How I Came to Islam

How I Came to Islam - Abdur-Raheem Green

Opening Testimony and Praise

(أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأشهد أن محمداً عبده ورسوله - Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu.)

We begin by praising Allah, we praise him, we seek his help and we ask for his forgiveness. And we take refuge with Allah from the evil of ourselves and from the evil consequence of our evil actions. Whomsoever God guides, no one can misguide. And whomsoever Allah leaves to go astray, no one can guide. And I testify that Allah alone is worthy of worship and that Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is his servant and his messenger.

Introduction to My Story

My first talk tonight is about why I came to Islam. So let me introduce a little bit about myself, where I come from.

My Early Background and Family

I was born, my mother christened me Anthony Watswath Gavin Green. Now Watswath is a strange name, in England anyway, because it's not an English name, it's a Polish name. My mother is Polish actually, completely Polish. And when she was, I don't know, two or three years old, the Second World War broke out and she had to leave Poland. And from Poland she emigrated to Iran and from Iran to Kenya. And actually, my father was a colonial administrator.

It was not long ago that Britain, of course, had one of the biggest empires the world has ever seen. They said, as they said, the sun never set on the British Empire. And now look at the British Empire. All we have left, Hong Kong went back in 1999 or 1998. And now all we have is a few islands in the Atlantic where there's more sheep than people. The Falkland Islands, we had a big battle over that. Some sheep, you know.

That's it, but you know, that's one of the signs actually from God. In the Quran, Allah says, travel the earth and see the end of those people who rejected faith. See the end of people whose power and strength was actually greater than yours. More numerous, more powerful, their buildings were more magnificent, but you can travel the earth and you can see the ruins of those civilizations and see what has become of them. This is the reality, of course, that civilizations come and civilizations go, but there are some truths that always endure.

So anyway, my father was a colonial administrator in Tanzania. It's in East Africa, and that's where I was born, in 1964 in Tanzania. I don't remember anything of Tanzania, but I was born in Tanzania in Dar es Salaam. Now when I was young, very young, then we moved when I was two years old, we moved to UK because Tanzania got its independence. And my father then began to work for Barclays Bank International, and he used to travel

the world. And when I was ten years old, we moved to Cairo. And my father was sent there in order to set up Barclays Bank in Cairo.

Boarding School and Catholic Upbringing

So that's a little bit about my background. So when I say I come from, you know, the upper middle class, this is a type of thing. When I was ten years old, I was sent to boarding school. Boarding school is a place where, you know, some people like it, some people don't. I didn't like it. I never liked boarding school. But that's where I went when I was ten years old. And that's where I spent most of my life for the next ten years until I was nineteen. Except for my holidays, which we used to spend in Egypt. So my father also spent a long time in Egypt, a lot longer than most people normally stay abroad as expatriates. But we lived in Egypt for ten years. So Egypt was my home.

And my school was this place called Ampleforth College. Ampleforth College is a very famous monastic boarding school that is run by Benedictine monks. So my mother being Polish, she's Catholic, and she brought me up to be and my brother to be Catholic. Although my father is actually and still is an agnostic. As an agnostic, he says, you know, I don't know if there is a God or not. So he doesn't say, I believe there's not a God. He just doesn't know if there is a God or if there is a religion or anything like that. So that's my father. That's my mom. That's a little bit about my early life.

Questioning Religion from an Early Age

Now, before I was sent to school, we, however, we don't live in a religious household. My mother never really taught me much about Catholicism. I never really learned much about religion. In fact, the only person who used to take me to church was my mom's, was my aunt. We knew her as Aunt Zosia. And she used to take me and my brother to church regularly, but my mother never bothered. And so that's all we got, really.

The First Question: Mother of God?

But I remember the first sort of piece of information I ever really got about religion was when my mother, obviously thinking it was about time she taught me something in order to prepare me to go to this school, this monastic boarding school. She decided to teach me one of the Roman Catholic prayers. It's called Hail Mary, the Roman Catholic prayer. They have two main prayers. One is, you find it in the Gospel or in the Gospels, which is called the Our Father. And the other is called Hail Mary. So she teaches me the Hail Mary.

And as far as I remember, it goes something like this: "Hail Mary, Mother of God, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Now, when she got to the bit, "Hail Mary, Mother of God," as an eight-year-old, and I remember, I remember thinking to myself, "Mother of God? What's that mean? God has a mummy?" And I'm thinking in my head, "God has a mum?" I'm thinking God is supposed to be eternal, without beginning, without end, and God has a mummy.

Okay, I didn't really get that. But then, you know when your mum tells you something at that age, I mean, you believe it, absolutely. You don't question what your mum tells you, because what your mum tells you, you just accept it. So instead of, you know, I mean, I just said, well, I figured it out in my head. I said, well, if Mary is the Mother of God, the only way that can work is she must be a bigger God than God. To give birth to God, she has to be a bigger God than God. So I think, okay, you know, so I just put that. But that was actually my first question. The first question that came to me, and it still remains as valid today, in reality, was that first question.

Questioning the Monastery School

And it wasn't the end of my questions. People often ask me, you know, if you didn't hate your school so much, do you think you would have become Muslim? Well, I don't know if hating my school had anything to do with me becoming Muslim, but it certainly had a lot to do with me questioning the paradigms or the things that I was being taught at that school. And I have to say, I didn't really enjoy school. I never really quite understood why I had been sent to this monastery, you know, perched on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, this desolate place in the middle of nowhere. And this is where I had to spend most of my life here. I could never really quite understand that. And actually, that caused me to question a lot of things.

The Problem of the Trinity

Now, some of those things are to do with what we call religion. And if you came to my talk yesterday, you will remember how I challenged the whole concept of what religion is. That from, in reality, a person's religion or deen, their way of life is more than just what we normally consider to be religion in the narrow sense. But what was my religion was obviously I was a Christian and I was a Catholic. And there were things I went on to question more and more.

Of course, the issue of the Trinity was continually perplexing. And I was always trying to find out and think about ways to make sense of the Trinity. And of course, there are a whole load of examples that are given to you. The Trinity is like, for example, water. You know, water is ice and water is steam and water is water. But, you know, this is all water, but they are in different sort of states. And they say, well, that's the Trinity. Or, you know, like a human being, you have a mind, a body and a soul. Or the egg, you have the shell of the egg, you have the yolk of the egg, you have the white of the egg, right?

I remember once I was, my mother had a candle stand with three candles and I thought, okay, maybe this is like the Trinity. Okay, three candles in one candle stand, right? So, I myself was always trying to find ways to make sense of the Trinity. But in many different ways, you realize that none of those examples actually can really apply. And in fact, it's interesting, if you actually study Christian theology, you will find that all of these type of examples are heresies. They're all heretical beliefs. Because none of them actually accurately represent the Trinity at all.

Okay, because God, by definition, is a being that contains all the attributes of God. You can't give some attributes of God to one thing, and another attributes of God to another. And give the other attributes of God to

something else. Because what we call God contains all the attributes of God. Right? So you can't have God the infinite, God the eternal, God the creator, and that's one God. And then you have God the loving, God the merciful, God the forgiving, as another part of God. Because God has to contain all of those attributes.

That's why the example of water doesn't work. Why? Because steam is hot. And steam rises. And so the steam has different attributes from the ice, which is cold. Right? And the other, you know, the water in its normal state has different attributes. But God is the one that contains all of the attributes simultaneously. So anything we describe as God has to have all the attributes of God, not just some of them.

So you look in the example of the egg, of the human, of the candle, or whatever you think, you'll see none of them actually apply. But these are things that people just try to imagine to make sense of something that actually does not make sense. And the most knowledgeable monks, they would say, "Listen, this is a mystery, and you just have to believe it." That's really what they would say. They said, "There is no logical explanation. This is a mystery, and you just have to believe it." But really, I think, you know, for most of us, "just have to believe it," just doesn't, you know, as we say, doesn't cut the mustard. It's not something we can really accept. In a day and an age where we are constantly taught to question things, and so on and so forth, "just believe it," certainly didn't really go down well with me.

Catholic Confession and Priestly Authority

And there were other things that are specific to the Catholic Church. For example, I could never really understand why I had to go and confess my sins to a priest. Right? And I think most of us at school couldn't understand that either. Because we lived with the monks. We live with them every day. So we realized that these monks were just like us, human beings. They made mistakes. In fact, in reality, we realized that most of them had big problems. In fact, we reckon that a good number of them became monks because they just wanted to run away from the world. They didn't want to deal with things.

So we found that really these monks were not these holy people. And this is not something my mother could never understand this. When I used to complain about my housemaster, she would say, "Yeah, well, he can't. I don't believe you. He's a priest." So what do you mean? I'm telling you. "No, he's a priest. Priests don't do things like that." And really, that's the attitude. The attitude of your average Catholic is like that. The priest can't do anything because he is, you know, he is almost some holy person.

And why shouldn't he be? Because what is the priest doing? I mean, this priest gets a piece of ordinary bread. And he gets some wine. And they do this ritual called the mass. Right. And at the end of this ritual called the mass, the bread is transformed into the body of Jesus. And the wine is transformed into the blood of Jesus. And by the way, not symbolically. When you eat the bread and drink the blood, you have to believe as a Catholic or you had to in my days, that you are literally eating the literal flesh of Jesus and the literal blood and drinking literally his blood. Okay. Not symbolically, literally.

And even an ex-priest, he confessed. Right. That mentally, of course, and Jesus is God. Right. So you're eating and you're drinking God. Right. Seriously. But as a psychology, the priest believes that he is consuming God and therefore God, and he is the one who has the power, you know, through his ritual, not himself, of course. But it is the ritual that he does that causes this transformation to take place. Right.

Now we used to ask awkward questions like, okay, we eat, you know, the flesh of Jesus and drink the blood of Jesus, but you know when it comes out as poo and wee, do we poo Jesus and wee Jesus as well? Well, that's the sort of questions we would ask, you know. We weren't holding anything back. Right. And I don't know, they just used to say you can't ask questions like that. You know, it's not, you know, which is, I mean, I suppose from a point of view they said fair enough. You don't think like that about these things. Right.

And then the confession, but the confession was one that really used to, you know, it really used to disturb me. Most of all because most of us at school were up to a lot of no good. We were doing a lot of, you know, certainly forbidden things. And the idea that I had to go to one of the monks who run the school and to confess to them about all the things I'd been up to, it made it sound like some psychological spy system. That here they were, you know, you did all of these things, then you have to go and tell them what you were doing. And it was like, you just must be joking. I'm not going to tell you all the things I used to be doing.

So we actually used to make up stuff. We used to say like, you know, "I lied three times this week and, you know, I was rude to, you know, such and such. And, you know, I felt jealous because, you know, this guy had a better stereo than me, you know, and, you know, and forgive me Father for I have sinned," you know. He says, "My son, say three Hail Marys and five Our Fathers, you know, and think deeply about the bad things you've done." And I go, "Yeah." Right.

And the other thing I didn't get is the "forgive me Father for I have sinned." Because I didn't just get why I have to tell the priest. This is what I really didn't get. Why do I have to tell, and I actually went, I went to the abbots, to the abbot. He's the top guy. You probably say the top dog, right, because they wear a dog collar, right. They call it the top dog, yeah. And you say, and you say, you know, I said to him, "Listen, why do I have to come and confess my sins to you? Why? Because, you know, what's so good about you that I have to confess my sins to you? Why can't I just ask God, oh God, I've been really bad, please forgive me?"

He said, "Yes, you know, you can ask God if you want to, but if you just ask God, you can't be sure that God is going to forgive you." And again, I didn't say anything to him, but in my mind, I'm thinking, "So, I can't be sure that God's going to forgive me, but I can be sure that he's going to listen to you," right. I'm saying no, because I know between you and me, there's no difference. There's nothing that makes you more holy than me, right.

A Contrasting Experience in Egypt

Now, in the meantime, I want to say something else that is going on. I am experiencing something else in terms of religion. And what I'm experiencing is something dramatically different.

The Monks' Comfortable Lives and Elaborate Rituals

Now, in spite of the fact that monks take vows of poverty and chastity. Poverty, because they don't own any property. Every piece of property that they have, any gift that someone gives to them actually belongs to the monastery. It does not belong to that monk. So, they take vows of poverty, right. And they take vows of chastity, which means they never marry. And so, they live, actually, you know, in spite of these vows of poverty and chastity, they lived very, very comfortable lives, in fact, right.

And the whole church and the rituals of the church are really surrounded by a paraphernalia of rites and rituals. I mean, if you've ever been to a mosque, right, you, there's the singing and there's the chanting and there's the incense and, you know, I used to be the altar boy, you know, you have to hand the bread and the wine and you have to cover, everything has a little, you know, you have to, you have the chalice and I can't remember what you have, you have to cover this and you have to move it just in a certain way. You have to turn the cup one third of degree.

You know, I remember explaining all of this stuff to a friend of mine, a Muslim friend of mine, and actually, we were up in the forest in the night time. He said, "My thing is, we better go back to the car now because I'm scared. It sounds like some cannibalistic voodoo ritual," right? And, you know, the funny thing was is that when he said that, right, when he said that, you know, I thought to myself, you know, it really does. I never thought of it before, right?

Ibrahim the Cook and Simple Worship

But there's all this ritual and then, I'm going to Egypt. Now, Egypt, of course, is a Muslim country, right? And, in our house, we have a, we have a very, very nice lifestyle, right? We had a driver to drive us around. We had a suffragi to tidy up the house, right? We had a cook to cook our food. Anyway, I want to focus on the cook, Ibrahim. This is, Ibrahim is really one of the most beautiful people I have ever met. Okay? And he used to pray five times a day.

And this is the thing that immediately I want to focus on that impressed me about Ibrahim, the prayer. You see, there am I going to this Catholic monastery dealing with all of these things and then I would come home and what would we do? We'd find Ibrahim. The time would come for prayer. He would put his prayer mat down in the kitchen and he would just start praying. And sometimes we'd go in the kitchen and, you know, we want a drink and, oh no, we can't get a drink. Just wait for five minutes because Ibrahim is praying.

And I remember looking at Ibrahim one day. He's wearing these simple clothes, you know, this jellabia, as they call it. He used to wear this jellabia. Very simple, very humble man, always humble. I never heard him shout ever once. I never heard him shout. And then this prayer, you know, I remember just watching him praying and just thinking if you want to see someone who is worshipping God the way God should be worshipped, this is the way. Not the way they did it back in my school. Here is a man, he is just standing, simply bowing, standing,

prostrating, quietly, silently, he is worshipping his creator. And it had a very, very powerful impact on me. The comparison between this and that.

Culture Shock and Deeper Reflection

And the comparison, by the way, was not only in religious terms. You see, going to Egypt was a really big shock in my life. I mean, obviously, any third world country compared to life in the West, okay, is, you know, dirty, chaotic, you know, confusing from many different angles. You know, it's quite scary. Okay, you go to a third world country, the way people drive, you know, we used to have a joke that the horn, the hooter, right, you know, is more important than the car engine. Yeah, you could push the car along, but if you didn't have a hooter, it was just, you know, you wouldn't survive, you know.

And, you know, it was like that, you know, really crazy. And the life in so many ways was crazy. And I have to say, for the first two years, I hated, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand Egypt. And then, you know, something happened. You know, as I got a bit older, and I settled down, you know, I began to see what was going on.

The Fundamental Question: Why Am I Here?

And, and then, as I suppose I moved in my, into my teenage years, and, you know, I'm a sort of person who at that time used to think a lot and very deeply about all types of subjects, all types of things. And so one of the things I began to question, and I go back to my life in this monastic boarding school, is why am I here?

Now, the question, "why am I here?" Initially, was a question, why am I here at this school? But then, it soon moved on to a question as, why am I here on this earth? What is the purpose of my life? What is the reason for my existence? And I used to think about that.

The Perpetuation Cycle

And then I figured thinking about my school and what am I doing here, and what am I supposed to do with my life, I sort of came to, I figured it out. I said, okay, I'm here at school so that I can work very hard and get good results for my A-levels so I can go to a good university, preferably Oxford or Cambridge, you know, but if not, you know, another one, okay. And then I can get a good job. Now, when I get a good job, I can earn enough money to send my kids back to Ampleforth College so that they can study hard and get good results so they can go to a good university so they can get a good job and they can go back and say they can earn enough money to send their kids back to Ampleforth College so that they can work.

And I thought, "My God, my existence is only to perpetuate the Roman Catholic middle class, you know, section of British society." I thought, is that the purpose of my life? That's what it's for? It was really depressing. And I thought to myself, no, this can't be the purpose of life. This can't be the reason for our existence.

Questioning Western Society

And so I, there was two things going on here. Actually, what I was doing was I was fundamentally questioning

the whole premise of Western society because ultimately, basically, that's Western society. It's just to work hard. You're just a cog in the machine. That's all you are. You know, you're just a cog in the machine. As those days, Pink Floyd used to sing, "All in all, you're just another brick in the wall." And it was so true.

I recently watched that, the film, The Wall, by Pink Floyd, well, recently, two, three years ago. I know it's got music in and this and that, but I remember that that film was something that was really transformative because that film was so aggressively attacking. Actually, the funny thing about that, it's even, that film is even critical about the whole music industry. If you've ever seen the film, you'll realize that even the whole pop music industry, the rock star, everything, it is fundamentally questioning those things.

And those powerful images of school kids going on this conveyor belt and then going into this mincing machine and then just coming out as mince, right? And it was like, that's just what you felt. I'm just part of the machine. Right? Just part of the machine. I'm just being processed. And is this really, that's what life is about? That's what we're for? This is the purpose of our existence? I said to myself that I am sure there is something more profound, more deep, and there is a deeper meaning to life than that. And really, that's where the searching started.

Exploring Different Religions and Philosophies

And I began to look through many different religions. And one of the religions I looked through, and very soon I looked at, was Buddhism.

Buddhism and the Search for Enlightenment

And Buddhism, you know, one of the brothers, he said, you know, why don't you talk more about Buddhism because I was a Buddhist for three years. When I say I was a Buddhist for three years, I didn't shave my head and put on saffron robes, right? Okay? And have a statue of Buddha and worship, you know, that's actually, by the way, only a form of Buddhism. Buddhism has many, many different forms. Okay? But actually, if you teach, if you actually, sorry, excuse me, if you actually study what Buddha taught, Buddha didn't really teach a system.

In fact, it's arguable that you could be a Buddhist and follow different religions because according to some Buddhists, you know, Buddhism is not a religion, right? It's more like a philosophy. Okay? And anyway, the Buddhism that I was the reading about was a very open type of Buddhism. The guy who wrote the book, he was a Buddhist monk. He used to be a, he used to be a Christian priest. He became Buddhist. And, you know, his basic idea is you take good from wherever you find it. And it was also to do with yoga. So it was a form of Buddhism that was still really based around, you know, the practice, the practice of yoga.

And basically, he outlined the fundamental principles of the Eightfold Enlightened Path of Buddha. And basically, Buddha's philosophy is that you should try to fill your life with goodness. Okay? So you are thinking good thoughts, you are looking at good things, you are hearing good things, you are doing good things, you are eating good things, so on and so forth. So the whole purpose is to be good and to be compassionate. Okay?

Understanding Nirvana

But ultimately, what one is seeking to achieve is a state of Nirvana. Now, Nirvana does not mean paradise. And it doesn't mean enlightenment. Those words are not correct translations of Nirvana. Nirvana actually means annihilation. It means annihilation. In this respect, it means annihilation of the self. Because according to Buddha, the cause of all suffering in the world is the self, is the ego. Right? All the problems that we have individually and collectively according to his teachings are a product of the self. Right?

So if you annihilate yourself, if you destroy your ego totally, then this is the stage or this is the type of enlightenment. Okay? Which actually makes Buddhists almost like empty... Well, I mean, it's an idea, by the way, that is very, very difficult to accept in the West. Right? Because it seems that individualism or individuality is that there is no room for that at all. Right? Any type of individuality or individualism, there's no room for it. Right? That there's no room for the enlightened one. No. There's nothing that marks him out.

That's why it's very difficult to write any biography of, you know, a Buddhist leader because there's nothing to write about because their whole life is not about doing anything, really. It's just about that because there's no individual or there's no self to focus on. That's why the Dalai Lama, he's a paradox. You know, the fact that he's a personality, right, actually is paradoxical in Buddhist thought.

Why I Left Buddhism

Now, why did I give up Buddhism? Actually, I have to say, I'll be really honest and I wouldn't be anything else, hopefully, that Buddhism, of all the religions I studied, all the philosophies I studied, was really the one that was most appealing, was very appealing to me. And it still has many, many aspects to it that still, I would say, are definitely things that are true, many aspects to it.

But the problem with Buddhism, in my opinion, is that I believe that Buddha's fundamental premise was wrong. His fundamental, you know, what was his fundamental premise? Life is suffering. That's his fundamental premise. He says, life is suffering. And the way to escape the suffering of life, and the cause of suffering is the self, and so, therefore, the way to escape. Okay? But what if your premise is wrong? What if life is not suffering?

And I'm sure most of us would agree that life is not suffering. Yes, there is suffering in life, right? But you couldn't say that life is suffering because there is joy, there is love, there are so many very positive things that happen in life, and you couldn't describe those things. We might describe some aspects, certainly love, you might describe some of that as suffering, there's no doubt about that, right? And I'll get on to that in a little bit as well. Okay?

But what I'm saying is there are many things in life that are really very joyful and very positive. And therefore, to say life is suffering is wrong. And also, I don't believe that the ego or the self is the cause. The self itself, the self itself is not the problem.

The Islamic Perspective on the Nafs

In Islamic terminology, the nafs. Actually, even in the Quran, for example, you will find the nafs is always referred to from a negative point of view. Yeah? But actually, in reality, the nafs is essential. The nafs is essential. In its raw quality, the ego or the nafs is essential because it's the nafs that makes me drink water. It's my desire, the feeling that I have, I am thirsty, and that is the nafs. The nafs drives me to drink. The nafs drives me to eat. Right?

The nafs drives me to anger. Anger is essential, by the way, in order to protect yourself. Right? Jealousy is essential within some context of the family and so on and so forth. Right? So, the problem is not the nafs. No. The problem is not the nafs. The problem is when you go beyond the limits. Right? When your desire for food is transformed into gluttony. When your feeling of anger is not controlled and it goes beyond the bounds and it leads to excess. And so on and so forth. So, the problem is not the nafs.

So, it is not right to annihilate yourself. You're not supposed to destroy totally your nafs. But actually, what you need to do is control that. Now, I'm saying that in retrospect as a Muslim because that's what I believe as a Muslim. What we have to do is we have to aim at controlling ourselves. Right? It's actually controlling our desires, not annihilating them.

Anyway, I hadn't figured that out at this, at the stage when I'd come to Buddhism. I'm just jumping ahead a bit. Okay? But the point is I felt that there was something not right. This was not quite actually right. Okay.

The Trap of Drugs

And another thing that happened, I suppose, and, you know, you could say, well, maybe if you'd taken Buddhism a little bit further, you wouldn't have reached this conclusion. But after about three years of, you know, practicing various forms of Buddhism, I came across instant nirvana. It's called marijuana. Yeah. Yeah. Marijuana spliff, whatever they call it now these days. Right? Well, actually, in Egypt, it wasn't marijuana. It was hash. Okay? Quite widely available.

Initial Resistance and the Fall

And I had always assiduously avoided these things. And, you know, my parents, good parents, warned me, you know, against drugs and getting into drugs. And, you know, even if you take this soft drugs, it's only a route to hard drugs. But anyway, I don't even remember how it happened. My brother, quite to my shock, started smoking first. My brother started, and he's younger than me, so that's why I'm shocked by it. And I always thought my brother was a real straight-laced guy. Okay? There he was, puffing away, and was like, what are you doing? Smoking what, man? You know.

And then along came this hash stuff. Right? And anyway, hash, yeah, it was like, man, it's instant nirvana. You know, I am annihilated. And remember what I was talking about yesterday? I'm stoned. I'm wasted. Yeah? The state of absolute intoxication is actually describing a state of self-annihilation. When you literally have

The Cycle of Addiction

What you find is that you're always chasing the high. You're always trying to get back that fantastic feeling you had when you begun. But what happens is your body builds up a type of resistance, okay, and then you need to smoke more to get the effect that you used to have when you started. Until what happens ultimately is that your life simply becomes an obsession with obtaining drugs in order to get that high. And you're spending more and more money, you're spending more and more time, you spend all of the time trying to get drugs and being high, and you even reach a stage when anyone who's a drug taker will know they're not even enjoying it anymore. They're not. They don't actually get enjoyment from it.

But what you are addicted to is the process. You've become addicted to the process and you're still trying to chase that high and that's by the way often when drug takers move on to harder drugs. Because harder drugs offer them something of the experience that they had before. But actually it is totally destructive. It destroys your body, it destroys your mind, it destroys you as a person, it destroys families, it destroys societies, but you don't think about that when you start taking it. You don't think about that when you begin. All you're experiencing is the high. Like I said instant Nirvana.

The Spiritual Experiment

So I started to play a little bit around with these drugs and stuff like that and initially it really was a type of spiritual experiment. It was another dimension. It was trying to find out something about my mind, about myself, a different dimension of my being. Maybe drugs could unleash that dimension and I could begin to experience something different in my life. So initially it wasn't just pure hedonism. I was not driven by that at all, just a desire to get high and have fun. That was not what I was driven by. It wasn't that. Okay.

It was really initially a type of seeking of some type of spirituality in it and actually even with the smoking of marijuana, you know, you actually have a religion that's around it. Rastafari, although I know Rastas would argue that not all Rastas believe that that's true, but there's a whole section of the Rastafarian religion that connects, you know, taking, smoking marijuana with this. Okay. So you have this whole type of even spiritual side connected to it.

Creating My Own Religion

Anyway, this, I guess this is from the time when I'm, you know, I don't know the age, but these things are going on from the age of like fifteen. I didn't start taking drugs then that was later, but these processes are going from the age of fifteen to about nineteen twenty. And I was at the same time studying different religions, psychosomatic yoga, magic. I studied quite a lot about magic, for example. Okay, and interestingly enough, one of the things that really interested me was the Kabbalah and and and interestingly enough as well, the Kabbalah because it's a Jewish book of magic actually contains a lot of monotheistic and I found that that aspect very appealing. But of course, the whole magic thing really so I found. Yep. So I was looking through all of these different religions.

Now, what happened is that I reached a stage where what I had done is I had invented my own religion. So what did I do? As I got bits and pieces of all the different, you know, bit of Christianity, bit of Buddhism, bit of psychosomatic yoga, bit of, you know, these new age philosophies, you know, I got them bit of rasta stuff, you know, and I mixed it boom junka and stuff like that, right? Mommy mixed it all up in the big mix man, right? I mean me and myself, me own religion. Yeah, so I got myself my own religion.

I actually still somewhere have the book where I'd sort of started to detail its principles. And it was, I mean, you know, if I tell you, you'd probably love it. I could probably form a sect, actually. I could probably do it a cult, you know, be quite easy. I mean, look a bit like Jesus, you know, so I could do the old and it was, you know, it was really typical, right? It was like oneness, peace, love. That's what it was, right? Oneness, doesn't that sound nice? See? Oneness, peace and love.

So it's all about, you know, peace and love and oneness and, you know, chilling out and we all love each other and this and that and smoke some weed. And that's, you know, let's get down with it and, you know, okay? So there was my religion that I'd invented for myself. And this went on for a very short time because I soon realized that this was the worst of all. I mean, of all the things I've been through, my own religion was absolutely atrocious, right? And it still hadn't answered the questions. I still didn't have an answer to the question, why am I here? What's it all for? What's it all about? It's still there. The question's unanswered. So I had not found the answer to this question.

Giving Up on Religion

And then that's when I gave up. That's when I said, forget it. Forget religion. Forget all of this stuff. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe the reality is what I was taught from day one. Wealth equals happiness. Right? And maybe the reason I'm not happy is because I'm not rich enough. Maybe I don't have

enough money. That's my problem. Right? Maybe the things I need and the things I want, I just can't access them with the money I've got at the moment.

Now, I can tell you that at the time, the pocket money, the pocket money my dad used to give me was more than lots of people's wages. Right? So I had a pretty, you know, I had a pretty good life. Right? I never had to steal anything to buy any ganja. Right? You know, I never had to do anything. I had, you know, I had a pretty, financially, I was pretty well off. Right? You know, skiing in St. Moritz, you know, holidays in Club Méditerranée, you know. C'est très joli avec toutes les G.O.R. et le G.M. et toutes les choses. C'est très... OK?

And so I had, so I had, you know, we had a good life. Cook, suffragi, servant, driver. I mean, you know, how much more rich do you... So I tell you, to give you an idea of how rich I thought I needed to be, I'm thinking private jet, yacht, private island. Right? That's the type of rich I'm thinking I need to be in order to be happy.

The Saudi Arabia Realization

So I start thinking, OK, in order to really enjoy my life to the maximum, right? What I need to do is get the most amount of money with the minimum amount of efforts. Right? So why do I want to work hard for my money? Because that means I'm going to spend all my time working instead of my time enjoying. So that's a waste of time. So what I'm starting to think is I start to... So my analytical mind starts kicking and I start thinking, OK, let's look at history now. Who are the richest people in the world, right? And who did the least amount of work in order to get their money? Right?

So I started thinking, right, let's start with England, good old England, British Empire, Industrial Revolution, fifth richest country in the world. Oh, man, that's just way too much hard work, Industrial Revolution, capitalism, industry, this and that, conquest and empire. Forget that, man. Germany? Oh, my God, the Germans, they work hard. And Japanese? All they do is work. Forget the Japanese, right? Americans, the American dream. What's the American dream? You're a self-made millionaire, you know, but you have to rise from the gutter and you make it for yourself and again, it's just hard work and then it hit me.

Oh, my God, those Saudi Arabians, they've been sitting on their camels, right, Allahu Akbar, right, praying to Allah, right, and they got all that wealth and all that money and all that work and they did nothing. I said, that's the one maximum money, minimum work, I like that. Right? Right? I swear, brothers and sisters, I swear, that's the truth. All right? And I said, right, okay, Saudi Arabia, okay, let's find out about these guys. Somebody got something, right? That's not coincidence. I don't believe that they got that oil just for nothing. There must be a reason that oil is there.

Discovering the Quran

So I started thinking, okay, Saudi Arabia, what's their religion? Oh, Islam, yeah, I know that, I know Islam, a little bit about Islam, right, Qur'an, I know that's their book, so right down, I went down there and, you know, I

picked up the Qur'an, anyway, I can say, I picked up a translation of the Qur'an in English, okay, and I started to read it. Okay, I started to read the Qur'an in English.

Reading Unlike Any Other

Now, I'm, I used to be, and I probably still am, a pretty fast reader. I can read, but the reason is because when we lived in Egypt, you know, the TV was so rubbish, right? It was so bad, right? In fact, the TV set, it had this thick dust on it, right? It didn't get turned on, it didn't get used, it just used to sit there because we never used to watch it, and as a family, what did we used to do? We did a lot of reading, a lot, a lot of reading.

Just to give you an idea how fast I can read, there's a book called Roots, you know, heard of that book Roots, Alex Haley? Someone's shaking his head, you know, old school, brother there, humble there. Roots is a big, thick book, you know, Harry Potter size, right? Okay, but it's a bit heavier than Harry Potter, you know. I read like three quarters of Roots in half a night, okay? Yeah, okay, I admit that I had just finished Carrie by Stephen King and I was so terrified, I couldn't sleep, right? And I had to read through Roots just to take it out of my head, but I could still read that fast, right?

Now, the Quran, in terms of the actual words, it is about, you know, it depends how you count the words actually, but it's about 100,000 words long. Now, that is not a lot. That's not a lot. 100,000 words is not a lot. It is about the size of a, you know, medium to small size novel these days, in terms of actual words, right? Two weeks after picking the Quran up, I was still reading it and I still hadn't finished it. It was a book unlike I had ever read before.

I mean, first of all, it doesn't have any structure that we're used to, right? It begins, you know, with Surah Al-Fatihah and then it goes, you know, to talk about in Surah Al-Baqarah. It talks about the hypocrites and who are these people who they say they believe and then they don't believe and then it goes to talk about Moses and, you know, the cow and, you know, how the people said, you know, the Moses said, slaughter a cow and they said, which cow? And then it's like, then it goes on to something else and then the table, you got the, you know, you got the next Surah, which is like full of, you know, there's no consistency.

It's like, that's the first thing. It doesn't follow like what we're used to, you know, we like in the beginning, this happened and then in the end, that happened, right? But there's no beginning and ends, right? There's no beginning and end to the Quran, right? Because actually, you know, there's a reason there's no beginning and end and so I'm reading through it and I keep having to go and, you know, because I really wanted to understand. It wasn't just about reading it. I really wanted to understand what the Quran was saying. What was this all about?

And so I had to read and reread and go back and I'd get so far and then go back and check something else that was from before and so it was taking me a long, long time to get through the Quran but what was happening at the same time is my brain was being put into, it was working, it was like those old rusty cogs and it was making me think in a way that I'd never thought before.

The Epiphany on the Train

And I remember until this day, I remember very clearly that I was taking the train to work and I worked in the city at the time as a life assurance salesman so I was traveling from my home at the time and I was traveling to work and I was literally I was, I remember very distinctly this epiphany, you know, this moment where something hits you and I was sitting in the train I looked out the window just crossing the Thames, the river Thames I looked back and I said to myself if I have ever read a book that's from God this is the one and I remember that day that was the time when I thought yes, this is the one this is it if I've ever got my hands on a book that is from God it's this.

Beginning to Pray

I remember that night I went back home and I was thinking okay, you know, I need to start praying the Qur'an talks about prayer but actually the Qur'an doesn't really tell you how to pray it just says to pray it gives you a few details and you know I used to remember okay, how did Ibrahim pray? I remember he used to stand and bow and prostrate and I didn't remember how much he used to do but he used to take about five to ten minutes, you know, so I went there and I would just do these things and the Qur'an describes about washing your hands and washing your arms and your face so I used to wash before I prayed each time every time, you know, and this went on like this I would pray in the morning I'd pray in the evening you know, I wasn't even sure how many times I was supposed to pray because again it's not actually detailed really in the Qur'an so I was doing these things and this went on for a couple of weeks.

Finding the Mosque

And then it happened that I had to go to a part of London I was not used to and you know it was one of those things I came out of the underground station and I was supposed to turn left I didn't turn left I just happened to turn right and I walked along and there was a bookshop and in the bookshop were all these books in Arabic and English and they were about Islam and they were about, you know, so I thought oh that looks I have to come and have a look at that so I went off to do what I had to do went back the other way I went back the other way and I said I came back and I went in the, you know, I went in the bookshop.

I want to tell you something I looked pretty much the same then as I did now right, so I was a bit thinner okay I was quite, quite a lot thinner actually, okay but I had long hair and I had a beard because I was a bit of a hippie remember, okay so I was still into this, you know, this one, you know, one love and this and that okay so there I was but the difference was I was a hippie wearing a pinstripe suit so I had my suit and you know my tie and my briefcase there I was.

Taking Shahada

So I went inside this bookshop I was looking at all these books all these books about Islam and Muhammad and you know my eyes were going wow right, this looks fantastic so I'm standing there and someone comes up to

Questions and Answers

What Does It Take to Be Muslim?

That's a very good question brother and may Allah reward you so much for asking that question the question is to repeat it what does it actually take to be Muslim and you know it's true that there are people who want to become Muslim but they get scared because they think that becoming Muslim is going to involve like some I don't know some weird ritual right you know like I don't know getting you know submitted and I don't know this and I don't know what they think you know they might get quite scared thinking about it right ok but it's actually very very simple ok becoming a Muslim is very simple.

You know being a Muslim fundamentally is that you accept something you accept that there is one God who has created the heavens and the earth right and that you should only worship the one God and if you accept that Muhammad is the messenger of God simply that is it right if that's what you accept and that's what you believe to be true right then simply all you do is you testify to that in front of some other Muslims and you do that simply by repeating in front of some other Muslims some witnesses:

Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah

So the most difficult bit is trying to say the Arabic right but apart from that you're just saying you testify there is nothing worthy of worship except the one God and Muhammad is the messenger of God and after you say that you have entered into the fold of Islam of course once you have taken the shahadah you've taken the testimony of faith right then it is recommended that you wash yourself you put on some clean clothes and certainly you need to start learning ok it's ok to pray five times a day of course you can't just pray automatically like that and learn everything it takes time but you start to try praying five times a day and that's really it that's all that it takes.

And as you find out and as you learn as you go along you do your best to practice what you can you know as much as you can as much as Allah permits you to do so it's really that simple you don't think I have to know all of these things and do all of these things you don't you just need to follow the steps so alhamdulillah does that answer the question brother? Did I leave something else? I think that is basically really what it is very very simple and of course if anyone does feel like becoming Muslim alhamdulillah tonight that will be fantastic as well inshallah don't feel shy you know you never know how long your life is gonna be you know so don't don't delay ok.

Faith and Actions

That's a very good question in reality in Islam when we say Iman which we translate Iman as faith right but the problem with translating is that often you lose the meaning of something but actually Iman is defined as the

belief in the heart the profession of the tongue and the action of the limbs it increases with obedience to God and it decreases with disobedience to God so this is the definition of Iman right so faith is something that if you have faith truly and you truly believe in God then that belief must manifest itself or it must be present in some way in your actions yeah.

So therefore let's go back to something you've already heard me mention today where the prophet Muhammad said he swore by Allah he is not a believer the one whose neighbor is not safe from his mischief so the prophet he is indicating that a person who believes cannot have this characteristic in another narration the prophet Muhammad said the believer could steal the believer could drink alcohol the believer could be a coward the believer could be a miser but the believer could never be a liar yeah meaning there are some characteristics that it's not possible that someone who has faith they could have these characteristics.

In another narration the prophet said whoever the signs of the hypocrite are for when he speaks he lies when he makes a promise he breaks it when he is trusted with something he betrays it and when he argues he is rude so whoever has one of these has a characteristic of hypocrisy whoever has all of them is a complete hypocrite now a hypocrite is someone who what they say they believe but in their heart they don't believe yeah.

Belief Must Produce Action

So a person could say I believe in Allah but in reality what we mean in Islam is that the belief in God the true belief in God must produce some actions if it doesn't then that belief is not true it's a hypocrisy you are claiming something that is not true and I will give you an example yeah if one of the brothers how do you say fire in Norwegian Fyr just guessing how do you say fire fire Brant yeah Brant Brant Brant good yeah if someone comes in running Brant Brant yeah and you just sit there ha ha ha right you think either the guy is a joke yeah means you don't believe him right if you believe the man who is saying fire fire fire what are you gonna do you are gonna run yeah this is the reality belief must translate itself into action right if there is something that prevents you right you are tied to your seat or you know or whatever that's different right but if you really believe you must have some action.

And this is why according to many scholars the person who does not pray five times a day when they leave prayer it is like disbelieving it's actually like this it's like they've said I've left Islam and this is based upon what the prophet said the prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said the difference between shirk and kufr and iman is a salah is the prayer so whoever abandons it then that person is a disbeliever yeah and it means either they truly are a disbeliever or what they have done is so bad they might as well be a disbeliever right.

So this is the reality is that and you see there are so many people saying I'm Muslim I'm Muslim I'm Muslim right but when they say I'm Muslim what do they mean many of these people they mean that's my culture right they say I'm Muslim like they might say I'm Pakistani or Somali or Bengali or they like eat a certain type of food or whatever that's all it means to them subhanallah.

Cultural Muslims vs. Practicing Muslims

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I remember this is you're gonna you know you probably won't laugh now that I said you're gonna laugh right but you'll laugh at this right okay I remember watching you probably won't laugh but anyway you're laughing now okay I remember watching this documentary remember Bosnia remember what happened in Bosnia yeah the Bosnians by and large very few of them were practicing Islam right I remember an interview and there was an interview with some members of the Bosnian army and one of them was a Muslim she's saying I'm a Muslim but I'm atheist I don't believe in God yeah you did laugh yeah.

But what she meant by Muslim is that's my ethnicity I belong and I come from those group of people who call themselves Muslims just like it's I don't know some ethnicity right and of course there are Muslims who are dealing in drugs and who are doing many bad things okay and they call themselves Muslims some of them may even have beards or even wear hijab sometimes right you know sometimes people do that because it's their culture it's the culture to grow the beard.

You often hear about Saudi women the moment they get on the airplane to England off comes the hijab the niqab and everything off it comes and if you ask them they just say well this is our Saudi dress they don't they probably don't even know about what Islam teaches about hijab they just it's just their culture you see so yes there are many many Muslims they use this name Muslim they may even say I am proud to be Muslim and this and that but really for them it's not to do with faith it's not to do with belief it's really a cultural thing yeah so I hope that answers that question.

The Inner Dimension of Worship

And my question to you is what do you think is the most important thing in our religion if we don't include the prayer in our practice it's a point well taken right is that you know even myself here I'm saying the prayer and I use the prayer as an example right but if you in the context I hope of everything I've said today you will have also picked up that I emphasized when I was talking about my own story the importance of prayer with understanding and with khushu right so I emphasized that because a prayer that is without understanding and the prayer that is without sincerity and humility to Allah is not going to change anything about your life actually it will probably make your life more difficult right because you'll just be thinking oh I have to pray and this and that and it does nothing you don't get any feedback from that right.

So yes the inner dimension is really really important and it is something that we have to develop but this is the beautiful thing in my opinion about Islam many religions you will find either emphasize almost totally on the inward dimension you know love and compassion and this and that and how you actually worship God physically it doesn't matter you can clap you can sing you can sit in your home you can do whatever right it doesn't matter right so there are some religions that just concentrate on these inner dimensions and other religions ok it's just an externalities as long as you follow the law you do the things you follow the rituals you follow the things that's what's important bit by bit and what it means it's irrelevant yeah.

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But Islam and these are both important actually the ritual and the inner dimension are essential for the complete religious experience it's maybe only Islam maybe there are other religions that really brings these two together right but it is a tendency for us to concentrate only on the external aspects and leave the internal development which is very very important yeah but I would not say I think it's a mistake to say either or that's a mistake actually it has to be both internal and external at the same time that is the right way and Allah knows best Jazakallah Khair Assalamu Alaikum Wa Alaikum Assalam.

Dealing with Parents Who Reject Islam

I have a question and my story is like similar to yours my mother is a Christian and my father is a theist and you know before Islam I had so good contact with them but when I came to Islam they are so much against me they don't want to have contact with me they don't want me to deal with them and in Islam it's forbidden to live alone so what should I do how should I talk to them okay how long has this been one year one year okay let me tell you something about my story yeah okay.

The question was the sister says I've been Muslim she's been Muslim now for a year we found that her parents don't talk to her and she has been even she can't live with her parents they don't want her to live in the house okay so what shall we do what shall I do I'm not allowed to live alone no you can sister first of all you are allowed to live alone it's no problem you can do that Alhamdulillah it's not haram okay.

But let me tell you about what happened to me right when I became Muslim right you know when you go back to my story remember my girlfriend she came over and my mom said why are you staying here and this and that right okay so from there we pick it up right so I now beginning to you know I'm talking to you know I want you know I feel so good about subhanallah praying and following Islam you know what I think all I need to do is explain this to my parents and they will accept it because who could not want to follow this beautiful way of life right.

My Parents' Initial Reaction

But anyway my parents didn't take it very well you know when I start explaining to them and I'm not eating you know I only eat halal food now maybe I'm going to take over the house maybe I don't know okay so I only I say I can only eat halal food you know and this and that and you know so many things I can't drink alcohol and you know I don't go to the parties and you used to be such a good dancer you know they say to me you know it's such a shame so all of these things so you know you know my mom she comes to me she says to me you know ant if you want to be religious why don't you go and live in a monastery why don't you go and live in a monastery.

I said it's not Islam you see in Islam we live in the world we work we live in the world we do jobs and we still try to worship God we don't believe that in our religion you run away and live in a mountain or this and that so it's not Islam right she said anyway I've come here to tell you that since you hate us so much and since you hate everything about us so much we have instructed the solicitors to take you out of the will yeah meaning you will

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not inherit anything from us anymore okay so it's like thanks mom I didn't say that that's what I'm thinking okay so that was what they said to me.

I actually alhamdulillah I didn't care I said so Allah he's gonna look after me that's more important even my dad reached the stage he said the same thing you better leave you better go back to London because really we've had enough of you and you need to go back to London and this and that okay so things were not very good between my parents for a while and then something changed right it wasn't getting married actually okay.

Because actually after I got married then something happened between me and my mom which was even worse she said something to insult the prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) and I just went crazy okay to tell you the truth I just went crazy I smashed some things and this I couldn't even talk to her I was so angry right this was just the day before I was leaving I was staying with them and after that my mom didn't talk to me for about a year.

What Changed Everything

But you know what changed all of this yeah when the first baby came yeah okay Abdullah he's not here okay he'd be so embarrassed okay but because he's 18 now drives a car and stuff like that okay you know but when the first baby came believe me it changed everything because it puts it all into perspective this is the grandchild you know I would really have to say that if you get married sister and you have kids and still your parents are not talking to you then probably your parents are not the sort of people that really are worth having contact with right because they must have hearts made of stone right.

I mean it must be literally or maybe they're Vikings or something I don't know tough people I'm just joking about the Vikings no but I mean seriously sister they must you know I really think that you know and I say and I've said this to so many people and in fact I know many other sisters brothers in Islam who exactly the same story one of my you know one of my good friends the same thing his wife was a convert to Islam her mother totally stopped talking to her had nothing to do with her then the first baby came and that's it everything changed and so it's a story that you find quite often you know it repeats itself.

My Current Relationship with My Parents

My relationship with my parents now is better than it has ever been in my life ok you see because what I have tried to do is both explain to my parents and show them through example the way that Islam teaches me to behave towards my parents right in fact I gave my book I've tried to give my mother and dad so much dawah but the best book I ever gave her is called Mother and you know what this book has verses of Quran and hadith and some poetry about how you treat your mother in Islam.

You know and you know subhanallah it mentions how the prophet so when someone came to the prophet he said who has the most right to my kindness your mother and then after that your mother then after that your mother and then after that then your father in fact the prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said he said that you

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can never pay your mother back there is nothing you can do to pay your mother back your father if you found your father a slave and you bought his freedom you pay him back your mother you can never pay him back.

And it mentions the story as you probably know of Omar when he was the caliph and a man came and he had carried his mother on his back through the whole of the hajj and he said to Omar oh Omar did I pay my mother back now he said you did not pay her back for one tear she shed when she gave birth to you alright this is a religion and you tell me Islam does not respect women subhanallah alright.

Allah says reverence Allah and the wounds that bore you in fact one of the names of Allah ar-Rahman is linked to the Arabic for womb rahm and so Allah said and it's the same because it means mercy and Allah linked his mercy to the womb meaning whoever cuts off from the relationship excuse me whoever cuts off from the relationship the family ties Allah will cut from them ok.

Never Give Up on Family

So sister the thing is what you have to do is this is the same for anybody by the way right in Islam we do not cut the ties of relationships we do not cut the ties ok we don't even I take back what I said even if you have a baby and it's your first parents first grandchild or not or whatever and they don't talk to you you still don't give up you never give up you send them presents you write to them you phone them you do whatever you can to make relations good with them without I have to say compromising your religion don't do something that is haram that's a big mistake right.

As long as it's halal right you can compromise you compromise whatever it is as long as it's halal if you can make that compromise make it right if it means leaving a sunnah or something mustahab if it's going to please your parents leave it if it's something haram no you don't do that right so you never ever give up trying to you know make a good relationship between your parents not only your parents all of your relatives whether you are muslim or not ok so breaking the family ties is very serious because islam considers the family to be so so so important.

So sister you just have to be patient inshallah yeah be patient inshallah everyone here is going to make dua inshallah right for the sister that Allah softens the heart of her parents to her and to islam and by the way I always ask everyone as well to make dua that Allah guides my parents to islam so please make dua brothers and sisters that Allah guides my parents to islam ameen ok.

Question About Hijab

If you are a muslim girl you pray 5 times a day fast and so on are you then a bad muslim if you don't wear the headscarf hijab how important is the headscarf ok that's a big question ok you know sometimes a question like this is very difficult to answer you know because everyone has different circumstances everyone has different you know conditions it's not always easy to answer a question like that because I don't know this person's particular circumstances right.

But you know there's a way I like you to think about this brothers and sisters you know don't just think about how to how bad is the sin yeah how bad is it that I don't wear hijab no think about how great is the one who you are disobeying that's what you need to think about don't think about how bad is the sin think about how great is the one you are disobeying.

You know Allah is telling you to do something because it is good for you you don't always know why that thing is good for you but if Allah ordered you with that then that's something because it's good and in a sense whenever we disobey Allah it's almost as if we are saying you know I don't really believe what you are saying Allah I don't really agree with that that in a sense that's I mean I know it's because of our desires and our weakness and you know whatever but in reality think about the reasons why you don't wear hijab or you don't do whatever it is you are supposed to do in Islam even pray.

Fear of People vs. Fear of Allah

How many people I wonder okay they don't even pray in the office or they don't pray at work and they wait and they go back home and they think they can join all their prayers together at the end of the day right why don't they pray in the office really most of the time brothers and sisters the reason you don't pray is because you haven't got the guts to do it it's what it is it's not because oh they won't let me pray okay they won't stop you going to the toilet or they won't stop you doing this and that the reality is have you got the guts to bring a prayer mat lie it out next to your desk and just pray what are they going to do really okay.

So a lot of these issues brothers and sisters really come down to our Iman that we are sometimes more concerned with what people think than what Allah wants us to do so I think that you know I don't really want to go into how bad it is and this and that whatever Allah told us to do do as much as you can right as much as you can you know you know if you stand in front of Allah in your heart whether you have an excuse or not.

Don't Be Judgmental

I don't want on the other hand brothers and other sisters you shouldn't be judgmental right you shouldn't be judgmental and think oh this sister she is no good you know because she doesn't wear hijab you don't know that okay you don't know that you don't know what her circumstances are maybe she just needs support and love and whatever you don't know what it is okay so I'm not making you know something but I would really encourage everyone to obey Allah as much as you possibly can you know and whatever Allah has told you leave it well then leave it Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah.