Mustafa Umar – My Journey Back to Islam Columbia University
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It doesn't require a lot of,
thought or a lot of understanding to understand
why alcohol is prohibited in Islam.
So for most people, most Muslims who want
to stay away from alcohol, not only would
they stay away from it, they realize the
blessing. They say, Alhamdulillah, I'm so glad that
Allah has forbidden alcohol. Because you see a
drunk person walking by, and he's doing some
ridiculous thing, or you hear about someone, you
know, beat, beat up his own family because
he got drunk and he came home and
beat up his kids and beat up his
wife, and you say, Alhamdulillah,
praise be to Allah. Allah has protected us
from this. Right? So that's something that we
understand the reasoning behind it. So the more
we you know, and we can understand the
reasoning behind many things. The more we reflect
upon the wisdom behind why Allah has prohibited
certain things for us,
we can also feel more comfortable that, you
know what? When I don't do this action,
there's a good reason. And I'm very happy
about it, and I'm glad Allah gave me
this teaching. Rather than, oh man, you know,
I wanted to say something about, you know,
brother Mike, but, you know, I can't I
can't even open my mouth. Every time I
wanna say something, there's some rule that's being
slapped in my face, and I cannot do
it. Our mentality needs to change. Our understanding
needs to change. So when it comes to
this specific thing, when it comes to insulting
other people, when it comes to
talking bad about other people,
especially when they're not there, what does what
did the prophet, peace be upon him, teach
us? What did Islam teach us? Well, there's
a hadith
which is narrowed in
Sahih al Bukhari and Muslim, where the prophet,
peace be upon him, he said, do not
be envious of one another.
He said, don't envy one another. Don't want
what the other person has. And then he
says, do not outbid one another
just to raise the price. You know, if
you're in an auction, or you're buying something
on eBay,
and you're just trying to raise the price
on the other person, and you're trying to
buy something, and you did you don't want
the other person to buy it for $50.
You just take it up to 60, because
you know he'll get it for 7. You're
just doing it to annoy the person. He
says, don't do that. And then he says,
don't hate one another. And then he says,
don't hold grudges against one another. And then
at the end, he says, do not backbite
one another. Do not insult one another in
absentia.
And he says, be fellow brothers and servants
of Allah.
Now the thing is, what is this hadith
trying to say? It's trying to explain
the entire context
of brotherhood
and sisterhood within society.
What it's saying is that when you do
any of these actions, if you show envy,
if you show this, if you're doing that,
and then it says, even if you insult
one another or you backbite one another, what
are you doing? You're destroying that brotherhood and
that sisterhood within society.
That's what you're doing. Because now, you you
don't know who's gonna be talking bad about
you. You don't know if this person talks
bad about this person, and if you go
with the whole, you know, American freedom thing,
say, I'm free to say whatever I want.
I have freedom of speech. So I can
go insult your mother. I can insult your
brother, and you you can come and insult
my dad, and you can we just insult
each other. What kind of society are you
gonna produce?
What kind of people are you gonna produce?
What kind of what kind of camaraderie are
you gonna have? You won't have a community.
You're gonna have a bunch of individuals
who are highly individualistic
in their thinking.
And they're they're primarily gonna be focusing on
their own rights, but they're not gonna think
much about their responsibility to other people. So
what this prohibition
of
gossiping against other people, insulting other people, backbiting
other people, this prohibition
actually results in a stronger,
better society.
And that's one of the wisdoms behind it.
So when we think about it, right, from
a communal perspective,
rather than purely from an individual perspective that
I need to just hold my tongue. No.
I need to hold my tongue,
but this is the benefit of holding my
tongue. It's going to actually result in a
stronger community. We're going to have more love
between people. We're going to be a, you
know, a greater social unit. That's the reason.
And when we understand that wisdom,
it's easier sometimes to realize the beauty of
Islam.
Now, even if we understand that,
we're still gonna be tempted,
because human beings, they say, on average, speak
somewhere between
17,000
to 10000 words per day.
Right?
And some studies have shown that it's different
between the genders. And I leave it up
to you to decide which gender is usually
using more words. Right? So the thing is
this. We use a lot of words. We
say a lot of things.
Now the question is
that
it's so easy that when a thought comes
to our mind, we can just go ahead
and say something against someone else. But when
we realize the underlying
spiritual cause or
ignorant cause that makes us do these things,
we can
tackle it a little bit better. It's like
a disease. Any disease, any physical illness you
have, you try to understand not only the
symptoms, you try to understand the underlying root
cause.
So there are 3 main root causes
of why people backbite or gossip or talk
bad about one another.
Number 1
is this misconception that people have. The misconception
is
that
as long as you're not lying, it's okay.
If you're lying, you're slandering that person. You're
saying bad things about him, but it's not
true. So the assumption is when you go
and you talk bad about someone, if if
all of a sudden, you know,
you say, oh, man. I can't believe, you
know, Mohammed failed his exam, and he doesn't,
study for for finals. He's a really bad
student. And someone goes, hey. You know, we
shouldn't talk about him like that. That's kind
of like that's against Islam. It's backbiting. He
goes, well, I'm just telling the truth. It
happened.
Right? You hear people saying exactly that, trying
to justify what they're doing by thinking that
since they're not lying, it's okay.
And this is exactly what happened in history.
It happened during the time of the prophet,
peace be upon him. So one of the
companions,
after the prophet defined what backbiting or what
gossiping is,
what happened,
he asked a question. And this is beautiful
that the companions, they used to ask questions
to the prophet so that we understand,
you know, a little bit more nuance, a
little bit more detail on his teachings.
So this companion said, messenger of Allah, what
if I speak the truth about it? And
what if I'm just telling the truth? Is
that is it okay then if if I'm
saying something bad, but it's true? And the
prophet, peace be upon him, he said, if
you speak the truth,
then you are backbiting.
And if you lie, then you're slandering,
meaning it's a double sin because you're lying
and you're talking and you're insulting the person.
But if you tell the truth, you're still
insulting the person because the definition of backbiting,
the definition of insulting that person is saying
something that they wouldn't like that you're saying
that about them, and they're not present.
That's the definition. So that misunderstanding
causes many people to say, well, I'm not
lying, so it's okay.
That's problem number 1. Cause number 1. Cause
number 2 is that people love stories.
We're human beings. We love stories. In the
Quran, there are stories.
There are many stories of all the different
prophets, and prophet Noah went to such and
such, and he built the ship. Why are
there stories not just absolute moral principles like
a law book?
Like a philosophy book on ethics? Why are
stories there? Because
it's part of being human. Not only do
they entertain us, we try and derive things
from them, but we have that natural desire
to want to hear these type of things.
So people love stories.
People love to hear stories,
and people love to tell stories.
What ends up happening is, in social gatherings,
you're sitting with a group of people. And
what ends up happening, you start talking about
so and so, and you start, oh, did
you hear about Zay? Oh, yeah. You know
what? I think, you know, he divorced his
wife, Mariam, you know, last month. No. No.
He retracted divorce after that. No. I think,
you know, their kids are gonna really have
a problem. It's so sad what's happening to
that couple. And you just start going off.
And then you're in a group,
in a Waleema or wedding gathering or whatever
it may be, and everyone else starts contributing
to the story. Do you hear you know
what? This has been going on for a
long time. I remember 1 year ago, you
know what he said to her? And then
it just continues.
And the gossip just goes off and off,
and everyone starts contributing to that story.
And sometimes, peer pressure play plays a role
as well. Because if you're sitting at a
table and everyone else is gossiping about someone,
you're the only one who's just sitting there.
You're like, I'm the only one who's not
contributing to the story. Let me throw some
fuel on the fire as well. Let me
go ahead and add something in as well.
And then everyone starts gossiping. And this becomes
a really big problem.
And we need to be very careful about
it. So, yeah, stories are nice, but if
you're in a gathering, think about something else
to say. And cause number 3
is the underlying spiritual cause,
and that's envy.
You see, when you're envious of someone, when
you don't like the fact that someone else
is successful, they're doing something good, they're doing
something right,
and you don't like that, you want to
put them down.
So what do you do? You backbite them.
You gossip and insult them. Oh, you know,
that guy thinks he's so good because he
got, you know, he got all As this
quarter, or he got hired at that company,
right,
even before he graduated. Oh, you think he's
so good? Well, you know what? I heard
that he talks back to his parents.
Or I heard that,
you know, he's,
he's really cheap. He doesn't tip when he
goes to a restaurant. Or you just think
of something to say to insult the person,
to put them down because you're jealous of
them.
That person got promoted to vice president. Oh,
yeah. Well, do you know how he deals
with his family at home? What does his
promotion at work have to do with how
he deals with his family at home? There's
no connection between the 2. But in reality,
sometimes people are envious. They're jealous
of what this person has got, so they
wanna insult them and they go and talk
bad about them.
And also, another hidden
defect in the
same category
is that they wanna put themselves up.
So if someone goes and, you know, someone
goes and gives a beautiful presentation
or they get really good grades, and they
say, oh, you know what? He didn't even
he doesn't even study. He doesn't really understand
the material. He just got lucky.
What are you trying to say sometimes? Sometimes
you're trying to put yourself up. You You
wanna put someone else down to show that
you're better than that person.
Right? And that's really a spiritual disease we
need to work on.
Now,
we've been talking about the dangers of backbiting,
gossiping about people, insulting them when they're not
present.
But what's gonna happen is, sometimes people will
go, woah. See, there's no time I can
ever talk bad about anyone, no matter what
the circumstance.
And the reality is, there are exceptions to
the rule. There are some exceptions. So let's
take a look at some of the exceptions.
The exceptions will fall into 2 categories. Imam
al Ghazali has 6 categories I'm putting into
2 main categories.
Category number 1 is when you're warning another
person about something, and it's needed for you
to warn them.
So for example, someone's getting married
to your friend Ali,
and Ali happens to be a drug dealer.
And Aisha's family comes to you and says,
you know, we wanted to know, you know,
you're kind of close to Ali. Can you
tell us,
is he a pretty good guy? And you're
like, I don't wanna backbite him because that's
haram. Right? So you just like, you know,
I'm not gonna say anything bad. So I
say, he's a decent guy. I don't wanna
say anything.
The thing is, this is
very likely to affect their marriage in the
future if the guy's a drug dealer. K?
If the guy did drugs once in his
life, and they were soft drugs, and there's
no, you know, evidence of any type of,
you know,
future harm and brain damage or anything like
that, that doesn't necessarily have to be disclosed.
You don't have to go and say everything.
But in cases like this, you have to
explain to the person and say, you know
what? I want you to know that the
guy happens to be a gangster and he
deals drugs, and this may potentially affect your
marriage. You're obligated to disclose that information.
But to who?
Just to the family who needs to know.
You don't have to go and put it
on Facebook. You don't have to make a
Snapchat post about it and be like, you
know, by the way, just to let everyone
know, my friend Ali happens to be a
drug dealer, and he's struggling with it. You
don't need to tell everyone. You only tell
those people who need to know.
When it comes to employment, it's the same
thing. When you go and apply, if you're
a manager or someone someone, you let one
of your employees go, somebody calls you, and
they say, you know, brother Omar, he used
to sleep on the job.
I can't say that though because I'll be
backbiting him. You have a responsibility to the
next company. You have to say what specifically
they need to know because it's gonna affect,
you know, his future performance.
Right? When it comes to business,
same thing. You're engaging with business. Someone ripped
off another person. They're gonna go in business
with this person, you're afraid that they're gonna
somehow have the same problem, you need to
do that. When it comes to oppression, people
always ask me after a hoodball like this,
Dylan. So we can't talk bad about, you
know, Donald Trump, you know, because we're backbiting
him as well. And the thing is this,
when it comes to oppression, when it comes
to unjust policies,
when it comes to Syria or, you know,
Burma, you know, what's going on with Rohingya
and all of that. When we're talking about
informing people
in order for them to know that an
injustice is happening,
and because they're actually gonna be able to
do something about it, or maybe their public
opinion will somehow, change, the policy somehow,
then that falls in the same category of
as needed.
But you don't need to talk about, you
know, oh, Trump is so fat, and he
looks like this, and his hands are such
big, and all of that other stuff. That's
not necessarily gonna lead to any policy changes.
That's just, you know, low blows getting him.
Maybe he seems like he may deserve it
sometimes, but we should not necessarily be doing
that. This is as needed. That's category number
1. And category number 2 is when you
need to consult with someone.
Consulting with someone is a very gray area,
though. So when you're going to a counselor,
you're going to an imam, you're going to
a sheikh or something like that, and you're
talking about your issues in your family, and
you say, I need to talk about my
brother. I need to talk about my father
because he's doing some bad things,
but I don't wanna backbite him. You're gonna
have to bring that up if you want,
like, a custom tailored advice on what you're
supposed to do. But that doesn't mean
that you go
in your entire circle of friends, and you
say, they're all my counselors, so I'm gonna
vent all my feelings and frustration about every
single brother and sister I have in the
entire community, and this is like my counseling
session.
No. Because now you're gonna be spreading insults
about all these people. And people always ask
me that question. They say, well, what if
what if I have all my friends and
I just have to tell them everything? And
then the common question is, what about between
spouses?
You know, I said, no. Not between spouses
even. You should not go. And you say,
but it's between spouses like a secret.
You can't do that. If I told my
wife,
as an imam, all the stuff that I
deal with, she would not
respect, you know, several people in the community.
It's not good. You shouldn't reveal those type
of things
unless it's absolutely necessary
for either consultation
or because they really need to know.
So now,
if
you realize
that you've been engaging
in backbiting and insulting other people, and you
want to repent,
you want to ask a law for forgiveness,
what do you do?
Well, the first thing you do
is you simply sincerely sit down, and you
ask Allah for forgiveness for all the people
that you've insulted in the past. And that's
very important. It may take a very long
time. I mean, you should do it on
a regular basis. You should ask Allah to
forgive you for all the words that you've
uttered
which
which were not pleasing to Allah, which were
not in line with Islamic principles and Islamic
values.
The second thing you should do
is you should go to the same group
of people
that you were insulting that person to,
and you spread good ideas about them. So
if you were talking bad
about brother Yaqu
in front of
his family,
Then you realize, you know what? I shouldn't
have done that. You ask Allah for forgiveness,
and then you go back to that family,
and you try and say some good things
about him to kind of undo
or compensate for the damage that you've done
in the past.
But then the common question is, do you
have to go and ask that person for
forgiveness?
Now there's a hadith about this, but some
people misunderstand the hadith. Imam Nawawi explains this
hadith in detail. He says, if the person
knows that you are talking bad about them,
then you go and ask them for forgiveness.
And that's a requirement. You should do that.
You should say, I know I've said some
bad things about you, and you know I've
been saying that. And I realize, you know
what? I shouldn't have done that. And I'm
very sorry. And please forgive me. And ask
their forgiveness.
But if someone doesn't know
that you were saying these things,
then not only you don't have to go
to them, you shouldn't go to them. Imam
Nawawi says it's better you don't go to
them. Because if you do, imagine, you know,
your best friend is Zaid. And you go
to Zaid, you're like, you know what? We've
been best friends for 10 years.
And I just realized, you know, I've actually
been backbiting you for 7 years to everyone.
And but now I've decided to ask a
love for forgiveness. Will you forgive me too?
What's gonna happen to your friendship? Right? It's
gonna be a big problem. If the person
doesn't know,
you just ask a love for forgiveness, and
you try and spread good ideas about them
so that you can compensate for what you've
done in the past.
And
the last thing before we conclude
is there's something called, like, you know, there's
secondhand smoking and there's thirdhand smoking, you inhale
it. There's something that I call secondhand backbiting.
And that's listening to backbiting.
And it's just as dangerous and it's just
as deadly
and sinful
as engaging in insulting and backbiting other people.
And look at what the prophet, peace be
upon him, said. This is a hadith narrated
by Imam Tiramidi and Imam Ahmed.
The prophet, peace be upon him, said, whoever
hears a believer
disgraced in front of him and doesn't help
him, and he's able to do so, Allah
will disgrace him on the day of judgement.
Meaning, if you can come to your aid
of a believer and someone is being insulted,
and you don't do anything about it, you
just sit there, and or you say, you
know what? Well, I didn't say it. I
was just at the table. I was just
listening to the story. I was just hearing
what's happening. I didn't comment on it,
but I didn't engage in it. You are
partly accountable as well. Because also, when we
talked about people love storytelling,
the only thing that motivates people to keep
on gossiping and talking bad about other people
is that others are listening.
So if you show interest, oh, really?
Really? Aisha said that? Zayd did what? Did
he do that? And then the person's gonna
keep on going. So you motivated that person
to do that. So what you should do
is you have 3 options.
Option number 1 is the best option if
you have the confidence to do it. If
you're someone starts talking bad about someone else,
you stop them and say, you know what?
This behavior is not befitting of a Muslim.
We should not talk like this. Or use
whatever nicer language that you want, depending on
the person.
If you don't have this confidence
to speak up and correct the person in
front of you and and everyone has their
own, you know, time and what they have.
If you don't if you're not able to
do that, try and just change the subject.
You're sitting at a table, someone starts talking
about someone else, just change it. There's a
million things to talk about. You could talk
about the latest technology that came out. You
could talk about the latest fashion that's existing.
The new hijab came out. The new car
came out. Tesla's
making a new Roadster. It's, like, the fastest
production car. So many things you could potentially
talk about. Just change the subject immediately so
everyone starts going off on that subject. You
can talk about Burma. You can talk about
Syria. You can talk about whatever.
And if you can't do that either,
because either you're not slick enough to kind
of change the subject, or the guy just
keeps coming back, or she she keeps coming
back trying to bring it back on that
subject, then you leave.
And it made me feel awkward.
You know? I I get people ask me
all the time, like, we're at a wedding,
and we're at the table.
If you leave that table, you go to
another table, they're also gossiping. You go to
another table, they're also gossiping. Like, where do
you go? I'm like, well,
find 1 there's gotta be one table in
the entire auditorium
where they're not gossiping. And if if there's
not one,
just go sit by yourself or with, you
know, one of your friends or something like
that. Or until
you can build up the self confidence
where you start to change
the conversation topic at tables.
And that's why it's very important for people
who are kind of like the head,
they kind of dictate what the topic is
gonna be in a social gathering.
It's very important for those people to specifically,
you know, understand
the danger of insulting and backbiting other people
because
they can actually rectify help rectify the situation.
We ask Allah
to help us and guide us at all
times.
So just to do a quick recap, we
were talking about gossiping or insulting or backbiting
other people, talking bad about them when they're
not present and saying anything, whether it's true
or false,
that they would not like
if they heard you saying this thing, that
is what classifies as gossiping or backbiting. And
it's called hiva. We need to be very
careful about that. And then we talked about,
so many different ways to do it. We
talked about the wisdom
behind
how this affects society,
and how it actually messes up the brotherhood
and sisterhood within a community.
We talked about 3 of the main causes
of why people do that and some of
the misconceptions that exist.
We talked about
And we talked about secondhand backbiting being
just as severe,
and we talked about secondhand backbiting
being just as severe
as talking or gossiping or insulting other people.
So we asked Allah
to purify our tongues. Oh Allah, help us
and guide us at all times. Oh Allah,
increase us in our faith. O Allah, increase
us in our certainty. O Allah, help us
to understand the wisdom behind the rulings and
the teachings that you have given us. O
Allah,
show us the truth is truth and help
us to follow it. Show us the false
is false and keep us away from it.
Ameen Subhanahu wa bi'alaisati yamayassifoon,
wa salamu alaymusaleen.
Wa alhamdulillah.
So I have been asked
to speak a little bit about
my life, specifically
the part of my life where
I drifted away from Islam and
I drifted back towards Islam and ended up
becoming
where I am today,
an imam and a professor in Islamic University.
So
I will do that insha'Allah. I will share
the story. And I think this story is
important
and is relevant for people and that is
why they are interested in hearing about it
because if we lived in a different time,
people would not be so interested in hearing
a story which
normally people would like to
suppress and kind of keep it under
the covers and just pretend like these type
of things do not happen in the Muslim
community. But I think the reality is that
we are starting to understand
that
not addressing issues that the Muslim community is
actually facing
is more detrimental
than actually bringing them up in
a controlled
and in a responsible manner.
So, inshallah. With that said,
we will start.
I have about
I was told to take about an hour.
So if I see,
people kind of dozing off or something like
that,
I will shorten that,
And then we'll have time for q and
a.
I'll ask you a bunch of questions, and
you can give me the answers.
Excuse me. Other way around, Insha'Allah. But if
you wanna
take my questions, I'm willing as well. All
right. So this is something that's becoming more
common, so we can address this, Insha'Allah.
So my background, normally the way that I
have done this in the past is somebody
interviews me. So it is a little awkward
if you find me fidgeting or something like
that. A little awkward just kind of speaking
one hour about myself. It's a little
strange, but that's okay.
We,
I'll just suck it up, Insha'Allah. Alright. Bismillah
Ar Rahman Rahim.
So let me tell you a little bit
about my background.
I was born in Cerritos, California, which is
Southern California.
It has the exact opposite weather that you
are having right now. It is very nice
and warm and pleasant. But it is okay.
Alhamdulillah. It is all a test from Allah.
I grew up
in the city of Tustin until 2nd grade.
And then
I moved to,
sorry, I grew up until Cerritos until the
2nd grade. Then I moved to another city
called Tustin. This is all Orange County.
Orange County is a fairly affluent area, if
you're not familiar with it.
It's very good weather,
a lot of tech people,
a lot of doctors, a lot of, you
know, you can see a lot of spoiled
people as well. Let's not use the word
affluent. A lot of spoiled people. So that's
kind of how I grew up.
I went to Tustin.
I went to a middle school in Tustin.
I went to Tustin High School.
I was an honors student. I was a
pretty good student, but
I didn't really care about grades.
Like, I didn't really care about school. So
I got the grades,
had good grades and everything, but I didn't
care about school. I didn't really read books.
I was not very interested
in anything, to be honest with you, except
just having fun.
So my parents were Muslim. We come from
a background,
Indo Pak background.
My father was born in India. My mom
was born in Pakistan. My father migrated.
They both were from, technically, they're from Karachi.
I really don't know anything else about my
family.
I don't know my grandfather.
I just know his name, that's it. I
don't know my great grandfather. I don't know
any of my great grandparents.
I didn't even know what tribe I came
from until someone in high school told me,
hey. Are you from that tribe? And and
I'm like,
I don't know. You know? Then I asked
my parents. They're like, no. He's making fun
of you because your Urdu sucks. The way
that you speak the language, it just really
sucks. So he asked me, he's like, are
you Khan?
I'm like, Khan. Like, the actor like Khan?
He's like, no. No. Khan means, like, are
you from such and such place? And I'm
like, I don't know. I asked my parents,
and they're like, no. He's making fun of
you because
you speak Urdu with a very bad accent.
My Urdu is very, very weak. I didn't
really know much.
So,
if you want to know where I'm from,
I'm actually from a tribe that is called
called the Memen. Memen is like a specific
type of tribe within India. They're known to
be business people.
There's 2 things known about them. They're always
in business, so they end up either making
a lot of money
or losing a lot of money. And they
always intermarry
within themselves, and they don't like to go
outside. That's what's the joke about mittens. They're
very, like, cliquish. They're very tribal.
So I just learned that when I was
in high school. I didn't know any of
these things.
The type
of upbringing that I had
was of a cultural Muslim. So what does
a cultural Muslim mean? It means that we
go for Friday prayers as a family.
Family meaning me and my father and my
brother. We would go for Friday prayers. In
Ramadan,
we would
usually fast.
Not always, but usually.
We don't eat pork. We don't drink wine.
But that's about it.
So we don't pray
anything else outside of the, you know, throughout
the week, we don't know this whole concept
of 5 prayers. We only know that there
is a Jummah prayer. No one else really
prays unless
you are at a gathering and everyone else
is praying. You just join them. We didn't
know anything about, you know, dress code in
Islam. We didn't know,
anything about we didn't even know what a
hadith was, technically. We just know there's a
Quran. We believe in the Quran. That's it.
So I didn't really didn't know much. I
didn't I couldn't tell you if someone said,
do you know who Abu Bakr, Omar Ahmad,
and Ali are?' I couldn't tell you a
single one of them.
Don't know their names. Don't know anything. This
is all the way up to about junior
year of high school,
despite the fact
that I ended up going to Sunday school
like most of my friends. So I don't
know if you have a Sunday school program
here. Do the masjids have it here, like
a Sunday school? They do Sunday school. So,
what happens is, you know, the masjids,
the mosques in that area,
they usually start like a weekend program for
like a few hours,
And that's either a Saturday school or a
Sunday school.
Many
immigrant minority populations, they do it. The Chinese
have it. The Jews have it. So they
kind of teach
their
traditions and their culture and their religion
to the young people
for a few hours per week. So I
went to that Sunday school system actually from
kindergarten through 8th grade. And the only thing
that I can remember
learning
from kindergarten,
we learned what are called the 5 pillars
of Islam.
That there's a declaration of faith. There's prayer.
Still, we didn't pray though. There's prayer.
There
is zakah.
There is fasting in Ramadan. And there's Hajj.
And then in 1st grade, we learned the
same thing. And then in 2nd grade, we
learned the same thing. And that's that's it.
All I remember
learning
in these 9 years of Sunday school is
just
what the 5 pillars of Islam are verbally,
but not understanding anything about them. Okay?
And this was at a pretty large
Sunday school and a very large mosque, which
is still functioning.
And I hope the Sunday school has improved
since that time of making making du'a for
them.
So, yeah, I mean, I was not a
bad kid. You know, I used to do
some bad things. We used to take and
this is not a tutorial, by the way,
but we used to take, like, you know,
toilet paper and, like, paper towels from the
bathroom.
We'd wet them. We'd throw them on the
ceiling so that they would stick. So, like,
that's that was my Sunday school experience. We
would go and play pogs.
We would try and ditch class regularly because
nobody was interested
in what the, you know, quote unquote aunties
had to teach inside the Sunday school because
there was no motivation for that. So it's
kind of like a socializing thing, but I
just didn't feel in you know, I felt
out of place
being in this area anyways. So I didn't
really pay much attention to that. So
you can see that I really didn't have
much understanding or much knowledge about Islam.
But one thing that used to happen is
that every single year, my father was off
from his work for 2 years in winter
break. So we would always go somewhere. So
we'd either go to Pakistan,
or we'd go to
Egypt, or we'd go to some different country
just because he felt like going there. We'd
go to London, we'd go to Portugal.
And in my junior year of high school,
he decided to go and take us to
Macquarie.
So we went for Amoram.
And when I got to Macquarie,
this was something
just completely different for me. It was an
absolutely different world. I have never seen anything
like this in my life where the adhan
is called, you know, like in the entire
city, and all the shops close
and everyone goes for prayer.
And I was just shocked.
It was really a big culture shock for
me. And then I remember going into
one of the Islamic bookstores there because all
you have is clothing stores. It's like Islamic
clothing. And you have like fragrance stores. Then
you have bookstores. That's all there was really
at the time. Or you buy dates, basically.
So I went into one of the Islamic
bookstores and I'm just looking around. I wonder
what's what this is.
And I saw
a translation
of the Quran. And I saw some Islamic
books. And I saw a translation of hadith.
Right? And then I didn't know what that
was. It says Sahih Bukhari. And I'm like,
I don't know what that is. So one
of the guys that I met, he was
part of our group.
He explained to me, he started telling me,
he was a guy who was a little
bit more interested in Islam. He said, you
know, this book,
this is the next authentic, most authentic book
after the Quran.
I'm like, really? I've never heard of it
before? He's like, no. No. You've never heard
of Sahih al Bukhari? I'm like, no. I've
never heard of it before. He's like, yeah.
So if you read the Quran
and if you read this, like, this is
this is where Islam is. Right? So this
is what he's telling me. So then I
started thinking about it. I said, you know
what?
You know, I think
that my parents didn't really understand Islam as
a religion character. I I think that they're
using some things just against me, and they
really don't have an understanding of what they're
saying. How old are you?
Junior year. Yeah. Junior year of high school.
Right?
So what is that? Like,
6, 17, 15. Right? So 15.
So I go in there, and then he
tells me this. And then I'm like, you
know, I just had an idea. I said,
you know what? Let me let me get
this. So my parents used to buy something.
If if I asked them for it, they
would buy it. So I say, you know,
I wanna buy this thing. This was not
the condensed version of. Okay? This is the
full nine volumes.
My parents said, you know, if you buy
this, it's not gonna fit in your suitcase
because we filled your suitcase with all sorts
of other clothing and stuff already.
So you're gonna have to carry this on
the airplane. I'm like, I'm fine. I got
my backpack.
I'll carry it. You know? So I bought
a translation of the Quran in that bookstore,
and I bought the entire translation of Sahil
Bukhari, 9 volumes.
And I remember carrying it with me on
the airplane in my backpack. It was really
heavy. But I wanted to kind of like
learn. What
is this Islam that
I was raised on, supposedly raised on? What
is this religion about?
So I had like an interest in finding
out, you know, what does this religion actually
teach? And I wanted to kind of catch
my parents on some things too. I had
a feeling
that they're just kind of using Islam against
me whenever they want me to get something
done. You know, obey your parents and do
such and such thing and all of that.
So
I remember, you know, having an interest in
that for a brief time. And I started
thinking about, you know, what is the religion
that we're raised on or that I'm raised
on, is it correct? So I started thinking,
I started reading a little bit of this
Bukhari that I bought, a little bit of
the translation of the Quran,
and I said, you know what? Let me
look at the other religions that are there.
So I kind of just didn't really read
anything. I just talked to some of my
friends.
When I heard about Christianity,
the few things I was exposed to, I
think I had maybe watched an Ahmed Diddath
lecture once in my life somewhere, somehow.
It just never made sense. The idea of
trinity and original sin and all of that.
I said, this would never happen. I'm not
interested in Christianity.
I looked at Judaism, and I'm like, the
only thing I really know about Judaism is
that there's a chosen people and there's a
selected people. And I'm obviously not from them
because my blood is not from that tribe.
So that eliminates that. This is when we
were 15 years old, this is my
detailed analysis of religion
to the extent of what it's worth.
And then I looked at
Hinduism
and I had some Hindu friends as well.
And I'm like, so you guys,
you know, I remember going to their homes,
and, they would put food in front of
the idol. You know? And then every day,
they would take the food out, and then
they would throw the food away. They would
put more food in front of the idol.
So I'm like, so
what's going on? They're like, yeah. The idol
eats the food, you know, spiritually. I'm like,
can I have some of that? Because you're
gonna throw it away anyways. They're like, no.
You know? This is the food for he
ate. The idol has eaten it, and they
threw it away. I'm like, this doesn't make
any sense to me. You know?
So I am like, you know what? That
religion doesn't work.
Judaism won't work for me. Christianity won't work
for me. So
I was kind of like, okay.
Islam,
this
seems to be a good religion,
but
I don't I think my parents didn't get
it right somehow. You know, something's not right.
Let me learn for myself.
So I started reading a little bit of
the Quran in English. I started reading a
little bit of Hadith from Bukhari and all
of that.
And what I used to do is I
had no teacher. I had no context. I
had never read any other books. So I
started to kind of read the Quran for
myself,
giving it my own interpretations.
So that was around the time where I
started becoming a little bit more interested. I
started debating my friends and be like, you
know, Islam is the truth and it's the
right religion. And look, I found this website
that proves it. And look, if you read
the Quran, everything is going to be good.
I did that for a little while and
I started praying.
But for me, it didn't make sense to
pray and not understand what you're saying.
And it's too difficult to go and learn
Arabic.
So I started praying in English. I said,
this is you know, God is gonna accept.
Like, God
if you know, God should accept this because
at least I'm understanding what I'm saying versus
what the other people who don't understand what
they're saying. So I was a little bit
arrogant, you could say, kind of like looking
down upon other people. I read the translation
of what's said in prayer, and I'm like,
See, I'm better than this person.
These people don't even know what they're saying.
Because
for most
people from my parents' generation,
they've been saying the exact same thing for
40 years in prayer,
and they don't know a word of what
they're saying. They can't tell me what Ikhidinasarati
Mustaqim means and they say it every single
day or at least every Friday.
And they don't even know what it means.
So for me, that always bothered me. Something
was wrong with that.
So
I started doing that, and then I started
kind
of adopting whatever I thought the Quran was
saying, or I kind of made it say
what whatever I wanted it to say. So
it's kind of like if it if it
doesn't make sense to me, I'm gonna,
you know, I'm either not gonna take that
or I'm gonna kinda modify it to make
sense. So I started doing some weird things.
Like, for example, like I said, I was
praying in English.
If I'm driving to school now, I'll be
driving,
and, I'm like, you know what? I was
tired. I don't need to wake up for
Fudger. Fudger is a morning prayer. So as
long as you pray in the morning, it
still counts as a morning prayer. You know?
But if I'm getting late for school, I
don't wanna be late for school either. So
I would pray while I'm driving to school.
Not a safe thing to do. You know?
But obviously, I'm not doing the whole prayer.
I'm just like, you know, I'm praying. I'm
reading my English Fatiha. You know? In the
name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, praise
be to Allah. Yeah. Praise be to God.
So I'm going and making some of the
motions, and I'm, you know, making a turn
and all of that stuff. So I did
that for a
while, and then I started finding some websites
online.
And while I was reading those websites, I
was trying to prove that the Quran is
the truth, that it's miraculous. And I found
some of those websites and started debating with
my friends.
But then when I would read some of
the hadith in the Sahih al Bukhari,
this doesn't make sense.
I don't understand why would something like this
even exist. And then I found some websites
which start critiquing hadith.
The same websites which are trying to prove
the Quran start critiquing hadith.
And I came across that one book, a
very famous book, The Bible Science and the
Quran by Maurice Bucaille.
And at the end of it,
I didn't read the whole thing at all,
but I just read the excerpt
where he started critiquing hadith saying that the
hadith are not in line with science but
the Quran is. So I read that snippet
somewhere
on a website,
and I started doubting the veracity of hadith.
And I said, You know what? This doesn't
make sense.
So there's a group online.
I don't recommend you really look into it,
but it's not a big deal. There's a
group online. They're called submitters.
And they're basically
a group of people who are like Quran
only. They don't accept anything but the Quran.
They don't accept the validity of hadith at
all.
And
when I looked into that group, I felt
like I could relate more to that group
because what they're trying to do, the reason
why it resonated with me, is that
there are people who
say that the Muslims have got their religion
wrong.
Right? This is this is where they made
it messed up, and this is the right
way. So for me, I'm like, that resonates
with me because I'm like, I know the
Muslims got their religion wrong. Something's not right
in our community.
So that really resonated with me. So I
became basically someone who rejected hadith completely. And
I'm just following the Quran. But that's the
only thing I know about Islam. I don't
know anything except whatever I open, I look
in the Quran, and you know, I find
my English translation,
and that's what it says. Right?
So that's junior year. That's senior year. And
then I get into,
university.
So when I go to university,
I end up in a philosophy class in
my 1st year.
And that philosophy class was a critical thinking
class.
And there's a book that we had. The
book is called How to Think About Weird
Things.
And it talks about, you know,
talks a little bit about Socrates and Plato,
or sorry, Aristotle
and Socrates.
It talks a little bit about different things
here and there.
But then when I got in that class,
one interesting thing happened. So one day,
and this is really what changed things for
me a lot. One day I'm sitting in
the class, and the teacher
says, he starts talking about statistics.
And he goes, Among Americans,
I don't remember the number exactly, it was
like,
32%
of people still still believe in angels.
And they said, 27%
still believe in Santa Claus.
And I'm like, ridiculous. You know? And then
it's like,
18%
still believe in demons.
Right?
And then and it's look at the wording.
Very clever.
Still believe.
Like, basically, we've evolved to a point where,
we're not supposed to believe in these things,
but they said, still believe. And then he
said,
how many of you still believe and he
started mentioning all these things like the tooth
fairy
and Santa Claus. And I'm like, these are
ridiculous people. I've always been very skeptical,
even skeptical about claims of jinn possession and
everyone
has a bad day and all of a
sudden he's possessed by a jinn. This is
all part of this culture that we live
in or that Muslims grow up in.
So he said, how many of you still
believe in God?
And
that
question just shocked me because of the answer.
So I raised my hand
and one other guy raised his hand and
nobody else in the class.
And that was like a defining moment for
me. So like I couldn't believe it because
my understanding up until that point in time
was like in high school, I'm like, 'Everybody
believes in God.' Right? That's like normal. Whether
they understand or they don't, whether they practice
a religion or not, it's just like everyone
believes in God at least. Right?
And that moment, it hit me
that my entire class,
none of them really believed in God. Or
they were just intimidated by the professor or
whatever it is. But they weren't even confident
enough to raise their hand. And the only
guy who raised his hand I looked at
the guy. The only guy who raised his
hand
was like this
weirdo
bible dumping Christian missionary type of guy who's
like the weird crazy guy who everyone hates.
Like, you'd never want to be associated with
that guy. And I was that just like
that broke
my asking so many questions and I started
thinking, like, you know, how do I even
know that any of this exists? How do
I know that, you know, there is I
just kind of assumed everything else that, you
know what? There's got to be a creator.
Everyone believes in a creator. That's not even
a it's not even a question.
Like the idea of atheism or agnosticism
or saying that you don't know if God
exists, it was not something that really crossed
my mind at all,
especially in high school. Even though the majority
of like almost all my friends, none of
them are Muslim.
I don't really hang out with Muslims at
all except at Sunday school and, like, at
a wedding or something like that. And if
it's like a wedding, it's like half of
them are Hindu and half of them are
are Indian. And I'm not really close to
them because just I'm I'm forced to be
there because my parents are there. So it
doesn't really none of this resonates with me.
So that was something that really, really shook
me.
So
I decided at that moment, I said, you
know what? I'm going to prove this professor
wrong.
Right? So I'm gonna I'm gonna show him.
You know? So what I did was
that, I went to Barnes and Noble,
and I started searching. And I'm like, I'm
gonna read this how to think about weird
things book. I'm gonna understand it, and I'm
gonna come back to the professor. And what
I'm going to do is I'm going to
go and I'm going to find the book
on atheism.
I'm going to read it. I'm going to
understand the arguments. I'm going to go back,
and I'm going to blast this professor. And
I'm going to get him really good.
So I bought this book. It's called Critiques
of God.
It's like essays
from the most famous, or you could say
infamous, atheist
in the field of philosophy.
And it has like 20 different arguments about
why you shouldn't believe in God. So I
go through it with the understanding that I'm
going to prove my professor wrong.
But that's the mistake that I make. So
the mistake that I made, I think, is
a mistake that many Muslims make.
The many Muslims make the same mistake is
that they think
that they're kind of weighing both sides,
and they know Islam really well. And now
they can go and read the other side,
and then they're gonna compare, and they're like,
I'm coming to my own conclusion. I've read
both sides, and now I'm gonna tell you
why one is one is right and one
is wrong. But the mistake here is I
didn't know anything about Islam.
Right? Reading a few pages randomly from the
English translation of the Quran and a few
pages from Bukhari and nothing else besides that
does not give me any
foundation for understanding what Islam is. So when
I'm reading, I'm not comparing 2 worldviews.
I'm just
reading 1,
and that's the first thing that I learn.
So I go and I start working my
way through this book. And every single argument
that I come up with,
that's a good argument.
I don't know the answer to that. Like,
why, you know, how am I supposed to
respond to that?
And instead of
refuting it, the book actually convinced me on
every single argument and I didn't have an
answer to any of them because I didn't
know anything. I didn't know anything about religion.
I had not studied religion. I didn't know
anything about Islam. I didn't really know anything
about anything really at that time.
So instead, I was indoctrinating myself with that
book.
And every single answer just came towards that,
you know what? Why should you believe in
God? And I always
I loved see, it's also a style. So
these atheist philosophers that were writing these articles,
these philosophers specifically,
they have a certain intellectual style about them,
and I love the intellectual style. And they
have a certain,
witty,
sarcastic humor, And that's a humor that resonated
with me as well. So they would make
fun and poke fun of religion and people
who follow it. And that humor resonated with
me as well. So the the arguments not
only resonated with me. It's more the style,
the intellectual style that resonated with me. Whereas
when I go back to the mosque or
if I go into a Muslim community, the
style is very anti rational. It's like you
just believe. Don't ask questions. No one really
wants to think. You're not allowed to, you
know, reflect upon anything.
So that book had a profound effect on
me. And I eventually could not find any
answers to this. So I said, you know,
what's the point of even what's the point
of, let alone being Muslim, what's the point
of even believing in God?
So I completely went away from
Islam. I went away from belief in God,
and I said, you know, I identify myself
as an atheist.
So I became an atheist, and I didn't
believe that God exists. I didn't believe any
of these things.
And again, all of that is coupled with
me being in college,
1st year,
in the dorm for the first time. I
have my freedom.
No parents.
They can't watch what I'm doing. I can
go and do whatever I want.
And on top of that, I have no
Muslim friends.
In fact, just keep just keep in mind,
I did not hang around with anyone who's
Muslim at all.
This is even before I became atheist.
Why?
I've just never really been into culture. Culture
is just really not my thing
because I've just had I just don't like,
the way that culture was kind of, I
guess, forced down my throat or pushed on
me whenever it's convenient.
Right? So I've not been a very cultural
person. The majority of people that I always
hung out with were non Muslims in high
school, middle school,
and and in college as well.
So another thing that happened to me is
when I was, you know, when I was
with my friends,
most of my friends were from the far
far east countries, like China,
Taiwan,
Vietnam. You know, UCI,
there's a nickname for it. It's kind of
degrading, but I don't mean disrespect. But it's
nicknamed University of Chinese Immigrants,
which is because there's a lot of Asians
there. Right? A lot of Asians. If you've
ever been to UCI.
Right? Face all knows. It's
also nicknamed University of Civics and Integras
because it's like a lot of people have
those cars. They soup them up, and those
are the type of people that race them
over there. Right? So there's nicknames for that
school. So there's a lot of Asians there.
Those are my friends.
And they come from a culture and a
background where
their parents pretty much have no religion.
So they went through phases of communism in
the 20th century.
Their parents are not religious at all. So
my friends are all identifying
now as atheists openly. So when I asked
them, like, what religion are you? In in
high school, I used to just assume everyone
is just kind of either Christian or Jew
or Hindu or Buddhist.
There wasn't any other option.
But now these guys come up and they're
like, no, we're atheists. I'm like, atheist? Clear?
Yeah. We don't believe in God. Straight up
atheists. So these are the people who I'm
hanging out with,
and I just decided, you know, it makes
sense. You know, there's no good reason to
believe. So I joined them, and I left
all of that. And I remember sometimes, you
know, people would come or some random people
would come to me sometimes,
and they would look at me and be
like, oh, this guy looks like he's Desi.
You know? So let's go invite him. So
one guy would come up to me. I
remember one of my now friends, previously, I
didn't know who this was, walked up to
me. He's like, hey. You want to join
the Muslim Student Association?
What the heck?
Why are you coming to me? No. I'm
like, get out of my face. You know?
He walked away. One other guy came up
to me. Hey. You wanna join the PSA,
the Pakistani Student Association?
Like, heck no, man. I've been to Karachi,
and I've seen what that place is like.
Heck no. I don't want anything to do
with that. And I just left. So I
didn't hang out with any of these people
at all. I wanted to have no connection
whatsoever
with them at all.
So people ask me, is there, like, a
specific moment,
where I chose
to, like, to leave Islam and become an
atheist? And the reality is, no. There's no
specific moment that, like, all of a sudden
I'm like, ding. That's the day I'm gonna
make that decision. It's more of a process.
The process of going away from Islam was
a long process.
The process of coming back to Islam was
also a process. It's not like one step
where you just kind of make a decision.
So it it took a long time. I
used to have discussions with my friends at
meals, at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner. We
used to talk about different things, and all
of a sudden, the influence is coming. In
addition to the influence of the movies that
I'm watching, you know, I'm into sci fi
and all of that, You have that culture
coming through those type of movies.
The music that I listen to. We're not
even going to get into what type of
music I listen to, but the type of
stuff you listen to has an effect on
you. So some of the stuff that I
used to listen to was you know, definitely
not leading me. Probably, say, most of the
stuff I listened to definitely was not leading
me in the right direction.
So
so one person asked me, what was it
like? What did you feel like when you
were going through that period and you had
gone away from Islam?
Did you feel lost, and did you feel
depressed, and did you feel all of that?
You know? And the reality is,
not really.
I didn't feel lost.
I didn't feel depressed,
because
for me, it was like I had all
these shackles of all these rules, parental rules
mixed in with the Islamic rules and the
religious rules and the cultural rules. And they're
just
they're impending my, you know, my freedom, and
they're preventing me from doing whatever I feel
like doing.
So once those shackles were kind of gone,
I was just like, I could just do
whatever I want now. You know? So I
started, you know, going to nightclubs. I started
going to raves and all of that. But
what's interesting
is that
for some reason,
I never wanted to drink. So I never
drank alcohol,
hamdulillah,
except accidentally one time in Islamic University. But
that was a long story.
Never
intentionally,
never intentionally
drank.
And even pork, like it was something that
I just grew up with finding
disgust towards it. I cannot walk through the
supermarket and, like, smell the pork section. It
just bothers me. So I could never eat
any pork,
even though, like, I'm like, I could do
whatever else I want. I could do anything.
You know? But
these two things just kind of like stuck
with me. I never,
crossed the line on them intentionally.
So
this happened
for about
a year.
Right?
So about a year, this is what was
happening.
There was no purpose in my life. There
was no meaning in my life. I was
just,
like I said, like an animal, just trying
to have fun, trying to enjoy myself, and
that's it.
My grades started going down,
really
down a lot compared to what my grades
were before.
And then I got into
street racing.
So you watch movies like Fast and the
Furious and all of that stuff. This is
before those movies came out. I got into
street racing, so with some of my friends.
Now street racing is a very dangerous thing,
so let me throw a disclaimer out there.
It's very dangerous, and you can not only
kill yourself, but you can kill somebody else.
So like I said, Orange County, spoiled kids.
So my parents got me a brand new
car at this time. It was like
the year that the Lexus IS 300 came
out. So they got me that the same
month that it came out. And that's like
a big deal in in in Orange County
because, like, everyone wanted that car.
So
I got that car.
It's pretty fast.
We start racing on the freeway. We start
racing on the streets.
And again, it's very dangerous.
So if you're going you miss someone, like
if you miss a pedestrian
by half a second,
if you just were half a second off,
you would have killed that person. They would
be dead.
So there were several times where I was
just like maybe a second or half a
second away
from taking out, you know, someone who just
happened to be walking by the street because
you wanted to win the race.
You know? That's,
so it's a dumb thing to do. I
just wanna clarify that. As cool as it
looks in the movies, if you wanna race,
go to a racetrack,
get all your adrenaline out there and you'll
be fine.
So
I got into racing and then I'm hanging
out with these other friends
and doing some other stuff.
And then at the same time, I was
investing.
It was a tech boom at that time.
My parent my dad had given me some
money because he saw that
I know a little bit about stock market
and investing. So I was investing in everyone
was making money in the tech boom at
this time, the dotcom boom. Everyone is
making something. So I was making money as
well. So I was investing for a long
time. I was trading. Sometimes I was day
trading.
And everything was going fine for me until
one fateful Friday
where it was morning, Friday morning, I woke
up
and
I had actually bought
Juniper Network stock
and the stock market crashed that day.
So I wake up and I lost a
lot of money.
So I'm really, really pissed off.
Right? And then I get a phone call
from
my mom, like, she pages me, you know,
from upstairs. We lived in a really large
house. So she pages me and she says
something she wanted me to do. I think
she wanted me to, like, take out the
trash or something like that. And I'm and
I'm just visiting, you know, home for the
weekend, and I'm like, you know, I'm so
upset. I'm really mad.
And I'm like, I don't wanna take out
this trash.
I don't even take out the trash normally.
And now you want me to take out
the trash on top of this? This is
not going to happen.
So then I decided I was just so
upset that day. I said, that's it. I've
I've had it now. I need to just
I need to free myself from all of
these shackles and all of these chains.
I put a few clothes in my bag,
got all my credit cards, got everything of
value in my in my house,
put it in my car, and I was
ready to go and just run away from
home. And I was just gonna drive
down
to San Diego or maybe to Mexico. I
had not decided where to go. And I
had enough money. I had my bank account.
I had my debit card. And I'm like,
I'm out of here, and I'm never coming
back. And that's it. I can just I'm
just gonna start a whole new life.
And,
so I get in my car. I'm ready.
I'm charged up.
And as soon as I go to reverse
my car,
I realize that
that my mom was having,
this is like she just started to become
a little bit more religious.
So there was a group of aunties that
came, and they were having a tafsir class
in my mom's house.
And 1 auntie parked right behind my car,
so I couldn't back out.
So now I'm really pissed off. Right?
So I I go inside the house
yelling,
and I'm like, who parked behind my car?
You know? And this one auntie, you know,
she came out and she's like, you know,
Betty. Betty, I'm sorry. And it was me.
I'll move it right now. So I'm like,
you move your car right now. I need
to go somewhere. You know? Not telling her
I'm running away from home, but, you know,
I need to go somewhere. You need to
move your car. So she goes and it's
funny because this auntie actually remembers to this
day that incident. And she's like, I was
the one behind your car. I'm like, I
know.
Right? So I tell her, you gotta move
your car. So she moves her car. I
go,
and I'm gone. So I'm on my way.
I'm taking the 5 freeway south towards San
Diego or Mexico.
Going all the way down. Now the thing
is I don't drive this route. So for
me,
you know, despite being a good student, I'm
not thinking very well. So for me, 5
south means that the road is just gonna
go in one direction all the way south.
If you take the 5 south from Orange
County to San Diego, you realize it does
not go in a straight line south. It
curves and curves and curves, and there's a
lot of curves.
So I'm driving,
turn on my rock music, you know, going
down.
And then of all the times that someone
had to come
and try to race me, it had to
be on this day. So a Nissan 300ZX
twin turbo cuts in front of me and
gives me the racing signal.
Among street racers, there's a signal. I won't
tell you what it is, but it's like
you flash certain lights a certain amount of
times, which means
let's race.
Right? And I'm really in a bad mood,
lost money, running away from home. You know?
I'm that's this is the worst time to
try and race with me.
And, obviously, it's a dumb race too. I'm
not even thinking straight because an IS 300
versus 300ZX
twin turbo,
they don't have the same suspension. So one
of them the the Nissan is way, way
better no matter what the driver does. But
I'm like, you know what? I can always
just there's no way this guy is gonna
be more daring than I am because I'm
pissed right now. So
I say, okay. Let's do it. So we
start racing, and we're going all the way
down, and we're going really, really fast.
I can't tell you how fast it was
going,
for legal reasons. You'll find out why. But,
it was really fast, and you don't want
to go that fast. And keep in mind,
it's not a straight road. It's a curvy
road. So we're curving and we're going around
and everything.
And,
I make one turn on one of the
roads and my car spins out of control.
And literally, at this very, very high speed,
it does like a u-turn on the freeway.
And I end up hitting the center divider
and hitting like 3 other cars.
My car is salvaged.
Frame damage,
like, totaled, basically.
So I get out of there,
and
I'm perfectly fine. There's not a scratch on
my body. Nothing. No,
what's it called, whiplash. Nothing.
So I'm perfectly fine. So I go back
home. Everything's, you know, fine.
And then,
some of these same, like, aunties in the
community and some people keep coming up to
me and they're like, you know what?
Allah saved you for a reason.
You should have been dead. If you look
at your car and you look at what
happened, you should have been dead.
And I'm like, whatever. I don't believe in
this stuff. I don't even believe in God.
What are you talking about? You know? So
they kept on saying that, and I'm just
like, it's in the back of my mind.
I'm like, whatever.
I don't care about this. But then what
really got to me was
the police officer
who came
to write up the ticket and write up
the accident,
he visited me later on at my house.
And he sat down with me, and he
goes, you know what?
He says, I know exactly how fast you
were going. And he was lying too because
he could not have known exactly because there's
no speed cameras or anything. But he actually
did know the right number, which is funny.
I don't know how he knew that. So
he says, I know how fast you're going,
and that's attempted manslaughter.
And I'm gonna make sure that you go
to jail.
I guarantee you, I will make sure that
someone like you is gonna go to jail.
And that's when I got really scared because
for me, it was all about having fun,
enjoying my life.
And you go to jail,
all your fun is done.
It's all over. And there's some
bad things you read about and hear about
what happens in jail. Right? Don't need to
explain that explicitly.
So I was very afraid
and I was
very concerned.
And I started thinking, I said, who's gonna
help me? Like, what can I do? My
parents cannot help me.
The witnesses are not gonna change their testimony
against what happened. There's nothing I can do.
So at that moment, I just thought about
it. I said, you know what? I'm I'm
in big trouble.
So
there's not a single person who can help
me get out of this. So then I
said, you know what?
Let me just try. I was just desperate.
I said, let me just try
and I will call out to God and
see if he can he can somehow do
something. So I made a dua.
I made a supplication.
And I said, oh, God,
I don't even know if you exist,
and I don't even know if I believe
in you.
But
if you do exist,
I said, I'm basically made like a deal,
maybe not the best thing to do. Right?
I said, if you exist, if you get
me out of this,
I make a promise that I will and
I was not overzealous.
I said, I will at least try
a little harder
to find out
what the right religion is. That was like
my condition that I made. So I did
that, and I kept on I kept on
doing that. That was like my prayer. It
was
like a if then conditional statement of a
prayer.
So I was doing that, and then after
a few days, or I don't know how
long it was,
the policeman just never never showed up. Nothing
ever happened. I just got, like, maybe 1
or 2 points on my record or something
like that, and that's it. And I was
completely off the hook. Never heard about anything
after that. So then
that's where it kind of,
you know, I had a decision to make.
So the decision, I started thinking and looking
back, I'm like, you know what?
Maybe I was just being emotional in that
state of mind. And
you know, that's what people do when they're
emotional. They just call on something, and they
do irrational things. And it was very tempting
for me to do, and I was thinking
about that. And I know I have done
that in the past. In the past, I
had also,
you know, made promises. We all make promises
to God and say we're gonna do such
and such thing. And they were like, oh,
yeah. But this is why we're not gonna
do it anymore. And you you rationalize it
to yourself,
justify it to yourself.
For some reason,
this time, I said, you know what?
I'm not gonna just let this slide. I'm
actually gonna fulfill my promise. I guess maybe
maybe there was part sincerity
and part, like, I'm doing this for myself.
Like, I'm doing this because if I cannot
keep my word on something so weighty, then
what kind of person am I? Know, I
have to, you know, fulfill something.
So I decided I said, you know what?
I will
try my best and I will stop,
like, partying. I'll stop going to raves. I'll
I'll not waste my time in all of
this stuff. I'm going to utilize my time
to try and figure out, you know, what
the truth is. I'll search for the truth
wherever that is and whatever that is.
So that's when I started
thinking about questions.
I started having more self reflection. I started
again. Now I started looking into different religions
but actually reading some books on them. So
I went to the library,
started researching.
Then I kept going
and I kept trying to think. And I'm
like, okay,
you know, how am I gonna figure this
out for myself? It was always by myself,
though. That was kind of part of the
problem.
And then, I remember the verses that I
had read in the Quran about, you know,
there's signs in the world. So I'm like,
okay.
I will search for the signs that I'm
supposed to see. So I would try everything.
I would try meditation.
I would try listening to, like,
Sufi,
I guess you'd call it Sufi music. It's
supposed to put you in a trance or
something like that. I tried
different things. And then I used to go
to the beach. So I lived next to
the beach. So I go to the beach
and I would, like, stare out at the
ocean. And I remember that there's a verse
in the Quran that says, you know, you
look in the in the seas and everything,
there are signs for people who reflect.
So I would sit there and stare at
the sea,
and I would just get frustrated. I'm like,
what am I supposed to see? Like, I'm
not seeing anything. There's nothing here. Like, what
am I supposed to get from this? I
just don't see it.
So I tried all these different things,
but then I started attending,
chutba as well again.
So
I went on Friday one day with my
dad again. He does he doesn't know any
of this was happening at this time. So
I just go. I'm like, hey. I'll go
with you on Friday for the chutba. So
I went, and usually chutba for growing up
was always,
like, the most boring thing in the entire
world. I could not focus on what the
guy is saying.
We don't even come on time. Almost no
one comes on time anyways. Their goal is
to aim for
the Arabic part of the khutbah, which is
a lecture and a khutbah. So you just
aim for the Arabic one. You get, like,
5 minutes where a guy reads from a
book, and that's it. It's extremely boring, and
the guy has a very like, you know,
can't really relate to
that person.
So
finally, we go to a different guy. For
some reason, my father had started going to
this new guy. We go to this new
guy, and when he gives Khutba, I'm like,
hey.
This guy seems to be kind of intelligent.
He
seems to kind of make sense.
He doesn't have so much of an accent.
He had a South African accent. It was
authentic South African. I'm like, hey. This guy
seems like he's pretty clever.
And for me, Islam was always something that
seemed anti rational because of what I saw
in the Muslim community. So for me, this
was totally new. This guy is educated. This
guy seems like he's smart.
And I'm just like, So what I started
doing is I started hanging around with the
guy afterwards and I would just listen in.
And while people were asking him questions, I
would just kind of listen in and start
asking some questions as well. I would ask
very dumb questions to start with because I
didn't want to get to deep questions because
I don't know if I trust this guy.
So I'd ask questions like, so why do
you have a beard? You know? I'm like,
why do you wear, like, such and such?
Is that part of Islam or supposed to
be this way? And ask all these weird
questions.
And then one day, I'm sitting with him
right after the Khutba
and someone
came
and asked him a question about philosophy.
And all of a sudden,
my attention got sparked thinking back from my
critical thinking class
and he mentioned in his answer
something along the lines of, he goes, oh,
Imam Ghazali refuted the philosophers.
And I'm like, oh,
refuted? Argument?
Intelligence? That sounds good. I don't know who
this guy is. I don't know what century
he lives in. I don't know if this
is like a guy nearby. I can visit
him or something. No. No. Imam Ghazali lived
about a 1000 years ago,
and he wrote books
responding to the arguments of such and such
philosophers. And I had not gone into philosophy
very in detail, in-depth.
So I didn't really understand what he's talking
about in detail.
So
for me, this is like, I'm really interested
in this. So I'm like, tell me more.
And he's like, this is not for you.
You shouldn't read it.
So for me, my mentality being a little
bit rebellious growing up,
I'm like, you're telling me that I shouldn't
read it? He's like, yeah. Yeah. It's not
for you, and you probably won't understand it.
So I'm like, oh, I'm definitely going to
read it now. I'm going to show you
exactly that I can understand this too. So
I go home,
go to Amazon dotcom, and I buy every
single Imam Ghazali book that I can find.
Everything that they had at the time, I'm
just like, I'm gonna get all of them
because I don't even remember the name of
the book he mentioned. I wasn't really focusing.
So I bought all of those, and then
Amazon has those suggested reads. So it's like
if you bought this, then you should buy
this too. So there was another book called
Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam by Aleema
Ibar.
So I bought that too. I'm like, that
looks interesting.
So I bought that, and then I started
opening up all of them. Now keep in
mind,
I technically,
until this time, I had never read an
actual book in my life.
I'm not exaggerating.
I've never read an actual book until
my, what is this, like, my 2nd year
of college in my life.
What does that mean? I used to read
comic books. Okay? Comic books don't count. I've
read a lot of comic books.
And I've read, like, maybe some selections of
computer programming books I was really interested in,
like Java when I was in high school.
But other than that, all those novels you're
supposed to read in English class,
Catcher in the Rye and
I don't know. What else is there?
Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, all of I
didn't read a single one of those. I
just got through I didn't even read the
whole cliff notes even. I just read like,
I skimmed through the cliff notes, and I
knew exactly how to answer so that my
teacher would make it think that it's a
good argument, and then I'd get my A's,
basically.
So and that just shows you the problem
with our school system, obviously. But you can
get by, and you didn't read a single
thing. So this is the first time
I'm actually gonna read
an actual
nonfiction
book or even a fiction book. I wouldn't
even read like Jurassic Park or something like
that. So
So I start opening it. I start reading
it, and it's
a difficult philosophy book. There's different books that
I bought. I bought everything that he had.
So there was a personal biography of Imam
Moseli. There was Ihiyuellah Medin, Revival of Religious
Sciences,
Allama Iqbal's reconstruction of religious thought. There was
a book called Faisal Atafrica,
Ghazali. There was a book on the attributes
of Allah. There's a bunch of different books.
So I bought all of them.
And, I started going through them and I'm
just like, woah. This is really difficult to
understand. This is all new.
But when I'm reading the first chapter of
Ihayad al Mudin, one of the books by
Ghazali, it's the first chapter is the book
of knowledge,
and it talks about the importance of seeking
knowledge and the importance of learning. And for
me, this is like, wow. This is the
first book I'm ever reading and it's talking
about how valuable learning is and I'm really
connecting to them. Oh, this is really interesting.
So that was kind of motivating for me.
And I would honestly, like, it was so
difficult for me that I would just go
and read this to kind of go back
the next Friday and kind of show off
to the guy that, hey. I'm reading what
you told me not to read, and it's
making sense and everything. He's like, yeah. Really?
Yeah. Keep it up. And then
he started giving me more books,
and he said, why don't you read this
one? Why don't you read this one? So,
like, sometimes I would go,
and I would, like, skim through it and,
like, pretend like I read it. And then
eventually, I'm like, you know what? Maybe I
should just actually read this entire book that
he's giving me. So the books that he's
giving me so far, he's giving me books
by a scholar he was interested in by
the name of Abir Hassan Ali al Nadawi.
Right? And his books also appeal to me
because he has a very intellectual style.
So I'm reading Ghazali.
I'm reading Abul Hasan Ali Nadwih, and then
he gave me a tafsir. And one of
the tafsirs was a tafsir by Abdul Majeed
Dariyaba.
So when I'm going through these books and
I'm kind of like reading parts of them
and trying to understand a little bit, I
read
the biography
of Imam Ghazali
and I find out
that
he had doubts about Islam and he had
doubts about his religion.
And you can say, and it's debatable or
not whether he did, but he kind of
went away from Islam completely.
And then he reformulated his thought, and then
he came back to Islam. And I'm like,
wow. This guy resonates with me. You know?
Like, this makes sense. There's someone who's questioning,
someone who's thinking, and then he's kind of
going through this, and this works for me.
And then Mawlana Dariawadi, his tafsir, you know,
I didn't know it at the time, but
his tafsir resonated with me for some reason,
the way he writes.
What I found out a little bit later
on was
he actually
became an atheist.
So he was in the department of philosophy.
He left Islam. He became an atheist.
And then he actually came back to Islam
and he became an imam or sheikh. Right?
So
there was a reason why his writing was
resonating with me, and I found that out
later.
So I'm going through and I'm reading all
of these things, and I'm going to this
guy, and I'm a little bit more impressed.
And I'm kind of opening my mind now
to all of these thoughts. So while I'm
going through it, I'm reading. And not only
am I reading this, I start going and
reading,
rereading
some of the atheist books that I used
to read in the past, trying to, you
know, trying to understand
what is their argument and how I can
compare and contrast. So I came basically to
a decision.
I said the decision is there's either gonna
be one of 2 options for me in
life. Looking at all the other religions, it's
either gonna be Islam or atheism. These are
the only 2 that make sense to me.
And I'm gonna have to pick 1 of
these 2. But I'm gonna have to keep
researching more and more, and I'm gonna stick
with 1 of these 2. So I kept
on reading and everything like that. And then
this guy,
who I used to go and listen to
his khutba,
he tried to convince me. I said, I
want to go somewhere, and I want to
focus my time and my effort on doing
this. And, you know, where should I go?
So he told me, you should go to
India, and you should go to this school
called Nadwa, called Nadwa al Salamah,
because that's where the scholar, Abu al Hasan
al Nadwi, went.
So I'm like, okay. I need to go
to this Natwa place. This is the best
place for me.
But my parents said, no. They said, you're
not allowed to go.
So I said, okay.
I have no choice. I said, then you
know what? I'm gonna drop out of school.
I need to go and I need to
find something. So what I ended up doing
was I took a leave of absence from
UCI for a year and dropped out of
school, technically.
And they said, you know, instead of going
all the way to India, we're gonna put
you in a local madrasa over here if
that's what you want.
So I'm like, it's not ideal, but I'll
take it.
So
remember, in my mind, madrasa means
Imam Ghazali,
intellectual
questioning, all of that stuff.
So I go
to San Diego and I join this madrasa.
Madrasa is like an Islamic school.
So I go there
and it's the absolute worst experience of my
life because I'm thinking the thing is I'm
reading about Ghazali and Ghazali went through a
school system known as madrasa
milwamiyyah.
Alright? So I'm like, madrasa, if it produces
people like this, then it's got to be
good. And then I go to this madrasa,
the only thing that they have in common
is the word madrasa.
So
I go here, and I have the absolute
worst experience of my life.
I can I can just go on and
on about why that happened, but I won't
go into details? I lasted 2 weeks,
traumatized.
I get out of there. So then someone
says, you know what? Oh, that madrassa is
not very good. You went to the wrong
one. Why don't you give it another chance?
So I'm like, alright. Fine. So they put
me in another madrassa in another place.
And this one is,
I would say,
slightly
better than the other one, but it's still
like being in jail. And it's literally
like a living nightmare. None of the other
students would do their homework.
It was dirty. It was all sorts of
things. Right? So I'm like, this can't be
Islam. This is not what I'm reading in
the books. Something is not right here.
So I didn't last very long, in that
madrassa either. So I left.
So my parents said, good. Now go back
to school because they're very career oriented. They're
like, you need to, you know, you need
to quickly you need to finish your degree,
and you need to get a job, and
you need to get married, and then your
life is done. That's all you need. That's
what life is about. That's their understanding of
life. So I said, no. I am not
going back to school until I
complete this mission. I am on a mission
to find something. I need to do my
best. So I need to do that. I'm
not going back to school. So they were
very upset.
So what I started doing is I had
I didn't know where to go. I don't
know really who to ask. The only other
guy said go to India, but I can't.
I don't have any money. After I lost
the money in the stock market, my accounts
were, you know, revoked like any responsible parent
would probably do anyways when they find out
your son is trying to run away from
home.
So you cut his expenses so he can't
run away from home again. It's not a
bad idea.
So I have no money. Can't go anywhere.
Can't do anything.
So
I go to the only place that I
know. I said, Okay. Let me go to
a library that has a lot of books
and I can read. So I go to
the UCI library.
So I'm going to UCI,
but I'm not enrolled in the school. So
every morning, I wake up, I drive to
UCI
Park, and I would sit there the entire
day in the library until nighttime and just
keep reading. And I'm reading about 2 things,
philosophy,
specifically epistemology,
and then I would be reading about Islam.
So I kept on reading, reading, reading, reading.
And then eventually that kind of like slowly,
slowly moved me closer and closer towards Islam.
So then I started praying again.
I started, you know,
understanding a little bit more about the religion.
And then I'm meeting Muslims on campus, and
I'm like, well, technically, it says in Islam,
you're supposed to be praying with other people,
not just praying by yourself.
So I start going, and I see this
MSA, this Muslim Student Association, and there are
people who are praying there. And I'm like,
I guess Islam says we should pray together,
so let's pray together. So I start praying
with them,
and then all of a sudden,
they're they're like, hey. This guy seems to,
like,
know something about Islam, whereas we really don't
know much about Islam. So they started saying,
why don't you give a lecture? And then
why don't you teach a class? And why
don't you do this? And why don't you
do that? So basically, everything I learned, I
would start doing and teaching it, and somehow,
I got involved in the MSA
even though I'm not enrolled in school at
the time. It was kind of strange.
So then
I said, you know what? I'm still not
fulfilled. I still have more to learn. I
still have more to think about. So I
made a deal with my parents, and the
deal was I go back to school. As
soon as I finish my degree, they'll let
me go to India, fulfill my dream, and
I get to learn about Islam from the
school I want to be in. So they
said, Okay. Deal.
So
I rejoined
school.
I started taking a really, really full load.
I finished
in 2 more years. I finished school in
3 years. Normally, it takes 4 years. So
I was really motivated. And my whole perception
of life
and knowledge and understanding and why I'm studying
in class and what's the benefit of this
and all that, it totally was changed. So
my entire experience
after this was different. And I would be
arguing with my professors and, like, you know,
you're wrong on this historical point. You've got
your century wrong. And I would just be,
you know,
like, being like a really top student and
but, like, going beyond just a curriculum and
a syllabus. So that went really well, and
I was involved in MSA kind of,
unofficially and officially here and there.
And then I graduated, alhamdulillah. And then I
told I didn't even go to my graduation.
I'm like, I'm not even going. What is
there to what is there to graduate? What
is there to celebrate? I said, I'm going.
I
I know what I wanted.
Just book the ticket.
I'm out of here. Parents changed their mind.
And they said, we decided that this is
not best for you.
You're not going anywhere. You need to find
a job. And I was really upset. You
know? So I'm like, we had a deal.
The deal was I finished my degree. I
get to go. And they said, no. It's
too dangerous, and we don't want you to
do it. And this is all post 911.
And they're like, oh, the situation is not
good, and you shouldn't go, etcetera, etcetera.
So I'm like, fine.
So I go and find a job. I
get a job working
as a programmer slash IT for a while.
And then every single day, I'm just like,
what am I doing here? I'm supposed to
be studying. I'm supposed to be doing such
and such thing. So I used to go
and after work, I would go and attend
other Islamic classes, like in the community, in
the locality, whatever I could. But even when
I was in those classes, they were a
little bit better, but I'm like, no. This
is not enough for me, and I need
something more high level. I need something more
in-depth.
And then so I worked for a little
while. And then as soon as I had
just enough money
to buy my ticket and return ticket,
and pay for the dorm, which is really
nothing in the mother, son, India,
I told my parents. I said, that's it.
I'm gone. I'm out of here. So I
said, I'm I'm quitting. I quit my job.
I was about to fly. And then they're
like, oh, okay. You know, if you really
wanna go that bad, we'll go ahead and
support you. You have our blessing. Like, when
I'm already ready to go anyways, which is
better than nothing. You know? So, alhamdulillah. So
I go,
yeah, I've already gotten past my back to
Islam part, but I go to India, and
then
my journey starts from there. So we'll leave
the story there, and we'll leave time for
questions.
There we go. Perfect. 1 hour or so.
Any questions?
So reconciling evolution in Islam,
at that point in time I have a
different stance than I do now. But at
that point in time,
I was viewing it as something that
is not entirely proven. It is just a
theory.
There is politics within science. And I had
come across some of these books like Harun
Yahya and things like that, which I am
not a big fan of anymore. But at
that time, I reconciled it through those books,
seeing that
there have been so many
fallacies or so many
experiments which have been overturned over time that
were still being taught in school. And there's
actually a a really good book called Icons
of Evolution where it's basically talking about how
the stuff that we learn in school is
like a lot of stuff that's been debunked
from the past,
and yet it's still being taught because the
curriculum doesn't get updated. So at that time,
it resonated with me. Now my views are
a little bit different. My views are a
little bit more different in the sense that
there are clear cut aspects of evolution, and
then there are non clear cut aspects of
evolution. There are clear cut aspects of the
Quran and Islam, and then there are non
clear cut that are kind of, like, open
to interpretation.
The two parts from each of these world
views that are clear cut, they're easily reconcilable.
It's the parts that are not clear cut
from both sides that
have some issue reconciling.
So that's not a problem for me because
there are clear interpretations which do make sense,
which could have some level of reconciliation in
terms of
ambiguity on on both sides.
That's my short answer.
So, yeah, honestly, I'm not sure. I mean,
I think the only thing that might have
resonated with me is if we had something
in common.
Right? So the thing is I was into,
you know, technology, computer science, sci fi, comic
books, the things that are, like, somehow interesting
to me. If they were able to relate
to me on that level, then maybe I
would have been of course, this is all
my fault. Right? I mean, I take the
responsibility. But I think maybe if
Muslims with different interests
and different maybe socializing techniques, if they were
able to somehow connect with people
on a more non religious level, then they
could insert some of that into, you know,
some of that good positive influence. But you
actually have to have, some type of interaction
or relationship with that person outside of just
the religious questions.
Maybe that would be a way. Sure.
Yeah. So, yeah, one last thing is, so
since that time, you know, I've started an
Islamic university. It's called California Islamic University.
We have classes online as well.
Hamdallah Faisal here is one of our good
students, masha'Allah.
Usually a good student. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. If you have any questions about,
like, details and, like, how he actually lives
in New York and does the classes, you
can always ask him. He's here. So I
have some brochures. If you want, you can
just grab one of the brochures. I recommend
you check it out because I I mean,
in retrospect, I think that
if I had some Islamic knowledge while I
was in college, like right when I walked
into that philosophy class, if I had a
background with, like, a little bit deeper level
Islamic knowledge, I think I would have been
able to process that. If I had my
Sunday school curriculum or even, like, even if
I went to Islamic school, I don't think
the depth,
which they teach would have helped me prepare
for those things. So even if you're teaching
the same subject, whether it's the life of
the prophet, peace be upon him, or whether
it's Islamic law, when you teach it at,
like, a very elementary level,
it doesn't equip you to learn, to deal
with issues that come at a college level.
So that's why even if you think, you're
like, Oh, I already know this stuff. I
learned this in 5th grade. Well,
when you relearn it,
when you're more mature and you learn relearn
it at a college level, it's different and
helps you process issues differently. So check it
out in the show.
It's not like everyone.
Just more about the classes.
I was kinda like Sheikh Mosefah growing up
as well.
Kinda went to Sunday school, didn't really have
a strong foundation of Islam growing up. And
I I went to UCI as well.
And I heard about CIS at the time,
College of Islamic Studies. Now it's California Islamic
University.
And I was like, I'm, I was pre
med, at the time. I had a lot
of classes going on. I don't have time
for this. Right? And
when I realized how easy it was to
take a class on the side, I was
like, what I should have done earlier.
And
it's you can take it in at home.
You can take it in the comfort of
your home. It's not an intense load. For
some of the classes,
I would say,
it's probably about, like, you said 4 hours.
Like, I would say 4 hour commitment, including
a lecture.
Don't touch on Nicholas about this. But you
can also speed his lecture too, if you
want to.
But I'm just saying that it's very doable.
And let's say you don't want to take
it during your undergrad or something. That's totally
fine. But keep it in the back of
your head even after you graduate. Like, let
me just take a class. And you can
audit a class. You can do it without
for a grade.
And it's really simple. It's and if you
want to know more details about it, let
me know. But
it's really it's not as big of
a huge commitment as you think. I think
that first step I took,
Stories of the Prophets.
It was my 1st class I took. And
I was up at Berkeley at the time.
And it was great. I was like, and
as I took more classes, I was like,
wow, this is giving me the foundation
that I really wanted in Sunday school that
they couldn't give me growing up. And I
was, like, wow. I I know a couple
of things now about Islam. So I don't
want to belabor the point. But, if you're
just considering it or even thinking about it,
talk to him. And, or you can ask
either by either Sheikha or myself, for more
questions.
IQV,
call of peace. Save humanity.