Communist to Islam - Young Smirks

Communist to Islam

An Interview with Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix

Young Smirks Podcast

Interviewer: Today we have a very special guest, a very good friend of mine, Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix. Assalamu alaikum Sheikh.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Wa عَلَيْكُمُ السَّلَامُ - wa ʿalaykum as-salām.

Interviewer: How are you?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh).

Interviewer: (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh). My pleasure to see you and sit with you.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh). It's nice to see you again. (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh).

Interviewer: My pleasure. So Sheikh, I've been doing the podcast now for a few months just interviewing different Islamic personalities, you know, more on their journey, what they've been doing, how they came to Islam and also how they've been actually benefiting the Muslim community. So inshallah, today I wanted to speak to you about your journey because you've not always been a Muslim.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: True.

Interviewer: You know, a lot of people, I know you've been a Muslim for quite a while, but many people think maybe, you know, you were born into Islam because you've done so much, (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh), a lot of work for Islam. Although the name Felix usually gives it away, you know, because they'll ask, maybe they might assume that, okay, he's Muslim, but then why has he got this name Felix? You know, where's that name come from? Or why, even if you became a Muslim, why do you keep the name Felix? Why don't you change that name? But then I have to enlighten them that, you know, from an Islamic perspective, it's not permissible for one to remove one's family name.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: This is actually a requirement. Though everybody's familiar with Yusuf Islam, you know, and other personalities who have just wiped out their names, right? But Islamically, it's...

Interviewer: You actually have something in common with Yusuf Islam, don't you? You're both singers, right?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah, musicians, yes, yes, yes. I was also a jazz singer before.

Interviewer: (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh).

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh). Yeah, Inshallah.

Accepting Islam in 1972

Interviewer: So, Sheikh, when did you accept Islam?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: I accepted Islam in 1972. 1972. I was 25 at the time. (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - al-ḥamdu lillāh), that was after traveling through communism, because I had left Christianity, I got involved in university politics. I was studying in university at the time. And communism in Canada was sort of spreading amongst the students, university students, et cetera.

So, I got caught up in that and in the student movement. So, I saw in communism an answer for the world's problems, you know. After studying some history, you know, when you grew up in Canada, you're not aware of what's happening in the rest of the world and, you know, the oppression which existed in the past, you know.

In America, there's more exposure to civil rights movements and these kinds of things so you can understand. So, I grew up in Canada without being really aware of that. When I went to university, then I started to become exposed to that movement and things that took place and injustices, reading the histories of the North American Indians, you know, the oppression that they went through, the slaughter, stealing of their lands and all this, you know.

It now becomes like, wow, it's a big eye opener, you know. I remember there's a classical book I read in that time called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by D. Brown. I think it's D. Brown, yeah, who wrote it. But this book, you know, lists what happened to the Indians, the treaties that they made with the European colonizers and how these treaties were broken, how they were cheated, their lands taken.

Interviewer: It's like an alternative history to what you've been taught.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really not even alternative, it's just, yeah, I guess it's alternative because, you know, it's the other side. You didn't hear from the other side. You know, it was always the settlers coming with their, you know, their wagons and they would make a circle and the Indians would be coming in off the mountains, you know, with their spears and arrows. And, you know, these poor settlers were just trying to live a life. But the reality was a whole other story altogether. They were faced like butter would have melted in their legs.

Interviewer: You know, I had a similar experience. You know, I think you know already when I traveled to Sierra Leone, I was doing business. But at this point, you know, I was like from England, you know, the great British Empire, you know, the great things you did for the world until you land in Africa and realize the reality of the whole thing. And you start to research and to study, you know, this whole truth. Like you said, the truth of the civil rights in America and all this.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah.

Interviewer: It opens your mind.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah.

The Communist Journey

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: So this is what, you know, because communism then offered an alternative saying, well, no people are equal. They should be, you know, equal everywhere in all facets of life. And, you know, so to find that utopian society where people would work according to their ability and only take according to their need. This is the agenda of the communists.

Interviewer: Right. Work some paper.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah. It sounds nice. Sounds beautiful. You know, wonderful. But it just doesn't happen. That's the agenda really. So after traveling that route, you know, being engaged at certain points with elements of the civil rights movement, black power movement in the U.S. and that, you know, and coming to the conclusion after a journey there that, yeah, communism really wasn't the answer because it really didn't change what it was supposed to change.

You know, Russia didn't become an egalitarian society with all this equality. In fact, Stalin massacred millions, you know, and then the most modern, you know, extension from that was China and China, you know, Mao Zedong and his Red Book. This was like the classic, you know. But then you come to find out that in the Cultural Revolution, millions were killed again in the name of protecting the revolution, you know, so.

Interviewer: So was you only a political communist or did you actually, was you atheist as well?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: No, I'd become atheist. You were atheist. I became atheist, yeah.

Interviewer: So was that like something you'd researched or you just kind of, was you more atheist against religion or did you not believe in a creator at that point? You know, what was your definition of atheism?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Well, you know, I was a nominal Christian. You know, I went to church because my parents' family went to church. We went to church. Yeah. But to say that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, no, it didn't happen. It was something that was said, you heard it, and maybe you repeated it a few times or whatever, but it was just not something that went into your brain and you became, you know, transformed, you know, the Holy Spirit, you know, changed your whole life outlook. No, no, it was just like school. You know, we used to go to Bible class and these kind of things. But, you know, that was, you went there to check out the chicks, you know, plan for the weekend parties, you know, these kinds of things. It wasn't really religious, you know, so to speak.

Interviewer: What church did you go to?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Presbyterian.

Interviewer: My church wasn't like that. You had a hard core. I don't think there's anyone like under 16 in my church.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Really? Yeah. No, no, well, I mean, of course, you went to church a long time after me. Yeah. You know, I was going to church, you know, in the 50s and 60s.

Interviewer: What type of church was you going to?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Presbyterian. Presbyterian. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I was Church of England. Yeah, Church of England was more, yeah, closer to the Catholic, yeah, more, whereas, you know, Presbyterian already, although there are an element from the Anglican, you know, they do retain something, but, you know, Protestants in general were just wide open.

It was just a belief, you know, you say, I believe Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, and then after that, everything is life, you know, and so no restrictions, requirements, and it's wide open. So that's why, so church, you know, became just a meeting place, you know. People would go, you know, with their fineries on Sunday, you know, show off their latest dresses and the guys with their suits and whatever, you know, it was just a show.

It was not, and then, of course, in America, it turned into something else. There's, you know, it became a whole, you know, rock, you know, occasion. It was just an event, you know, everybody's up there with the guitars and, you know, singing and as a whole, at least while I was in Canada, they were not at that stage.

I mean, the black churches in America and whites that also take that same route, you know, there's a whole different thing. So for me, you know, I was not, you know, really a practicing Christian, a nominal Christian, you know. My father didn't used to go to church. My mother did. But my father didn't. He later on told me, after I accepted Islam, that the reason why he never used to go, but he would send us, go with your mother, but why he never went was because of the fact that when he was about 12, back in Jamaica, or 12 or 13, he studied logic because they used to teach that in a British system of education back, that's now back in the 30s.

It's not right, you know, 30s. He studied logic. And after studying logic, he said, Jesus could not have been God. No way. It's illogical. Completely illogical.

Father's Rejection of Trinity

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: So from that point, the age of around 13, he rejected the idea of Jesus' divinity, and he only prayed to God. He had become a muahid, you know, and that was it. For his brothers and sisters, they used

Meeting Muslims and Accepting Islam

Interviewer: So, SubhanAllah, so at the age of 25, you accepted Islam. How did this come about?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Well, you know, there were some brothers from the States who had come up. They were draft dodgers mainly because this was Vietnam War time. And that's what a lot of the universities, you know, demonstrations and shutting down in Canada was about. Because Canada was making the bombs which the Americans were dropping on the Vietnamese.

So, you know, students say, what is going on here? What does Canada have to do with this? And, you know, so at that time in Toronto, there were many Americans who had come up from the U.S. They were in this university in West Coast Canada, Simon Fraser University also. In Toronto, there were many that came avoiding the drafts so they wouldn't be sent over to Vietnam because the borders were open for Americans to come up to Canada. So they came up and stayed.

So some of them that came up were Muslims. They'd converted to Islam in the States. So they gravitated towards because they were into sort of a political Islam, but it was the political Dawa, the movement at the time.

So they would come to the rallies and they would try to promote their Dawa here and there where they could. I mean, I wasn't really open to the Dawa because we were already clear that, you know, religion was the opium of the masses. So there was not really any thought along those lines.

But one of them managed to affect or they would say infect, you know, one of the women that were part of our central committee. She accepted Islam and that shocked me because she was a hardcore communist. She was a Maoist, right? You know, she had memorized Mao Tse Tung's Red Book and the whole shot.

Interviewer: In Chinese?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: No, no, not in Chinese. Of course not. That would have been something else. But she, you know, she had memorized it. So she was really hardcore Maoist. So how in the world could she accept Islam, religion? You know, so this is what I asked her.

So what's going on, you know? So she said, you know, actually Islam is not like the other religions. You know, yeah, it's true. You know, what we learned about religion and, you know, used to placate the masses so that they would not desire, you know, the things of this world.

They wouldn't challenge the upper class that is running the society because they will all be told it's paradise is coming after this world. So you'd be happy with what you have here now. You know, so it was understood.

But she said, you know, Islam is not like that. It's a whole different thing. Actually, Islam is very revolutionary.

You know, and then we watch movies like they call it the Battle of Algiers, you know, where the Algerians were the first country in Africa that liberated itself, not were given their independence, but liberated itself through battle, fought their way until France had to let go. Right. So this was like, you know, this is the revolution, successful revolution.

But the battle cry was Allahu Akbar. What is this Allahu Akbar? You know, God is great. How? What's the connection? You know, and so that seeing those issues and then I started to read Islamic books, in particular the book by Mohammed Kutub called Islam, the misunderstood religion.

This was the book that really did it for me. You know, it was only like the second book I read on Islam. And that was it.

That book covered everything because it is a political. Yeah, he looks at everything. He's looking at communism, capitalism, socialism, you know, Christianity, everything, which was that people followed to show basically what the summary of what he showed there was that all the good that was found in all of these religions and systems and political, all of that good is there in Islam.

And each one of these had negative aspects to them. And all of that negativity is not found in Islam. So what are the conclusions that you can come to that, hey, Islam has got it all, you know? So it was clear, just clear.

All the good points were there. So I said, well, OK, yeah, this is something I could accept, you know, because I was having as I told you, I was having my doubts at the time. And it was the same period I was also reading more about the history and seeing the impact of communism on these countries, China and Russia and related countries.

And, you know, how much injustice that ended up developing there under the name of communism and how these countries couldn't compete with the capitalist countries. If communism was so great, it should have shot ahead and been the economic power of the world. But instead, you know, the people were still down.

They couldn't compete with America and Europe. You know, sometimes non-Muslims, they try to use this argument against Islam. They say if Islam is so good, as you say, how can the Muslims be in the situation that they are today? But it's because they're not following Islam the way it should be.

Yeah, or you can just simply say that this is a period in history. Go back to the period when they were the top of the world. Technology, everything was them.

People came to them to learn. So it's shown that Islam can take people to the top of the world. You know, so it's there.

So the fact that it's down right now, you know, they were overcome and whatever. So it's down. It doesn't mean that it can't be there.

You know, so which is different. Communism never had a period when they only now with China, Russia to a smaller degree, but only now with China. China has now come up to become world power.

But it didn't become that under communism. That's the whole point. That's what they had to modify that communism till it became capitalism with the name communism on the outside.

You know, they became capitalists. They accepted that capitalism, you know, had value and it would move the society forward. And we keep the theory of communism in place.

But what is working and moving, you know, the engine of the society is capitalism. It's not communism, not communist economics. It's capitalist economics.

So, you know, so they don't have any proof from that perspective.

Studying in Medina

Interviewer: So at this point you accepted Islam and then you went to study in Medina.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah. Within a year after I accepted Islam. Within a year. But, you know, in that one year, I joined Jamaat al-Tabligh.

I went to the UK. They had the first Ijtema in the West there in Dewsbury. Right. And I had spent my four months there in the UK. I completed my four months there in the masjids of the UK because I'd gone there seeking knowledge. This was the idea.

In Canada, I accepted Islam. The few books I had, limited, tried to get other books. Very few books available.

You know, OK, study on the people, you know, foreigners who were there in the masjids from different countries, Egyptians, Moroccans, you know. And trying to get knowledge, but realizing that it's very limited. These guys are just, you know, cultural Muslims.

So what they gave you is their piece of their culture. So where was the real Islam in all of this, you know? So then when they said, OK, you want to study? We've got scholars in England. We have over 50 mosques in Canada.

In Toronto at the time, there were only two mosques in the whole of Toronto, whole of Toronto. So at that time, so 50 mosques. And in every mosque there's a maulana who's studied.

That's like, you know, ah, you know, the student's dream. So I went there and I sat. I had my notebooks with me.

I would sit, ask the questions, and the maulanas would tell me, and I'd make the note of all the answers. You know, a good four months of study. Came back to Toronto and, you know, told my wife, we are Hanafis.

Because, you know, you had to follow one of the four madhabs according to what everybody was saying. And, of course, most Muslims are Hanafis. Abu Hanifa was the first of the imams.

Yeah, go with the majority, you know. So, you know, became a Hanafi. Told my wife, I had to learn in the UK, I had to learn the female prayer for Hanafis.

Because it's so different from the male. It's not something you can even explain it in writing. It has to be demonstrated, you know.

So I learned that female prayer. From the maulanas. And I came back, taught my wife, you know, how to pray according to the Hanafi way.

And then I moved next door. I recommend a good book for this actually, The Evolution of Fiqh. Yeah, it gives the whole history.

Yeah, yeah. It's a book, The Evolution of Fiqh. Kind of explaining and bringing people through the history of how Fiqh was developed.

To understand the madhabs. Because the madhab is a mystery in the minds of the majority of Muslims. They know it, they heard the name.

Madhab, you know. Madhab, we pronounce it different ways. Maslak, they have different names.

But the madhab, the reality of the madhab, the vast majority of Muslims have no idea. Are they different religions? Some even call them different sects. You know, we have the Hanafi sect, we have the Shafi'i sect.

No, they don't call it sect, it's not really sect, it's madhab. So what is a madhab? It's just follow one. They're all correct.

So this was the point. We were told that they're all correct. If anyone you follow, it's okay.

Though Hanafi is the best one to follow, since the majority of people are following it. But any of the others you follow, it's okay. If you don't follow one, then your imam is shaitan.

Wow. Yes. Yeah, even you had books coming from Turkey.

This Hussein Ishik, he wrote some books. And in this book, one of his books, he's explaining about the madhab. He says, one of the questions you will be asked in the grave is, what is your madhab? Yeah, they went to that point.

So it made it really serious about this madhab thing. So I remember when I... So I moved next to the masjid. Imam of the masjid was Shafi'i, imam from Egypt.

And I started studying with him, fiqh and sunnah. With the evidences and that, I started to see the contradictions. And I saw that ultimate contradiction where the Shafi'is say, if you accidentally touch a woman, your voodoo is not broken.

Your voodoo is broken. But if Hanafi said, if you touch a woman, your voodoo is not broken. So that is the irreconcilable difference.

Would you study the logic that your father had studied? No way. Can't accept it. One has to be correct.

One has to be incorrect. So this is what set me, made me ready for Medina. And when I reached that point of understanding, and the person who gave me shahada, just as a point of information, was Dr. Abdullah Hakeem Quick.

He was one of the Americans who had come up. He's the one who converted that sister. Yeah.

And he's also a convert to Islam. Yeah, yeah. He converted in the U.S.

Converted in the U.S. So when did he convert? Was it around the same time? Well, I mean, maybe it was a year or two before me, something like this.

And he's also specializing in history. Yeah, yeah. But he went to Medina.

We went together to Medina. Oh, masha'Allah. We went together to Medina.

So the point, though, is that when I reached that point where I could see contradictions which could not be reconciled, you can't say both are correct, I realized that I needed to go to the sources to get Islam from the sources to understand it because I felt something was obviously wrong here. You know, it's not something you could talk about out loud. You know, we would, us convert Muslims that were there in Jordan, we'd grumble about these differences amongst ourselves.

But you don't say this to a born Muslim because, huh? How to be that? So we had to just, in the background, we would grumble, hey, look at this. They're telling us this or that. Exactly.

That's exactly how it is. Shaytan has got you, man. It's in your head.

It's shaytan. You know. So alhamdulillah, so when we went to Medina, then the enlightenment came.

We came to understand the origins of madhabs and these kind of things. Alhamdulillah, you know, never look back. So how many people read this thing, they don't know how blessed they are to, especially in the English world, we have so much literature, you know, from different people such as yourself and other people, in English, but at this time.

Nothing. The only books we had were the Ahmadi books. Because they.

Do you have a translation of the Quran at this point? Ahmadi translation of the Quran. That result is available. You know, we then, then Yusuf Ali showed up.

But difficult to get a hold of a copy. So Yusuf is very difficult. Yeah, yeah.

So you kind of just figuring it out for yourself, you know, but he didn't put you off his stuff. No, no. I mean, Allah presented a way.

It's really when I came to Medina, you know, then, you know, this discussion was there amongst the students. They didn't insist on any one Madhab, even though they use the in the in the high school, junior high, they use books from the Hanbali Madhab. But in the college, university, we studied from books which were non-Madhab specific books.

You know, so we looked at the classics, the classic works, did research. Studies with attend many classes, scholars. I sit in the circles of Sheikh Masoud Al-Din Al-Bani and Sheikh Bin Baz.

Sheikh Abu Bakr Al-Jazairi and Sheikh Omar Al-Fulata. The well-known scholars were teaching in Medina. No, Sheikh Al-Uthaymeen was in Riyadh side.

Riyadh, Qasim, that's where he was based, another side. So when I came out to Riyadh, you know, then I was studying mostly in the circles of Sheikh Bin Baz because he had a big class going on there. So I would attend his as well as others.

How was it meeting these big scholars? The people were very humble, you know, very, you know, simple. You know, there was not the hype wasn't really there. So it was very, very like Medina.

You know, I mean, we had access to scholars, big scholars who came from Egypt, you know, who were teaching there, were known as giants of scholarship in Egypt. But, you know, they're regular people. They would sit and talk with students.

And, you know, it wasn't the superstar type of relationship, you know, so, alhamdulillah. So how long were you studying in Medina? Well, I did basically five years or five and a half years, you know, four years of the college, you know, and a year, year and a half of the language school.

And then I went on to Riyadh to do my master's. I started teaching then, did my master's at the same time. Ghanaians have, they have a strong Islamic, you know, Arabic background. Because my teacher when I was studying in Medina, who was informal teacher was Ghanaian.

I used to study under him in preparation for, his name was Muhammad Rabia. He's in the States, he's still in the States and stuff. But he and Abdullah Hakim, myself and a couple others, we used to study with him.

We taught him English and he would teach us Arabic, you know, building and preparing us for the university. I met an old sheikh in Ghana who knows you. The very, very old sheikh, one of the first batches of the Medina students.

What's his name? I forgot his name. There's a bunch of them though. Yeah.

There's a bunch of them in Ghana. MashaAllah. Because I went to, they have a school.

There's about four of them who are my, some of them I used to teach karate in Medina. You know, they were my students. This was a means of earning some little extra money, you know, to survive.

I used to teach karate and Kung Fu and Judo. Yeah, yeah, I studied. You still know him? Yeah, yeah.

I will talk to you later. No problem. But yeah, so there was a set of students, maybe about 40 or 50 students, you know, from different parts of the world.

I trained them. My wife used to sew the giz that they would wear. She would sew it up.

She had a sewing machine. And this was our means of generating just survival money, man. Surviving in Medina in those days back in the, you know, the early 90s.

Sorry, early, that's what I said. It was 1970s, 1974, you know, 74. You can't imagine what Medina was like.

They didn't provide, no, no, no. Married students, you're on your own. You're on your own.

The same money they gave to the single students, the same money they gave to you. And you had to survive.

You couldn't be on campus because they were getting that money.

But they were living on campus. They would send that money home, build a palace. When they graduate, they go back, you know.

They're living high, you know, from India. They'll fail. They'll pass one year, fail a year, pass a year.

So then the whole four-year degree becomes an eight-year degree. You're earning all of this salary for the eight years. You know, you come back, man, you are laid out.

You are the sheikh. You understand? So all that was going on. So us, you know, they're struggling, you know, survival.

Serious survival mode, man. I remember not eating, you know, eating meat like once a week. Yeah, yeah, they don't know.

They've been complaining, of course. I just met one student. I was there last week.

I met one student. He said, I've been here 15 years. Yeah, because he started from Sanoi, right? He started from junior high school, from grade eight.

That's what they do it. No. He's been doing what makes his people... No, but he can only do so many times because they put in the thing that if you do it twice, they'll fail.

They'll kick you out. They started to put that in. No, I don't know how he got to... No, that's what I'm saying.

Those people here, that's kind of numbers. They've been there. They came there from the grade eight.

So they do grade eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, right? Seven, actually. Seven is the beginning of Sanoi.

So they got a mutawasit. Sorry, mutawasit. So they got a good six years. Those six years, they turn into 12 years because, as I said, you're only allowed to fail once, right? So they'll pass.

They'll fail. Then they pass. Then they fail.

Then they pass. Then they fail. But if you fail twice, boom, you're out.

Twice in a row. Because before that, they would do that. Before those days, people were doing failing twice, three times, and they're just there.

This is for life. We're not going anywhere. I'm going to be buried in Bukia.

This is it.

Dawah Work in Saudi Arabia

Interviewer: You were telling me you were getting involved in Dawah in Saudi as well.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah, yeah. When I was studying in Medina, those six years in Medina, five, six years, the Dawah would be during holidays when I went back to Canada, US, and the West Indies. So I would go back into those communities and focus mainly on the convert Muslims. Their numbers were increasing, reaching out to them, holding circles for them, guiding them.

US, as I said, West Indies, I used to go down regularly to Trinidad, Barbados, Bahamas, Jamaica.

Interviewer: So you were born in Jamaica. What age did you move to Canada?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: I was about nine, something like this.

Interviewer: So you still have that connection with...

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Yeah, my whole family was down there and everything. Of course, that's the first place I went, actually. When I accepted Islam in Toronto, first thing I did was I flew down to Jamaica to give the Dawah to my family, my cousins and uncles and aunts, and to reach out to them first and foremost.

That was a duty. I recognized that. So after giving Dawah to my own parents in Canada before going down, then I remember when I went down to Jamaica and I was with one of my cousins, close cousins, and he told me, oh, there's a mosque in downtown Kingston.

I said, really? Please, take me. So they took me down. Yeah, we came up there.

Nice masjid, you know. When we came up... What I'm saying? No, no, it wasn't Tabligh. I came up looking and I said, there's something strange about this place.

So then when I got closer and I went up to the front door, I saw the thing, Baha'i Temple. Yes, the Baha'is, you know. So because they are a breakaway sect from Islam, from Shiite Islam, and they retained the Eastern style of place of worship.

So it looked like a mosque, but it wasn't. So there I hunted in Jamaica for Muslims. I finally came across one Muslim in Montego Bay, you know, an old Indian man.

He was dying of cancer at the time. He had built a little mosque on his land. A couple of workers who worked for him, they converted to Islam.

So they used to pray there. He used to give the Jumu'ah khutbah. And then eventually the word reached a couple of sisters, older sisters who had accepted Islam in New York.

And they came back down to Jamaica to live out their lives there. So they came to the mosque. So I met a little handful.

That was about it. That was it of Islam in Jamaica. Now, you know, Jamaica, they have over 35 mosques, you know, many thousands of Muslims, you know.

Those days, Islam was just non-existent.

Interviewer: I can't imagine a world like that. You know, I've kind of been raised in a world where Islam is everywhere.

You know, I've traveled a lot. Every country goes to every city with Muslims. You find them in the jungles, you know, with Muslims.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: That's how it was. Those were the days.

Writing and Curriculum Development

Interviewer: So, Mr. Parola, after your studies, you was also writing.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Well, the writing began in Riyadh. In Riyadh, I was asked to join a school, an Islamic school, called Manarat Riyadh, and to design the curriculum for grade 1 to 12. So at that time, it was like 1979, 1980, there were no books on Islam available for children, for young people to study in English.

So I had to create something. So at that time, that's what forced me to write. I was not a writer, you know, in particular.

My father was, of course, masters in English, teaching English as a foreign language and all that. My mother was also a teacher, you know, mathematics. And they helped me to put things together to write.

They reviewed my materials and helped me to get it in the best format, you know. I was a writer from the perspective that I started from my communist days to keep notes. Recorder, you could say, more than writer.

I recorded, and then every book that I read of Islam, I took out the most key ideas and I put them in books. So if I want to review that idea, get back to it, I could just flip. I didn't have to go back through the book again.

So I had that practice of writing, but it wasn't really creation. It wasn't authorship. It was just basically recording material.

So I had to take the ideas now, which I had studied in Medina over the four years, et cetera, and bring them down to the level which was appropriate for grade 12, 11, 10, 9. So this was a challenge. I said, with the help of my parents, I've prepared materials as like notes, which we printed out and stuff like this circulated amongst students and developed teaching skills, which helped also for Dawah purposes to give lectures, et cetera,

What other university in the world is teaching that? You know, so we're broken ground, you know, in areas that other universities have not even began to think about.

IOU Programs and Mission

Interviewer: So this is open, you know, if people want to study at the IOU, they can go to the website, they can sign up. Simple.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: And we're trying to make it as simple as possible. You know, simpler and simpler, so that the registration process doesn't become a knockout point. You know, because if it's not user friendly, you know, then people start, ah, too much trouble, you know.

But we have, you know, the courses, of course, we're known as the Islamic online university. So people tend to think, oh, it's just Islamic subjects. You know, we have the Sharia, we have a master's in Sharia, which is recognized by the government of Indonesia.

So you can do PhDs in Indonesia with our master's, et cetera. And we have bachelors in Arabic. Again, this is to be expected.

This is Islamic university. But the majority of our courses are not quote unquote Islamic. You know, it's education, Islamic banking and finance, Islamic psychology or psychology, business administration and information technology.

And we are also launching in the coming semester, we're launching also agricultural economics. We're choosing subjects which are vital subjects to the growing Muslim community. We're not focusing on robotics, because who's using robotics in the third world? This is first world stuff.

That's just training people to be a part of the brain drain, you know, because they'll swoop you up right away to US, UK, Germany. But then what did the Muslims benefit from your knowledge? So we focus on those critical areas. We want to also include mass communications, journalism, as well as studies in public health.

These areas, which are the critical areas of the third world, the third world need people properly trained. And then with an Islamic understanding, because that's what's unique about us. Because otherwise you can go and study these other subjects anywhere in any other university, but they're not teaching it from an Islamic perspective.

That's the missing link. And this is what we are doing and what all of the Muslim universities need to do. So we are pioneers in this, to say that we offer everything, including business administration, including IT.

People are, IT, Islamic IT? Is there such a thing? Yes, there is. It's IT taught from an Islamic perspective. And no matter how people may think that this is just, this is just technology.

But technology has to exist in a society. That technology is learned and applied in a society. It's not in outer space.

It's functioning so you can say, okay, you don't need anything Islamic about that. It's floating around the world. It is applied in human society.

And as long as you're dealing with human beings, Islam has guidelines to protect those human beings in all the different ways. And to make that technology a benefit to the society and minimize the potential harm which comes from it. Islam is going to identify areas that the non-Islamic instructors would not bother to get into because it's just technology.

You learn it. So there's no place for Islam here. This is IT.

The reality is that IT has maybe less than the humanities because humanities are more dealing with human societal relations, teaching, education, these areas. But technology tends to be sort of a little bit more distant. But still you have to apply it.

This is really important. Just the atmosphere of studying in an Islamic environment is what most of the Muslims who are having issues with their faith, it's because of the secular education. If you've been growing up in a secular society, a secular education, running through school for the next 15 years of secular education, it's going to have an effect.

Because every subject is taught as if Allah doesn't exist, as if Islam is false. So no matter what you study, it's so important to have that Islamic ethos.

Closing Remarks

Interviewer: Jazakallah Khair Sheikh. It's a pleasure. I really enjoyed meeting you and speaking with you again. I've known you for quite a few years now.

We've seen each other in different parts of the world. It's good to see you. Inshallah we'll continue to do so.

I know I've told you this before, but for those who are listening, it was actually your video that helped me come to Islam. I told you before. I forgot.

I was, through my experiences in Africa, with the world of the jinn, if you like, and that type of thing, I was explaining this to my friend, my Libyan friend in the UK, and he showed me one of your videos explaining how the jinns get their information and how it actually works, basically. This was the key video that switched me on. Subhanallah.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Jazakallah Khair. My pleasure. I can add you to my scale of good deeds.

Interviewer: Inshallah. I've benefited a lot from your work, especially your books in English. Just clarifying and clearing up a lot of the doubts that many new Muslims have.

And, you know, we use these books. They're still being used and promoted when we're teaching the dawah.

And, you know, we use these as reading material, you know, for the new and up-and-coming dais.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Jazakallah Khair.

Final Advice

Interviewer: And just before we finish, do you have any last words or any advice that you can give the Muslims or even the new Muslims on how they should go forward in life?

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: Well, you know, as a teacher, you know, the general advice that we naturally give is that one has to be in that learning process. You know, we should never feel, I know enough. I have enough knowledge. The Prophet ﷺ had already informed us that whoever seeks knowledge, he or she has entered a path which is leading ultimately to Paradise. So this issue of learning, you know, we should look at it the way we look at Ibadah.

We know if the worship is not done properly, you don't have wudu, or you broke your wudu whilst you're praying, or, you know, what to do. You know, you can't just do anything. There are clear guidelines.

So similarly, when we are in that learning mode, and it should be a part of our lives till we leave this world, we should consider all of the factors that will make sure that the knowledge we're getting is correct, the understanding of it is correct, and the application of it is correct. You know, because otherwise, shaitan knew Allah, knows who Allah is, you know. So it's not just the knowledge by itself.

So you say, I can get it from a book. You know, I can watch the video here, and, you know, YouTube, and I can get it from there. Learning in that way where you're just taking from whatever is available, you know, is a cocktail.

It's mixed up. And if you don't have proper teachers, proper sources of knowledge, content, where you access content, then that knowledge will not benefit you. It may benefit you from a material perspective, because you've got a degree, and now you're making money, or in this position, et cetera, but it won't benefit you ultimately in this life and the next.

So we need to recognize this responsibility that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam put on us when he told us, convey whatever you've learned from me, even though it is only a single verse from the Quran. To convey. He told us to convey, but he also told us to seek knowledge.

Seeking knowledge is compulsory for every Muslim. So he gave us two instructions. One, that it is obligatory for us to get that knowledge.

Why? Because it will put us on a path to paradise. And also, it is obligatory for us to convey whatever of the knowledge we have gained, we have benefited from, we've understood, et cetera. So it's both aspects, being a student and being a teacher.

And anyone who is a student can be a teacher. He may not be able to be a university teacher, lecturer, professor, but there are always people around him who he can teach, he can pass that knowledge on to. So that is the responsibility that every Muslim has and has to fulfill, which Allah will ask us about on the day of judgment.

So that would be my general advice that we need to look at this process as ibadah. It's a blessed process. Being a teacher and a student, student first, teacher after, simultaneously.

This is a process that each Muslim should be conscious of. Ask ourselves, what have I learned today? Who have I taught today? If we're not learning anything, we're not teaching anything, then we are like, as Allah said, al-an'am hum kal-an'am bal-hum adum. They, the disbelievers, who don't have any consciousness of God, they're like animals.

Or, in fact, they are more deviated. Because the animal, he's just doing what he's created for. Where human beings living like an animal, you can't get worse than that.

And that's not what you were created for. Yes, there's an animal aspect to your life. But that's not what you were created for.

So, this would be my advice to those who are watching this program. And inshallah, I pray that Allah gives all of you the insight in this Islamic understanding of life so that Allah accepts us on that path of happiness and gives us paradise here in Israel. Inshallah.

Interviewer: Ameen. Fatiha. JazakAllah khair.

It was a pleasure. Assalamu alaikum.

Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix: JazakAllah khair. My pleasure. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Al Fatiha.

End of Interview

Podcast: Young Smirks

Guest: Sheikh Dr Bilal Felix

Topic: From Communism to Islam - A Journey of Faith and Knowledge