Knife Crime in Birmingham & Advice to Youth | Mufti Abu Layth

down. Did you get the Mufti, did you see the 20-year-old get stabbed in broad daylight in Birmingham? Uh right, I I don't I saw the video clip of it. I'm very um I was actually I I was very saddened by just watching the clip. I saw it on from it was being shared it was viral on a few different sites as well.

Utterly um it's so kind of you know, when you see things like that it's so damning of um of the kind of bleak future that that there is for these people. Honestly, I I I I kind of almost I'm in a state of despondency and despair sometimes when I think about young guys.

Because they this it's this kind of stuff. I don't know whether on one hand people are saying maybe because we've got more social media, we've got more, you know, recording devices that these things are being um you know, they they're more in in in the visual spectrum. We're seeing them more just because people are recording them more.

Uh whereas they haven't actually increased. I don't know if that is true. Uh it is nonetheless very sad, very disappointing to see. It is nothing but an utter waste of life of complete disregard to the sanctity of humanity. Honestly, the these people are lost. I have no idea what they're fighting over. I mean, I assume it's either drug-related, gang-related.

These are the only the main kind of things. Um so uh and these are utterly I mean, utterly meaningless. Honestly, I want to say that you know some of these first of all as far as drugs are concerned, the amount of hard work that some of these people put into bloody their drug dealing rack you know rackets, if they put that kind of effort and hard work into entrepreneurship, I tell you that many of them would be like amazing entrepreneurs.

Like they work some some of these people work so hard. It's so ridiculous. It's it's you know it's kind of mind-boggling when you think about it. So, it and it's such it is nothing but a poison in in the bloodline of of the communities.

So, and it's really kind of a pandemic amongst Muslims. It's amongst other communities as well, but amongst Muslims for some reason Muslims are at the forefront of drug dealing. Um I don't know why that is. Um is it because obviously opportunity meets availability to resources in the sense that heroin and things like that um a lot of it can come from Pakistan, Afghanistan, those kind of places.

That is the main axis of the world for the largest producer of heroin. Um Is is that does that play a factor or is it just the kind of roadman culture and things like this? I mean, I I don't know what it is, but it is very when you see these things it's very disappointing, very disheartening. I I get I you know, I don't know. I'm at a loss for words.

May Allah make things easy for people. My advice to young people that are in that age range, like let's say you're in the late teens going into the early mid-20s, like that range of people, is, "Look, these years will pass. Do not, under any circumstances, seriously, do not engage with these kind of crowds.

Um even if they are your friends, I mean, sure, you can be friends with them. There's nothing I'm not saying don't be friends, but don't get involved. Don't, you know, if you know that they are going to be doing something, don't go to that place. Don't I mean, invest these years in something meaningful. Start up a business. Let it fail. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, at this age, a lot of young people are living with their parents.

They don't have the burden of of paying mortgages or paying, you know, rent or doing things like that. A lot of their expenses are luxurious expenses or secondary, tertiary kind of expenses. So, you can do a startup, you can invest in learning, learn a skill, learn anything you can. This is the time. This will not come back. Honestly, and and it will fly by just like this as well.

And the last thing you want is to end up, you know, doing these kind of things. God forbid you either you get killed, you end up killing some other person out there, you end up rotting away in prison, or spending valuable years of your life in prison. Um these things, may Allah save each and all, but I would really emphasize that, you know, at a young age, a person has a high uh risk exp- uh an an exploratory attitude to them, that they are prepared to kind of explore things.

It's like Erik Erikson, he puts young people in that category of low commitment, high exploration. And I would say put that to work. Learn something. Learn language, you know, if nothing, learn languages. I tell you that it is it will never go to waste. A skill you learn in life never goes to waste.

Honestly, you will 20 years later, you will 30 years later be like, "Thank God I learned that back then." I'm telling you, it's Seriously, I I must have been about that age when I started learning Arabic. And it was it's one of the best things I did in my life, honestly.

It set me out on a path. When I began it, I had no high ambitions. I had no high kind of expectations. I did not, you know, when I started learning Arabic, let me tell you something, people. I must have been about 17. Yeah, something like that. 17 and a half, something. And I had gone to Umrah. I'd um Right. So, I had gone to uh Umrah and I'd just gone with my my mother and some extended family and like a group.

I didn't really know much about what was going on. I I knew the basics. I read up some basic things. Do this, do that. And when I was there, I realized, "Oh, I can't speak to anyone really in Arabic." I mean, I could speak to Urdu to some people and speak English, but I couldn't speak Arabic. I couldn't And when I left, um I came back and I thought to myself, you know, I'm a Muslim.

I adhere to this faith. It Arabic is a core part of this faith. The Quran is in Arabic. Why why I invest some time? Like I thought to myself, why don't I learn Arabic? And at that stage in life, I didn't have much going for me anyway. I mean, I I used to work part-time and not part-time. I think I'd actually finished uh my college thing and and was working.

So, I started just studying Arabic and I just started eventually studying it on my own. I mean, I started with a few different people and then just on my own, I got a book. It was the only thing I used to look forward to every day. Like I I used to wake up in the morning. Um after subah, it all I used to do was for 20 minutes to 30 minutes, I used to every day go through that Quranic Arabic book. I used to make notes of everything.

And then sometimes at work, when you know, let's say I've got, you know, I'm just kind of, I don't know, I'm just mhm fiddling about, doing stuff. I'm just kind of just sitting there. Uh I used to work for some insurance company. Um in the IT thing. I used to do IT for them. So, at that if I'm just kind of doodling, doing stuff, what I would start doing is just practicing the Arabic um charts that you have, like the the verb conjugations.

So, I would just start like, you know, how you have fa'ala, fa'alat, fa'alta, fa'alti, fa'altu, like this. And so, I would just conjugate different verbs, you know, darasta or the different forms. However you want to see it, staff sa'arto, however, I just keep practicing. And from at this stage, I had no intention that, oh, I'm going to go and study and become an a hafiz or an alim or a mufti.

But and in fact, if you told me, I would have thought that's impossible. But sometimes you take a certain path in life. And it will, you know, your whole trajectory has been re-aligned. And you will never know until you get there. You will think, "Bloody hell." And you know, at the time I I remember when I did think about start taking it a bit seriously, the studies, I remember speaking to a chef who'd come from he'd come from abroad.

And he was doing a talk and I just asked him that chef I'm thinking of going to study. What do you think? And he said to me that he was an American chef and hopefully I'm going to have him on my mind trap this week. But now he said to me that look he said that studying this dean was the best decision I made in my life.

He said, you know, if I could go back and people gave me so much money not to do it, I wouldn't take it. Like I would I would do this what I did. And and that was like a a kind of like a nail in that decision. So my point for saying this is people if you whatever age you're at, if you start doing something you are realigning your trajectory.

You just don't know where it's going to get to, but it will get there. It will change a course an entire course. So yeah. Yes Allah Allah may Allah make things easy.