Abdurraheem Green – How to Create a Worldwide Dawah culture
AI: Summary ©
The speakers stress the importance of showing respect for Muslims' legality and finding connections with multiple people and mediums to promote their values. They stress the need for a strong message to change people's views and find a credible person to lead the charge towards Islam. They also emphasize the importance of creating a culture of peace and liberty for Muslims, as distraction and distraction can affect behavior and create a culture of peace and liberty. The pandemic and its impact on the economy and the uncertainty surrounding it are discussed as topic of discussion.
AI: Summary ©
As salam o aleikum, welcome to this live stream. I'm delighted to be with you this morning with Shane green. Are you doing che
Al Hamdulillah? Well, how are you wrong 100 on the law. So it's been a while since we've done a live stream.
I was with some of the brothers off the,
you know, Speaker's Corner on Sunday. And we were talking about the fact that I mean,
the Muslim culture, of giving Dawa Dawa to non Muslims as a general culture is missing, right? And this got me thinking, it'd be great if we did a live stream breaking down. Why is that the case? And how can we
create or facilitate or somehow jettison a worldwide culture of giving Dawa towards non Muslims? I thought, Who better to speak to than yourself? You dedicated 30 years or so to Dawa to non Muslims? So to get us going? Do you feel we are even close to the sort of cultural evangelism that the Christian Christians have? How far are we from, you know, say our counterparts on the other side? I think I think I don't think we're far at all
in the sense, in the sense that
in the sense that I think that I'll handle
the vast majority of informed Muslims.
And I mean, here, I mean, the masses, I don't necessarily mean the scholarly class or the academic class, I mean, the masses
who are reasonably informed about Islam, I think they instinctively know from their reading of the Quran, and from their understanding of the life history of the Prophet sallallahu, ala he was sort of how important data is.
And so anecdotally, I think there's some strong evidence for this as well. And that is the level the in ordinate amount of respect and attention that is given to do art. Now, you can take someone like Ali dower right, with all respect to Brother Ali. Yeah.
He's not very knowledgeable. Right?
He's not even that articulate.
Like when I listened to his some of his stuff,
you know, he's his, in the sense that he's, you know, he's not that amazingly articulate.
But what it is, is he is passionate and dedicated to Dow and he calls himself Ali Dower, which is a clever name, right? But he does go out there and give dower
Now I don't mean this as a slight on it at all. Right? Quite the opposite. Actually. It shows that why would people give someone like that? That much level of respect? Now I know because I've been in exactly the same situation. In fact, I don't count myself amongst the knowledgeable people at all right? Am I articulate? I'm pretty articulate. I don't say that out of a bowl. So I just know myself quite well that I'm quite articulate.
So what is it, you know, the in mice, you know, my own life history historically, that people gave me a level of attention and respect that they did not give to Imams to scholars? Right. Look at Mohammed hijab. Now, Mohammed hijab is both
quite knowledgeable and quite articulate, right? But Hamza sources, Zakir Naik? Most I mean, the common thread between all of us accepts Muhammad hijab is most of us don't speak Arabic. I know Ali doesn't, not really, Hamza doesn't not really zakian like doesn't not really I don't use it essays doesn't share. Medina I didn't write, but you will find people even from Saudi Arabia places that they will respect these a lot more than they respect their own scholars, it will give them a higher level of respect than even the likes of even of they mean and even Bas and I know this for a fact. People have said this literally said it to me. Why?
Right? The reason is very simple, is because no one who reads the Quran, with any level of understanding will fail to see that the Quran is all stories. Almost all of it is stories about data. And it's not doubt it's not it's not stories about telling other Muslims how to be better Muslims, right?
It's not stories about long feta discussions and big debates about whether this is Nigeria and whether you should make it a fire Dean or not, or blah, blah, whatever it was, from, you know, the, you know, the in the times before, in fact, the Quran warns us that people, you know, only differed after knowledge came to them. It's not as if, you know, having a lot of knowledge seems on its own to be some particular, you know, necessarily beneficial thing, right.
But people see that when people are out there giving dower
it's a type of jihad writes that type of struggle in the same way that I suppose historically, some of the most respected and admired and revered figures in Islamic history are the great generals and the great leaders who either defended the Muslim lands or conquered Muslim lands. And again, because that whole topic of jihad is a very strong theme,
you know, that you can see both in the Quran and the Syrah. So I think it's what it is, is that this instinctively Muslims know that Dao is something that is of a very high importance and in the Quran, and that is what the prophets fundamentally and primarily concerned themselves with, and why you find the Imams and scholars tossing and turning and scratching their heads and bemoaning the fact that no one respects them anymore.
The simple reason is because they don't really do the things that instinctively Garner people's respect, right, writing academic papers and getting involved in, you know, debates about the minutiae of this issue. And that issue, apart from a few people here, and the no one really thinks this is anything particularly worthwhile.
And again, I'm not saying that it's not worthwhile, I'm just saying this is instinctively what people believe. So, having said all of that, you asked me,
you know, is it far away? The possibility of the Muslims having a strong Dalit culture, like the Christians? I don't think so. I think we're on the cusp of it.
You know, it could happen very, very quickly.
But so what's missing? This is the real question. This is what we need to think about. Why aren't we?
You know, and I suppose we can go back to
the studies that have been done recently about, you know, what brings about societal change? What brings about major change? We don't need to say revolution, that I mean, you know, revolution has a, you know, a broad term, right? It, you know, like you could you can have, they don't need to be violent, doesn't only need to be a violent overthrow of an existing order. What it means is radical new ideas that people and they don't have to be new ideas. I'm not sure there's necessarily that many new ideas around. Right, what it is is rejiggering and restructuring existing ideas in new ways, right?
And so
that I think it's not far off.
That the essential elements are, first of all you need.
You need someone who I wouldn't say necessarily a genius, but you know, someone who has brought these ideas, someone who, you know, understands why these particular things are important, and how this, you know, this new idea, or this new arrangement of existing ideas, yeah, can have such a big impact.
But in addition to that, what is really important is you need someone who has connections, you need a person who is connected to lots of different people, and this person needs to be, you know, respected and admired and looked up to.
And finally, you've got to have someone who can articulate these ideas in really simple, easy to understand language, so that even the most obstinate person can grasp it.
And sometimes, all of those three characteristics are combined in one person very, very rarely. Normally, you need a collection of, you know, people
to be able to do that. And then of course, there's other things you need, like, you know, a medium or a platform through which these ideas can be communicated.
Because otherwise, you know, what you have if you have someone who's just really broad you know, like he's a genius, right but a genius on his own is mostly thought of as just the lunatic fringe madmen, you know, like, whatever. So I think you know, these these three
The elements
you need to bring together. Now, I think in the context of our discussion about creating a dour culture. And I think when we say a dour culture, we mean something very specific. We mean, evangelizing, that we still don't have an evangelical movement, in the sense that evangelizing is very, very clear to evangelical Christians. You know, it's almost, it's a branch of Christianity that has, as its main function of worship, you could say, is literally preaching the gospel. And to them, that's literally the purpose of life, the purpose of life, is to preach the gospel is to evangelize. And is to invite people to believe in Jesus and that, you know, that's literally I mean,
they do other stuff, but the thing that drives them more than anything. Now, that's not to say that the Catholics, for example, don't have a strong
preaching, movement they do. And obviously, they have the Jesuits. And historically, you know, they've been very aggressive in you know, forcefully converting people, you know, at the point of the sword, right?
To, you know, to Christianity. And until today, you can see the Philippines, the whole of Latin America, is just through Holy War, where Christians have conquered at the point of the sword and slaughtered and force people to accept their religion, right.
But apart from that, you know, whether it's, you know, St. Francis, St. Francis, of Assisi, who actually traveled in the Muslim world, and, you know, spread that spread, Catholicism tried to spread it there.
Or, you know, it's like they have a different system. So they tend to convert people through educational systems, that's their main avenue these days, is by building schools and so on. But point being is that whether it's the evangelicals, the Protestant evangelicals, or the Catholic Church,
they both have very strong movements within them. One is almost entirely driven by it, and the other is still has a strong movement of proselytizing their religion. Now, you know, how close are we to having something equivalent?
I don't know. I mean, it's, I think I'm sure it will happen. Simply because the Prophet said, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that you will follow those who came before you step by step how to stand by hands back. So whatever they did, we're going to end up doing it. And, you know, there's some negative things in some positive things, not all of it is negative, right?
So it's gonna happen.
How good of a thing is it? I definitely think we're at right now we're in the opposite direction. Like, right now we're in the thing of, of this very, there's almost no movement down movement at all. Right? Except for, you know, like, you know, you do have it, you have, of course, you have IRA, which is trying to create, you know, he's trying to spur that movement on and get it to happen. And you've always had, you know, groups of brothers going down, having our tables, some massage or doing exhibitions, you know, so there is, you know, and just ordinary Muslims talking to, you know, the people they work with. Yeah. So, that's always been going on Alhamdulillah. But in the sense of
there being a really committed, organized movement and Muslims generally
understanding on a on the level of practicing it, I think they understand it instinctively. But I'm not sure that they understand it practically.
The importance of calling non Muslim states now.
Yeah, so I think there's some key ingredient ingredients but you know, what, what were your thoughts? So you're talking to the brothers in Speaker's Corner What What were you guys theorizing and positive on this subject? Areas. Me, machine mentor, who, you know, from
2025 years ago, when we were discussing was the Dow in
Korea, I believe, Mongolia,
Africa, what's happening with, you know,
other religions, what they're trying to do there? And
I had some, I'm going to throw out a few thoughts to you and I want you to sort of analyze them whether we're going in the right direction. So I think one of the first things I believe, is people learn through observation, right? People learn through observation. So what
We repeatedly speak about Dawa.
And people see online. Muslims refuting other Muslims over trivial issues or they think okay, that's our, but when people start to see videos of mass shahada in Africa and Philippines and Latin America, I think that will do more for the worldwide our culture than any abstract, you know, paper about the obligation of power, or a really powerful or eater. I think just the visuals and the accessibility for people to plug into that system. That will be a self feeding loop, far greater than anything that a particular Scholar can do, a particular person can do. And secondly, this, I believe, has to be done in a way that the vast majority of Muslims that listen our Jamaican plugin
collectively, because one of the things which I think I found quite distasteful is the passion with which people are willing to defend their motherboard, their particular brand of Islam, as opposed to a wall of Islam. And I feel that's almost a sign of hypocrisy, that you are so passionate about that branch that you want to support over the fact that the religion of Islam is far more important for us to propagate, then, you know, having distractions like this, I'll give you an example. I've without naming the country. We were in a very remote country. And we were dealing with a place where the vast majority of people are non Muslim. And, you know, Islam is very difficult there for the
people. So there's quite a few countries that fall into that category. And I remember of the scholars of that region, one of the first things he wanted to he said to me was, do you guys do a one month hub? Do you follow up? I obviously said, you know, we, you know, we go with the mother with the land. We're not here to challenge anybody, we work with everybody. But deep down inside, it just felt shift like, What the * is wrong with you? We're here in the non Muslim country. We're here as foreigners trying to help you to give Dawa we spent hours coming here by you know, our own money. You know, we're giving you our time, our energy, our passion, our you know, everything. And
these are the trivial pathetic things that you're asking us, as opposed to what did you learn from that hour? Let's work together. Let's do this. Let's do that. Why boring me with your trivial questions. Like it literally drove me mad, because I didn't react. But this is not the first time it's happened in other countries. I've sat down with Okay, some I went to a country, some of the brothers said, there's a local scholar we want you to meet. I said, okay, but generally, I haven't had, you know, I don't really get along too much with people. Because I with people have a scholarly class because I sometimes just feel like they just don't get what we're trying to achieve. Sat down
one of the first things, are you whiny Are you Tablighi? Are you this? Are you that are you know, so and so. And I was just saying, Look, you know, we're just here for that. He just wouldn't have it. Like, all he wants you to know is where do I pigeonhole you? And then am I going to refute you? Am I going to do this? And I just feel, you know, I don't care whether you're a scholar, I don't care whether you graduate from here and there. I question your loyalty to Islam, like you seriously think is so important to pigeonhole people, and to start speaking about these trivial issues, when clearly we're here for giving Dawa to non Muslims. It doesn't matter whether we fit in your pigeonhole,
right. And I've met people from many different, you know, backgrounds, and Alhamdulillah, from all of the branches of Adela Sana, from all of you always get those like minded people who want to plug into your role. So as I was saying, people know this, I think a lot of you're reasonably educated, well informed Muslims know this, and they are sick and tired of it, like some of them buy into it, you know, probably because they don't have much at all. Right? And that's all they can do. Right? They can't really think for themselves that much. Right? And, you know, which is fine, right? But I think there's a lot of people who feel exactly the same way. And they, you know, again, they may not
have articulated it quite so well as you but they feel exactly that thing goes back to what I was saying, right? In the beginning. Like why do people listen to Ali Tao or me, you know, or Hamza sources, you know, Ozark Ignite,
or atma de Medina.
Why would they even ask us fatwas by you think they you think they would say okay, these guys are not scholars, right? Why? Well ask them a thoughtful right, because they don't. The reality is they don't trust their Imams for this exact reason that you've said right, all of the what they generally see from them. Is this partisanship this you know, this fanaticism this divisive attitude
You'd right?
And they just people, people, a lot of people have had enough, they realize that the OMA is not going anywhere with this type of attitude, and it's going nowhere fast and the OMA has been going nowhere fast. Right? For probably, you know, 250 years since the Ottoman Empire started declining, right.
So, you know, there's something Something needs to change and something needs to give I you know, one of the things I, I really do believe that
Dow you know, dalata non Muslims has the, the really does have the capacity to,
to revive, but
I think it is a path, a real path of revival, and to put some life back in, you know, into, into the Allah the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam. But yeah, I agree with you. But I think that actually getting on board the psychology classes is key, because there is a paradox here, right.
Just as people instinctively feel attracted towards dogs, they also know probably instinctively that they're not scholars, right, they don't have that same level of knowledge and understanding, right. And so there is some sort of a credibility gap, while they may respect them for their efforts, that, you know, it's only a matter of time before, you know,
these things, the cracks begin to shut, but you don't need to listen to any of us for long, right, whether it's Muhammad hijab, Ali Tao, or me or whoever it may be, to realize that, you know, there's, there's some sort of pretty crazy stuff coming out from,
from from, you know, so, you know, so the thing is, it is important to get, because that's this is, I think, when you can say, oh, observation is way more important. It's you shouldn't think like that, that is a mistake. To think like that. What you need to understand is that actually, effective change is going to come through a gather getting together of these different things, right? So if you have that you can, yes, you can motivate people
through what you said, these videos of people going into Mongolia or Papua New Guinea, or wherever it is, right? Sure. Right.
You know, and these things, give people that motivation, it gives them that, you know, that realisation of what is important of what we've lost. It's true, but I don't think it's going to go that far. If you don't have the support and the backing of
these people, they're the people who can, you know, that their skill base is gathering the information, right? And in this case, for us the information is evidences from the Quran and the Sunnah. Right. And so, could I push by my theme, obviously, evidence is from a Quran and Sunnah. But it does depend on who's presenting it. And so I think getting, you know, you don't have to get all of the scholars on board. So like you said, some of these people they're going to do is ask the city questions, right. But you need to get enough of them on board who realized how important this is, you know, to give you back in and that is key and less important. Yes.
I would slightly disagree with this. And I'll give you an example. Maybe we don't disagree. But
when, when I've been challenged in a mosque after I gave a talk on our on, well, which scholar did give you permission to give Dawa in our towns in our town, right in our city, right?
The way I thought about it is if we are at the forefront, as into ot at the forefront of calling non Muslims to Islam, then the scholars with the right mindset will be attracted to that movement and then endorsed that movement, as opposed for us to go and grovel to people who is just going to waste our time and energy. We were just trying to beat a dead horse. So it's better to observation that the like minded people from all these different brands of Islam come together by at least it's like a torch light. You know, Natasha, it's like a lighthouse out in the sea. And then everybody's going towards that, as opposed to going to particular institutions and trying to speak to people you
shake. I'll give you an example. There was an other graduate right a person clearly should know Islam. And me and John Fontaine, we were out, giving Dawa and speaking to people about, you know, Islam, and he was saying, you're giving our wrong and people were like taking him seriously. And he was he was basically openly confronting us. And he's saying you're telling Christian
What's the difference between you two, you're supposed to tell them what's similar. And everybody wants you to listen to this guy. So the thing is, I rather go through the approach of observation and everyone coming to us, rather than us going and trying to convince people who it's just a wasted effort. Do you see my point?
Yeah, well, I mean, you bet you've you've sort of, you've just proved me right and refuted yourself and what you said,
because you just said the guy from Asada was saying this, and everyone was listening to him. Thank you. Exactly. My point. Yeah. So you've sort of proved me right there in what your example that you gave, right. And that's exactly the point.
And, you know, I don't really care how you get them on board. You know, it doesn't really matter to me, whether you go out show an example, and the like minded people are going to join you. Or you go and sit at their feet and you know,
and grovel before them, in order to get them to agree with you. It doesn't really matter. It's well, at the end of the day, bro, Islam, and obeying Allah and spreading his deen is more important than us groveling to anyone. It's better that we
are we sort of arrogant and proud that we can't do that? Yeah, no problem. I will apologize. And you know, Chef, you are the great chef and of Islam. And just in that we need your help. We need your guidance. Yeah. You know, if that's going to tickle his ego, and make his you know, scholarly credentials, you know, shine up on his wall, you know, and say, Yeah, Mashallah. And then he's going to support the effort, then good, we'll do it. Who cares, right? Because now the work is more important than, you know, anyone's ego or our own ego or whatever, right? It's about what works. And the fact that what you said sort of proves exactly my point here, because savant or whoever, right,
can say whatever they like, but all it takes is some guy from us to come along and say, no, no, no, no, you should be doing this. And you should be doing that. And, and everyone thinks, yeah, who is the support guy anyway? Right. Yeah. All saying, you know,
or saying, oh, let's not, let's not do the go wrap. Just me and atheist and give him the five pillars.
I mean,
I mean, this is this is something that was spreading the UK amongst me, we lost some people to this narrative, right? No, no, no, don't follow the Go rap. Just go to an atheist and give them the five pillars. I remember this years back, or maybe offline, I can tell you who it is right.
And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that intelligent dog, people who should know better, retractable street experience. Were willing to listen to this guy, right, say this, as opposed to the logical thing which works, which is to actually speak to an atheist about God, as opposed to just giving him the five pillars. And that's it. We don't need to do anything further. So I think you're right. And yeah.
Yes, about the verses of the Quran, where I was from Ottawa asks,
questions, was it made from nothing? Are you the creators of it? Did it create itself? So you don't go through that at least? More subtle? AirFloss? Really, and give them a little tough zero? So little floss? Right? It's just that what?
Again, it goes back to your point it's going to be
you can you can give you all the evidences, but if you don't have the credentials, then you know, people just don't even if the evidence is there, they don't listen to you.
Yeah, well, we've seen this, we've seen this, you know, in life, but I think, at the end of the day,
you know, you're always going to get, you're always gonna get these type of things happening. And that's just part of the challenge of the doubt. Right. But I mean, it just shows even the more importance of you know, getting credible voices on board, you don't need every voice on board, you just need some that are credible, and that are accepted. Right.
And that's,
that I, yeah, that's the key thing. You know, I don't want to be like, I don't want to give the image that no one endorses it. I mean, they are very, very good. You know, scholars who do endorsed our to non Muslims, and they have done for a very long time, actually.
I remember that. I mean,
even at a micro level people without a social media presence, but they have a scholarly or student knowledge background. I've seen their reaction when they've seen people working in the field of power towards non Muslims and they love it. I mean, there are very good people out there. It's just sometimes
you would expect them to be leading the charge as opposed to being led. I think that that's what I find surprising.
If you're right, I mean, if we have to grovel, if we have to do this, if we have to do that, then the day we're trying to, you know, nothing is more important than the mission of Islam. So whatever I think so, the thing is, is that you are still going to need, I do still think, ultimately, you need and you're going to need a credible voice and extremely credible voice to lead the way.
And it's all it takes you only it only takes a couple of, you know, scholars of real credibility, who are respected widely to, you know, to make this a consistent point. But I mean, you know, like, the thing is, is that the PA The reason why
I mean, look there, on the other hand, things may never change, like the Catholic church hasn't really dramatically changed its approach very much.
You know, it has, you know, for them evangelizing is a part of what they do. But, you know, they have this priesthood, they have all the other things that are going on. Or as evangelicals, it's like almost a single minded, that's literally what their reason for being is. Right.
And so it comes from also very, very,
you know, well, quite different interpretations of Christianity and the whole approach to the gospel and the Bible. And, you know, you know, that that whole approach and understanding is very, very, you know, it's different, as you know, right.
So I don't know, it's not like we're looking forward to some new type of sects in Islam. But it's interesting that a lot of the dour to non Muslims, and it's being done in the world today. A lot of it is being done by people who are very influenced by, you know, the Salafi movement. If they're not actually, you know,
badge wearing selfies, I don't know if anyone is anymore. But you know, who people are, but they're definitely influenced by it.
And nothing, because there's, because I think it just offers that sort of departure from the, you know, the fossilized, fossil fossilized. And, you know, this whole, you know, madhhab ism, and, you know, this, you know, as you can see people being
lost in these constant arguments about the minutiae of, you know, FATCA and worshipping aqidah, which must be above most people's heads. Anyway, to be honest, I don't know a lot what Alan, you know, I mean, it's not necessarily true.
Yeah, I mean, sure. Khadija was obviously not a Salafi, but I did, I was reading an article recently, where some Salafi Imam was, you know, making the I hope he is
justice capable of anyone else's being, you know, fictitious and audience, you know, what I, you are you are this, or you have that, and whatever. I mean, it's almost like, no one's free of it. No one's free of it. I mean, in my experience, I can openly say this, you know, you cannot say one group of Muslims is more guilty than the other. And you will find everywhere, people from different sectors have a hilason not supporting the general workflow, because they're the broad minded people who say, you know, what, this is not, it's not worth it. It's really not worth it. And when it comes to shake up, Medina, you know, he's the one who, in a way, arguably started the modern Dawa in the
West, especially right. And a lot of it, I mean, they, look, I absolutely love him, but I don't obviously use the Bible as primary evidence, right. However, I still promote his stuff, because it's the confidence share, right? It's the confidence, not actually the Bible. It's him standing there as a Muslim with full confidence and just speaking to people. That's what really, I believe, was the success behind him. I could be wrong. I mean, I don't know.
You know, if missionaries, you know, when it comes to his arguments, if there's how valid they still I think they probably still are, but that's what Muslims are really looking for. So when he stood up, and he started, you know, preaching, and, you know, we have his
biography here in the office. What's interesting is us giving dollar for maybe 30 something years before he became like, viral back then. Right. So he had years of training. And again, you know, he couldn't care. I mean, the Saudis were giving him awards, and clearly he was
So if you're right, and then you have all these other groups of Muslims, and some deobandis, and you're obviously closer to them, you know, they were refuting him. They were, you know, he's this and he's that. And the fact is, he was somebody who everybody of the like minded mindset started to support, because they just saw a confident Muslim speaking. And sometimes that's all it takes. I'll tell you something interesting. I was speaking to an atheist. This is hilarious, right? I couldn't believe this. This is just like one of those bizarre conversations. And I was talking to him about God's existence. And, you know, I know you don't like the really detailed evolution stuff. But you
know, I was having some really intricate debates about evolution as well. And it just wasn't working. None of that stuff was working right. And then he said to me, do you know what savour
agent says, in these words, but he basically said, There was a time, I came very close to believing in God, I pretty much did.
And it was when I was watching on the news, an interview of a member of the Taliban speaking. And you speaking with such confidence, I almost got.
And I was thinking to myself, Oh, my God, this guy, who's, you know, he's going to argue with me about philosophy and science, and this and that, and really intellectual atheist way, he was getting affected by some guy who probably couldn't even, like speak English, you know, just the confidence about God, I don't know what he was talking about. And just made me just think that look, human nature is not going to change. There's nothing new under the sun. No one's really intellectual, right? People are generally emotional, and they go by
confidence. Absolutely. And I think this is the thing, it comes back to the the key one of the keys to creating a proper global dollar movement, where Muslims once again, take this whole matter of giving down to non Muslims really, really seriously. And I think the key is, ultimately, it's emotion, it's, you know, you have to make them feel the emotion of it, and they are emotional. Muslims do get emotional. When people take shahada, when they become Muslim, they do get emotional about it.
And there's a reason why they get more emotional when you know, at someone from the West,
simply because they view the West, as you know, more, in a sense, generally more aggressive enemies of Islam. So it's like when someone who has seems to have a general unjust say, you know, the sort of enmity towards Islam becoming Muslim, that becomes even more amazing sort of more emotion is quite normal. It's not like some, it's just a normal emotional reaction.
So the dimension of emotion has to be taken in, at the end of the day, if you're, you know, thinking, if one is thinking how to
create a movement, a successful movement, I think one of the things is you in some ways, you just have to keep doing the work. And one of the things we were actually very good at in the early days of AI era. And in fact, that was the core of what we were doing in those days, was going around to massage it, telling people what we were doing, reminding them of the importance of giving dower to non Muslims, and then giving them a small, go wrap down training. And all of that will be done in a day. And as well, as you know, doing some fundraising. The benefit of that was is that we had huge responses, we have lots of people turning up to our training. Now how many of those people may
put that into practice, only Allah knows that, but that's not the point, maybe you're missing, maybe the point is being missed missed, you're only going to get 20%. At the end of the day, you're only going to get a small fraction of people are actually going to go out there and do the work. It's just the way it always is. Right? You will always have a small number of people who do most of the work. But unless you go out there, and there's two, there's two benefits, it's going to have number one benefit is you create a support network. And you revive just a mindset of why Tao is important amongst the ordinary Muslims. And the other benefit is you will find some people who are ready to do
this work. You will find some people who are actually going to be dedicated to it and they're going to put their time and effort and energy into it. So I mean, I know martial law in my era, we have Imran and we have motors. They're still doing this. They're still going around the country. They're doing this dour training, they're telling people about how important data is
And, you know, I think this is very, very key, but needs to be done in other places in the Muslim world as well. Yeah, it does. And you don't you were speaking about this. And it reminded me of the power when, when somebody already has certain traits. And they just need that extra salt, that extra ingredient, which is just going to get them ready. There's a brother, who I'm not going to name him doing, you know, you shouldn't praise someone too much. But this guy, he's possibly Jim, it still is. And he used to go to, you know, Thursday night and all of that stuff. And when he came across Ira stuff, he's just like, that's it. This is my golf. No. And he just started just doing these, you
know, going in front of the Big Ben saying up at our stall, right, going to East London going here. Good. He's the same guy made you meet during the event, global demand that we had last year in Wembley. And he had that he turned up randomly at that point. And I got you to me and right now that brother, who, you know, he's he doesn't like being you know, doesn't like praise and stuff. That guy, who was he? He was just, you know, an average Muslim. You know, he, he's just one of those guys who regularly goes on Jamaat, but what mate? What, what gave me a lot of hope is there's so many companies, there's so many people with those sacrificial, you know, mindset, that mindset of, you
know, there's a local Tablighi guy in my area, and he went to Latin America for one year on his own expense, one whole year, and I have met them in Latin America in many different places. So you know, this, these very good people in the Ummah that exist already. And this literally, you know, you said, it's only going to be a fraction, a fraction of an of a normal one, something billion is still, you know, 10s of millions of people, right? The web Gmod members are more than 20 million from what I read a few years ago. So you know, if we can activate even a small percentage of the Ummah, we're still talking about 10s of millions of people. And the impact is going to be
disproportionate because Islam is the truth. We don't need all this aid and humanitarian stuff. And, of course, it's good to facilitate, but Tawheed is so contagious, right? I mean, give you an example. We when we were in Mongolia, we were speaking to the shepherd, and it's so beautiful, because all around us with these mountains and greenery and you know, the traditional Mongolian look. And there's a shepherd who just started speaking to him. And he has some Kazakh Muslim neighbors, but they don't really, you don't speak to him about Islam. So you know some things about Islam. So we just broke down through here, the concept that you cannot call upon or worship anyone
besides God, and just make total sense to him. Like there's no resistance there. But if you go to and you know, we have the god Giannis and we even have Hindu preachers in Africa, right? They have to teach people weird stuff. Like this guy. You know, the old man with the white beard in India was very famous
for his name.
Something guru sagas, yeah. Sadhguru Sadhguru. Right. So he put something on Twitter,
where all these African people were basically doing some Hindu ritual. And he's talking about, oh, how fantastic Hinduism is or whatever, right? I was thinking, What crap? You've just taken advantage of these poor people, right? But the reality is, we don't need to give them food or do any of the things that you're doing these nonsensical things and take pictures. We speak to him about the heat and they're going to leave that nonsense in a second. Right? So we it's like what the Mufti said it was one of the most days in Africa, he said, we only need 5% of the budget of the missionaries and we could do far more work
or greater impact than them and that's something you know, when when we do talk about it's only going to be a small group of humans. You know, that's not a negative thing that's still very significant.
I mean, we have the you know, at the end of the day we have all the core ingredients everything we need. I mean it's just the story of the OMA isn't it written you know, in microcosm the story of the OMA like the OMA we have everything we have all the resources we have the people we have the mineral resources, we have the material resources, we have everything we need to build a great civilization but we just can't seem to do it. And it's the same with the dollar really, we have all the ingredients we have everything that is needed.
You know,
the, all the essential ingredients for a message that people
I'm going to accept it and stick with it. A simple, it's very simple later in Milan Tawheed is super simple. At the same time, it's unexpected because people, either they haven't heard of Islam, or what have they heard about Islam is negative often. So when they hear what Islam is, it's like, oh, that's free. You know, I wasn't expecting that.
You know, the idea is concrete, it's very simple are five pillars of this, you know, the five pillars of Islam. very concrete, very simple, very beautiful, easy religion. Right?
You have all you have all you have the emotion, we have the beautiful stories to tell. It's all they're all the essential ingredients for success. You know,
as you know, you look at the chip and Heath book, right?
Made the stick. Yeah.
Chip and Dan Heath there. But it's like, That's it, though, there was all the essential ingredients, we've got it all, it's just what we don't seem to be able to do is deploy those amazing things that Allah has given us, you know, in a really, really productive, beneficial, useful way. But again, it I don't think it takes much, bro. It just takes commitment, it takes focus. The other thing is, is we're always getting distracted. Now, this is, I think one of the big tricks that shaytaan plays on us, we're always getting distracted. We're always allowing our attention to be diverted from the key points to
something that may be important, but it's just not as important as, as the main thing. And that's happening all the time. I was thinking Subhanallah, you know, just the other day, I was thinking about the amount of money we send British Muslims in the UK and the amount of money that's sent abroad, the amount of money that is spent
for aid, yet the Muslim community in the UK itself is suffering from serious problems.
And no one will spend money on solving those problems. Yeah.
Which is sort of crazy.
Right? It's sort of crazy.
And, you know, despite what anyone's saying that money is not unlimited, there is there is a finite number of Muslims,
you know, 2.5 million, and each one of those Muslims, the income of all of those Muslims, only reaches a certain amount of money. Even if they spent every single penny they had on dollar and didn't feel it feed their families didn't pay the rent, or did none of that. And they gave all of their money in charity, it still would not even touch solving. Like if every Muslim in the UK gave us all of their money and left nothing for rent or food. We still wouldn't, as an organization, I era, have enough money to do all the work that we need to do, let alone all the aid organizations, let alone feeding all the hungry people and all the starving people and rebuilding everyone's homes
and this and that. So this, there's got to be some rational way of understanding what is really important, what is really worth spending our money on. And I'm sure I'm not sure that this is part, I'm not sure we're doing that I'm pretty sure we're not doing that.
And I think that's part of the challenge that we face, again, is we just get distracted too easily. And that can happen on an individual level or community level or even an organizational level.
Even within our own organization, we have to ask ourselves these questions, are we getting distracted? This is why I'm constantly you know, personally, I'm constantly afraid of it. This entropy, you know, this movement away from the really hard work of going out there and giving dower and inviting people to
that's the hard work. That's the stuff that people admire and respect and they say, You know what, I'll give you money to do that because I don't see myself doing that. Releasing myself but you know, feeding your neighbor and giving them gifts and holding an Eid event and inviting the non Muslims around and you know, smiling and like come on.
Every any Muslim can do that. You don't need a special dying to be able to sit in a center and just talk to people about Islam.
Yeah.
I think one of the things which is going to facilitate a Dawa culture as well is when we're clear on what is the objective, right? And I've heard people involved in Dawa say the very opposite of the objective, which is the right objective of Dawa, which is people accept
ting Islam and remaining upon Islam. That is the objective. People saying fluffy things like I was just conveying the call is just because you know, if you really just think about it, a lot of this is to do with clarity. like Tony Robbins, one of the big things he speaks about is clarity is power. When you know what you need to do it, that itself just gives you a whole sort of motivation. So, you know, going back to, you know, the Sierra, we see, if the processor had the mindset of I'm just here to convey why would you leave maca? Why would you look for more fertile land? Why would he go and get older in another area? Why would he go and you know, get the pledge from the people in Medina.
Clearly, it wasn't just conveying the call, yet. We have very educated people saying, Oh, just be nice and convey the call. And that was done. But clearly that there was an urgency for people to accept Islam. And I would argue
not that we do this, but they are. My interpretation is there's an urgency for people to accept Islam of a certain caliber as well. People that could give Nusra to Islam, people that could give strength to Islam.
It was It wasn't just like, wholesale, let's just give it out to everybody. I believe there was an element of let's look for those strong people. And in fact, why shouldn't we also think like that, okay, here's a person who is very influential. It reminded me of when I was with some Tbilisi brothers in Oxford, many years ago, Bilawal Bhutto who is the son of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister. He was studying at Oxford University. And I remember one of the Tbilisi uncles telling me that we're trying to target him. We're trying to go for this guy. And I was thinking Subhan Allah, what a fantastic thing. They've already got cricketers, they've already got, you know,
movie stars, who already has these people that this targeted? Now they want to go for the son of the prime minister, who, you know, he's a Shia, he is completely away from Islam. You know, those nothing, call me speak or do properly yet. They're like, they're not thinking big. They're thinking big. Let's go for him. He's in the city. Like, when it comes to Dawa, we should also be thinking, if this person accepts Islam, that's a point of inflection. That's something that can bring around a big change. I mean, if you look at far right figures, right, I was looking at a tweet of Nick Griffin,
the leader of the former I don't know if he's still the leader, the BNP, right. And, you know, you know, some of the views that he has very conservative, and they actually fit with Islam. Obviously, a lot of stuff doesn't write, versus thinking, if we truly had the power mindset, rather than complaining and moaning and crying about Oh, this guy's Islamophobic. Has anyone thought? Why don't we use the fact that he already believes in certain conservative values? And has anyone actually tried to convince them?
Why do we have this constant mindset of victimhood and, Oh, this guy's oppressive and that guy's oppressive, as opposed to, you know, recently? You know, when we were in Mongolia, one of the things Esau spoke about is that book Han, the grandson of Genghis Khan, the direct grandson of Brent Kangaskhan, accepted Islam while he was the ruler and the Muslims are subjects. And then he attacked his own cousin who attacked about God. And that was the first inter Mongol conflict, right?
The fact that Burke Han was given power to by one of his subjects who were pretty much enslaved, right? The Muslim was enslaved. He was the ruler of modern day, you know, the area close to Pakistan, I believe it's called the Blue horde later on. Nobody thought at the time. No, Muslims need to be technology, technologically and morally, and politically, we need to do activism and to defeat the Mongols. No, he just gave him Dawa and BookCon became Muslim, more support was given to Islam through BookCon then it was through, you know, people just hiding and trying to fight even fighting the Mongols wasn't as effective as actually giving Dawa to them. Yeah, the only thing
Yeah,
absolutely broke. And I think these are stories that, you know, that's the key thing is that these stories need to be told.
You know, we need to tell these stories, and people need to understand this. And we need because this whole thing of storytelling, gaming stories out there, you know, it's what what, what that does is it puts these ideas into a very concrete easy to understand form. And because that's what people do, they remember stories. And when they remember stories, they tell other people, those stories.
And I think again, we need to mine our history for stories like that, because it's a very, very good example of the power of
doubt.
And again, it just shows that maybe we're just not looking in the right direction
as to what is going to, because I think that, I think part of the reason is if we're going to be completely honest,
and you said this at the beginning, I don't think there are some people that what they are attached to is their sects, they're attached to the group, they're attached to some particular thing. And a lot of people are, quite frankly, just interested in their own, you know, their own comfort.
That's the reality that is interesting, which is fair enough, like who isn't, they're interested in having a comfortable life.
They're interested in
even when they think about the victory of Islam, they think about it in terms of the material benefit that will accrue to them and their families.
They think I want my town to be civilized and advanced and clean and ordered, likes in like they imagined things are in the West. So if and when they think of these things, they think of it in terms of worldly benefits.
And obviously, that is not going to be the intention and the attitude that is going to be most conducive to the sacral the you know, the demands of sacrifice that Tao is going to make, because now what is it demanded demands? It does, you're going to have to make sacrifices.
And it allows, you know, also that mentality, that mentality of being attached to the world, is that often not compatible with the mentality of thinking about Islam holistically thinking, you know, it's very important. Here's the story I used to tell a lot. When I when.
When I went to
Israel and Palestine during the First Intifada that soon after the First Intifada, I went there with use of Islam. And there were about a group of 18.
You know, British Muslim, most of us will come convert, I think we were all converts, except maybe one or two, but most of us were converts.
So we went there. We spent, I think, 10 days driving around, we have been driven around by these brothers. Mashallah, may Allah bless them.
At the end of it, we were asking this question to the brothers, what can we do?
What can we do to help Palestine? What can we do to help the cause?
So,
what do you think the brother said?
You know, what they said to us, and by the way, I'm thinking, I'm the only person who acted on this piece of information. I don't think anyone else did.
Okay. But if they said, go back to England, and invite the people to Islam.
They didn't say, produce a pamphlet about
some moss, which is what one brother did, yeah. Start starting organization, creating awareness about Palestine and raising money for Palestine, really, which is what another brother did.
It is to say that the guy said to us right in front of us go back and give down, go back and invite the people to listen.
And
of all the things in the room, he gave the reason he said, Because if they're Muslim,
they will support us.
They will understand what this is about. And so this the thing is this, this was a Muslim brother speaking this was a person who primarily cannabis.
It wasn't it I don't think he cared about the Palestinian cause. Particularly it wasn't Palestine or some Palestinian cause, or it wasn't that the cause that he really cared about was the cause of Islam.
What he really cared about was pleasing Allah and His messenger.
And he realized that when a person is a Muslim, who is a true Muslim will stand up for justice, a true Muslim, wherever it is. Muslims will stand for justice.
They will stand against tyranny and injustice and wrongdoing.
And they ultimately the goal is a goal that is pleasing to Allah, not a political goal. Not it's not about a nation, or some flag or some made up nationality. That means nothing in the sight of our master paradigm.
This is not what it's about.
So they understood something I took something that was Sunday.
very deep
and understood something very profound from what that brother said is that he understood what's the power of doubt.
And he he had a holistic view of the ummah
of the revival of Islam.
So that's another story of Rome about, you know, the, of how somewhat How is how is it that someone in such a desperate situation, their land occupied, taken away from them living in constant? Tyranny? Yeah. What was he thinking about inviting people to Islam, so, people to Allah, because what he's thinking about, it's come full circle, because as you were speaking, I was remembering
some of the campaigns that we've done, we've actually worked with brothers from that area.
And people have accepted Islam through our facilitation of those brothers in the Holy Land. And one of the people that came to mind right now, I'm not gonna say his name, but he's one of the members of the Dawa team there, who was formerly with the IDF.
And he's a Muslim now, right? So the thing is, if, if that was the intention, if the intention was to, you know, that inshallah that Palestinian brother is still alive and well and healthy, if his intention was to help Palestine through dour, we can see some micro elements of that, because these are signs from Allah. They literally I just, I even the guy's name is in my head right now the brother, because they sent me the pictures of this guy, funnily enough, you he wasn't actually, you know, he was a Jewish agnostic before you can vote. And I think a lot of them are, I think, a lot of
God. But that's amazing. That's amazing that, you know, the work of, and there is a lot of work happening of Dawa, and Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and a lot of these places, and some of those guys actually came to see us just a few months ago.
You were not in London at the time, but they just came over for a few days.
So, you know, if you have that intention, and inshallah that's what the intention The brother was, Allah shows you signs that that is better. That is happening. I mean, that for me, and I'm not knocking the work that I do the people that do work for Palestine. I mean, we're not knocking anybody out. That for me, is my contribution as opposed to going and protesting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, bro. Listen, it's been a good session. Yeah, I have the luxury to talk for a lot longer. But I think there's more than enough for anyone who's listening to hopefully, maybe they can contribute some thoughts and some ideas and suggestions to us.
Yeah, I want to bring back our regular lives in Sharla. And I think this is a good time for me and you early morning.
We could start going to these, you know, going through this. So any last message you'd like to give summarizing how to create a worldwide our culture?
I think, you know, telling stories around our reminding ourselves of those stories is, is if there's one thing we can all do, we can all sit down with our kids and our families and, you know, our nieces and nephews especially and tell stories tell stories of the prophets and their Tao tell the story of Hebrew. Tell the story of Musa tell the story of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the efforts they made to call people to Islam because everyone needs to be reminded about how important these things are. And this is such a key important part of our religion that unfortunately, I still think until today, it's just really just not given the attention and the
focus. That is it's true, right.
Brilliant doc locker chef for everybody watching. Thank you for joining us on one acre rahmatullahi wa