that's what I'm thinking okay so that was what they said to me I actually handle I didn't care I said so Allah he's gonna look after me that's more important even my dad reached the stage he said the same thing you better leave you better go back to London because really we've had enough of you and you need to go back to London understand that okay so things were not very good between my parents for a while and then something changed right it wasn't getting married actually okay because actually after I got married then something happened between me and my mum which was even worse she said something to insult the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasalam and I just went crazy okay to tell you the truth I just went crazy I smashed some things and this I couldn't even talk to I was so angry right this is just the day before I was leaving I was staying with them and for after that my mum didn't talk to me for about a year but you know what changed all of this yeah when the first baby came yeah okay Abdullah is not here okay be so embarrassed okay but because he's 18 now drives a car and stuff like that you know but when the first baby came believe me it changed everything now because it puts it all into perspective this is the grandchild you know I would really have to say that if you get married sister and you have kids and still your parents are not talking to you then probably your parents are not the sort of people that really are worth having contact with right because they must have hearts made of stone right I mean must be literally or maybe they're Vikings or something like tough people look I'm just joking about the Vikings no but I mean seriously sister they must you know I I really think that you know I and I say and I've said this to so many people in fact I know many other sisters brothers in Islam who exactly the same story one of my you know one of my good friends the same thing his wife was a convert to Islam her mother totally stopped talking to her had nothing to do with her then the first baby came and that's everything changed and so it's a story that you find quite often you know it repeats itself my relationship with my parents now is better than it has ever been in my life okay you see because what I have tried to do is both explain to my parents and show them through example the way that islam teaches me to behave towards my parents right in fact I gave my book I've tried to give my mother and that's so much dower but the best book I ever gave her is called mother and you know what this book has verses of Quran and hadith and some poetry about how you treat your mother in Islam you know and you know subhanAllah it mentions how the Prophet SAW when someone came to the Prophet he said who has the most right to my kindness your mother and then after that your mother then after that your mother and then after that then your father in fact the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said he said that you can never pay your mother back there is nothing you can do to pay your mother back your father if you found your father a slave and you bought his freedom you pay him back your mother you can never pay him back and it mentions the story as you probably know of Omar when he was the Calif and a man came and he had carried his mother on his back through the whole of the hatch and he said to Omar Omar did I pay my mother back now he said you did not pay her back for one tear she said when she gave birth to you right this is a religion you can you tell me Aslam does not respect women so how long love right Allah says reverence Allah and the wounds that boy in fact one of the names of allah ar-rahman is linked to the Arabic for womb rahem and so Allah said and it's the same because it means mercy and Allah linked his mercy to the womb meaning whoever cuts off from the relationship excuse me whoever cuts off from the relationship the family ties Allah Allah will cut from them okay so sister the thing is what you have to do is this is the same for anybody by the way right in Islam we do not cut the ties of relationships we do not cut the ties okay we don't even I take back what I said even if you have a baby and it's your first parents first grandchild or not whatever they don't talk to you you still don't give up you never give up you sell it in presence you write to them you phoned them you do whatever you can to make relations good work with them without I have to say compromising your religion don't do something that is Haram that's a big mistake right as long as it's halal right you can compromise you compromise whatever it is as long as it's hell if you can make that compromise make it right if it means leaving a sunnah or something mustahab if it's going to please your parents leave it it's something Haram no you don't do that right so you never ever give up trying to you know make a good relationship between your parents not only your parents all of your relatives whether you are Muslim or not okay so breaking the family ties is very serious because Islam considers the family to be so so so important so sister you just have to be patient inshallah yeah be patient inshallah everyone here is going to make du'a inshallah right for the sister that Allah spawn Attila softens the heart of her parents to her to Islam and by the way always ask everyone as well to make dua Allah natela guides my parents to Islam so please make to our brothers and sisters that Allah guides my parents with them I mean you're a banana me okay if you are a Muslim girl you pray five times a day fast and so on are you then a bad Muslim if you don't wear the headscarf a how important is the headscarf okay that's a big question okay you know sometimes the question like this is very difficult to answer you know because everyone has different circumstances everyone has different you know conditions it's not always easy to answer a question like that because I don't know this person's particular circumstances right but you know what there's a way I'd like you to think about this brothers and sisters you know don't just think about how bad is the sin yeah how bad is it that I don't wear hijab No think about how great is the one who you are disobeying that's what you need to think about don't think about how bad is the thing sin think about how great is the one you are disobey you know Allah is telling you to do something because it is good for you you don't always know why that thing is good for you but if allah subhanallah ordered you with that then that's something because it's good and in a sense whenever we disobey Allah it's almost as if we are saying you know I don't really believe what you're saying Allah I don't really agree with that that in a sense does I mean I know it's because of our desires and our weakness and you know whatever but in reality think about the reasons why you don't wear hijab or you don't do whatever it is you're supposed to do in Islam even pray how many people I wonder okay they don't even pray in the office or they don't pray work and they wait and they go back home and they think they can join all that prayers together at the end of the day right why don't they pray in the office really most of the time brothers and sisters the reason you don't pray is because you haven't got the guts to do it that's what it is it's not because oh they won't let me pray okay they won't stop you going to the toilet or they won't stop you doing this and that the reality is have you got the guts to bring a pet prayer mat right lie it out next to your desk and just pray what are they going to do really okay so a lot of these issues brothers and sisters really come down to our Eman that we are sometimes more concerned with what people think then what allah subhanaw taala wants us to do so i think that you know i don't really want to go into how bad it is and this and that whatever allah told us to do do as much as you can write as much as you can you know you know if you stand in front of Allah in your heart whether you have an excuse or not I don't want on the other hand brothers and other sisters you shouldn't be judgmental right you shouldn't be judgmental and think oh this sister she is no good you know because she doesn't wear hijab you don't know that okay you don't know that you don't know what her circumstances are maybe she just needs the support and love and whatever you don't know what it is okay so I'm not making you know something but I would really encourage everyone to obey Allah as much as you possibly can you know and whatever Allah has told you leave it well then leave it hamed Allah Hey heeey II

Channel: Islam Net

Views: 607,242

Keywords: guds, eksistens, og, meningen, med, livet, norsk, kultur, erfaring, hvordan, jeg, kom, til, islam, hat, hvorfor, hater, media, nordmenn, muslimer, så, mye, allah, hio, høgskolen, oslo, ekstremist, ekstrem, sunni, sjia, shia, koran, quran, speech, fahad, estes, zakir, naik, tariq, jameel, deobandi, barelwi, converts, reverts, convert, revert, embracing, shahadah, accepting, becoming, muslim, discussion, talk, politics, educational, news, deedat, hijab, hijaab, burqa, nikab, niqab, importance, of, hell, punish, hellfire, paradise, good, people

Id: RePRTTrDVMk

Length: 93min 4sec (5584 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2011