THE INTERVIEW: Malik Jones & Dr. Bilal Philips

hello and welcome to the interview my guest tonight is dr abu amina bilal phillips a jamaican canadian islamic scholar who converted to islam in the early 70s but before that he got into communism but consequently to islam in the early 70s and now he is not only a lecturer at the islamic online university but he is the founder of the islamic online university dr phillips welcome to the interview my pleasure to be here uh jamaican canadian your environment must have been predominantly christian in the beginning and what what what inspired you to move away from christianity and let's say communism first well of course as you said i was born in jamaica to a christian family both my parents were christians and i grew up in toronto toronto canada as a christian nominal christian to be honest by name um so it wasn't until i went to university um i went to university in simon fraser majoring in biochemistry and i got involved in the political movements of the time in the the late 60s early 70s there was a upheaval you know in universities across canada across the u.s you know questioning vietnam and you know the west's involvement in vietnam canada's complicity in the uh actions of the us and the vietnam and um i also became aware at that time of the the the the world situation in terms of you know oppression and um exploitation and all these other kinds of things i read more about the history of black people in the west what happened slavery and things connected to it and became aware of what was happening in the south so i became you could say politicized you know i became aware of of a wrong situation in the world which needed to be corrected so it wasn't enough for me to be just going and studying biochemistry and i needed to do something or be involved in some kind of movement which is about changing the world to a better place so that's what you know set me up for communism because the the the movement at that period of time you know the communists were exploiting the movement and using it to to gain followers so i was convinced by some of the professors who were teaching me at the university at the time that communism had the answer you know it brought about freedom justice equality brotherhood you know all the beautiful did you find that it did to a certain degree initially it seemed to but then after i started to look at it on a world scale and what was happening um in in russia in china you know i i could see things which were not pleasing i mean it seemed to be very harsh very rough stalin you know massacred millions to to just eradicate the the bourgeoisie the former capitalists you know mao zeitung in the cultural revolution millions more lose their lives because they're unable to to accept the the new ideology you know it seemed and then not only that these countries as communist countries couldn't compete with the west you know after all this talk about capitalism and communism and and economics of capitalism and communism the the communists couldn't compete economically with the west there was something missing which led to their eventual downfall and they had to start to introduce capitalist economics back into their countries in order to move ahead you know so the obviously it wasn't the answer there was something missing and that's what made me open to hearing the message of islam at that point when i came to that realization that communism wasn't the answer and i knew capitalism definitely wasn't it had good points but it had a lot of bad points you know and then christianity really didn't deal with uh you know anything beyond the church it was leave on to god what is god's and unto caesar what is caesar's so it left that whole world of politics and economics yeah you know so i needed something which encompassed everything and alhamdulillah and how did you how did you discover it how did you discover islam well the actual instant which opened it up was one sister who was in the communist organization which i was in in toronto she converted to islam some brothers had come up from the u.s who were former members of the you know black panthers and and the the political movement in the u.s and had converted to islam themselves and they were trying to reach out to members of this organization i belong to and um she accepted the message and that caused me to say well what is this you know let me have a look at this you know why i wanted to know why why why convert to to a religion when we were taught that religion was the opiate or the opium of the masses you know it was used to to to drug people into submission so that the capitalists could exploit them you know that's how it was sort of taught in communist theory and and um thought so she explained well no this is not a religion like the religions we know it's not like christianity you know islam is a whole different story altogether so i said okay let me read you know and i got some books i started reading studying you know coming to understand and you know as i the more i read the more i became convinced that yes islam was really what i was looking for then you sought knowledge you traveled to saudi arabia you went to the middle east then you started to extend your knowledge where did you study well the reason why i went there in the first place was because i wanted to learn islam from the sources i accepted islam in toronto but you know those around me who were teaching me islam were confused one some were saying something you know hanafi another one said maliki another one says chaffee and you know people had different ideas and it wasn't really clear so i said i needed to go to the sources i need to learn arabic and i need to take it from where it came you know back to medina so i went to medina and studied in the university there i did my ba in arabic and islamic studies from the islamic university of medina then i went on and did a masters in islamic studies from king saud university college of education specializing in in islamic theology and then added to that a phd from university of wales in the uk also in islamic theology so that was a quest for knowing islam as you know as detailed away as i could so i did it wasn't i i was not it was not sufficient for me to just say okay i became a muslim and i'm now a muslim oh yeah i'll pray five times a day i'll do this no i needed to know you know everything i could about it to understand it to be able to explain it to others because of course my parents my family they want to know well why you know if i couldn't give them some logical reasonable explanation i felt myself you know deficient because they they deserved a logical and reasonable explanation from a spiritual point of view how close have you been in your religion in your communication in your communion with god how close do you think you've got well i feel the presence of god in my life you know as a reality now you know before um growing up as a christian it was distant it was it was far away you know it was represented by a man you know and a man and god you know that's like blocking you from the real god because if if jesus is the god then um you know it means he as a man is everywhere and you know he's he sees everything and and it just didn't make sense in us you know in that from that perspective that man is man we have a limitation we are born we die we don't have the ultimate uh characteristics and qualities which raise us above the creation we are part of creation you know we're animals just another level we're a bit higher that's all really that i mean although we tend to look at ourselves as you know being supreme beings you know in that sense in this world but the reality is that we're only a step up above the animals so whether you worship a man or you worship a cow or anything else you're still worshiping god's creation so you know how to get close to god when you don't know who god is so you discovered god in your submission in your communion during prayer time it was really for me i mean i had to discover god to go beyond the intellectual acceptance of islam because i could accept islam intellectually that it did have the good points of all of the various systems it was free from the bad points of those systems but still that was just that was an intellectual exercise for me to accept god in my heart to accept god in my soul in that sense it required another step you know a step where i could feel god in my life you know and i had my own you know personal uh experience which which led me to conclude you know to to remove any doubt about the existence of god because of course as a communist for how many years four or five years i was denying god's existence altogether there was no god so for you to go from that to belief in god means that you have to make a leap of faith as they say or you have to make a step which now carried you into the spiritual realm you have got knowledge and from there you put a pen to paper you've written some some books on islam could we take a look at some of the things you've written well the books i wrote initially were books to clarify confusion which existed in amongst new muslims in the west my initial writings were about shiaism to clarify that this is not real islam because it was being promoted in the 80s through khamenei it was promoted as islam but in fact it wasn't so i needed to clarify that because i had access to information which people in the west didn't have so my initial writings were in that area i also wrote about polygamy one of my early books was polygamy in islam because this was something which was new to people in the west you know and the the society considered it to be something forbidden this is called bigamy you know a crime here is islam is saying it's a way of life you know it's legitimate so to understand it to explain it to explain the rules governing it no it's not a free-for-all you know there are rules governing it so i wrote on that then i wrote on tawheed on the unique oneness of god you know the basic islamic theological con concept of god so that was like a you could say my magnus opposed you know of of my writings right the book called the fundamentals of tawhid then i wrote on islamic studies in general because i became when i finished my ph my ba and i started on my masters i became a teacher in high school and junior high i was asked to teach islamic studies but there were no books available in english on islamic studies so i had to create textbooks for the children so that process produced a series of textbook called islamic studies four books for junior high and high school which i produced these teachings she did in canada no they were being used in english medium schools in saudi arabia and around the world they were using canada us uk australia they are constant they're being used all over the world today um then i started because i when i moved to from the saudi arabia to the uae i became a professor in the american university in dubai and i taught there for 10 years so islamic studies in arabic so i now had to create books which explained arabic from an english perspective so i wrote two books on that then i also had to explain you know the various disciplines of islamic studies so i started to create textbooks for fick for hadith for tafsir for you know the other basic disciplines of islamic studies and then i set up a department of islamic studies and worked further in terms of creating more and more books dealing with current thought one of my books is called the clash of civilizations and islamic point of view because that book came out of by huntington samuel p huntington's book so it needed an islamic view on all of this so i i did a writing on that and so on and so forth my books actually tended to be more academic you know basically to prepare for uh setting up my a university myself which i set up in india back in 2009 i went to chennai in south india and i set up a university there called preston international college and from there i went online to develop the islamic online university and of course these textbooks form the backbone of uh the courses most of the course is there we use other texts also but it's the it's the core backbone for the the textbooks for the university uh dr billah let me take you now to the core of our discussion on the interview the islamic online university how did it came about well um in 2007 actually a number of people were writing me on the internet emailing me and asking me about some different websites which they wanted to go and study at so when i looked at the websites they asked my opinion i went and looked at the websites i found that they were deviant that's when i i always go to islamicity.com islamiccity.com that's a general website that's okay that's not really you know a study website per se meaning that it's it's a it's a college of some sort online but there were there are some already up there and people had gone and there were you know one called sunni path and a few others like this which were in fact really they had deviant ideas with them so i felt that there needed to be an alternative for people so that was like around 2007 i decided to go ahead and start a university course uh really a diploma which was to be offered freely you know in order to compete with these others who had already been functioning for two three four years ahead of me you know in order to draw and attract people i offered it and of course in case i wanted it to be accessible to everybody i offered it freely and people responded in droves they started coming signing up you know within the first year we had some 2000 plus students second year 4 000 plus third year we're you know going to 8 000. now there are over 100 000 students studying the diploma course across the world from every single country on the face of the earth we now have students how does this online university work well the diploma course um and and we started i should mention in 2010 i started a ba you know using those textbooks that i've been preparing i had been teaching also on the ground out a ba in islamic studies from english perspective i started a department i mentioned earlier so all of that was now recorded and then offered online so how it operates is that a person registers for the diploma you don't need any kind of qualifications you know even if you didn't do your high school whatever you can join you just register classes are open for you you start okay for the ba you have to have a a high school certificate because ba now means an academic degree you have to maintain university standard international university standards so we require students to have you know an accredited high school degree for them to enter once they have entered in then they are given a series of courses which are they have they may choose from or they have to do for the ba the each course has basically 30 hours of recorded lectures right by a phd or masters in that field along with that they have 15 live lectures by a ba tutorial assistant who would then explain questions that students may have regarding the recorded lectures they do tests after every lecture they do a midterm halfway through the semester and a final these are multiple choice tests so it can all be done online we don't have to have a physical location but for the final exam of the semester this has to be done from an examination center so we have for example here in gambia you know imam malik institute is one of our examination centers we have microtech is another examination center the university of the gambia has also agreed to be an examination center for us so the students will go there still doing their exam online but with an invigilator to confirm their identity not to prevent them from cheating because the way it is set up it's not possible to cheat because everybody gets a different exam you know the the programming system that's available today can give every student everyone has his own example you know you have 50 students in a class everyone has a different exam so nobody can benefit from looking at anybody else's computer etc so you're on your own you know but the point is that you could get somebody else to go write your exam for you so that in vigilation where they check your id to confirm you who are writing the exam is the same person who registered for this course right so you know that is the overall uh way in which it func functions uh now in this final exam with the use of uh plays and personnel like the individuators would there be is any cost to that well for the ba there is a cost as we said for the for the diploma it's free no cost we have volunteers 25 plus volunteers who are working to keep it running but for the ba because we have to now hire full-time lecturers we had to hire full-time tutorial assistants invigilators and things like this now there is a cost but we have put it on a sliding scale unesco's scale of uh gnp of the various countries the the underdeveloped countries uh are only forty dollars the developed countries are a hundred and twenty dollars per semester this is just fourth semester not tuition the tuition remains free so it's only a semester registration fee of 40 for students here in the gambia and they would pay at the uh islamic bank of the gambia ajib or agib you're watching the interview my guess is dr abu amina bilal phillips he is the founder of the islamic online university i'll come back to the online university and your work you're doing but let's look at islam in the international arena first of all i want to draw your attention to what is meant by being a sunni and a shiite what is the difference between these two sets well to put it simply you know people may look at it as a political difference because the issue of whether abu bakr should have been after the death of prophet muhammad or should it have been ali this is a minor point this is not really the issue the big issue is the issue of intermediacy the difference between protestantism and catholicism in the sense that catholicism accepts intermediaries who are called saints who people can pray to besides god whereas protestantism has rejected all of that they say no you only pray to god similarly in islam it is even more precise you only pray to god who is not a man you know this is the basic teachings of sunni islam that we only worship god alone whereas the various deviant groups whether they be shiites or others they now have put intermediaries between themselves and god and they say they argue that you know we as human beings cannot go directly to god because we're dirty with sins god is pure we need somebody who will intermediate for us will be between us and god will carry our prayers to god but god in the quran clearly says call on me and i will answer you he didn't say call on my close friend or you know whatever and and he will get it to me and i'll answer you no he said call on me and i will answer you so this is the fundamental difference for shiites they pray to the imams the twelve imams they pray to them they believe that their intermediaries between themselves and god so they will call on them and ask them to do things for them this is not from islam and this is this is where they have deviated could that be related to the day of resurrection when all prophets will try to intercede between mankind and allah and subsequently the holy prophet muhammad may peace and blessing of allah be upon him will be the only one that will intercede between allah and mankind for mankind to be forgiven his sins well the concept of the intercession on the day of judgment it includes not only prophet muhammad may god's peace and bless be upon him as but as well all of the prophets absolutely all of them will have an element of intercession that god will have them honored by interceding on behalf of on behalf of humankind for those who god had already decided would be going to paradise because know that if god has decided that somebody is going to hell based on the evil of their lives etc and his all-merciful already then no one can actually change that decision on the part of god's but those people who god had decided to forgive because they'd done so much other good or whatever you know then these people are forgiven on that day when it seemed like they would be going to hell the prophet muhammad may god's peace and bless be upon him and the other prophets will intercede on their behalf and it will be a way by which god honors those prophets or honors special individuals you know who he has chosen to show give them that status on that day you know so it is the intercession is still in accordance with the will of god dr phillips i'll ask you a very uh crucial question what is evil evil is fundamentally disobedience to god that is the fundamental uh element of it it is evil to deny god's existence this is a part of disobedience it is evil to steal because god forbade us from stealing it is evil to destroy plants and and and pollute the the atmosphere and the land because this is a gift from god and god forbade us from doing these things so evil really is the rejection or the disobedience to god it has of course different levels just as goodness or righteousness has different levels would there be any any sin greater than the sin of adam by disobeying god from god's own physical presence like say presence because god did speak to adam and forbid adam from not from eating the the tree of life but having heard god himself speak to adam and adam disobey willfully willingly as well does is there any other scene that supersedes that of course they're taking up one's life no i mean even greater than that is the sin of this believing in god that is the greatest sin that is the one unforgivable sin the to disbelieve in god or to worship others besides god in the case of adam's this disobedience really that that shows the mercy of god in that adam having disobeyed god turned back to god in repentance and god forgave him you know satan also disobeyed god so in the end really in terms of sin they both disobeyed god so why is satan cursed and adam forgiven because satan when he was shown that he had disobeyed god he realized that he had in fact committed a sin instead of turning back to god in repentance as he had been taught because god is not going to put a person in that situation or a creature in that situation without giving it a way out so he had the ability to turn back to god in repentance but instead he chose arrogance he questioned why should i bow to adam adam is inferior to me this is the basis of racism this is the basis of of pride you know and this is this is the evil that that quality of pride which leads one to to disobey god this is what prophet muhammad said no one will enter paradise who has a mustard seed's worth of pride in his heart because this is an ultimate evil element you know when one accepts this and it becomes a way of life and it controls one then we have gone completely off the path so so the point here very important point when we said one that adam willingly disobeyed god he was deluded he was tricked by satan satan called the tree the tree of eternal life god didn't call it that it is not the tree of eternal life it was just a tree man wouldn't have died yes if it was no no no no no no no no yeah yeah it wasn't the tree of eternal life yeah as you said if he ate it he wouldn't have died so it was just a trick satan in order to get him to eat from the tree he gave it that name it didn't have a name god just told him don't eat from this tree there are all the other trees you can eat from but not from this one and that is the nature of halal and haram for every haram element there are a thousand halal equivalent to it pork is forbidden but goats and sheep and cows and so many other things are permissible you know alcohol is forbidden but so many other drinks are permissible way more than the drinks which are alcoholic so but what happens is that satan comes and makes the forbidden so attractive you feel you have to have some you know so alcohol is presented in such a nice and attractive way you know that you feel so good and you're this and you're that so you feel i gotta have some of that you know my life is incomplete unless i have some you know similarly with pork and and and similar with other sins like adultery or fornication i mean these are forbidden things but it's glorified in the media and you know it becomes girlfriends and you know this is living the life and all this kind of thing so satan beautifies it and makes it so attractive you know same thing with nakedness you know to walk around naked this is something objectionable this is the way of the animals it's okay for animals but for human beings you know who have this consciousness to be walking around naked is unacceptable you know the nudist colonies in in europe and nudist beaches and all these are very offensive for muslims too but then for muslim women today now to wear clothes as the prophet muhammad said a time would come when women would be clothed but unclothed they would be wearing clothes but they are virtually naked so this is what we find walking in the streets now today and it's coming from the western thought women who wear clothing as if somebody sprayed a paint on their body only you know they're completely naked but they think they're covered maybe they might even wear a scarf on their head you know but this is uh satan has deluded them into thinking i'm covered but no you're not we can see everything you know you're not covered dr phillips let me take you to the arab spring this is a international phenomenon why are the arab states crumbling well i don't think it is crumbling it is an awakening it is a part of the islamic awakening taking place all over the world you know why did the the the police and military state of indonesia fall you know it was the indonesian spring they never call it that but that's what happened there those military rulers that had controlled sukarno so heartwood controlled the country for so for half a century were up overturned and who did they replace them by abdul ahad half-blind muslim cleric was brought as president of the country the first president to replace these military people this because the people want islam so this desire to want islam expressed in all aspects of society is a natural desire of muslims so this our what we call arab spring is the is the final revolt of the people they revolt from oppression fundamentally that they were repressed they were oppressed people so but at the same time there was the islamic element which which was there to help to guide it towards an islamic conclusion because a simple economic revolt will only replace one ruler with another one you know abdul nasir jabal abdul nasir he took over from king farooq king farooq who had been running the country you know as his own personality he was the king benefiting etc people were oppressed so when they replaced him with jamal abdul nasir he also oppressed the people you know because it was only an economic revolt it was not an islamic revolution not a change on the basis of islam so so what we're seeing there is a is a an economic revolt in its origins but an islamic awakening in its development doctor don't you think the word jihad is use being a very loose way as we now find in countries now it's coming to south of the sahara in nigeria in places like in mali algeria and not to mention what takes place um in some countries in the west where muslims will say they're fighting against the the the the the believers the disbelievers now what is your what is your view of the modern day jihadist that will blow up himself and kill people is that the the essence of the jihad well fundamentally we know that jihad is the struggle against evil which begins with oneself and the prophet may god's peace and blessed be upon him had even said that the greatest jihad is the jihad against one's own evil desires so this is the this is the essence of the jihad it's a struggle against evil now as it manifests itself in different levels of the society there are guidelines which islam has placed for it among those guidelines for example you know when you're dealing with jihad against yourself is that you can't forbid yourself to ever marry or forbid yourself to sleep at night or forbid yourself to eat and just fast every day no these are forbidden though this is a kind of a jihad that you may want to struggle against your desires for food etc but you're going to go and starve yourself no prophet said don't do this it's extreme so extremes in everything islam is opposed to allah said we have created you um a balanced middle nation that's that's the message of islam we don't go to extremes to one side or to the other side now what we see going on today in the in these in the name of jihad are extremes extremes which go against the very teachings of islam islam forbids us to kill innocent for civilians so all of this blowing up and you know in in supermarkets and in airports and in middles of cities all of this is forbidden in islam islam has no place for it at all you know and similarly even just to take up arms simply to to resolve problems in the society this is again evil you know the the prophet muhammed you know forbade the taking up of arms against the society you know we should resolve our issues through political means we should do it through education this is why the main motto of the islamic online university is changing the nation through education this is the way to go for people to understand what is correct and when they understand what is correct the leadership will rise from among them who will make the corrections dr phillips you've been to the gambia and i'm sure you must have realized the uh sort of uh religious tolerance that happily exists in this country christians and muslims living side by side we have a church in banjo and just adjacent to the church it's a mosque don't you find this unique well i wouldn't say it is unique it is it is a part of islamic history you know muslims ruled spain for 700 years and the churches remained they existed mosques were built and they existed side by side with the churches that were there when um came into jerusalem and they wanted him to pray you know where where one of the major churches was he refused to do so that people may build you know an islamic structure later on and destroy the that christian structure so muslims control jerusalem where jews christians and muslims lived side by side and continued that is how it has been and that is the norm in muslim society so what we can say here in gambia is that it is alhamdulillah this aspect of religious tolerance which is a part of islamic teachings is implemented here in gambia doctor let me take you back to where you just touched on islam jerusalem baitil mahdi some call it i mean how significant is jerusalem to the three major religions christianity judaism and islam well for uh jews this is where the temple of solomon was built and they believe that it has to be rebuilt for christians this was where jesus was born and they believe that for jesus to come back into this world the temple of solomon has to be rebuilt for muslims we believe that this was the place in which prophet sulaiman did build the temple which we know as masjid al-aqsa that's what we call it today and that this is sufficient for the rebuilding or the establishment of the temple of solomon because it was a mosque so it is the third of the three holiest mosques in islam doctor let me take it to the unbelievers let's look at for example a place like the soviet union where probably culturally um people have not been aware of islam and you grew up in a family that has no idea about religion now and you believe in nothing when you die will you be judged as as an unbeliever well it depends on the course of your life you see when you're looking at the hypothetical situation that you've described what we can say is that if that person never heard the message of islam or the only way that it came to them was in a distorted fashion yes they have died as an unbeliever but god will not judge them for their disbelief since they did not have an opportunity to achieve belief similarly children who die similarly people who are you know or or don't have the means to understand the message you know et cetera all of these people prophet muhammad may god's peace and blessings be upon him explain that all of these people who never got the message properly they will be brought back they will be resurrected together separate from the people who had the message made the choice of heaven and hell and they are being resurrected for judgment these will be resurrected separately resurrected with their full faculties and their will appear before them at the time of resurrection a wall of fire right and when they're all resurrected before this wall a messenger will come out of the fire to them and will talk to them it will tell them about god and and belief in god and and all of the various necessary knowledge that they needed to have to be able to make a choice when this is told to them then they will be instructed to enter into that same fire from which he came people will walk towards it the fire will flare up some will back off and others will walk through they will try a few more times more will go through and then there only remains those who refuse they say no we're not going in so at that point the prophet may god's peace and blessing be upon him said those who went through will go on to paradise there are those who if the message came to them they would have believed it those who refuse to step in they're the ones going to hell because they're the ones who if the message had come to them they would have rejected it doctor finally um what are your plans i know you do this online university but do you have any plans to work with the university of the gambia well inshallah we have very great plans we hope uh which will work out you know with a form of affiliation with the university uh offering our programs from the university this is all in discussion at the moment we hope it will end up in that in that state but either way we are offering through the islamic university online an opportunity for the madressa graduates some 30 000 of them coming out of your schools here in the gambia every year only 50 of them unless get accepted into arab universities only a hundred of them unless become teachers in the next year the vast majority 29 850 of them have no place to go no future so the islamic online university is going to provide for them a means to upgrade their english and to further their studies in islamic studies and our program as you have seen it goes beyond the standard sharia subjects we also teach psychology we teach also you know counseling we teach islamic economics we teach uh you know management we teach education so all of this is included in the course of our study to prepare the graduates to be most functional in the society after graduation dr abu amina bilal phillips thank you very much for joining me on the interview alhamdulillah my pleasure to be here that was dr abu amina bilal phillips a jamaican canadian he is uh an islamic scholar erudite islamic scholar and now runs the islamic online university jeremy mali joins us next week for another edition of the interview you

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Id: ldgLJNNWR84

Length: 45min 22sec (2722 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 04 2014