Tough Questions To Omar Suleiman! - Why Were You Handcuffed Behind The Back?

is it true that you were handcuffed behind the back and rested why do you put yourself at such a risk if you had a supplication you knew it would be accepted what would that be do you ever get angry i can't imagine that eventually one gets angry frustrated when i was 13 years old if you asked me if i was muslim privately i would say not really so we went to churches we went to synagogues we went to masjids and ask them questions about islam judaism and christianity and she she initially you know was not supportive at all and she became muslim right before she died isis had put you on a killing list why do you think they saw you as a threat okay let's start with who is omar suleiman that's a hard question already you know but [Laughter] alhamdulillah my parents originally are from philistine from palestine i was born and raised in a state in the united states called louisiana it's in the southernmost part of the united states i grew up in the united states of america i studied sharia i studied accounting and i studied political science and political history i have served as an imam of a masjid in new orleans louisiana alhamdulillah also have taught in various institutions and universities and and today alhamdulillah the founder and president of the epine institute for islamic research which i hope inshallah the work is benefiting people here in turkey we always see you smiling do you ever get angry i can't imagine that emerging man gets angry frustrated yeah i get i get angry sometimes um for what um some sometimes the very human weaknesses right so someone that's that's uh driving and upsetting you on the road or sometimes it's certain things that are said to you or about you i'm a human being we're all human beings and we get angry for different things a few years ago you had an interfaith discussion that reached millions of people how was that experience for you what was the most interesting reaction that you received after the conference so alhamdulillah actually that particular interfaith dialogue was something that i do on a very regular basis i didn't think it would be special we do a lot of these in texas it was something that we do very normally and i was surprised to see the way that it spread throughout the world there's not a single week in my masjid that someone or it's very rare i shouldn't say there's not a single week it's very rare that someone doesn't come to the masjid and say that i came because i initially got exposed to islam through that interfaith dialogue so people see me in different parts of the country and they'll say that that's how we got exposed to islam we happened to come across that video and many of them ended up embracing islam alhamdulillah there are many people who were introduced to islam and accepted islam by your means from the ones you know which of them affected you the most wow um the most i'd have to say and i've spoken about him before so my best friend from first grade his name was joshua so joshua and i grew up together when i was 13 years old if you asked me if i was muslim privately i would say not really you know that's how that's that's how far away i'd kind of gone you know i was trying to explore religion understand religion so joshua and i were extremely close and his uncle was a reverend was a pastor christian pastor and we we decided together to study islam and christianity together and not just islam and christianity we said you know we're going to as teenagers we're going to read the whole bible together we'll read the whole quran together and we'll talk about religion together and that's how close we were which is you know the hadith of the prophet that a person is on the religion of their friends it has a special meaning to me because we literally said as teenagers we're going to study religion together so we went to churches we went to synagogues we went to masjids masajid and asked them questions about islam judaism and christianity and we're really studying and we had our highlighters you know we were marking the parts of the bible that seemed to contradict each other questions that we had in the quran and we asked all these questions together what were you believing i believed in a god i believed in god but i didn't know if islam was the religion of allah the religion of god and so that was that was what that exploration was like so subhanallah allah guided him but he also guided me so joshua became yusuf and became muslim alhamdulillah i mean and so he and i really converted together if you will and yusuf became my brother in the sense that he had a very difficult time when he embraced islam and he basically came to stay with us he would he would refer to my father as you know he'd call him pops which is an endearing way to say dad you know to my own dad my dad would treated him like a son the same way he treated me and my actual blood brother his family didn't support him so not initially not not in the beginning uh then alhamdulillah i mean almost everyone in his family became muslim by now yeah it spread through i mean his mother his grandmother it just spread throughout his aunt subhanallah his aunt who passed away from cancer and she she initially you know was not supportive at all and she became muslim right before she died so islam spread through his family i mean and to to go through that journey of faith together uh the way that we did it i mean and so till now you know my father will say he's his favorite son and what is omar suleiman's daily routine how do you spend your day different days different things but generally speaking a good morning routine is what's going to determine whether or not i have a good day so the first few hours of the day spent on reading and researching are very important very practical thing take my kid to school sometimes and then between me and my wife we take our kids to school but really those first few hours of the day is praying fajr doing the the morning afghan the morning remembrances and make the first couple of hours of your day a means of fulfillment and energizing yourself intellectually and spiritually read listen research and so my day has to start with a routine of of that you know wikir and then research and reading and doing what's important to me in that regard and then the rest of it can be work in terms of meetings and things of that sort but that's the most important part of my day so that's what i'd recommend to people inshallah we know that you're a huge fan of new orleans saints is it normal for any mom to be a huge fan when you're praying do you pray for your team as well so is it normal i don't think it's normal i'm not going to say it's normal um i grew up uh into sports so i played sports and i watched sports that was my leisure time was watching sports and playing sports where where i'm from you know the new orleans saints are a very big deal and one of the reasons why uh i i love them growing up is because they always would lose so they were they were a really bad team when i was a kid uh everyone knew them for how much they would lose in fact you know it was common for us to to see people rooting for the other team uh against the team so i love them because they were the underdog you know it was but you still didn't answer my questions do i pray for them [Laughter] you know maybe sometimes here or there you know it's okay to pray for your team just don't pray against the other team it was said that isis had put you on a killing list why do you think they saw you as a threat okay you don't seem to be a threat you're a very humble guy i don't know why anyone want to kill me yeah you're right i can understand why someone will be annoyed by me sometimes but not that um look uh that was um surprising but not surprising so it was a very interesting time with isis when they first came up because you had a lot of interesting emails that i was getting tweets and a lot of them were unknown accounts in fact the majority of them were unknown accounts threats are pretty normal from different quarters of different people so it's not just isis that does that but but i'd say i think isis because of the particular fear especially you know you're talking five years back i think at this point now five six years back the fear of isis right when isis made a video then it it became a big big story in the united states isis represents a perversion of islam daesh manipulates text it manipulates and and groups like daesh they manipulate the deen and they they try to teach people what it's not and subhanallah that's why i tell you know people that hate islam in america islamophobes i said that you and isis have the same reading of islam because they read violence into texts when it's not there they both distort the ayat of the quran they both distort the hadith of the prophet saddam so i say you guys are talking about the same religion but the 1.8 billion muslims are talking about this religion right so i think isis is threatened by mainstream muslim scholars and that's why who do they target they target mainstream muslim scholars because they need they need to to silence people is it true that you were handcuffed behind the back and arrested why do you put yourself at such a risk isn't it enough to read quran make salah on your own so that's a lot of questions in one um but i'll say that that was a protest against the the mistreatment of migrants at the border and i think that this is becoming a global issue and so i think it's important that we uh that we participate in those discussions the prophet saws he was a mercy to the world he wasn't just mercy to the muslims he was a mercy to muslims and non-muslims human beings and animals right he was a mercy to them all sallallahu so we have to champion that insha'allah what it means to be a mercy to the world but i i think it's important for muslims to be present in some of those uh uh discussions in sha allah and to to work for people in poverty people that are oppressed uh people that are being harmed whether they're muslim or not we have to consistently be present inshallah if you had a supplication you knew it would be accepted what would that be easiest question in the world that allah entered me into jannatul phildos without any questioning and without any punishment we don't want a personal supplication what about us the muslim community brother you forgot us when it comes to that look it's um the prophet saws he even said on the day of judgment allah will inspire him to make a dua that he he would have never said before so he doesn't even he did not even know what that dua was that would be on the day of judgment but i pray for forgiveness because you know the main the dura that allah gave to us to pray for forgiveness you are in an elevator and you noticed a young man who doesn't pray you want him to start praying you only have one time what would you say to him you know uh i i would first ask him about himself and i'd ask him what he wants in life and what he's pursuing what are you seeking what's your purpose in life what's your connection like with allah what's your what is it that keeps you going what is it that moves you what is it that inspires you so i'd ask him questions about himself because i know it's one minute but i have to ask him about himself you can't give dawah to someone you don't really know right and then i would take the approach if i only had one minute of gratitude because in gratitude we pray to allah subhanahu ta'ala because he commands us but the driver of our prayer is gratitude shouldn't we thank the one who gave us everything that we have shouldn't we offer at least these five daily prayers shouldn't we you know shouldn't we use what allah has given us to worship him with what he has given to us so i would i would then bring it back to gratitude your eyes your ears your your your thinking your sight your presence your existence the nerum the blessings that allah gives to you because shapon at the end of the day his challenge to allah from disconnecting people from prayer he said that you will find the majority of your servants are not grateful if they're not grateful they won't pray so gratitude is to drive someone back to prayer and so that's what i would do in one minute but what i'd also do is i take his phone number so i could have a longer conversation with him because one minute's not enough to change someone's life if you had the chance to say a few things to 17 he wrote amer he's just sitting in front of you i like your questions what would it be pace yourself don't try to do everything at one time develop work on yourself don't be sad because the obstacle that you face that might seem like it's going to be the worst obstacle in the world it's going to pass inshallah and what i mean by that is that sometimes especially you know when you're young you try to do too much at one time so pace yourself you know because if you burn out early on in life if you just exhaust yourself and do everything at one time or try to do everything at one time then you're not gonna be any good in five years or ten years so you see a lot of people young people they get very enthusiastic about dean about religion and they're so active in college and then they just burn out and they disappear so pace yourself take it easy keep things in perspective and inshaallah things will pass and also i would say to a 17 year old version of myself to value your parents more even though i was always very very you know attached to my parents but you just don't i don't think people understand how much they're going to miss their parents when they lose them and so if you have your parents keep them every single moment with them is so precious how would you answer someone who says i'm a muslim i have the kaaba i have the kable why should i care about liberation of masjid al-aqsa al-aqsa is the first qibla of the muslims and it is the place in which all of the prophets gathered to pray it is a place that allah has blessed in in so many different ways it's the place where our prophet saw some ascended to the heavens it is a place where when you read about the end times everything circles back to maasa to that area of al-aqsa al-aqsa being occupied should be as severe to the heart of the believers as if mecca madina work occupied it should it should paint us it is a duty and i get asked all the time is palestine a muslim issue of course it's a muslim issue but it's not only a muslim issue so it's a human issue there are human rights discussions about occupation and the humiliation of the palestinians the ethnic cleansing the settlement expansion the abandonment of muslim countries of our brothers and sisters there that's a human rights issue and those people are sacred because one person one of just one of those brothers and sisters that has their neck under the you know the boot of an israeli soldier is more sacred to allah not just than the cab itself the honor of that person of that one brother or sister that old woman that you see being pushed and shoved and spit on by an israeli soldier the child more sacred to allah than the kaaba or the masjid but at the same time if you lose an attachment to mas of aqsa you're losing a piece of your iman you know we are taught the prophet sallam taught us that if you can't go there then at least send oil to be in its lamps like that's the level of attachment that you should have to measure that i can't even i can't even go there i'm going to send oil for its lamps and i'll say this to helen in turkey the solidarity is just so crucial the solidarity of our muslim brothers and sisters for palestine is so crucial and so don't think that your your protest and don't think that your solidarity doesn't mean anything it means a lot to your brothers and sisters in philistine when they see their brothers and sisters in turkey showing that level of love and solidarity for them if you had a chance to speak to all non-muslims in the world just for just one minute what would you say to them learn about muhammad sallallahu islam learn about the man and you'll understand his mission know the prophet and you will realize why he is the culmination of the call of all the prophets before so learn would about muhammad see it's not even a whole minute it's almost 10 seconds learn about learn about the prophet [Music] muhammad um [Music]

Channel: Towards Eternity

Views: 734,875

Keywords: islam, muslim, towards etenity, omar suleiman, towards eternity omar suleiman, omar suleiman turkey, omar suleiman interview, imam omar suleiman, tough questions omar suleiman, who is omar suleiman, omar suleiman story, islamic scholar

Id: 0PHcnqPOuYQ

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2022