Sh. Adam Kelwick | Dawah Unhinged, Dishonest Charities & Deferential Attitudes | MindTrap #38 | MALM

[Music] [Music] with another episode of mind trap with mufti people and

what a guest we've got tonight all right it has been too long right it is way overdue to have this esteemed guest who we have tonight let me just bring up the profile people right there you can see allahu akbar the profile picture the elegant the the the the illuminated right there with the man behind as you can see kelwick's sidra honey which we'll be speaking about let me just bring on

our beloved sheikh [Laughter] i thought i thought usually when i do such an intro i invoice people for it afterwards all right you do alright i like the pint glass right there you see that that's the kind of you see this is where we're going all of you who are this is where i get my inspiration from it starts it already hasn't see this is

where we get the it's got the hard time that's it in fact you know what the days of jai hillary those half pints were for the ladies you see we're not up to that we we've we'll get there someday someday it has it's an absolute pleasure to finally have you on sure a lot well seeing as it started uh later than what we anticipated but we're still in in the night of jummah one thing i can do

is request that everybody sends peace and blessings upon the messenger of allah this is something that adam kelwig will always remind you about you know every time i go onto facebook it reminds me it's jummah they'll be sheikh adam kellweek he'll have his reminder

and every friday i see this without without fail subhan allah does not need an introduction hailing from liverpool but those of you that have been unfortunate it is your and it is a tragic unfortunate kind of what can we say a lack of knowledge if that's the case but i'd like people may be curious you know adam kelwick hmm what's this background

what is the story here first of all he's not he's not a chef and uh he was actually taught many many years ago by his sheikh uh that if you uh claim to be a share when you're not a cher prepare yourself for a bad ending so let's let's get that clear from now not a happy ending teaching me you know this one right so tell us for people a bit of your words in in your word sorry a a bit of an overview of your journey

uh okay okay so uh in 1999 i became muslim wow uh 19 19 wow 1919 that was the year i was i was in damascus studying wow and that's a long story in itself uh so my birth father my natural father is yemeni and he's muslim but i wasn't brought up with him i was brought up with my english mother and my stepfather who passed away recently and so i was just brought up as as an english lad

i didn't really have much contact with many muslims uh and the contact which i did have when i was younger wasn't particularly the best kind of example sir local local cannabis dealer for example not joking being the muslim that used to be [Laughter] anyway let's not go there i can't believe i've even said that right so allah so yeah i discovered islam i i discovered my roots i met my uh my birth father

got on really well with him met my whole yemeni family who they never even knew that i existed and they welcomed me into the family uh i i became muslim uh i took a flight out to yemen uh wearing my lacoste tracksuit and my nike shocks uh bouncing around sana and the two-week holiday to yemen to visit my long-lost family uh turned into almost two years over that on my first visit wow uh and i came back with a uh a dress a beard and a wife that's the show so people who want to

take inspiration from that story basically if you if you're looking for a dress that's the place to go one of these dresses actually i i get these done now in uh i'll get them tailor-made okay wow you see i was just thinking the other day damn i need my personal tailor you know i need somebody like that can always just kind of put things just right for me so people reach out to me man don't don't read into me wrong though because taylor made in qatar is not like taylor made in the uk very reasonably priced okay wow so so you were there you've gone there in 1999 you've

reconnected with this whole uh no sorry i went out to yemen for the first time i think it was towards the end of 2000 uh so yeah no summer 2000. so i just embraced islam just become muslim uh don't forget as a 17 year old which is what i was at that time it's very difficult making the shift from one lifestyle to another and that's really what conversion to islam needed from me it needed a kind of lifestyle change and i needed it from from islam if you like i needed some discipline things were going on in my life i wasn't in the best place alhamdulillah i really needed some discipline because

all my family around me they kind of were struggling uh to discipline this 17 year old and alhamdulillah yemen yemen the rugged mountains of yemen did it for me wow it was more than just a i mean because there's the aspect of you reconnecting with a whole family so you know you've understood that look i've got arabic roots you've reconnected with them but there's the cultural kind of like embracement if you like this whole wow immersion but it's more than that the faith was that decision to embrace the faith as well it was it wasn't just part of i'm embracing the yemeni culture

you're right you're right uh so so the the faith aspect of it right so the best way i can describe this is as i was being brought up so i i was raised very very loosely a christian so maybe every two or three years i'd go to church once uh i was a part of the boys brigade i don't know if you know anything about that but it's it's like a christian boys club and i was part of that for a few years and so i wasn't the most practicing of christians so when i say i was brought up christian i don't want you to think i was some goody two-shoes praying christian all the rest of it however

i always had a strong belief in god now the thing i find the main amazing is i have these memories from when i was probably about seven years old when i used to philosophize uh and and it's something i remember specifically that when i reached the age of seven now this is gonna sound amazing but this really happened it's not like the story's changing with time this really happened i came to my own conclusion at seven years old that i believe in god but i don't believe in jesus so that's where i was at that age and my journey after that when i was first

introduced to the quran it hit me really hard now obviously i'm reading the the translation of the quran in english but the first thing which which shocked me muthia boleth was that even though i had a few muslims in my school this is when when i used to live in south yorkshire i didn't know anything about their religion so i remember one time one of my friends he was uh from pakistani background and his old grandfather used to sit in a separate room in the house and the door would be closed but it would have a window covered by a curtain and and i know now that he was reciting the quran he was in this room he was reading the quran and there was something very peaceful

about this recitation but when i asked my friend he said oh no he's just singing so my my muslim friend just said oh yeah that's my granddad he's he's he's singing his songs and and that was about as much as i learned about islam from my muslim friends besides the time when i was and i know this might sound uh it might sound trivial but to me it it really it was a big thing so one time i was welcomed into one of my muslim friends house and five pound went missing and they decided that i don't know what the the decision process was

but because i was the non-muslim guy i must have taken it and so everybody was accusing me of taking this five pound and i just remember that that really uh impacted me in a negative way that's another and i did not take that five pounds till this day that haunts him you see this is that oh no but this is the thing this is the thing people have to be you know especially if we're talking about presenting our faith to other people sometimes people aren't even looking for faith but you'll notice things you know what's interesting is they used to you know when i was a kid my mother sometimes would say there's this proverb that she would say in in our language but it

was that somebody who loses a thing with it they lose their faith like the iman meaning that they and what they meant by it was that they become distrustful of everyone that they would say that you know whose ever thing went the concept of trust yeah as that's interesting because as you know trust amanda and iman it's from the same it's from the same route fascinating yeah yeah yeah yeah so okay i mean so these kind of experiences are hitting you as a non-muslim in the uk but these are your early

impressions of islam just to some extent in in all fairness nothing really much was said directly about islam but then i could go around to my friends now and and say to them you know what what's wrong with you but then from another person you know why didn't you introduce me to islam why did it why didn't you you let me know about this faith but then from another perspective it's probably for the best that they didn't try and give me any quote-unquote data because maybe they didn't have have much to give give also but but the the changing point for me is when i was presented a copy of the quran translated into english and i saw

i remember i opened it and i i read the story of joseph suratu and that really shocked me it really that is an amazing you know it's interesting that you've read that and allah says that is you know that we reveal upon you it's interesting yeah that that's but the the most amazing thing for me is because i knew so little about the islamic faith i'd assumed and many people do assume this as well non-muslims in our in our society that islam is a polytheistic religion similar to hinduism or jainism you know all these are the

eastern religions they many people don't even realize that muslims believe in the same prophets you know we know of course a muslim knows we believe in jesus we believe in moses we believe in abraham and probably many religious christians know that and many religious jews but your average kind of non-muslim person out there in society will assume that islam is similar to hinduism just by nature of the ethnic backgrounds of the the immigrant communities so that's what shocked me i'm reading about all these prophet prophets who i remember the the boring guy in the church used to be

teaching us about in sunday school which i've probably run away from and uh and played true and anyway uh but but that got me so that grabbed me and then i came to the islamic understanding of isa alaihissalam and that was like whoa it kind of it brought back as i said so my own philosophy in life was i believe in god but i don't believe in jesus uh jesus uh it's too far-fetched this is what i used to tell myself jesus is just too i don't even think he even existed that that was my belief my conclusion uh but then when you presented with an islamic jesus it was a jesus for me isa alaihissalam it was like ah

now now this i can't believe in this i can't believe it uh so yeah but at the same time you're talking about a 17 year old who's exploring the world and explore i don't want to mention there's no benefit in the the things that i was those explorations still go on not me tilted but the thing is for yourself i mean obviously for me not for the share of course but you see these two kind of openings and realizations were happening parallel so this spiritual awakening where i was starting to become a person of of firm belief and desiring and wanting to worship

together with the teenager lifestyle which i was i was a few years ahead of my time as well so i'd i'd be able to get into places and they'd assume that i was older than 17 and i'd be involved in in different circles and different things which uh usually a 17 year old isn't uh isn't involved in and so that was happening together at the same time and so it was quite confusing and it was a really difficult mix uh and it was it was causing more turbulence uh and then this trip to yemen came along as i said it was supposed to be for for two weeks uh and i ended up living there for two years and those mountains they they sorted me out masha allah but

since then you went on to take not just embrace the faith but to try and grasp get a grasp on the understanding of it to develop a learning have a foundation in the faith which is a different journey as well as opposed to just saying well i've become muslim alhamdulillah i'll pray and just live my life you see it's interesting when i think back because i i i sometimes feel like the pull factor for me has always been much stronger than the push factor so there has been a will and a desire for me to learn and come to grips with it but i don't want to sound too cliche and

and too kind of devout or anything but i i honestly feel that from the time i was introduced to islam it's the pull factor and by the pull factor i'm talking about a kind of irresistible attraction from from from allah if that makes sense i i had to make a decision like who wants to who wants to be part of a religion at 17 years old when you've got your life in front of you and and bang your head down on the floor five times a day who who wants to do that but the thing is when when you read it and when it touches your heart and you feel that ball

it's as if you've got you've got no choice you've got no options so that's where i was i mean it's it's very hard to to explain sometimes and and i understand it can be very different from a lot of british born muslims experiences they often feel it's the opposite where people are kind of pushing them there's pressure on them to be religious there's pressure on them to have faith there's pressure on them to go on this journey and and they don't feel necessarily as if uh they're being pulled as as much but then lots of people do come back to islam later on in their life or they they take a different journey to the one which they were brought up in so that's uh

yeah it's very interesting but the pulp subhanallah seriously i i wonder if that era had something about it because it was a time when so many of us went off and studied i mean we were very young i went off i it must have been like 97 98 something like that i was just 18 but it was an era when so many people were going off and there was this this thing to study for for several years that followed i don't i i don't assume in the mid

2000s onwards to the late 2000s that eva carried on like that like people getting up i mean maybe it didn't just i'm not in touch with it i don't know but yeah i i think i think because we often talk about this when i'm with friends of a similar age and we go back to those days that there was something very very special in the early 2000s it was a special time but i think it might have had something to do with our youth as well and i also think the youth of today they are experiencing something similar but a slightly different manifestation because we're in different times i i think it's something what comes with age i really do and i think everybody gets that if you

like the the the calling or the the motivation and yeah i think it still does happen for for youngsters and all you've got to do is reach out to your local eye socks and you can kind of see the the i don't want to say naivety but the innocence and the light you can see these youngsters faces literally shining with with iman you know that it's subhanallah it's it's iman uh but i think it has got a lot to do with uh with the age uh that they're in and i think youngsters are still experiencing the same it's just where to all the to be part of that anymore this is you know on a tangent there just on a slight tangent

it's interesting that you know one thing that this day and age has that maybe is i mean it has many things that are unprecedented but one of the things it has is because of social media you see you mentally can be trapped in different kind of social circles social loops so let's say now you've got facebook now i'm on instagram now instagram generally i'm assuming has a a much younger audience so like i'll follow a lot of meme pages uh i'll go on there usually just to check the memes now it's interesting that i'll see so many posts often

and i think that that's just sounds so dumb and then i realized oh yeah because it's just i'm just way too old for these people you understand like they they they just they just still i mean they're not kids but too to me they like kids because they'll what they'll just post about it's just dumb stuff but i think there's a double-edged thing to that that people can because you're gonna have your own circle anyway in life you see you're gonna have your own friends anyway but you can still be in certain psychological loops be aware of what is being discussed what and it can it can be the other way as well younger people

in older loops for example like facebook and things like that what are the discussions that people are having what is the just that was just a tangent but i thought um you know something very much again very interesting so so so maybe the lines between the generations have kind of been uh worn down a little bit because it gives us access to like i'll go on to instagram and i'm seeing this is what people so for example we're hearing a lot of slang that that people otherwise usually generations develop slang one of the purposes behind it is so the elder people are slightly distanced isn't it so when they speak other people don't

understand them as much but you're you're kind of all i'm saying is it's created somewhat of a connect even if it's not intentional but so that's a bit strange because i don't think people generations before us had that in that way but yeah coming coming back to your journey this surgeon so you so you were there did you remain several years in yemen studying and things like this what what was that right so the the first trip uh was as i said was for for just under two years and during this time so so the the the journey of study started started in a village in

i'm talking you know there's uh what's his name was it leo tolstoy i believe he said that all great literature begins with one of two stories that a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes into town it is really all great literature take it away adam so you come to town i the stranger arrived in this town and uh it was a very very very simple yemeni village uh back then even when i go back to this village now it's like whoa

what's happened here they've got electricity so yeah this village we we used to get electricity from sunset and it used to last for one hour uh the the only mobile communication was via satellite mobile phones of which one existed in the village and it was about this big it was like a huge box uh water you had to go down to the well and pull some up a very very simple lifestyle uh but as i said that that's that's what i needed at the time uh and so one of my uh friends in this village just so happened

uh to work in uh new york okay uh manhattan and he was coming back to to stay some months with with his family and so he kind of took me under his wing and started learning but bear in mind when i first arrived in yemen i couldn't even speak arabic so i didn't have any arabic i was very very uh elementary in terms of in terms of everything to be honest and so the the journey started there and then i got uh i got in touch with some people in the closest town to this village uh which is still a town now it's nothing nothing special and then i used to start to attend their lectures and

and then before you know it what i found myself i i was like the prize which these several groups within this city wanted to fight over uh and so before before you know it the the warning started coming to me all keep away from them because they're involved in politics and allah says in the quran and the other ones they're the sufis they don't pray they say my soul has gone and flown to mecca and prayed next to the ka'ba and the other ones are saying keep away from them they're all extremists and so very early on in my journey i developed this

ability uh to uh put an opposite twist to everybody's warnings about everybody else so when they said to me keep away from them my first thing to do was go to them mix with them and find out for myself what they're about and when somebody told me keep away from that group i'd do the same so i've i was always open-minded in in that respect and that open-mindedness uh has been important for me on my journey since because if you're not careful you'll end up keeping away from everybody and that's when you expose yourself uh to falling into being part of a cult or a group which is not really going to

help you get closer to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and so yeah even to this day advice which i give to converts uh because this is what happened when i came back from yemen is very quickly and this was naturally it wasn't something that i wanted to do or kind of position myself for just within the community in the mosque here in liverpool at rahman mosque which which is the largest mosque in liverpool whenever anybody would convert the community we'll be like ah what do we do we don't know adam give them to adam give them to adam give them to adam and so i was dealing with all these people who were coming into islam and i understood their backgrounds because i've converted myself and and so i kind of took took up that

role but one of the key pieces of advice to this day which i give to new muslim converts is only keep away from those who tell you to keep away from everybody else right that makes sense so stay yep so anybody's spreading division they are the problem unquestionable yeah exactly if you're gonna keep away from somebody keep away from the ones who are saying keep away from everybody except me and my sheikh and my small group of people because we are upon the absolute truth and the whole ummah everywhere around the world is upon bottle they're the ones to keep away from

yeah i mean because this thing of you know people converting to islam i feel that we don't have the adequate um facilities really i feel that there's so much you know there is this rush that people have to uh everybody should embrace islam but what would they do where would they go what would they uh i mean what does the muslim community have to offer and in many cases we are very um inept in that sense we don't have facilities we don't have um i don't know what are your thoughts

because i know you know what you're saying i hear because you do get a lot of converts coming to you and i i think that's great what you do as somebody who's who's kind of been dealing with converts and convert issues for for many years and not just that but i've i've been able to learn from even the the senior kind of converts in the uk and and abroad and they have decades of experience and they will all tell you that some of the biggest problems which converts face after they become muslim are not neces the most frequent problems are not necessarily from their non-muslim

friends family employers job all the rest of it it's usually from within the muslim community unfortunately and the bulk of those issues come in erroneous advice comes in the form of advice which everybody thinks they can throw advice at converts and they do not have a clue they destroy people's lives they destroy people's marriages they like seriously just take take it easy with the converts and and try and try and find somebody who understands so you this is what we say so when when somebody becomes uh muslim they should especially appreciate the advice of a person who fits this

criteria so number one that there's sound in at least the basics of of islamic knowledge and that's not enough on its own number two they have to have an understanding of the convert experience or the cultural background or the nature of the change itself otherwise the advice is going to be misplaced i'll give you one advice mufti yeah so sorry i'll give you one uh one example so there was a lady who was in touch with me this is going back a few years now in al rahman mosque and she got in touch with me she said i'm thinking about becoming muslim so this kind of dialogue went went on for a few months and she phoned me up she said okay i'm ready to take shahada now i'm ready to become

muslim i said fantastic uh what what day we'll work with you with you we pin the date in the diary and she came on the day of the appointment and she was looking very very sad i would say borderline depressed uh and i was like well what what's the matter and she said uh i've i've taken shahada already okay and i'm like okay that's that's not a bad thing you know i'm i'm i don't have the the sole rights on distributing shahadas in the uk it can it can be with with whoever that's not not an issue but she said yeah but i

felt like i was pressurized to do it uh can i take my shahadah again and i said what do you mean you felt pressurized she said she was invited to a reverts circle and you know i've got issues with the word revert anyway but that's yeah that's the difference and i agree with you on that on that she was invited to a revert circle in a very small mosque in a town in lancashire she went along she found out that she was the only revert there uh and within this one hour contact that she made with these people probably with beautiful intentions they didn't mean any harm but look at

what happened right so within this one hour gathering she was told that she can't have a christmas tree because they're haram okay okay this is a woman she hasn't even become muslim me and muffy we might have different views about christmas trees okay definitely because i still got mine somewhere downstairs in the pantry we're both going to say that telling somebody who's not even become muslim yet that it's haram to have this thing in your house is is not the wisest of of of decisions but anyway she was told also uh uh she was told uh about all the different

fourth prayers the five and all the sunnahs and she was told she has to pray them now she doesn't even know what the word followed me she doesn't know what the word sunda means she was given all these prayers and all these numbers of rakaats and all this information she doesn't even know how to say bismillah she doesn't even know how to make wudhu and you're teaching her all these things was she was she told that she needs to get married as well yeah no two two marriage proposals

just too thirsty two marriage proposals from auntie's there were no men there well there were no hoops whose nephews were back home [Laughter] do you know you don't know whether to laugh or to cry we're not finished yet hold on then she was told if she didn't take shahadah today she might walk out onto the street and get hit by a bus and die and die as a careful we're not finished yet we're not finished yet and when they invited her back next week

she said oh no sorry i'm going to a moto gp motorbike race with my uncle to which they said oh no you can't it's haram because there are men and women intermingling there and they sell and they sell alcohol so this this was this lady's experience with the muslim community now that advice would probably be much more sound if it was to the daughter of one of these aunties or do you get what i'm saying i don't think they were ill-intentioned in giving this advice well besides the the marriage

i mean that advice has the word islam doesn't belong anywhere in that advice but i mean if somebody wants to give cultural just auntie like advice to their own people then you know you could say what they could say whatever they like i guess but yeah and so the point was this was this experience of this lady she came in she was very very sad she she asked me can we take the shahada again i said yeah we can take sure we we all take shahada every prayer don't then you follow by saying that i just want to remind you easter is haram halloween is haram and so this this is the thing with this up and and i remember a discussion which i had once with the sheikh abdullah

murad and this was in regards to uh caring for converts and helping them in and and i said if you could summarize uh the main priority up into one short short piece of advice what what would you say we should focus focus on as practitioners in in new muslim mentorship and he said take the new muslims out of the mosques that's what his advice was wow i so agree with that i i know you do but i say take all muslims out of mosques

apart from the elderly let them obviously go no no but this is the question what what is the mosque what is the mosque and the reality is the manifestations of the masajid which we have sometimes the role they play are more about kind of ethnic clubs if we're honest with ourselves it's true being the the masjid as as it meets its conditions for for its islamic purpose it is you know the masjid is exactly it's it's like saying it's a dulled down version of a social club a dull down it's not as

entertaining as a cafe but like in i don't know i don't know sometimes you get you get more entertaining are they i wouldn't have thought they've read every week you know you know what we're we're looking at the money i mean it's locked i meant from a food perspective committee problems oh yeah no of course i meant from a food and coffee and tea perspective it's not on top but other than that it's just a place for people to go sit down and do some socializing at that particular age and then whilst they're there they're going to pray as well now i i mean it's not about the masjid totally like what you're saying but i i said once on my

uh monday night as well that i feel you know muslim circles sorry let me re specify that religious circles not so much about muslim by ethnicity or muslim by it's not about muslim but the religious circles to me are so toxic and i said somebody asked me what advice would you give and i said i would advise you to remove yourself from religious circles and just be with normal people because because the toxicity of these circles is like it's just like next level i don't know if this

you see i'm actually not a part of so many religious circles at all so i mean i i wonder what your thoughts are on this [ __ ] i i hear what you're saying and and your views do in a way echo what uh saying uh and and so to be honest when i first heard this from from his mouth it's because it's the first time i've ever heard it from somebody who knows what he's saying and it kind of hurt and it felt uncomfortable like what do you mean take them out of the mosques the mosques are the houses of allah the mosques are the place when you where you go to multiply your rewards for your prayer the pla the the masajid or the you know that what it should be

but what he what he was trying to explain is that they are in the current form that they are in or the majority not all many many massaged in our country they are not what they should be in terms of the environment which they provide to people so what happens is instead of developing spiritually you start to regress and before you know it you'll you'll join one of these factions within the masjid and they'll have you turning onto the other group and and before you yeah anywhere what has this got to do with with worshiping allah subhanahu wa ta'ala yeah and we we know we know uh i dropped a nicer onion there didn't i

it's got to be done proper offensive that's that's the you know that that's authority speaking when they say yeah i i hear that woman saying so anyway where will we so i asked him the question i said okay then how about the converts who come into islam through the mosque and the community in the mosque that's a good point actually yeah and you know what he said take them out yeah get them out he said take them to an eye talk like some similar to what you said just normal people take them to an eye sock an islamic society in a university

or a group or there might be some kind of community center which is like semi-sacred space and you know all these kinds of of of people where they'll meet people who they can relate to and the reason why he said our massage are full of ethnic traumas and if we're honest with ourselves as people who have yourself or myself we we have lots of experience experiences with several different masajid and the problems which our communities have are so many that you can't even blame them for not being able to meet the basic needs of muslim converts they have their own issues with their

own children and their own communities low educational attainment drug problems you know you know if i start the list it will never end and so maybe we are wrong from expecting yeah in the first place any reasonable support to be given to converts or even born muslims who are coming back to islam later on yeah maybe where for why are we so stupid to even expect these things anyway when there are arguably much more urgent issues which are happening within their communities which they're not even able to to solve so i think it's got a lot to do with our expectations very well said very well

that's so true yeah i mean um i don't know what the what i i mean possible solutions if any could be um i i agree that these things have to be organic and they have to be kind of like a real life um and by real life i mean they have to take the time that this kind of evolution would take in real life it's not just like a uh you know hey we've got a problem within 24 hours we've got a solution but yeah i mean i i don't know but you see you see awareness awareness of these kinds of issues which converts face

is already on the increase anyway just by just by virtue of the next generation of muslims who are coming through our schools they they have a much clearer understanding of what life is like for your average uh non-muslim person anyway so i think it's just a you know mata a matter of time and and eventually these things will develop on top of that what you've got all around the country are these these pockets of uh convert support groups which are not just emerging some of them are quite well quite well developed and they're in every city up and down the country they're usually but not exclusively convert lead

uh and uh they they put on nice social programs they put on a nice educational pro so sometimes i think the focus on on the education is too much i think what converts especially new muslims need they need to sort out the social side of things first before before before you can even deal with the five pillars of islam the convert needs to deal with who am i who am i now how do i how are you who are you does that mean who are you man who are you how am i gonna interact with my parents how am i gonna interact with my children now uh how am i gonna interact at work and so so it doesn't mean you can't do one without

the other you can you can set on this journey together but quite often that's neglected and when you see these kind of social events uh for converts they they can be very very beneficial wow that is i remember as well mufti i remember seeing a clip of you sure and you said something along the lines of why are we going out looking for converts and what does islam have to give them nothing and i remember i was i was a little bit when i heard that so i'm gonna give you the chance to explain i think i know what you meant yeah from my perspective you've got to understand as somebody who wasn't brought up as a muslim

by hearing uh somebody who was uh born as a muslim and if we if we consider that uh islam is the greatest nema is the greatest gift to hear somebody who has been born with that gift say why do we need to share this with anybody else it can kind of like no no you see so i yeah i remember saying that and it got shared by a bunch of people um you see it was in a monday night with mufti and i was being asked about dawah that word that went one and i said that look i don't see this obsession i don't understand this obsession with that one

i said that you see to me this this thing of we need to go out and offer islam we need to offer you know this this we need to oh let's get out there we're gonna it's this kind of like obsessive cultish manner in which people are trying to spread islam which is almost identical to the born-again christians exactly it is and i wouldn't be surprised if it's in some ways subconsciously i mean inspired by them but they may not know it that's all now this this this kind of thing of we need to spread islam we need to spread islam i was like why like why do you feel that you need to spread islam and i said that let's

just be real like what does it have to offer them and here i didn't mean what maybe you could say what do you so so here this is what i was about to say here what i didn't mean is what does islam ontologically what does the essence of islam have to offer i mean islam as it is unfortunately often presented islam as it's often presented i disagree with a lot of people's interpretation of islam but unfortunately that is widespread their interpretation it's not like my understanding of islam is is not you know it's it's you have to

search to come across something like that people out there spread a very brutal barbaric misogynistic uh a a very kind of unethical representation and then say this is what god demands of you and all they do is just in my understanding insult islam and then they say let's get this out there let's get this out there you get you make somebody like you convert someone and these very same people are the people that are chucking and i say in that clip that you're chucking out so many muslims every day from islam so these same people will say to people like me you're not even really a muslim

now i'm i'm a born muslim i mean i'm somebody who's memorized the quran i've studied hadith i've studied the shariah i've taught these things yet they will say to me there's no room in islam for me they will bring someone in check out 99 people bring in one person three months later out you know excommunicate him or her say to him or her you've now become a deviant what is that so my point is what islam the way we have it today what does it have to offer look these people are living an ethical lifestyle they understand ethics unfortunately i feel that i fear

that many muslims have failed when it comes to presenting ethics like we present an underdeveloped version of ethics so that was my angle and i think although i don't think it was part of that clip that got shared but it was in part of that episode i do say it but i think when they made the clip i i don't think they included that part in the clip i gave the example of so just to confirm you you don't get offended when people like me or other non-muslims embrace islam no look i actually say they in the beginning which i see i can't recall the clip they cut out but i remember what i said i actually said in the beginning i think

it's amazing when people embrace islam so that part might have got cut out they might have ignored that part when they made the cut out so i actually begin by saying look i think it's amazing when people embrace islam because to be honest i say that to be honest i'm surprised anybody would given the bad rep that islam has and then i go on to say that look because what does it have to offer people and i gave the example as well which i'm not sure if they include in the clip i gave the example that i was going to buy a car and i said that look let's be honest in this country i said that i had an offer and there was a car i was looking for it was

for someone and i said well this we had to do a three-hour drive to get to and there was a car much closer about an hour's drive but unfortunately it was being sold by a muslim and and let's be honest we don't trust them ourselves we don't trust like within let's say i within the pakistani community there's a huge distrust because we know the kind of scams people are pulling and the car being sold closer by the pakistani guy i was was like let's say a hundred pounds 200 pounds cheaper and i felt that you know which lower mileage no but but it seemed good and i felt that you

know what there must be some kind of a scam here because the car we found was a bargain and this seems to be even cheaper and when we were reading eventually in the in the in the fine print he had written that oh being sold for parts like as parts or something like so at least but in the fine print not in the main thing right so i've got friends who've bought cars and that wasn't even this was after i saw that after we'd made the decision anyway no i don't trust it i don't my gut feeling was i don't trust this let's go buy from that guy because let's look unfortunately i mention in that clip look i'm just being honest that look there are ethics that

non-muslims already have they have like they have a bar of ethics that is unfortunately higher than our we are muslims yet the bar of ethics is much higher than us we won't think twice about scamming people and in the community i mean and yet they they will say like oh regardless of whether the law will catch them but it will be like oh but that's wrong you understand so this was my point in saying that what do you have to offer today this comes back to what you said right at the beginning this saying about if you lose something you lose you lose iman yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean and and to be honest to be honest the the

the reason that the the dollar of the messenger of allah was so successful was of course he was the messenger of allah first and foremost but then before islam before revelation he had this reputation of being al-amin which once again comes to amana and iman you know i just wanna ah if we are a community who are not trustworthy people in general then what kind of what what kind of foundation is that to be calling calling people and i want to just caveat further because i just remembered recall the clip

right that the clip begins and the reason i'm saying this because things have a context right now it's it's because it's a very good question i'm glad glad you asked me that look the that clip in the beginning when i respond it stems from a question or a phenomenon an event it stems from this clip to do with this was a follow-on as in i'd answered it one week about this clip and the next week i was asked that why did you say this and then i elaborate again and that becomes the cutout i you see stems from there was a clip going viral of alidawah where he was arguing with tommy robinson

about sofia being raped and he says tommy robinson says so your prophet killed her husband and took her and and had sex with her that night and then he says yes so what but where does it say it's rape now i then made a clip refutation saying look that's not what happened and i've got this on youtube but then i said i wish people would stop giving that one because this that were is what is killing us well this is the thing mufti from from my understanding of da'awa which i've i've kind of even studied as a science with with scholars for example in yemen

this is very alien you know the the the the majority of what goes by the name of dawa in this country in my opinion is anti-darwin yeah it does it does the opposite and and with all due respect to whatever good intentions people might be having going down to speaker's corner every month to have or every week to just shout and argue with people i mean that's that's not the son of the prophet salallahu did you did you forget which sunnah we're trying to follow look look at the tao of the messenger of allah and emulate it forget about the born again christians yeah they're not the ones who are supposed to be emulating

they'll just take you down the lizard hole and i feel what happens is something which i call like a reactionary bravado effect where some people will these missionaries will bring out things against against islam like some points that they found like oh the prophet married a little child uh or they'll say a bunch of things like this that they've got as in this is our weaponry that we're gonna attack islam with now i think it's just part of humanity some people they just love to argue but but dixon it's an addiction hundred percent but i f what i fear happens is some of these part of this modern

this neo-dawa is that they will some people will say let's own it yes so what you know this kind of reactionary bravado thing like yes so what what what you're going to do about it kind of thing and i feel that first of all that that that look listen islam doesn't belong to me it doesn't belong to you it doesn't belong to somebody's dad it is it is really a responsibility which we have like i can you know if i want to speak about islam i should say oh in my opinion this is what it's like somebody could say to me muffle your opinions wrong

you know it could be wrong but when i say this is how the prophet was this is what he did you say openly oh he married a child and you stamp this out now you are i feel like i feel insulted because i feel that you are attacking i get your intentions may be good but you are attacking not only the prophet this whole message but just for some reactionary bravado like you know this is not you yeah exactly exactly and and and you know your point of saying this whole dawah thing this kneel that well with the kind of

uh the christian uh fundamentalism the way they preach it i really do feel that this dawah has its subconsciously its ties with colonialism because when them going over and preaching because we do you see in muslim history people felt this need to go out and stand and and preach where did they do even even mufti and this is one point i raised even distributing copies of the quran yeah many people they say what you know i've i've done some dawah workshops before and we really break that over down and who is that we're too and how is that what we're doing and how did the messenger of all and

that there was the ability to to give out pages of the quran what the muslims had yeah of course and in fact they were very skeptical and they didn't like it they actually you know if you read the fatah of like imam nowadays you you've got whole projects whose whole fundraising campaign is based around we distributed one million copies of the quran in such as in such a town or such and such a country and it's like hold on who who whoever said that that was the the aim of dawah yeah the prophet

he was the quran walking amongst people his manners were the quran yemen yeah where you spent your time the message you know imam doesn't have a chain for this hadith it does not have a chain ibn abdullah said i've gone through everything i could i could not find a chain for what imam malik brings he does not care the message of this hadith that imam malik brings under kitab under the book of manas is that

important that the chain could be done he does not care he does not bring any snot he just says it has reached me that the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam when muad is going it says that puts his foot in in the kind of saddle thing and he's climbing on and the prophet stops him and he says he says he says that before i could go the prophet stopped me and said just make sure your character is good this was the message that's the whole head that's the hadith

imam malik brings it he does not have a chain for it or he does not share a chain ibn abdullah says you know i've i've exhausted everything i could the half of the i couldn't find a chain this is from the four hadith that imam malik brings with no chain that we can find but it's that important that he puts this in his mother so but i have a question for you no no which is easier to do to to distribute a book which is comes off the printing press or to start the really difficult journey of becoming people of better which is easier to do oh yeah i mean it's just let's just

print out mass print the quran and just give it out to people because you know this and then convince ourselves that we've done that this age of number crunching data you know that we are victims to a quantitative age where we can just show you know i've done uh like somebody said uh i'm uh i'm a shahada there was a clip i commented on it once that i'm a shahada something machine yeah that i i can't forget what the full thing he said but basically i turn over shahadas every week

i have quantitative data that you know i convert so many people conversion this thing is not just saying there is an islam to bring and the problem is is that but you see you can't show qualitative data i can't show people oh you know we've got uh you know mashallah good character this this is it's easy to say hey i distributed ten thousand leaflets you you can't you can't show it you can't quantify it but it can be seen yeah and people are looking yeah and people are not stupid and if they see a foul mannered and foul mouthed person give them a copy of the quran that copy

of the quran is is very unlikely to do anything for them if they see a good mannered person with who impresses them with his character or her character that is going to have an impact on the heart and that is what brings people to islam and that's the doubt of the messenger of allah 100 i i say this every single time i can that when the prophet salallahu that's just my private jet [Music] right i say that whenever i can that when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam came to medina and they asked him what should we do what should we do tell us the prophet could have now said yet you

know go around bang on each door call them to salah which by the way is technically a bidad not i'm not banging on about bridal but i'm just saying that was never the way of the prophet to knock on people's doors and say come but he could have said oh stand in that corner and start distributing uh you know these kind of parchments with quran written on them he could have said just start yelling at the top of your voice over there that lies great and he could have said go around find [ __ ] and tell people off what did the prophet say he said

yeah you know like look check this out like say peaceful nice stuff spread peace and feed people people like to be fed like people like you know be kind to people be generous gift people things and is that is there an outcome

this will get you your salvation that you're searching but yeah i mean i remember once uh i remember once mufti and this is when i remember the crisis in cali with the with the refugee camp um went down and and so what happened is within this camp which was known as the jungle yeah the people kind of separated themselves according to their nationalities or clans and it was really interesting we did a full mapping of the whole kind of camp and and we we met and we appointed different representatives and that's how we did the distributions then but part of it was made up uh with ethiopian christians and so

they they had their little tent church and they had their storeroom and and while we were doing distributions uh because we we our aim was to to make sure that everybody in the whole camp had uh suitable well not suitable but something for accommodation clothes and food and so we went to them we sat down with the with the with the priest uh i think his name was nemo i i remember that yeah his name was nemo that's exactly the name that is this really humble ethiopian guy who was seen as like the community leader by his community there and we went down there i remember we we rolled up with the van

and we started getting the sacks of rice out and all this all this uh food aid and he said to me you know what we've had some other visitors from england they came to us you know what they gave us they gave us bibles you know what i said to them how dare you give us these bibles when we don't even have food in our stomachs how can we even focus on reading this bible when we're hungry and we don't have any clothes and so this guy was so happy that we just brought some some food and he was so upset with the with some of the christian responses from from the uk i don't know probably you know everybody has these people yeah of course it's it's not just those in this now

that's true it's a mentality unfortunately this it's a club you know we want people in our club we want quantitative kind of uh results i want to show people i've done this you know it's this age of and you find it in everything you find it in aspects of rituals of people you know they could say like i've read this many thus be hard i've read you know such and such as read this many quran you know he said this a hundred times he's read surah yah sin it's a quantitative age you see yeah but subhanallah but i mean that

this this this this whole thing tying in with um you've got what happened at cali and moving uh further you know back to to the current time there is p there are people that do want to sometimes do real effort do real work um and and obviously everybody themselves now that's something people can't do like i i can't just get up and say you know what i want to help i mean i could say but it's it's it's it's such a long mission for every individual to get up and create a wheel to say well let's go help like you said refugees let's go help asylum seekers

let's go help the poor there are mechanisms and cogs in places where people have already set up something but i mean you know this this in itself involves a whole unfortunate new kind of web of understanding and saying well hmm what's going on here you know we're happy people are happy sometimes like we said about give things gift things give money people are happy to do it uh but they fear corruption you know and i've said this before and i'm not just saying this on your face that i've said this on my thing on my monday nights that there's only two people who i three people who i personally

know that i would say that are that are involved in humanitarian work charity work that i would personally trust and i've said one is chef adam kel week i've mentioned also osama and i've mentioned wazio and i've said that i i don't the problem is i too am distrustful of these organizations but you you've worked closely with some uh you're also acquainted with charity work with humanitarian aid you you spend every time i'm on facebook you're out there tell us a bit about this man right so uh this this kind of field i i the same thing it's the pull effect it's

not i didn't sit down one day and think you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna get into the kind of humanitarian sector and i'm gonna set up projects up around the world and i'm gonna do it it kind of just happened it started with cali in fact so kali uh was just something which as an individual i saw images of and and remember that image of the kurdish boy elaine kurdi wearing the red top and he he turned up on a turkish beach and he drowned and it really impacted me and then i heard about this this camp down in calais and i was like i have to do something i have to i have to do something and the only thing i could think of doing was driving down

filling my car with tents and supply whatever i could get together and so what happened is i went to my local tesco and i decided rather than buying all this camping stuff because it was the end of the summer this is before by the way kali even became a thing uh which was known about it was still okay france's dirty little secret when we started nobody really knew about the condition in this camp and so i i went to the local tesco uh and i thought rather than buying all this stuff i'll speak to the manager because i'm going to be buying a few things i'll see if she can give me a discount so i speak to the manager ask for a discount she says no i'm not going to give you a discount but

stay there two minutes later she comes out with boxes and boxes of supplies she said you can have these for free you're gonna you're gonna go down and help refugees you can have these for free so i just took a little picture with this manager put it on on uh on social media and the whole thing went viral and everybody was sending me messages we want to help can can i contribute to the cost of your fuel can i give you some money to buy some stuff and so what happened is people started transferring money over to me and it was going into my personal bank account now one of my print no one of my personal principles of fundraising is

every fundraiser you will see me do now none of the money ever comes to me it goes straight direct to the charity and then the charity administers it and i i have oversight over the project that's the way i work now but i this is the way it started so very quickly i had literally thousands of pounds in my personal bank account i knew that i was vulnerable to maybe accusations further down the line in the future or any anything could happen so i decided as soon as i came back i'm gonna change that situation and i sat down uh with the uh senior management human relief foundation that was a charity who had known people involved there for for several years and i trusted them

and basically i said to them listen i don't like the fact that this money is coming to me i want it to go under your charity umbrella and you give me the the the ability to control where this is spent and where it goes and everything else and they were like fine yeah as long as you can meet our uh kind of uh procedures and policies all the rest of it fine go ahead so that's how it started and then it went from calais it quickly went to greece then it went to jordan and the syrian border and iraq and somalia and yemen alhamdulillah while i was over in yemen a couple years ago we established the human relief foundation office uh we were coordinating with the united nations body so so all of a sudden it's gone from this

individual small thing to all of and this is what i'm saying it's the pull effect yeah i don't know what's going on mufti saab all i know is that allah just keeps opening door after door after door and we try and review our intentions as much as possible and then we'll try and do as much as possible so i find myself in a situation now where i have the ability and this kind of pool of supporters and donors has has built up and i i try to be as transparent as i can i don't do any fundraiser except that i'm willing to spend my own money on the on the project what i'm raising for uh and and i i believe it's about i believe it's about the

now this is the issue we've we've seen lately trust has plummeted for within the muslim charity sector shall we say and there are there are issues in the muslim charity sector and people often get confused what i i'd say two things the first piece of advice is is your right to be cautious your right to ask questions and check and make sure and in my advice i say to you don't ask these questions to the fundraiser

no because that's their job their job is to meet their targets you see and so unfortunately they have a a tendency not everybody but they'll have a tendency to to kind of bend the truth or just say anything to get that donation from you ask somebody other than the fundraiser within the charity the the important questions the other thing i tell people to do is is be aware that they're not all charities are bad there are some really good transparent charities out there who operate properly yeah uh but then there are other issues as well you know about so what what happens often is people become so disenfranchised

with the larger charities that they set up their smaller little group initiatives and sometimes you have to really question the efficiency of these outfits because they really don't make any sense so for example when people and i'm not trying to pull anybody's work down but all i'm saying is real talk so i mean yeah yeah you want to help the people of yemen okay if you want to put some old clothes or a bag of rice in a container and send it to yemen that is not an efficient way to do it it would be much more honestly no but people don't get it they're obsessed with these containers

first of all it's going to take months to even get there if you can even get the clearance into the port and then when it arrives the whole task involved in distributing these to the right places is a project in itself if you're going to do it properly which is going to cost money of course and what will probably happen is because you don't have the funding to distribute it properly it will go into the hands of whoever gets it first and then they'll probably sell sell the stuff unless you're going to pay the money to distribute it which will probably cost twice as much as if you would have sent the money over to yemen as a donation in the first place to a trustworthy charity who could have bought the food locally and benefited the local economy

bought the clothes locally or whatever you're sending over and and then distribute it so you know sometimes people can be disenfranchised but that you know the the individual way is not always the most efficient another another thing which i have an issue with uh is so we have the charities commission as you know yeah the charities commission what they do is they regulate and make sure that all charities uh act according to british law with a muslim charity you have an added level of ethics or expectations say for example if a project is zakat eligible for example

how do you implement that uh the the the qurbani the udhiya for example which is restricted by time and all these other factors so so i i do see the potential for charities and people falling short in fulfilling that kind of a mana and trust from the donors uh whereas nobody's there to regulate it that is so true i mean it's it's such a you see because i think there's so many things here that you're saying one which is just real talk in the sense that look there is uh things cost money let's just be real you know like if i say uh

i want to pay a hundred pounds i want to pay a thousand pounds i want you to get this to yemen i want you to get this to uh whether it's going to be syria iraq kashmir gambia wherever it's going to be i want you to get this there but i'm not going to pay for anything else or i don't want this to now there's a there's a nice that's a nice intention but there's also a real life scenario here that had you know it's going to cost money to do the things you're trying to do and i think sometimes people do forget that the other thing is that sometimes people are happy to give the money like they're happy to have an expense

taken out but they fear that if that's gonna be the majority or a huge chunk of what they're giving then is it even worth it because if you say well i'm giving a thousand pounds and basically 600 pounds of your thousand pounds will just go into my pocket because that's how the person is understanding it they feel that well in that case i'd rather spend it on my own kids you know this is the kind of thinking that people which to some i feel is justified uh but then on the other hand there is and i want to say this just put this out there i did say i had an episode with brazil as well

and i said that look i feel that the tragedies that are going on worldwide there you know it takes such a big heart to really go there and to be able to do these things that i actually feel that honestly i don't have the heart to do it because i feel that if i was exposed to so much things it would just break me down so i feel you know like a big wow to people that do do that so you know people that go out there and i understand there's a desensitization after a while but still you know to even become desensitized to tragedies is a you know it's a it takes a big effort so

there's a huge you know what you know there's distrust but there's a need there's there's just so many uh important factors here to to bring in one thing to mention is that the the british muslim community are very very very very generous martial yeah very generous and if a little bit of thought if a little bit of professionalism if more transparency was added into that mix maybe a bit of strategic planning on behalf of the the donors coordinating with the people who are going to implement these projects on the their behalf

they could have much more impact locally and globally than what they've had so far yeah uh you know do you know you know how we've been talking about like sectarianism within within islam yeah within the muslim community or within the masajid you also get this unfortunately within the charity sector it's just a human thing everybody likes to stick to their club and unfortunately over the years time after time after time i've seen opportunities presented to charities to come together and join forces if you like and it's uh do they just become cults in and of

themselves i think that that potential is definitely there yeah and then don't forget the different charities they've got different colors so this one's orange and that one's purple and this one's green no seriously and this one's yellow and and these volunteers it's it's like the the the sufi tariqas it's like i'm a this and you're this and oh no we don't mix with them and we don't talk to them and and and it's more competition than cooperation like competition is sometimes good if it's if it's healthy and productive but i don't see i don't see much of of that kind of competition within the charity sector unfortunately

and at the end of the day people are in in in this kind of sector for different reasons for some people it's their job it's a source of employment nine to five it brings in a monthly paycheck so they will do whatever needs to be done to keep that in place for other people uh they're in this kind but you need those as well you need the nine-to-fivers you you need the the people for whom it's just a job if they can come in and do that job properly you do need those guys so it doesn't have to be a heart thing for everybody i understand however when we're talking about annie the the islamic charities and and the the kind of ethics what goes along with it and and the relieving uh or making situations best i

think you do need people with with heart like there needs to be a you know there needs to be that the right measures have to be taken like let's it's all over the media this let's say recently there was uh penny appeal now they'd had this whole thing going on setting up a uh child kind of refuges and all these things in gambia now there was sexual abuse going on there was you know violence going on they were it was so ill it was actually operating according to the report illegally according to the gambian

government from what i've read um despite the fact that many uh people here are qualified they're professionals they've got the post i mean they they have a responsibility of safeguarding of of or at least of pla of doing something like having certain measures in place i'd assume i mean what's the you're closer to the whole charity sector so what's this what what the hell happened with with this situation in gambia

i'll be honest with you i've got to be careful about about what i say because many of these outfits you know they have they have uh good lawyers and and they don't hesitate in getting things out there but i think in general so not speaking specifically about sure in general it's me i'll i'll say anything they can come for me don't worry about it be careful they're more than one

right but in general in general it's about it's about your model and how you operate and i think it comes back to what i was saying before striking the balance between professionalism and and and your your ethics so are you driven are you driven is is it all about running things like a business i agree many business elements should be incorporated into a charity the the elements of a business which which allow your work to be more efficient which allow you uh to to grow and and have a bigger impact but i don't think we should go down that route to the maxwell

where you're spending huge amounts of your income on facebook adverts for example yeah uh that annie where where where do you draw the line on your marketing budgets where do you draw your line on your staffing budgets and if it's all about business then i think this is where you're going to be making the the kinds of mistakes that were made there in in different parts of the world and maybe these whole issues come to light because of financial disputes not necessarily because of because orphans are being abused maybe it's a financial dispute with the people on the ground

and in revenge if you like they bring out but that is a shame though isn't it because it's because like that means especially yeah if we're talking about orphans yeah i mean that means that the one who who unjustly takes the the wealth of a your team that which they're putting into their mouths is is nothing's going into their stomachs except fire yeah to be honest mufti i've been so afraid of being involved in in orphan projects since i've been involved in the charity sector i've never done a fundraiser for for an orphan project because i'm not because i don't want to help orphans

of course i do but i find it such a dangerous area to be this is me personally you know you you in in general you have to be careful with these things but especially with with with the threat of honey for me it's an area i i don't like to go near and it looks like there's been some gross gross uh yeah i mean you're right if if a charity was professional had the safeguarding policies and procedures uh not just there as documents to show that they have them in a tick box exercise if they actually acted upon them and and made sure they they were up to date and had these

mechanisms for because they've had because they have people you know what's funny i mean this thing isn't funny but what's funny is just when you've made a post today so somebody sent me a uh screenshot there was uh that you're gonna be going live so there's a lot of kind of hate jumping on your post um i mean a lot of positivity as well but a lot of the love is always more love is a little like button right let's let's let's do a a test now okay go for it and all the haters right now do the angry emoji

let's see let's see that come on people spread the love so can you see you see and what's funny is that somebody had sent me some screenshots uh and somebody said and you know this the funny thing is somebody on there commented and i don't personally

know these people but somebody commented with some hate towards me saying that um hey jiba mbe or something saying ask him about his criminal conviction and i'm thinking and the funny thing is now this is just a fine example here is a no it was a question are you going are you going to ask him and i replied and i said i wasn't planning on it and the funny thing is this was a person that was actually the safeguarding consultant for penny appeal during the years in which they had this gambian project set up

and and you've got people like that i'm i'm not sure i'm i'm i don't know if you're sure about that but i know she does contribute lots of of safeguarding yeah no so during no so i'm not whether she's specific she's a a consultant proposing on social media saying i'm a consultant at a british level for this charity during those years and this kind of horrendous stuff has been conducted and you've got this person now saying well what i do now is i handle vulnerable children in this country then having the nerve that this is the example of the muslim community trying to say well

do you know mufti's been to prison well of course i've been to prison but my point is well i'm not the one that is dealing with vulnerable children i'm not the one that's trying to claim that hey let's take money off people and turn a blind eye to while horrendous horrendous kind of atrocities are being conducted it was the world the worst thing about it for me is obviously besides the fact that that not just children but orphans have to go through this the worst thing about it was the gap between the image of these things and how it was marketed to get donations and the and the reality of it that

and this is what i'm talking about a a a a kind of crude business operation would do something like that a charity who is out there to help how could they ever have such a big gap between what they're marketing and what they're selling and and the the you know what you're actually getting that shatters the trust in in the muslim community everybody yeah for everyone everybody gets kind of somebody said what did you ah right prisoner doing it but yeah i mean i've got a whole video explaining i mean it's it's nothing people would say it's for basically uh corrupting

corrupting a police officer normally i'm i'm done for corrupting the ummah but but anyway i didn't corrupt him but yeah i still until today maintain my innocence but it was a wonderful i'd like to actually say on that note you know my prison experience it actually i don't just mean in the showers i mean the the the prison experience actually gave me such invaluable insight on life that i'm weirdly very grateful for it so it's actually and i've got a whole video where i explain that i don't think it would take too much to go back if i

mean i've taken my experience but it was you know it's i'm just saying it's a very interesting you know that seems to be it's a very common occurrence for i don't want to beg your ego but that many many assalah many a righteous man has to go through prison on his journey towards why not why not but i was just i just remembered that whilst we were talking about we're like a genuine criminal right who that's it dedicated to the profession but uh but yeah and and to be and just to say as well look i've never claimed to be a pious person and in fact i make it very clear that i'm not a pious

person if you're coming looking for piety you're coming to the wrong person hell no i say to people if you're looking for somebody to make you very pious and spiritual and stuff like this you've come to the wrong place you know i'm i'm just somebody who fell in love with the legacy of islam and i studied it and i continue to study and just teach what i've learned so that that's that's my journey it's not to you know you're not going to catch me praying nafal i wish you would but that would be a lie

yeah so but i just remembered that point because somebody had said that and i thought oh yeah that's funny and you know there's a there's a poem in urdu it reminds me of it says from such people who call me uh like look at that misfit you know somebody who's whatever lost or whatever they say these people who themselves keep a separate address and live in a different address like meaning that is the duplicity of these people's lifestyles

to be honest in in today's defense uh i don't know what what's going on between you two no i don't really i did have by the way i didn't even go into people messaged me no mashallah no let me just tell you so so since this whole scandal happened she's been quite a savior for many people within the muslim charity sector in that she's she's gone in and she's helped them and she's cover up trash yeah she's good [Music] she could have but i didn't go into all the hanky-panky stuff people shared because i thought let that be but the professional stuff they shared about her

and this kind of stuff i thought well that's odd i don't know this person gunning for me and i thought well check your track record the the yeah the thing the thing is now it's difficult to know what what and i think about this often but i i do think there is there is room for i do think there's kind of uh there's a desire for within the muslim community and within the the kind of donor community to have some kind of mechanism whatever form that will take to to just hold our charities to uh standards which the charities commission doesn't hold them to because obviously we have our

faith standards of course and and then maybe to higher standards as well and i'm not sure would it take the form of a halal hmc more bureaucracy to fix the bureaucracy would it just be uh i don't know maybe a group of people and this is something actually which i did within within hrf what we did we developed the zakat policy and then i went around the country to the different offices so birmingham uh manchester all over the country london and we trained every member of staff and volunteer up on the issues surrounding zakar the theory of zakah developments in zakar modern manifestations of that the different

elements involved and and it was a really really interesting process but we need something which is more regular uh and more accessible and maybe there is space for some a kind of group of people uh who have experience of to kind of oversee yeah i don't know how it would work because i know if it was a body trying to give authentication or not then the charities would all just boycott them from the start and wouldn't they because why why would this especially the corrupt ones but it is a it is an uh yeah i mean i i hope

i hope things get resolved i hope things there was some other scandal as well recently was i think was the islamic relief or something or yeah there's been a few yeah and islamic relief uh one of the i think it was trustees got found out to be making uh anti-semitic statements and then the whole committee resigned and what really happened i've been told there's another story as well and what's that there was something about children in need or something or children in deen children in deen no or i thought that because they were in the last few months i've seen a few people have sent me messages and i can't remember now but there's a bunch of them and it's it is a shame

it's one charity after the next and to be honest my personal policy uh after i i after i uh left hrf last year i was very very very very choosy about who i was going to be involved in to the point that i only sat down and talked with two charities okay out of everybody this is me personally maybe my standards are quite high but i i i was only willing to entertain uh or even be involved in working with with two charities back then uh that's not to say there aren't any more out there it's just maybe i i don't know who who were the two out of curiosity so for me it was

it was syria relief and muslim hands okay i've not even heard of syria relief i mean unfortunately for me i've not heard of them um i mean so this is this is the thing so siri relief are the charity who i'm working with now and we're just on the verge of making them more international uh inshallah it's going to change from syria relief to a an an international level inshallah but into alhamdulillah so yeah but the muslim community within the uk is a very giving by statistics are very giving communities and it ranked number one when it came to giving uh you know with their hearts open david cameron when he was prime minister

he came out and he acknowledged this he said our muslim community are the most generous community in the country yeah by by far that is amazing yeah it is also when when you see how inefficient the use of this resource is then that that can uh kind of that dampens the spirits quite a bit unfortunately and whenever you see these kind but then again the people of vision they're always going to be complaining aren't they sometimes yeah because i think what would be amazing is if we could have this kind of group of people who have the the the they understand the basics of

uh zakah and islamic kind of elements and also they have a thorough understanding of the charity sector and how how programs works and how fundraising works and maybe they could go in and offer training or that's how it could start and then maybe you could have affiliate members or you know so to me it's like this i and i've said this on a previous show and i'm not saying people need to adopt this method to me it still works from a ground level up like this just i i understand that many charities must be doing amazing things but i have unfortunately and it's been for a

while because you know when you're involved in the religious circle you have access you know you have behind the scenes access and you realize that it's all you know often all too often let me put it like this it's just human to human you know it's like all about power money things like this that's the religious circle generally and charity is an extension of that so i've been don't forget it's an extension of it with potentially even more power yeah even more like there was this there was this whole incident with sheikh kubi and a particular charity i can't remember where it was all about this as well about money power trying to chuck people

off become now so for me it's been about just from you know from bottom up it's been about if i know some people who i feel those people are trustworthy then as a sense of amanah i would take it that they know the bureaucratic process and i trust them so i've and i've mentioned that you have been one of those people for years now that i've known and i unfortunately i've only known a few i'm not saying there ain't more out there i'm sure there's you know countless people out there that are like that it's just people that i've personally known and i felt you know like you kind of get a vibe in it and you feel that subhanallah like

like tranquil that you know this this trust here there's a mana you know you know that the person is not gonna you know it's not really going only my limited circle of charity and i maybe if people have a connection with their local people and they trust them like that they could probably give in that way yeah yeah martial uh yeah but wow i mean that's it's yes for hmc for chelsea [Laughter] shall we set this up we set this up and it brings a whole new level of power

[Laughter] so adam are you uh you're gonna be back abroad soon i take it doing some projects or something uh two weeks time i'm heading back to yemen inshallah and i'm really looking forward to it because the the way i say as we described before when i first went over to yemen and on my journey ever since then i've benefited so much from the scholars of yemen not just the scholars of yemen even the people of yemen especially that that first time when i was there i need that the messenger of allah said

and this this is the thing right because i wonder as a convert to islam in the uk would i ever have been able to have been kind of shaped and formed and cultured into a quote-unquote practicing muslim if i if i had not gone to yemen and i don't think i would have and i feel sorry for converts who kind of do convert and don't have the two years in yemen followed by the the time after that as well and and it the environment and yet seriously you know why so many yemeni kids in england go straight okay why you know why because their parents think that you leave your kid on the street

and the street will bring him up that happens in yemen in yemen you can literally leave your kids on the street and the street and the environment will bring them up or it would have done when i was there anyway into becoming these subhanallah very very and those that didn't understand that that's a hadith in sahih muslim that al-iman yamani that iman faith is of yemeni origin and walhikma yamaniya and wisdom is of a yemeni origin that's that's always been an amazing hadith imam malik was from yemen he was from a descendant from um so hence some of the the maliki's

tried to fit it there but but i i felt that it's been an amazing what can i ask you what is your take on the whole situation going on politically there i mean why is saudi arabia and this attack bombardment of yemen i mean what's the obsession what's right so so so there are a few things what i'd say and that is the common narrative which is given to people over here or which people have access to via the media does not really set a very accurate picture of of what's going on so i think the best way to do it is is kind of specific can i just ask is there const is there bombardment still going on

there are bombardments going on however the majority of the attacks which the media don't tell you about are actually the houthis launching drones and missiles over to saudi arabia and bombing the airport in abha bombing the oil fields and this is happening all the time even though it's small scale so i'm not justifying saudi attacks here but i'm saying this is the side of the conflict which you don't hear about can you for for the viewers explain the breakdown briefly what is when you say houthis and you say who are the the main factions within yemen that that may contribute yemen is

very broadly split up between north and south if you get a map it actually looks more like western east than it does north and south but that's just the way the the the kind of borders and boundaries uh run so in the north of yemen which is smaller in land size but it's much more dense in population so the majority of yemenis live in the north and the majority of those yemenis in the north uh are from zaidi backgrounds so traditionally in yemen you had showafe and zhud you had the chaffees and you had the zadies and when i was back there in 2000 all the

way until just before this new latest conflict started there's always been uh relative harmony between these two groups to the extent that without exaggeration you can pray in each other's mosques the zadies don't say i mean loudly the chef is do that's fine you're praying each other's mosques the zadies pray with their arms down saddle the sherpa is pray with their arms that's fine it's never been an issue the zadie say uh after the and the shaykh is uh say

just for the viewers that you know the zadie uh although it is i mean dating back to imam zaid of the shia uh lineage although it is a shia sect in essence or a group denomination it is actually very um respectable uh not only two but also from the sunni perspective like they they because they don't actually the differences have always been very mild so all in essence all it was was for example the [ __ ] i don't have a an issue with center of the alarm yet for sahabah because they don't have this concept of cursing

because they just basically uh honored i mean imam said he he honored uh the companions but he felt seven ali was more virtuous and better uh more deserving is is a better word for let's say he ought to be number one but the fact that he wasn't he still said that the shaykh who are abu bakr and umar i say radhiallahu and i respect them and and so the difference is although they are she a politically in that sense i've discussed this previously they kind of aligned themselves with said ali's camp but they weren't like the general 12 versions or people who had an issue later on with

some companions once you introduce part regional politics then it becomes more so so what what you have is is an a potential ally for iran with the zadies yeah and a potential ally for the saudis in the chef at ease and and believe you me uh mufti this has very very little to do with sectarianism and to do with religion and it's more about geopolitics if you look at the areas where the saudi-led alliance have been attacking it's got more to do with the red sea coast all the way down to the babel mendeb strait it's all about controlling berbel mendeb

which is the southern version of the suez canal in the north of the red sea every ship coming from the east to the west has to travel through this and it's all about control over there and ironically burble mandev and and these towns up that course so uh uh all these towns to these four north or the south they're not even zadie towns they're they're they're chef at the town so it's it's got nothing to do with sundance here it's about controlling that that kind of uh uh that straight for for having just a straightforward within the northern or the southern it's under southern yeah

but also the red course so so the biggest port in yemen on the the red sea was al hodeidah which is which is in the north uh once again you've you've got sunnis there but you've got intense conflicts because of the uh the strategic uh value of of these places so it's it's it can be very confusing it's uh in the south in the south you've got a whole different political landscape so in the north you've got the houthis now the houthis are originally zadies they're led by said abdul melikel houthi they started off as a bit of a rebel group in the mountains who the who the saudis decided to run a

campaign against them and bomb them out of existence and now they are running the north of the country and the former capital and they're doing a much better job of it than the yemeni government the quote-unquote legitimate yemeni government are doing down in the south if we're being honest they are okay even so so what's happened is you've got some new banknotes have been introduced to yemen and they're smaller in size so they're the same values but smaller in size the old banknotes which the houthis still have up in santa because they don't have access to the to the smaller ones will give you a higher exchange rate than the the smaller ones which which the southerners are printing

in cooperation with the alliance and that's because they're just running the government better up in the north even though they've been blockaded even though they they don't have an airport and and i'm just speaking from a neutral perspective here i'm not a supporter of houthis by any span of the imagination the official slogan of the houthis and this is enough for me to know that it's not anything i want to be involved in the official slogan of the houthis is

israel allahu [Laughter] death to america death to israel may the curse of god be upon the jews and victories for islam wow so subhanallah yeah and then in the south you've got this reemergence now of al-qaeda of isis why isis isis is supposed to be this is this is recently like what's isis got to do with yemen what

yeah how is you know i used to hear so many uh peaceful things about uh is it i used to hear so many things about the kind of baroque there the peaceful kind of sense of learning is that still there is that now what what's what's happening is an exception in all of this okay so a terrain just happens to be this kind of peaceful oasis which nobody knows how it martial allah they they managed to avoid all of this and i think part of the reason is because the the scholars of tarim they they have a dislike of of involving themselves

in politics uh and that i think has has been kind of like their insurance policy which is which has saved them in a time like this however because you've got security there you've got mass migrations of internally displaced people from all over yemen who are now settling interim and so that they're kind of suffering indirectly in that the the rents have shot up the costs of food go up it's a stress on the education and and even even the covert situation uh bacca a a few months ago kovid was really really ravaging uh the city of terrain more than more than other parts of yemen but that seems to have calmed down

alhamdulillah oh okay and you know this recent um these new kind of uh um what they called it with israel naturalization of the situation the status quo opening up commerce with israel having flights and saudi arabia i think will be announcing something soon as well it's kind of preparing people uh the uae clearly has what has this impacted yemen in any way has there been any kind of no no not not that i know of uh highly doubt yemen will be involved anytime soon in

announcing any kind of normalization of relations just for the mere fact that the distance traditionally in yemen between the people and between the rulers is much shorter than in the gulf countries so in the gulf countries it's always been a taboo to say anything against your leader or your ruler if it wasn't then i think a lot of the people in these countries who've normalized the relations would be speaking out but because there's this kind of uh you know you know what i'm saying in yemen you've never had that you people walk around and they'll swear at the president day and night and there won't be any repercussions for that so i just don't think it's a

it's uh it's even on on the table i have a feeling oman which is the next door neighbor of yemen will be announcing their normalization within the next few days uh sudan has they're putting pressure on them to to to do the same egypt has kind of uh expressed some interest but has it openly announced yet or uh i don't think there's been an open announcement but i think i think we all know where the government would like to go uh but we also know where the people would like to go and this is this is the irony isn't it you've got all these kind of uh governments who are going in one particular direction and if

they don't if they don't have the people with them then how sustainable are all kind of gestures like this you know what's interesting is that you look historic you go back through history and it's kind of like the same story except just the characters have changed now if you go to before the prophet's time and even

this is it now in in the book by uh macintosh arabs a 3000 year history he highlights how the the forest the at that time the persians you've got the uh the sassanid dynasty how they had certain they had uh special relations with yemen they had some of the abner that were of persian origin that was sent there and they were established then they had certain relations with they were trying to gain ground in uh in egypt they were trying to do certain things around here but then you had the byzantines who would have had european support as well

but they were trying and there was this kind of like internal and it's interesting that uh he highlights in that book that um during the one of the reasons that is this is tim mcintosh smith here yeah so he highlights he lived in yemen by the way he lived in because he has a whole book dedicated to i'm trying to actually reach out to him if i can i saw him on a podcast and i'd love to get him out once and i did get in touch with him but i never managed to meet up with him while he was inside if you still have a contact for him please do forward it to me i want to get him on a mind trap to review his book and talk about it right so the the interesting thing is he

highlights that prior to the prophet you had an effort where there was um i think it was or someone who the arabs supported as almost like a prophet but this is prior to islam now he one of the things he was doing was going around arabia and he was putting out these uh these erastrian kind of worship places the fire and stuff like this and the arab tribes kind of supported him but what he highlights is that during the prophets time peop one of the reasons why the arab tribes may have eventually all come behind the prophet

is because they may have felt this was a a defense against the kind of the the encroachment of the sassanids and here is an arab that we can get behind and rally behind and it's interesting that you move on now 1400 years and the story is pretty much the same very important it's just different people like now you've got iran which is now muslim but it's still there's a politics going on it's got allies some allies over there in the middle east in yemen it's still got the same thing you've got now you haven't got the byzantines but you've got is israel

israel and they've got the allies in europe and they you you know it's the yeah you know it's the same uh hekaia same krisa going on just wow it's it's amazing it's it's so like in a way it's like well it kind of blows your mind when you think about it so who are we exactly are we are we just playing are we just extras [Laughter] character are you playing please god don't make me an extra should we take a few questions that are being presented oh before we before we take that since i

discussed already some some of the trolling comments that had appeared on your post and uh in light of that i have to bring up abdullah al-andalusi who who also engaged on the thing uh this whole thing of uh and i did and by the way if he watches this or if anybody that's close to him watches this this is i do invite him to to come on to uh mind trap i'd love to have a discussion but this whole ideology it's not about him but this whole ideology of we need an islamic caliphate uh it's something you've dealt with as well you know quite a bit have faced a lot of heat trying to tackle this ideology it is the

the driving the the pull factor for groups like isis for al qaeda in essence this global we need a kind of global caliphate something to rule the world islam has to rule the world right what on earth is going on here sure i think in in short no khilafah of the last 1000 years would meet their criteria or not 1000 years i'm pretty sure uh pretty sure most of the entire history of islam maybe they'll accept i'm not even sure they'll accept uthman i don't think they'll accept uthman and

ali but they'll probably accept uh because in uthman's time they'll also arguably say there's nepotism and this and that and in ali or the alliance time they're going to say the civil war muslims fighting muslims uh but okay maybe abu bakr and omar they might accept well you know what uh i'm not going to speak on their behalf has agreed uh to come on uh and he apparently is waiting for your invitation so you saw it i i would love to get him on that would be amazing i i'm dying to have somebody talk to me about what i will say to you both because i know you both love a good debate and that's not

that's not my thing it's not a debate it's a discussion it's a dialogue i i want to i want to be educated on why we need a global global caliphate and where does this even come like which counterfeit before it exactly i mean none have actually existed because god forbid they say bonnie omaya or the other sins i'm really intrigued and or could it be the ottomans who weren't even arab according to the definition they weren't even eligible to be khulafa so uh i i i'm really intrigued by this whole understanding but this thing has it plagued the muslim world

that we need a global we need global domination i i think it's just been a bit of a fashion which kind of came and i think it's almost gone now if if i'm honest yeah i think whatever dreams or nightmares were were out there they've kind of been crushed by the whole isis thing because what isis did is they gave you they gave you what you've been what you've been asking for abu bakr al-baghdadi was your khalifa why didn't you get behind him exactly now that is actually and what's interesting is many such people said that oh it's not that they disagreed in essence with these such these such people said it's

not that they disagreed with isis they just felt okay some of the administrative structures were slightly rushed this is what they felt and you think no but you know why they said that because they just love arguing they're just like even even when the mehdi comes which i don't know what your position is on that but you probably don't think he's coming i don't i think he is when he does come in do you think you think he's gonna are gonna kind of entertain the mahdi the first thing he's gonna do when he comes is

imagine spending an entire lifetime trying to chase this dream of a caliphate i mean this it's so you know the idea that the prophet was about politics that he was really about controlling the world it's so antithetical to the seerah and it's interesting that not once in the quran the entire quran i mean the kalam of allah not once are you told or in a what i would argue hadith that the prophet

has taught you that muslims are about global domination you're not told once about the caliph in fact i've actually argued that this word khilafah is a post-islamic occurrence it doesn't even exist like with this meaning in the time of the prophet how could these hadith be using this word when the word comes into existence way after uh the prophet has has long been i mean this this word khilafah to mean something political is not found in the arabic language prior to islam so yeah that that so definitely you are preaching to the converted a lot

now this is also to the viewers who are uh intrigued about this topic but yeah i'd love to get inshallah i hope uh uh uh below it our savior does embrace i i remember once uh uh and i'm i'm no this is this is nothing to do with the brother abdullah and who by the way uh i i i don't know him too well but from what i do know of him and i'm not want to watch all these lectures and all right all these i mean you're not missing much but yeah he does seem like a very uh serious dedicated well-mannered person to to to his cause and and to be honest he's never gone kind of beyond the bounds in in his

interactions with me and i found him very helpful and you know one time i went over to uh portugal and i i think he might be originally portrayed he really helped me and you know recommending places to visit and this kind of thing so uh but on on on oh that's good so uh we'll wait for you to inshallah come on to it'll be a pleasure and it won't be and it won't be a debate just to be clear it'll be a dialogue i'm interested in just speaking i'm not interested in in kind of like the debates anyway i

don't like i feel that this is a death or to it it is the death of learning this kind of like this old you know this way of like oh you've got to debate but let's let's talk let's let people talk yeah this is uh we need to read a book about how to have a conversation this is the problem [Laughter] yeah moving on yeah so of course uh so yeah i'm going back to yemen in sha allah in the next two weeks uh if anybody wants to uh right i'm gonna get some clout now uh of course people listen up you can

follow you can follow the journey because one one thing which i do when i'm out there so i've got loads of admin work to do over there which i probably won't show much of meetings with ministries and documents rather security policy no no no no i think it's important for people to know i don't this is not the side of what people see people usually see me like kind of on the ground doing a food distribution which i just love i love honestly it just gives me so much of a buzz to be there and and just doing something to to to serve the people even though strictly speaking it's it's not necessarily my remit you know i could ask anybody to do that on my behalf but i love to be in there

and and i think this is you know this is something we see throughout the sunnah is the prophet saw was telling he would he would he he'd get in there and he'd he'd be involved and he'd be with the people and ali so yeah follow the the journey in yemen inshallah uh one of my uh first things i'll be doing is actually going right up to the uh to the the red line the kind of what's it called the uh the close to the front line and what you'll get there is because people are fighting you'll get lots of displaced people and usually they have very very little uh to survive on so we'll be doing some emergency interventions there inshallah

and i'll i'll send the link to mufti as well of course i'll put her up i'll put up the links in the youtube description as well people so do check it out uh should we take some quick uh q a that's that people are right people if you've got any questions fire away i'll be presenting them to the sheikh right here allahu akbar the one and only people sheikh adam ibn adam al-khelwick our questions marx asks the question is there a humanitarian crisis currently in yemen would you say uh the answer to that is is yes

according to the statistics and the statistics are or any people don't just make this the fault that you know you have a very strong presence of uh organizations and people who feed into this uh the according to the statistics it's currently the world's largest humanitarian uh crisis i think something like uh 75 to 80 percent don't quote me on that but it's a very high proportion of of people in yemen they they have to rely on food aid because they don't have the income and they don't have the access to the food one big misconception though is that people assume that there isn't any food in yemen

there is food yemen in yemen there's loads of food in yemen you don't need to fill a container with bags of rice and bags of pasta and send it over there because they have food in yemen people are prevented from that food through two main reasons either they're in an active conflict area in which no food can get into that area so as soon as the conflict dies down we can go in and provide them with food or if they have to leave the area as displaced people then we'll provide them food and shelter when they come out of it the second issue is the depreciation of the local currency uh the yemeni real has been plummeting for some time now people have lost their jobs they just

don't have the ability to be able to afford that food but there's a common misconception out there that there's there's no food in yemen there there is food there's lots of it it's just so people operate much better to get to basically stimulate the local economy and trying to get stuff done okay uh somebody has asked is it safe to travel to yemen uh i i would say so so as a person who's kind of lived there for years and it wasn't just the initial two years i've i've been back and lived there for years uh since then and traveled through i'm okay i've got my yemeni id card i can just blend in and i'm a little bit lighter skinned but once i get putting the

clothes on you know that they call it that was you know the oh they call it mauer's man that was alright yeah there's loads of different names there's the saurona which is the indonesian style the forta the matawas the yeah there's all different names i like it is the thick threaded woolen one i'll i'll send you a picture whenever is that you sending a picture of you in a sarong it's it's similar to a kilt in that you can get an idea of the person's tribe or the area where they're from by the style i thought that response was going to go in a totally different direction then you were like

you can get an idea of the guys uh i was thinking we're still alive [Applause] people are like well i how can i be seen in society if you're going to compare me to all these other people now on that note somebody has said about what you've mentioned well basically any any non-yemenis at the moment they can't even get visas i've been waiting since january for lockdown flights have just been reinstated to yemen uh and yeah the embassy i was speaking to them the other day they're not issuing visas to to non-germany so it's it's a difficult uh very difficult to

access at the moment somebody has asked what is your nationality see looks there you go you're mentioning the lightest skin there is what's your nationality which one do you want to play into here that's that's a question to to you share not to me i think obviously the sheikh is british but i think they mean ethnicity well if if they mean ethnicity let them ask ethnicity then exactly exactly learn english god damn it is british but we did discuss all of this in the beginning my red my red soon to become blue british passport does uh does mean lots of favors right let's check the facebook people

as well questions are coming up the if you're reading let's just know that you're loved take care uh much love right back [Laughter] see if we get if we attain love from you then nothing else really matters everything above the above the ground is just simply soil

so people well let me just take a look any questions and you wrap it around some questions here about jesus came to offer salvation okay i don't know what what the question there is but jesus came to offer salvation that that's that's interesting and and you know what uh in in my personal experience and also in in the experiences of many christians who become muslim with me and i've been helping them on their journey a lot of people are worried of a kind of sense of betrayal to jesus and so a common christian narrative is that no jesus is the only savior and the evidence they give for this is

from the bible where jesus says the only way to the father i.e god which is in the christian understanding is through me and then what i what i explain to christians is is that is not necessarily wrong from an islamic perspective because once jesus was with his once jesus had been sent to his people the the the way that you come to god was through jesus and the message of jesus because he was the messenger of god likewise the only way to god in the time of moses amongst the beni islam the children of israel was through moses and the messenger and the message of moses

and likewise in the time of of rasulallah the prophet muhammad peace and blessings be upon him the way to allah subhanahu wa is through the prophet muhammad peace and blessings be upon him so if you like if it depends what you mean by the word by the word savior but all of the messengers are literally people who offer salvation to people through them bringing them to god through them that that's that's the purpose of a messenger to offer salvation uh to take them out of the darkness and into the light and that's been the purpose and the and the the mission if you like of of every prophet a messenger so when jesus says

that the only way to the father or the only way to god is through me then we say oh of course we agree with that jesus was a messenger and he brought salvation to his people and likewise we're in the time of the prophet muhammad peace be upon him so you heard that people so none shall reach the father except through me there you go explain you know on that on that note i want to ask you that people say that look what books do you recommend converts or people close to you know those people who maybe have an affinity to islam to read especially when it comes to the seerah the life of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam

or maybe some early books in islam that are in english i often struggle with this because a lot of my that kind of reading isn't really done in english so and the stuff i do read in english isn't really to do with these topics about you know for newcomers and islam and so but you deal a lot with converts so what would you advise i i do and after all these years i still haven't come up with a with a reading list to recommend if i'm honest and it depends on the person themselves it depends are they coming in a spiritual angle are they coming in a kind of social angle are they coming in a kind of literalist angle where who is

the person and where are they coming from and i think books are an important part of the journey and i've i've met many is it amjad peop called being muslim many people kind of yeah they they speak highly about this book and it's and it's i think people are much more important people are much more important than books and uh you might be offended by that as a as a scholar and somebody who no no i'll be offended once i've got my books published and somebody who is kind of immersed in the world of books as i know you are but i think

like how how important were books in the life of lives of the sahaba ravi they were pleased with allah and allah is pleased with them like they they are the pinnacle of human existence for anybody who's looking for somebody to follow i'm not saying don't read books of course this is it's from here the dumbing down of the muslim ummah began in the uk they're going to trace it back to this moment and i'm not and i'm not saying and i'm not saying that that knowledge and books and ulama have not

done a huge service this is of course they are this ultimately this is how the clergy kept the masses illiterate and dumb like what's in books what's in books what knowledge is what power oh sorry sorry oh i forgot we're alive and it transfers from from from one breast to another breast it's yanny these these chairs

those kind of symbols which are printed as words on pieces of paper if that's going to be your teacher then the mistakes you're going to make there in are going to be more than the benefits you heard it people from the sheriff you got it sorry you got to take it from the from the breasts as the sheriff said and you got to transport it from breast to breast i want to learn more about this check where do i enroll on this course

i'm not sure you want to come on this show it's all about the knowledge people it's all about the knowledge yeah so but you know so i do i just i just think that peoples whose conversions are or whose journeys into islam uh are uh part of uh coming into contact with these people who have this light as the sahaba had it and as the taberine had it and now you know i think i think their their journey tends to be a lot more wholesome uh if it's a journey of and and we're obviously going to disagree here because you are you are the the kind of muslim intellect who's all about the

who's all about the the the the books and the works and but who wrote those works and you know the ones which have stayed behind with us for the hundreds if not thousand years that there's something that the author had in many a case which was that light which allows it allows it to reach us and these people do exist even though we're in dodgy times and there are charlatans everywhere these people still do do exist and i'm sure everybody has has their mentor on a journey who who is who is a good not perfect not an angel of course but a good sturdy person with good character who smiles who's prophetic in the in

their kind of mannerisms and and who's soft and not harsh who who want wants to to to get the best out of that person and i think so maybe it's not about the books which you look for it's about the people who you would you advise people that i'm asked this uh i have a take on it but i'd like to know your version that uh people who become muslims they say should we change our name and the habits in terms of uh we mentioned festivals earlier on partaking in attending family christmas meals things like this what what is your your take right first thing

first thing names names here there's been a tradition for hundreds of years for converts when they become muslim to change their names and that's uh even in the earliest kind of uh muslim community in this country sheikh abdullah william his name was william henry william he took the name abdullah many of the converts with him we have fatah mccains we have all these different examples of people they would take on names uh is is this the best thing to do personally when i'm working with converts i don't advise them to uh to take on uh a muslim name uh the reality is the vast majority of

names which are in existence or muslim names anyway yeah if you look at the sun of the prophet saw assad changing a converts name was the exception that wasn't the norm it wasn't people who changed their names were few and far between uh and especially when you consider what impact it can have so i've met people whose parents get really upset and really offended that their child has decided to take a name other than the name that they gave them at birth it's like what how uh however there is a nice example which i can mention and this is of uh this this brother became muslim and he his parents were actually christian missionaries

uh he converted to islam himself but what he did he he involved his parents in selecting an arabic name so they decided on yusuf in the end altogether and he kind of involved his parents in that process and this is the key involve involving parents in the process of conversion makes it so much easier i know it's not possible for everyone some people have like proper hardcore edl parents fair enough they're never gonna accept it they're gonna make your life health forever fair enough however for most people they make the mistake of completely uh separating their parents from this journey whereas if you would have involved them from the start you would have found it

would have been much easier later on because many people dread the moment sometimes months sometimes years after they've converted when they have to tell their parents and they say listen i'm a muslim and it's a bit of a shock and there is a way you can avoid that in terms of christmas and and stuff like that just before you say that my what i've responded on that is i'd said to people that i do personally have i do incline towards um partaking in the social identity of islam because people otherwise don't know um like let's say somebody approached me and they said their name was

mark or their name or something i i wouldn't just i wouldn't assume you're a muslim and i wouldn't therefore maybe indulge in that talk with you and i wouldn't do that kind of uh whereas if a person said well look i'm you know his name is ibrahim now i may be kind of surprised oh the person doesn't not my default kind of muslim so i may ask and like me many other hundreds thousands of people may have this thing but so i am inclined towards adopting a muslim name if we call it muslim whatever culturally muslim however i have said that look people can adopt a name without making

without a legal name change like you don't need to like let's say you've got your actual name on documents you could just have a a social name you could have that it doesn't mean you have to well that's what a lot of people that that's what a lot of people do i'm fortunate my name is adam from the start so it's like universal was it universal i didn't need to change mine but for a lot of people they do go by a name within the muslim community and if i'm not going super selfie on you yeah but in the time of the sahaba their names were the equivalent of mark exactly yeah they were

one of these issues where you can justify taking your name you can justify not taking your name and i don't mean it from an islamic perspective so just to be clear i don't mean that i don't feel this an islamic obligation there isn't it's not i don't feel i uh if you're asking me is it islamically must a person change their name or should they from a religious perspective i've what you're saying is it's going to make life easier what i'm saying is from a social perspective uh if you aim to engage with muslims which i'm presumably you may uh it would it would be the thing that generally muslims would expect it would make life

a lot easier yeah well then the question the question arises okay so what about clothing then do do we start to wear shalwar kameez what about food do we start to eat silent and darling hell yeah welcome to this and in fact and in fact a name is much more important in determining determining a person's identity even than food or clothes so where where do you draw the line and where do you make sure that a person is converting into a faith or a dean and not into a into a culture so there are lots of different dynamics uh what what i would say if is a if a person is going to

have a muslim name then uh think about how you do it i don't have an issue at all with people who want to have an arabic sounding name or a name uh a transliteration of one of the names of the companions or because there's also a there is a you know from a psychological perspective there is a uh a kind of ritualization to it which um and for some people it can be actually quite transformative at a psychological level mental level that people feel that you know like i feel that's one of the reasons islam actually said that oh there's a ritual bathing

this water and this kind of cleansing it's not a physical cleansing it's just a ritual this state of mind and people sometimes feel that this is a new journey and they have a new name sometimes it's very meaningful for them uh not from the fact that allah mandates you have a name that that is like this but it's part of this kind of shift psychologically and it aids that and i can see that psychologically not just that some people that's what they're looking for they've had this horrible life and then they've discovered islam and now it's time for a fresh start and and islam gives that opportunity to a lot of people it gives that opportunity to born muslims not just converts

and for some people taking on this new name can finally give them the the fresh start what what they've been looking for but what i am saying is it's it's awkward when you've got a convert in the mosque and uncle ahmad with the big beard does the shahadah and he's like repeat after me shadow allah so you go back to your parents mom dad i've changed my name what what what what have you changed

your name to patrick like oh no i'm abdullah right just imagine what what what that does to the family no seriously or if the brothers black is bilal yeah this is this is bilal is just like a standard black convert name it's just like give him the name bilal i see what i'm so even though to have the name abdullah it's a beautiful name and i i find it hilarious when they're given what are just like select pakistani names or they've i've heard of certain converts with the name like chaudhary or with the name shazad

which you think like it's i haven't actually heard of a convert pervez but these are like select very ethnic ethnic they're not even islamic names they weren't even from the arabic language what were you saying is not like uh that's awesome yeah there's lots of issues involved but or ultimately what about what about this dinners and time you don't have to rush if they don't want to take on the name take off this dinners and and family meals and this oh yeah yeah

for for me the advice what i give to converts is is you the the the sin of cutting family links is such a such a a big sin yeah i need that and and for many families and as you know these aren't even religious festivals anyway the vast majority of people who have these christmas dinners that's that's not a religious festival you go there you meet with your family it's something you do every year all the family comes together no you you know who's gonna force you to to drink the wine nobody who's gonna force you to eat the pork nobody be there fulfill your family links inshallah however however mufti saab

my advice to muslims might be different to yours because i i would say if if if you're not from if that culture is not a part of your background then then why would you i can't understand why you know it just bewilders me when i've seen muslim families like really go over the top with the christmas tree and the trimmings and the and the turkey dinner i just look at it and it it just really surprises i suppose what it is is that a person is a product of their environment ain't they so realistically speaking people who are brought up in this country they're not actually brought up in like pakistan or in let's say so

from a young age they will see this as everybody does this at this time it's just normal so to them it'll be like you know like now let's say october approaching you'll have halloween coming up now i know the americans get really offended some of them that have been really offended by my fatwa saying halloween isn't haram and i did this halloween kind of fatwa thing but i don't know your take on that but you see to me these things are like people have just been brought up and it's just part of the society like they just see this as you know it's just people having a bit of fun or like with christmas

what it was is i saw that a lot of people are usually off work because of the it's a national holiday and so they see this as as as the day and age is becoming much more corporate and people are always immersed in their lives they see this as okay we're going to get together it's another get-together and weirdly unlike eid you see because for muslims brings a certain amount of pressure like there's a just as christmas does for people who actually celebrate it like religiously it brings pressure like they have to give gifts it's an expensive time but then they'll like eid will be like oh they've got to go to this person's house they've got to do this they've got

oh these relatives are going to come or we've got to do this we've got to do this christmas for muslims doesn't have that pressure it just has like for muslims they don't have to go to people's homes they don't have to distribute food what would you say what would you say about easter if easter is done like that i personally i haven't seen easter as part of that kind of thing generally i haven't like growing up which is interesting because in the christian calendar easter has always had a bigger significance okay now the easter eggs i have seen this oh i i love the sales on these tabs two days after chris uh two days after easter all the eggs are available like half price you get some

really good bargains that's me celebrating easter yeah going to other because i've seen as kids we did this uh you know this uh the easter bunny and the and the easter egg hunt and stuff in school and i see that with kids now but i didn't see easter as a commemorative thing growing up i i'm not i'm sure i can guess that it does happen i agree and this and this is this is possibly an argument what you've got for christmas in that it's not a religious festival it's not re it's not religious worship uh and the way a lot of muslims see is that it that that's what it's uh how how do you feel about halloween by the way

since i mentioned it i don't know but i mean would you have a yeah i don't do anything myself on halloween but you might you might think that i'm being quite kind of uh black and white but i don't want my kids dressing up as [ __ ] [Laughter] there you go see that's what pious people would answer like me i'd be like yeah what the hell have some fun the irony is as i'm sure you know all you have to do is look into the origins of halloween and you realize it's not as sinister as uh as it might be uh manifested today so originally it was said to be the the all hallows and it was the day that the all this all the

arwa all the souls of the righteous people would come out and that did all the rest of it but uh yeah i i know we've been going on for quite a while sir i know you've got a trip in the morning and you've got to kind of uh you've got definitely call it a night i i want you to drop a very difficult one on you if i could before you you go to do with converts you see there's often an issue when people embrace islam what do they do in terms of their spouses right because people embrace islam the woman has embraced islam let's say the husband isn't really interested or the man has embraced islam the woman isn't really interested

um obviously you've mentioned about parents but people see parents as a kind of slightly removed entity uh here you've got an actual family a nuclear family potentially in certain cases there may be children involved what have you what i'm sure you've come across this case what would you advise i was asked the exact same question while i was in saudi arabia studying al-qaeda with a saudi sheikh in front of all his saudi students he put me on the spot in front of the wall and he asked this same question he said what do you say to the uh woman who converts to islam

how should she deal with her husband and i've got my approach to this but i didn't think you know what saudi's like i'm talking about this is a saudi chef as well not not like uh yemen no this is this is a saudi arabia it's not like a hahaha mufti bulay the selfies like to take their jazzers from him and and so forth and so forth uh and i just went quiet i thought no no no i'm not going to say anything so i just kept silent and and he said no no how how do you deal with this tell me and i thought i'm in saudi arabia i'm not even going to talk about the

approach what we have with people he said and then he recognized that i wasn't going to speak and he said i'll tell you what to do you treat them with mercy and he came out with example after example after example after example of the female companions of the prophet salallahu sallam whose marriages were still intact when they were married to the muslim i was thinking of the example of alas who comes to medina later on and

and reconnects exactly exactly um what our community gets confused with is the prohibition of a muslim muslim woman being allowed to marry a non-muslim man and then automatically applies that ruling to a situation which is not the same situation because the convert woman she's already married to this man from before and subhanallah i i the the inf the the yani the approach of the sheikh in the middle of the saudi desert it was in asa by the way in eastern saudi arabia okay yeah with the maliki's reign

this was actually a hanafi's follow-up martial okay we'll give him this one oh masha'allah al-mubarak and amazing people this this was from uh from the mullah family but anyway the point the point was that even in the desert of saudi arabia they the the people of knowledge they understand this so where have we fallen short and we're giving people advice no you have to devote if you take shahada you have to divorce your husband let me just finish with this one example this one this is a family who i'm very close to in belgium uh i visit them every year in ramadan we do programs with them they're a family of of of converts uh the the woman in the

family or the mother what happened is she called up before she became muslim she called up the main mosque in brussels spoke with the imam and told him she wants to become muslim the imam asked her are you married she said yes he said you know you're going to have to divorce your husband she said i slammed the phone down on him this was like a a woman in her in her 50s who's been married for decades she's got several grown-up children and this random man who she's never met before tells her she's got to divorce her husband she said i slammed the phone down you know anyway you know those people by not by it's

not just the the conversation with these words that they terminate they block people the access to allah this this is exactly tying in to what we were saying at the beginning and it was very unfortunate how this imam in his defense uh he's very close with this family now and he's changed his ways completely and he apologized profusely for this advice the point is not everybody is as confident and independent as that woman to slam the phone down many people will now think for my relationship with allah to be complete i now have to divorce my husband

and you've wrecked a family you've wrecked generations but she ignored his advice she became muslim a few months later her eldest daughter veronique took her shahadah a few months later her husband the same one who who she was told to divorce takes his shahada becomes muslim a few months later her father accepts islam a few months later her son accepts islam and what you've got is this house now of four generations of muslim converts because that woman never took the advice of that imam to divorce her husband and i i want to add with that sheikh if i may that look

even if they didn't embrace islam even if they didn't even if it took a lifetime it is not your decision to make to close the door of allah on them you understand too it's not it's not a counting game exactly the point which the scholar and saudi made he said the only the only uh scenario in which you might want to encourage a divorce is if the husband is so uh kind of oppressive uh and abusive in the relationship because she's a muslim then you might want to of course go down that's an entirely different discussion

but uh but i thought that was important because there are many cases like you've mentioned where alhamdulillah people once they become muslim through their character and an explanation other people become muslim but there's many cases where they won't but it is not i i consider it an abuse of the word of god to to kind of try to strong-arm these people into boycotting their relationships if they naturally feel that look this relationship isn't working for me we've kind of taken different paths now you know i'm on a different journey this person doesn't that's their choice but i don't feel they need to they should be blackmailed

emotionally guilt-tripped this kind of like strong-armed into saying you need to cut off your wife now you need to cut off your husband right now otherwise allah will never on the day of judgement you know you'll be like basically distancing them blackmailing them emotionally yeah i just felt that do these people realize first of all who are you to advise anybody to get divorced full stop who are you are you some kind of marriage counselor is this a field of your expertise like why do people think they can just go like i'll give you one example a brother converted to islam here in

liverpool uh and the the way for him to be to be interested in islam is that he his long his girlfriend of many years just happened to be from a muslim background so he had this girl he's got he had kids to her when he took his shahadah one of the elders in the community said to him you have to divorce her because she's a prostitute what what kind of what kind of muslim woman this happens what kind of muslim woman would sleep with a non-muslim man you cannot have her as your wife

now you're muslim this is what he said and the guy was distressed and he came to me he said is is this true and this is the problem because a lot of converts they see somebody with a beard or they see somebody who's been muslim all their life and they assume that they know what they're saying when it comes to religion and these people have no idea the destruction what they're causing in people's lives these are real people with real lives like how can you say get divorced is

when people were embracing islam whether they were a minority in mecca or when the prophet comes to medina and people embrace it was this even ever a question that the prophet asked oh are you married by the way you know you you have to leave your husband or you have to leave your wife so but as i said i think a lot of this comes down to people's insecurities and all of a sudden they see themselves to to be a big influence in somebody's life and that might not be a position they find themselves in before and the maybe the power gets to their head or or maybe they wanted their own son to be a kind of super muslim uh it never

worked out but now this converts come along so i can i can curious kind of yeah my curious control but yeah absolutely some very important words there right there chef shukran uh people this was an amazing absolutely uh a unique opportunity i'm very grateful to you adam for coming on tonight especially i know you you know you've got a busy schedule in the morning and you're not a vampire like me yeah i have a drive around the country but i before we uh finish off if people want to reach out to you sure if they want to know more about your projects or generally just reach

out or if it's on your uh convert kind of um classes or things that you do what where's the best platform for them to do that social media facebook instagram instagram is very he's on social media he's very social people i advise you all to connect with him seriously especially if there's anybody that you converts or people if you're affiliates friends of converts definitely that is the purpose well i find myself doing in all honesty in regards to convert care is i i mashallah i'm aware of lots of different projects and i i kind of pass people on to to the most suitable uh group group for them so

and and regarding charity as well that's the we didn't speak uh we didn't get an opportunity to speak much on really but i did show with the profile picture there's a lot of people do ask at times about nutrition honey and i don't just mean that as a metaphor because absolutely he is very sweet as you can see from his words and his presentation but he is the man behind his own honey brand alright so if you're interested in that kelwick that's what it's called isn't it can't even the website is going to be launched very this is a sales pitch now hold on

you know you should have sent me a bottle to hold right here and go well people you could do a lot with this honey so this is pure raw unpasteurized honey from our hives in yemen and it's the real deal if you're a cheapskate don't bother it is quite expensive but it is it's the keys can it be used as moisturizing thing for just rubbing it all over yourself

there you go people is more than one way to consume this right sugar and for tuning in people it's been absolutely awesome it's been a an absolute blessing right chef once again and i'm you know may allah accept all your efforts man it's been an absolute pleasure tonight the as controversial as you are yeah right and as much as you might rile people up with your

opinions one thing i've noticed about you is when when the messenger of allah is mentioned there's something going on inside you and you you're a person who doesn't who doesn't hold back or hesitate to send salawat on the prophet salallahu so if if nothing else i'm deeply honored i'm deeply honored by a word it's it's a good it's a good sign for any believer to have to have this this this that the salah as as you know when you go into your books the islamic books there are secrets and there are openings associated with the salawat upon the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam which no other type of of worship or

action or or words can achieve and i've said before that it is through sending because people sometimes say why should we send salawat it is through this that the prophet has taught us as as an extension to apply the art of giving because exactly what is there in it you know you're perceptibly thinking well i don't but it is the art of giving that you're praying or you're sending salutations you're saying you people i'm going to bring up my the final page do make sure you have subscribed if you haven't then haters

guys wherever you are take videos all the haters always subscribe haters are what keep my channel going [Laughter] right take very good care of yourself