What Kind Of Muslim Are You

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			Miss Milan hungry la Salaam Alaikum. Peace be unto you. Welcome to another episode of the deen show.
And in the de show studio, we have Shaykh, Abu Toba, who went from being a Christian, to a Muslim.
And you can go to the D show.com. We've done some shows with him in the past. And we talking about
his experiences his journey to Islam, Islam, the simple message to acquire peace by submitting to
the One God the owner peace, the same God of Jesus, Abraham, Noah, Moses, and all the messengers
got, including the last and final messenger, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So we're going
to continue on talking to him and having him share his experiences work with us when we come back
		

			here to the show, sit tight.
		

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			Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah peace be unto you.
		

			Thank you, thank you very much. All right. You know, we were continuing on we we've done some shows,
with you in the past, talking about your story, how you came to Islam, people go to the Dean's show
calm. And we did kind of like a series where, you know, it's very interesting talking with you. And
we kind of went off on some of the elements. And we discussed that kind of here, there. But we still
didn't get to the crust of the matter. where we left off you were, you joined the Marines, and you
started to perform the prayer. And then that's where we kind of left off. If you can just take it
away. We just slide right into it. I'm the lander berloumi. Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah, Karim,
		

			Allah, he was the he were many of our humanity. You know,
		

			when I was in Japan, it's very, may sound strange when I moved to Japan.
		

			I started to learn more about the slab. You know, I went to the masjid in Japan, and the Imam there
began to teach me Arabic, how to read Arabic. So the first letter he showed me and I accused him of
being a worshipper of Mohammed. I went to the masjid and I said, You know, I want to learn about
Islam, but I don't want to worship Muhammad. So you Arabs, you worship Muhammad. He was Arab, the
Imam. And so he's like, No, you know, as I said, Yes, you do. Because every time you say Allah, you
don't say anything. But then when you say Mohammed, you say sola love Allah, He will say, yes, you
know, Ally's the one more right for you say something after his name, like a lobby great is a law
		

			and this that and the other thing. He said, No, really, a lot doesn't need anything. He is gonna
need you. Hamid is free of all need Worthy of all praise. Where's the Prophet Muhammad is a man,
he's a prophet, and he benefits from our prayer. And we pray for all to Allah, that Allah have mercy
on him and give him this high position. So I immediately started to understand something desperate.
So I said, I don't trust you. Because remember, I wanted to learn more about the religion. So you
need to teach me Arabic, so I can read for myself and figure this thing out. So he asked me my name,
my last name, Robertson. So he showed me the little raw, this is raw in Arabic, he wrote it there.
		

			He says, see this, and this line above, says, raw? Okay, I can say that raw. And then the next
letter he showed me was bad. So you'd like your name, and I thought he was gonna do my name. He
said, Rob, can you say that? I said, Yes, I can say that. Rob. He said, this is a word. You read
your first word is a very important word. I said, What is this word? He said, Lord, this word is
Rob, Lord. And it touched me the way he did it. It made me cry. I was like, Wow, so Pamela, I'm
reading and it's the first word I ever read was Rob. You know, instead, I had a lasting effect on my
intellect. Now, I was in the Marine Corps, as you said, and I was in special operations. I was part
		

			of an entity
		

			I terrorist team. So I know a lot about what terrorism is, and what it's not, you know, and hungry
loadable. I mean, so I was in a class. And during this class, our teams was jsoc Joint Special Ops
capable. So you have a team of force recon, a team of Navy SEALs, the team of Delta Force, and we're
all make one jsoc unit, Joint Special Ops capable of doing anything. So we're having this class, and
the screen pops on, and it says this is the first type of terrorists, and it was Yasser Arafat. He
is the political terrorist. And so we're taking notes down. And then he says, He goes, the next
screen pops up. Here's the next terrorists. This is the religious fanatic. And it was Ayatollah
		

			Khomeini. So we write this down. He's the religious fanatic, and then in the screen pops again, and
it shows Muammar Qaddafi, and he is the military fanatic. Boom. And so the lights come on, and they
say, hey, what are all these guys have in common? And somebody yells out, there are *, you
know? And so a couple of guys giggled and stuff like that. And it struck me he does and he says,
Yeah, they're all Muslim. Okay? Then he says, do we have any Muslims in here? And I raised my hand,
my hand went up automatically, you know, since I put my hand up. So they used to call me, Rob,
because my last name is Robertson, or Rob or Mr. Like that. So they say, what cipher Muslim, are
		

			you? Okay? That was the key sentence that changed my life. What type of Muslim are you? I had never
thought about it before. I never considered that thing. And I looked at the screen. And it's got the
religious fanatic, the political fanatic, and military fanatic. Those are the only choices that I
was given at the time. So I said, I guess I'm the military fanatic, because, you know, we're all,
you know, military guys that turn. And everybody busts out laughing. Oh, you're a funny guy. And he
thought I was joking. And I said, wow, you know, what type of Muslim? Am I for real? I wasn't
laughing. You know, because I didn't know how to really answer that question. I knew there was more
		

			to it than the three choices that I had. And that became the quest that I was on the journey that
was one to define what type of Muslim Am I so the the logical? Next question is? What type of
Muslims are there? What are the choices? Yeah, let's, let's take a break. We're going to we're going
to continue there. What are the choices? Because you'll see a lot of different you know, ama D,
you'll see the what else you have the
		

			nation, the Nation of Islam, you have the different forms that Islam is taking over the years. Yeah,
you know, so this is a good point now, and I'm sure there's a lot of other people who can relate to
this. And we're going to continue this, what kind of Muslim are you now we come back here on the D
show.
		

			Do not kill a woman. Do not kill a child do not,
		

			you know, going to different religious,
		

			Buddhism, Hinduism, forms of Christianity. I even ran into people from the Nation of Islam.
		

			Do not kill an animal, do not cut a tree down, do not pollute the water, do not burn their homes.
		

			Back here on the deen show, and we're talking to Abu Toba. And you hit a point where what kind of
Muslim are you? Now before that you were learning Arabic? And you were almost at the point where
you're saying like, Look, you know, there's no God, but the one guy, but you want to kind of seem
like leave this Mohammed, the howdy felt, you know, right. That's what it seems like, to me. It was
and we know that, you know, there's no separation and verbatim Word of God. And you have the sooner
the authentic. I say these aren't lullaby stories. These are the authentic hadith sayings of the
last semester, because he's the walking around, right? Yes. So now, you you you are confused, and
		

			many people are because they don't have the correct knowledge. So now you have by high, you have
asthma D. You have I didn't start there. Yeah, you know how to Let's go, can you so now I'm, I'm
trying to figure out what type of Muslim am I? And I started to do some research to figure out I
went asking people, and I started learning the history of Islam in the United States. Yeah. And so
you have the those people like the Nation of Islam, or even before that you have principal masonary,
you have the more science temple, this group of guys who saw themselves as African and since African
was meant Muslim to them, and they made this group and then they started to go for and they have
		

			problems in there. They believe they made their own quarter and, you know, and they make blasphemy.
So I said, Oh, these guys are way out. I'm not going to get myself involved in that group right
here. Then you have the Nation of Islam, who said that Elijah Muhammad became the messenger of a law
firm a statement saying that he was you know, fard Muhammad is the God in person. I said, it's the
same thing as Christianity. There's nothing different from that.
		

			And I let go of that. And then it was this thing with the work the Mohammed ministries, and that was
really a more Afro centric side, you know, approach to Islam. And I said, Well, you know, to be a
nationalistic is not what Islam is calling me to be, you know, I'm not going to be reverse racist in
Islam, and I want the proper religion of Islam, you know, and I said to myself, I, my father, and my
mother, they weren't really too happy when I accepted Islam, and I love my father, and I love my
mother, as I would never make my mother and father displeased or unhappy for something less than the
truth. And so I would read the Quran and and like he said, I initially said, Well, I don't really I
		

			believe that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. But I don't know about these Hadeeth I don't want
to get involved in this. This may be just like the new testament to me. But then as I start kept
researching, and finding out that no, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and that that means that
we believe everything he said to us, you know, and that we have to take sacred law from Him and obey
his commands and call everything that he calls Haram. And so I started to learn more about what that
meant. Can you equate it? Can you equate it like if you were living during the time of Moses, he was
revealed the Torah and he was explaining to the people how to implement the Torah. But what happened
		

			is I learned in Japan, this happens in Japan now. I learned what the Imam they have made us do
research papers on the simple principles of Islam. What is a prophet? That's what changed my life
with regards to the Prophet Mohammed salaam, salaam, the prophet Mohammed Salah, Salah, what is a
prophet? A prophet is a man whom Allah reveals to him revelation and tells them what's going to
happen in the future, what happened in the past, and he tells them how to rule the rule in the lives
of the people. Now, what's a messenger? A messenger is a prophet that comes with a new legislation,
he comes with a new book, if you want to use an example, you have the Prophet Moses and Harun,
		

			whereas their brothers, Moses is a prophet and a messenger. He has a book, Revelation and a Sharia
legislation to rule in the lives of the people we're hard on is a prophet, but he's not a messenger,
he prophesizes. And he has or has the permission to lead the people and teach them how to run their
lives. But he doesn't have a new legislation, or a book that revealed to him specific giving any new
laws. So when I learned about what was a prophet, and what were the rights of the Prophet, I did two
things. I looked at Paul of sources in Christendom, and realized that he was not a prophet and
didn't have any right to legislate. Okay. Second, I looked at Jesus and recognize that we don't
		

			really have what he legislated in the Bible at all. And that made me understand why the quarter end
was revealed, and that the job of the Prophet sallallahu Sallam was to explain the Quran. And I was
very happy with that, because then I started to notice things that I had known in Christianity, that
it said, going a little further, Jesus falls on his face in praise. I said, Oh, he's making Salah,
like we do, you know? And I said, Well, I didn't realize those particular things. until I started to
learn more about the Quran, and how to offer salah and these types of things, I was able to bring
things together, but then it still didn't answer my question, what type of Muslim I saw the Shia
		

			Muslims, and they were beating themselves in the backs and we were dealing with them because we were
fighting them at that time in the Marine Corps. So we see the Shia and I said, Well, these this is
not Islam that I know about. And they were saying that Ali was the Prophet of Allah, and I knew that
was incorrect. And they were saying that different Sahaba were not to be listened to the Prophet
that this mentality so I said, Okay, we're not like this. Then I heard about the idea. Then I heard
about the the the the fukuhara you know, because coming from New York we have this militates type
Islam that was growing in the United States. We called it the doll is slam and adata slam is was a
		

			lot of the afro centric brothers who started to practice Islam, but it was really heavily militant
at the time and this was our fathers and and our Father in law's so I said, Okay, what's missing?
All this afrocentricity all this militants all this to so Wolf, where is the sun? Then I can said
the Prophet Mohammed Salah Salaam became very important at that time. And so I realized that the
only way you can be a good Muslim, the thing that ties Islam and the Quran all together is following
and emulating the life of the prophet SAW the love and accept him the Prophet Muhammad, as as you
said, He is the core and walking this is the last and final message sent to mankind not Elijah
		

			Muhammad. No, not I don't mean Elijah Muhammad, the Prophet Muhammad, the son of Abdullah, okay,
okay, so now you have to follow him. What about some people say look, you know, we didn't get a
prophet sent to us and this fraud Muhammad, you know, and Elijah Muhammad and
		

			They sent for the African Americans to help us and they take him as a prophet. Well, you know, what
we tell those people is that, you know, what's the difference between that and Jesus and the idea
that Jesus is God as man. And you say, Father Mohammed is God in the body of man, the Prophet
Muhammad different from all the other prophets came down Rahmatullah alameen as a mercy for all the
people, and so different from Jesus, Jesus said, he came only for the last people that are sheep of
the children of Israel, whereas the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam, he came as a guide for all
mankind, for Chinese black for every everybody can use that excuse. Now, in fact, we find that the
		

			majority of the Muslims are Arab. Yeah, you know, the majority of the Muslims would be the the
Indonesian, Malaysian people, and then the African people. And then the Indian people, you know, so
and then you go to the Arab people in find the majority, you know, we talk about Muslims, you know,
in, in general, but the mindset is that the Prophet Muhammad is only four hours. Yeah, this is this
is ludicrous. So now what happens next? Well, hamdu lillahi, Rabbil aalameen. I come back to the
United States. I study for some years here, and I was teaching in the United States, and then I go
back overseas for about 10 years. I lived in Mauritania for 10 years. I lived in Mauritania for
		

			about six years, six years, and then I moved to Egypt, what are you doing there? I was learning, I
was perfecting my skill in Arabic language and solo. Okay, law, learning law. And then I went to
Egypt and I memorized the Quran, a masala. And then after that, my son, he got sick, he had to have
brain surgery. So I came back to United States and that was about three years ago. And I've been
here opened up school called the fix fundamental Islamic knowledge and seminary. I teach from the I
teach Arabic I teach, and memorization of the Quran and law. I do that now. And you know, I have a
book coming out called the Black is black sheep chronicles his whole journey like that. And that's
		

			pretty much what we do. And we do martial arts, and I'm gonna beat you up when I get a chance.
		

			We're gonna have to, you know, do a program on that. Since you know, that's one thing. I didn't
mention that you're also involved in martial arts, somewhat little bit. Yeah. humbler? How long have
you been doing that? Well, actually, I've been doing martial arts since the 70s. Since I was a young
youngster, you and I do a system now called el muro. Yeah. Which is just, you know, the Islamic
system. Yeah. chivalry. Islam promotes people taking care of themselves. Yeah. And especially for
the young adults and older adults to learn how to wrestle. And that's what martial arts is basically
is wrestling. How'd you do martial arts itself? Yes, yes. You know, what do you do? The Gracie
		

			Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Gracie. Wow, handle law. Martial Law. I heard the Gracie family is really
tight. Very, very tight. Yes. You handle it world famous. So yes, B must be pretty good. Yeah, homme
de la la. I got involved with them and you know, they dominated the martial arts world. Yeah. You
know, a long time ago was a Helio Gracie, the older one Helio Gracie. And then you have his brother,
Carlos, Gracie. Okay, I'm under Carlos Gracie from junior senior, I mean, Jr. and I have the lineage
connected back to them shall Ah, that's that's a beautiful thing. I try to promote brothers to go
learn martial arts for Muslims. Because then you don't have to get involved in the shirk and the
		

			different things that come along with some of the systems. Yeah, you know, when people have to
realize that the Muslims are very involved in martial arts. And that's another form of, you know,
internal struggle. Yeah. Where you're not fighting the other guy. But you're fighting to see if
yourself to make your body respond in a proper way that will benefit you and training your body and
disciplining yourself. And what do you think about that, you know, how do you find martial arts in
that regard? I think it's incredible. Definitely a good way to, you know, channel your time in a
positive way in a constructive way. We'll see if you're afraid or not into some martial arts. I'm
		

			going to get Eddie and do him a karate chop. inshallah. We'll see how tough he is when we get on the
mats. And I might take you up on that. We're gonna take a break. We'll be right back with more. Here
on the show.
		

			successes. He brings Oh, here we shake off with Toba and we're gonna bring you another self defense
tip. What do you say? Like self defense tips? Let's do it. So this week, around
		

			this point even Okay, you see he's grabbing me by my collar. Okay, and now from here. I
		

			Try to defuse the situation is not working. Now I know defusing the situation now he put his hands
out, I gotta defend myself. Okay, so how am I going to do it and suffer the least amount of damage
because again, I've tried to defuse is now working. Okay. So from here I'm going to grab the wrist.
All right, this is a bent arm escape, if the arm is stiff, this won't work. So it's a bent arm
escape, I grabbed the wrist. Okay, and from here I'm going to step through pop the elbow up,
		

			duck under free hands gonna come over.
		

			This is this we self defensive with Edie?
		

			La
		

			La success is
		

			from South London, they don't even know what it means is to go for them
		

			for a reason they need to stop faking enough and they don't dismiss that that's always the time I'm
already submitting. I'm already on a straight line. I'm already one God, would you come along, do
what he wants you to do put your desires this thing inside you that just wants this. And once that
and you just can't get enough. You know what you never get enough until the dirts in your mouth,
don't let it come to that be sincere and honest, as the one who created you to guide us the first
step put off chasing all the women and the good times and the parties and this and that there's no
one worthy of worship except Allah don't wait. You never know that would come today for you.
		

			Back here on the D show and wrapping up, we're almost out of time. So tell us now you had a long
journey? And how could people now really benefit and take home some great advice when either they
are Muslim, or they just been kind of going with the flow, and you have some new Muslims? How really
people get to practicing Islam the way that it was revealed from the Creator of the heavens and
earth to the last and final Mr. Muhammad peace be upon them, so they can implement it the way that
is pleasing to the creator that happens there and then are following their lusts and desires and
making up things as they go along. What advice do you have? And how under the law? You know, that's
		

			a good question because
		

			Alhamdulillah we have resources and like Dr. Blau Phillips, he has his website Jamal's are bozo,
these guys, they have on the internet where people at home, can go and get online, and ask questions
from people who have gone and studied and acquired a lot of knowledge. And now they're able to give
that knowledge back. You know, I try to tell people don't get involved so much with, you know, who
was this person on it. And often, because there's a bunch of people that get overly involved in
that, as opposed to looking for benefit, learning the basics, you know, and then of course, you have
the fix, you can come to the fix, and learn from us there. And there's a lot of resources out there
		

			that people can take advantage of. And I think if they just stick to the basics, the basic
principles of Islam, trying to find answers to that they won't have a problem, learning what they
need to learn and stick to the masjid that was the thing that changed my life, going to the masjid
and learning that knowledge proceeds words and deeds, you know, people are going to have to look out
for our show we're going to have to give some since you're in the martial arts, I'm in the martial
arts Yeah. And we can maybe show some some safety to self defense tips and we'll do a show on this
what do you think inshallah inshallah God. Okay, I look forward to having you back. Thanks for
		

			coming. Thanks for letting me come on your show. Thank you very much for coming out. I really
appreciate it. May Allah reward you. I mean, that's all the time we have. And as you've heard him,
say, stick to the basics. It's very simple. Start off with asking the one God, the Creator of the
heavens and earth and everything we say Allah and your May, Jesus said, Aloha, that one guy who
created the heavens and earth and everything in it, asked him for the guidance. And then keep it
simple. Keep it simple. Go back to the basics. If you're Muslim, already, you have the verbatim Word
of God the Quran, and you have the authentic teachings of the last and final message sent the man
		

			kind of problem on the peace be upon him, his son his way, the same way, if you were living during
the time of Moses, you follow what he was given. And he was the teacher, he was the messenger
teaching you how to get close to God. Same thing. During the time of Jesus, he was the teacher
teaching you how to get closer. But today we have the last and final message send him a kind of
problem having peace be upon him. And then you have his companions. They understood this way of
life, the best. So you have the blueprint, the formula, the verbatim Word of God, the authentic
servant of the last and final messenger from him and peace be upon them and how his competitors
		

			understood it. They ate slept live with the last final messenger. This is a simple way of life.
		

			All the information is there. You just got to take the time, continue to come back here to the deen
show, and inshallah you get to benefit and we'll see you next time. Until then peace be unto you.