Future Priest Converts to Islam! - “I Challenged the Quran!” @YushaEvans
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I had a very traumatic childhood. In order to take revenge on my mother, my stepmother abused me. Physically, mentally, just tortured me. I needed to make a phone call. So, we went to a payphone in this very small town in the middle of nowhere. There was a young man who was on it. And I asked him to get off the phone, like, "Yo, I need to get on." And he said, "No." And he said something to me that irritated me. So I beat him up and I beat him up pretty violently. So, I got arrested for that. And they sentenced me to seven years in prison. So while I was waiting to go to trial, I accepted Islam. I spent those three years and nine months studying Islam. Every day, all day. That's all I did.
I also became the very first white imam in the South Carolina Department of Corrections, but that also almost got me killed. I was very good in the community, but there was one individual. He came out right behind me and stabbed me with a shank. It went through my ribs and missed my heart by about three millimeters. Just question, you know, you said you forgave the one who stabbed you. Do you also forgive your stepmom? Yes, but... Assalamualaikum Brother Yusha Evans. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. We are very honored to have you with us. I want to start with who is Yusha Evans? Can you tell us briefly about your life? Who is Yusha Evans?
That's a question I asked myself many times. I was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. Born and raised as a Christian, raised in the church. I had plans to become a youth minister, a Christian minister, you know, and started looking for other religions. Couldn't find them. Ended up in the streets. Street life, you know? I accepted Islam when I was 18 years old. And ever since then, I've always tried to make it my goal to help as many people as I can understand the religion of Islam. I started a Video Gamers League during the pandemic. Muslim Gamers League. Because I play video games with my kids, and I've been playing since I was a kid. I like building race cars, muscle cars.
So, Yusha Evans, I try to be a well-rounded person while maintaining the fact that I am human, just like the rest of us. So how was your life in regards to faith? What were you believing in? Before Islam, I was raised as a Methodist Christian. So, it's a very formal version of Christianity. Like, it's not what you would think. And you go to a church, there's a bunch of jumping and screaming and yelling. It was a very formal, almost like Catholic Mass. So, that was what ended up leading me to want to be part of Christian Ministries. But at the age of 16, I became more Pentecostal. Well, growing up, I believed what I was told to believe, which I believed in the Trinity.
I believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, meaning it was the Word of God with no errors. It's the same way like the Muslims believe about the Qur'an. This was the core of my beliefs growing up. But it was also what led me away from Christianity when I started studying the Bible and realizing that this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach the Trinity. Jesus did not teach the Trinity. And the Bible is not an inerrant book. It is a book full of errors. That period between leaving Christianity and accepting Islam, I had kind of given up on religion. I believed that God existed, but I became agnostic. I became an agnostic deist.
I never was going to believe that God didn't exist, because I look around me. My grandfather used to always teach me that there's no painting without a painter, right? So, this existence doesn't exist without a cause for its existence. So, I always believed in God, but I had come to the opinion that God had created the world and just let it be. Like, He created things but had no impact. He just let it go. Yeah, just send it out and see what happens. And I'd also become a little bit jaded with God, a little bit upset with Him. Because I'm over here looking for you, you don't want to be found. So I started getting into the street life, listening to rap music.
I fell very much into hip hop music at the time. You know, I fell into the rap lifestyle, the hip hop lifestyle. And I was getting into trouble in school. I actually got arrested during this period of time. So, what got you arrested? Stupidity, to make it more bluntly. But what got me arrested was my anger. I was a very angry young man that stems from my abuse as a child. My parents divorced when I was very small. My mother left me when she was, when I was three months old, disappeared out of my life for the next six years. I wouldn't see her again until I was six years old. So I was raised by my father, and then he remarried.
And my stepmother was a sworn enemy of my mother from high school. Like, my step mother was deaf, and my mother... They all went to the same high school. My mother used to make fun of my step mother for being deaf. So in order to take revenge on my mother, my step mother abused me. Physically, mentally, just tortured me. My one true emotion was anger. Like, I really couldn't feel any other emotions other than anger. So, I was very angry. And I also had a black belt at the time. So, I was a black belt. I had gotten my first black belt in martial arts by then. One night we were in a small town in South Carolina called Pickens, and I was intoxicated.
So, we went to a payphone in this very small town in the middle of nowhere. And there was a young man who was on it. And I asked him to get off the phone, like, "Yo, I need to get on. You can call whoever you want to call back. I need to use the phone now." And he said "No." He said something to me that irritated me, angered me. So I beat him up and I beat him up pretty violently. As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an, and so on.
And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah. Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. So I beat him up and I beat him up pretty violently. Because once you let that anger out that you've been repressing and holding in for so long, it's just like, it just all comes spilling out. So I beat the young man up and put him in the hospital. So I got arrested for that. How could you get out of the jail? I didn't. So what happened then? How could you get out of... I got out of jail on bond. It was such a small town. There was only two judges. And that young man was one of the judges' son. So, they charged me with attempted murder. So, it was a very serious charge.
They charged me with attempted murder. So, I was going to go to trial, because there's no way I'm going to, you know, agree to attempted murder charge. And I went to court for that in February of 1999. And I was lucky enough, Alhamdulillah. My grandmother got me a lawyer. And they were able to drop the charge down. Even though this is, you know, I'd never been in trouble. This is the first incident. But they wanted to prove a point because this was the judge's son in a very small town. They dropped the charge from attempted murder to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. And they sentenced me to seven years in prison. So when did you start to question your belief?
In the summer of 1996. In the summer of 1996, I started reading the Bible cover to cover. And I was also studying science because I was preparing to go to Bob Jones University, which is a very famous biblical college in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. It's known throughout the world. And my focus of studies was going to be textual criticism, which is studying the oldest documents we have of the Bible, etc. So, digging into the Bible led me to understand that it is not... And even from a scholarly perspective, it is not a perfect book. It is a book that was written by men and women and passed on. And the way it was passed on, so many things happened.
What the conclusion I came to was that the Bible was not the Word of God, that it was not a perfect book. And this is what I told one of the professors at Bob Jones University at the time. I had a conversation with him and I asked him a question. This was a logical question. I said, "Is God perfect?" He said "Yes." I said, "Okay, if God is perfect, then by default everything that comes from God should be perfect by its nature, right?" He said "Yes." I said, "Is the Bible perfect?" He said, "No." If God is perfect and He has a book, then that book should also be perfect. If it's not perfect, it's not from God.
There might be parts of it that are from God, but then there's parts of it that are from man. And if we can't tell the difference, then you can't say this book is a foundation of your faith. That makes sense. So that was my problem. My journey towards Islam began with me leaving Christianity. Of course, that was a catalyst. Otherwise it would have never happened. And it came with me studying other faiths. But I wanted proof. I came to the point in my life where I was tired of being bamboozled, right? I believe that if God had a religion, it would have proof. There would be tangible, physical, manifested proof. Because my grandfather taught me, and this was...
He'd already passed away at the time. But I remember him telling me, "If someone tells you they're telling you the truth, ask for proof, because the truth always is accompanied by proof." So I was asking all these other religions, Judaism Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, whatever it be. They all had the same level of contradictory information to me. And to me, God had to be... Not only there had to be evidence, it had to be logical, it needed to be simplistic. And it had to have some proof, and that proof needed to be perfect. I would not accept anything less than perfection at that point. So then you were introduced to Islam through a friend? I was introduced to Islam through a...
I wouldn't say he was so much of a friend. He was an acquaintance. And he just so happened to be a Muslim. I didn't know this until later on. The concept of religion was brought up at his house one day and he said he was a Muslim, which shocked me, because he was African American as well. I thought all Muslims were Arabs. But he asked me to go to Juma on Friday. So, I went in December of 1998 to the mosque in my hometown. I listened to the sermon, the khutbah. It was a beautiful sermon. Beautiful. I'm not going to lie. It was about the forgiveness of Allah. But that was not enough to convince me. Because I've heard plenty of beautiful Christian sermons too.
So I asked the imam after Salah, "Does your religion have proof?" He said, "Yes." So he took me to his office and he gave me a copy of the Qur'an. And I said, "What is this?" He said, "It's God's word." And I said, "Yeah, I've heard that before. You know, I've heard that a few times." I said, "Let me figure that out for myself. I'll take it home. I'll read it. See what happens." So I started reading the Qur'an. I opened the Chapter One. The Fatiha sounds very much to me like the Lord's Prayer. But Chapter Two, Verse Two is what caused me to really want to read the Qur'an.
It said, "This is the book that has no doubt in it." So, I wanted to prove that verse wrong, because I did not believe that Muslims could have the right religion. And I saw another challenge in Surah Al-Baqarah. "If you were in doubt about this book, then bring something like it." You know what I mean? Or "If this book had been from other than God, you would find in it contradictions." So there's all these challenges at the beginning of the book, and there's no... There is no religious text on this planet that is like that. The book starts off with a challenge to the reader that there's no contradictions, there's no errors. Try, please prove it. And I took that challenge seriously.
So I spent that entire weekend reading the Qur'an cover to cover, Friday evening till Sunday. When I finished on Sunday, I was a Muslim. Even that very first reading, yes, I had not... Even scholars of the Qur'an can't encompass all of it, and I was reading English. There was something about that book that inside of me, I said, this is the one. Because it talks about all the prophets, but it does not talk about the nonsense in the Bible about the prophets, you know? There's a lot of crazy stories about the prophets in the Bible. It talks about God being one. It talks about Jesus and his message and what he preached. And this is exactly what I found in the Bible. It was so simplistic.
There's plenty of it I did not have any idea what it was talking about, but the things that were clear. God is one and He is to be worshiped. This is what I believed from the Bible. I kept trying to tell people when I was studying Christianity that, look, in the Old Testament, God teaches He's one. The Qur'an was saying the same thing. And then when I got towards the end, "Say He is Allah, the one." This is the book. This is what was supposed to have been there. So I went back on Monday and became a Muslim. And then on Friday took my public Shahada in December of 1998. So how did you feel when you took your Shahada? It's not a feeling you can really put in words, if that makes sense.
Like it's not... It's hard to explain. It's like trying to explain the birth of your first child. Like, there's just no real... There's no real words for it. It was more of a I found my place, You know what I mean? Like, my heart felt, like that hole that had been in my soul for so long, felt like it had been filled. Because before that, I was trying to fill it with so many other things, you know? Christianity was there for a while and, you know, the streets and partying, whatever. And I try to explain to people that trying to fill... Because every person has a hole in their soul without Islam, just because it's our fitrah.
And I try to tell people that if you try to fill that hole with anything other than Islam, it's like going to the beach and trying to fill the ocean with sand. No matter how much you dump in, you'll never fill it. You'll never fill it. It can only be filled with coming back to your true nature, which is to worship God alone. I just felt home. I felt at peace. All that anger, all of that craziness that was going on in my mind quieted down, like it plugged that hole. What was the reaction of the people around you? I didn't really tell a whole lot of people. That's the thing. The friends I had at the time, I distanced myself from them because they did not help me out.
They were with me that night that I beat up that young man, and they all ratted me out. When the police came to them, they all ratted me out Like so, I had cut off all my friends at the time. My grandmother and my father, I didn't tell them I had become a Muslim right away. I just started trying to better my life. And when my grandmother saw after, like, a month, she had saw that, like... She was like, "Something's changed." You know what I mean? Like, you're not... I'm being, you know, nice and courteous. I'm trying to help more, I'm trying to do the right things. She's like, "What changed?" And I told her at that point I had become a Muslim.
She was like, "I don't particularly agree with it, but if that's what's making you like this, then stick with it." And my father was like, "You're a grown man. You can make your own decisions. You got to live with them." I've been a Muslim for 25 years. I still talk to my dad. I've been giving him dawah for 25 years. He hasn't accepted Islam. May Allah guide him. But he is super happy that I'm a Muslim. He's like, "It's made you the best version of that you could ever be." He's very proud to tell people, like, 'My son's a Muslim, he travels around the world helping people. He's involved in charity.
He goes to refugee camps." And whenever I've done lectures in my hometown, which I've done twice, he's in the first row. He comes and sits in the first row. And that's what I tell new Muslims. It's that, it's not always about running around telling people that you've become a Muslim. Show them you've become a Muslim. That's the difference. Have you ever experienced an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah? When I got out of prison, one of the stipulations was that I must keep a job. If I got fired for something I did, that would be considered a violation of my probation. I'd have to go back to jail for the rest of the two years.
And so when I got out of prison, I found a job doing construction. The first Friday that came up, I told the boss that when everybody takes lunch... Because we had an hour lunch break. I said, instead of lunch, I'm going to go... It was like three miles down the road. I said, "I'm going to go to Friday prayers." Because they knew I was a Muslim and they saw me pray on the job site. I said, "I'm gonna go to Friday prayers." And he said, "You're not allowed to leave the work site." And I said, "That's not... I'm not really asking for permission.
I'm telling you what I'm going to do." And he said, "If you leave the work site, you are fired, like, you're quitting." So I had a choice of stay on the job and disobey Allah's command or go to Juma. And I said, you know what? I spent four years in prison learning my deen to do the right thing. I'm going to do the right thing. So I left. I said, "Fine, keep your job, I'm gone." So, I went to Juma. And I made a lot of dua during that Juma that, "Ya Allah, I've come here to give obedience to you. So, you know, help me out here." After Juma, a young man came up to me. He came and he said, "Brother, do you have a job?" And I said, "Yeah, I had a job till today.
I actually walked out of the job site and quit it to come here." He said, my dad, who was the imam... He said, "My dad came to ask me, do you want to work at his pizza shop?" I said, "Of course, I need a job." So he gave me a job starting that day, making double the money that I was making at the construction site. Time I left the job to the time I had a new job was two hours. When you do something sincerely for Allah, He will make for you a way out. So, doing the right thing is scary sometimes, but that was one of the most beautiful nights I think I ever remember in my life. What is the thing that impressed you the most about the Prophet (saw)? The love he had for us, for his ummah.
Like, it's not even really definable how much he loved the ummah. Every prophet was given one dua that they could ask for anything they wished. And it would be granted to them. Anything. Our Prophet (saw) had so many times he needed that dua. His uncle, Abu Talib, dying without Islam. Before the Battle of Badr. The Battle of Uhud, you know, the Battle of Khandaq when Medina was... There were so many times where he could have really used that dua. But he said, "No, I saved it." And whom did he save it for? Us. For us. He said, "I saved it for you." On the Day of Judgment, Allah is going to ask him to come forward and he's going to make sujood. We know this very famous story.
He's going to be there for whoever knows how long. And Allah is going to tell him, "Come, get up and ask me, because you've been holding on to this dua." Allah knows he still has it. "You've been holding on to this dua. So now what do you want?" And there's so many things he could ask for. But what is he going to say? He's going to ask for us. So it's that level of care and concern for this ummah, not just his companions, like, all of us. He loved us so much that he was willing to suffer all of the things he suffered, without ever taking advantage of that dua. Because he knew that we would need it one day. There are many people who consider Islam but have certain concerns.
They say, "Do I have to leave my culture if I embrace Islam, wear like an Arab, is it obligatory to have a beard? Or can I become an American Muslim with my culture, without abandoning my culture?" Like you do not have to erase your identity, your cultural identity to be a Muslim. You just have to get rid of the parts of it that are against Islam. So there's nothing wrong with keeping my identity as an American. There's nothing wrong dressing pants, shirt, suit, tie, whatever. There's nothing wrong with me. You are allowed to keep your identity. I mean, you go to Africa. You see the culture of the Muslims in Africa. It's just so different.
The same way you go to South Asia, you know, you go to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia. They've kept their culture, but Islam has just enhanced it. But you don't have to become an Arab or become a Pakistani. You can be who you want to be. So there are Christians who say, "I feel some kind of spirituality and I feel connection with God when I pray. I don't need any other new thing." What would you like to say to such a person? Spirituality can be deceiving. Because spirituality is a feeling. That's what Christians are chasing. They're chasing that spiritual high. That spiritual high is not going to sustain you. That is not an evidentiary connection.
Because many people get that in many different ways. Hindus get the same thing. Wiccans get the same thing doing witchcraft. You know, druggies get the same thing. An alcoholic gets the same feeling. They're chasing that high. In Islam, we are not chasing a high. That high comes and goes. Like, there are times when you have spiritual highs and you have spiritual lows. The Prophet (pbuh) spoke about this, that he said iman increases and decreases. What we are chasing is that stable connection to God as He wants to be worshiped. It's not for me to decide what is my right connection with God. "Oh, it feels right, so it's right." That's not... We don't dictate those terms.
Allah dictates the terms. God dictates the terms. We follow them. So we worship Him the way He desires to be worshiped, not the way we desire to worship. And so a Christian might ask you, why did you leave the Team Jesus? I didn't, I follow Jesus now the right way. I didn't leave Jesus, I found him. I left Paul. I left Paul and started to follow Jesus. Because the word Christian means to be Christ-like. Christ was a worshiper of the one true God. That's what I am now. Just question, you know, you said you forgave the one who stabbed you. Do you also forgive your stepmom? Yes, but... I forgive her, not for her.
I actually wrote her a letter, because she's never even acknowledged what she did to me. Like, she just acts like it never happened. Like I made it up as a kid. So I wrote her a letter to forgive her. But I told her I'm not forgiving her for her. I'm forgiving her for me. Because she does not deserve to continue to have that kind of impact. I realized that holding on to that anger for her, she was no longer abusing me. I was abusing myself. And that's what happens a lot. I actually do counseling and coaching every day. That's where I was, I had a session right before I came here. And most of it is with trauma victims who have been through abuse and things of that nature.
And I explained to them that the forgiveness for you is that so you can move on. Because she does not have the... I don't think she has the right to continue to have that effect on my life. I can't continue... I can't blame her now. If I'm still struggling with the things that I went through as a child, I can't blame that on her. It's done. It's been done for 30 years now. I'm the one doing it to myself, so I have to let it go. So yes, I've forgiven her, but I've forgiven her for me. We do forgive for the sake of Allah. Of course, that's a core behind it. But I forgave her for myself, because I deserve to heal from that.
Lastly, what would you like to say to the non-Muslims in all over the world, if you had a chance and had a few moments? I would tell them to search their own soul and realize that there is a purpose to everything. Nothing in this world is without purpose. That includes yourself. You are here. You exist for a reason and a purpose, and that purpose should be discovered. You should know what your purpose is, and that purpose is to worship God who created you. And therefore, you should do some intense research on that. And make sure that you know you believe what you believe for a reason.
Not just because your parents taught you this way or this is what your culture says, this is how you grew up. Your belief system, your core belief system, should be a deciding factor based on the information that you have chosen to be factual.
I also became the very first white imam in the South Carolina Department of Corrections, but that also almost got me killed. I was very good in the community, but there was one individual. He came out right behind me and stabbed me with a shank. It went through my ribs and missed my heart by about three millimeters. Just question, you know, you said you forgave the one who stabbed you. Do you also forgive your stepmom? Yes, but... Assalamualaikum Brother Yusha Evans. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. We are very honored to have you with us. I want to start with who is Yusha Evans? Can you tell us briefly about your life? Who is Yusha Evans?
That's a question I asked myself many times. I was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. Born and raised as a Christian, raised in the church. I had plans to become a youth minister, a Christian minister, you know, and started looking for other religions. Couldn't find them. Ended up in the streets. Street life, you know? I accepted Islam when I was 18 years old. And ever since then, I've always tried to make it my goal to help as many people as I can understand the religion of Islam. I started a Video Gamers League during the pandemic. Muslim Gamers League. Because I play video games with my kids, and I've been playing since I was a kid. I like building race cars, muscle cars.
So, Yusha Evans, I try to be a well-rounded person while maintaining the fact that I am human, just like the rest of us. So how was your life in regards to faith? What were you believing in? Before Islam, I was raised as a Methodist Christian. So, it's a very formal version of Christianity. Like, it's not what you would think. And you go to a church, there's a bunch of jumping and screaming and yelling. It was a very formal, almost like Catholic Mass. So, that was what ended up leading me to want to be part of Christian Ministries. But at the age of 16, I became more Pentecostal. Well, growing up, I believed what I was told to believe, which I believed in the Trinity.
I believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, meaning it was the Word of God with no errors. It's the same way like the Muslims believe about the Qur'an. This was the core of my beliefs growing up. But it was also what led me away from Christianity when I started studying the Bible and realizing that this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach the Trinity. Jesus did not teach the Trinity. And the Bible is not an inerrant book. It is a book full of errors. That period between leaving Christianity and accepting Islam, I had kind of given up on religion. I believed that God existed, but I became agnostic. I became an agnostic deist.
I never was going to believe that God didn't exist, because I look around me. My grandfather used to always teach me that there's no painting without a painter, right? So, this existence doesn't exist without a cause for its existence. So, I always believed in God, but I had come to the opinion that God had created the world and just let it be. Like, He created things but had no impact. He just let it go. Yeah, just send it out and see what happens. And I'd also become a little bit jaded with God, a little bit upset with Him. Because I'm over here looking for you, you don't want to be found. So I started getting into the street life, listening to rap music.
I fell very much into hip hop music at the time. You know, I fell into the rap lifestyle, the hip hop lifestyle. And I was getting into trouble in school. I actually got arrested during this period of time. So, what got you arrested? Stupidity, to make it more bluntly. But what got me arrested was my anger. I was a very angry young man that stems from my abuse as a child. My parents divorced when I was very small. My mother left me when she was, when I was three months old, disappeared out of my life for the next six years. I wouldn't see her again until I was six years old. So I was raised by my father, and then he remarried.
And my stepmother was a sworn enemy of my mother from high school. Like, my step mother was deaf, and my mother... They all went to the same high school. My mother used to make fun of my step mother for being deaf. So in order to take revenge on my mother, my step mother abused me. Physically, mentally, just tortured me. My one true emotion was anger. Like, I really couldn't feel any other emotions other than anger. So, I was very angry. And I also had a black belt at the time. So, I was a black belt. I had gotten my first black belt in martial arts by then. One night we were in a small town in South Carolina called Pickens, and I was intoxicated.
So, we went to a payphone in this very small town in the middle of nowhere. And there was a young man who was on it. And I asked him to get off the phone, like, "Yo, I need to get on. You can call whoever you want to call back. I need to use the phone now." And he said "No." He said something to me that irritated me, angered me. So I beat him up and I beat him up pretty violently. As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an, and so on.
And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah. Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. So I beat him up and I beat him up pretty violently. Because once you let that anger out that you've been repressing and holding in for so long, it's just like, it just all comes spilling out. So I beat the young man up and put him in the hospital. So I got arrested for that. How could you get out of the jail? I didn't. So what happened then? How could you get out of... I got out of jail on bond. It was such a small town. There was only two judges. And that young man was one of the judges' son. So, they charged me with attempted murder. So, it was a very serious charge.
They charged me with attempted murder. So, I was going to go to trial, because there's no way I'm going to, you know, agree to attempted murder charge. And I went to court for that in February of 1999. And I was lucky enough, Alhamdulillah. My grandmother got me a lawyer. And they were able to drop the charge down. Even though this is, you know, I'd never been in trouble. This is the first incident. But they wanted to prove a point because this was the judge's son in a very small town. They dropped the charge from attempted murder to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. And they sentenced me to seven years in prison. So when did you start to question your belief?
In the summer of 1996. In the summer of 1996, I started reading the Bible cover to cover. And I was also studying science because I was preparing to go to Bob Jones University, which is a very famous biblical college in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. It's known throughout the world. And my focus of studies was going to be textual criticism, which is studying the oldest documents we have of the Bible, etc. So, digging into the Bible led me to understand that it is not... And even from a scholarly perspective, it is not a perfect book. It is a book that was written by men and women and passed on. And the way it was passed on, so many things happened.
What the conclusion I came to was that the Bible was not the Word of God, that it was not a perfect book. And this is what I told one of the professors at Bob Jones University at the time. I had a conversation with him and I asked him a question. This was a logical question. I said, "Is God perfect?" He said "Yes." I said, "Okay, if God is perfect, then by default everything that comes from God should be perfect by its nature, right?" He said "Yes." I said, "Is the Bible perfect?" He said, "No." If God is perfect and He has a book, then that book should also be perfect. If it's not perfect, it's not from God.
There might be parts of it that are from God, but then there's parts of it that are from man. And if we can't tell the difference, then you can't say this book is a foundation of your faith. That makes sense. So that was my problem. My journey towards Islam began with me leaving Christianity. Of course, that was a catalyst. Otherwise it would have never happened. And it came with me studying other faiths. But I wanted proof. I came to the point in my life where I was tired of being bamboozled, right? I believe that if God had a religion, it would have proof. There would be tangible, physical, manifested proof. Because my grandfather taught me, and this was...
He'd already passed away at the time. But I remember him telling me, "If someone tells you they're telling you the truth, ask for proof, because the truth always is accompanied by proof." So I was asking all these other religions, Judaism Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, whatever it be. They all had the same level of contradictory information to me. And to me, God had to be... Not only there had to be evidence, it had to be logical, it needed to be simplistic. And it had to have some proof, and that proof needed to be perfect. I would not accept anything less than perfection at that point. So then you were introduced to Islam through a friend? I was introduced to Islam through a...
I wouldn't say he was so much of a friend. He was an acquaintance. And he just so happened to be a Muslim. I didn't know this until later on. The concept of religion was brought up at his house one day and he said he was a Muslim, which shocked me, because he was African American as well. I thought all Muslims were Arabs. But he asked me to go to Juma on Friday. So, I went in December of 1998 to the mosque in my hometown. I listened to the sermon, the khutbah. It was a beautiful sermon. Beautiful. I'm not going to lie. It was about the forgiveness of Allah. But that was not enough to convince me. Because I've heard plenty of beautiful Christian sermons too.
So I asked the imam after Salah, "Does your religion have proof?" He said, "Yes." So he took me to his office and he gave me a copy of the Qur'an. And I said, "What is this?" He said, "It's God's word." And I said, "Yeah, I've heard that before. You know, I've heard that a few times." I said, "Let me figure that out for myself. I'll take it home. I'll read it. See what happens." So I started reading the Qur'an. I opened the Chapter One. The Fatiha sounds very much to me like the Lord's Prayer. But Chapter Two, Verse Two is what caused me to really want to read the Qur'an.
It said, "This is the book that has no doubt in it." So, I wanted to prove that verse wrong, because I did not believe that Muslims could have the right religion. And I saw another challenge in Surah Al-Baqarah. "If you were in doubt about this book, then bring something like it." You know what I mean? Or "If this book had been from other than God, you would find in it contradictions." So there's all these challenges at the beginning of the book, and there's no... There is no religious text on this planet that is like that. The book starts off with a challenge to the reader that there's no contradictions, there's no errors. Try, please prove it. And I took that challenge seriously.
So I spent that entire weekend reading the Qur'an cover to cover, Friday evening till Sunday. When I finished on Sunday, I was a Muslim. Even that very first reading, yes, I had not... Even scholars of the Qur'an can't encompass all of it, and I was reading English. There was something about that book that inside of me, I said, this is the one. Because it talks about all the prophets, but it does not talk about the nonsense in the Bible about the prophets, you know? There's a lot of crazy stories about the prophets in the Bible. It talks about God being one. It talks about Jesus and his message and what he preached. And this is exactly what I found in the Bible. It was so simplistic.
There's plenty of it I did not have any idea what it was talking about, but the things that were clear. God is one and He is to be worshiped. This is what I believed from the Bible. I kept trying to tell people when I was studying Christianity that, look, in the Old Testament, God teaches He's one. The Qur'an was saying the same thing. And then when I got towards the end, "Say He is Allah, the one." This is the book. This is what was supposed to have been there. So I went back on Monday and became a Muslim. And then on Friday took my public Shahada in December of 1998. So how did you feel when you took your Shahada? It's not a feeling you can really put in words, if that makes sense.
Like it's not... It's hard to explain. It's like trying to explain the birth of your first child. Like, there's just no real... There's no real words for it. It was more of a I found my place, You know what I mean? Like, my heart felt, like that hole that had been in my soul for so long, felt like it had been filled. Because before that, I was trying to fill it with so many other things, you know? Christianity was there for a while and, you know, the streets and partying, whatever. And I try to explain to people that trying to fill... Because every person has a hole in their soul without Islam, just because it's our fitrah.
And I try to tell people that if you try to fill that hole with anything other than Islam, it's like going to the beach and trying to fill the ocean with sand. No matter how much you dump in, you'll never fill it. You'll never fill it. It can only be filled with coming back to your true nature, which is to worship God alone. I just felt home. I felt at peace. All that anger, all of that craziness that was going on in my mind quieted down, like it plugged that hole. What was the reaction of the people around you? I didn't really tell a whole lot of people. That's the thing. The friends I had at the time, I distanced myself from them because they did not help me out.
They were with me that night that I beat up that young man, and they all ratted me out. When the police came to them, they all ratted me out Like so, I had cut off all my friends at the time. My grandmother and my father, I didn't tell them I had become a Muslim right away. I just started trying to better my life. And when my grandmother saw after, like, a month, she had saw that, like... She was like, "Something's changed." You know what I mean? Like, you're not... I'm being, you know, nice and courteous. I'm trying to help more, I'm trying to do the right things. She's like, "What changed?" And I told her at that point I had become a Muslim.
She was like, "I don't particularly agree with it, but if that's what's making you like this, then stick with it." And my father was like, "You're a grown man. You can make your own decisions. You got to live with them." I've been a Muslim for 25 years. I still talk to my dad. I've been giving him dawah for 25 years. He hasn't accepted Islam. May Allah guide him. But he is super happy that I'm a Muslim. He's like, "It's made you the best version of that you could ever be." He's very proud to tell people, like, 'My son's a Muslim, he travels around the world helping people. He's involved in charity.
He goes to refugee camps." And whenever I've done lectures in my hometown, which I've done twice, he's in the first row. He comes and sits in the first row. And that's what I tell new Muslims. It's that, it's not always about running around telling people that you've become a Muslim. Show them you've become a Muslim. That's the difference. Have you ever experienced an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah? When I got out of prison, one of the stipulations was that I must keep a job. If I got fired for something I did, that would be considered a violation of my probation. I'd have to go back to jail for the rest of the two years.
And so when I got out of prison, I found a job doing construction. The first Friday that came up, I told the boss that when everybody takes lunch... Because we had an hour lunch break. I said, instead of lunch, I'm going to go... It was like three miles down the road. I said, "I'm going to go to Friday prayers." Because they knew I was a Muslim and they saw me pray on the job site. I said, "I'm gonna go to Friday prayers." And he said, "You're not allowed to leave the work site." And I said, "That's not... I'm not really asking for permission.
I'm telling you what I'm going to do." And he said, "If you leave the work site, you are fired, like, you're quitting." So I had a choice of stay on the job and disobey Allah's command or go to Juma. And I said, you know what? I spent four years in prison learning my deen to do the right thing. I'm going to do the right thing. So I left. I said, "Fine, keep your job, I'm gone." So, I went to Juma. And I made a lot of dua during that Juma that, "Ya Allah, I've come here to give obedience to you. So, you know, help me out here." After Juma, a young man came up to me. He came and he said, "Brother, do you have a job?" And I said, "Yeah, I had a job till today.
I actually walked out of the job site and quit it to come here." He said, my dad, who was the imam... He said, "My dad came to ask me, do you want to work at his pizza shop?" I said, "Of course, I need a job." So he gave me a job starting that day, making double the money that I was making at the construction site. Time I left the job to the time I had a new job was two hours. When you do something sincerely for Allah, He will make for you a way out. So, doing the right thing is scary sometimes, but that was one of the most beautiful nights I think I ever remember in my life. What is the thing that impressed you the most about the Prophet (saw)? The love he had for us, for his ummah.
Like, it's not even really definable how much he loved the ummah. Every prophet was given one dua that they could ask for anything they wished. And it would be granted to them. Anything. Our Prophet (saw) had so many times he needed that dua. His uncle, Abu Talib, dying without Islam. Before the Battle of Badr. The Battle of Uhud, you know, the Battle of Khandaq when Medina was... There were so many times where he could have really used that dua. But he said, "No, I saved it." And whom did he save it for? Us. For us. He said, "I saved it for you." On the Day of Judgment, Allah is going to ask him to come forward and he's going to make sujood. We know this very famous story.
He's going to be there for whoever knows how long. And Allah is going to tell him, "Come, get up and ask me, because you've been holding on to this dua." Allah knows he still has it. "You've been holding on to this dua. So now what do you want?" And there's so many things he could ask for. But what is he going to say? He's going to ask for us. So it's that level of care and concern for this ummah, not just his companions, like, all of us. He loved us so much that he was willing to suffer all of the things he suffered, without ever taking advantage of that dua. Because he knew that we would need it one day. There are many people who consider Islam but have certain concerns.
They say, "Do I have to leave my culture if I embrace Islam, wear like an Arab, is it obligatory to have a beard? Or can I become an American Muslim with my culture, without abandoning my culture?" Like you do not have to erase your identity, your cultural identity to be a Muslim. You just have to get rid of the parts of it that are against Islam. So there's nothing wrong with keeping my identity as an American. There's nothing wrong dressing pants, shirt, suit, tie, whatever. There's nothing wrong with me. You are allowed to keep your identity. I mean, you go to Africa. You see the culture of the Muslims in Africa. It's just so different.
The same way you go to South Asia, you know, you go to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia. They've kept their culture, but Islam has just enhanced it. But you don't have to become an Arab or become a Pakistani. You can be who you want to be. So there are Christians who say, "I feel some kind of spirituality and I feel connection with God when I pray. I don't need any other new thing." What would you like to say to such a person? Spirituality can be deceiving. Because spirituality is a feeling. That's what Christians are chasing. They're chasing that spiritual high. That spiritual high is not going to sustain you. That is not an evidentiary connection.
Because many people get that in many different ways. Hindus get the same thing. Wiccans get the same thing doing witchcraft. You know, druggies get the same thing. An alcoholic gets the same feeling. They're chasing that high. In Islam, we are not chasing a high. That high comes and goes. Like, there are times when you have spiritual highs and you have spiritual lows. The Prophet (pbuh) spoke about this, that he said iman increases and decreases. What we are chasing is that stable connection to God as He wants to be worshiped. It's not for me to decide what is my right connection with God. "Oh, it feels right, so it's right." That's not... We don't dictate those terms.
Allah dictates the terms. God dictates the terms. We follow them. So we worship Him the way He desires to be worshiped, not the way we desire to worship. And so a Christian might ask you, why did you leave the Team Jesus? I didn't, I follow Jesus now the right way. I didn't leave Jesus, I found him. I left Paul. I left Paul and started to follow Jesus. Because the word Christian means to be Christ-like. Christ was a worshiper of the one true God. That's what I am now. Just question, you know, you said you forgave the one who stabbed you. Do you also forgive your stepmom? Yes, but... I forgive her, not for her.
I actually wrote her a letter, because she's never even acknowledged what she did to me. Like, she just acts like it never happened. Like I made it up as a kid. So I wrote her a letter to forgive her. But I told her I'm not forgiving her for her. I'm forgiving her for me. Because she does not deserve to continue to have that kind of impact. I realized that holding on to that anger for her, she was no longer abusing me. I was abusing myself. And that's what happens a lot. I actually do counseling and coaching every day. That's where I was, I had a session right before I came here. And most of it is with trauma victims who have been through abuse and things of that nature.
And I explained to them that the forgiveness for you is that so you can move on. Because she does not have the... I don't think she has the right to continue to have that effect on my life. I can't continue... I can't blame her now. If I'm still struggling with the things that I went through as a child, I can't blame that on her. It's done. It's been done for 30 years now. I'm the one doing it to myself, so I have to let it go. So yes, I've forgiven her, but I've forgiven her for me. We do forgive for the sake of Allah. Of course, that's a core behind it. But I forgave her for myself, because I deserve to heal from that.
Lastly, what would you like to say to the non-Muslims in all over the world, if you had a chance and had a few moments? I would tell them to search their own soul and realize that there is a purpose to everything. Nothing in this world is without purpose. That includes yourself. You are here. You exist for a reason and a purpose, and that purpose should be discovered. You should know what your purpose is, and that purpose is to worship God who created you. And therefore, you should do some intense research on that. And make sure that you know you believe what you believe for a reason.
Not just because your parents taught you this way or this is what your culture says, this is how you grew up. Your belief system, your core belief system, should be a deciding factor based on the information that you have chosen to be factual.