Nouman Ali Khan – A Heart to Heart
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the "has been a pleasure," "has been a pleasure," and "has been a pleasure," messages from the Atlantic Sunrise movement that affect people's perception of Islam. They emphasize the importance of finding inspiration in the Quran and finding success in life, and emphasize the need for a better way to produce content and promote their vision of empowering people with the word of Allah. They also share their struggles with extremist and anti- Islam arguments and express their desire to achieve their vision in the future.AI: Transcript ©
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today is going to be a interesting challenging session for me, I won't be talking to you about Ibrahim alayhis salam today, I wanted to have a direct conversation with many of you that follow my lectures, those of you that are attending here live, those many of you have been following me for many, many years, you know, going through the Quran with me as much as possible. And I just wanted to share some thoughts with you about what I have as a vision for myself and for this organization and what I hope to accomplish and you know, where I think we need to be heading, and some of these thoughts are rather raw, this is unrehearsed and unprepared. So I wanted it to be something that
comes from my heart and reaches your hearts. And that's my draw from the very beginning. Like the Arabs have a saying my uncle Jimmy, they'll call BOC doodle globe, what comes out of the heart reaches the hearts. So that's fundamentally the the intention today. The first thing I want to say is my own observations about the landscape of the Ummah, you know, before we talk about giving Dawa tests to non Muslims, and the problems, of gopher and of shared can, the outside world, right? And we were learning about that in the context of the religion of Ibraheem Alehissalaam. But we did you know, this started ringing in my head when I was giving you this the other day about, well, me
Albizu, Imana, homebuilt Ohlman. And they didn't, they didn't cover up their own faith with wrongdoing. Right. And I've seen some, some Allah has shown me some incredible things around the world, like I have seen so much of the OMA. And I've seen some such inspirational people. And I've also seen some trends that really deeply hurt myself. Like, it's the same story over and over again, it comes in different faith, you know, different ways, but across cultures and continents, we seem to have similar kinds of problems. And I wanted to highlight some of them, at least from my point of view, and Europe, of course, absolutely free to disagree.
The first of them is extremism. Now, you know, you know, in like CNN terms, or BBC terms, extremism is about militant, or, you know, you know, war oriented, jihadi kind of you, they've taken the term jihad, which is a beautiful term and turn to something disgusting. And that kind of, you know, mindset, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the extremism within our religion, that is actually much, much before anything is violent. There's a mindset that becomes extreme. And that mindset is rooted deeply rooted in really a lot of lack of knowledge at how permissible our religion is on many issues. Right, we've heard something growing up. And if somebody was raised in
Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or India or wherever and there, they heard something growing up about what Allah says, or what he doesn't say they believe that to be absolutely true, and I don't blame them. Right. And the opposite is being heard by somebody raised in Algeria, and something completely different, is being heard from the imam from somewhere in Nigeria, and something else is being heard by people that are living in another part of the world. And they're all very convinced about their position, because they were accustomed to hearing that over and over again. And instead of being understanding of how these conclusions came about, and how did we become, you know, how there was
room in our religion to disagree about certain things, some things we don't disagree on, right? Nobody's going to come out and say there's four records in Maghrib. Nobody's going to do that. But there are other things in which there were multiple ways of looking at things. But that is that started disappearing, you know, my way is eemaan. And everybody else's way is Gopher,
right? And there's this like, extreme intolerance of someone who looks different from you, someone who you know, who expresses their Deen different from you, someone who even prays slightly different than you must be just completely off. They must not know their Islam. That's why they are the way they are. And this extremism it got so ugly, it's so ugly and it's so it creates so many cults like people become you don't even see somebody else who says La ilaha illallah is a Muslim. First you see they are Muslim but are
Are they part of the elite club that I belong to? Right? So we formed these different, you know, Islam within Islam kind of thing. And so you start looking at people first from the lens of, are they in line with my view? Or are they on the outside? And if they're on the outside, even though they're technically Muslim, pretty sure they're going to *, you know, that's the this is the kind of mentality, even if we don't say it, it's become commonplace. And you would think that I'm talking about something that some crazy people actually get on the pulpit and say these kinds of things, and there are plenty of those. But this is actually being thought about. And it's internalized by people
that don't even express it. So this extremism became more and more commonplace. But then this gave birth to another extremism in my view. And the other extremism is when you see that our Dean and I, the reason I wanted to talk about Ibrahim are they set up this year. And you know, people assume you will so I know the story of Ibrahim I some I have to talk about that. Right? I haven't even gotten to the point where I think this is absolutely absolutely fundamentally needed. Ibrahim I think Sam was concerned about all of humanity. He was concerned about people he's never met before. He's concerned about generations of people in the future across the world, and he wants something good
for them. Right? Now think how far we can come we can claim to be from the religion of Ibrahim Al Islam and think forget about wanting good for someone else, we find joy at the at the destruction of another Muslim. Right that that is different from us, the belongs to a different sect than ours or that belongs to a different political ideology than ours, etc. We we find some kind of internal like, yeah, got them. You know, how far from that from the religion of Ibrahim or Lisa is that? You know, it's so the other extreme that got developed as well I want to come to Islam I want to come to this Deen because it softens my heart. It brings me closer to Allah. It makes me love my messenger
SallAllahu sallam, it makes me you know, we hear all the time. This is one OMA, this is one Omar. But the more I come closer to the religious environment, the more I find this is so divisive and cultish. And, you know, sectarian is so it's so aggressive. I don't want anything to do with it. And so a lot of people over the last century, a lot of people practically wanted to stay away from anything that looks to religious Muslims. They want to stay away from a masjid, they want to stay away from somebody who looks like they might be teaching about Islam, because they're probably extreme. They're probably very hateful, very judgmental people. They're these assumptions that were
developed, these assumptions did not come out of the figment of somebody's imagination. A lot of people were very judgmental, a lot of people were very extreme. And they created that kind of hostile environment. And when they did that, there was a reaction and so both sides got polarized. So if you go to any Muslim country, and any Muslim community even you could, you could do that cross sectional analysis, even in a city like Dallas, right? You can find plenty of Muslims here. When you ask them about the masjid the opinions you they will you will hear you guys know you've been in those conversations already. All these people are like this. There's this you wonder where did where
are these thoughts coming from? Why are they so like, you know, averse to anything that has to do with Islam because they've experienced something in Islams name, they've experienced divisiveness, and hatefulness, they've divided they've experienced cultish behavior, you know, gang mentality, they've experienced these things in the name of Islam. So they're like, you know, I just want to be good. I don't think this is any good. So I'm gonna just stay take a step back. Right? And so they pull away and they want to just do their own thing, you know. And so that's another extreme that develops and by the way, when you when you disconnect from any, any environment where you can learn
about your religion, where you can find some spiritual growth, when you disconnect from that, well, you're also in chatlines playing field because now you're by yourself. So you're gonna surround yourself with non Muslim friends or friends that are Muslim by name, but they don't really talk about Islam. That's your new criteria. So when you surround yourself in that environment, how, how well, is your deen gonna flourish anyway, you're gonna start withdrawing from your deen, you're not going to be connected to Allah the way you used to be. You know, it's gonna start hurting you spiritually, even though it's helping you in other ways. It's starting to hurt you spiritually. So
there's that's the other extreme.
Then there, of course,
something that I didn't realize how serious it was until I started traveling and meeting with people and
just having conversations, because a lot of my career was spent giving the rules in masajid. Right, and I'm like, I'm sitting here I'm giving them the machine and the people in front of me and and I thought, This is what the OMA looks like. Right? And this is not what the OMA looks like. This is a subsection of a subsection or subsection of what the OMA looks like. And things happen in my life. And I started kind of looking at the
Omar differently and started experiencing different kinds of populations that I did not know existed and I realized Subhanallah there are people that will walk by you, you would never even think they're Muslim.
But they have a love of this Deen in their heart. And they really want to, they really want it. They really wish they knew more. And he really did. It's burning them on the inside. But there, they are kind of the next generation I just described to a generation that kind of disconnected itself from the religious environment. This is a byproduct of that those people are so just so far removed, that they have a love and a reverence and a desire to learn about the religion. But they're also terribly afraid of Muslims that are Islamic. They're terribly afraid. And genuinely, I mean, you think non Muslims get scared when they when you board a plane and they look at your beard. Now you haven't met
those kinds of Muslims, they get scared. They get scared of other Muslims. And I actually for the first time, learn to empathize with their fears, learn to understand where they're coming from, learn to engage them in conversation, and I found Subhanallah these people, they may not look like they're practicing Muslims. They may look like they're on the verge of cover.
But their hearts are in the right place. And they're just looking for for that spark to connect them and to really bind them to Allah as dean, but on the outside it looks like oh, the OMA is secularizing the OMA is liberalizing the OMA is getting progressive, almost becoming this. Oh, we're leaving, we're leaving the appearance women are leaving the hijab. Men don't have the beards anymore. The mustards are empty, etc, etc, etc. Right? And that, that that population of people, one of the things that chatline gets them with is because they don't look like your conventional, religious, Muslim. And because they're not in the best environments, sometimes they make mistakes.
And when they make mistakes, then they want to figure out how to make Toba come back to Allah. Right? You know, what's traumatizing, for a lot of them the message they've heard, and this is coming directly from so many hundreds, if not 1000s, of voices, the message they've heard growing up from the member, from the member of us who lost sight of the you know, when you hear something over and over again, you get a summary in your head, right? The summary in the head, you know what it is, I'm probably going to *, no matter what I do,
I'm probably not worth worthy of being saved. Because people that get saved are really, really good people. And they're, I mean, they came from a long time ago, they're probably already dead. So in this day and age, most people can't be any good. You know, that those times are over. So there's a deep hopelessness inside of those hearts. So now I mentioned a few problems to you, we're there's an extremism, there's a response to that extremism. There's an there's a silent OMA that slowly fading away, they're hoping to cling on to their religion in some way. But there's nothing to cling on to, to hold on to. And there, then comes along, and yet another narrative that takes hold. And that
other narrative is you know what, maybe these people have knowledge, these these shift types, these conservatives, etc. They're too Hardline, we need to have, we need to rethink Islam. We need to you know, reinterpret the whole thing and figure out a way of making us feel better and not making us feel bad. So now a reinterpretation of Sharia, a reinterpretation of the Quran, a reinterpretation of its teachings, anything that doesn't fit with a modern mindset, anything that doesn't fit a progressive worldview, let's reinterpret it, and reconfigure it. So it's a jives with society better, it syncs better. It's more politically correct. You know, it's more socially acceptable. And
anything that doesn't we should say, you know, what, that doesn't make any sense anymore. Maybe Allah said that for that time, it's not for our time anymore. Right. So that's, that was a new wave. And that wave is no straw, no small wave. It's a massive wave. Right. And, you know, the idea of not questioning conclusions, because the evidence is are weak. No, let's question conclusions. Because, well, you know, it's just not convenient. I want a religion that's convenient, that I don't have to make any changes in myself, but I can feel good anyway. Right. That's the That's another way if that came about. And so in the middle of all of these waves, I found myself like,
there's a lot of assumptions among Muslims, when you're talking about something, oh, this month, this one must belong to the extremists camp. Or if they don't make that assumption, Oh, this one must belong to the progressive camp, or this one must belong to this camp. So if you show mercy or empathy or understanding towards any one of those groups, then automatically others are ready to label you as a member of the opposite group. Right? There is a paranoia, I need to figure out which which gang he comes from because I need to make sure I'm not I'm not
falling under the rug on the long side of the border. You know, and you know what's the the tragedy and all of that is that the actual beautiful teachings of our deen are being lost. Like Quran is being recited, in my view, Quran is being recited. People are learning and teaching. And there's a lot of good happening too. But for the most part, the spirit of our, the, the mentality that's that it's supposed to produce the healing that it's supposed to have for the hearts, where's it to be found? Whereas it's, and for me, I realized that Allah azza wa jal that I realized this actually, after going through a lot of personal struggle, it didn't come to me easily. I've been studying
obsessively. I've been studying the Quran since like 1999. And I like it's a passion for my life. Like I don't know if I can do anything else with my life and study Allah's book, the way that I do. And the the, all of that study, and you know what happened, I had to go through some really difficult times in my life, and I realized some things were always there in Allah's book, and I just couldn't see it.
Like it was always there, and I couldn't see it. I'll share one of those things with you today. He says, Allahu Allah livina Ave, Johanna Johanna Bulu Mati.
Allah is the protective friend of those who had faith, he brings them out of darkness into light.
Contemplate that for a moment, he brings them out of darkness into light, you know, you would think that this idea is they used to be Kuffar. And he brought them into Islam, he brought them out of darkness into light. But the fire began, Allah, Who will you let him look at the seal. Look at the tenses. Allah is the friend of those who already had a bad faith. So the people being talked about already have faith, they've already had it. Then he uses the present tense and says, Yo Collegium, he keeps bringing them out. from darkness into light. You know what that means? Even a believer can fall into darkness. Even after having faith, you fall into darkness. And it's not one kind of
darkness, there could be different kinds of darkness, they could have darkness, there's a darkness that can fall for you. Because of the struggle you're having with your parents. Another one because of the struggle you're having with your children. Another one because of the struggle you have with your spouse. Another one of that because of the struggle you're having within yourself another one because of the struggle of your loneliness, these are there different kinds of struggles that are happening inside people, and they never talked to anybody about it, you know that they don't talk to anyone about it. It's too embarrassing to talk about it to somebody. So they live with that struggle
inside of their head. They live with it inside of their head. And we don't even know. And you know what, without that empathy without me understanding that somebody's actually struggling.
I met a young man, I hope he doesn't get embarrassed. I won't tell you his name or story about a young man at Fudger this morning, who just wanted to talk to me, right? And people, people come and meet me all the time they want to talk, it's fine. So second, I just have 10 minutes. And I was like, Where are you coming from? It's coming from 30 miles away to Fudger. Here 30 miles away, I'm like, okay, just come sit down. You know, and he was feeling really bad for even asking me five. I asked I sit down with him in the auditorium, not two minutes, we I think the first five minutes he had to gather himself because he couldn't stop his tears. For the first five minutes, just tears
rolling on his eyes.
Because of what he's feeling because of what some something he needed to get off his chest and he couldn't trust anybody to say it to.
You couldn't find somebody that, you know, if I tell somebody, I don't know how they're gonna think what they're gonna think.
I'm not here to tell you what he shared with me. That's between me and him. You know what the point is, there are a lot of people that are holding a lot of tears inside.
They're just holding deep tears inside. And they need to hear that Allah cares that Allah loves them, that Allah is not here to condemn them to *. And that if they're wrong, Allah has a gentle loving way of showing them how wrong that is. And can they can they can change course, they can develop courage, they can find strength.
And even if they're believers, and they messed up, if they really messed up, they fell to a place they never imagined they would fall there. They never imagined themselves failing in the way that they did. And people around them have written them off. People around them have given up How could you fall like that? You're disgusting creature. Don't ever show your face again. You call yourself a Muslim? Muslims are the most merciless. They are the most merciless. It's I say this, it hurts me to say this, but I wouldn't have said it if I haven't experienced it.
Right. And I Allah put me in a certain place in my life, where I had to really experience darkness, emotional, spiritual, personal darkness. I had to experience it in different kinds of ways. Before I could realize man, Allah maybe maybe one of the wisdoms of me going through that is Allah azza wa jal shows me what a lot of people go through and you don't even see it.
You didn't
You don't even see what they're going through.
Hola, hola. Hola, Latina Amanu Ucrete Yamuna Boulevard in LA No, you become repentant Allah. Allah says Allah says, When you recognize your mistake make Toba. When you recognize your mistake, Allah will elevate you back, he will lift you back, you know, who doesn't let you get lifted back? Fellow believers, apparently.
* believers, right. And I realized that that can't just be me. There's there's a lot of people like that. There's a lot of people struggling like that. I used to have this vision for what I wanted to do for me, you know.
And then over the years, with my own personal journey, that vision changed. And I have a new vision, something else I want to do with this, this mission, this organization, and in a couple of minutes, I just want to put that in front of you. What I'd like to do, because I have now you can't go back, you can't unsee what you've seen, right?
I genuinely believe that the way that we think about Islam, the average Muslim, the way that they think about the sun, which doesn't matter which category I mentioned, that they belong to, they're really disconnected from the Quran.
They're really, really, they're just the words of ALLAH, the counseling in it, the wisdom in it, the thought process in it, we're disconnected from it. The Quran is an artificial part has become an artificial part of Muslim life. Meaning it's recitation is heard some Halaqaat are attended. And even when you're studying the Quran, most of the time you're studying what other people said about the Quran and the Quran itself. Right. But the way that we're supposed to our heart and our mind is supposed to engage Allah's book, it's it's not happening the way it should have been.
I used to feel like that when I first studied the Quran, I was like, I was born a Muslim. How come I didn't know this stuff until I was 2120 years old? 19 years old. How come I had no idea this stuff is in this book. And now after 2324 years of study, I'm reading the book again. I'm like, How come I didn't see this for 20 years?
How am i How come I didn't see the empathy Allah shows? I didn't see the mercy Allah shows, I didn't see the wisdom Allah shows about these semiauto you know, so many times, I didn't see it. Why? Because we actually became a people that are are hard hearted. Overall, individuals are very soft hearted. But overall, the the attitude the narrative of Islam became hard, harsh, you know, I would even argue, merciless, and that needs to change. The Quran needs to be brought back. The you know, the Quran is analogy in the Quran itself. It describes itself by way of analogies, right? One of the analogies Allah gives for the Quran is that it's like the rain.
You know, that brings the soil back to life.
You know, what is what does the rain do to the soil, it makes it soft first. And it puts life into it. Right? And then it gradually allows the seed to grow. It allows it to have tickets time to have a process, right? So if we're going to bring the Quran back, we're going to give an individual time to grow, time to nurture, we're going to deal with them gently. We're not going to see somebody come to me and say that they have a drug problem. Or they have an alcohol problem. My job isn't to just tell them it's haram. My job is to help them get out. Like, step by step by step for the sahaba. Allah didn't just reveal alcohol is haram. He revealed step by step like years before Allah said
It's haram years. And at the end of it, he said, it's from the work of the devil. At the end, he kind of said that in the beginning. It's always it's not like it was the work of the angels before it was always the work of the devil. And it's something I'm illustrator, unfortunately, woohoo. Why is he saying that all the way in sort of either all the way at the end of Revelation, or at the end of the zero? Why not early on. Because he's even though those people are ready to go fight on the battlefield. They're ready to get killed for the sake of Islam. But some of them can't handle letting go of this darkness. Just because you're you're brave enough to even sacrifice your life
doesn't mean you're strong enough to overcome that addiction. You see how nuanced and beautiful religion is so beautiful, but we lost that. So my, my vision let me let me get to in two minutes my my vision.
I am trying to make a commentary on the entire Quran. I've already done a brief one, and I'm trying to do a detailed one. And the detailed one is 48 solos are finished and another hopefully over the next decade. If Allah gives life I can finish the rest. Right? And along the way, I will I'm taking advantage of people that have dedicated their lives to Quran studies scholars, experts, researchers, and taking advantage of that and being able to be able to just sit and contemplate every idea to give it its try to give it its due. And then to create a library of that material. This is most of this stuff. 90% of the stuff that is not on YouTube, I put all
Other than being a TV, why? Because I wanted people that are actually dedicated to this. You know, YouTube, you'll find my goodbyes every week you'll find these broadcasts, you'll find this stuff. But I wanted to build a library of people that just want to study Quran, little by little every day. They just want an idea they wanted they want to, they want to, you know, first engage with the word of Allah and then go deeper with the word of Allah but my vision was something more that's what I can do. But you know what I'm really hoping for people learn, people get some inspiration and they talk to their family, they talk to their friends, then those friends talk to their friends. My
vision overall my my long term vision is mothers across the OMA should have an easy way of learning the Quran and teaching it to their own kids.
Because I can guarantee you if mothers were equipped with the Quran some of you may have heard in Pakistan not too long ago, there was a riot there was some I believe, a sir Lankan fellow that was beat to death, right in public in a mob motivated by Islam, apparently motivated by Islam. If we had done our job, equipping mothers with the ability to teach their children what the Quran actually says 20 years ago, 30 years ago, if we were doing our job, do you think a mob like that whatever happened?
I think if we reach those villages, and we empower those those parents to teach those children what Islam really is, they would ever become a mindless mob like that. We would ever end up in tragedies like that. We wouldn't we wouldn't. We keep thinking about the OMA is in crisis. It's in political crisis. It's a social crisis. It's an economic crisis. It's an a Quran crisis. Personally, I you and I can be in a Quran crisis as an alma, we're also in a Quran crisis. And we can solve that for the OMA, if we're not solving it for ourselves. That's actually my vision. My vision is I want to do something where I'm, even if I fall, I get back up, I find strength in the word of Allah make the
corrections I need to make and move forward. And at the same time, I identify others that may have fallen, and say, Get out. Here's the word of Allah. Here, get started, learn a little bit, gain some strength, yes, get your head back, get your get your head on straight. Correct your course. And we can. It's possible.
And this is something I can do. I've said it multiple times before that, if I'm able to do that, if I'm able to do that for one person. But you know, if I if I if one young man finds benefit in what I'm saying, and I'm my plan is to share this story with you. I hope I can meet him I'm going to call him out. I won't say his name because gonna get embarrassed.
This is what I'm going to end with. There's a young fellow that I was teaching Arabic to, you know, within mme here at the Dream Program, it's been broadcast online. It's the Arabic of the Quran, online course. And I get students that call in from, you know, from from different countries, they can come in on the live feed, right? And the student comes on the live feed will start I've been studying, I'm making a lot of progress. I'm in France, was like wow, in France. Cool.
And he says, You won't believe where I am, was like, where are you? goes, I'm in my jail cell. Like what?
You're in your jail cell. He turns the camera around. And it's a prison cell. And he literally points the camera at the bars. And there's, there's people outside in the yard in the prison yard playing.
And he came into prison because of a really hard life of crime. And found Allah's book when he was in prison and started studying it. He didn't know any Arabic even started studying it, started learning started a little bit of Arabic. So I listen to lectures on the Quran, he transformed. They saw such a change that he was the most dangerous gangster in there. He saw they saw such a change in him that they allowed him Internet access and a phone here you can study in your jail cell.
They allowed him that. And you know what happened? 1617 guys in jail took shahada because of him.
And then on top of that, you know what else happened? Those guys he was he fell in love with surah. Yaseen. I've done some lectures on Satya seen some years ago and they're on YouTube. He watched his lectures, he completely falls in love with the surah right? So he memorized sort of your scene. And then he has his his jail buddies, memorize suit non Muslims were memorizing pseudo Yacine in six months. And for each IR they memorize or each phrase they memorize. They were actually watching those videos and he was translating them in French for them. So they knew that Tafseer of each piece of the ayat while in prison, and then some of them went back and their entire families became Muslim
through solid Yacine
he's just sitting there, like going to have some time when I'm my plan is to go meet him. I just need to give him a hug.
You know, but you know what, that's the vision
I have a vision isn't oh, I want to expand the campus or get a bit of a, you know, do big documentaries or this or that, no, I just want to find people that have found inspiration in the book of Allah to capture their stories to, to support them in whatever way I can. So they can inspire others with the book of Allah, so they can inspire others with the book of Allah. Imagine those young men that have changed inside of that prison, how many futures 100 years from now how many generations will have changed because of that change? Just think about that. Just think about that for a moment, right? This is what I want to do. This is what I want to do with the rest of my
life. And what I want from you guys, those of you that are consuming what I have to share, if you find benefit in it, of course, what I say is, you know, maybe riddled with mistakes, and I'm always open to being corrected and discussing. That's, that's besides the point. But what I want from you is to make a commitment to yourself, I want the light of the Quran in my heart, I want to be able to take advantage of this, I want to be able to learn it regularly. Just a regular daily part of my life. You know, a lot of you don't know I've done an entire translation of the Quran and videos, brief commentary, it's already there in Vienna tv.com, sign up and get it just to sign up, just
start just do me a favor and start. And I've said it a million times when I started this organization back then. And even now, I wanted to do something that I know I'm taking extra time I swear to you five minutes, no more than that inshallah. I had a business plan. So I'm going to share in these last five minutes my business plan with you. My business plan in the beginning was I want an organization that serves Allah's book that doesn't need fundraising.
I don't want to ask for funds. And the reason I don't want to ask for funds is I found it embarrassing. I felt awkward when I would go to the masjid. And I would go to some org, you know, and people are coming. And they're asking and asking and asking and asking. And I'm like This is Allah's work, why? It's so embarrassing, you know, like, I felt it was, and there's no shame in asking for the sake of Allah not putting those organizations down. But I couldn't get myself to say this is the mission, please donate generously, I don't want to do that just doesn't feel right, you know what this is for those who believe in it. And for anybody who believes in a cause, they're not
going to feel like they're spending, they're going to feel like they're investing into themselves. And I don't want somebody to give I first I would want you to invest into yourself, before you invest in somebody else. I'd like you to say I'm committed to learning Quran, I this is something I feel inside me, I benefited so much. I like to so much, you know, the part of the Islam of a believer, right? Is we love for ourselves, you know, my you're humble enough, see, you know, you heavily rely heavily Nipsey he loves his brother when he loves for himself. If you find real purpose benefit guidance in what you're getting, then you say, hey, I really want to give this gift to you.
I want this to be with somebody else. You know, they're their entire groups that are translating what we're doing the commentary on the Quran and the stuff they're translating into, into Bahasa Indonesia, into Bangla into Punjabi, there are groups that are doing that. And you know, my vision, my vision is people, like if you're from Bangladesh, if you're from Pakistan, if you're from these countries, you know what you should, you should sponsor students from your countries, because you should want to say I want 100,000 1,000,010 million 20 million people from my country to know the Quran better in the next 10 years. I want to facilitate that for them. And I want them to know that
in a way that softens their heart that that expands their mind, that's what I'd like to see. That's the goal that I have. I want to just pump, I want to gain those who can should give to those who can't. And if you can't, it's our subscription is $11 a month I'm not even selling it to you, I don't care if you can't afford it, go get a gift subscription we'll give it to you
doesn't matter and then our business analysts my business I was friends with like, if you get give too many people a gift subscription, your servers, you're not going to be able to uphold the cost. You're not it's gonna, you're gonna go bankrupt. And I was like, Don't worry about it. Those who believe in this will come through. We don't have to worry about that. We just have to worry about we didn't deprive anybody. We didn't close the door, Tony, because on the one hand, people feel like Islamic education should be free. Nothing is ever free. Nothing is ever free. The lights that are on have a cost. The Sheikh that's teaching has a family to pay for and all of that. That's not even the
point. My point is it shouldn't be free. It shouldn't be free, this is the highest form of education, it should be accessible, it should be affordable, and whatever revenues are generated should be used to spread this even further. To make this we should be Quran organization should be more powerful than Netflix. Why and why not?
Why not? Why don't we have that mentality? We should be more influential. You know, they can produce dirty materials, that the world will say hey, you're producing things that are
graphic content involving children. And they can say, Yeah, so what we're going to increase our subscription price.
And their shares go up instead of going down, they can do that, right?
We need to think big. At, on the one hand, I want to think about myself and the other I need to think big about how What vision do I want to give to the world? What is it that I want to accomplish for the world? And the best empowerment we can do? We, I think Alhamdulillah we built enough buildings. We built enough buildings. It's time to build people. It's time to empower people with the word of Allah and that's my appeal to you. That's my genuinely what I feel from my heart is you don't know where the next inspiration will come from. We don't know if it's going to come from a jail cell. If it's coming from come from a basement somewhere. It's going to be the bouncer at a
club that is free time is reading the five behind he's like, I gotta make a change. You don't know where it's going to come from. That's up to Allah azza wa jal, that's up to Allah we our job is to just support it so I pray that you I'm able to find like minded and like hearted folks that believe in this vision and want to be a part of it. There's a low hanging fruit listening patiently. I know it took a lot of time today BarakAllahu li Walakum su Quran Al Hakim, when finally we combine it with the clucking
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