Portuguese Church Student Became Muslim! How He Accepted Islam! - Towards Eternity
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So I grew up in a kind of Christian background. So my mother was Catholic. The school I went to was Church of England. If there is a Hell and there is a Day of Judgement, I don't want to get punished by God for following the wrong religion or the wrong belief that could have bad consequences. I don't want to get punished by God. If there's a purpose of life, and the purpose of life is for human beings, then surely it should encompass every aspect of human life. I was aware of Islam and it seemed deceptively simple. It was only when, after further investigation, after I went through a whole bunch of different other religions and beliefs and philosophies, I kind of bumped back into Islam.
Islam... I actually tried to refute Islam as I tried to refute every other religion before that, or belief, or philosophy, and Islam just kept answering me back with even more profound answers. And so I had to adopt it. Assalamualaikum, Brother Abdullah al Andalusi. Really, thank you for coming and accepting our invitation. We are very happy to have you with us. I want to start with who is Abdullah al Andalusi, and can you tell us briefly about your life? Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Thank you for inviting me on. Um, who's Andalusi? Just another servant of Allah (swt), as we all try to be. So I was born in London, raised in London, UK.
My family background is I'm kind of part Portuguese and part North African. So I grew up in a mostly Christian, kind of Christian secular family background, and I kind of became Muslim at 14 years old. At about 18 or 19 years old, I got more involved in public dawah, and eventually I ended up getting involved in public debates and discussions, giving lectures at universities and kind of doing videos and publishing articles and things like this. You were 14 when you converted to Islam, as you said. Can you take us back to those times? What was the reason that you start researching at such a young age?
The simple answer would say curiosity, but also it was just simply, I became aware of different religions. So I grew up in a kind of Christian background. So my mother was Catholic. The school I went to was Church of England, and they had mass and communion and all this stuff. I was taught Bible stories like my fellow students were. But I asked the question, after I became aware that there were different religions I asked the question, how do I know that I'm following the right religion? If I was born in China, would I be an atheist or a Buddhist? Would I be a Hindu, if I was born in somewhere in India?
The accident of geography can't determine what the truth is, and there's different ideas going around. Well, I need to investigate for myself. And also if there is a hell, and there is a Day of Judgement. I don't want to get punished by God for following the wrong religion or the wrong belief that could have, you know, bad consequences. So I wanted to investigate and... So, about 10 years old, I decided to go to my local library, although I always liked going to library anyway. This is before the internet, so when people used to go to libraries. If you remember those things.
And I used to read every book you can imagine, not just on current religions, but historical religions, historical philosophies, you name it, I researched it. From, you know, ancient Egyptian concepts of life after death to, you know, Tibetan Buddhism, to even kind of Western New Age spirituality and so on, every kind of cult you can imagine. I researched everything. I thought, I'm not going to assume that the size of a belief or a religion or a philosophy determines its truth. I'm just going to see, you know, what these different ideas are. Is there any proof of it? Does it make sense? Are there any problems I can find in it, like contradictions or things like this?
And if so, then it's not the truth. So I went through that gradual eliminating process. Did you start with Islam or Islam was the last religion to look at for you? I was aware of Islam and it seemed deceptively simple. When I first saw it, I thought, oh, it's very simple. Maybe there's not much, kind of, deep truth in it that I'm aware just by seeing the basics. I was reading a book about different religions. So it just presented Islam. Very basic, very simply. It was only when, after further investigation, after I went through a whole bunch of different other religions and beliefs and philosophies, I kind of bumped back into Islam, and I started to ask the question about this.
It was something very, you might think, very small, which is, uh, it talked about Islam... So Islam talked about women having hijab. And as an obligation, I was like, why does Islam want women to wear hijab? Then what's the point of this? So I thought about it and I thought about it. And I said, well, you know, it seems like in the West, you know, we see there is a lot of sexual politics going on in the workplace, sexual tension and sexuality then becoming used for advertising commodities and goods and things like this. Society is becoming very sexualized. And it's leading to a lot of problems, relationship dysfunctions, people leaving their partners, unfaithfulness, a whole bunch of things.
And when I looked at the Islamic concept of hijab, I was thinking, well, what's the point of this? And I said, well, what would be the purpose of it, do you think? And I thought maybe it's because they want women to look modest, not show sexuality in public. The hijab and jilbab and everything. Oh, okay. So that means then Islam wants society to keep sexuality out of the public view. Keep it for the private, because you can't do anything with sexuality in the public. You want to go to work, you want to go to university. Why is sexuality going to be distracting you? Why allow it to distract you in public? It's not fair.
It causes issues you know, in society that I was aware of in the West growing up. So I said, oh, that makes sense. And then what struck me, which is if there's a purpose of life and the purpose of life is for human beings, then surely it should encompass every aspect of human life, not just once a week or, you know, in Jumah or in church on Sundays, but every part of a life, including society. So Islam seemed holistic and it seemed, well, if there is a true religion and true belief, then that looks quite like it or close to it. And I started to ask more questions. I didn't embrace Islam just on that, but I asked more questions and I encountered more answers, which just blew me away.
And so eventually I saw that Islam... I actually tried to refute Islam, as I tried to refute every other religion before that, or belief or philosophy, and Islam just kept answering me back with even more profound answers. And so I had to adopt it. So you didn't have any prejudices about Islam, misconceptions about Islam before reading this? So you didn't have any prejudices about Islam, misconceptions about Islam before reading this? The prejudices I had was the common liberal and secular prejudices about religion. Religion doesn't talk about politics. Religion doesn't talk about society or economics or human problems.
Religion is just a belief you have where you can pray for things that you want and maybe get them, or it makes you feel good, perhaps when you feel scared about things. But that was it. That was the prejudice. This was early 90s. This was before, you know, 9/11, before all this stuff, so... It was the common prejudice against all religions that was imbibed into me, inculcated into me rather that I had as a liberal, as a secular liberal, you know, person in a secular liberal society. So when I encountered, Islam was so holistic. That's what shocked me, because I was told that religion doesn't talk about those things.
And when I discovered it did, it made more sense that it would have talked about those things. It should talk about those things. So I think you went through this process of elimination, right? This can't be true. This can't be... So how did you decide that those other religions were not true? Sure. I mean, okay, this is between the ages of 10 and 14. So I looked at different religions and I asked a number of questions, which is, is there evidence for this? Is there proof? Was it available to most human beings, or is this a message that is brand new, has it always existed?
So when it came with Christianity, the idea that you have a human being that comes down to Earth and he's actually God, apparently, and he dies even though God doesn't die, and his sacrifice you know, kind of forgives your sins even though you're still sinful afterwards and you still have to repent. So those things didn't make sense to me when it comes to Christianity. When it comes to Judaism, sure, it believes in monotheism, but it seemed very much restricted to this one particular tribal nation of people throughout history. And you didn't see any explanation for all the tribes around history or what other people should be doing and following.
When you come with Buddhism, human beings are basically born into the world, and they reincarnate constantly until they reach enlightenment. And I say, okay, well, what's enlightenment? Enlightenment is when you know the purpose of life or, you know, some deep truth. And I say, well, you're saying the purpose of human beings is to be enlightened, and enlightened means to know your purpose. But then, I know my purpose. My purpose is to be enlightened. And it becomes a circular logic. Also, there's other questions like, if there's no God in Buddhism, or God is not important in Buddhism, who set up the system of rebirths? And was there a first human being?
Because you can't have an infinite regress in the past of people being... So what was your first soul, your first body that you were born into? And then where were you before that? They don’t answer these questions in Buddhism. Hinduism believes in a similar idea too, because Buddhism comes off from Hinduism. Mainstream idea of Hinduism believes that there was one God that we come from, but we are... We used to be part of God, and somehow Gods can split into pieces and these pieces are ignorant and powerless. So a part of God is ignorant and powerless. And then you go into reincarnation, you get born, you die, you're born, you die, until you can find a way to get back to God.
But you are a part of God. That doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever. So God can be split into... The infinite, unlimited Creator can be split into pieces, and these pieces are finite and these pieces are limited. It doesn't make sense. So these are kind of the process I was going through for many different religions and beliefs. Also, atheism was also one of the things in the list, right? So you eliminated that as well. Well, I mean, I followed the typical prejudice that science can answer all questions at one point. I mean, I've always been interested in science. I still am.
I've always got good grades, whenever I did science or physics-based subjects going for university and so on and so forth. But the idea that I thought science could answer all questions was an assumption that was taught to me by the society that I was in. But science doesn't talk about what is beyond matter. It talks about how matter behaves, and that's it. So how fast it goes and how it operates. It doesn't talk about what ultimately it's made up of. It doesn't talk about where it comes from. It doesn't talk about where it's all going. It just talks about how matter behaves.
And then scientists either try to extrapolate, saying that, ‘oh, matter will always be the same way forever, or matter was always existing there forever.’ But that doesn't make sense because again, infinite regress. If we, to get to this point in time, we had to wait an infinite amount of time to finish... Well, infinity doesn't finish. We never reached this point in time. So the fact that I'm right here, sitting in front of you, proves to me that God exists, or there was a Creator that initiated matter to move and to change and so on and so forth. So that's why I eliminate all these things. So after being convinced that Islam must be the true religion, what steps did you take?
What was your ultimate, you know, journey to accepting Islam? Can you tell us about the phases? Okay. As I was reading through the Quran, but also reading through tafsir explanations and the commentary on the Quran, as well as all the different books I could find on Islam, it was... When I would find something that didn't make sense, I realized after thinking about it for ages and ages that it wasn't that the text didn't make sense, but I had brought into it an assumption, and the assumption was leading me to not understand it properly, right? And so my process of going through the Quran began to purify me of my assumptions that I brought, my baggage that I brought into Islam, right.
And so, Alhamdulillah, you know, my steps for encountering Islam and becoming a Muslim was really one of first, I was interested. I was intrigued that this sounds like something that could be true, to the step of I adopt it as a hypothesis. So a hypothesis is something that you believe is the best explanation, but you're not 100% certain. Maybe there could be a better explanation, but from all the available evidence you have, it is the only... It's the best one. And after going through, and my knowledge increasing more and more, and I started to ask questions like, what if there was a...
Let's say I was going to create a religion and I was going to take Islam as a basis, but I'm going to change something of it. Would it be just as good or better? And as I did that process, I realized that every time you make any... If you make any kind of change to Islam, it ends up with a contradiction, or something that doesn't make sense. And so I realized then that how Islam explains the universe, human existence, the existence of animals, the planets, everything, whether it's pleasure and suffering, and whether you are... The finite lifespan we have, all these things were answered in Islam to the point that there was actually no other possible answer that could answer all of this.
So then I eventually came to the conclusion that Islam is the only possible explanation for reality. And then I had yaqeen, then I had absolute certainty in the deen of Islam. What was the last thing that you said, "Okay, now I'm going to become a Muslim tomorrow." What happened that you decided? Well, it was at 14 years old, and that was when I adopted Islam, as you could say, a hypothesis, which is it's the best explanation that I know of. So as a human being who is searching for purpose, I'm obliged to, to follow the best explanation presented to me. And I don't see any contradictions in it. So there's no reason I should say no to it.
I didn't know that you have to testify the Shahada in a formal kind of way. I just thought it was something you just believe in. I said, okay, well, I believe this, and so, yeah. So my Shahada was simply going up to my mother and saying, you know, "Mom, I think..." "You know, I think I'll be a Muslim." That was my Shahada, basically. And you know, my mother, from a secular background, but a liberal secular background, religion wasn't so important. So she didn't really think it was a big deal. She thought it was just a passing phase, because, you know, parents see their children go through different phases, and they try different things or different hobbies.
So she thought this was just maybe a hobby I'd do. After almost 30 years later, I think now she realizes that it's a bit more than a hobby here, right? - Life itself. - Yeah. Yeah, Alhamdulillah. When you started preaching Islam, giving dawah to people, were there anyone that became Muslim around your circle, your family? Well, I mean, you know, when I... As I started investigating Islam, I would always tell my mom about this, and obviously, you know, my father as well. And over time, Alhamdulillah they saw changes in me. I became a better son to them. I came from a secular, liberal society. And, you know, you had rebellious kids.
And it's different from the kind of rebellious kids you might think, because all kids are kind of rebellious in some way. But Western rebellious kids are much more disrespectful to their parents compared to other cultures and beliefs and so on and so forth. And so when I answered what my purpose in life was I saw the errors of my ways, and I saw that I increased in gratitude for what my parents did. But when my parents saw this, when they see that their son is working harder, is politer, is more well behaved... I wasn't perfect, but they saw a radical change in me. How can you hate that, right? How can you fear that? I think adab conquers more than ideas do sometimes.
People just see the change in your adab and akhlaq, and that impresses them and inclines their heart towards you more. More effective than any hours of preaching you can do or speaking you can do. The one difficulty is it is hard for the parents to see their child teach them about life. So I changed your nappy, right, and now you're going to tell me about what I should be doing in life. So there was some of that. But eventually, my father kind of rediscovered, I suppose you could say, Islam for himself. And for my mother, she became a kind of a nominal Muslim. It's not 100% perfect, you know, you could say, because the thing is that she doesn't have many Muslims around her, right.
And so all her friends, or most of her friends are Catholic or secular and so on and so forth. So it's very hard because we're social creatures. As human beings, you need to have encouragement. But Alhamdulillah she did say the Shahada. Some people's stories are a bit more romantic, you could say. My one was more this gradual realization for both myself and eventually for my parents too. When you look at the Quran, what kind of book do you see from the perspective of your areas of interest? When you read the book of the Quran, it is unlike any book you've ever read. Even when you see the translations.
It doesn't seem like something a very capable human being could ever attain, because usually people who are very good at writing books and very good at writing, they have these very limited structures they think information should fit into. So, chapters which only have a few points in them, and then they move to the next chapter and next. The thing with the Quran is that one verse, its meaning can change depending on what question you ask. And you can read things that superficially don't seem connected, but you feel in the back of your mind there is a structure beneath it. My advice to anyone reading the Quran is have a conversation with the Quran, not just passive reading. Ask questions.
You might think, I've asked questions to a book, how can it answer me? But you'd be surprised how an ayah you think was very basic, didn't really have much explanation, how it could answer questions you've never, ever even contemplated or thought of. It's a book you can just keep on rereading again and again. Muslims today are more preoccupied with the sound of the Quran rather than the meaning of the Quran. There's even a hadith that talks about this. I mean, the hadith is da'if, but I don't know. It seems to predict things, very interesting. It talked about the Muslims at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) were more interested in the meaning of the Quran.
But there will come a time when Muslims will be more interested in the pronunciation of the Quran and the sound, but not the meaning so much. And I think that should be reversed. Ask questions of the Quran. Have a discussion, ask questions. Why does the Quran use this word, and not another word? The Quran is very precise. It's a very precise book. Why does it use the words it uses? Once you ask those questions, the Quran opens up even more to you. So that would be my my advice. As a convert and a da'i, as a revert, what is the most common prejudice people have against Islam and how do you respond to it? The problem is that depends on which society you're speaking of.
So now after 9/11 in the West, the perception is that Islam is violent, and it's barbaric, and it has punishments which are barbaric, and it restricts all kinds of things, and it restricts women, and it restricts being, quote-unquote, free, whatever that means. Now, before 9/11, the perspective of Islam was that Islam was just a religion, and all religions are kind of based in the past, and they don't talk about modern day problems. That's a very common misconception. And it's one that even is in the Muslim world today. After colonialism, the Western education systems, or even influence, Muslims themselves have that misconception about Islam.
They think Islam is something based in the past and it can't answer modern problems. Islam could answer problems, modern day problems, better than the solution that the West can bring. But we don't realize it. We think that it's just about praying five times a day. It's just about going to Jumah. It's just about tajweed, pronunciation of the Quran. Islam is much more than that. It is a full way of life. We see some people who, despite seeing clear evidences, don't become Muslim. What is the reason behind this, do you think? Well, I'll say there's two categories of people who resist Islam. One of those is obviously, you might call them, they have emotional reasons.
So they are already invested. It's called the sunk and cost fallacy. There we go. It's where you invest... You've invested so much of your time, effort, your life, your hopes and your dreams into something false that you don't want to give up because you've already invested so much. You want to keep on investing. The second kind of people, and those are the people I'm interested in. They are those who... They have assumptions, and those assumptions blind them from actually seeing the truth of Islam. People might assume, they say, ‘there's so many different religions, there's so many different ideas of God. So they must all be wrong.’ Right? That's an assumption.
And it's a quite common one amongst many atheists and so on. But I could simply point to them and say, okay, in the past there were so many theories about what the Sun was. Yeah. Was it a flat disk? Is it an upturned bowl, with a bowl of fire? Or is it a sphere? Oh, could someone say, well, ‘there's so many different, you know, theories about the Sun, then the Sun doesn't exist.’ No, one of them is right. The rest are wrong. Just because there's different ideas doesn't mean they're all wrong. Yeah, so that's an assumption. So in Islam, we don't say that every word for God, for one God, in every culture throughout civilization is false. We simply say that not all ideas of the divine are true.
If you believe in 3-in-1, or you believe that God has split into parts, or there's multiple Gods, yeah, or that God has a family, that's false. But if you believe in one God, whatever you want to call him throughout history, you want to call him Eloch, or Allah, you want to call him Dios, or Tanri, right? This is all... It's the same word. You're describing the same thing in different languages. So, that's an example of an assumption that people hold that gives us a roadblock. And so when we encounter atheists, deists, or people of different religions, those who are sincere amongst them, the only thing that stops them from becoming Muslim is their assumption.
So Inshallah the work of the da'i is to destroy their assumptions. And what does the Shahada do? The Shahada starts out with a negation first. It says "La ilaha," right, so there is no... All these idols, all these humans, statues, pieces of wood, all these things, whether it's volcanoes you worship, or the Sun you worship or the Moon you worship, all these are false idols, right? There are all these Gods are false except the one God which is beyond creation. How did you find strength in those times? Where did you find strength when you were by yourself and no one around you was Muslim?
One of the biggest questions I find Muslims, people who are born into Muslim families in the Muslim world today is they ask about being strong on your deen or if you're not publicly manifesting your deen, or if you're not calling to it, it's because you maybe have a weakness or you have a struggle in yourself, which is hard to reconcile. For me, I always found that strange. If you understand that your purpose of life is something, it's following this deen. There's a Creator. He made you. There is no other meaning in life except obeying him, following him, what he says, how is his guidance. Then it's pointless to do anything else.
Because if I'm trying to follow my parents or follow society, but these things are going to pass away. They are not my God. They didn't create me. So there's no point. When I find Muslims are preoccupied with these things, it really baffles me because I came in with the assumption... And many reverts and converts do. It's not just me. Ask any convert and revert. They'll say they are shocked when they see the Muslim world, because for them, they knew what life was like before guidance, and when they had guidance. Guidance wasn't just simply, oh, here's what to do. It's this is the only meaning for human existence. Humans who have access to this, who now know it. Follow anything else out.
It would be pointless. Say someone went for a job interview, in a corporate law office or whatever. They came with a suit and they did very well in the job, in the interview. They got the job and they're going to earn lots of money and there's lots of respect. And they come in and then they start, let's say, playing football in the office. And they don't do anything else. You're like, you're meant to be doing this job. You're here to work and do this job. Why are you playing football in the office? That's the equivalent of Muslims who...
They have this purpose of life, but they are preoccupied with these childish things which don't have any meaning, like national honor or patriotism or nationalism or their family honor, or just making money or following popular culture. These things have no meaning, though. Why are you following this? There's no point to this. When you die following these false idols, your life would have been meaningless. So asking me about my strength. I don't think you needed much strength. It's just pointless to do anything else other than implement the deen of Islam in everything.
If you had a chance to speak to all the non-Muslims in the world, what would you like to say to them if you have just one minute? I think I would say the same thing I'd want to say to Muslims in the world, which is, don't blindly believe what you've been taught by your parents, your culture, your society. Question it for yourself. How do you know what you're following is true? How do you know that all the things that you've been taught are true about everything? And I don't just mean about questions of science or what have you, which of course we ask questions anyway. It's about what you should and shouldn't do. What is your life for? Ask questions about this.
How do you know that what you've been taught is true? And if you do, if you investigate it and you discover the truth, why don't you implement it in all areas of your life? So ask questions and don't blindly follow.
Islam... I actually tried to refute Islam as I tried to refute every other religion before that, or belief, or philosophy, and Islam just kept answering me back with even more profound answers. And so I had to adopt it. Assalamualaikum, Brother Abdullah al Andalusi. Really, thank you for coming and accepting our invitation. We are very happy to have you with us. I want to start with who is Abdullah al Andalusi, and can you tell us briefly about your life? Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Thank you for inviting me on. Um, who's Andalusi? Just another servant of Allah (swt), as we all try to be. So I was born in London, raised in London, UK.
My family background is I'm kind of part Portuguese and part North African. So I grew up in a mostly Christian, kind of Christian secular family background, and I kind of became Muslim at 14 years old. At about 18 or 19 years old, I got more involved in public dawah, and eventually I ended up getting involved in public debates and discussions, giving lectures at universities and kind of doing videos and publishing articles and things like this. You were 14 when you converted to Islam, as you said. Can you take us back to those times? What was the reason that you start researching at such a young age?
The simple answer would say curiosity, but also it was just simply, I became aware of different religions. So I grew up in a kind of Christian background. So my mother was Catholic. The school I went to was Church of England, and they had mass and communion and all this stuff. I was taught Bible stories like my fellow students were. But I asked the question, after I became aware that there were different religions I asked the question, how do I know that I'm following the right religion? If I was born in China, would I be an atheist or a Buddhist? Would I be a Hindu, if I was born in somewhere in India?
The accident of geography can't determine what the truth is, and there's different ideas going around. Well, I need to investigate for myself. And also if there is a hell, and there is a Day of Judgement. I don't want to get punished by God for following the wrong religion or the wrong belief that could have, you know, bad consequences. So I wanted to investigate and... So, about 10 years old, I decided to go to my local library, although I always liked going to library anyway. This is before the internet, so when people used to go to libraries. If you remember those things.
And I used to read every book you can imagine, not just on current religions, but historical religions, historical philosophies, you name it, I researched it. From, you know, ancient Egyptian concepts of life after death to, you know, Tibetan Buddhism, to even kind of Western New Age spirituality and so on, every kind of cult you can imagine. I researched everything. I thought, I'm not going to assume that the size of a belief or a religion or a philosophy determines its truth. I'm just going to see, you know, what these different ideas are. Is there any proof of it? Does it make sense? Are there any problems I can find in it, like contradictions or things like this?
And if so, then it's not the truth. So I went through that gradual eliminating process. Did you start with Islam or Islam was the last religion to look at for you? I was aware of Islam and it seemed deceptively simple. When I first saw it, I thought, oh, it's very simple. Maybe there's not much, kind of, deep truth in it that I'm aware just by seeing the basics. I was reading a book about different religions. So it just presented Islam. Very basic, very simply. It was only when, after further investigation, after I went through a whole bunch of different other religions and beliefs and philosophies, I kind of bumped back into Islam, and I started to ask the question about this.
It was something very, you might think, very small, which is, uh, it talked about Islam... So Islam talked about women having hijab. And as an obligation, I was like, why does Islam want women to wear hijab? Then what's the point of this? So I thought about it and I thought about it. And I said, well, you know, it seems like in the West, you know, we see there is a lot of sexual politics going on in the workplace, sexual tension and sexuality then becoming used for advertising commodities and goods and things like this. Society is becoming very sexualized. And it's leading to a lot of problems, relationship dysfunctions, people leaving their partners, unfaithfulness, a whole bunch of things.
And when I looked at the Islamic concept of hijab, I was thinking, well, what's the point of this? And I said, well, what would be the purpose of it, do you think? And I thought maybe it's because they want women to look modest, not show sexuality in public. The hijab and jilbab and everything. Oh, okay. So that means then Islam wants society to keep sexuality out of the public view. Keep it for the private, because you can't do anything with sexuality in the public. You want to go to work, you want to go to university. Why is sexuality going to be distracting you? Why allow it to distract you in public? It's not fair.
It causes issues you know, in society that I was aware of in the West growing up. So I said, oh, that makes sense. And then what struck me, which is if there's a purpose of life and the purpose of life is for human beings, then surely it should encompass every aspect of human life, not just once a week or, you know, in Jumah or in church on Sundays, but every part of a life, including society. So Islam seemed holistic and it seemed, well, if there is a true religion and true belief, then that looks quite like it or close to it. And I started to ask more questions. I didn't embrace Islam just on that, but I asked more questions and I encountered more answers, which just blew me away.
And so eventually I saw that Islam... I actually tried to refute Islam, as I tried to refute every other religion before that, or belief or philosophy, and Islam just kept answering me back with even more profound answers. And so I had to adopt it. So you didn't have any prejudices about Islam, misconceptions about Islam before reading this? So you didn't have any prejudices about Islam, misconceptions about Islam before reading this? The prejudices I had was the common liberal and secular prejudices about religion. Religion doesn't talk about politics. Religion doesn't talk about society or economics or human problems.
Religion is just a belief you have where you can pray for things that you want and maybe get them, or it makes you feel good, perhaps when you feel scared about things. But that was it. That was the prejudice. This was early 90s. This was before, you know, 9/11, before all this stuff, so... It was the common prejudice against all religions that was imbibed into me, inculcated into me rather that I had as a liberal, as a secular liberal, you know, person in a secular liberal society. So when I encountered, Islam was so holistic. That's what shocked me, because I was told that religion doesn't talk about those things.
And when I discovered it did, it made more sense that it would have talked about those things. It should talk about those things. So I think you went through this process of elimination, right? This can't be true. This can't be... So how did you decide that those other religions were not true? Sure. I mean, okay, this is between the ages of 10 and 14. So I looked at different religions and I asked a number of questions, which is, is there evidence for this? Is there proof? Was it available to most human beings, or is this a message that is brand new, has it always existed?
So when it came with Christianity, the idea that you have a human being that comes down to Earth and he's actually God, apparently, and he dies even though God doesn't die, and his sacrifice you know, kind of forgives your sins even though you're still sinful afterwards and you still have to repent. So those things didn't make sense to me when it comes to Christianity. When it comes to Judaism, sure, it believes in monotheism, but it seemed very much restricted to this one particular tribal nation of people throughout history. And you didn't see any explanation for all the tribes around history or what other people should be doing and following.
When you come with Buddhism, human beings are basically born into the world, and they reincarnate constantly until they reach enlightenment. And I say, okay, well, what's enlightenment? Enlightenment is when you know the purpose of life or, you know, some deep truth. And I say, well, you're saying the purpose of human beings is to be enlightened, and enlightened means to know your purpose. But then, I know my purpose. My purpose is to be enlightened. And it becomes a circular logic. Also, there's other questions like, if there's no God in Buddhism, or God is not important in Buddhism, who set up the system of rebirths? And was there a first human being?
Because you can't have an infinite regress in the past of people being... So what was your first soul, your first body that you were born into? And then where were you before that? They don’t answer these questions in Buddhism. Hinduism believes in a similar idea too, because Buddhism comes off from Hinduism. Mainstream idea of Hinduism believes that there was one God that we come from, but we are... We used to be part of God, and somehow Gods can split into pieces and these pieces are ignorant and powerless. So a part of God is ignorant and powerless. And then you go into reincarnation, you get born, you die, you're born, you die, until you can find a way to get back to God.
But you are a part of God. That doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever. So God can be split into... The infinite, unlimited Creator can be split into pieces, and these pieces are finite and these pieces are limited. It doesn't make sense. So these are kind of the process I was going through for many different religions and beliefs. Also, atheism was also one of the things in the list, right? So you eliminated that as well. Well, I mean, I followed the typical prejudice that science can answer all questions at one point. I mean, I've always been interested in science. I still am.
I've always got good grades, whenever I did science or physics-based subjects going for university and so on and so forth. But the idea that I thought science could answer all questions was an assumption that was taught to me by the society that I was in. But science doesn't talk about what is beyond matter. It talks about how matter behaves, and that's it. So how fast it goes and how it operates. It doesn't talk about what ultimately it's made up of. It doesn't talk about where it comes from. It doesn't talk about where it's all going. It just talks about how matter behaves.
And then scientists either try to extrapolate, saying that, ‘oh, matter will always be the same way forever, or matter was always existing there forever.’ But that doesn't make sense because again, infinite regress. If we, to get to this point in time, we had to wait an infinite amount of time to finish... Well, infinity doesn't finish. We never reached this point in time. So the fact that I'm right here, sitting in front of you, proves to me that God exists, or there was a Creator that initiated matter to move and to change and so on and so forth. So that's why I eliminate all these things. So after being convinced that Islam must be the true religion, what steps did you take?
What was your ultimate, you know, journey to accepting Islam? Can you tell us about the phases? Okay. As I was reading through the Quran, but also reading through tafsir explanations and the commentary on the Quran, as well as all the different books I could find on Islam, it was... When I would find something that didn't make sense, I realized after thinking about it for ages and ages that it wasn't that the text didn't make sense, but I had brought into it an assumption, and the assumption was leading me to not understand it properly, right? And so my process of going through the Quran began to purify me of my assumptions that I brought, my baggage that I brought into Islam, right.
And so, Alhamdulillah, you know, my steps for encountering Islam and becoming a Muslim was really one of first, I was interested. I was intrigued that this sounds like something that could be true, to the step of I adopt it as a hypothesis. So a hypothesis is something that you believe is the best explanation, but you're not 100% certain. Maybe there could be a better explanation, but from all the available evidence you have, it is the only... It's the best one. And after going through, and my knowledge increasing more and more, and I started to ask questions like, what if there was a...
Let's say I was going to create a religion and I was going to take Islam as a basis, but I'm going to change something of it. Would it be just as good or better? And as I did that process, I realized that every time you make any... If you make any kind of change to Islam, it ends up with a contradiction, or something that doesn't make sense. And so I realized then that how Islam explains the universe, human existence, the existence of animals, the planets, everything, whether it's pleasure and suffering, and whether you are... The finite lifespan we have, all these things were answered in Islam to the point that there was actually no other possible answer that could answer all of this.
So then I eventually came to the conclusion that Islam is the only possible explanation for reality. And then I had yaqeen, then I had absolute certainty in the deen of Islam. What was the last thing that you said, "Okay, now I'm going to become a Muslim tomorrow." What happened that you decided? Well, it was at 14 years old, and that was when I adopted Islam, as you could say, a hypothesis, which is it's the best explanation that I know of. So as a human being who is searching for purpose, I'm obliged to, to follow the best explanation presented to me. And I don't see any contradictions in it. So there's no reason I should say no to it.
I didn't know that you have to testify the Shahada in a formal kind of way. I just thought it was something you just believe in. I said, okay, well, I believe this, and so, yeah. So my Shahada was simply going up to my mother and saying, you know, "Mom, I think..." "You know, I think I'll be a Muslim." That was my Shahada, basically. And you know, my mother, from a secular background, but a liberal secular background, religion wasn't so important. So she didn't really think it was a big deal. She thought it was just a passing phase, because, you know, parents see their children go through different phases, and they try different things or different hobbies.
So she thought this was just maybe a hobby I'd do. After almost 30 years later, I think now she realizes that it's a bit more than a hobby here, right? - Life itself. - Yeah. Yeah, Alhamdulillah. When you started preaching Islam, giving dawah to people, were there anyone that became Muslim around your circle, your family? Well, I mean, you know, when I... As I started investigating Islam, I would always tell my mom about this, and obviously, you know, my father as well. And over time, Alhamdulillah they saw changes in me. I became a better son to them. I came from a secular, liberal society. And, you know, you had rebellious kids.
And it's different from the kind of rebellious kids you might think, because all kids are kind of rebellious in some way. But Western rebellious kids are much more disrespectful to their parents compared to other cultures and beliefs and so on and so forth. And so when I answered what my purpose in life was I saw the errors of my ways, and I saw that I increased in gratitude for what my parents did. But when my parents saw this, when they see that their son is working harder, is politer, is more well behaved... I wasn't perfect, but they saw a radical change in me. How can you hate that, right? How can you fear that? I think adab conquers more than ideas do sometimes.
People just see the change in your adab and akhlaq, and that impresses them and inclines their heart towards you more. More effective than any hours of preaching you can do or speaking you can do. The one difficulty is it is hard for the parents to see their child teach them about life. So I changed your nappy, right, and now you're going to tell me about what I should be doing in life. So there was some of that. But eventually, my father kind of rediscovered, I suppose you could say, Islam for himself. And for my mother, she became a kind of a nominal Muslim. It's not 100% perfect, you know, you could say, because the thing is that she doesn't have many Muslims around her, right.
And so all her friends, or most of her friends are Catholic or secular and so on and so forth. So it's very hard because we're social creatures. As human beings, you need to have encouragement. But Alhamdulillah she did say the Shahada. Some people's stories are a bit more romantic, you could say. My one was more this gradual realization for both myself and eventually for my parents too. When you look at the Quran, what kind of book do you see from the perspective of your areas of interest? When you read the book of the Quran, it is unlike any book you've ever read. Even when you see the translations.
It doesn't seem like something a very capable human being could ever attain, because usually people who are very good at writing books and very good at writing, they have these very limited structures they think information should fit into. So, chapters which only have a few points in them, and then they move to the next chapter and next. The thing with the Quran is that one verse, its meaning can change depending on what question you ask. And you can read things that superficially don't seem connected, but you feel in the back of your mind there is a structure beneath it. My advice to anyone reading the Quran is have a conversation with the Quran, not just passive reading. Ask questions.
You might think, I've asked questions to a book, how can it answer me? But you'd be surprised how an ayah you think was very basic, didn't really have much explanation, how it could answer questions you've never, ever even contemplated or thought of. It's a book you can just keep on rereading again and again. Muslims today are more preoccupied with the sound of the Quran rather than the meaning of the Quran. There's even a hadith that talks about this. I mean, the hadith is da'if, but I don't know. It seems to predict things, very interesting. It talked about the Muslims at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) were more interested in the meaning of the Quran.
But there will come a time when Muslims will be more interested in the pronunciation of the Quran and the sound, but not the meaning so much. And I think that should be reversed. Ask questions of the Quran. Have a discussion, ask questions. Why does the Quran use this word, and not another word? The Quran is very precise. It's a very precise book. Why does it use the words it uses? Once you ask those questions, the Quran opens up even more to you. So that would be my my advice. As a convert and a da'i, as a revert, what is the most common prejudice people have against Islam and how do you respond to it? The problem is that depends on which society you're speaking of.
So now after 9/11 in the West, the perception is that Islam is violent, and it's barbaric, and it has punishments which are barbaric, and it restricts all kinds of things, and it restricts women, and it restricts being, quote-unquote, free, whatever that means. Now, before 9/11, the perspective of Islam was that Islam was just a religion, and all religions are kind of based in the past, and they don't talk about modern day problems. That's a very common misconception. And it's one that even is in the Muslim world today. After colonialism, the Western education systems, or even influence, Muslims themselves have that misconception about Islam.
They think Islam is something based in the past and it can't answer modern problems. Islam could answer problems, modern day problems, better than the solution that the West can bring. But we don't realize it. We think that it's just about praying five times a day. It's just about going to Jumah. It's just about tajweed, pronunciation of the Quran. Islam is much more than that. It is a full way of life. We see some people who, despite seeing clear evidences, don't become Muslim. What is the reason behind this, do you think? Well, I'll say there's two categories of people who resist Islam. One of those is obviously, you might call them, they have emotional reasons.
So they are already invested. It's called the sunk and cost fallacy. There we go. It's where you invest... You've invested so much of your time, effort, your life, your hopes and your dreams into something false that you don't want to give up because you've already invested so much. You want to keep on investing. The second kind of people, and those are the people I'm interested in. They are those who... They have assumptions, and those assumptions blind them from actually seeing the truth of Islam. People might assume, they say, ‘there's so many different religions, there's so many different ideas of God. So they must all be wrong.’ Right? That's an assumption.
And it's a quite common one amongst many atheists and so on. But I could simply point to them and say, okay, in the past there were so many theories about what the Sun was. Yeah. Was it a flat disk? Is it an upturned bowl, with a bowl of fire? Or is it a sphere? Oh, could someone say, well, ‘there's so many different, you know, theories about the Sun, then the Sun doesn't exist.’ No, one of them is right. The rest are wrong. Just because there's different ideas doesn't mean they're all wrong. Yeah, so that's an assumption. So in Islam, we don't say that every word for God, for one God, in every culture throughout civilization is false. We simply say that not all ideas of the divine are true.
If you believe in 3-in-1, or you believe that God has split into parts, or there's multiple Gods, yeah, or that God has a family, that's false. But if you believe in one God, whatever you want to call him throughout history, you want to call him Eloch, or Allah, you want to call him Dios, or Tanri, right? This is all... It's the same word. You're describing the same thing in different languages. So, that's an example of an assumption that people hold that gives us a roadblock. And so when we encounter atheists, deists, or people of different religions, those who are sincere amongst them, the only thing that stops them from becoming Muslim is their assumption.
So Inshallah the work of the da'i is to destroy their assumptions. And what does the Shahada do? The Shahada starts out with a negation first. It says "La ilaha," right, so there is no... All these idols, all these humans, statues, pieces of wood, all these things, whether it's volcanoes you worship, or the Sun you worship or the Moon you worship, all these are false idols, right? There are all these Gods are false except the one God which is beyond creation. How did you find strength in those times? Where did you find strength when you were by yourself and no one around you was Muslim?
One of the biggest questions I find Muslims, people who are born into Muslim families in the Muslim world today is they ask about being strong on your deen or if you're not publicly manifesting your deen, or if you're not calling to it, it's because you maybe have a weakness or you have a struggle in yourself, which is hard to reconcile. For me, I always found that strange. If you understand that your purpose of life is something, it's following this deen. There's a Creator. He made you. There is no other meaning in life except obeying him, following him, what he says, how is his guidance. Then it's pointless to do anything else.
Because if I'm trying to follow my parents or follow society, but these things are going to pass away. They are not my God. They didn't create me. So there's no point. When I find Muslims are preoccupied with these things, it really baffles me because I came in with the assumption... And many reverts and converts do. It's not just me. Ask any convert and revert. They'll say they are shocked when they see the Muslim world, because for them, they knew what life was like before guidance, and when they had guidance. Guidance wasn't just simply, oh, here's what to do. It's this is the only meaning for human existence. Humans who have access to this, who now know it. Follow anything else out.
It would be pointless. Say someone went for a job interview, in a corporate law office or whatever. They came with a suit and they did very well in the job, in the interview. They got the job and they're going to earn lots of money and there's lots of respect. And they come in and then they start, let's say, playing football in the office. And they don't do anything else. You're like, you're meant to be doing this job. You're here to work and do this job. Why are you playing football in the office? That's the equivalent of Muslims who...
They have this purpose of life, but they are preoccupied with these childish things which don't have any meaning, like national honor or patriotism or nationalism or their family honor, or just making money or following popular culture. These things have no meaning, though. Why are you following this? There's no point to this. When you die following these false idols, your life would have been meaningless. So asking me about my strength. I don't think you needed much strength. It's just pointless to do anything else other than implement the deen of Islam in everything.
If you had a chance to speak to all the non-Muslims in the world, what would you like to say to them if you have just one minute? I think I would say the same thing I'd want to say to Muslims in the world, which is, don't blindly believe what you've been taught by your parents, your culture, your society. Question it for yourself. How do you know what you're following is true? How do you know that all the things that you've been taught are true about everything? And I don't just mean about questions of science or what have you, which of course we ask questions anyway. It's about what you should and shouldn't do. What is your life for? Ask questions about this.
How do you know that what you've been taught is true? And if you do, if you investigate it and you discover the truth, why don't you implement it in all areas of your life? So ask questions and don't blindly follow.