In this short episode, Br. Abduraheem Green takes us through the process or doing street dawah. He talks about the 3S of street dawah, mainly sincerity, sabr and smiling.
Abdurraheem Green – How To Do Street Dawah
AI: Summary ©
The importance of visibility and being patient in Islam is emphasized, along with introducing oneself to people and following social media. The speakers stress the importance of body language, social media, and introducing oneself to others. It is crucial for individuals to be patient and persevere, and social media is used as a means to achieve long term objectives. It is crucial to avoid going down the line of trying to answer all uncomfortable questions and instead find a way to make people feel comfortable and addicted to social media.
AI: Summary ©
Slam will enter everywhere. It's going to happen. There is no doubt about it.
About 29 years ago, when I first became Muslim, one of the first things I did was get involved in the work of doubt. And it was street down. In London in England, we have a central place called Leicester Square, where there's a lot of cinemas and near there's a lot of nightclubs. But the main thing is a lot of traffic there of people during the nighttime, so it's a pedestrian area. So we went down there to give down and I spent many years on the street giving down. So what we're doing here brothers and sisters is compiling for you some of the things that we have learnt about how to give down on the street. Street dour is when we go to the streets and talk to people about Islam.
It's very important that we do that because it creates visibility. It's fine writing articles doing community work, and that's all very good and very important. But you need to know brothers and sisters that being out there having a presence on the street is part of the prophetic methodology. It's something that Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam himself did. He used to go down to the Kaaba, he used to pray in public, he used to talk to the people, there was a very, very public place. He used to go to the marketplaces, he went to the events where people gathered. That's not only something that Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam did, but we find is the methodology
of all the prophets. When the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam sent Musab in America to Medina, Musab used to stand on the street. And he used to talk to people and have conversations with people on the street. It's something we find the Christians have understood very well the importance of visibility of being there and talking to people on the street. And sometimes that happens, they may stand there for hours, and no one talks to them. But it doesn't matter. Because you're creating that visibility, that we have a presence. And at the end of the day, brothers and sisters, it's very important for you and for you to understand. Our obligation is to convey the message. It's not up to
us whether people are guided to Islam or not. But we have that responsibility to establish the hjem to establish the proof. So at least on the Day of Judgment, if you go and you stand there on the street, and people pass you, you will be free in front of Allah. And you can say, Well, I was there, I made my effort. I was there I gave people the opportunity to hear the message. It's up to them whether they took the time to stop and listen and talk to me or not. So there are three S's three S's of straight down. The first and most important is sincerity. Of course, in Arabic, we call that a class, a class last should be the first thing that we think about. But I want you to think about
sincerity from the point of view of what emanates from you what what is what is your essence about if you are doing something sincerely and purely and truly for Allah subhanaw taala. And that is what is in your heart, what is in your heart reaches the hearts of people, this is the route if you what is in the heart reaches the heart words, well, words can come in, out in one ear and out of the other. But what comes from sincerity, what comes from real belief and real commitment that reaches the hearts of people. So this aspect of sincerity brothers and sisters is very important, you need to work on it, you need to think about your intention. And you need to make sure that you are doing
things purely and sincerely for a lot. So that's the first thing that's the first s. The second s which is very important is sobor. Now, you may think by looking at some of the videos on YouTube, that you can just go and stand on the street and in five minutes, you've got a Shahada know what you see on YouTube is just the small moment of action. That's because you're not going to watch 24 hours, five hours, six hours, half an hour of somebody just standing there handing out a leaflet, you're going to get bored in 30 seconds. But that's the reality brothers and sisters, the reality is that a lot of it is just standing there. Most people are going to ignore you. A few people might
even look at you in a bad way, very rarely and occasionally something untoward might happen. So in reality, maybe one in 101 and 201 in 300 people might actually stop and take a lever and actually listen to what you have to say. So in order to put up with that, and in order to put up with that rejection and that feeling of rejection. You need to
Have Subbu Subbu is this very important quality of being patient of persevering? It really means giving up your short term desire in order to reach a long term objective. Yeah, so the short term desires, your desire to see results, I want to see something now. But you realize that in order to see those results, you're going to have to stick with it, you're going to have to be patient, you have to persevere. Again, brothers and sisters, please reflect on the life of the prophets look at prophet nor alayhis, salaam, he gave down for 950 years, and only a handful a small group of people accepted Islam, this is a very good example of sub.
Now the final s very important, I think this is super important is Smile, smile, when I say smile, I actually mean your body language, are you you know, the way that your body language is actually speaks a lot more than your words, they say that 70% of communication is not verbal nonverbal. So the expression on your face, the way your body is, if you're standing, or if you're standing like this, your arms crossed, and you're looking severe. They think, Oh my god, it's ISIS over there. But if you're like, your hands are open, your chest is open, you're facing a person, you're smiling, you know, they think, oh, that that person looks happy, that person looks welcoming. And that's how it
has to be, you know, if you're working in a shop, and, you know, any good shop, any good business is going to tell their employees smile at your customers, you know, say to them Have a nice day, you know, even if they just say everything's rubbish in here is okay, sir. I'm really sorry, we couldn't help you have a nice day. You know, that's how they are, does not allow us do not deserve better representation even than that. So this is what you need to think about brothers and sisters, you know, you are conveying the message. And a lot of the way that you convey the message is the body language that you adopt. So smile is the standard that you need to adopt for that.
Okay, now the next thing we need to cover is the how how do you actually get down on the street. So the first let's take it in baby steps. The first thing first thing you do very simple, very easy, anyone can do it, sit down, go to a visit. First of all, find in your town or your village or your wherever it may be your city, a busy place, find a busy place with a lot of human traffic, not a lot of car traffic. Theoretically, I suppose you could, you know, that's an idea you could give down at the traffic lights. But generally, when there's a lot of human traffic, go with some leaflets, or some booklets or whatever it is that you have. Remember body language, remember to smile, remember
to be welcoming, and literally just hand out leaflets, that's all you need to do. So once you've done that for a bit, you'll get some confidence. And believe me, you'll probably start to get a little bit bored of just handing out leaflets. And then you might like to explore, beginning to have some sort of conversations. So the way that you can do that is just by asking questions. Is life just the game? Why are we here? What do you think is the purpose of life? What's it all for? Those existential questions, those questions about, you know, what is the meaning of life the very provocative, they usually are able to spark some type of conversation. And that's obviously what you
want to do. You want to try and engage people in conversation. So once you've got confident with that, you can move on to the next level. And the next level is to begin to introduce to people what we call go rat. So go rat is
God's existence, the oneness of God, Revelation may be accurate as well the life after death and Prophethood. So these are the essential components of go rap. So you just want to explain that very, very briefly. So some conversation or some discussion, a simple argument about how do we know that God exists? The mobile phone example I'm sure you're all familiar with it, again, that there's only one God why does that make sense? Very briefly, I'm going to keep it very short. Revelation, how do we know the Quran is from God? Maybe you might use that linguistic argument or the fact that the Quran is memorized by Even kids and millions of people is that many effective arguments you can use.
I think it's very important to remind people of the ephemera because it makes what you're saying really real. To put in there some reminder that life is short, we're going to meet God, there's going to be a day of judgment. There's a paradise as a Hellfire and Prophethood talk about the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, some ideas, some simple things of how can we know that he's a messenger of God. So the idea is to keep this simple to keep this brief. I'm sure that once you do that people are
To engage you in conversation, the very important thing to remember brothers and sisters is, you know, our principle that we teach about dour is don't go down the line of trying to answer all those uncomfortable questions. Why do Muslims do this? Why do you listen to that? How Islam this and how you don't do blah, blah, blah. And then you get into these long discussions that actually most of the time 90% of the time leave absolutely nowhere. Keep on bringing it back to the very important point, because what you have to understand is that the non Muslim looks at the world through a whole different prism a whole different, you know, if you can imagine like, their glasses are tinted red,
right? So they see everything in that red hue. So what you have to do is allow them to look at the world clearly. And you can only do that by taking it back to making them understand that Allah God, the Creator is the center of everything, and that he has revealed guidance to us and therefore what he says is what we need to try and do with our lives. That's really what the Dow is about. Those are systems. So if you can do this, and you can develop that inshallah, you'll become really great st dot and handler, you find a really enriching and positive and exciting experience. I'm sure you get addicted to it, inshallah.
So, just to quickly summarize brothers and sisters, we've covered the why. Why do we give street Tao? Why is it important we talked about that we mentioned it's the prophetic methodology. We talked about the three S's the sincerity, and the sub, the patience and the smile, the body language. And then we talked about how how do we actually you know, what are the simple baby steps that we need to take in order to get involved in street down so to find out more, go to world dour mission.com I'll see you on the other side.