Nouman Ali Khan – Bridging Cultural Differences Through Understanding and Growth
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss their hometown culture and past struggles with their parents, including parenting issues and their desire to learn a language. They emphasize the importance of story nights and first principles for every Muslim, including parents' beliefs and divine speech in shaping one's identity. The story of the first known story in the world is emphasized, including the importance of story nights and the importance of first principles for every Muslim, including parents' beliefs and divine speech in shaping one's identity.
AI: Summary ©
And that's why my family wasn't really religious,
because for over 100 years, this atheism propaganda
was really taught in schools and everyone...
They were trying to gut Islam for a
century.
Yeah.
So having to actually write a paper on
the existence of God, that was kind of
like, I was kind of like, mind struck,
like, what do I even write?
Like, my paper was blank for about a
week.
I was like, I didn't even know what
to write.
And what we often do in our study
of history, these last 400 years, the most
recent 400 years, is we separate the Islamic
history, Islamic scholarly history, from the political history.
As though they're two separate subjects.
Religion and politics are never separate.
They're never separate.
The state or forces or money is always
involved in what becomes the dominant narrative.
Now think about that for a moment.
Parents are a core part of your identity,
right?
Both physically and psychologically and socially, in every
way, right?
Now take that back.
Who's our parent?
Adam.
Adam.
If you don't know your parent, then you
don't really know you.
The way Allah talks about Adam in Surah
Al-Baqarah, some of that is also the
way he talks about the Israelites.
In the name of Allah, peace and blessings
be upon the Messenger of Allah, and upon
his family and companions.
Peace and blessings be upon you.
Let's start by introducing yourselves.
Okay, my name is Syed Bek, but you
can say I go with Syed.
I'm originally from Uzbekistan.
I was born and raised there, so I
came to the U.S. when I was
18 in 2012.
So I've been living in the U.S.
and doing my best here in the U
.S. 2018, you said?
2012.
2012, sorry.
Yeah, 2012.
It's been like 12 years now.
Where do you live in the U.S.?
I live in Virginia, right next to D
.C. and DMV area.
Okay.
I'm familiar.
I spend a little bit of time in
- You've been there a lot.
We've met a lot.
Yeah, I lived there for a little bit.
You do?
I lived in Alexandria for a little bit.
I didn't tell anybody, but I did.
Was that before or after the- Not
telling you the timeline.
Nice.
Well, we hope to see you there again.
Yeah, I don't like it.
I have some very good, very close friends
in D.C., actually.
I go often.
Every couple of months, I'm in Virginia, D
.C., especially Tyson's area.
Every couple of months?
Every couple of months, yeah.
Because I have some very, very close friends
from, God, my college days.
Where do they live?
That's personal.
Okay.
They live in Tyson's area.
They live in the Tyson's area.
Okay.
And a bunch of my old New York
friends, they moved out there.
Nice.
I just go hang out with them, and
we just sit and talk all night.
Okay.
We do that sometimes.
It's not really enticing to invite them here
to Texas, so I go there.
We'll try to catch you next time, then.
Yeah, Inshallah.
You know, one thing, if I were to
ever leave Dallas, I'd probably move to D
.C. If anything, I can't think of anywhere
else in the country, and I have a
reason for that.
Not because it's pretty, because I don't think
it's pretty.
It's, there's a brain drain, I feel, or
there's a ceiling.
There's an intellectual ceiling in many parts of
the country, right?
And that's because a lot of places are
insulated, right?
So there's much a lot of brilliant people
everywhere, right?
But you have like, you know, there's industries,
right?
There's tech industries big in, and oil and
gas is big in Texas, right?
Or the medical industry or whatever.
So you have these professionals that are accomplished
in these fields.
They're here, right?
But we don't have an influx of historians
and political scientists and sociologists and anthropologists and
researchers and dignitaries and ambassadors.
You don't have that, right?
D.C. is one of those places.
Not only is it, you know, a hotspot
for universities, but it's also, you know, because
of Washington, D.C., so many intellectuals fly
in from around the world there.
So I get to be in a place
where I can learn from people just in
conversation, right?
And even though I benefit a lot from
local discussions, there's still a cap.
I feel a cap in suburbia, you know,
that I'm drawn to a place where I
can constantly grow or I can gain perspective
I didn't have before.
And every time I've gone to D.C.,
I've experienced that.
Yeah, yeah.
I live close to Dulles Airport.
Okay.
And we see a lot of planes in
and out, but I see a lot of
private jets, like flying in and out.
That makes it right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What about yourself?
My name is Anan.
I'm actually Palestinian, but I was born and
raised in Saudi Arabia.
And until what age?
Until 18.
Wow, Mashallah.
Until actually him and I actually same age.
And we came to the United States the
same year, too.
I came in 2012.
And yeah, I've lived here ever since.
And I still never went back to Saudi
and not even for a visit till just
last December.
You came here same age?
Yeah.
18.
18, yeah.
Did you speak English when you came here?
I mean, you don't really speak the language
of the country until you go to the
country.
But I mean, in Arab standards, yeah, I
spoke a little bit.
Yeah.
You don't have an accent anymore.
It's barely like, it's like 1%.
Yeah.
I could tell you Arabic, but that's.
Yeah, no, actually, my parents had me in
what they call back home is an international
school.
Yeah.
They teach only in English.
What city were you in?
Riyadh.
You were in Riyadh?
Yeah.
I was in Riyadh.
Yeah, you were in Riyadh.
I was going to ask you about that
actually, see what you're like, what age?
Yeah, we used to live in Malaz.
Oh, in Malaz.
Malaz, yeah.
And Nasiriyah was my school.
What was it?
There was a town called Nasiriyah.
Oh, Nasiriyah.
Yeah.
So what age did you?
We left after the Gulf War.
So we left in 92.
I was there during the war.
We were learning how to put gas masks
on and all that stuff.
You remember?
Yeah, I remember.
I was in seventh grade.
Oh, wow.
Like we didn't go to seventh grade because
the schools were in danger of being rocketed.
So we just stayed home for a year
and just put newspapers on windows and light
rejecting plastic trash bags so that in case
there's a ground invasion, soldiers wouldn't think there's
someone inside.
They were training us to prepare for all
these kinds of scenarios.
It's wild.
Yeah, it is wild actually.
I haven't imagined, especially comparing it to the
experience that I grew up in Saudi, it's
kind of like one of the very safer
areas.
Yeah, we experienced that vulnerability.
And my parents, they're from Pakistan.
So they experienced the 1965 and 1972-71
wars in Pakistan.
So they had a little bit of being
civilians in a war zone experience.
It was wild.
Like every time the siren would go off,
they'd know exactly what to do.
Stand in a doorway or make the kids,
my sister and I, my sisters and I
would lie down under a mattress in case
debris falls.
Like it's wild.
Yeah, your parents were very well equipped for
it.
They knew what they were doing, yeah.
There was a Scud missile debris that fell.
It was a half a mile from our
house.
It leveled an entire apartment complex.
Like it was a very wide, not an
entire, half of it was just gone.
It was like a slice of cake.
It was just gone.
And you could see the insides of people's
house when we drove to school.
It was crazy.
Yeah, yeah.
That would be actually like a somewhat of
a, mashaAllah, a traumatizing experience actually to have
to go through that.
I was too young and stupid to think
it was traumatizing.
I just thought it was exciting.
It was like no school.
Like movies.
The alarm goes on.
I'm in the middle of playing tag with
my sister and I'm like, okay, I gotta
go.
That's funny.
But yeah, no, my parents had me in
an only English speaking school.
But after that, my mom was very concerned
about my brothers and I losing our Arabic.
Because there was such a focus on learning
English and learning English, you know, going to
American universities and learning English is basically the
future.
So my mom was very worried about that
influx of thought into the country is going
to actually dilute my knowledge in Arabic.
Both my brothers and I, with three of
us.
And she was like, I need them to
learn Arabic.
And I need them to learn Islam.
I need them to learn religion.
So English, I'll teach them myself like at
home or like they will catch on to
it.
Or once I send them to the United
States at some point, they'll learn themselves.
They're just gonna get it.
Yeah, they'll just get it.
But I don't know at what point in
their future are they going to take it
upon themselves to learn Arabic, to learn Islam.
So I'm gonna have to put them in
a school that where they will be infused
into it.
And then they'll like, I'll just give them
the basics.
And then they're on their own from there.
So after kindergarten, they had me and my
brothers into like an Arabic school.
It's like madaris ahliyya, they called it.
So there was just all Arabic schools, like
very traditionally Muslim schools.
So you went to very traditional Muslim schooling
for a good number of years.
Yeah, basically my entire life, I was in
the same school.
It was like an all boys type thing?
All boys.
Yeah, all boys type thing.
Actually, I was just telling him like, comparing
our lives before and after we came to
the United States.
It's a world of a difference.
Yeah, I was like, it would be normal
for me to go two and three months
without seeing a single woman besides my mom
and my sister.
And that'll be okay.
That was our Saudi life.
Yeah, that was Saudi life.
Yeah, same thing with me.
Second grade to eighth grade, that was what
life looked like.
And even when I moved to Pakistan for
almost a year, I was in a Pakistani
school.
Was it the same thing?
Was it the same thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the really messed up boys were
waiting outside the girls school.
You'd walk by them and just go like
this.
Yeah, no, actually there was like a Berlin
wall between us.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, we had that too.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
They had curtains like these, but two layers
of them.
Yeah.
And then you'd have to call, I used
to pick up my sister from school.
Yeah.
So I had to call her name on
a mic outside the second curtain.
Yeah.
So that if she comes out of the
first curtain, nobody outside could get a glimpse
into the school.
Yeah.
Then the second curtain.
So behind her, you only see the first
curtain.
Yeah.
That's the level of like, and then she
had the full on niqab on.
You couldn't even show the eyes.
Yeah.
So I used to recognize her from her
pumas.
Yeah, that's actually still, I mean, curtains aside,
but it was still the same, like similar,
like theme I would have to, I didn't
have like a sister, but like my friends,
they would have to go to the, they
call them the guy at the gate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The guy at the gate, like, Hey, I'm
looking for like, and he would just say
her name and then the guy would call
out her name and he would just be
waiting there for his sister to come out.
Then he would take her to the car.
Yeah.
So like, even the bad boys did not
really stand a chance to be kind of
quote unquote bad because you'll have to deal
with the brothers.
Best you can do is get a job
as a gatekeeper.
Basically, yeah.
I want to switch subjects a little bit.
Like with you, what was your relationship with
Islam?
Like growing up in Uzbekistan?
Okay.
So I was born in 1993.
We got independence from Soviet union, like a
couple of years back.
Right.
Two, three years.
And that's why my family wasn't really religious
because for over a hundred years, this atheism
propaganda was really taught in schools and everyone.
They were trying to gut Islam for a
century.
Yeah.
So when they first came in 1875, I
guess they started, there was like a mother
of Naha.
And they're like three Emirates, like Bukhara, Heba
and Cocon.
So they took over.
Then they put the Soviet.
There are a lot of big history there.
But over a hundred years, they're like atheism
propaganda to all country, no religion.
And though they didn't fully destroy it, but
whoever tried to fight for religion, they were
killed or they were just put in prisons,
torture and all of that.
And that's why it wasn't a very religious
family.
So the good thing is I went to
a school, like similar school, like English specific.
There was one in the country.
Even the president's grandson went to the same
school as me.
Oh, okay.
Like English.
It was free public, but one of the
top.
That's why I had like a little bit
English background, but there was no religious background
at all.
But the opposite is we were scared of
religion.
I remember when I was either four or
five years old, our neighbor taught me the
seven levels of *.
Like first level, you get to this torture.
Second level, you get this torture.
I'm like, this guy really loved to punish
people.
I was very young.
And whoever, if you try to learn religion,
not me, like I was very young, but
when I was really getting interested, they call
it in Uzbek, it means like oldish.
If you want to study Arabic, you want
to become oldish.
That was the whole Soviet Union propaganda, like
it's old.
And that was their thing, like religion is
old.
Now we got to get to a new
world.
Right.
And backwards.
Yeah.
That same thing.
Even my mom, she still remembers the poems
about Lenin, the Russian leader from that time.
Yeah.
She still remembers that.
Like from very childhood, there was.
So did you guys learn Uzbek and Russian
growing up?
Yeah.
So Uzbek was my home language, native language.
We speak Uzbek.
They didn't touch the culture.
They only touched the religion.
Right.
So we kept the culture.
And almost everybody speaks Russian, which is a
good thing as well, like Russian, Uzbek.
And I went to English school.
So yeah, after getting independent, it started getting
better.
So people started studying actually.
And before, during the Soviet, I heard that
a lot of people went to Europe to
study.
And when they came back, they were arrested
by Soviet Union.
Like we don't need smart people here kind
of thing.
Study what?
Study engineering?
No, worldly stuff.
Wow.
And that's why there are a lot of
movement, like Jadid movement.
They're like, OK, we have the religion, and
now we need the worldly stuff.
When they started teaching and preaching people, not
just religion, this and that, they were all
just either killed or executed.
Wow.
They were really against our development.
They were developing new ideas.
And that's wild.
So that's why when growing up, the religion
wasn't really a part of my life when
I was a kid.
Yeah.
And I actually got scared of it.
Like God really loves to punish.
So by the time you were 18 and
you came here, what was your view of
Islam?
No, before that, I went to a Jumma
Khutbah once when I was 15 or 14.
OK.
That's when it started.
I'm like, ah, no, Allah is not just
someone who loves to punish.
So just from one Khutbah, it got started.
So now I started getting interested in it.
And then after coming to US, it got
even better because here I have more freedom.
I used to hide like without telling my
parents to go to Masjid and I'll study
this and that.
It wasn't too much.
But the US, it gave me more opportunity.
You used to hide from your...
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on a second.
You used to hide from your parents to
go to the Masjid?
Ah, yeah, I did.
I've been from my college back home.
In it back home as well.
And here too.
But it wasn't illegal to go to the
Masjid.
No, no, no.
They were like...
But it was just the family was uncomfortable
with it.
Kinda, yeah.
Just don't bother.
Study.
My father, I thank him.
He...
This school was very far from our home.
And we were rich.
We were not.
So we were like...
So you invested a lot in your education.
Yes.
So we would study English and he really
invested in our studies.
But he didn't want us to become really
religious.
But, you know, the more you forbid, the
more you want to do it.
And that's actually very common in middle-class
families.
Yeah.
And families that want to see a better
future for their kids in many parts of
the Muslim world, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, other places.
You'll have people that are...
Like they want their kids to become an
engineer, doctor, whatever else.
And then they see these like Mullah types.
These kids that went to the madrasa.
They memorize the Quran.
They're imams of masjids, etc.
And they live...
They don't move on in the world.
This is their world.
And they are terrified that our kid will
end up in this situation.
So even if they touch religion, they're just
going to abandon their education, their career, everything
else.
And they're going to want to just move
to the mountains somewhere.
Etc.
There's this terrible fear.
And that fear is so extreme that even
when many of those people were raised with
those fears, they became parents themselves.
Many of them moved to England, United States,
Australia, etc.
So even within the American landscape, you'll have
people that are raised Muslim, but cautiously not
too Muslim.
Because not too Muslim means you'll become one
of those extreme goat herders, right?
And when their son or daughter goes to
university, runs into an MSA, or hears a
khutbah that inspires them, and the girl decides
he's going to start wearing hijab, or you
start seeing a little bit of facial hair
on the boy.
He's 17, 18 years old.
The parents freak out.
What are you doing?
This is too extreme.
That's not what Allah wants from you.
Because they know that what they think that's
going to turn into is the worst of
what they've seen in their society, right?
Basically, the least respected class of your society
is the religious clerics, and the imams of
masjids or whatever.
In that middle class, many of them, these
people have no respect.
These are the idiots of society that want
to take us back to the Stone Age
or whatever, right?
And so I used to get very angry
about that sentiment.
Over time, I became more, I would say,
empathetic to that sentiment.
And it's more complicated than it first seems.
It says they're against Islam.
Actually, not against Islam per se.
They're against what they think is Islam.
That's correct, 100%.
Right?
They just don't know that that's not a
good representation of what the religion has to
offer, right?
This is a religion of remarkable renaissance around
the world.
This is a book I'm fascinated with right
now.
It was written by an author in Michigan.
His name is Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah, and
he wrote Islam and the English Enlightenment.
And his next book is going to be
about the American Enlightenment and its relationship with
Islam.
But man, it's mind-blowing what we were
and what we became, and what some of
these institutions were and what they became.
There has been, it's hard to say, but
there has been an intellectual decline in our
institutions, in our religious institutions.
They used to be far more diverse, far
more open-minded, far more exploring.
They were polymath, multiple sides.
Like, you know, you have a Western university
has a science department, like a physics department,
chem, bio, and they'll have a political science
department, and they'll have an anthropology department, et
cetera, et cetera.
They have these departments.
The Muslim mind was like that.
Like, we had these multiple departments engaging with
each other, all within the Islamic studies, right?
And then we just kind of said, no,
everything else is duniya.
And we just want to study deen.
And this is actually, in my mind, I'll
come out and say, that is, to me,
the definition of secularism.
Secularism is when you separate religion from all
else, right?
Well, they say we separate all else from
religion.
Well, you're doing the exact same thing from
the other side.
I'm going to separate religion from all else.
That's just as secular, right?
So what they find problematic is actually what,
in some sense, what any reasonable person would
also find problematic, on top of, of course,
the propaganda is that the content of the
religion itself is poisonous and all that stuff,
right?
But on a social level, this is actually
a tough reality to contend with.
Yeah.
And like, since I actually found like somewhat
of an empathetic approach to that sentiment, did
you find like a way to actually like
navigate it in a way?
Yeah, yeah.
So I, because it's firsthand, right?
My parents had that sentiment.
And my parents thought that I'm just going
to abandon my education and leave everything behind.
That's when you found the MSA kind of
thing?
That's when I first found the MSA.
That's when I first started seeing some sprinkles
of hairs that I could only go three
twigs and I was growing them.
Yeah.
For the longest time, I had long sideburns
and nothing else.
I look like a bad replica of like
Pulp Fiction or something.
That was my MSA look.
But anyway, what I figured out very quickly
is that if you're excelling professionally while holding
on to your religion, that creates the biggest
confusion of their lives.
They don't know how to deal with it.
Because their whole problem was the more religious
you become, the less successful you'll be, right?
So now if you're excelling in your studies
and you're excelling in your career and you're
excelling at like you're leaving other people behind
in every one of these boxes.
And yet you're holding on to your religion.
Then they start thinking either he doesn't understand
the religion or I didn't understand the religion.
Somebody's confused.
That's right.
Right?
So then the next thing they'll do to
cope is they'll try to attack the religion.
Because they're trying to figure out where you
stand.
They can't make sense of it.
And that's when you have an opportunity to
intelligently present the religion for the first time
instead of being defensive.
And what that does is it does wonders.
I think a remarkable renaissance and reform will
happen in the Muslim world when middle class
and beyond professionals, business people, students, etc.
They start embodying Islamic principles while living, while
succeeding as members, contributing members of society.
Right?
When those two things start happening together, it's
an unbeatable force.
In fact, then people will say these people
are more successful, more principled.
They're better to do business with.
They're the better hire.
They're the better students.
Because they're more principled.
I've never had a college student who, you
know, hurt someone or haze someone or got
drunk and got in an accident or whatever
because they're Muslim or whatever.
Right?
That it'll set us in a different standard.
That's what I think.
But anyway, so go ahead and tell me.
So you were hiding from your parents going
to the masjid, which is cool.
I've hidden from my parents but not gone
to the masjid.
Yeah, so.
And I listened to a lot of your
lectures as well.
Like family wise, like how to deal and
all.
Really?
It wasn't that bad.
So I don't want to give the wrong
picture of my family.
But still, they were like, don't get too
much into religion at all.
Yeah.
But I was doing a lot of stuff
without telling them.
Did you get married without telling them?
No, not yet.
The main part, just like I mentioned right
now.
So I started kind of doing well in
my studies and in my job as well.
So I got hired in a company.
So I started doing well as a, I'm
a software engineer right now.
So I started like years back.
So that's what draw the line.
Like you can be a successful person while
holding on to a religion.
And that's really proved the point.
That's why when you say it, I'm like,
that's 100% correct.
Yeah.
Has your relationship, has your family's relationship with
Islam changed at all?
It did, but not because of me.
But they also found like, they were not
super totally against it.
They were still Muslims.
It was just cautious.
Yeah.
So now later on when things change, but
now everyone's happy.
Alhamdulillah.
Like we're all good.
So.
Alhamdulillah.
That's pretty amazing.
What about yourself?
What's your relationship with this religion growing up?
No, so growing up, actually, it's all on
you.
It's, it's, it's, yeah.
I mean, yeah, we, there was a lot
of studies.
Yeah.
Like we studied, like we studied like physics,
chemistry, biology, all of it.
We studied all of it.
But like in, in, in, in our schools,
there was like, we had a separate class
for fiqh and there's hadith, there's tafsir, there's
tajweed, and there's Qur'an, tawheed, and there's
like hafidh Qur'an too.
Wow.
That's a lot of classes.
Oh yeah, no, we had like 17 subjects.
Like we didn't get to choose.
We had like 16, 17 subjects that we
had to take and we'd like get tested
on all of them.
But then, yeah.
And this is basically kind of just like
the way of life.
It's kind of like being, this is just
how everybody lives.
This is how everybody thought.
And then that's when like I came to
the United States with that thought really.
And then come to like the culture shock
was real.
The culture shock was really, really, there was
a lot of adjustment to make.
And then there was one particular year, I
think it was like 2013, I was taking,
so I didn't have like any Muslim friends.
Like didn't have any Muslim friends.
All my friends were basically either atheists or
Christian.
And then I was in one semester in
school.
I was taking world religions and I was
taking philosophy.
And one of my closest friends, he's actually
one of my closer friends to this day,
he was Christian.
And him and I would engage in dialogues
about religion, but not in a matter of
which I'm trying to convince you or you're
trying to convince me.
Right.
It's more of like an open discussion of
what different religions thought.
We'd just open up a thought and be
like, oh, in Islam we think this, and
in Christianity we think that.
And during that semester, when I was taking
these classes and I was getting exposed to
all this, specifically in philosophy, you're forced to
think in ways that you're never really taught
to think.
Correct.
Back home.
Yeah, you're supposed to answer questions you never
even thought of.
Exactly.
Okay, how do you prove there's existence of
God?
And in my mind, I'm like, what do
you mean there's, like how can the world
exist without God?
Like actually giving me, so having to actually
write a paper on the existence of God,
I was kind of like mind struck, like
what do I even write?
My paper was blank for about a week.
I was like, I didn't even know what
to write.
Yeah, so it was just a lot of
these thoughts that were introduced, they're very new
to me.
I did not know how to navigate them
at all.
And because I didn't know these answers, I
started having some doubts.
And I was like, okay, I need to
know, like why is it?
Like, especially in world religions, everybody, like there
were these religions from these Native American religions.
There's Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Confucius, all of
them.
And they were like, actually a good mixture
in my classroom where people were...
Representing different...
Yeah, representing different religions.
And I would look around, like everyone had
that unwavering conviction that...
Yeah, yeah, we're right.
But then couple that with that philosophy class.
I'm like, okay, if I was to actually
like engage in a conversation with one, especially
like someone like my Christian friends I was
talking to, I came to realize that they
were taught Christianity the exact same way I
was taught Islam.
Heritage.
Exactly.
So I was like, okay, if I was
to come up with a reason for that,
I had no idea.
And I remember to this day, my friend
asked me that one question that kind of...
My parents actually never...
My family doesn't know about what I'm talking
about right now.
So it's gonna be a shock to them,
nobody actually knew.
But at this point, one of my friends
asked me one question that kind of just
shattered my faith.
And he was like, deep down, you know
who you are better than like anyone.
Like deep down, when you're on your own,
you're alone in your thoughts, you know who
you are.
If you had grown up in a Christian
family or a Hindu family or a Buddhist
family, would you have left it for Islam?
Would you have left your entire circle, your
entire family, your entire thought, everything that you
grew up with for Islam?
And thinking about that, I'm like, no.
If I was to like change everything, if
I was to actually imagine the thought that
I grew up in the same way that
they grew up in a Christian, like, I
don't know if I know enough about Islam
for me to say, I would actually make
the move.
So that's when I was like, okay, I
need to...
I need to start actually...
Why do you believe what I believe?
Exactly.
I need to actually answer the why behind
everything that I'm doing.
And that kind of like bled into 2014.
There was a period of months that where
I did absolutely nothing but research Islam, research
religions and research everything.
And well, to this day, I don't remember
exactly how.
I have no recollection of that memory, but
I was working on a project.
It was like a final project that I
had.
And I took a lot of notes on
my phone.
During classes, during conversations with professors, I found
it easy to pick up my phone and
put in some notes.
I was working on that project.
And I was like, yeah, I remember taking
notes about this project that would help me.
So I opened up my phone.
I was scrolling through it.
One of the notes had no subject, had
no context, had nothing.
It just had divine speech.
And I was like, what's divine speech?
Like, I don't know.
I have no recollection of how that got
to my phone.
To this day, I have no idea how
that got to my phone.
And I just Googled divine speech.
And there was like these two videos on
YouTube.
And I think it was around like 8
p.m. The project was due at midnight,
like at midnight, 11.59. And I started
watching these two videos.
And that bled into just watching Islamic videos.
After these two videos, till like 4 a
.m. in the morning, it blew up the
project.
Blew up everything.
I was just listening to lectures.
And that's when I delved very head down
deep into just researching Islam.
That was the tipping point that made me
feel like, OK, now I have my why.
Now I believe the Qur'an is actually
the word of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
If I was actually to think about how
the Qur'an is actually a miracle, now
I have my answers.
And that's actually how it turned out.
And actually, that kind of, that period of
time, it was actually funny because like I
was really like delving deep into it.
But in my field, like my parents were
very supportive of the fact.
When I would come and tell them like,
hey, listen to this.
This is what I found out.
This is what I learned.
But my brothers, however, where that was like
the subject of making fun of.
So like they'd be playing like PlayStation or
FIFA or something.
And they were like, hey, Ana, come join
us.
And I'd be like listening to a lecture.
I'm like, we'll play a lecture, Islamic lecture
for you here if you just join us.
So kind of thing.
They were just kind of, that's, this is
how it kind of like was for a
long period of time.
But then right now, alhamdulillah, like every kind
of like shifted and started listening to the
same thing too.
So, you know, I'm wondering.
Because I think the one on YouTube is
from me when I spoke at City College.
I think it's very old.
It was very, very old.
It was kind of very dark themed, like
very.
City College in New York.
Yeah.
And that was the first time I spoke
about divine speech.
Yeah.
I had no idea who you were.
Honestly, I just.
I'm not sure if I knew who I
was.
But you know, my thoughts on that subject
is interesting.
It was talking to a couple of young
men last week.
They were visiting here.
They've all done their PhDs in Islamic studies.
Out of Harvard.
Brilliant young guys.
And they're all heading their own ways.
And they stopped by Dallas to meet with
some people.
And they wanted to meet with me.
So we had dinner.
We talked and we were talking about divine
speech.
And one of the things that I mentioned
at the time was that when I first
started studying the Quran, my attitude was, oh,
here's what makes it divine.
Then I learned to humble myself over time
to that statement.
And that I'll give you an analogy.
If I dove into the ocean and I
pulled out a pearl, I wouldn't say I
have found the ocean's treasure.
I would say I found a treasure that
I find priceless.
But I cannot speak on behalf of the
entire ocean when I'm holding this one pearl.
But I can say that this is pretty
valuable to me, right?
Yeah.
And that's what divine speech became to me.
Every time I discover this, to me, this
is miraculous.
I can't speak for anyone else.
Maybe they don't see the pearl from the
same angle that I do.
Maybe they see it from a distance, like
it's just holding a rock.
Is that what led to the evolve, how
divine speech evolved from these two lectures into
these 13 lectures up on Bain?
And then a book.
And even those 13 lectures were a summary.
They were a 39-page version.
I've just list of what used to be
a 65-page document.
So I only taught two-thirds of it
ever.
And then Heavenly Order was a byproduct of
that.
I did on the sequence of the Quran.
And now that I'm actually full-time studying
Quran, like I'm just, that's what I'm doing
with my life.
Now I see reasons for the Quran being
divine in a completely new way.
That I didn't see those years ago.
It's completely enhanced, or it continues to evolve
my view, which makes me humble myself to
the Quran every single month, literally every month.
You were at one of the Quran weeks,
weren't you?
In Minneapolis, yeah.
Surat Al-Qamar.
Surat Al-Hadeed in Minneapolis.
You were in Minneapolis?
Yes.
Weren't you in Florida too?
I was not in Florida, no.
You were in Minneapolis?
Minneapolis, yeah.
I'm so bad.
No, I was actually just joking.
I would be very surprised given how many
people you meet worldwide, if you had actually
remembered, actually.
There was one time I actually ran into
you in...
DFW.
In where?
The airport.
Yeah, in the airport.
Exactly, yeah.
That's when I like ran into you at
the airport.
I'm like, oh wow, yeah.
When you kind of sort of recognize me,
I'm like, wow, what a memory, Mashallah.
It's like you're recognized.
I remember you were doing like combat sports.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm not that bad.
I'm not entirely senile yet.
Yeah, yeah.
That's actually one of the things that actually
my parents were very strict about growing up
is that they were very strict on religion,
studies and martial arts.
So my brothers and I, if we don't
do our studies or if we don't do
our prayers or if we don't do our
martial arts, then like we don't get to
go out and play or we don't get
to see our friends.
Wow.
We don't get to do like what fun
things.
Some cool parenting policy.
Yeah.
What kind of martial arts do you do?
I did taekwondo for almost 10 years and
now I do more like Brazilian jiu-jitsu,
like grappling, martial arts.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Very cool.
So divine speech for you.
Yeah, divine speech.
And you were talking about those videos you
used to watch in Uzbekistan that were about
parenting.
Did you have an allergy or something?
No, I got cold like a week ago.
So I was good.
I didn't cough the whole morning.
Just now, I just started.
I was barely holding it back, but I
couldn't.
It's okay, cough away, it's okay.
Don't hold back.
So after coming to the U.S., the
first time I just got to hang out
with my friend in New York City, just
to walk around, like first year in New
York.
And we got to the New York University
MSA.
We just looked at the masjid where we
pray.
Yeah, it's a nice spot.
Yeah.
So we were praying and we just met
the brother there.
I don't remember his name.
It was like eight years ago.
He said, you guys know Noman Khan?
I'm like, yeah, I've watched a couple of
his videos.
He's coming to the story night next week
or something.
I was like, oh, that's cool.
Let's do it.
So now on the spot, we bought the
tickets and I got the number of your
brother.
So we emailed back and forth and I
volunteered at the event as well.
You did.
So I remember when the people are walking
in, my job was just to check their
tickets.
Was that the one at Cooper Union?
I don't remember the spot.
But it was an auditorium, right?
Yeah.
With pillars.
It was what the Musa alaihissalam.
Yeah, it was Cooper Union.
Yeah.
Yes.
And when you were walking in, I see
you like, where's your ticket?
I asked you for your ticket on purpose
as a joke.
I don't remember what you answered.
But that's when the first time I heard
the story of Musa in a completely different
perspective.
I knew the story of Adam alaihissalam, Noah
alaihissalam.
Just very, very basic.
That's what I've been studying my whole years.
And now like, oh, this is how the
Quran taught.
The way you explained that the Quran says
the story that.
Yeah.
Wow.
And that's when like, I started getting into
it like by, you know, subscription and all.
We took a lot of pictures with the
actors, but I lost that phone.
All the memories are gone.
That reminds me of a New York show
I gave two years ago.
I was in New York giving the Eid
Khutbah.
Okay.
It was downtown New York.
I give the Eid Khutbah, people are coming,
giving me hugs and all that stuff.
This one guy is just staring at me.
I just, he's giving me the mug.
He's this bombastic side eye the whole time.
And then when people are kind of done,
he comes to me and goes, I don't
know you.
I don't even know if I like you.
But a lot of people want to take
a picture with you.
Can I take a picture with you?
I love the authenticity.
So you attended a story night.
I remember which story night that was.
Which part of Surat Al-Qasas?
That was from Surat Al-Qasas.
Young and courageous.
The early life of Muslims.
And that's when you really explained like about
man getting married.
The guy called you like, go get the
baby bottle.
Yeah, of course.
Like that was like, yeah, I gotta be
the man now.
I was very young.
I was 18 or 19.
I wasn't very young, but not mature.
That was a good one.
That helps.
I think that motivated a lot of people
as well.
Like youngsters.
I should tell that joke to you guys.
Yeah.
You know it.
I do.
I don't know if you wouldn't know it.
Yeah, I think I heard it.
Tell it.
I was like, okay, I don't want to
butcher it.
But I was like, so, you know, now
you have guys that will come up and
say, I like this girl.
I want to marry her.
I've been talking to her.
How long have you been talking to her?
Three years.
But I'm not sure if I should, you
know, I'm not sure if I'm ready to
get married.
Or I'm not sure if I can talk
to the family.
Three, after three years?
What if they, yeah, what if they say
no?
You get this all the time.
Okay.
And I'm like, oh, I have a brother.
What should I do?
I'm like, I have a solution.
Go to the local pharmacy.
If you go to the infant section, they
have this baby formula.
And get yourself a small bottle.
And you have to get, like, it needs
to be a little bit warmer than room
temperature.
Shake it really well.
You stick the thing on top.
You go sit in the corner and suck
on that bottle.
Because you're a baby.
You're not a man.
And when you become a man, then you
can go talk to the family.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a joke, but it really touched a
lot of people.
Like, it works.
Yeah, it works.
This was, this is a classic.
And Alhamdulillah, within two years, I guess.
I went to my father, like, I want
to get married.
After getting a job and all this stuff.
Yeah.
Straight.
Nice.
I think because of that.
Okay, it got through.
Yeah, that's phenomenal.
So what are you guys up to nowadays?
So I'm actually in consulting right now.
It's actually, given by the amount of lectures
I've heard from you, it's your favorite, favorite
field of study.
It's accounting.
Oh, my God.
Isn't it software engineering?
That's why you do combat sports, to release
you.
Probably true.
You want to debit somebody's credit.
It's funny you say that.
Because, like, in some of the meetings that
I've had with some of my colleagues, they're
like, why do you do martial arts?
I'm like, it's the only way to balance
out the life that I'm having here.
Yeah, but it's, well, we say that jokingly.
No, it's actually, it's a great place that
I'm in.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
I'm a software engineer.
What kind of stuff are you developing?
Mostly full stack.
It's for the financial company.
I see.
Front end, back end database and all that
kind of stuff.
You're the heavy hitter, full stack.
Kinda, yeah.
Didn't you do software engineering?
I was.
Then I made Toba.
And then now I have, well, with Behina,
it's kind of almost a tech company, almost.
Because we have a lot of tech issues
and, you know, the app and all of
that stuff.
So I deal with engineers and we have
a company we work with.
They're out in Kosovo, actually.
Oh.
Yeah.
So I go to Kosovo a few times.
We're good friends out there.
Uzbekistan is a place I've been wanting to
go, actually.
Oh, perfect.
It would be pretty cool.
I don't know if I tell anybody.
I just show up and just let people
give me the look.
Yeah, a lot of people know you.
So when people know me and they see
me walk by, here's what happens.
The person who wants to, like, who hates
you and wants to almost attack you has
the same look as the person who almost
recognizes you.
I didn't know that.
So they're looking at you, like, and I'm
thinking, should I be ready?
And then within a split second, are you?
But the original look is just as dangerous.
And I look back and he's still doing
the scan.
I'm just going to let this be.
I need to become a stoic and let
it happen.
Yeah, around two years ago, I made a
YouTube video on my own about the bayina
.com.
Oh, you did?
In my language, like, hey, guys, want to
study Arabic or lectures, bayina, you can go
and subscribe and all.
And after that, I did see that, you
know, when you go to bayina, the subscription
page, it's going to show you numbers, like
how many people are waiting for subscription.
Uzbekistan just really grew.
It was like 2030, I guess.
Yeah.
So I hope because of that, a lot
of people get to know now, like a
lot of people.
MashaAllah.
How's English comprehension in Uzbekistan?
Say again?
How's English comprehension in Uzbekistan?
Oh, very good nowadays.
Almost everyone speaks English.
Not the older people.
One of my hopes now with the way
AI is, you know, moving at light speed,
is that, you know, I always wondered if
I can get my duroos, because it's been
now almost 24 years, 25 years that I'm
trying to study Quran, comment on the Quran.
And inshaAllah, another 12, 15 years to go
before I can complete my work, at least
that phase of the work.
But whatever has been done so far, I
was thinking, man, if I just learned another
language and I tried to do this over
again in another language, it would take me
another 25 years.
Like, this is too much work.
Well, now I'm thinking if AI could be
trained enough to do it in my voice
in Uzbek, in Farsi, and, you know, in
Punjabi.
I think there are already like ways to
do that.
There is, because it's multilingual, right?
So I'm speaking in Arabic sometimes, throwing in
some stupid Urdu joke or whatever.
So if the AI model can be trained
to, because there's only so much range I
have, right?
I come back to the same things as
any human being does.
That if it can be trained, I think
it can be produced.
And then, because to me, it's not just
getting my work produced.
The point to me is the Quran is
missing from our discourse.
Like Islamic discourse is about all things.
With a touch of the Quran, like a
reference to the Quran.
It's not Quran discourse.
The Quran is not our conversation, you know?
And I want the Quran not to replace
those conversations, but at least be as much
a conversation as all else.
You know, this is the thing that created
this civilization, this book.
And now it's just become like a referential
tool, right?
And so...
Is that why you kind of find that
book that you reference with Al-Fiqar as
like fascinating?
Is he kind of like touching upon the
fact that how it was very...
There was a Quranic discourse.
That was not the reason.
I've become more and more fascinated with two
things.
The history of the last 400 years and
the history of the first 100 years.
That's very specific.
It is very specific, yeah.
So the last 400 years helps me understand
much more deeply why we are where we
are.
Not just politically and socially, but also intellectually.
Why are Muslims...
Even Muslim scholarship.
Like when I think of when I went
to visit a madrasa in Pakistan, and they
were using a certain curriculum for their madrasa.
These 400 years helped me understand how did
that curriculum get developed?
How did it come here?
How did it evolve?
How did it end up in this madrasa?
And what is it producing now, right?
There's a context to why things are the
way they are.
And what we often do in our study
of history these last 400 years, the most
recent 400 years, is we separate the Islamic
history, Islamic scholarly history, from the political history.
As though they're two separate subjects.
Religion and politics are never separate.
They're never separate.
The state, or forces, or money is always
involved in what becomes the dominant narrative.
Or what is allowed to survive as the
narrative, right?
So a state-sanctioned religion is part of
our history.
And protest against that, and voices that were
raised against that is also a part of
our history.
It's not just, oh, you know, the church
that did it, or the ancient Jews that
did it.
No, Muslims did it too.
Muslims have done it too.
And they don't just do it now.
You know when it's happening now.
It's clear as day.
But we think it's just happening now.
No, no, no.
This has been happening for some centuries.
And if you don't understand that, then you
can't really honestly look at the scholarship.
Because you're looking at it in isolation from
other influences and other forces, right?
So that's one of my fascinations.
The other is, of course, the first 100
years, which I'll just give you one question
that's still unanswered for me.
I became very interested in the subject of
Riba.
And I still don't have answers on that
subject.
It's still questions right now.
And I'm exploring.
And one of the things I really wanted
to explore in depth is, well, Islam spread.
And we got to the Roman Empire.
We got to the Persian Empire.
We got to the Abyssinians.
And, you know, so we're taking over all
these lands.
And now we're implementing Sharia, which means we're
prohibiting Riba.
Yeah.
So my question is, when we get to
the Byzantine Empire, what did Riba look like
before we got there?
And what did removing Riba look like after
we came?
Like, how did the economic structure change?
How are we operating?
Right?
We have so many theoretical discussions about these
subjects.
And we have anecdotal stories from like our
Sira tradition, like one or two glimpses of
this stuff.
But we're not just the Sira.
And now there's an entire civilization that was
built.
How did they implement it?
And I'm today years old, and I don't
know yet.
Was there like a lot of actually references
to go back to that would actually delve
into that detail?
That's what I'm still in the dark right
now.
I'm trying to speak with some historians about
where I can find more of this.
And maybe some people have done work on
this.
And just in my ignorance, because this is
a relatively new curiosity that I have.
So I don't even know actually where to
begin.
Yeah.
Because actually, that makes me curious.
Because just recently, I was actually studying the
history of how the Muslims actually took over
Constantinople.
Yeah.
See, that's middle Islam now.
Yeah, that's very middle Islam.
But you said Byzantine Empire.
And basically, that's when the Byzantine Empire actually
came to an end.
That's right.
Because when Sultan Muhammad al-Fatih actually took
the city, and he actually just changed it
dramatically, like insanely fast, the changes took over.
And how there was...
I'm not sure about the economical situation of
the Byzantine Empire, but they dealt with a
lot of gold, and specifically before the conquest
of Constantinople.
And Constantine had to actually take a lot
of the monuments and the churches and everything,
and had to burn it down and mine
it into coins.
To mine the gold.
Exactly.
But right now, actually, one of the historians
that I saw, he actually held one of
the coins, and it didn't have any engravings
on it.
It was just little copper, even.
It was not even gold.
So he was kind of in a dire
situation, almost economically.
Wow.
Yeah.
I'd have to actually remember...
I think to this day, he's in Massachusetts,
if you're ever in the East Coast area.
I mean, I hate the Celtics.
But I must admit their superior team, and
we got crushed.
Yeah.
There's nothing you can do about that.
Yeah.
It was like watching a high school team
play a college team.
Yeah, it's painful.
Anyway, so I'll take my time going to
Massachusetts.
I'll fly in from a different city.
I won't fly in from Dallas.
It was really nice talking to you guys.
I want to sort of ask you now,
going forward, you've been exposed to my work,
I think, to a decent extent.
What is it that you think about this
work that we're trying to do as Bayyinah
has impacted your relationship with the Quran particularly?
Because you're Muslims already.
You already knew about the Quran.
You already probably read some translation or heard
those.
What is it that brings some sort of
value to this work for you guys?
I want to know.
Yeah.
So at least for me, ever since I
was like 16 or 17, I've been delving
into it.
I read a lot of books.
I'm not on social media at all.
I don't spend much time on my phone
either.
I just like to spend a lot of
time either listening to lectures.
I read a lot of books.
Particularly, I like to refer to books as,
I don't want to call them self-help
books, but more like self-improvement and how
to always optimize how to actually go about
it the best way, particularly in the areas
of psychology and sociology.
I've always at least thought, like, believe me,
the Quran basically has the answers for everything,
but I didn't know how to actually navigate
it and know how to actually go about
it.
Extract those answers.
Exactly.
Because there were many times I would read
books, and then I would remember, like, I
would read a particular part of a paragraph
of a book.
I'm like, oh, yeah, actually, I think that
ayah actually just basically describes what this book
has been talking about for an entire chapter.
That entire chapter is just really just in
that one ayah kind of thing, like, like
that book when I read The Obstacle is
the Way by Ryan Holiday.
Basically, that entire book is basically stoicism, and
it delves into a lot of details.
But when I read, basically, The Obstacle is
the Way, so that's, so I've always known,
basically, the Quran basically has the answers.
Every book I've ever read, basically, I know
in a way the Quran has touched upon
it.
But going specifically, when I went through Quran
Week and Surah Al-Hadeed, Alhamdulillah, I'm very
thankful.
Hadeed was quite an experience.
Yes, it was like, Surah Al-Hadeed was
mind-blowing, honestly.
And that really set the foundation for me
as to how I can actually go back
to the Quran, and how can I read,
especially like you give out the booklets, and
how, what is the blueprint of actually when
you're reading the Quran?
What is the thought process?
And what are some of the answers they
should be looking forward to that would help
you extract those answers?
So that approach in and of itself kind
of made me like, okay, now I can
refer back to the Quran in a way
that would...
I did so many Surahs, and I was
so...
I always had a fascination with Surah Al
-Hadeed, but I didn't get to dive in
it the way I did in that Quran
week.
Yeah.
And this was a couple of months before
my son was born.
And I named him Hadeed.
Really?
Yeah, his name's Hadeed.
Oh, mashallah.
My mother-in-law heard, so what are
you studying?
And I was like, I'm preparing for Surah
Al-Hadeed.
She goes, we should name the baby that.
And I was like, okay, you're right.
He's Hadeed Norman Ali Khan.
Oh, actually, I love that name.
Actually, Hadeed.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah.
Actually, what was it about Surah Al-Hadeed
in specific that kind of made you...
or I don't know if there was one
thing because of the entire...
So it's several things.
My late teacher, Dr. Azhar Ahmed, he purported
that Surah Al-Asr summarizes the entire Quran.
And if Surah Al-Asr was a flower
or a seed, then it blooms into a
flower.
And that flower is Surah Al-Hadeed.
And he demonstrated that.
Everything in Surah Al-Asr gets elaborated and
opened up in Surah Al-Hadeed.
It's the opening of that Surah.
And the way that Allah has talked about
in the opening of that Surah is not
found anywhere else in the entire Quran.
The way that Allah has tied the philosophical
and the metaphysical underpinnings of our religion with
the mission of this religion.
So there's, you know, put it in the
most simple terms, there's, you know, you live
in your head.
How do you see the world in your
head?
And what kind of life do you lead?
Like, what is driving you to lead your
life?
And both of those things are so beautifully
fused together in the Surah.
Like, it really does...
It does something that I don't know if
any other Surah does in the way that
it does it.
Yeah, actually, it's funny.
Actually, you mentioned that because that particular part
is the one that really just kind of
blew me away.
Because particularly right now, actually, I got in...
I met like a new group of people
that I've been hanging out with.
And they're very much into the thought that
whatever you think about, you will end up
seeing at some point in your life.
So like manifesting or something?
Yeah, they call it manifestation kind of thing.
So just kind of keep like, watch your
thoughts.
And basically, the story that you tell yourself
inside, because whatever it is that goes inside
your head, basically, at some point, you're going
to be seeing.
And I've always thought there was a little
bit of a kink in the armor of
that argument.
But I know there's maybe some truth to
it.
But I didn't know how.
So I was wondering, how can we tie
that to the Quran?
Whereas I mentioned the Quran.
So when I listened to Surah Al-Hadeed,
I was mind blown.
I'm like, okay, now I got my answers.
Now this is it.
Now I was like reading Surah Al-Hadeed
over and over.
My mom actually, just last week, asked me,
my mom goes through Surahs and she wants
to memorize the Quran as much as possible.
And she's like, what Surah should I go?
I'm like, go for Surah Al-Hadeed.
Go for Surah Al-Hadeed.
It's amazing.
Like it's so...
MashaAllah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm actually really baffled right now.
I've been stressed with every Surah that I've
covered.
But this is a new level of stress
right now.
Surah Al-Hadeed?
No, not right now.
Right now?
Surah As-Saf.
Surah As-Saf?
Yeah.
Why?
I've taken more time off to prep for
Surah As-Saf than any other Surah in
all of the Quran weeks that I started
from since Surah Al-Dhariyat.
There's two Surahs that I knew were going
to take me, like they were going to
drain my brain juice.
And we're going to be Hadeed and Hashir.
Not Hadeed, Saf and Hashir.
The three used to be Hadeed, Saf and
Hashir.
But Alhamdulillah, those are done.
That's Saf, man.
That's a beast.
It's...
There's so much to do, ya Allah.
I'm all...
I'm overwhelmed.
I gave the research team, because we study
together as a team.
I gave them like, here's what we're going
to work on.
And they're like, yeah, that's a lot of
stuff.
Did you like extract so many, like a
lot of information out of it?
A lot of like treasures, as we called
it at the beginning of this conversation.
And you kind of have to choose like
a path?
Or how does it go?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's...
This surah, it demonstrates the mission of the
Prophet ï·º in the most explicit terms.
And it's easy to just read that and
move on.
And it's not easy to stop and contemplate
it.
It leads to some very...
You're going to go down a rabbit hole
of questions and exploration.
And I'm doing that currently.
It's made me revisit things I was studying
20 years ago.
Wow.
Recounting them.
Revisiting conclusions I thought I had reached five
years ago.
I have to rethink them.
So it's like a cataclysmic shift in my
head right now going on.
Because I'm like just giving myself to Surat
Al-Hadeed.
Wow.
What's the stuff you mean?
Huh?
Sorry, I keep saying Hadeed.
Yeah.
All sorts of stuff, yeah.
Yeah.
Wait, do you have a deadline for it?
How's it supposed to be done?
Well, I'm supposed to teach it in Michigan.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
It's coming up.
Yeah.
Early July.
29th, is it?
June 29th, isn't it?
Is it?
Oh, God.
I have no time.
No, I think it's a little later than
that.
A little later than that, yeah.
You're coming to Maryland in July for the
story night.
That's right.
We'll see you there.
That's when you thought you knew the story
of Adem Ali Salam.
Yeah.
So when you do story nights, do they
change from one to another?
Do you do them?
I develop one.
Yeah.
Then I tour the world with it.
Okay.
For about a year and a half.
Then I retire that one.
Then I take six months to recover from
doing story nights.
And then think of another one.
So there were two that I was thinking
about.
The one currently, I usually don't give away
what I'm doing.
But I thought when I studied, I re
-studied the story of Adem Ali Salam in
the Quran.
And I am now convinced that it is
the first priority for every Muslim, and actually
every human being to know this story before
they know anything else.
It's not just first chronologically, it's first in
priority.
That's why it's the first story told in
the Mus'haf.
And there's a reason it's the first.
Now I'm seeing the reason.
Why is this the first?
Everything else we're learning.
Well, to put it the most simply, why
are we on this planet?
I need a deep answer to that question.
Why are we here?
That question is the story of Adem Ali.
That's how we got here.
And that's, in essence, something that you're developing.
That answer is not in the...
I developed it.
You developed it.
I developed it.
It's not on Bayyinah though.
No, not yet.
Not in the way that I'm doing it
now.
I've done some stuff on the story of
Adem Ali Salam, but not this way.
Okay.
And this is, to me, it's the most
known story in the world.
Some version of this is known by everybody.
Yeah.
The book of Genesis has it.
The rabbinical tradition has it.
The Christians have their own reading of it.
Yeah.
Right.
So there's at least three versions of the
story floating around already.
Before the Qur'an even enters the picture.
The biblical version, the Jewish version, the Christian
version.
I kind of want to ask you what
is the answer you could...
Come to start.
Yeah.
It got me thinking even about Islamic education,
like kids education.
There's a point where we need to form
the identity of a child.
When you think about identity, the first definition
of identity is affiliation.
To me, practically speaking.
Not subconscious.
At the subconscious level.
At a conscious level, as a child is
developing, their first sense of self comes from
self-sense of belonging.
So if they don't see Baba or Mama,
they get a little nervous.
Or even if they're comfortable with...
My kid is very social.
The slightest one, he'll go to anybody.
He'll give anybody a smile.
Yeah.
He was just...
Hadith is just like he's...
Mashallah.
But if he sees me even from a
distance, the way he sings and dances...
He's 10 months old, 10 and a half
months old.
He'll go crazy.
Because there's a bond between us.
And that's actually become a part of his
identity.
He's learning language from his parents.
He's getting his genetics from his parents.
He's getting his habits from his parents.
His parents are an extension of, if not,
the formulating part of his identity.
Think about that for a moment.
Parents are a core part of your identity,
right?
Both physically and psychologically and socially and everywhere,
right?
Now, take that back.
Who's our parent?
Adam.
Adam.
If you don't know your parent, then you
don't really know you.
So does it kind of like at some
point tell you where we kind of diverted?
Is it going to have to go back
to the source to make things right kind
of thing or...
I don't know.
Okay, yeah.
It's juicy.
I'll give you one clue though.
Okay.
The way Allah talks about Adam in Surah
Al-Baqarah, some of that is also the
way he talks about the Israelites.
In the same surah.
Same language.
It's very perplexing.
It's confusing.
What?
Why would he talk about them with this
same phrase?
That was here, right?
It's mind-blowing stuff.
Okay, yeah.
I'm trying not to ask a lot more
questions.
I know.
I want to create those questions in your
head.
Yeah, you're doing a * of a job.
Yes, it's working.
That's my job is to get people to
start develop an itch in their brain to
get them to go and explore.
Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that you guys
inshallah become It's interesting.
You come from very different backgrounds.
You're coming from a background where religion was
not really a part of your life.
And you have to hide from your parents
to learn the Quran or learn anything about
Islam.
And you're getting a full-on 17 classes
a day in Islam.
And seven of those classes are Islam education.
And yet you're finding yourselves kind of...
You discovered, I think your first exposure was
story night.
Real, real exposure.
In the year.
Right?
For the Quran, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is also to me, it's two different
things.
What story night does is my objective of
story night was somebody hears that and says,
Wow, the Quran talks to me.
These stories are alive.
Right?
There's this personalized connection.
And the purpose of divine speech was, Wow,
that is from God.
Yeah.
That can't be human.
Well, those are two equally important things.
Yeah.
Because one of them is kind of intellectual.
Yeah.
Right?
Okay, now I'm convinced it's divine.
But that doesn't mean that I connect with
it deeply.
Yeah.
Emotionally.
But the stories...
Yeah.
They're...
So, SubhanAllah.
You guys came to...
Full circle.
Full circle.
In a really interesting way.
MashaAllah.
No, it's actually funny because when I was
growing up and we'd hear all these stories.
So there was a lot of emphasis on
tarikh, on history.
Yeah.
And there was the story of Umar ibn
al-Khattab when he was hiding between the
cloth of the Kaaba with ill intentions.
And he heard them reciting Quran.
Yeah.
And how he was mind-blown by it.
That's right.
And how there's this other tribe leader that
he was told that plug your ears when
you hear like Muhammad alayhi s-salatu wa
s-salam.
Obviously, they didn't say Muhammad alayhi s-salatu
wa s-salam.
When you hear Muhammad, like basically you just
plug your ears because it's like magic.
And he was at some point like he
heard it and was like, Oh, that must
be it.
And he plugged them like, you know what?
I'm the tribe leader.
I was like, I can't do that.
So I should listen to it.
And he was fascinated.
He learned Islam.
But I'm like, what is it that they
listen to?
Like, I want to know what is it?
Like, how come I'm not feeling what they're
feeling?
What is it that I don't understand that
they did?
Yeah.
So that's kind of like what, that was
kind of like the tipping point with divine
speech, actually.
I hope you guys become a motivation for
many others.
Inshallah.
To engage with the Quran.
And Allah protect both of you.
I'm really grateful that you guys came.
Hope you guys enjoyed this discussion.