The Man with the Red Underpants | Sh. Abdurraheem Green & John Fontain | Young Smirks PodCast EP46

it's all and because i didn't take it seriously i mean i was i was drinking and smoking and all the rest and like i was saying i'm a muslim and eating pork and like nothing was different about my life for me it was more like there was this thing i'd come across it made sense to me i would say i'm a muslim but i didn't practice i didn't do anything you know like some things happened like between me and my girlfriend at the time and it and that was just like a big catalyst for me and i totally changed literally you know i used to smoke quite a lot of weed and stuff and hash and like just like got rid of everything like literally overnight from this to that boom you know anyone who smokes a lot of weed will know how hard it is but you know to get ready to get your stash and just throw it away it was like it's a big thing like for me i still remember it was just tipping it out into the thing throwing it away it was like yeah i was digging around the next day done i'm not saying it's boasting but my pocket money was probably what most people's wages were right and that's my pocket money right so like you know you're talking like when i was thinking of money i'm thinking about jets yachts my own private island you know that type of stuff right i'm thinking that's where i need to get to maybe i'll find happiness there right i came to a point where i actually made it made my own religion i actually came up with my own religion which is like a bit of buddhism and a bit of christianity you know like everything like all all the nice bits you know yeah you could say well okay what's the hardest thing that for you right to give up yeah and either we didn't have a term for it then right but now there's a work there's a term for it white privilege i didn't call it white privilege right but it now i would say if they ask me the hardest thing to give up is white privilege when i went from the you know from the areas that you know the actual enclosed area and i stepped down into the the open area where the people are making to off and it's when i went into that throng of people making two off that moment then it's just like that that me that why i just evaporated bro i realized i was nothing it meant absolutely nothing i realized that being white being british my passport was nothing it was nothing me and my dad died like what was it now you know three four years ago um hamdulillah he became muslim yeah there's video you can see the video on youtube uh i'm not ten days before he died he took his shahadah you know the day i took my dad he took shahadah right i went back and told my mum i said okay i said to dad you know take the same shahada and he did he's become muslim and whatever i said bro why didn't you help and and then he said abdulraheem you have to understand what was like being a black kid brought up in brixton and what we went through and then like and it's like i realized i had no idea when he started telling me um that was really more or less the foundation of what became the man in the red underpants like a very slimmed down version right to the extent that the rand corporation right they wrote you could probably still find it they wrote a paper called democratizing islam right wow okay and they quoted me twice in that paper based upon this this letter that i written to my dad hey bro i was going to ask you a question like you know how do you feel like that all your fame and everyone knows you off the back of them thinking that you're actually me [Laughter] this is gonna be a long day come on bro get yourself together okay deep [Music] into the young smokes podcast oh it's called young smokes just get on with it bro like seriously podcast and join with a very special guest abdurahim green sonic i'm chef bro how are you doing good i'm humble i'm very good to see you again it's been a long time subhanallah i've not seen you for a long time and uh i just wanted to speak to you about your early dawah okay big inspiration to myself i remember before i was a muslim i've seen you on peace tv you know one of the people who i've seen and i thought okay i can actually be a muslim you know there's actually white muslims out there i remember i remember the exact uh video i was watching just seeing you i think you had like a blue jacket long red hair mashallah and uh so since ever since that day you know it really inspired me even seeing people like yourself you see there's other english people who have embraced islam because it uses american but anyway yeah yeah true no problem no but she didn't get confused people think i'm you well i was going to say bro i was going to ask you a question like you know how do you feel like that all your fame and everyone knows you off the back of them thinking that you're actually me it's true it's true yeah white people look the same brother it's true honestly people say i saw you at mecca i haven't been to mecca for like years and years what are you talking about no it was you definitely it was like yeah i remember um no it's upon the i remember someone came all the time like literally even the local takeaway near my house yeah you know it's a panel like a lot of people that you know you was telling well the first time i met you do you remember the first time i met you no it was uh the um birmingham convivencier event okay and i remember you you spoke first and you said uh i'm just very happy to finally meet john you know everyone thinks he's my son yeah and then i stood up and i said i'm very happy to meet absolutely for the first time everyone thinks he's my granddad yeah i remember that he wasn't too hot i haven't forgotten until today yeah no hard feelings no sorry no they're definitely hard feelings bro i'm hanging on to that hard feeling that's right so i wanted to speak to you a bit about your early tower because you know you became popular and you you kind of learnt your craft in hyde park yeah and it's kind of people have mixed feelings about hyde park today um you know some people think it's beneficial some people think you know they always did to be honest bro even back in the days people have mixed feelings about it yeah so how do you think it's changed over the years has it changed i know because i haven't really been so the last time i went well i've only been a couple of times i went um very soon after 9 11. i went down there once or very soon after gave a talk there um and i went one other time but that was more like just for filming for aira you know um so i i don't i'm not really familiar i know from hearing about it from the brothers and stuff that it all seems to be very led by social media you know it's a lot of yeah it's also a lot of playing to the camera you know um so back in the days it was very different although i think we were the first people who started filming down there and you know until today those videos are out there on you know dower in the park videos and they were very very popular but it wasn't really the main component it was like a sort of add-on you know yeah um so i think that's the big you know the big change but i think fundamentally it's still really the same place i guess back in the days it's like it was really important to be able to stand up and speak and deliver a speech you know like you couldn't get away with just like okay yeah sure we would chat to people on the side and that's where a lot of the real dao went on but for for for those of us who were like the speakers you you really had to learn to deliver a speech and keep keep people's attention you know you that seems to have gone now like i remember yeah sabor's still trying to reignite that yeah he's he's got his stepladders he's standing here speech and i quite like that that kind of you know where you actually give yeah i mean that's right i guess that's speaker's corner that's the whole point you're supposed to go down there and give speeches and generate debate that way but there always was a lot of you know a lot of um people discussing and having debates on the side that was always there to be honest it always was there um in fact one of the big challenges back in the day was always to try and get more focus on the speaker rather than like get everyone diverted away from the main the main event because that would happen a lot but we we had a sort of technique actually if there was someone who wanted to sort of debate with the speaker we had we had people there ready to take that person on the side and take them away onto the grass and sit down and have a chat with them you know yeah well sort of but obviously sometimes they were just genuine you know people who needed a more of an in-depth conversation so we had a nice little system going there back in the days and so we were surprisingly organized actually it wasn't just as random as one might have imagined yeah so i wanted to speak a bit about how did you find islam because i know you've got quite an interesting story um i like what i'm surprised you're gonna ask me that question because like it's so easy to find my story about how it becomes but the thing is i think there's a few things that have not been documented yeah like what i don't know maybe maybe you can earlier yeah no i mean you know yeah no like what you know you've had a lot of experiences aren't you i mean you know the thing is is that i mean it's one of those things bro when you to be honest i've said the story so many times it's like um i just say to everyone yeah go and watch the video but i mean very briefly i don't know i was brought up a roman catholic i went to a roman catholic monastic boarding school i had lots of questions but my fundamental questions were really i guess about what's the purpose of life and it was basically because i just didn't enjoy school at all i didn't really get why i was at this boarding school stuck in the middle of well the edge of the yorkshire moors literally and you know far away from almost every everyone and everything and i you know i didn't really enjoy it at all and i i guess that sort of prompted me to ask like deep questions about what am i even doing here why am i at this you know like it went from why am i at the school to what do you what is even even all of this school about right why am i studying like you know i'm studying to go to university so i can get a good job so i can earn enough money right to send my kids back to the same school so they can do the same thing and i thought is that it that really is because i really couldn't see anything except that was the only thing i could see is that that was it that and i thought that can't be what life is about and that's what really started me questioning and then i you know i had too many doubts about christianity and in general catholicism in particular um and i just searched through different religions buddhism hinduism like the whole you know it was the back end of the you know it was okay it's the 70s but you know this the hippie stuff was still around there so there was that whole sort of psychic energy and you know that type of stuff going on right so i was looking into all of this stuff philosophy everything um and i guess just looking through different religions and different things and i i came to a point where i actually made made my own religion i actually came up with my own religion which is like a bit of buddhism and a bit of christianity you know like everything like all all the nice bits you know yeah i actually have a notebook where i actually sketched the outline of this i actually still got it somewhere so yeah yeah i found it and the funny thing was was that um it was a very little thing although in my mind now it was a big thing but actually in my in terms of my actual notes yeah it was not it was not really much much at all um but it was the worst like that my own religion was absolutely the worst thing of all and i got to the stage where i thought maybe there's no religion maybe there's nothing you know there's maybe it's just like maybe really is money maybe that's what it really is about i just don't have enough money yeah um and i thought and like from my background enough money like you're moving on to a different level right if i think i needed more money than i had that was i mean like my pocket i'm not saying it's boasting but my pocket money was probably what most people's wages were right and that's my pocket money right so like you know you're talking like when i was thinking of money i'm thinking about jets yachts my own private island you know that type of stuff right i'm thinking that's where i need to get to maybe i'll find happiness there all right so but i thought i don't want to have to work hard for my money like what's the point right because the whole point is to enjoy yourself and if i'm going to work my you know work so hard where's the enjoyment going to be right so i'm looking for the shortcut i'm looking for how can i get the maximum amount of money with the least amount of work i suppose in some ways it's starting the religion yeah no but that's yeah you know i yeah i didn't think about that to be honest because that that would i don't know i've seen people literally start like different churches in africa as a business i i honestly could have i really you know the funny thing was i realized like three four years into islam i realized i could have done it i actually but but that was with once i discovered islam yeah i realized this is dangerous knowledge because you could really use and i think any serious christian or anyone who goes into any book that's got some semblance of something left in it they could you know you it's not hard to start a cult man you know it's not it's not hard um you know that but so anyway yeah so um so i was like i said i was searching for what's the easiest way to get money without working hard for it so i started thinking my life my i guess my thing was history i went to university to study history and i guess that's why i started thinking historically you know like who are the people who have the most money like who are the rich people in the world who is the rich countries right so i thought of britain industrial relations a rich country six whatever sixth seventh richest country in the world i thought industrial revolution you know all that capitalism that's it that's way too much work america the american dream you know the american dream is you work yourself up from the ditch you know and you work yourself self-made like that was all too much hard the japanese they were rich but that was just all they did was work like none of that was like appeal to me and then i thought oh my god those saudis right they're rich like what have they done they just sat on their camels for a thousand years going allahu akbar right well they've done nothing right literally nothing and i thought but they've got all this money yeah i said that sounds like that's the that's the game there right no work lots of money what are these guys it sounds like a similar idea so young lawrence of arabia yeah well maybe i want a piece of that you know yeah well whatever it was but it was like honestly that was it i i literally that's the attitude i went to when i picked up the quran because i thought i knew that book was the quran that's their religion and i thought okay what do i know about these people that they're muslim they what's their book quran let me find out about them right so i the interesting thing was i was not looking for anything in the quran like i just wanted to see what is this about so that it was interesting that my frame of mind was totally without any preconceptions at all i was not approaching the quran with any other agenda except i wanted to understand what this book was saying yeah and that was it like i got you know through obviously it was a translation but i got like three quarters of the way through it and i just knew i said this is it if there's ever been a book that's from god this is the one you know i just knew from all my studies so you have to remember like reading the bible bhagavad gita all these scriptures buddhist i just knew that there was nothing i'd ever come across was like like the quran what was it what was it that because you're saying like three quarters through what that's a good what was the i think the key points were number one right lots of descriptions of the akira right yeah so the quran was talking about paradise hellfire the day of judgment right and like wait a minute if if that's going to be if that's where we're going to be for eternity yeah we definitely like surely a book that is from god is going to tell us some details about that yeah so i think that was the first thing that not just some details a lot of detail i think that was one of the first things that really like impressed me about the quran and then like the other thing it just answered some questions like the trinity just dealt with the issue of the trinity just like it was just like it made so much sense did you ever believe in the trinity no i always struggled with it i i made myself believe it in the sense that you know i'd make i tried to find ways really hard to try to find ways to believe it um but it's not rational right you believe it by like they would say you have to accept it it's a mystery you just have to believe there is not a rational explanation for it it's just something you have to believe and you have to accept it and i guess that you know that's just not good enough for me right i wasn't going to just believe it because someone told me to um and i think the scriptural foundations of it are very shaky as well like it's very like if you re again if you go to the bible and you read it without your bias yeah if you're not if you go to it not looking to find the trinity it's not it's not something that's going to jump out from the bible at you right yeah in fact if anything it's how human jesus is right not how divine he is right so yeah so um no i never always struggled with the trinity a lot that was one of the big issues i had with catholicism yeah i i come from a church of england background so it's slightly different but again the same yeah fundamentally the same cv and catholicism very very similar yeah yeah i mean the difference is things like confession mm-hmm um i never really saints yeah i know yeah that was the young yeah a lot of that mariology you know like mary's almost like a divine being really um you know so that i think the funny thing was i remember like i often talk about how my mom i remember my mum when i was i must have been like nine years old and my mum was uh talking to me about because i was going to school she so she was um telling me like um you know trying to teach me the hail mary because she thought she know like i'm going to this catholic school i better you know prepare you know prepare them for um you know going to the school and so she taught this prayer hail mary which is like that's a particular catholic prayer so it's hail mary mother of god blessed art thou amongst women and when she said hail mary mother of god i remember thinking mother of god what how can god have a mother that doesn't make any sense yeah so how can someone give birth that i was trying to sit there i was thinking how can someone give be god's money god's supposed to be the cree you know like you understand the whole thing was just that that's just crazy and then i thought well maybe she's a bigger god than god if she's god's mummy she must be bigger you know that's just like in my little kid's way i try to because you know whatever your mom says you sort of accept it you know yeah like yeah so no i never got down with that trinity stuff man no since accepting islam how has your kind of doubt your parents kind of evolved or changed well my dad died like what was it now you know three four years ago um hamdulillah he became muslim yeah there's video you can see the video on youtube uh i'm not ten days before he died he took a show harder you know my mom is still very obstinate she's just not you know like my mum is a very strange strange one because you'll have a conversation with her she'll basically one minute she'll be saying she only believes as one god right she never makes sense to her how jesus is god and that type of stuff and then another you'll have another conversation with her and she'll be defending the trinity although she has no idea what the trinity is because when you actually discuss it with her and like it's so cool yeah basically that's yeah you know my mum once said oh if i wasn't a catholic i would have converted and i thought no if you were born worshipping in a in a society that worshipped the tusk of a walrus you'd still be worshiping the pin the tuscaloosa because that's you know that she's just following what her people do right yeah um yeah i mean you know she doesn't have any crosses she doesn't have any statues she doesn't have any icons yeah nothing like that because you know the second commandment is you shall not make any graven images she knows that right yet she's a catholic and catholicism is full of that so like it's very very my mom is like very strange like in some times it's like she's a mona and then sometimes she's i don't even know if there's a god and even though there's a paradise or a hellfire so she's like all over the place my mom like she has no real certainty i think about anything to do with how does she feel with your father accepting islam i think she it was a very hard time role it's like i don't think she really computed about it but because my dad was i would say he took like two years to die on and off it was like he was very ill for about two years so it was a long long time it was a lot of stress uh mostly on my mum but me as well i was there a lot of the time with her and so it was just a you know i would tell her i'm going to get him to become muslim before he dies you know like i was up front with my mom yeah about it um you know i'm going to try and convert him and she knew it you know it wasn't like we we didn't you know we were because i think we spent so much time together at that time we were like very very close i suppose we could say anything and like we would alternate so she would go to see my dad one day and i would go the next day and so we would just say like it happened that when she went back from the hospital i said how's dad and he'd tell me and vice versa right so the day i took my dad he took shahadah right i went back and told my mom i said okay i said to dad you know take the same shahada and he did he's become muslim and she was like oh okay you know that was it really you know um so she just i think she's sort of it like it's a bit complicated with my mum because she had some like um she had a like a i think she she had a really bad flu right a few years ago and it like messed her brain up really badly and you know she's getting old as well so like she i think she even forgot everything about what happened you know she thinks my dad is buried you know his ashes are in the garden he's not he's buried in a muslim cemetery in uh you know like in lisbon she doesn't even remember that anymore so yeah i mean i do try and tell and she she's very confused about stuff you know like old people do get confused you know how how did they react when you became a muslim did they think it was like a phase oh yeah definitely he'd already kind of been reading yeah for sure in the beginning they didn't take it seriously at all and because i didn't take it seriously i mean i was i was drinking and smoking and all the rest and like i was saying i'm a muslim and eating pork and like nothing was different about my life for me it was more like there was this thing i'd come across it made sense to me i would say i'm a muslim but i didn't practice i didn't do anything like i did in the beginning and then i just like left it um but then okay it all flipped and i started how long did it take for you two years to two years before i you know like some things happened like between me and my girlfriend at the time and it and that was just like a big catalyst for me and i totally changed literally you know i used to smoke quite a lot of weed and stuff and hash and like just like got rid of everything like literally overnight from this to that boom you know it was just like that moment where i just lit she switched you know and and i remember coming home my parents yeah and i told them i said i'm never gonna drink again and you just burst out laughing yeah yeah i'm like no i'm serious yeah you know and i've never drank since yeah so how do you survive no drinking i know yeah i think uh because these things usually are addictive right yeah yeah i mean of course new muslims still like anyone who anyone who smokes a lot of weed will know how hard it is to get your stash that you've like back in i don't know what it's like now i think it's like you know quite easy to get hold of it back in the days it wasn't that easy to get hold of you know uh you had to go around you had to know someone yeah it was like a hole i'm sure it is still like that to some extent but you know to get ready to get your stash and just throw it away it was like it's a big thing like for me i still remember it was just tipping it out into the thing throwing it away it was like yeah you know i did that with my cds i threw out all my cds right yeah and i was living in a flight at the time yeah and the the neighbor underneath yeah digged them all out and i was listening to them for the next season he was literally playing all these music yeah yeah should i like crack them or something yeah that's brilliant well yes it's not easy i mean for like the new muslims who you know people who embrace islam struggling with things like this yeah easy no it's not bro there's a lot of a lot of tests a lot of trials yeah i mean what everyone's got their own particular you know um and they're still going on bro it's like people think oh you reverts yeah they think we're some sort of better than them and it's not necessarily true at all i remember like when i was um one of the interesting things is that like when i was working in the london central mosque the kids used to come and i'd you know give them show around the mosque and stuff and so one of the things they'd ask me is like what once the kids say well okay what's the hardest thing that for you right to give up yeah and either we didn't have a term for it then right but now there's a work there's a term for it white privilege i didn't call it white privilege right but it now i would say if they ask me the hardest thing to give up is white privilege you know um that idea that you are better because you're british because you're white because you're whatever that that is because that's something deep you know that's like from when you're little i i don't think someone can even i think it's very difficult to become a muslim unless that is broken first yeah yeah yeah because i that that i remember going to africa yeah as a non-muslim and i had this kind of idea of the great british empire yeah you know i wasn't i wasn't my family are not racist really yeah but i was proud of you know history oh i was brought my dad was a colonial administrator right my dad was a colony administrator worked for the imf barclays international right i was posted to egypt you know his you know the british embassy in egypt is still the leftover of the days when the british ruled egypt right it says massive huge place right we used to go there regularly like that's where we would sort of you know my dad always knew the ambassadors so like that was still deep deep deep like breaking that you you're right bro you're right that in many ways i'd already broken it but i wouldn't say it was like getting it out completely like you know abu dharr i'm sure he wasn't like really really racist but he still said to bilal you son of a black woman right he still had that that like getting rid of those it's just like totally exp you know and and the problem is bro because we we're still surrounded by the fact that we we are privileged that's just the reality yeah you know i mean of course you can get rid of your well you can try to get rid of your kind of superiority complex but you're always going to be treated differently as well yeah just by being white yeah you know which you can't deny that as well yeah you know certain you know just the way you get treated in a local masjid for instance you know it might be different to someone of a different well back in the days bro it was there was a lot of hostility actually funnily enough like people wouldn't even believe you that you were actually muslim i i remember walking to a mosque in birmingham and it says like are you a muslim yeah he said no you can't be you're a guru you know they couldn't believe that like no you're a good you can't be muslim yeah and you know that gurah but they say in a certain way means catholic it doesn't just mean it means this is synonymous so it wasn't like always the case that um you know people looked at you because you're white like you're something special or it wasn't always that not back in the days bro it was quite tough and getting married that was a whole different that was a whole different ball game bro and people are still struggling with that to be honest until today um yeah so yeah i think the thing is like you said it's that it's not the superiority maybe it is a superior as you come you know the thing that really subhanallah guess like you know i i in buddhism um there's something called nirvana right now nirvana most people think nirvana means bliss or like enlightenment it doesn't and the word nirvana means annihilation right so like the idea of the the basic i guess the basic idea of buddhist philosophy is that the ego is the cause of all suffering right and so the way you get rid of suffering you know within yourself and the world is by destroying the ego but this destroying the ego is it's not so in islam we have tasked yeah we have the purification of the so like the idea is that actually the ego is fundamentally a good thing what's not good is when you take it beyond certain boundaries but in buddhism it's no you annihilate the ego right so you ha the ideal is for you to have no identity whatsoever right there is no you there's nothing that is you anymore right you are just so you annihilate this ego right um but i had this moment like that was a bit when i made hajj the first time right i think i experienced this sort of annihilation of my like and it's when like it was like really surreal like totally insignificant that was it bro and and like you know i remember arriving and it was at night we arrived at night and it was floodlit the car was funny and it just looked like a movie screen it didn't look real to me at all it was like okay it's like looks like a movie yeah and then when i went from the you know from the areas that you know the the actual enclosed area and i stepped down into the the open area where the people are making to off and it's when i went into that throng of people making two off that moment then it's just like that that me that why i just evaporated bro i realized i was nothing it meant absolutely nothing i realized that being white being british my passport was nothing it was nothing me and all of those people the only thing that allah cared about is what's in the hearts that's it i knew i was just nothing that month for me was the most prof one of the most profound moments in my life yeah that just annihilation of like abdul rahim you are nothing you really who are you nothing just one amongst and who knows who's the best of all of these people right you don't know it's you right only just just you know so that was beautiful beautiful beautiful moment you know it's a huge experience you know i remember the first time i went same thing you know you just literally feel like an ant yeah you know millions of people and no one's looking at you you know they might look you in your local mosque yeah because you're white or whatever yeah yeah no one cares everyone's focused on online yeah yeah really uh well yeah i mean of course this is uh something as you're talking about the the privilege the white privilege or the superiority complex these type of things this is kind of hot topic at the moment yeah you know the black lives matter yeah kind of protest all around the world what do you think about that what what's your kind of take on the whole i i i'm doing this um you know this like uh podcast with abdul huck baker who's a comrade back in back in the selfie days right so we're just reliving a lot of the stuff that we went through and discussing it and how things actually i was watching some it's really yeah it's really i enjoy i don't know if anyone enjoys listening but i love doing it because it's just like it's really good sometimes to go through that stuff and and one thing i remember with abdul haq it's it's a you know like you have these things in your life that really stick out and we come back from a talk i remember talking wales i think it was in swansea we'd come back late at night one o'clock in the morning uh and you know and i was on my road this is in london literally on you know on the road to my house police stopped me outside my house right and they said what are you doing i said well i've come back we've been giving a talk in wales right and so where do you live i said right here that's my house i couldn't believe it right but the police when this notice these guys were like you know their eyes were bloodshot you know they literally must have woken up saw a car drive past and said let's stop him you know and then basically the car their car started sliding down the hill because they forgot to put the handbrake on and they weren't running to stop the car and i went running to help them right yeah and abdulhat was standing there like that like looking down like like that with complete contempt yeah and like you know anyway they went and whatever i said bro why didn't you help and and then he said abdullah you have to understand what was like being a black kid brought up in brixton and what we went through and then like and it's like i realized that i had no idea when he started telling me it's like i didn't have the and he said to me in this podcast he said you know why they stopped you know why they started because i was in the car if it just been you nothing would have happened it's cause there was a black guy they thought i was your drug dealer that's what they thought it was like oh my god like it took me like 20 years just to hear that part of it as well like yeah and he told me about uh you know there was this there was this shed in in clapham common where they used to take black kids and beat them up the police used to just beat him up just for fun you know like take him for a beating you know you can't imagine what it's like oh i know no idea like i said you know like i said i was talking to dilly about this in his podcast and he would say like it was like for me the police are the boys in blue you know they're the cavalry you know that you look for them when when you're feeling nervous i like you know i remember and this is not a racial thing right i remember once when i was at school and i was in the like a local like a local town we used to go to you know to go to the pub and stuff like that it's called helmsley right was in this thing and i saw these flipping hells angel bikers and i was terrified yeah i was literally where the police were these guys gonna like you know you know so it wasn't to do with whether this these that to me they just posed the threat and the police were someone i believe were going to help me um and i still have that attitude towards i still do have that attitude towards the police like from my perspective i've never had a bad account all my encounters with the police have been either neutral yeah right or actually quite positive right i mean i'm not from like such a privileged background and i i don't have a good uh experience with them right um but i would say that obviously because i it's weird because i my parents were from a very white racist area and they were aware of this so they sent me to school on the other side of manchester yeah in hume yeah you know here must side it's more multicultural there's lots of uh uh like asia and caribbean african etc so it's more mixed yeah so having that kind of experience in both areas really kind of you know you realize that there is like this racism and you see treated differently even if you are pulled over yeah in like the white racist area they don't treat you like a certain way where if you if you're with uh black friends yeah you definitely you definitely do see that um you know it's um yeah exists yeah yeah but i think you know i mean like the whole issue is you know um i don't know i don't know what do you think about all the you know i i quite like the discussion about the whole colonialism and the uh the slave trade what's going on at the moment you know they toppled the statue yeah i thought that was very interesting it's a whole kind of worms though isn't it like because you know slavery like slavery has existed you know up until recently it's still listen let's be honest slavery still exists yeah we're just fooling ourselves we you can change the name but the reality of slavery still exists even in this country right why did teresa may pass the which is one of the really decent things i have to say she did she passed the modern slavery bill because slavery still exists it's just a different form people are still being bought and sold they're still being trafficked they're still being exploited and not paid anything and like literally anything can be done done to them right so it's always existed in human history right and it doesn't justify it doesn't make it right um i think the thing i think that what is really maybe particularly different about the the western you know you know slave trade was it was it had a very strong racial element it was justified like biblically justified right they justified it by the bible they justified white supremacy by the bible and they still do some of them right they justified slavery right based upon their so i think that obviously slaveries existed in islam as well right but it was never a racial issue because the the moors were capturing white slaves and they say that probably one one and a half million europeans went into slavery in morocco right over a period of a lot longer than the transatlantic slavery like the period of hundreds and hundreds of years right um so but it was not based on race yeah right it's just based on that was the status quo yeah right i mean that was the times as well you know all the npr empires like but i think the other thing is that i think you know islam's perspective on slavery is it's interesting from the point of view of maybe trying to abolish slavery is futile in the sense that it's never going to stop what is what is more effective is changing people's behaviors right changing how you treat another human being changing the way that you behave to them and i think that you look at the islamic paradigm and it was like um yeah it didn't abolish slavery right but the relationship between the save and the master was reformulated really dramatically you know so islam gave very very strong rules about what you are not allowed to do to a slave how you they had to you had to feed them with what you fed you have to you know dress in the way you dressed it it was almost like they became a member of the family right that's they became and then the huge encouragements to you know free slaves as an act of virtue and stuff like that so i think it's about transforming attitudes which is what really is important because you can change names but the reality of the situation is really there it's what is more important is transforming how we think about other human beings i think then when it comes to racism right back to black lives matter i think that's another thing that i found about islam is that you know that very very strong ethos you know there's no difference between the white and the black the arab the non-arab you know the only your tribes and nations to know one another not hate one another the best of you is only the most pious yeah right um these are very very strong messages right that anyone who's sincere about their religion right uh will i think will make a real strong effort to get rid of that racism and tribalism out of their system you know i wanted to speak to you about the daoa and uk yeah uh now we're to our own tribe oh we're speaking about tribes yeah you know i feel like in obviously in the major cities there's a lot of muslims london birmingham manchester yeah you know all the big cities but a lot of the countryside yeah you know the villages there's very little islam and muslims and i feel that a large portion of our tribe has not heard the message i think interacting with like it's very interesting that in places where they have high immigrant populations and high muslim populations generally people's attitude towards immigrants and muslims is positive right it's more positive it's where they don't interact where they don't actually have living experiences of meeting and talking to and having muslim friends right that's the key the key is having friends who are muslim you know and i think when people do meet muslims and they see their human beings like they're human beings right and maybe they might even admire and respect some of the values that they have as muslims right then that's you know that's a great way of um breaking down barriers um you know i mean you know i live in this this town here and um i think we're the only muslims in there i mean it's awesome maybe someone else you know the only muslims in the town right um but you know it's one step maybe you know we don't really go out there and preach to people or anything like that but you know people see us they see our presence our kids are around you know they're into they interact with us my wife still martial where's the full nihab goes into town like people are very polite and very nice and generally super friendly and treat her really nicely you know the thing is you know you know what english people are like though they they'll never say it to your face they're like no i think that's yeah you're right sometimes there's a polite sort of whatever but you know the difference between that and people who are actually quite genuine and my wife is actually quite a sort of conversationalist type of person she's like she will really just i think people get surprised how uh you know like how she communicates really like clearly and positively and you know like it's sort of like what like sometimes like you can speak isn't it ironic now bro with all the face masks honestly i went to i went to the co-op today and it was like this girl at the counter with you know with a face mask and it's like oh my god like that's like in a car like this is like a real like this is just like this is weird no it's crazy yeah so yeah i mean what so what what was your inspiration for the man in the red underpants well i used to well we still do do this dower training course yeah um and um like before i era it's not like something else it's not it's not from back in the club so yeah um no like so i used to give this um dower training course which is basically what is now known as the go rap method um we did i didn't call it that in those days it was um i called it the systematic approach to dao um and it was very much like inspired by sheikh who basically gave me some advice about the right way to give dawah and basically told me don't bother answering all of these questions just go back to the essence of islam is there a god is god one is the quran from god is muhammad the prophet i i you know it's a revolutionary approach really you know um and so i was i was doing this course in this uh actually it was like a private house it was just like his family and some friends and stuff and um and so part in in so part of the thing is that to get people to think about before we have a conversation about you know trying to understand anything about the god the universe whatever let's agree on some principles so i'd always say look start with you know your foundational principles right what process are you going to use in order to know what is true from what is false right so like obviously there's various things like people you're just going to follow your ancestors is that what you're going to do right whatever they did you're going to do right uh is it you're going to just wait for some you know some writing in the sky or so like what what process are you going to do to so the point was is that we should use reason right or we should use common sense right so the the the so i used to say look if some guy came on you see these bikers i don't know why these bikers are stuck in my head these hell's angels right we've seen yeah there's a lot around if you saw someone right with love and hate tattooed on their fists yeah with a biker jacket knocking on your door saying i'll come to read your gas meter yeah what would you do did you let him in your house would you let him read you again you say you can't lost me you know like so you call the police yeah so i there's that exactly call the police so that was the example i would give right but then i would get the people the students in the class to practice the conversation yeah so i'd say okay this is what you say so but you have to make it your own right you don't just use my example so this one guy one of the stu he said right he said what if a man wearing nothing but red underpants came knocking on your door saying i've come to read your gas meter and i said that is just genius right i forgot the biker love hate thing i demand it you know it's like boom it was just such a powerful and that's it from then i used it in my dowel training from then on it became the title of my book because this student he that's what he thought up himself so that's where it came from yeah i think this was one of this is one of the most popular dial books really yeah you know over the past however many years when did when did you i don't know it was interestingly enough that book was really based upon really based upon a letter that i'd written to my dad years and years ago and he had given me this economist like the economist magazine used to have these inserts right about various countries and one one month they had this insert not about countries but about islam right and it was talking about samuel huntington class of civilizations and this whole thing was about islam in the west and is there a clash or whatever my dad my dad used to read the economist right a lot and he gave me this and said what do you think of this and then i tried to have a conversation within minutes it was an argument so i said okay dad let's forget the thing i'm going to write you something yeah so i literally wrote him what ended up being you know a 100 page almost a book right it was in two parts the first part was really basically proving that islam is the truth right uh and um that was really more or less the foundation of what became the man in the red underpants like a very slimmed down version right um and that interestingly enough that paper got was in the early days of the internet like early early days in the internet right that was all over the internet to the extent that the rand corporation right they wrote you could probably still find it they wrote a paper called democratizing islam right wow okay and they quoted me twice in that paper based upon this this letter that i written to my dad right that was all over the internet twice then quoted me the round corporation yeah because i basically said the west don't believe in human rights they don't believe in any of this stuff right when it's convenient for them they believe in it right and so they quoted you know they took bits from my things so yeah so it has actually that book in a sense has a long long history it goes like way way back to other stuff that was around on the internet and and i can't even remember what that because when i think of doll books i mean the only other things really out there are like it's very different isn't it yeah a lot of them are like just uh transcripts of debates and things like that they're not really anything or just you know just bash bible bashing you know you know the you know like the ahmedidat stuff which had its time and place yeah you know um not really tawa to islam isn't it no no it's not or then you have islam in focus which is almost sort of like a just oh islam says this in islam says that there were a few great something with the intention yeah there were a few good books but again even towards understanding islam by mao duty he never really wrote that for non-muslims right um i think dr bilal phillips wrote a few really good little booklets but then they were focusing on one particular dimension yeah yeah one particular thing but um i mean there have been books but i think partly because of our era and we published it and pushed it out and and um and the title was catchy and it was all based on research as well because one of the things we would found out through research was that if you have the word islam written on a book people will not pick it up so if if you left for example a pile of books in a doctor's surgery and one said jesus in islam and one said the truth about jesus the ones jesus islam will literally no one will touch it yeah islam is there they will not touch it the other one they'll pick it up so like there was a so back in the days when we started ira that's why it's called the research islamic education and research foundation because we we we wanted to look into those things like you know what makes something attractive why would a person read a book and even when the book begins it's sort of trying to draw a person in a little bit not straight into the first page yeah what's going on yeah it's still like the hook yeah you know yeah yeah yeah no it's good and um and i guess this is like the basis of the ayura dollar really yeah because you know what what i like about ayura i'm the love you know i've you know done a lot of work with you guys of course volunteering and travelling and different things you know thank you for inviting me to the brazil thing that was amazing but you know the the good thing is is you got the the everyday muslim yeah giving dawah yep and this is so important because and it's not difficult yeah right once you know the method you know a simple thing like go right you don't need to study the bible you don't need to study bhagavad-gita remember verses you don't need to it's about your religion go to tawhid talk about islam talk about how we know allah exists and allah is one how do we know the quran is very simple and literally the stuff you can learn in a day yeah right and you should already know most of it you should already know anyway right it's just it's just about putting it together systematically and the beautiful thing is it's very logical it has a very logical like step by step by step and if the person you're talking to doesn't wanna take the next step you say okay that's it's been nice talking to you let's leave it there there's no need to go any further right if a person doesn't accept that there's a god why would you want to talk about hijab like why he doesn't even believe there's a god what's the point you know yeah nice to see you hopefully we'll catch up again yeah you shall roll yeah in charlotte in five minutes [Laughter] location

Channel: Young Smirks

Views: 24,454

Keywords: abdurraheem green, new, younh smirks, john fontain, podcast, islam, IERA, dawah, hyde park

Id: bS6QQIOP0Q0

Length: 53min 50sec (3230 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020