Shadee Elmasry – OCD & Waswasa Abdullah Misra NBF 277
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Beyond
this Willa Rahman Rahim Al hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala
Rasulillah. While he was Sunday he will Manuela welcome everybody to
the Safina society nothing but facts. live stream on
an autumn day. It feels very autumn ish out here today. It's
gray.
But it's not cold. And the first thing that we're going to talk
about today before we get to our noble guests
Almira
we got ombre, we got seats. Now I have to say.
I almost sort of apologize. But they got to us late this year.
We're not one of the we were not yet a senior organization that has
their connections with them. So we didn't exactly get the best of
prices this year. To be quite honest with you. But nonetheless,
we are going we're doing it and we got signups and we only have a few
spots left.
So go to Dar El salaam dar e Dar Al Salam.
He'll pin it in the chat Daraa salaam.com/youth 2023 And it's in
the poster right there. Data Center. Now, let's say I'm from
Chicago. How do I go with you guys? Yeah, well, you have to come
to JFK.
You're gonna see the ticket information, everything, all that
information is going to be there. You're gonna have to come to JFK.
Okay, you can come to Jersey and start in New York.
And then you're gonna join a flight to fly with us on the
plane. So that's the that's the method. That's how you're gonna go
about doing it. Okay.
Maddy, I'm just turned out down a movie night to watch this live
instead.
Oh, you're proud. My priorities are straight. Your priorities are
like an arrow straight. And I think our noble guests will also
agree our noble guests have studied
in the data set I'm curriculum. Sorry, Donal Allume curriculum and
he has studied in dotted fats. Sorry, Dr. Mustafa. I sat down
with fat to like that's our joint. Dr. Mustafa and he is an imam in
Toronto. And many, many people love him and like to talk to him
and he has developed an expertise in a subject matter
which is which happens to a lot of converts a lot of people where
they become a little bit
tricked by shaytaan I would say okay.
In never believing that they have will do never believing that their
thought this is a problem. It becomes such a problem for people
to drive them crazy. Okay, and drive the people around them
crazy. And with that, let's bring on board our guest today Sheikh
Abdullah mistletoe Everyone knows him especially in Canada you know
him in America you may not know him as much because he is from
Canada but he does come down south from the Toronto Greater Toronto
Area Mississauga and he does come to Jersey comes to different
areas. Sheikh Abdullah Misra again studied in dato loom curriculum
finished it dot and must have a curriculum now let me get some
miracle welcome you to the stream but also I want to start off with
the first question
is your your parents are converts Are you yourself or convert?
Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salam ala Sayyidina
Muhammad ala Leu software drain. So now what I what I want to lay
water care to Dr. Shetty and everybody else. Welcome to the
program. Thank you so much humbled and honored to be here. I do have
to make one correction. I studied in a branch. My first time when I
went to go study overseas was in the language school of Donald
Mustafa. But my main studies in the Arab curriculum took place in
Jordan for the 12 years that I was there, so I can
Yeah, so I don't claim to be a dolt Mustafa
graduate. I was learning language look at the time. But the those
studies were mostly in in Jordan and Jordan. Okay. Yeah. So I'm a
I'm a convert to Islam. I converted in 2001. You convert in
2001. That's around 911. Is that before 911 Or after either way?
It's a story right. So it is.
Yeah, so I grew up in a Brahmin Hindu Brahmin household Indian
family. You know, it's I grew up in the temple, you know, learning
yoga, these types of things and, and my parents, their background,
has a lot of kind of Hindu, religious right wing kind of
connections.
In dream
University, or before that I got kind of into Christianity, when I
was in my exploration phase, which kind of put me on a track, because
my best friends growing up were Christian missionaries. And so
that put me on a track to learning about Tawheed, at least in their
version, right, learning about the idea of profits and prophethood.
And most of all, which was most life changing was the idea of
getting to know Jesus, or a salon Isa. And, and that eventually led
to coming to University, where I learned more about Islam, this was
about, I would say, six months before 911. So it's, it's funny,
because I just thank Allah, but I, I went through all of that before,
so I didn't have the the pressure and the tension that came into the
media. It's not the same anybody who has who has not seen before
and after 911 will not understand the difference, the difference in
really between where the discourse was at Islam was just another kind
of another religion, you know, before it pre 911 days, so I
didn't have to deal with a lot of those, those things. Hamdulillah.
But it occurred very shortly, like about five, six months after I
became Muslim Subhanallah that just to give context to people
before 911, it's very likely highly likely a person lived their
whole life, just hearing the word Islam and not actually not hearing
anything else. Anytime that Islam was in the news,
everyone knew about it. And usually it was a small segment at
Hajj, right, a small segment about the local mosque, fasting Ramadan,
it was like a meaningless segment, essentially, there was not news
was like a non news segment.
Right after 911 thrusts in, You're the villain, in civilizational, at
the civilizational level, your people are the villain. So
it's important to note this, that we care so much about converts,
but the Hindu converts tend to blend in so much that many people
don't even know their converts. And people sort of have this
imagination that while you're from that part of the world anyway. So
it must be a seamless transition. In fact, to be a convert from a
Hindu family is probably a lot harder than to be a convert from,
you know, many other ethnicities in America, let's say from an
African American cover, or even a white convert. Oftentimes, those
families are very open minded. And they have no problem with their
kids converting. Very little resistance, very little historical
animosity between Muslims.
Same thing with African American Conference in some areas. Yes,
there may be a pushback from the Baptists. But in a lot of cases,
it's almost expected, like the default religion when I need one
is going to be a slump. So we now know that the the Hindu trajectory
is very anti Muslim. So why don't you talk to us a little bit and
maybe there are a Hindu conference out there again, listening are
gonna listen to this later on on YouTube. Why don't you tell us
something about that experience and how you navigated it? Yeah.
Bismillah I am what I call Muslim passing. So I did have, you know,
because I'm a brown person. You know, you always you grew up your
whole life, people saying, Are you muslim? And like, no, and then
seeing there, now I realize why their face would be like, Oh,
alright, you know, because people, people think, especially if you
are moving around a place like Toronto, which is very diverse,
you know, you have Sikh friends, Hindu friends, Muslim friends. And
so you need to get to know a little bit culturally about you
may have Pakistani friends. So you get to know culturally about about
the other side a little bit, but just not really, so much. I would
say that the experience of converting from Hinduism to Islam,
very similar, like Judaism, to Islam, it's their cultures that
are almost diametrically opposed to each other in some ways. Unless
you're very secular, or very, very, like left wing, very, very,
you know, or spiritual, enlightened type of person. It's
there are cultures that have a really big clash, you know, kind
of like also Greek Turkish
historic clashes and so the way I try to explain to people like
what's it like to be a Hindu convert to Muslim Islam is imagine
if a Pakistani kid converted to Hinduism or Christianity, what
would they go through? Yeah, so that's kind of the same thing
where you're expected that this is your religion. So what you're born
into there's an idea in Hinduism that you know there's the caste
system idea so let alone your main religion, even your even the
family status and the caste that you're born into is unchangeable.
You can lose caste, you can lose caste actually, but you can't
can't go up right and so it's so an reconsider this something that
is Lifetime's like they consider multiple rebirths reincarnation
and stuff is so so drilled into them, that you can't change what
you are, you are what you are. And in that sense to change is an act
of it's a huge, rebellious
huge revolution because you're throwing off not only your
identity, but their entire worldview is what you're throwing
off. Right. And this is why they're deeply you know, Deaf deaf
generally is a deep, bitter taste in the mouth of a lot of Indians,
a lot of Hindus, regarding the Muslim population in India, the
Christian population, I mean, they're not outside invaders, like
the propaganda would have you think, yes, there are people came
in for outside, you know, hunting and possum and so on and so forth.
There are there were campaigns that took place in history. And
those are those can be debated on a on a historic level, secular
level to not necessarily all religious necessarily, what
happened in terms of how Islam came into India. But it also came
in through peaceful means, as well. And, you know, from the
South to traders, through wandering mystics, which is
probably one of the most profound ways that Islam spread in India.
But there was no sort of kind of a campaign of conversion that took
place on mass, but rather, it's the people there themselves, the
Hindus, the indigenous people of that land, the people who see in
Pakistan and India who are Muslim, now, Bangladesh, there are people
from that land, who decided to become Muslim, because they
thought that there was something better that it was offering them
whether it is first of all to heat and a beautiful spirituality, or
whether it was an escape from caste, a type of a brotherhood.
And there are many other benefits that Muslim civilization showed
people to bring people on hope, you know, a unity, the idea of a
system where people take care of one another, you know, so there
are many reasons why people came to Islam. And the amazing thing
is, in my, my time, when I became Muslim, 22 years ago, it was very
rare to find a Hindu con, or even a Sikh convert. And now
Subhanallah, I mean, it's just feels like it's so much more
common. And it's wonderful to see that people are, especially
because of the internet. And because of social media, people
are able to defy Islam, and realize, realize that a lot of the
talking points they were raised with a lot more skills being
invaders and they're dirty, and they're bad. And they this and
that. They can they can see through a lot of that. And so 100
A lot of people are becoming Muslim now. So let me ask you this
22 years ago, we weren't hearing what we're hearing from Hindus
today. This right wing nationalist revival wasn't something that I
think the mainstream mainstream world was aware of. But so my
question is, did it exist at the time or were Hindus a live and let
live people at that time? No, 100% it existed at that time. So you
know, RSS has existed, I mean, looking at Mahatma Gandhi, who we
were raised to revere, right? We found Gandhi. Ji, like, you know,
sir, Gandhi, you could say, you know, he was assassinated, right?
Yeah, he was exactly. He was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
Okay. So it existed all the way back then. And the idea, the only
difference is it did not become the dominant narrative, it was
like, kind of find almost like how we have these certain groups that
are like they have these weird political ideologies that are like
htm or something that are kind of confined to like these very small
kind of circles, right. So you had that kind of like a fringe of
people who saw things like that, you know, the first BJP Prime
Ministers are distant relative of mine, you know, so it's always
there. But my, my mom tells me my dad's brothers were thrown in
jail, when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, because they were an
RSS as young people's young boys. Yeah. So I mean, so the ideology
has existed, but the idea of how diabolical it becomes in terms of
a plan to actually capitalize Muslims and then persecute them
and become like a kind of a dominant fascist, state sponsored
media controlling ideology. Now, this is something that is only
within the last 1015 years. And just to tell you just to
highlight, you know, what's happening, you know, we grew up
understanding that Gandhi and Nehru, for example, our, our, our,
you know, I'm Canadian born but as a heritage thing, they were like
the big people, they were like your founders, the founding
fathers, that idea respected. Now, if you go to ask my family
members, they look down on those people. But that's true. And the
same people that you practically worship the ground they walk on.
So now our persona non grata there.
They were they sold out, basically.
Yeah, yeah. Like there's Western Western imported or they sold out
to Muslims. And the, the kind of idea or the doctrine of, of kind
of supremacy of Hindu supremacy, unfortunately, has, has
infiltrated the minds of people, even secular family members that I
had our right wing now because it's the media control. So that's
The reality of it. That doesn't mean every practicing Hindu thinks
like that. It's just the dominant narrative makes it very difficult,
like Fox News, yeah, to not think like that. So, I like to sometimes
go back to the theology of things and see if things line up. And
it's sometimes theology just completely doesn't matter, because
people are just going to do what they want to do, or they're going
to do what's practical and pragmatic. And we see that
happening today,
where Christians are the biggest supporters of Israel,
despite the fact that they had a terrible history, in their beliefs
regarding
their God, God's essentially the Virgin Mary and Prophet Jesus. But
in Hinduism, one of the things that we learned in school was
this, in the Masters in our master's program on Islam in
India, I had a very good teacher was actually Hindu priest, and he
was a Hindu philosopher, and he was the master's program at GW. He
taught the Hinduism class. And one of the things that he noted was
that Islam settled, entered India, at a time where there were
Buddhists, and there were Hindus, the Buddhists, they have an
absolute belief, like they they believed in a worldview, right?
The Hindus are very fluid. Right? So the immediate results was very
interesting. When Muslims
crossed paths with Buddhists, it was a clash, right, only one could
survive. Yes. And over time, the Muslims were stronger. And the
Buddhists eventually capitulated and entered a slump, because there
can be only one worldview. When the Muslims arrived at Hindu
areas, it wasn't even a thing called Hinduism at the time.
Right? It was just local pagan gods.
These Hindus welcomed the Muslims.
And they said, we have so many gods. Here's another one, right?
You already got 1000 Gods now. Now what do you Muslims have your own
god, that's 1001. Gods welcome in, right. And the Muslims were
confounded by this day is the first time that they came upon a
people that do not have an absolute worldview, it's a fluid,
truth is fluid with them. Right? And so they the Muslims had
trouble bringing them into Islam. Even when they did come into
Islam, the mindset was that there is like, no rule of non
contradiction amongst them. So yes, we'll worship with you will
even do to us so with your own righteous people, and they love
that part of things. And at the simultaneously, we'll go back to
the idols right, that we have. So there was this fluidity with
Hinduism. But clearly, that has changed. And that fluid reality of
just like accepting everything, and that it's like ultra liberal,
almost in a sense, where the the law of non contradiction doesn't
exist anymore. Right? And you're constantly contradicts yourself,
but that's okay. It's all relative. So what do you think
exactly happened? Why did Hinduism deviate from that? Why did it
divert from that very fluid
to this rigid religion? Well, I would, yes, I would say, I like
the assessment of what your your teacher mentioned, I would say
that there are different modes of how Muslims entered the
subcontinent. And so that would shape the response to them, right.
So there are we know that there was when there's war and that
aspect that creates a bitterness in any society, right, that an
outside force or idea comes in, and they're dominant. And so that
creates that little bit of things. So there is a resistance of No,
just because you're the one who believes in that. I'm not going to
consider it. So there is that idea of the clash, right? In that
aspect, that's more of a cultural idea. The religious aspect of
Hinduism was not simply it's not simply cross idol worship, I do
have to say that it's a collection of philosophy. So the reason why
it seems nebulous, is not only because yeah, there is this idea
of, you know, it's it's relative, but it's also because there are so
many competing philosophies and ideas and deities, and cults
within cults that are going on, that it's a kind of, it's kind of
a world of religions within itself. Does that make sense? It's
a kind of a microcosm of of that. So when Islam comes into that, so
for example, Afghanistan was completely Buddhist. Right. At
some point in time, that's why you have the Bamiyan Buddha statues,
for example. And as you said, Afghanistan now is completely
Muslim. I can't you know, almost, you know, 100% Muslim. And so,
that was a very different experience. But when it comes into
when you come into India, now, you have this idea of like, as you
said, it's accommodating. It is a sense of, oh, it's very kind of
nebulous.
Um, there are still underlying beliefs that are there. It's not
like it's all relative 100%. So like, for example, like
reincarnation is very, it's very common throughout, even though a
deity that they worship might be, might be different from each
other. The idea of caste, for example, is kind of spread out. So
at the end, at the end of it, when Islam came in, there is an idea
of, let's talk logic, and they're like, we don't use logic and
religion. And so that's one of the things that people complain about,
like, you can argue as much as you want it. There's one God and it
was like, Okay, sounds pretty logical. It's cool.
When I, you know, so this is why this idea there is that mismatch
there that they're not using their minds to kind of in their heart,
which is why the most success in Dawa was not through any type of
argumentation or logical convincing. It was a Sayed, from
Iraq, or the Arab Damascus who, who is who is a, a spiritual
master, walks barefoot with a couple of his disciples into a
jungle 1000s of kilometers away, saying goodbye to his family,
Parks himself in a jungle in India, surrounded by crass idol
worship and all types of practices that are not, you know, that
antithetical to Islam, and sits down and makes vicar and loves the
people who are around him, and encourages feeding and
spirituality and then tells His disciples to try to try to make a
bridge between how you're going to live your Islam and how you can
explain it to these people and their spiritual music that's using
like sama alcohol is used in that there's poetry, there's all types
of, you know, how do you integrate Islam into an environment in which
people are not willing to listen to your debates? Because remember,
even the common person among them, the pundits, the Brahmins had the
access to their scriptures, no one else even sees them. Right? So the
idea of arguing on that level of Scripture is just it's just not
even in the picture. Now what happens is,
when the British come in, then they need to kind of like they
they understand these neat categories of like Abrahamic
religions revealed religions, okay, your most of your Jewish
your Christian, what do you guys like? What do you believe in?
What's your book? Like? We have a bunch of books, okay? What are
your beliefs while they're all over the place? Okay, fine. So
there's this idea of an influence even from before the Muslim
influence, which says, Okay, pick a book, okay? Let's say the
kingdom. Okay? So that's, that's your, that's your text. Okay.
That's how we identify you. Now, let's standardize some beliefs.
Even though Hinduism was much more diverse. That's how you kind of
deal with the other and then that standardization becomes a way of
self identifying to now so Wait, what is our identity in the face
of foreigners? are what the foreign idea? Okay, fine, we're in
the winter, we believe we can no longer be nebulous. So there's a
kind of solidifying of something in response, something else,
right. And so that goes now the thing is that, when you come to a
point where the post independence, you know, they never really had
their day, in that respect, to try to run the country the way that
they wanted to, because even Hindu leaders are educated in Oxford and
Cambridge, during, during independence time, right, at the
end of colonial era, but it's the elites of educated elites who are
coming back. And they're kind of like British in one way and Indian
in one way. But you don't see this kind of like indigenous, like,
let's try it grassroots like how we believe it. So there's a small
group of people who will say, just like in the Muslim countries, no,
let's let's go back to making religion the thing that leads this
civilization you get in, and that's what you're seeing over
there. It's, it's, I can actually you can empathize with it, because
it's something that Muslims want in Turkey that Muslims have wanted
in Malaysia, which is to revive your own civilization, not on
colonial foundations and epistemology. And that's what
they're trying to do now. But the problem is, when you to do that,
when you have a whole bunch of minorities living there,
automatically means that there's a chauvinism that has to come in, in
order for people to rally around because people just didn't care
about religion, like growing up, I wasn't religious, you know, in
some senses, but not many people care in that community that
galvanized it based on identity, not based on theta, or, or these
types of things that we have. And it's interesting all throughout
the world, this influence and this impact of
Western civilization is fading. And people like, Oh, hold on,
let's go back to something more genuine that matches our life. And
so And believe it or not, that's actually even happening in the
Nordic world, where whites are want to come back Hold on, we all
what's wrong with our culture? We have a culture too, right? And so
recently, trending on Twitter was this concept that, Nick, why
shouldn't whites have their own culture? Like we're celebrating
our own culture? So everyone's going back to this and the
question is, is it something of Jehovah, or is it something of
truth? All right, that seems to be the question and Israel is no
different. You talk to those Rabbi
Is there and the Hasidic Jews, they are like, they despise
Western culture. And they say, we'll take the aid but that's it.
Right? Well, we'll take your help. But here you're our enemies like
your liberalism is our enemy. And even David Ben Gurion said this,
he said to the British, he said, we learn from you. We support you.
We take protection from you in Germany in World War Two, but in
this territory, you're our enemy. Right? So we find that and you
hope it catches on with Muslims eventually. I froze again, no, we
I think we both froze.
Hold on a second while we froze for a second here.
Yeah, terrible. We need to we need to get nowhere to fix it is the
sound going through at least the sound goes through okay. Only the
picture is messed up. So you hope that that most Muslims
get the picture too? Right? Because what I look for in these
reactions, to tribulations and everything is our people turning
back to Allah or not? Right, that's really more important than
what's happening. What's the solution is not the right
question. What's the solution? spouse is not the right question.
The right question is, are we reacting to this fitna? By
returning to Allah Now I want to ask you another question. People
have told me that the actual Brahmin texts the actual Brahmin
philosophy
is actually very sophisticated. Right.
And it has to Haden it.
Talk to us about that. Yeah, this is a so I'll just say 99.9999% of
Hindus have never even seen the cover of the book of their ancient
texts. So I'm not even talking about read the book. I mean, they
wouldn't have not even looked at the cover of it.
So that's something to remember. But that does not mean that, that
yeah, there's high degrees of sophistication, philosophical
depth, you have debates going on in between internal debates that
where they debated moral philosophies, you know, we're
talking about 2000 years ago, more. So it's the Vedas that kind
of formed the bedrock of that they do is a lot of depth to that
there's no doubt about that, which is why even Muslim scholars, when
they came into India, and they started to learn about it, they
could actually with the Brahmins, they could hold these types of
debates and intellectual engagement do we freeze? Now I'm
only frozen, but you're you can keep going. Okay. So there was a
high level of dialogue, you know, and encounters between the Mughal
courts, the courts of the Muslim rulership, about discussion and
debate over philosophical I, Diaz, now do the I think they're in a
strange because number Hinduism has different philosophies, but
there is a definite philosophy in which there is a return to a one
one source,
a one one kind of all pervading source, which you can say is one
God in that respect, but it's not as personal of a God as we define
in the Abrahamic tradition. So they don't believe so they won't
believe it's an actual attribute less we have attributes argued our
you know, Allah Sparta has SIFAT right? Yeah, qualities. They will
say attribute lists, like you know, formless nameless, it's an
ultimate reality. But there is an idea, the kernel of Tawheed, which
is why those people are at the higher levels of religion and even
spirituality within Islam, they can see that they have more in
common, but when it starts filtering down onto the kind of
lower levels of popular religion, that's when it seems completely
opposite to each other, which is why there has been always some
very interesting interactions and clashes as well on different
levels. It's not only been one narrative on one narrative,
there's been also lots of dialogue and discussion, intellectual
engagement on one level, and on other levels. It seemed like this,
we just, we just have nothing in common. That's a diversity of it.
Subhanallah so when you went to temple What did you Did they teach
you this stuff? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we did. I mean, remember in
Temple is more popular form of religion. Yeah. So you know,
there's like idols everywhere, different different idols and
stories. And we learned about the epics, the Hinduism, popular the
Hinduism, now, modern Hinduism that's followed is based on moral
stories coming from Epic books, you know, kind of how they how you
have like Iliad and Odyssey and the traditions you have like the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana, that came before that. And so, I mean,
you learn moral moral values through that you have also kind of
like how we have to ask you have what they call shlokas from older
texts that are like prayers and so on.
And
so that's another thing. So in those they will reference this one
God, which is why translated from Sanskrit, some of the older
prayers would almost seem like it's Surah class. It's like, whoa,
you take this, it takes a classic very similar. So they that is
obviously why this idea appealed to me, right? Because I was like,
Oh man, I've been worshipping God all my life. I just call it a
different name. Right? So So yeah, that's how you find that
commonality that that string, but it's all of the code