Road To Damascus - A Personal Interview (Host: Dr Mehdi Sajid) | Mufti Abu Layth

and i after that moved to um a lot of private studies so at that time damascus remember this is like something like 97 98 something like that were yeah and it was that time and it was that era that there was a lot of this private you know people want to reduce the russia they go to a particular share share you know can i you know you can acquire can i do this can i do that and um so i did a bit of that um studied a bit of hanafi fear a bit of grammar a bit of different things i started my fifth i went to damascus university that was great fun

uh damascus university they used to in that day and age have um arabic courses where they they had them in these three month semesters uh semesters that you would um so they had different levels and so i did like a level three a level four right and that was really you know it gave you that secular perspective as well so that was great um and then from there i went to pakistan okay immediately directly you didn't come back to the uk actually i i came back for something like a couple of weeks and then went back to pakistan

and surprisingly you see because my family weren't really keen about me studying islam and stuff i wanted to ask you about that how your how did your parents react to your choice you see because the thing is that it was it's not really a thing in the in rural pakistani culture becoming a mulvey of maulana isn't a thing that anybody does so it doesn't make sense like they couldn't understand what i was trying to to do here like they they said to me they weren't against me learning about

islam they didn't i mean they saw that as that's a nice thing you know like because i remember my parents actually said to me at that time look nobody has an issue with you learning about islam you know learn about it you know these are nice things that's what they actually said these are nice you know achievement you know but nobody but what the hell is this because i had at that point i was i got a job and i was working they were like oh so you're gonna quit your job you're to what become what like a darwish who lives in a mosque is this what you're going to do like what the hell is that and who the hell does that in the uk you know like that they they couldn't understand so they were

i mean they they they incredibly uh upset about this decision and then they just thought well you know it's a phase he's gonna kind of come out of it it's like it's gonna pass it's like a goth phase is going through it's just becoming a goth or something and you know it'll last a couple of months and then he'll just come out of it you know it's a teenager whatever and ironic and a lot of people around me were like that as well that you know almost you're going abroad and you know well well we'll give it three months that can but you know ironically that really uh

oh it really fortified my willpower to not give up uh i remember thinking that giving up is not an option like it doesn't matter what happens to me i'm not going to give up i thought you know if i die here i'm going to die you have to prove them wrong yeah because i felt that you know it's going to be like a double insult for me if i give up and and one i wanted it it was there was this very sincere passion you know back then though studying was you see there was no future for it you know now we have celebrity shares right and we have this kind of almost like a parallel stardom

you know you've got like sharehamsa yusuf and all these great studs and uh you know people who get paid hundreds of thousands of pounds and back then in the 90s there was nothing you know you weren't coming back to a in glamour or glory in fact you're gonna come back and probably if you're lucky drive a taxi you know this is what the hell were you gonna do you've been out of the country for so long yes so people who went then went with a great sincerity for learning the actual theme for learning yeah like today you know it is true that a lot of people that go off they go off sometimes for this glamour that you know i'm going to come

back and be a great i never thought i was you know oh i'm going to be some kind of i mean yes in my heart i did wish that oh you know i become so learned in islam but you know this glamour thing didn't exist or this kind of like oh become a um you know to aspire to because there were no models like that at that i mean there were some shares in the rising but it hadn't reached what it reached later on so yeah there was this immense uh sincerity so you