“I Made a Deal With God!” - Emotional Revert Story of Rahim Jung
Published on
I remember saying, "Look, God, I don't know if you're there, but I tell you this, I'm not giving up my lifestyle. My life is too good." If you want this for me, you have to show me. My brains are coming out of my head. All the whole back of my head is all open. I mean, it's unbelievable. The ambulance came. I was just sitting there. I didn't lose consciousness. I was sitting on the side of the road. There was a blanket over my head. And then she lifted the blanket off my head and she saw my head injuries and immediately her voice changed. I need an emergency airlift now. Salam Alaykum brother Rahim, thank you for accepting our interview invitation.
To start off with, who is Rahim Jung and can you tell us briefly about your life? I was born in London. I come from a mixed background. I've done lots and lots of different types of work, lots of different types of jobs, lots of different industries. Alhamdulillah, Allah has sent me this way and sent me that way. And inshallah, I hope that more of this will come out during the discussion today. Inshallah. -How was your life back then? -In those days, I don't think I believed in anything. So we were brought up, I would say very open-minded, really.
So my father, he, he believed in Islam, but he didn't believe in conventional Islam, the way we would understand it, the way I would understand it now. My mother, she actively hated religion. She was originally married to an Irishmen and then she got divorced and they don't allow divorce in the Catholic faith. So, she was excommunicated. She was thrown out of the Catholic faith. And then when she met my father, people didn't accept that. And she looked at religious people and she saw them as hypocrites. She saw them as always preaching, but not practicing. So, we grew up in an atmosphere where there was no real faith in the household.
So, we were just taught to be to have good character, good conduct, good manners, but that your religion didn't matter. And if I think back now, there were probably times when I, I doubted if there was any God or if there was any belief or anything. And I certainly didn't believe that you needed to practice any faith. So, can you tell us about your youth years? The time I was 18, I was failing everything. I was failing all my school exams and all I wanted was to work in the music business in any way that I could. And Alhamdulillah, an opportunity came up. My father was doing some business and one of the people he was doing business with had a lot of connections in the music business.
And I spoke to him and I said, "Look, please." I said, "Just get me in any way you can. Just get me in the door. I'll do the rest, just get me in the door." And he managed to speak to somebody and I started working in a music promotion company. I was so happy. It felt like the world was open to me. And that led me on to my next job, which was just an incredible job.
The company I was working with, we got the contract to do a promotion for Stevie Wonder, and the main person who was running that, the project manager, and she phoned me and she said, "Would you consider leaving your job now and coming to work with me?" And I said, "Well, it depends what it is." And she said, "We're starting Motown Records here in the UK." That was more than a dream come true. Motown is the biggest record label in history. Having that name, Motown, just having a business card with the name Motown Records on it. Anywhere you went, you put that card down, it would open doors. And I was having a chance to start this new version of Motown Records in the UK.
What was the defining moment that led you to come closer to Islam? I think for me, one of the defining moments was, I was, I was literally inside a party. Music and people and everybody was there and this big party. And my uncle, he had recently become religious and it was Ramadan. I didn't even know it was Ramadan. And he came, he knocked on the door of the party and he knew I was there.
And he called me and he said, "I want you to come to the mosque tonight." I said, "I'm here with my friends." I said, "You know, uncle, please, another day." And he said, "No, tonight." And again, I said, "I can't leave." And he said, "I'm not arguing, I'm telling you." And I didn't know it was Laylat al-Qadr. And he took me to the local mosque. And this was when I was in Motown Records. And at that time I would say my life was going better than I could ever have hoped. And I remember the dua in the qunut. And I wasn't joining in. I was sitting at the back of the mosque and I felt the power. Ameen, ameen, ameen...
I remember saying, I just sat there and I said, "Look, God, I don't know if you there. But I tell you this, I'm not giving up my lifestyle." I said, "I'm not give... My life is too good." I said, "If you want this for me, then you have to, you have to do something. You have to show me." From then, from then, things started to just go down and down and down and down. Until I genuinely feared that I was losing my mind. I was unable to function properly. I was unable to work. I was unable. my relationships became sour and all went wrong and my career went wrong. Everything went wrong. And really I went into a spiral which led to a sort of breakdown. I was so lost.
And I remember one day, one of my cousins, he took me, he made again. Same thing, the son, the son of my uncle who took me to the mosque. He took me to meet somebody, an imam. And I remember the imam kept saying to me the same thing. He was talking. He kept saying traveling with no direction. And I felt that I was moving, but I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what was the point of life. I didn't know what was important. And I remember I was in this job and I fell asleep. I fell asleep in my chair. And I just remember waking up. And brother, I felt like, I can't explain it. I felt like I was floating in the middle of the universe with nothing. I didn't know who I was.
I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what was happening. I just felt this crisis, this crisis. What were the things that impressed you the most about Islam? Two things, in the beginning, impressed me the most. Number one, when I saw people who had... and I knew people growing up from my family, from my distant family who weren't practicing. None of them were practicing. We didn't grow up a wider family. No one. But when I would see those who had made the transition, I always saw a contentment, a certain peace that they had that was lacking from everybody else. And that had a big impact on me, especially my cousin, when I would visit him. As I said, he's married with a child.
He didn't have any money, and yet he was happier than me. And I'm working in the music business with loads of money and celebrities and he's happier than me. Then what? Number two, when he would talk to me, when I would say, "Yeah, but what about this? This doesn't make sense." How is God gonna do this? And why did God do that and why is a prophet? I would ask him because I didn't want it to. I didn't want to believe. His answers always said, ‘’Allah, says in the Quran something. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) said...’’ He wouldn't argue with me from his aql, from his reason always, every single time. And it would always be the right answer. And I'd be, I...
How can he always have the right answer? And that I used to think, that's amazing. You know, he's not arguing from himself, just he's telling me Quran and Sunnah. So what incidents made you change your ways? I remember this moment. This moment where everything changed. I can tell you the date. The 5th of October, 1993. I was in a, I was in a bar with some friends and I felt like a panic attack coming on. First, I had never experienced anything like this. I just wanted to run out of this. And then I thought, where am I gonna run? And when I get there, I'm going to feel the same. It felt like the ground opened up and was going to swallow me up. That's what it felt like. And I drove home.
I don't even know how I drove home. For the first time, I made dua and I didn't know what I was saying. I didn't know what I was doing. But this is the funny thing about it. This shows you where I was in my life. I said, "Oh God. I said, Please, God, please, help me." And I made a deal. I said, "Look, if you save me now, if you save me from going crazy, I will give up everything haram for two weeks." This is why I said it, because it was inconceivable to me that I would give up for more than this. And then I said, "No, no, no, no, that's not enough. That's not enough." I said, "God, if you save me, I will give up all the haram for one month." Then I said, "No, no, no, no, no.
It's too long, too long, too long." Then I said, "Three weeks. Yes, okay." I settle. Two or three weeks. I said, "God, if you save me now, I will give up everything haram next three weeks. I won't touch anything haram. That was the first day where I decided to leave the haram. And of course, after three weeks I was... it was terrible. I was still... I wasn't better. So then I said, you know, then I started saying because in that time, I'd started making dua and I'd even opened the Quran.
I remember opening the Quran first time, and I remember, of course, one of the most important verses of my life to this day, to this day ’’Fa inna ma'al usri yusran, inna ma'al usri yusra.’’ So this difficulty that you're in, it will come to an end. It will come to an end. And I remember just holding on to that, holding on to that. Like with everything, I held onto that verse that maybe some ease was going to come after this crisis. What made you convinced that Islam is 100% true? I'm gonna be honest with you. I think if you grow up with many different ideological backgrounds, as we did and even now, my, my brother, he is agnostic, maybe atheist. My sister is Buddhist.
You know, my father-in-law is Jewish. My mother-in-law was atheist. You know, my closest people in my family are not religious, many of them. And, and same with many of my closest friends. But for me, the journey of faith is a constant journey. It's constantly tested and shaytan will always whisper doubts. So I can be honest and say that my journey has not been linear. It's not just been straight. More, more, more. In my mind, it's gone up and down and up and down, and there are periods of crisis that I have where I wonder, am I following the right version of Islam or am I, is it really necessary to be this devout? Or maybe these small sins are not that bad?
Or maybe, you know, the thing, every single time is the Quran. The Quran. How? How is this book possible? How is this.. we can hold this miracle in our hands? How is it possible that the Prophet Muhammad(saw) knew all? He couldn't read, he couldn't write, he had no education. How is this possible that he predicted so many things over decades and centuries that would come true? How is it possible? So every time for me, the thing that is, brings me back without any doubt is the Quran. And the more we learn about the Quran, the more we find out with science and with maths and with computers. The more we analyze it, the more miraculous, the more miracles come out of the Quran.
So this whenever shaitan comes, this is the thing I say, ’’Audhu billahi minash shaitanir rajim.’’ What were the last things that you had to give up when becoming a committed Muslim? Really, it was the time when I decided to leave my relationship. You know, the relationship that I was in and go back home and live with my parents. That was the defining moment, because by then I was already praying. I was fasting. I'd given up most of the haram. But I was still in a relationship. And I remember, you know, saying, I can't do I can't wake up and pray fajr and then get back into bed. This is, I just can't do this anymore.
In my mind, it was like big neon signposts saying to me, you can't do this and you can't do this and you can't do this. But I was still doing it, you know? But that's what I felt like. I felt like it was very clear and I was trying to I was trying not to look, you know, but it was very clear to me. Now, I was 100% committed to trying to find my way within Islam. No more, no more haram at all. I had to give up these things. And for me, that was the defining moment. How was your family's and close circle's reaction to all these? Oh, my father was concerned. He wasn't worried about Islam, but he was concerned that I was becoming extreme. For my mother, it was a very, very big thing.
It was a really big thing. And it affected our relationship for many years. My mother was definitely damaged. She was damaged by her experience of religious people. Whether they were Muslim or Christian or whatever. She was damaged by that. And when she met Muslims, often they were quite aggressive towards her and she was really upset. She was, she would shout at me, she would tell me that I am going crazy, that I'm just, I'm just in a weak moment of my life and people are taking advantage of me. And even when she would see me praying, always she was upset, even if she heard me say, ‘’Salam alaikum’’ to someone, "Gosh, you got out stupid. She was very upset for a long time.
So how did your relationship with your mum go? Did she change her opinion and feel closer to Islam as time went by? This is one of the greatest miracles of my life. My mother's all the time, this, this something was in her heart. It was against religion, it was against faith, it was against religious people. And it didn't really change. Even after 15 years. If I was praying, she would walking through it, "Ohh!", she would go like that. But she became sick. It was cancer. She had cancer. And this was just coincidence. It was pure coincidence. I went to visit at the hospital and it was just me and her.
When the doctor came with the bad news, he came, he took her hand and he said, "I've got some bad news" like that. And she just looked him. She just said, How long?" And he said, "It's difficult to say." And I'm sitting there. So, I think we're talking weeks rather than months. This was so shocking. I can't say to my mother ‘’Allah will forgive you.’’ I can't say it to my mother. The next life Alhamdulillah. I can't say to my mother, ‘’Allah will reward you for your sabr’’ I can't say anything because she doesn't believe. So, what do I say? I said her, we have a tradition in our background where we believe that we are all travelers.
I said, "In this life is just, we sit under a tree and we just taken a little break and at some point, we're all going to stand up and we're going to move on to the next part of our journey." And she looked at me and she said, ‘’I like that." And that, that touched her. Something in her heart. Then the next thing happened. Mashallah. My cousin, the same one we are very close to. He sent out an email because she was like a mother to him. And you know, at the bottom of your email, you can have a little tagline. He's happened to be at that time a quote by the poet and author, the Nobel Prize winning author George Bernard Shaw. And my mother loved George Bernard Shaw.
She was always quoting George Bernard Shaw. And at the bottom of the thing, George Bernard Shaw had said this quote about the Prophet Muhammad(saw). He said, "If anyone was able to cure the problems of this world, it would be none other than the savior of humanity Muhammad." And my cousin just had it as a sign-off at the bottom. She said, "What's this?" She came to me, said, "Did you know George Bernard Shaw said this about Muhammad?" I said, "Yes." Now people have... She started telling everybody, "Have you seen what George Bernard Shaw said about Muhammad?" So slowly, slowly, slowly, You know, the door was opening. But still I was thinking, she's not Muslim, she's not Muslim.
Then she came to me and she said, "I need to have a serious conversation with you." She said, "Look, I've told your brother and your sister that when I die, I want to be cremated. So, that's my wish." And she said, "I know you're going to find that difficult." I said, "No problem. Whatever you wish is your wish." I said, "But hold on." I said, "Have you thought of the practicalities? What's going to happen?" She said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, look..." I said, "If you die here in our home, which we hope that you will die here in the home." I said, "Some strangers are going to come and take you." Said, "Who are these people?" I said, "They're just paid undertakers.
They're going to come and take you." I said, "Then they will undress you." I said, "Then they will pump you full of chemicals to preserve your body." I said, "Then they will put make up on your face, then they will do your hair, then they will put you in a dress." I said, "Who?
Who are these people?" I said, "And this will, this normally takes like a week, two weeks." She said to me, "Ugh!" Said, "What's the alternative?" I said, "Your sons will carry you and no will see you and your dignity will be preserved at all times." I said, "Then you will be taken to the local center." I said, "Your daughters will wash you." And I said, "You'll be wrapped in a simple white cloth." And I said that "You'll be buried in the ground within one day." She said, "That's what I want." And Alhamdulillah, she phoned my brother and sister and they couldn't believe it. Because they know that she doesn't like Islam, she doesn't like religion. Now I've got a problem.
She's not Muslim, so now I've got a problem. Okay. So, now I'm thinking, what am I gonna do now? This is all just me in my head, you know, What am I gonna do now? My mother is not Muslim. She wants a Muslim burial. I can't go to the imam, and say, please do janazah for my mother. She's not Muslim. What am I gonna do? So, I was every chance I got. And it was difficult because so many people were visiting. I just want everyone to go. Because just a few minutes here and a few minutes there, I can talk to her alone. And I got my first chance because she was a nurse. Her favorite thing was medicine. She used to marvel at the human body.
So I said to her one day, I said, "You know, the way the body works and how incredible it is." I said, "Do you think it's possible that this is designed and didn't just happen by chance?" She said, "Yeah, I think so." I said, "Okay." I left it. That's it. I left it. Then I came back next time. Again, people coming, days going by. I don't know if she's going to live one day, four days, five days. Every day I'm thinking, when is a chance, another chance.
I said, "You know, we spoke last time I said about the possibility of a creator." I said, "Do you think it's possible that, that creator might have sent us people, good, righteous people, to guide us like Jesus, and like Abraham, and like Moses, and like Muhammad like that?" You know, just putting it in there like that. I'm so scared that she's gonna say ‘’No, no.’’ She said, "Yeah, I think that's possible." Now, in my heart that's enough. Because I'm afraid that if I say to her, say Shahadah, she'll say "What? I'm not saying this." And then I'm stuck. In my heart, I thought that's enough. Alhamdulillah. I'll tell the imam. She said she believes in God and she believes in Muhammad.
Alhamdulillah. That's enough. We can bury her. So I came down and I said to my wife and my son, I said, "Alhamdulillah, she said she believes in a god. She said she believes that there are prophets. It's enough." My son, he said, "It's not enough, it's not enough. I said, "Wait." He said, "Let me go and talk to." I said, "No, no." Because if she says no, then we're stuck. He went upstairs. It felt to me like he was up there for 5 hours. I was just walking left, right, left and right, left, right. And he came. I don't know how long it was. I said, "What happened?" He was, "Yeah, no problem. She gave shahadah. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. So, she gave her shahadah MashaAllah. In Arabic.
-Alhamdulillah. This is the greatest miracle of my life. And she's buried Alhamdulillah in a Muslim cemetery. Alhamdulillah. What was the hardest challenge that you had to face after becoming a practicing Muslim? For me, the biggest problem was I knew I couldn't go back into the music business. That was my dream. That was my life. It was my career. That's all I knew. I hadn't done any other work. I never had another job. I'd done other jobs like delivery jobs and pizza. I used to deliver pizzas, and I did some taxi driving, and I did all that. But the only proper career I had was the music business. I knew at that time I couldn't go back into that industry because it...
Most of my work was in nightclubs. I also feared going back to it in a way, I feared going back because I knew for me it was this or that, and if I went back to that, my Islam was dead. I knew that. And for me, that was the most difficult thing. I had to start again with no qualifications, with no experience. I had to try and find a new career, a new way forward. And that was hard. That was hard for a long time. I didn't know what I was going to do. What was your purpose in life before Islam and what is it after Islam? Purpose in life, before Islam? There is no purpose. That's what that imam said to me, traveling with no direction. You are just there. You are no different from an animal.
What does an animal do? An animal feels hungry. It eats. An animal needs to go to the bathroom, goes to the bathroom. The animal feels afraid. He runs. Animal feels angry, he shouts. Just responding to nafs. Just responding to desires. That's what an animal does. Alhamdulillah. That's how Allah created them. No problem. Without guidance, that's all we are doing. We are just responding to the next influence that comes. That's all I was doing with my life. Chasing happiness, chasing pleasure, responding to your environment, responding to, you know, peer pressure. Alhamdulillah with Islam, you have a perspective which is eternal.
It can influence me in the way I am going to step into the bathroom. I have a purpose in the way I'm going to sit down in front of my table. I have a purpose. Am I going to sit down gently? Am I going to disturb somebody? Am I going to eat with my right hand? You have a purpose and a direction and a meaning which is not from your nafs, is driven by revelation, is driven by guidance. Did you experience an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah, especially protection from him? Yeah. Alhamdulillah, not through anything that I chose by Allah's guidance Alhamdulillah. I've been lucky enough to work with many Muslim charities.
I see the miracle of sadaqah all the time. I was at a charity dinner and this dinner was raising money for a particular cause. And I'll tell you what that cause was. I had an intention to give a certain amount of money. I came prepared to give a certain amount of money. I knew it was a charity dinner. And I said to my wife, I said, "Look, this is, this is quite a unique thing. Imagine we save one person. Actually this, this thing, and we just save one." And I said, "Let's give more." She said, "Okay, let's give more." We gave six times the amount that we intended to give. A few days later, I was leaving on a trip.
We were doing some filming and we were doing some charity work in New Zealand and Australia. On the way back, in New Zealand we had one day spare where we went to do some tourism and we went to these amazing caves. These are Maori caves. We're driving back from that and there was an accident and I came out of the car, the door flew open and I came out of the car 100 kilometers per hour, and the first thing that hit the ground was my head. My brains are coming out of my head. All the whole back of my head is all open. I mean, it's unbelievable because I just bounced along the road. I bounced along... I remember when the nurse, the ambulance came, I was just sitting there.
I didn't lose consciousness. I was sitting there on the side of the road. There was a blanket over my head and I remember she lifted up my back, first of all, and all the skin on my back was gone. And she was kind of, yeah, like nurses. She was trying to be light-hearted. She said, "Oh, that's going to sting." And then she lifted the blanket off my head and she saw my head injuries and immediately her voice changed and she said, "I want emergency airlift. We want helicopter airlift now. Extensive head injuries side of the road. I need an emergency airlift now." And they sent a helicopter and I had to be taken by helicopter. From the moment of the accident, Allah knows I was fine.
My heart was fine. Every doctor I met said the same thing to me. They said you had a miraculous escape. When I was in the hospital, they were searching me for brain damage. They said no sign of any brain damage at all. And in my heart I knew 100% what that miracle was because that fundraising dinner, which was just a few days before I left for New Zealand and Australia was for the people of Gaza. It was 2014 And you remember the attacks on Gaza in 2014 and this was for a brain pressure sensor to protect the people of Gaza from having brain damage when they had brain injuries. That's what that donation was for. It was to protect them.
And I said to my wife, "Imagine we save one person from brain damage." Alhamdulillah. I knew, I knew 100% that my donation had saved me, Alhamdulillah. That was my sadaqah. What quality of the Prophet(saw) impressed you the most? Two things, really. You know, we... He could have been a Prophet King. This was his option. He could have been like Davud alayhi salam and Sulaiman alayhi salam and been a king and had palaces and had all the wealth that this Dunia has to offer. And he would still have been Habibullah. Just his personal characteristic that he just had no love or attachment to this Dunia at all. Anything he had, he gave it away.
The messenger of Allah made dua, to remain poor, to be with the miskeen. And he said, "I will be with them in this life and I will be with them in the next life." Subhanallah. What a... What character? How can anyone close to that? Subhanallah. and his... I'm sorry, and his mercy, his kindness, his mercy. How is it possible that the person who throws rubbish on you, that you're worried you're worried about their health, the woman is throwing rubbish and you're concerned about her welfare, about her health. How is this possible to be in a human heart? This level of mercy, this level of compassion.
How is it possible that when your most beloved relatives, the people who were closer to you, your best friends have been tortured and murdered, how is it possible that you feel no vengeance, that you forgive all of them? Subhanallah. The level of mercy, the level of softness of his heart. Subhanallah. What kind of projects are you doing right now? So, I work with, as I said, Allah blessed me. I work with a number of charities at the moment. I'm an ambassador for a charity called Read Foundation. They specialize in education. So, they work with the Syrian refugees. They have a thing called school in a bus. Because, you know, in the camps there is no schools.
So, they've built a bus, which is a school, and the bus goes round to all the refugee camps. Mashallah. And provides a fully functioning classroom for children in the camps. Alhamdulillah, I'm involved in that project. I'm also with Islam Channel gonna be starting a podcast soon. So, Alhamdulillah, I'm looking forward to that. Because we just working out how that's exactly how it's going to look. And there's a possibility as well of an audiobook on the Sirah.
So there's a book that's been written in UK, in English called The Simple Sirah, is at a level of a non-religious people or people who are just practicing a little bit, who don't know much about the Sirah, and they want to do an audiobook and they're considering me inshallah as one of the voices to narrate that. I'm looking forward to that project as well. Alhamdulillah. What would you like to say as your final comments? Alhamdulillah. I would say really as an advice to myself, first and foremost, just keep going back to the basics. The life of the Prophet Muhammad(saw). When we need inspiration to look at how he dealt with things, how did he deal with children?
How did he deal with his wives, his family? The more we can learn from his example, and we won't learn that by osmosis. We have to study. We have to learn it. You have to read about it. You have to make that effort to go towards Allah, to go towards his Prophet(saw) and then Allah will come running towards us. And that really is has been my experience of my life is that every time you take a small step towards Allah Allah comes running towards you, you know, and the times of difficulty, these are blessings. This is Allah giving you a nudge, and He'll nudge, come back, come back. And you know, the biggest thing I see amongst the youth is the trick of the shaitan.
Because I have a girlfriend or because I smoke marijuana or because I drink alcohol or because I go to a nightclub or because I am doing... then Islam is not for me. I can't, I can't be full of my faith and do that. This is a lie. No one is beyond. In fact, Islam is there for the sinner, Islam is there for the lost. It's for the person who has nothing. It's for the person who thinks that they that they're beyond hope. This is who is there for. Allah is always, always there. So if you, if you can't do everything, don't do nothing. Do something. Whatever you can do, keep the door open, even if it's just one step that you're taking. Keep making that step inshallah and Allah will make it easy.
To start off with, who is Rahim Jung and can you tell us briefly about your life? I was born in London. I come from a mixed background. I've done lots and lots of different types of work, lots of different types of jobs, lots of different industries. Alhamdulillah, Allah has sent me this way and sent me that way. And inshallah, I hope that more of this will come out during the discussion today. Inshallah. -How was your life back then? -In those days, I don't think I believed in anything. So we were brought up, I would say very open-minded, really.
So my father, he, he believed in Islam, but he didn't believe in conventional Islam, the way we would understand it, the way I would understand it now. My mother, she actively hated religion. She was originally married to an Irishmen and then she got divorced and they don't allow divorce in the Catholic faith. So, she was excommunicated. She was thrown out of the Catholic faith. And then when she met my father, people didn't accept that. And she looked at religious people and she saw them as hypocrites. She saw them as always preaching, but not practicing. So, we grew up in an atmosphere where there was no real faith in the household.
So, we were just taught to be to have good character, good conduct, good manners, but that your religion didn't matter. And if I think back now, there were probably times when I, I doubted if there was any God or if there was any belief or anything. And I certainly didn't believe that you needed to practice any faith. So, can you tell us about your youth years? The time I was 18, I was failing everything. I was failing all my school exams and all I wanted was to work in the music business in any way that I could. And Alhamdulillah, an opportunity came up. My father was doing some business and one of the people he was doing business with had a lot of connections in the music business.
And I spoke to him and I said, "Look, please." I said, "Just get me in any way you can. Just get me in the door. I'll do the rest, just get me in the door." And he managed to speak to somebody and I started working in a music promotion company. I was so happy. It felt like the world was open to me. And that led me on to my next job, which was just an incredible job.
The company I was working with, we got the contract to do a promotion for Stevie Wonder, and the main person who was running that, the project manager, and she phoned me and she said, "Would you consider leaving your job now and coming to work with me?" And I said, "Well, it depends what it is." And she said, "We're starting Motown Records here in the UK." That was more than a dream come true. Motown is the biggest record label in history. Having that name, Motown, just having a business card with the name Motown Records on it. Anywhere you went, you put that card down, it would open doors. And I was having a chance to start this new version of Motown Records in the UK.
What was the defining moment that led you to come closer to Islam? I think for me, one of the defining moments was, I was, I was literally inside a party. Music and people and everybody was there and this big party. And my uncle, he had recently become religious and it was Ramadan. I didn't even know it was Ramadan. And he came, he knocked on the door of the party and he knew I was there.
And he called me and he said, "I want you to come to the mosque tonight." I said, "I'm here with my friends." I said, "You know, uncle, please, another day." And he said, "No, tonight." And again, I said, "I can't leave." And he said, "I'm not arguing, I'm telling you." And I didn't know it was Laylat al-Qadr. And he took me to the local mosque. And this was when I was in Motown Records. And at that time I would say my life was going better than I could ever have hoped. And I remember the dua in the qunut. And I wasn't joining in. I was sitting at the back of the mosque and I felt the power. Ameen, ameen, ameen...
I remember saying, I just sat there and I said, "Look, God, I don't know if you there. But I tell you this, I'm not giving up my lifestyle." I said, "I'm not give... My life is too good." I said, "If you want this for me, then you have to, you have to do something. You have to show me." From then, from then, things started to just go down and down and down and down. Until I genuinely feared that I was losing my mind. I was unable to function properly. I was unable to work. I was unable. my relationships became sour and all went wrong and my career went wrong. Everything went wrong. And really I went into a spiral which led to a sort of breakdown. I was so lost.
And I remember one day, one of my cousins, he took me, he made again. Same thing, the son, the son of my uncle who took me to the mosque. He took me to meet somebody, an imam. And I remember the imam kept saying to me the same thing. He was talking. He kept saying traveling with no direction. And I felt that I was moving, but I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what was the point of life. I didn't know what was important. And I remember I was in this job and I fell asleep. I fell asleep in my chair. And I just remember waking up. And brother, I felt like, I can't explain it. I felt like I was floating in the middle of the universe with nothing. I didn't know who I was.
I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what was happening. I just felt this crisis, this crisis. What were the things that impressed you the most about Islam? Two things, in the beginning, impressed me the most. Number one, when I saw people who had... and I knew people growing up from my family, from my distant family who weren't practicing. None of them were practicing. We didn't grow up a wider family. No one. But when I would see those who had made the transition, I always saw a contentment, a certain peace that they had that was lacking from everybody else. And that had a big impact on me, especially my cousin, when I would visit him. As I said, he's married with a child.
He didn't have any money, and yet he was happier than me. And I'm working in the music business with loads of money and celebrities and he's happier than me. Then what? Number two, when he would talk to me, when I would say, "Yeah, but what about this? This doesn't make sense." How is God gonna do this? And why did God do that and why is a prophet? I would ask him because I didn't want it to. I didn't want to believe. His answers always said, ‘’Allah, says in the Quran something. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) said...’’ He wouldn't argue with me from his aql, from his reason always, every single time. And it would always be the right answer. And I'd be, I...
How can he always have the right answer? And that I used to think, that's amazing. You know, he's not arguing from himself, just he's telling me Quran and Sunnah. So what incidents made you change your ways? I remember this moment. This moment where everything changed. I can tell you the date. The 5th of October, 1993. I was in a, I was in a bar with some friends and I felt like a panic attack coming on. First, I had never experienced anything like this. I just wanted to run out of this. And then I thought, where am I gonna run? And when I get there, I'm going to feel the same. It felt like the ground opened up and was going to swallow me up. That's what it felt like. And I drove home.
I don't even know how I drove home. For the first time, I made dua and I didn't know what I was saying. I didn't know what I was doing. But this is the funny thing about it. This shows you where I was in my life. I said, "Oh God. I said, Please, God, please, help me." And I made a deal. I said, "Look, if you save me now, if you save me from going crazy, I will give up everything haram for two weeks." This is why I said it, because it was inconceivable to me that I would give up for more than this. And then I said, "No, no, no, no, that's not enough. That's not enough." I said, "God, if you save me, I will give up all the haram for one month." Then I said, "No, no, no, no, no.
It's too long, too long, too long." Then I said, "Three weeks. Yes, okay." I settle. Two or three weeks. I said, "God, if you save me now, I will give up everything haram next three weeks. I won't touch anything haram. That was the first day where I decided to leave the haram. And of course, after three weeks I was... it was terrible. I was still... I wasn't better. So then I said, you know, then I started saying because in that time, I'd started making dua and I'd even opened the Quran.
I remember opening the Quran first time, and I remember, of course, one of the most important verses of my life to this day, to this day ’’Fa inna ma'al usri yusran, inna ma'al usri yusra.’’ So this difficulty that you're in, it will come to an end. It will come to an end. And I remember just holding on to that, holding on to that. Like with everything, I held onto that verse that maybe some ease was going to come after this crisis. What made you convinced that Islam is 100% true? I'm gonna be honest with you. I think if you grow up with many different ideological backgrounds, as we did and even now, my, my brother, he is agnostic, maybe atheist. My sister is Buddhist.
You know, my father-in-law is Jewish. My mother-in-law was atheist. You know, my closest people in my family are not religious, many of them. And, and same with many of my closest friends. But for me, the journey of faith is a constant journey. It's constantly tested and shaytan will always whisper doubts. So I can be honest and say that my journey has not been linear. It's not just been straight. More, more, more. In my mind, it's gone up and down and up and down, and there are periods of crisis that I have where I wonder, am I following the right version of Islam or am I, is it really necessary to be this devout? Or maybe these small sins are not that bad?
Or maybe, you know, the thing, every single time is the Quran. The Quran. How? How is this book possible? How is this.. we can hold this miracle in our hands? How is it possible that the Prophet Muhammad(saw) knew all? He couldn't read, he couldn't write, he had no education. How is this possible that he predicted so many things over decades and centuries that would come true? How is it possible? So every time for me, the thing that is, brings me back without any doubt is the Quran. And the more we learn about the Quran, the more we find out with science and with maths and with computers. The more we analyze it, the more miraculous, the more miracles come out of the Quran.
So this whenever shaitan comes, this is the thing I say, ’’Audhu billahi minash shaitanir rajim.’’ What were the last things that you had to give up when becoming a committed Muslim? Really, it was the time when I decided to leave my relationship. You know, the relationship that I was in and go back home and live with my parents. That was the defining moment, because by then I was already praying. I was fasting. I'd given up most of the haram. But I was still in a relationship. And I remember, you know, saying, I can't do I can't wake up and pray fajr and then get back into bed. This is, I just can't do this anymore.
In my mind, it was like big neon signposts saying to me, you can't do this and you can't do this and you can't do this. But I was still doing it, you know? But that's what I felt like. I felt like it was very clear and I was trying to I was trying not to look, you know, but it was very clear to me. Now, I was 100% committed to trying to find my way within Islam. No more, no more haram at all. I had to give up these things. And for me, that was the defining moment. How was your family's and close circle's reaction to all these? Oh, my father was concerned. He wasn't worried about Islam, but he was concerned that I was becoming extreme. For my mother, it was a very, very big thing.
It was a really big thing. And it affected our relationship for many years. My mother was definitely damaged. She was damaged by her experience of religious people. Whether they were Muslim or Christian or whatever. She was damaged by that. And when she met Muslims, often they were quite aggressive towards her and she was really upset. She was, she would shout at me, she would tell me that I am going crazy, that I'm just, I'm just in a weak moment of my life and people are taking advantage of me. And even when she would see me praying, always she was upset, even if she heard me say, ‘’Salam alaikum’’ to someone, "Gosh, you got out stupid. She was very upset for a long time.
So how did your relationship with your mum go? Did she change her opinion and feel closer to Islam as time went by? This is one of the greatest miracles of my life. My mother's all the time, this, this something was in her heart. It was against religion, it was against faith, it was against religious people. And it didn't really change. Even after 15 years. If I was praying, she would walking through it, "Ohh!", she would go like that. But she became sick. It was cancer. She had cancer. And this was just coincidence. It was pure coincidence. I went to visit at the hospital and it was just me and her.
When the doctor came with the bad news, he came, he took her hand and he said, "I've got some bad news" like that. And she just looked him. She just said, How long?" And he said, "It's difficult to say." And I'm sitting there. So, I think we're talking weeks rather than months. This was so shocking. I can't say to my mother ‘’Allah will forgive you.’’ I can't say it to my mother. The next life Alhamdulillah. I can't say to my mother, ‘’Allah will reward you for your sabr’’ I can't say anything because she doesn't believe. So, what do I say? I said her, we have a tradition in our background where we believe that we are all travelers.
I said, "In this life is just, we sit under a tree and we just taken a little break and at some point, we're all going to stand up and we're going to move on to the next part of our journey." And she looked at me and she said, ‘’I like that." And that, that touched her. Something in her heart. Then the next thing happened. Mashallah. My cousin, the same one we are very close to. He sent out an email because she was like a mother to him. And you know, at the bottom of your email, you can have a little tagline. He's happened to be at that time a quote by the poet and author, the Nobel Prize winning author George Bernard Shaw. And my mother loved George Bernard Shaw.
She was always quoting George Bernard Shaw. And at the bottom of the thing, George Bernard Shaw had said this quote about the Prophet Muhammad(saw). He said, "If anyone was able to cure the problems of this world, it would be none other than the savior of humanity Muhammad." And my cousin just had it as a sign-off at the bottom. She said, "What's this?" She came to me, said, "Did you know George Bernard Shaw said this about Muhammad?" I said, "Yes." Now people have... She started telling everybody, "Have you seen what George Bernard Shaw said about Muhammad?" So slowly, slowly, slowly, You know, the door was opening. But still I was thinking, she's not Muslim, she's not Muslim.
Then she came to me and she said, "I need to have a serious conversation with you." She said, "Look, I've told your brother and your sister that when I die, I want to be cremated. So, that's my wish." And she said, "I know you're going to find that difficult." I said, "No problem. Whatever you wish is your wish." I said, "But hold on." I said, "Have you thought of the practicalities? What's going to happen?" She said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, look..." I said, "If you die here in our home, which we hope that you will die here in the home." I said, "Some strangers are going to come and take you." Said, "Who are these people?" I said, "They're just paid undertakers.
They're going to come and take you." I said, "Then they will undress you." I said, "Then they will pump you full of chemicals to preserve your body." I said, "Then they will put make up on your face, then they will do your hair, then they will put you in a dress." I said, "Who?
Who are these people?" I said, "And this will, this normally takes like a week, two weeks." She said to me, "Ugh!" Said, "What's the alternative?" I said, "Your sons will carry you and no will see you and your dignity will be preserved at all times." I said, "Then you will be taken to the local center." I said, "Your daughters will wash you." And I said, "You'll be wrapped in a simple white cloth." And I said that "You'll be buried in the ground within one day." She said, "That's what I want." And Alhamdulillah, she phoned my brother and sister and they couldn't believe it. Because they know that she doesn't like Islam, she doesn't like religion. Now I've got a problem.
She's not Muslim, so now I've got a problem. Okay. So, now I'm thinking, what am I gonna do now? This is all just me in my head, you know, What am I gonna do now? My mother is not Muslim. She wants a Muslim burial. I can't go to the imam, and say, please do janazah for my mother. She's not Muslim. What am I gonna do? So, I was every chance I got. And it was difficult because so many people were visiting. I just want everyone to go. Because just a few minutes here and a few minutes there, I can talk to her alone. And I got my first chance because she was a nurse. Her favorite thing was medicine. She used to marvel at the human body.
So I said to her one day, I said, "You know, the way the body works and how incredible it is." I said, "Do you think it's possible that this is designed and didn't just happen by chance?" She said, "Yeah, I think so." I said, "Okay." I left it. That's it. I left it. Then I came back next time. Again, people coming, days going by. I don't know if she's going to live one day, four days, five days. Every day I'm thinking, when is a chance, another chance.
I said, "You know, we spoke last time I said about the possibility of a creator." I said, "Do you think it's possible that, that creator might have sent us people, good, righteous people, to guide us like Jesus, and like Abraham, and like Moses, and like Muhammad like that?" You know, just putting it in there like that. I'm so scared that she's gonna say ‘’No, no.’’ She said, "Yeah, I think that's possible." Now, in my heart that's enough. Because I'm afraid that if I say to her, say Shahadah, she'll say "What? I'm not saying this." And then I'm stuck. In my heart, I thought that's enough. Alhamdulillah. I'll tell the imam. She said she believes in God and she believes in Muhammad.
Alhamdulillah. That's enough. We can bury her. So I came down and I said to my wife and my son, I said, "Alhamdulillah, she said she believes in a god. She said she believes that there are prophets. It's enough." My son, he said, "It's not enough, it's not enough. I said, "Wait." He said, "Let me go and talk to." I said, "No, no." Because if she says no, then we're stuck. He went upstairs. It felt to me like he was up there for 5 hours. I was just walking left, right, left and right, left, right. And he came. I don't know how long it was. I said, "What happened?" He was, "Yeah, no problem. She gave shahadah. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. So, she gave her shahadah MashaAllah. In Arabic.
-Alhamdulillah. This is the greatest miracle of my life. And she's buried Alhamdulillah in a Muslim cemetery. Alhamdulillah. What was the hardest challenge that you had to face after becoming a practicing Muslim? For me, the biggest problem was I knew I couldn't go back into the music business. That was my dream. That was my life. It was my career. That's all I knew. I hadn't done any other work. I never had another job. I'd done other jobs like delivery jobs and pizza. I used to deliver pizzas, and I did some taxi driving, and I did all that. But the only proper career I had was the music business. I knew at that time I couldn't go back into that industry because it...
Most of my work was in nightclubs. I also feared going back to it in a way, I feared going back because I knew for me it was this or that, and if I went back to that, my Islam was dead. I knew that. And for me, that was the most difficult thing. I had to start again with no qualifications, with no experience. I had to try and find a new career, a new way forward. And that was hard. That was hard for a long time. I didn't know what I was going to do. What was your purpose in life before Islam and what is it after Islam? Purpose in life, before Islam? There is no purpose. That's what that imam said to me, traveling with no direction. You are just there. You are no different from an animal.
What does an animal do? An animal feels hungry. It eats. An animal needs to go to the bathroom, goes to the bathroom. The animal feels afraid. He runs. Animal feels angry, he shouts. Just responding to nafs. Just responding to desires. That's what an animal does. Alhamdulillah. That's how Allah created them. No problem. Without guidance, that's all we are doing. We are just responding to the next influence that comes. That's all I was doing with my life. Chasing happiness, chasing pleasure, responding to your environment, responding to, you know, peer pressure. Alhamdulillah with Islam, you have a perspective which is eternal.
It can influence me in the way I am going to step into the bathroom. I have a purpose in the way I'm going to sit down in front of my table. I have a purpose. Am I going to sit down gently? Am I going to disturb somebody? Am I going to eat with my right hand? You have a purpose and a direction and a meaning which is not from your nafs, is driven by revelation, is driven by guidance. Did you experience an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah, especially protection from him? Yeah. Alhamdulillah, not through anything that I chose by Allah's guidance Alhamdulillah. I've been lucky enough to work with many Muslim charities.
I see the miracle of sadaqah all the time. I was at a charity dinner and this dinner was raising money for a particular cause. And I'll tell you what that cause was. I had an intention to give a certain amount of money. I came prepared to give a certain amount of money. I knew it was a charity dinner. And I said to my wife, I said, "Look, this is, this is quite a unique thing. Imagine we save one person. Actually this, this thing, and we just save one." And I said, "Let's give more." She said, "Okay, let's give more." We gave six times the amount that we intended to give. A few days later, I was leaving on a trip.
We were doing some filming and we were doing some charity work in New Zealand and Australia. On the way back, in New Zealand we had one day spare where we went to do some tourism and we went to these amazing caves. These are Maori caves. We're driving back from that and there was an accident and I came out of the car, the door flew open and I came out of the car 100 kilometers per hour, and the first thing that hit the ground was my head. My brains are coming out of my head. All the whole back of my head is all open. I mean, it's unbelievable because I just bounced along the road. I bounced along... I remember when the nurse, the ambulance came, I was just sitting there.
I didn't lose consciousness. I was sitting there on the side of the road. There was a blanket over my head and I remember she lifted up my back, first of all, and all the skin on my back was gone. And she was kind of, yeah, like nurses. She was trying to be light-hearted. She said, "Oh, that's going to sting." And then she lifted the blanket off my head and she saw my head injuries and immediately her voice changed and she said, "I want emergency airlift. We want helicopter airlift now. Extensive head injuries side of the road. I need an emergency airlift now." And they sent a helicopter and I had to be taken by helicopter. From the moment of the accident, Allah knows I was fine.
My heart was fine. Every doctor I met said the same thing to me. They said you had a miraculous escape. When I was in the hospital, they were searching me for brain damage. They said no sign of any brain damage at all. And in my heart I knew 100% what that miracle was because that fundraising dinner, which was just a few days before I left for New Zealand and Australia was for the people of Gaza. It was 2014 And you remember the attacks on Gaza in 2014 and this was for a brain pressure sensor to protect the people of Gaza from having brain damage when they had brain injuries. That's what that donation was for. It was to protect them.
And I said to my wife, "Imagine we save one person from brain damage." Alhamdulillah. I knew, I knew 100% that my donation had saved me, Alhamdulillah. That was my sadaqah. What quality of the Prophet(saw) impressed you the most? Two things, really. You know, we... He could have been a Prophet King. This was his option. He could have been like Davud alayhi salam and Sulaiman alayhi salam and been a king and had palaces and had all the wealth that this Dunia has to offer. And he would still have been Habibullah. Just his personal characteristic that he just had no love or attachment to this Dunia at all. Anything he had, he gave it away.
The messenger of Allah made dua, to remain poor, to be with the miskeen. And he said, "I will be with them in this life and I will be with them in the next life." Subhanallah. What a... What character? How can anyone close to that? Subhanallah. and his... I'm sorry, and his mercy, his kindness, his mercy. How is it possible that the person who throws rubbish on you, that you're worried you're worried about their health, the woman is throwing rubbish and you're concerned about her welfare, about her health. How is this possible to be in a human heart? This level of mercy, this level of compassion.
How is it possible that when your most beloved relatives, the people who were closer to you, your best friends have been tortured and murdered, how is it possible that you feel no vengeance, that you forgive all of them? Subhanallah. The level of mercy, the level of softness of his heart. Subhanallah. What kind of projects are you doing right now? So, I work with, as I said, Allah blessed me. I work with a number of charities at the moment. I'm an ambassador for a charity called Read Foundation. They specialize in education. So, they work with the Syrian refugees. They have a thing called school in a bus. Because, you know, in the camps there is no schools.
So, they've built a bus, which is a school, and the bus goes round to all the refugee camps. Mashallah. And provides a fully functioning classroom for children in the camps. Alhamdulillah, I'm involved in that project. I'm also with Islam Channel gonna be starting a podcast soon. So, Alhamdulillah, I'm looking forward to that. Because we just working out how that's exactly how it's going to look. And there's a possibility as well of an audiobook on the Sirah.
So there's a book that's been written in UK, in English called The Simple Sirah, is at a level of a non-religious people or people who are just practicing a little bit, who don't know much about the Sirah, and they want to do an audiobook and they're considering me inshallah as one of the voices to narrate that. I'm looking forward to that project as well. Alhamdulillah. What would you like to say as your final comments? Alhamdulillah. I would say really as an advice to myself, first and foremost, just keep going back to the basics. The life of the Prophet Muhammad(saw). When we need inspiration to look at how he dealt with things, how did he deal with children?
How did he deal with his wives, his family? The more we can learn from his example, and we won't learn that by osmosis. We have to study. We have to learn it. You have to read about it. You have to make that effort to go towards Allah, to go towards his Prophet(saw) and then Allah will come running towards us. And that really is has been my experience of my life is that every time you take a small step towards Allah Allah comes running towards you, you know, and the times of difficulty, these are blessings. This is Allah giving you a nudge, and He'll nudge, come back, come back. And you know, the biggest thing I see amongst the youth is the trick of the shaitan.
Because I have a girlfriend or because I smoke marijuana or because I drink alcohol or because I go to a nightclub or because I am doing... then Islam is not for me. I can't, I can't be full of my faith and do that. This is a lie. No one is beyond. In fact, Islam is there for the sinner, Islam is there for the lost. It's for the person who has nothing. It's for the person who thinks that they that they're beyond hope. This is who is there for. Allah is always, always there. So if you, if you can't do everything, don't do nothing. Do something. Whatever you can do, keep the door open, even if it's just one step that you're taking. Keep making that step inshallah and Allah will make it easy.