The Letter From Malcolm X Led Him to Islam! "I Shook His Hand!" - 70 Year Story of Khalid Yasin

I was born in New York uh 1946 Christian parents New York that's me Malcolm X was assassinated he was shot down by 10 bullets it was a very cold morning thousands of people were in the street to listen to Malcolm to see him we were on the roof myself and two or three others and his security saw us on the roof and told us to come down just something that happened at that time we are very happy to have you with us I want to start with who is Khalid Yasin and can you tell us briefly about your life alhamdulillah I was born in New York 1946 Christian parents and I grew up in sort of as an orphan although I had Parents I accepted Islam in 1965 from a very dignified personality by the name of Ahmed Faisal 1965 was the same year that Malcolm X was assassinated so he was assassinated in February and I became Muslim in October how was your life in regards to Faith what were you believing in well the um the Christian I mean the foster homes that I were in the each one of them were a different persuasion of Christianity we can say like it was like a buffet so Methodist Episcopalian Baptist so I had the whole Spectrum by the time that I was 16 years old and then I went into the military service and and I was in the Air Force for two and a half years so when I was in the military service the Catholic religion was the most dominant and so I had an occasion to to go and talk to a priest because I thought that you know the priest is a person that he can mentor you or whatever and then I saw some inconsistencies in that so I tried my hand at Catholicism but it was just too rigid too much Mystique to European too clinical and then there was some tremendous contradictions inside the Catholic church that manifested itself later on can you tell us about some of those contradictions so while I was in the Air Force I was still trying to practice Christianity you know traditionally in some forms it wasn't making sense to me when I was seven but you digested because it's given to you but there were issues that were not making sense like well Jesus being God and his own son that didn't make sense to me and then he's also somehow the personality of the Holy Ghost so you know the Trinity this whole three-in-one Concept in a person three separate persons but one God it just didn't make sense to me so how did your journey to Islam start at 17 years old I remember riding on a train I saw this letter it was the New York Times and New York Times did a a complete full page uh advertisement or they printed the letter of Malcolm from Mecca so I remember reading that letter and then that letter Malcolm he mentioned words like Mecca you know the prophet Muhammad he mentioned the Kaaba he mentioned the Quran so just five or six or seven things that he said in that letter Hajj Arafat and I never heard those words before so at that time we didn't have social media if you were fortunate as a young person and I was one of those fortunate young people I had a set of what was called at that time the Encyclopedia Britannica so I went to the encyclopedia and I looked up these words that was it I never saw those words before when I understood those words I understood why Malcolm was moved I understood why he could not put his car into reverse so you were very inspired by him did you meet Malcolm X so I started looking into this Nation of Islam that he evolved out of I started looking at his words in his trip to Mecca and just before he was assassinated I had the chance to to attend one of his talks in Harlem and um it was a very cold morning he I think he spoke from the hotel Teresa which is no longer there and I was one of the people that was there thousands of people were in the street to listen to Malcolm to see him we saw him we we came we were on the roof myself and two or three others and his security saw us on the roof and told us to come down we came downstairs and of course we were very cold and he called us over and we shook his hand and when I look back now that was very memorable it's just something that happened at that time Malcolm was uh he was electric you know he was a personality that African Americans had never seen But Malcolm took his shahada he was assassinated in February 1965. I was 17 or 18. and um so he was assassinated in February and I became Muslim in October so how did you take your shahada it was a friend of mine named Zachariah Zachariah Rasheed may Allah have mercy on him and so I went and met his father and his father's name was Elman Rasheed may Allah have mercy upon him a very very unusual intellectual um powerful thinking person and he sent me to Sheikh dawood Ahmed Faisal from the Islamic mission of America and on September the I'm sorry October the 5th 1965 at the Islamic mission of America I became Muslim so I never went through the Nation of Islam I took my shahada directly and then I saw my my Islamic we can say my Islamic Evolution it started in October how did your family and the people around you react to your conversion to Islam I started with my father I didn't meet my father until I was 22 when I did meet him I think he passed away when I was 27 so I didn't know him until he died and then I buried him I was fortunate enough to have a good relationship with him before he died and he asked me to wash him and bury him the way that we wash and bury the Muslims he asked me to to wash him because I was an Imam at the time and my sister told him that that I was responsible that when people passed away in my community I was the person that did the washing and the burial I wish that he would have accepted Islam but maybe in his own way he did because we had several conversations and secondly my mother never resisted Islam she told me son if you if you believe that this way of life is going to make you a better person just go but don't be a blind follower that's what she told me and my mother was the she accepted Islam 11 years before she died and so my sisters my siblings they had various reactions but over the period of time God made it so that I'm not going to say it was because of my maturity or it wound up that I became became sort of like the counselor to my family so today what Islam gave me with my family members generally I've been able to Mentor them even if they didn't agree morally I became dementor for the family and then now today I have about 151 Muslims in my family that's an incredible number which of those conversions was the most special for you my mother my mother's acceptance of Islam was probably worth if there was 70 000 or 75 000 they were not equal to my mother and ironically the person who actually gave my mother to shahada wasn't me my mother was following me she was supporting me respecting me probably for 25 30 years but it was my Somali wife that actually gave her the shahada and my Somali wife didn't speak English that much it was her treatment of my mother my mother told me that one day she wanted to go to church she didn't know where the churches were so Amina told her mother I'll take you to church some other said you're going to take me to church I'm in the drove her to church when they got there my mother said to Amina Amina are you going to wait in the car for me I mean I said no mother I'm coming into church with you I mean it has full hijab like Somali girls do I mean has sat in the church with her until she left and then drove her home and my mother told me that was the most profound experience for her that this Somali girl she's wearing full hijab my mother said are you allowed to do that and I mean I just said to her mother this is a church and I'm sitting with you if they say something wrong I'll say for Allah if they say something good I'll say alhamdulillah this was her simple rationale to go with my mother which she was treating like her mother it was that cumulative experience that made my mother comfortable to take shahiden when I came from Europe I mean I had my mother sitting in the doorway she had already given her the shahada is it true that you were a gang member no no I was never part of a gang first of all I was raised in middle class homes I was not a product of the ghetto because of the foster homes that I was in they were middle class Christian homes so in my youth I didn't belong to any gangs and even and I became a Muslim at 18. so there was nothing there for me to become a gang member but um I walk like a gang member I talk like a gang member why because that's New York that's Brooklyn and uh metamorphism is just a part of our culture I think there's some people they they say the check is like sometimes he talks like a gangster they said that but I never said that and no I've never been can you tell us about the memory that you cannot forget I can recall being invited to a group of churches and they invited me because I had delivered a talk called Jesus the prophet of Allah and so they were very interested to know how do we come up with that perspective Jesus the prophet of Allah there were around 600 of them in this church I talked to them about three hours and the priest on the Reverend he started to see that maybe I was having a little bit too much influence with his congregation and he interrupted and said that we've reached Kyle Knight the end of our program and but some of the people said no no no he's not finished so he sent us downstairs so most of the people left maybe close to 200 stayed and we talked some more well in that final discussion I was emphasizing to them about the Oneness of Allah about the distinction of Jesus Christ about Muhammad peace and blessing be upon him and the parallel of Islam and the scripture and the parallel of Muhammad and Esau and so I asked him if what you have heard do you bear witness that there's none to be worshiped except almighty God and at least 80 of them said yes when I asked them about Muhammad they said yes I'm talking about virtually you become Muslims well they were kind of like surprised how can we be Muslims you know we're Christians well your Christians by indoctrination but but by affirmation you've become Muslims now how are you going to reconcile that that's not my job now so look at that look look at their behavior in in the invitation and look at their response in their church so if that happened and I was a witness to that just look at that phenomenon across the world if Muslims were able to interact with Christians and if we were able to treat Christians in the way that they treated me I think that things can be different what impressed you the most about Prophet Muhammad the fact that the prophet saws was not he was not allowed by Allah to chill out he wasn't given any time for relaxation if you study the serial of the Prophet sermon in those 13 years and all the battles that he supervised and the battles that he engaged with and the treaties that he had written or that was given to him from jabriel to to have written and whatever if you just look at his life it was Non-Stop and it's just unbelievable how that rate of activity consistently on an individual whose job it was to deliver the message which regulate the people act as a judge act as an Arbiter Inspire the people educate the people be a warrior a general a head of state a husband a friend how how does he do that is because of the wahi is because God mandated that what is the biggest mistake in teaching religion indoctrinating people you don't have to indoctrinate children to eat candy you don't have to indoctrinate young people to use their phones this mobile phone nobody leaves the house without it it's the first thing they look at when they get up in the morning so this incentive they have this relationship that they have with these phones and this social media if we were to make Islam attractive like that connect Islam to that it's gonna flow but we've got the older generation starting out with saying or the TV is Haram or the movies is Haram or the or the mobile phones Haram and so you're scaring the kids because you don't understand something so I think that today if fathers would spend more time with their sons and mothers spent more time with their daughters embracing each other tolerating each other talking about issues together using the same technology together encouraging each other eventually Islam as a faith as a discipline will become a part of the technology it'll become become a part of the the industrial phenomena Islam will be there it will not be something separate if you had a chance to speak to all the non-muslims in the world what would you like to say to them there's a verse of the Quran because today everybody feels challenged we don't know what to do we're frustrated people are emotional they don't have answers and it leads to depression it leads to anger there's a verse of the Quran where Allah says Allah I think this is the 16th Surah 90th verse of the Quran and then there's a Hadith of the prophet of the Prophet sallallahu that our mother is she said that he used to recite after every prayer not every day but after every prayer it was [Music] the translation of hola I seek refuge in you from anxiety and grief from lack of strength and laziness from cowardice and from stinginess and from being overpowered by debt and the oppression of men Allah suffice me with what is lawful to keep me away from what is unlawful and with your grace and your magnitude make me free and independent from everyone and everything other than you so if the prophet salallahu used to recite this after every prayer and he's a prophet it seems to me that that should be one of the prayers that each one of us recite [Music] foreign

Channel: Towards Eternity

Views: 921,209

Keywords: islam, muslim, towards etenity, letter from malcolm x, malcolm x led him to islam, interview with khaled yasin, Story of Khalid Yasin, The Letter From Malcolm X Led Him to Islam

Id: 2j3x4qbMsZY

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023