Tom Facchine – Pursuit of Knowledge

			Yeah, it was definitely a I've always been the type of person. That's just the way that Allah
created me that I wanted to know why
		

			I was a pain in the butt in high school, I was always arguing with my teachers, I was always a
little bit defiant, a little bit of a rebel. Definitely got in trouble with some with some teachers,
but not in the way of, but always because I was going to challenge people, I always wanted to
challenge people as to why is it like this? Why do I have to think that way or, you know.
		

			And so, you know, when you're young, you don't know how to rein that in, I learned how to rein that
in over time and focus it and actually a more productive way.
		

			And when I became a Muslim, you know, I just knew that I wanted to study it more in depth.
		

			And I kind of was at a crossroads in my life, I had finished my my first degree in political
science, and I had some opportunities to continue in, you know, sort of academia.
		

			But I also felt this tug and this pole to go study something more traditional, or more traditional
way, right to go overseas to try to study Islam like that.
		

			And I guess I always felt like, if I wasn't, if I didn't go abroad, and I didn't study and learn
Arabic, and I wasn't able to access things directly myself, that I would always be dependent upon
somebody else for interpreting and spoon feeding me and kind of given me their account of things.
And that's not to say that that doesn't exist in some degree. Always. Yes, okay, sure. But the
amount of stuff that there is an English translated is nothing, it's like a drop in the ocean,
compared to the stuff that you can access. Once you learn the Arabic language, you're able to
understand and and access the scholarly conversations directly. So
		

			push and pull, you know, there were some opportunities that closed down and some that opened up and
I just always had the draw to go over and kind of do the quote unquote, real thing. Not that there's
no benefit to going about studying Islam and other sort of ways, but I definitely wanted that sort
of direct access. And so that was kind of what pushed me to apply myself and and go abroad.