Unknown Life Story of Nouman Ali Khan! - “ I Was An Atheist!”
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For a while, yes, I was an atheist. Didn't see the point in religion. I thought that it was a way of keeping people from being happy and being, doing whatever they want to do. So, while I was at my job, this job was crazy. This was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Every weekend it's flooded with teenagers. There's salsa and merengue and loud club music and everybody's dancing. It's like, it's crazy. It's the craziest part of Queens. I fell asleep and when I fell asleep, I saw this dream. It was me lying in my grave, very distinctly. And it was those pools, tubs that have the water gushing out from the sides.
It was like faucets opened on the side of the grave and fire was pouring out like water pours out. The grave was open. So I could see above. And there's a voice from above that says, "This is because you don't pray." I remember my face was completely wet in tears, like, I was crying in my dream. I woke up already crying. I sat there and I'm like, this guy's not giving a lecture, he's reading. He's just reading the Qur'an. He just had the Mushaf in front of him. I just started listening to what he's saying.
And the fact that every time the Qur'an is recited by the Prophet (saw), somebody listening can immediately get hit with it and say, "Whoa, that's talking about me." It started feeling like I'm having a conversation with this person. But who's actually having the conversation? It's Allah. It's like Doctor Sami disappeared and it was just me having a conversation with Allah. Assalamualaikum, Ustad Nouman Ali Khan. As Towards Eternity, we are very happy to have you with us. Welcome. It's very nice to be here. Waalaikumassalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. I want to first ask the classic question. Who is Nouman Ali Khan? I don't even know sometimes.
I guess my new answer to that is a constant learner. I think I've developed a new appreciation for learning. As everybody else, I'm lots of things. I'm a goofy human being. I'm a lover of children. Alhamdulillah, I have a young, beautiful boy. My latest addition. So, he's keeping me busy. Is it true that you used to be an atheist? For a while, yes, I was an atheist. I didn't see the point in religion. I thought that it was a way of keeping people from being happy and being, doing whatever they want to do. It was a way of controlling freedom, religion. And so, when you get rid of religion, you kind of get rid of God with it too.
It didn't help also that I took a couple of philosophy courses in college. What made you change your ways and what was the incident? There were a few. There were a few incidents. The dream was one of the big incidents. So the dream was, I was in the habit of... I had mostly non-Muslim friends, mostly Hindu friends in New York. A couple of Jewish friends. And there was one Muslim guy. But I was in New York, and the way our house was in Queens, I had a basement. I lived in the basement. My parents were upstairs. So, my room was the downstairs and it had its own exit.
So, I got really good at sneaking out when there was a party and covering my, you know, the old school, covering your body shape with pillows and putting a blanket over it, leaving the fan on, etc. And I did that, and I went to a party. And I was out till 2, 3 in the morning. And I snuck back in. I've been caught before, I've been caught and I got beat too, but not badly. But you know, Pakistani beating standard. It's good for your sinuses. But this time I got away with it completely. I got back in and I was so happy that I escaped. You know, the authorities, my parents. I fell asleep, and when I fell asleep, I saw this dream. It was me lying in my grave, very distinctly.
And it was, if you've seen, like, those pools or those tubs that have the water gushing out from the sides. It was like faucets opened on the side of the grave and fire was pouring out like water pours out. The grave was open. So, I could see above. And there's a voice from above that says, "This is because you don't pray." I remember my face was completely wet in tears. Like, I was crying in my dream. I woke up, already crying. And then I made whatever I remembered of wudu, and I started making Salah. And I kind of remembered there are five prayers. I didn't quite remember how many, each Rakat. Because you haven't been praying. I hadn't been praying for a long time.
I'd been praying for maybe four years, since we came, basically. The only prayer I could have got caught was Juma, but Juma was during school time, so I didn't get that either. And then the only time we did go to prayers, if it was a holiday or it was Eid and my parents took me, my dad took me. Other than that, I didn't see the inside of a masjid. I didn't expect that dream. I didn't expect it to feel that way. But all of a sudden I just started praying. And then I remember being in sajdah in one of the prayers and just crying. And then I fell asleep like that. And I woke up like that. And I stopped hanging out with all those guys. Like, what's wrong with you? Why are you being like this?
Why are you being weird? I just avoided everybody. I just went straight home. I just kept going straight home. Then when, you know, the semester ended, I remember that because I still had a job at a Spanish neighborhood in the Spanish Junction Boulevard. So while I was at my job, this job was crazy. This was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Every weekend it's flooded with teenagers, and there's salsa and merengue and loud club music and everybody's dancing. It's like, it's crazy. It's the craziest part of Queens. And I was working at a clothing store. They specialized in, like, basically what we used to call it thug wear.
Back in the day in the 90s, you wore like, super baggy jeans and like Karl Kani boots. And, you know, that's what they sold. And I would work at that store and then it would be Salah time. I'd run down to the shoe area, shoe warehouse, and go make Salah quickly. And come back, join again, Asr time, go back, come back, go back, come back. I started being regular with my prayer. My coworkers, they were all, like, Hispanics. They didn't call me Nouman. They called me Ali. Like, "Yo, Ali, what you doing, man?" "Why are you being weird like that?" "Yo, why aren't you looking at me?" I have to explain, I'm praying. "Oh, man.
You talk to God." "Yo, can you tell him to get me a promotion?" "I gotta get a raise." So, they had... Then they started asking me questions about it. I didn't know anything about Islam. But my friends, you know, my Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban friends in the neighborhood, coworkers, they're like, "So, like, am I going to hell?" It's like, I don't know. "Yo, you can't eat pork, right? So I'mma eat it right now. How do you feel about that?" Like, this is what they would do. So prayer became a part of my life. But I don't think that my Islam was anything more than that. It was just prayer. And it was maybe somewhat better company, or at least avoiding bad company.
College started and As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an and so on. And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah. Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. College started and now for the first time, I had Muslim friends as opposed to basically non-Muslim. But the Muslim friends I had were the biggest party animals in the campus. You know, it was the Muslim version of what I used to have, except with, you know, Muslims.
Now, it felt less guilty because they're Muslims and none of them prayed. But they didn't mind that I'm praying. But other than that, it was kind of, I went back to the same thing as before. Just with prayer. And one of them took you, I think in Ramadan, there was this dawra of the Qur'an, and then your love of the Qur'an started. He introduced me to the [-]. Omar, I'm going to call you out. It's his name, Omar Baig. Now, people know your full name, bro. Okay. Well, I'm still in touch with him. Love him to death. He saw that I was really trying to learn Qur'an. I used to have a Yusuf Ali Qur’an translation with me all the time. I was reading it.
I was finding it extremely difficult, but I was still reading it, still taking notes on it because I didn't have anything else. And he's like, "You want to do Qur'an? There's a thing going on in..." And he wasn't even in that neighborhood. He said, "Let's go check that out." And he brought me there. This was in Flushing, in the Muslim Center in Flushing, Queens. So the program was Doctor Abdul Sami was doing... So they had, the masjid was two different floors. So, one floor was 20 Taraweeh, express train. Like most places. The third floor was, okay, we're going to read four Rakat. Then I'm going to explain Ayah by Ayah, translate and briefly comment on what we just read.
Then we're going to pray four, then I'll comment. Then we'll pray four, then I'll comment. And that's how we'll finish one juz. Then we'll do the next juz tomorrow and the next juz tomorrow. And this would go on from, I think it was about 9:30 PM until about 1 AM every day. And then the weekends he would just cover up. So, it would be 2, 2:30, 3 AM even, sometimes. Like, all night. But we just take a break, you know, 45 hour lecture, then four Rakat. Hour lecture, four Rakat. Hour lecture, four Rakat. And I came in, I'm not going to listen to a lecture. I sat there and I'm like, this guy's not giving a lecture. He's reading. He's just reading the Qur'an.
He just had the Mushaf in front of him. So, I just started listening to what he's saying. And one of his great skills was, like, if you've heard me give lectures, I'll go into a word, I'll go into a phrase. That's not what he was doing. He was reading the Ayah. Then he was translating the Ayah. But when he was translating the Ayah, he was not reading the translation. He was speaking the translation. So it sounded like speech. It didn't sound like reading. It sounded very natural. And the effect of that, if you listen to that for 10, 15, 20 minutes, it started feeling like I'm having a conversation with this person. But who's actually having the conversation? It's Allah.
So it's like, Doctor Sami disappeared and it was just me having a conversation with Allah. And that felt incredible to me. Like, I didn't think the Qur'an was that at all. Because I was reading the translation in English, and that's not what I felt at all. And that was the pivotal moment where the Qur'an went from being a book to being a conversation. And I just got hooked. Every night I would show up. Every night I would show up and he would just... He noticed me in the back. And he'd just come in. He wouldn't say anything. He'd just pat my shoulder. Walk by. "Assalamualaikum, good to see you." He'd just notice, he didn't say anything.
And then famously, I think I said in some video, I went to him at the end, I said, "I want to do what you do." He said, "Okay, come on Monday. Come learn Arabic." I said, "Okay, I'll learn Arabic." I once heard you say "I fell head over heels in love with the Qur'an." What aspect of of the Qur'an made you say that? The first of them was how it untied my knots. Like, what I thought about religion. What I thought about God, what I thought about purpose. Just unravel them. Even though again, I had some connection to Islam. Now, before the Qur'an, my mind was occupied with graduation and getting a job. And even though I had a job. But, you know, moving on in your career.
Marriage, money, savings, car, house. These were the things on my mind. Just constantly, that's what I was thinking about. Making my parents proud. And the Qur'an came along and said, yeah, those are all nice things, but they're so small. Like, why is your world so small? There's your reality. You were made for something so much bigger. And all of a sudden my world became bigger because I was listening to the Qur'an. Like, I realized how small I was keeping myself. It's like it freed me from thinking small. And the other thing that came with that is, I don't even know how that happened, but I know it only happened because of the Qur'an. Confidence. I was the quietest guy in high school.
People didn't know what my voice sounded like. I was the shy person. I almost failed public speaking class. Wow, I can't believe this. First semester of college. Like, I did not want to speak, I had to take this elective. It was the only one that fit in my schedule. I was like, oh my God, public speaking, how am I gonna do this? And even when Doctor Abu Sami asked me to give a khutbah, fast forward, for the first time, I was shaking like this, right? But one of the things the Qur'an did for me is, it liberated me from the opinions of others. It doesn't much matter what someone thinks of me so long as I'm good with Allah. Like, Allah does not see me as a disappointment.
Everybody else is welcome to be disappointed. It is so liberating. It's so liberating. Like, I come from a culture, Muslims come from a culture, we always think about what people think. Now I'm in the middle of New York City. It's Maghrib time and I'm on Park Avenue. I got nowhere to go. I make wudu with a water bottle. And I'm praying on the side of the street. And people are walking by laughing. People are walking by making comment. I don't care, I said, "I'm making Salah." And in the beginning it used to feel like, "Oh my God, what are people thinking? What are they going to say?" Did the world just became invisible? Like, it's just you and Allah and that's it. What else does matter?
The thing that made me love the Qur'an was one part of it. What it did for me, it liberated me. The other thing that made me love the Qur'an is, like, through that door of the Qur'an, I felt like I wasn't reading the Qur'an. The Qur'an was reading me. Like, Allah is talking to me personally. Why am I this important that Allah would talk to me personally and make me feel like He's talking to me personally? Like, I'm a nobody. I'm not the confident guy. I'm not the popular guy. I'm not the successful guy. Why would Allah talk to me? Why would I be important? Like, I felt like Allah has given me a lot of importance by speaking to me in this way. By speaking in the Qur'an this way.
So it was humbling and elevating at the same time, Subhanallah. You said, you know, you were going to school full time, working full time, but still finding time to learn Arabic. What made you hold on to this? It was Doctor Sami. It was... I saw that man feeling what the Qur'an is saying. And then he could make me feel what the Qur'an is saying. And I was like, I need to feel what he feels. I can't let go of this connection. And I don't want to be dependent on him. Like, how does he get that from this book? And I realized, because I had already tried to struggle through a translation, I'm going to need to have direct access.
So I just became obsessed with this idea that Arabic is my stepping stone to accessing Allah speaking to me directly. I don't put that on anybody else, I need it. I did feel that if I lose the Qur'an, I lose Allah. Because you can have a concept of God, right? And different religions have a concept of God. You can even philosophically say there's the force. The universe, or you know, something's out there. Some being is out there or something. People give different names to it. But the Qur'an isn't just about the existence of a God. It's actually not just that He exists, but He is... He wants a direct relationship with you. He wants you to know Him the way He wants you to know Him.
Instead of me philosophizing what He's like, instead of me theorizing what He must be, what He must want. What am I doing here? He's telling me. And He's telling me with so much love, right? Like, I know people say they have a spiritual connection with God, and fitrah is there and you can have that. But for me, I don't know if anything can ever do what the Qur'an does, right? It's when Allah calls it, you know, one of my favorite places in the Qur'an. In Surah Ali 'Imran. "Hold on to the rope of Allah." A reference to the Qur'an, because one end of it is with Allah, the other end of it is with us. But the other place in the Qur'an is, In Surah Al-Hajj.
"Hold on to Allah." And those two phrases, hold on to the rope of Allah, hold on to Allah. It's as if it's the same thing. You really want to hold on to Allah? You got to hold on to his rope. So He made them synonymous. So, there are many people whose lives were completely transformed by your means. And from the ones you remember, which of them affected you the most emotionally? It can be from either non-Muslims or Muslims that came up to you and said something. There was a... I was teaching in Copenhagen. And this father and daughter traveled to come take the class with me. The daughter, young lady, she had graduated college and they listened to me together.
So they came, they took the course. A really lovely gentleman and so many... He made so much dua for me, so much dua for me, so much dua for me. And then I was going to come back 6 months later and teach a follow up. So I came to teach the follow up. The daughter was there, the father wasn't there. And she came to me and she handed me a Portable prayer mat and said, "My father died, but even before he died, he was listening to you and he was making dua for you, and he got this gift for you, and never got a chance to give it to you." And I just, you know... There are moments like that. I know I don't deserve them. I know that, like, those are some amazing souls.
There are some incredible, incredible human beings. Just now in our WhatsApp group, my team, there were some people dedicated to translating our work. Some of them are translating in Turkish. One of them was someone who lost her home in the earthquake, And she was still translating while being homeless. As a volunteer. I look at these people and I'm just... I just pray that their goodness, because I can feel that their goodness is so much greater than my own. Their closeness to Allah, their love of Allah. I think it's... Instead of me being an inspiration for them, they're an inspiration for me. That's honestly how I see it.
And I pray that not only that I'm benefiting them, that in the Akhirah they can benefit me. Because they far outshine anything I could do. Subhanallah. I want you to be sincere and open with me. If you were to die right now, do you feel yourself closer to Hell or Paradise? Oh. Hell. Hellfire. Yeah. I feel like I have a lot to make up for. I feel like I need to do better. Yeah, that's what I feel like. After touching so many people's lives, I was expecting you to be more hopeful. That doesn't matter.That's not my doing. That's Allah. That's not me. What does that have to do with me? Millions of people benefited from what I said. I didn't do that. But you get to share.
Yeah, that's Allah's doing. And that share depends on the state of my heart. I could be deprived of my entire retirement plan, right? So, like, the amount of good you're doing or the amount of good you're going to do is great, but it's not an insurance policy. The only security you have is this thing, right? And this needs, I feel it needs improvement. Now we have short Q&A. Just maybe one word might be enough. Cool, one word, I love those. It's gonna be the worst. I think it'll get really cool answers. The thing that Nouman Ali Khan enjoys doing the most? Ping pong. Yeah. Oh, good. The best decision Nouman Ali Khan has ever made? Oh, the best decision I ever made.
Uh, I suppose study Qur'an. Yeah. And what is the worst decision? I'm not going to tell you. There's a long list. The first thing Nouman Ali Khan would do if he got to Paradise? Uh, look for Musa (as). The best and the worst comments Nouman Ali Khan has ever received? The best comment I received was, I pray Allah overlooks your mistakes and rewards you for any good that's ever benefited anybody from you. That's the best comment I ever received. And the worst? The worst. I can't even remember. Actually, most of the time the worst comments make me feel like they entertain me. I guess one was, you should never speak about the Qur'an. Your personal trait that you dislike the most?
I have conflict avoidance disorder. The last thing you searched on Google? The last thing I searched on Google was a Pakistani restaurant in Istanbul. I was not disappointed, let me tell you. Good stuff. A funny moment where you felt extremely embarrassed, the moment that you could never forget? I want to tell you this one. This is so bad. It's so bad. I don't know, they just censored on YouTube. I was in England. God, I can't believe I'm telling you this. And I'm giving a lecture, story night, as brothers and sisters. And I tell a lot of jokes. I can't help myself. It's just, so... And I'm asking questions, and people are answering loudly.
But the ladies are answering, the sisters are answering really loudly, and the guys are like... And there is like, roar from the ladies' side. And I said, "Mashallah, the sisters here, they've got a lot of..." And I used a word, which in American English is completely fine for energy, enthusiasm, not an inappropriate word, but apparently that word, which I shall not say because the camera is on, is very bad in England. Because England English is different from American English, right? So, the moment I said it, I thought it just meant enthusiasm, energy. The entire crowd went, oh. I'm like, what happened? And then somebody came on stage.
"That word means this in English in England." I was like, oh. Moving on. You'd had a different connotation. Completely. What is the one food that you can never say no to? Chicken karahi. Well made Pakistani chicken karahi. I cannot say no with garlic naan. And what about dessert? It's suji ki kheer. It's a special kind of rice pudding made of, what do we call it? Suji. Did you ever have a nickname? No, I didn't. I didn't like them. So whoever gave me a nickname, I started to fight with them. Nomie, Nomes, Norman. Or NAK, maybe? NAK is not really a nickname. It's, you know, NAK has become an acronym, it's fine. Have you ever received death threats?
Has anyone tried to harm you because of what you do? Well, not so directly. There was one ISIS video one time. But other than that, people have said mean things. Like one guy said, "I'll see you in hell." And I told him, "Why will you be there?" I'm like, what? But other than that, not really. One guy tried to hit me one time, but it was too slow. Psychological disorder? Yeah, I got other... People don't try to hurt me. People get weird with me. Well, people come and say, you know, "You were talking to me in a khutbah." But you're in Sri Lanka? I gave the khutbah in Australia. Yeah, but I saw in the video that you were talking to me, and I'm coming to question you. Why did you speak to me?
I got your message and I'm coming, I understand. I'm like, what do you understand? So, there are people with all kinds of strange disorders that feel that I'm speaking with them, communicating with them, or I have a special encoded message in my videos that was, they're able to decipher it. That it's targeted at them. So, I'm a magnet for weird. But other than that, no. No threats, Alhamdulillah. A person sees you in an elevator. He recognizes you and asks, "I have everything I need in my life. Why should I restrict myself by becoming a religious person?" How would you respond to him in one minute? You're in an elevator, so...
I mean, you're so restricted because you think you have everything. Your definition of everything is about as much space as this elevator. So it's ironic you're saying you have everything. You have practically nothing. You were made for something so much bigger. I know it's almost impossible to choose, but what is the one Ayah that touches you the most? It depends on the Surah I'm studying. I'm studying Surah Al-Mursalat right now. And Allah said, you know, "Didn't we make the earth, means shifting, moving, also covering. Allah is saying, "Didn't we make the world in a way that is always shifting?" Politics is shifting. Powers are shifting, societies are shifting, migrations are happening.
Societies come to life and societies die. And Allah said, "We put mountains," right? Tall mountains. What does that have to do with society shifting? You know that geopolitics has everything to do with mountains. Mountains kept one nation from invading another nation. Mountain ranges created natural defenses. Mountain ranges stopped certain empires from continuing to expand more. The world looks the way it does because of mountains. Civilizations like Russia, for example has a natural protection with the Antarctic behind it. Right? Mountains and seas. And they've created the natural barriers of the world, Subhanallah, right? Now watch this.
"We gave you water." The description of the water is furat. Now, in Arabic furat means, could mean sweet, could mean fresh. But actually furat was one of the words that came to Arabic from Akkadian. And it's actually the Arabic version of the river Euphrates. And the Tigris and the Euphrates were called "The Two Furat" in Arabic. Furatan. And human civilization begins with the Tigris and the Euphrates. And Allah said in this Surah, "Didn't we destroy the first ones, and we follow them up with new civilizations?" And then He's talking about how civilizations shift and what role mountains played. And then He mentions water that is furat, right?
Like, in a couple of Ayah, Allah described the story of all human civilization. Just like that. And I'm just like, ya Allah! How do you... How do you do that? Subhanallah. And then He says, In your opinion, what is the biggest miracle of the Qur'an? A miracle that you think no one can object to? I think every miracle of the Qur'an, someone can object to. The Qur'an is made like that. Allah made the miracles... Musa's staff, somebody can call it sihr, yeah? The miracle of the Qur'an, they are endless. There is no one greatest miracle. People think, because I talk about the language of the Qur'an, to me the language is the miracle of the Qur'an, no. Language is one of many.
And to a psychologist they might see something in an Ayah about the nafs, that is their miracle. To a geologist, something else. To a historian, something else. To a sociologist, something else. To a philosopher, something else that might be the miracle to them. To a linguist, something else. To a comparative religion expert, something else. The miracles of the Qur'an are actually dependent on who's coming to them. That's one of the most amazing things about the miracle of the Quran is, it's not just one stick turning into one snake, right? It's every human being has the ability to find their miracle in this book. And I subscribe to Doctor Fadl Samerai's view on this.
He says, I dive into the ocean. I find a pearl, a really big pearl. Like, not even a little, a big one. I come out, I say, "This is the greatest treasure of the ocean." Yes, this is the greatest treasure of the ocean for you. Somebody else will go, pull out another pearl and say, no, this is the greatest. No, no, no, that one's for you. Now the one I'm holding is a miracle to me, is a treasure to me. But somebody else can say, "Yeah, I don't even like pearls." Isn't that possible? So you can have, somebody can say, "There's a scientific miracle in the Qur’an." Somebody says, "No, it's not, that's not special." Somebody else can say the language and say, no, it's not, that's not special.
They can deny it. They can find reasons to deny it. I'm not saying their denial is legitimate, but when someone wants to deny, they can deny everything. And when someone is seeking to find genuine answer, they will not find one, they will find endless miracles in the Qur'an. That's the way Allah made this book. If you had a chance to talk to your 17 year old self, what would you say to him? Take learning more seriously. That would be the first thing. Second, learn to draw boundaries. Don't assume, give benefit of the doubt, but don't be blind to the harm that someone can do to you. Like, navigate the world with more caution. The world is full of a lot of good people and a lot of bad people.
And then a lot of good people with good intentions who, even in their good intentions, end up doing a lot of harm. So, don't be gullible when it comes to people. When you look at the personality of the Prophet (saw), what impresses you the most about him? His ability to inspire so many different kinds of personalities. Like the Sahaba, we think of them as one group, but they're not. They are people that are very temperamental. They're natural leaders. They are people that are, you know, hesitant and quiet and extroverts and introverts and the intellectual types and the emotional types, all kinds of personalities. And yet he's not just able to inspire all of them.
He's able to make them work with each other, love each other. How do you pull that off? It's one of the most incredible things about Rasool (as) is that he was able to build a bond between people that ended up changing the entire world. If the Prophet (saw) were to enter this room right now, through this door, what would you want to say to him? I would die, probably say, "I'm sorry." I would probably be speechless. I don't think I'd be able to say anything, to be honest with you. Because I feel like Rasool (as) carried the burden of the Qur'an. And he put that burden on us. And whatever we're trying to do, I just know it's not good enough.
How do you see the man that left you with the responsibility? So, what would be the day to witness if you had the chance, from the life of the Prophet (saw)? Hudaybiyyah. The negotiation. Rasool (as) was questioned and called insane and called wrong by kuffar, all of Mecca. 13 years of that. In Hudaybiyyah, he's being questioned by the people that believe in him, right? And it's one thing to be questioned by your enemies. It's a completely different thing to be questioned by your followers. And for him to remain firm, convinced, like a rock, you know, in that moment, and to carry on when no one believes that he's doing the right thing. Nobody.
The most loyal, the people that have risked their lives, the people that have fought beside him, the people that have bled for him. They don't believe he's doing the right thing. And he takes Shura and other things, right? He took Shura in Uhud, he took Shura [-] he took Shura in [-]. But he's not taking Shura now. They're saying, "Don't do this," and he's still doing it. He's not listening to anybody. He's doing it. I just want to sit there and just stare at his face, like, that is iman. Like, that is conviction. When you know something is right, no amount of pressure... I can't imagine that kind of pressure. And Allah could have given Surah Al-Fath, right then. He didn't. Allah waited.
Allah let him experience that and let the Sahaba experience all of their emotions. In fact, Surah Al-Fath could have been revealed before the negotiations. Would have been way easier, right? Allah's plan is to let him, like... And I think the Sahaba would be in a different, like, their respect for Rasool (as) and their admiration of his leadership and his connection to Allah probably went through the roof after the Surah came. Like, this was coming, and he didn't even know it's coming, but he just knows Allah has told him to do something and he's going to do it. Subhanallah. You know that there's a rise in atheism both in the West and even in Muslim countries.
Why do you think this is the case? And what do you think is the most effective way to fight this? My honest answer to that is it's multiple factors. But I'll talk about only one factor. We didn't do our job demonstrating the beauty and the power of this religion. And we do a bad job of prioritizing things in our religion that actually aren't even a priority in our religion. And honestly, if most of the time we're talking about our religion in unintelligent ways, then, if I put myself in the atheist, young 16 year old's shoes, and he's listening to something that's utterly ridiculous, and he's not hearing a reasonable response to his very legitimate questions.
And then, he's turning away from this religion. Do I really want to blame him? I don't. So, you know, efforts like yours, efforts like so many others that are, Alhamdulillah, trying to combat that, we have to... The Da'i has to understand we're not here to defend everyone, everything. We're here to defend the truth. Which means I have to become a seeker of the truth in our religion more than ever before. Like, every Da'i has to be more of a student of this religion than anything. So that every issue they speak about, it comes from a place of knowledge.
And if they don't know, they need to just comfortably say, "I don't know." Because when you speak without knowledge, you think you're defending the religion, you're making things worse. You're giving a bad argument, you're giving a weak argument, you're presenting false evidence, which then gets refuted. But actually you got refuted, not Islam. But for the atheist, Islam got refuted. And it's your fault because you did a bad job presenting the argument, right? So, we have to know our stuff issue by issue. We have to really know what we're talking about before we open our mouth. And not have false confidence that... Become a researcher on every issue.
Present Islam beautifully, present Islam deeply, intellectually. Even if you're going to use simple language, behind that simple language should be a mountain of complex research that you did. The rise of atheism to me, is the biggest evidence of us not doing our job enough. That's all. Atheism is not attractive. If you could have one dua that you know would be accepted, what would that be? Yeah, because if... That dua has a, it says more than it says. So, okay, if Allah accepts my good deeds from me, that actually cannot happen if He doesn't forgive my mistakes. Because accepting my good deeds necessarily comes with being rewarded. But I can't be rewarded if I'm punishable.
And I know my efforts, my work, my good deeds, my prayers, my worship, all of that is going to be flawed. It's going to have mistakes. And outside of that worship also, I'll have plenty of mistakes. But if He just accepts from me, I have that acceptance, then that is the ultimate hope, right? That we be acceptable for our Rabb. If you were given one minute in a Super Bowl commercial to tell millions of people about the Qur'an, what would you tell them? Oh, you got to think about that one. That minute would probably take me days and days of thinking before I opened my mouth.
But briefly, because it's the Super Bowl and because probably America is watching, I'd talk about Adam, and Jesus being the Savior, because that's the pivotal two pieces of Christian theology. And I'd say, did you know that the Qur'an talks about Jesus and Adam and the devil, and it's telling you things about the Bible that you didn't know? I would say more than that because I have a minute, but I would actually do a lot of thinking about those stories and pick something from it that I'll throw at the American Christian audience. One that immediately comes to my mind is, Adam was not cursed, and he didn't come here to be punished. He wasn't broken. And you're not broken.
And I can show you how. I had an additional question about this, but maybe a short answer. What do you think is the biggest mental barrier that prevents 2.3 billion Christians to accept Islam, to consider..? Salvation. It's not Trinity, it's salvation. The concept of salvation is actually the concept in Christianity. And they have a notion of what that means because of the way they framed it. It's often we think the Qur'an goes against Christianity. That's an oversimplification. The Qur'an takes concepts in Christianity that were misinterpreted. I know this is going to take two minutes. Allow me these two minutes. There's Mushrikun in the Qur'an, and there's Ahlul Kitap.
But we know Ahlul Kitap are also Mushrikun, right? So why not just call them Mushrikun? Why? Because the Mushrik says there are five gods, or gods has these many daughters, etc. This is shirk because they believe in multiple gods. If you ask a Christian how many gods do you believe in, what are they going to say? One, but three. No, they won't say three. Oh, they will say one. They will say one. I believe in God. They'll never say "I believe in gods." They'll say "I believe in God." But they misinterpret that God to be three. Understand, the Mushrik says there are multiple gods. The Christian says God is one, but I interpret in this way.
So the difference between the Mushrik outright and the shirk of the Christians is they have a shirk in their interpretation. There's a big difference. This is, like, immediately shirk and this is interpreted shirk. What does the Qur'an do? The Qur'an points out the places where they took something and they misinterpreted it. And then it starts from the same place and it interprets it in the right direction. So I'll give you one example. They believe in the beginning there was God, and then there was the Word, Logos, yeah? And Jesus is the Word of God. And since the Word of God is eternal, therefore, since Jesus is the Word of God, Jesus is also eternal. That's kind of the Logos logic, right?
What's the Arabic word for logos? Kalima, right? Did the Qur'an call Isa (as) a Kalima? Yeah, that's the starting point of their entire theology. And the Qur'an used it, it's dangerous. But then He said, no, but the Kalima of Allah is simply kun fa yakun. So instead of making the Word eternal and all of that, no, the Word just means when God says a Word, that Word comes into existence. So the Word became a miracle instead of being the eternal entity and got part of God and all of that. Allah took the same logos and redirected its interpretation. And Allah does this over and over. He did this with the Virgin Mary. He did this with Jesus. He did this with Adam.
Instead of completely dismissing Christianity, it takes all the points of divergence and redirects them beautifully. It just does such a beautiful... If you study Christian theology and then you study how the Qur'an is doing things, you'll be baffled. I did a study of the story of Adam (as). The study of Adam (as) in the Old Testament, the study of Adam (as) in the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, the study of Adam (as) in the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament, and then the study of Adam (as) in the Qur'an.
In the Qur'an, it its story, it's commenting on the Bible and the Christian interpretation and the Jewish interpretation, and correcting all of them at the same time. All of them, like, a couple of thousand years of scholarship is being addressed point by point by point in a few Ayah of Surah Al-Baqara. It is mind blowing. Like, if I started giving you examples, it would take a long time. But like, the Christian world hasn't experienced the Qur'an. And our claim should be, "Actually guys, you haven't experienced the Bible because you haven't experienced the Qur'an. Let us help you experience the Bible all over again." That's actually my claim to Christians. Come, let's talk about the Bible.
And finally, what would you like to say about Towards Eternity and how was your experience? I think you guys are doing an amazing job. I genuinely say that. And I think that the sincerity and the diligence and the ihsan you're putting into this work shows. And I pray that Allah gives this... What you've accomplished so far becomes a drop in the ocean compared to what's coming, Inshallah. And I pray that Allah brings confidence and faith to people around the world and people that are seeking. That He makes you a means of arriving at the faith and arriving at the truth. And may Allah put that in your hasanat.
And the wonderful young men that I see here that are dedicating so much of their time and energy to doing this work. I pray Allah puts barakah in their lives and the lives of their families, that Allah gives them good married lives, gives them righteous children. And just what an amazing, amazing concept. And you know, the campus you've put together here and the facilities, it's world class. It's really something special. And I think it's something to emulate. And I pray that you become an inspiration for people around the world. Just like you guys are translating your videos in different languages.
I pray this project gets translated, and you have a version of this in Afghanistan, and a version of this in Bangladesh, and a version of this in Indonesia, and your satelliting everywhere, Inshallah. Ustad Nouman Khan, thank you so much for your time and we are really honored to have you with us. Alhamdulillah. The honor has been mine. And may Allah preserve you. Ameen, and all of you too. May Allah allow you to serve the deen, serve the Qur'an until your last breath. May Allah accept, overlook our shortcomings.
It was like faucets opened on the side of the grave and fire was pouring out like water pours out. The grave was open. So I could see above. And there's a voice from above that says, "This is because you don't pray." I remember my face was completely wet in tears, like, I was crying in my dream. I woke up already crying. I sat there and I'm like, this guy's not giving a lecture, he's reading. He's just reading the Qur'an. He just had the Mushaf in front of him. I just started listening to what he's saying.
And the fact that every time the Qur'an is recited by the Prophet (saw), somebody listening can immediately get hit with it and say, "Whoa, that's talking about me." It started feeling like I'm having a conversation with this person. But who's actually having the conversation? It's Allah. It's like Doctor Sami disappeared and it was just me having a conversation with Allah. Assalamualaikum, Ustad Nouman Ali Khan. As Towards Eternity, we are very happy to have you with us. Welcome. It's very nice to be here. Waalaikumassalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. I want to first ask the classic question. Who is Nouman Ali Khan? I don't even know sometimes.
I guess my new answer to that is a constant learner. I think I've developed a new appreciation for learning. As everybody else, I'm lots of things. I'm a goofy human being. I'm a lover of children. Alhamdulillah, I have a young, beautiful boy. My latest addition. So, he's keeping me busy. Is it true that you used to be an atheist? For a while, yes, I was an atheist. I didn't see the point in religion. I thought that it was a way of keeping people from being happy and being, doing whatever they want to do. It was a way of controlling freedom, religion. And so, when you get rid of religion, you kind of get rid of God with it too.
It didn't help also that I took a couple of philosophy courses in college. What made you change your ways and what was the incident? There were a few. There were a few incidents. The dream was one of the big incidents. So the dream was, I was in the habit of... I had mostly non-Muslim friends, mostly Hindu friends in New York. A couple of Jewish friends. And there was one Muslim guy. But I was in New York, and the way our house was in Queens, I had a basement. I lived in the basement. My parents were upstairs. So, my room was the downstairs and it had its own exit.
So, I got really good at sneaking out when there was a party and covering my, you know, the old school, covering your body shape with pillows and putting a blanket over it, leaving the fan on, etc. And I did that, and I went to a party. And I was out till 2, 3 in the morning. And I snuck back in. I've been caught before, I've been caught and I got beat too, but not badly. But you know, Pakistani beating standard. It's good for your sinuses. But this time I got away with it completely. I got back in and I was so happy that I escaped. You know, the authorities, my parents. I fell asleep, and when I fell asleep, I saw this dream. It was me lying in my grave, very distinctly.
And it was, if you've seen, like, those pools or those tubs that have the water gushing out from the sides. It was like faucets opened on the side of the grave and fire was pouring out like water pours out. The grave was open. So, I could see above. And there's a voice from above that says, "This is because you don't pray." I remember my face was completely wet in tears. Like, I was crying in my dream. I woke up, already crying. And then I made whatever I remembered of wudu, and I started making Salah. And I kind of remembered there are five prayers. I didn't quite remember how many, each Rakat. Because you haven't been praying. I hadn't been praying for a long time.
I'd been praying for maybe four years, since we came, basically. The only prayer I could have got caught was Juma, but Juma was during school time, so I didn't get that either. And then the only time we did go to prayers, if it was a holiday or it was Eid and my parents took me, my dad took me. Other than that, I didn't see the inside of a masjid. I didn't expect that dream. I didn't expect it to feel that way. But all of a sudden I just started praying. And then I remember being in sajdah in one of the prayers and just crying. And then I fell asleep like that. And I woke up like that. And I stopped hanging out with all those guys. Like, what's wrong with you? Why are you being like this?
Why are you being weird? I just avoided everybody. I just went straight home. I just kept going straight home. Then when, you know, the semester ended, I remember that because I still had a job at a Spanish neighborhood in the Spanish Junction Boulevard. So while I was at my job, this job was crazy. This was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Every weekend it's flooded with teenagers, and there's salsa and merengue and loud club music and everybody's dancing. It's like, it's crazy. It's the craziest part of Queens. And I was working at a clothing store. They specialized in, like, basically what we used to call it thug wear.
Back in the day in the 90s, you wore like, super baggy jeans and like Karl Kani boots. And, you know, that's what they sold. And I would work at that store and then it would be Salah time. I'd run down to the shoe area, shoe warehouse, and go make Salah quickly. And come back, join again, Asr time, go back, come back, go back, come back. I started being regular with my prayer. My coworkers, they were all, like, Hispanics. They didn't call me Nouman. They called me Ali. Like, "Yo, Ali, what you doing, man?" "Why are you being weird like that?" "Yo, why aren't you looking at me?" I have to explain, I'm praying. "Oh, man.
You talk to God." "Yo, can you tell him to get me a promotion?" "I gotta get a raise." So, they had... Then they started asking me questions about it. I didn't know anything about Islam. But my friends, you know, my Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban friends in the neighborhood, coworkers, they're like, "So, like, am I going to hell?" It's like, I don't know. "Yo, you can't eat pork, right? So I'mma eat it right now. How do you feel about that?" Like, this is what they would do. So prayer became a part of my life. But I don't think that my Islam was anything more than that. It was just prayer. And it was maybe somewhat better company, or at least avoiding bad company.
College started and As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an and so on. And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah. Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. College started and now for the first time, I had Muslim friends as opposed to basically non-Muslim. But the Muslim friends I had were the biggest party animals in the campus. You know, it was the Muslim version of what I used to have, except with, you know, Muslims.
Now, it felt less guilty because they're Muslims and none of them prayed. But they didn't mind that I'm praying. But other than that, it was kind of, I went back to the same thing as before. Just with prayer. And one of them took you, I think in Ramadan, there was this dawra of the Qur'an, and then your love of the Qur'an started. He introduced me to the [-]. Omar, I'm going to call you out. It's his name, Omar Baig. Now, people know your full name, bro. Okay. Well, I'm still in touch with him. Love him to death. He saw that I was really trying to learn Qur'an. I used to have a Yusuf Ali Qur’an translation with me all the time. I was reading it.
I was finding it extremely difficult, but I was still reading it, still taking notes on it because I didn't have anything else. And he's like, "You want to do Qur'an? There's a thing going on in..." And he wasn't even in that neighborhood. He said, "Let's go check that out." And he brought me there. This was in Flushing, in the Muslim Center in Flushing, Queens. So the program was Doctor Abdul Sami was doing... So they had, the masjid was two different floors. So, one floor was 20 Taraweeh, express train. Like most places. The third floor was, okay, we're going to read four Rakat. Then I'm going to explain Ayah by Ayah, translate and briefly comment on what we just read.
Then we're going to pray four, then I'll comment. Then we'll pray four, then I'll comment. And that's how we'll finish one juz. Then we'll do the next juz tomorrow and the next juz tomorrow. And this would go on from, I think it was about 9:30 PM until about 1 AM every day. And then the weekends he would just cover up. So, it would be 2, 2:30, 3 AM even, sometimes. Like, all night. But we just take a break, you know, 45 hour lecture, then four Rakat. Hour lecture, four Rakat. Hour lecture, four Rakat. And I came in, I'm not going to listen to a lecture. I sat there and I'm like, this guy's not giving a lecture. He's reading. He's just reading the Qur'an.
He just had the Mushaf in front of him. So, I just started listening to what he's saying. And one of his great skills was, like, if you've heard me give lectures, I'll go into a word, I'll go into a phrase. That's not what he was doing. He was reading the Ayah. Then he was translating the Ayah. But when he was translating the Ayah, he was not reading the translation. He was speaking the translation. So it sounded like speech. It didn't sound like reading. It sounded very natural. And the effect of that, if you listen to that for 10, 15, 20 minutes, it started feeling like I'm having a conversation with this person. But who's actually having the conversation? It's Allah.
So it's like, Doctor Sami disappeared and it was just me having a conversation with Allah. And that felt incredible to me. Like, I didn't think the Qur'an was that at all. Because I was reading the translation in English, and that's not what I felt at all. And that was the pivotal moment where the Qur'an went from being a book to being a conversation. And I just got hooked. Every night I would show up. Every night I would show up and he would just... He noticed me in the back. And he'd just come in. He wouldn't say anything. He'd just pat my shoulder. Walk by. "Assalamualaikum, good to see you." He'd just notice, he didn't say anything.
And then famously, I think I said in some video, I went to him at the end, I said, "I want to do what you do." He said, "Okay, come on Monday. Come learn Arabic." I said, "Okay, I'll learn Arabic." I once heard you say "I fell head over heels in love with the Qur'an." What aspect of of the Qur'an made you say that? The first of them was how it untied my knots. Like, what I thought about religion. What I thought about God, what I thought about purpose. Just unravel them. Even though again, I had some connection to Islam. Now, before the Qur'an, my mind was occupied with graduation and getting a job. And even though I had a job. But, you know, moving on in your career.
Marriage, money, savings, car, house. These were the things on my mind. Just constantly, that's what I was thinking about. Making my parents proud. And the Qur'an came along and said, yeah, those are all nice things, but they're so small. Like, why is your world so small? There's your reality. You were made for something so much bigger. And all of a sudden my world became bigger because I was listening to the Qur'an. Like, I realized how small I was keeping myself. It's like it freed me from thinking small. And the other thing that came with that is, I don't even know how that happened, but I know it only happened because of the Qur'an. Confidence. I was the quietest guy in high school.
People didn't know what my voice sounded like. I was the shy person. I almost failed public speaking class. Wow, I can't believe this. First semester of college. Like, I did not want to speak, I had to take this elective. It was the only one that fit in my schedule. I was like, oh my God, public speaking, how am I gonna do this? And even when Doctor Abu Sami asked me to give a khutbah, fast forward, for the first time, I was shaking like this, right? But one of the things the Qur'an did for me is, it liberated me from the opinions of others. It doesn't much matter what someone thinks of me so long as I'm good with Allah. Like, Allah does not see me as a disappointment.
Everybody else is welcome to be disappointed. It is so liberating. It's so liberating. Like, I come from a culture, Muslims come from a culture, we always think about what people think. Now I'm in the middle of New York City. It's Maghrib time and I'm on Park Avenue. I got nowhere to go. I make wudu with a water bottle. And I'm praying on the side of the street. And people are walking by laughing. People are walking by making comment. I don't care, I said, "I'm making Salah." And in the beginning it used to feel like, "Oh my God, what are people thinking? What are they going to say?" Did the world just became invisible? Like, it's just you and Allah and that's it. What else does matter?
The thing that made me love the Qur'an was one part of it. What it did for me, it liberated me. The other thing that made me love the Qur'an is, like, through that door of the Qur'an, I felt like I wasn't reading the Qur'an. The Qur'an was reading me. Like, Allah is talking to me personally. Why am I this important that Allah would talk to me personally and make me feel like He's talking to me personally? Like, I'm a nobody. I'm not the confident guy. I'm not the popular guy. I'm not the successful guy. Why would Allah talk to me? Why would I be important? Like, I felt like Allah has given me a lot of importance by speaking to me in this way. By speaking in the Qur'an this way.
So it was humbling and elevating at the same time, Subhanallah. You said, you know, you were going to school full time, working full time, but still finding time to learn Arabic. What made you hold on to this? It was Doctor Sami. It was... I saw that man feeling what the Qur'an is saying. And then he could make me feel what the Qur'an is saying. And I was like, I need to feel what he feels. I can't let go of this connection. And I don't want to be dependent on him. Like, how does he get that from this book? And I realized, because I had already tried to struggle through a translation, I'm going to need to have direct access.
So I just became obsessed with this idea that Arabic is my stepping stone to accessing Allah speaking to me directly. I don't put that on anybody else, I need it. I did feel that if I lose the Qur'an, I lose Allah. Because you can have a concept of God, right? And different religions have a concept of God. You can even philosophically say there's the force. The universe, or you know, something's out there. Some being is out there or something. People give different names to it. But the Qur'an isn't just about the existence of a God. It's actually not just that He exists, but He is... He wants a direct relationship with you. He wants you to know Him the way He wants you to know Him.
Instead of me philosophizing what He's like, instead of me theorizing what He must be, what He must want. What am I doing here? He's telling me. And He's telling me with so much love, right? Like, I know people say they have a spiritual connection with God, and fitrah is there and you can have that. But for me, I don't know if anything can ever do what the Qur'an does, right? It's when Allah calls it, you know, one of my favorite places in the Qur'an. In Surah Ali 'Imran. "Hold on to the rope of Allah." A reference to the Qur'an, because one end of it is with Allah, the other end of it is with us. But the other place in the Qur'an is, In Surah Al-Hajj.
"Hold on to Allah." And those two phrases, hold on to the rope of Allah, hold on to Allah. It's as if it's the same thing. You really want to hold on to Allah? You got to hold on to his rope. So He made them synonymous. So, there are many people whose lives were completely transformed by your means. And from the ones you remember, which of them affected you the most emotionally? It can be from either non-Muslims or Muslims that came up to you and said something. There was a... I was teaching in Copenhagen. And this father and daughter traveled to come take the class with me. The daughter, young lady, she had graduated college and they listened to me together.
So they came, they took the course. A really lovely gentleman and so many... He made so much dua for me, so much dua for me, so much dua for me. And then I was going to come back 6 months later and teach a follow up. So I came to teach the follow up. The daughter was there, the father wasn't there. And she came to me and she handed me a Portable prayer mat and said, "My father died, but even before he died, he was listening to you and he was making dua for you, and he got this gift for you, and never got a chance to give it to you." And I just, you know... There are moments like that. I know I don't deserve them. I know that, like, those are some amazing souls.
There are some incredible, incredible human beings. Just now in our WhatsApp group, my team, there were some people dedicated to translating our work. Some of them are translating in Turkish. One of them was someone who lost her home in the earthquake, And she was still translating while being homeless. As a volunteer. I look at these people and I'm just... I just pray that their goodness, because I can feel that their goodness is so much greater than my own. Their closeness to Allah, their love of Allah. I think it's... Instead of me being an inspiration for them, they're an inspiration for me. That's honestly how I see it.
And I pray that not only that I'm benefiting them, that in the Akhirah they can benefit me. Because they far outshine anything I could do. Subhanallah. I want you to be sincere and open with me. If you were to die right now, do you feel yourself closer to Hell or Paradise? Oh. Hell. Hellfire. Yeah. I feel like I have a lot to make up for. I feel like I need to do better. Yeah, that's what I feel like. After touching so many people's lives, I was expecting you to be more hopeful. That doesn't matter.That's not my doing. That's Allah. That's not me. What does that have to do with me? Millions of people benefited from what I said. I didn't do that. But you get to share.
Yeah, that's Allah's doing. And that share depends on the state of my heart. I could be deprived of my entire retirement plan, right? So, like, the amount of good you're doing or the amount of good you're going to do is great, but it's not an insurance policy. The only security you have is this thing, right? And this needs, I feel it needs improvement. Now we have short Q&A. Just maybe one word might be enough. Cool, one word, I love those. It's gonna be the worst. I think it'll get really cool answers. The thing that Nouman Ali Khan enjoys doing the most? Ping pong. Yeah. Oh, good. The best decision Nouman Ali Khan has ever made? Oh, the best decision I ever made.
Uh, I suppose study Qur'an. Yeah. And what is the worst decision? I'm not going to tell you. There's a long list. The first thing Nouman Ali Khan would do if he got to Paradise? Uh, look for Musa (as). The best and the worst comments Nouman Ali Khan has ever received? The best comment I received was, I pray Allah overlooks your mistakes and rewards you for any good that's ever benefited anybody from you. That's the best comment I ever received. And the worst? The worst. I can't even remember. Actually, most of the time the worst comments make me feel like they entertain me. I guess one was, you should never speak about the Qur'an. Your personal trait that you dislike the most?
I have conflict avoidance disorder. The last thing you searched on Google? The last thing I searched on Google was a Pakistani restaurant in Istanbul. I was not disappointed, let me tell you. Good stuff. A funny moment where you felt extremely embarrassed, the moment that you could never forget? I want to tell you this one. This is so bad. It's so bad. I don't know, they just censored on YouTube. I was in England. God, I can't believe I'm telling you this. And I'm giving a lecture, story night, as brothers and sisters. And I tell a lot of jokes. I can't help myself. It's just, so... And I'm asking questions, and people are answering loudly.
But the ladies are answering, the sisters are answering really loudly, and the guys are like... And there is like, roar from the ladies' side. And I said, "Mashallah, the sisters here, they've got a lot of..." And I used a word, which in American English is completely fine for energy, enthusiasm, not an inappropriate word, but apparently that word, which I shall not say because the camera is on, is very bad in England. Because England English is different from American English, right? So, the moment I said it, I thought it just meant enthusiasm, energy. The entire crowd went, oh. I'm like, what happened? And then somebody came on stage.
"That word means this in English in England." I was like, oh. Moving on. You'd had a different connotation. Completely. What is the one food that you can never say no to? Chicken karahi. Well made Pakistani chicken karahi. I cannot say no with garlic naan. And what about dessert? It's suji ki kheer. It's a special kind of rice pudding made of, what do we call it? Suji. Did you ever have a nickname? No, I didn't. I didn't like them. So whoever gave me a nickname, I started to fight with them. Nomie, Nomes, Norman. Or NAK, maybe? NAK is not really a nickname. It's, you know, NAK has become an acronym, it's fine. Have you ever received death threats?
Has anyone tried to harm you because of what you do? Well, not so directly. There was one ISIS video one time. But other than that, people have said mean things. Like one guy said, "I'll see you in hell." And I told him, "Why will you be there?" I'm like, what? But other than that, not really. One guy tried to hit me one time, but it was too slow. Psychological disorder? Yeah, I got other... People don't try to hurt me. People get weird with me. Well, people come and say, you know, "You were talking to me in a khutbah." But you're in Sri Lanka? I gave the khutbah in Australia. Yeah, but I saw in the video that you were talking to me, and I'm coming to question you. Why did you speak to me?
I got your message and I'm coming, I understand. I'm like, what do you understand? So, there are people with all kinds of strange disorders that feel that I'm speaking with them, communicating with them, or I have a special encoded message in my videos that was, they're able to decipher it. That it's targeted at them. So, I'm a magnet for weird. But other than that, no. No threats, Alhamdulillah. A person sees you in an elevator. He recognizes you and asks, "I have everything I need in my life. Why should I restrict myself by becoming a religious person?" How would you respond to him in one minute? You're in an elevator, so...
I mean, you're so restricted because you think you have everything. Your definition of everything is about as much space as this elevator. So it's ironic you're saying you have everything. You have practically nothing. You were made for something so much bigger. I know it's almost impossible to choose, but what is the one Ayah that touches you the most? It depends on the Surah I'm studying. I'm studying Surah Al-Mursalat right now. And Allah said, you know, "Didn't we make the earth, means shifting, moving, also covering. Allah is saying, "Didn't we make the world in a way that is always shifting?" Politics is shifting. Powers are shifting, societies are shifting, migrations are happening.
Societies come to life and societies die. And Allah said, "We put mountains," right? Tall mountains. What does that have to do with society shifting? You know that geopolitics has everything to do with mountains. Mountains kept one nation from invading another nation. Mountain ranges created natural defenses. Mountain ranges stopped certain empires from continuing to expand more. The world looks the way it does because of mountains. Civilizations like Russia, for example has a natural protection with the Antarctic behind it. Right? Mountains and seas. And they've created the natural barriers of the world, Subhanallah, right? Now watch this.
"We gave you water." The description of the water is furat. Now, in Arabic furat means, could mean sweet, could mean fresh. But actually furat was one of the words that came to Arabic from Akkadian. And it's actually the Arabic version of the river Euphrates. And the Tigris and the Euphrates were called "The Two Furat" in Arabic. Furatan. And human civilization begins with the Tigris and the Euphrates. And Allah said in this Surah, "Didn't we destroy the first ones, and we follow them up with new civilizations?" And then He's talking about how civilizations shift and what role mountains played. And then He mentions water that is furat, right?
Like, in a couple of Ayah, Allah described the story of all human civilization. Just like that. And I'm just like, ya Allah! How do you... How do you do that? Subhanallah. And then He says, In your opinion, what is the biggest miracle of the Qur'an? A miracle that you think no one can object to? I think every miracle of the Qur'an, someone can object to. The Qur'an is made like that. Allah made the miracles... Musa's staff, somebody can call it sihr, yeah? The miracle of the Qur'an, they are endless. There is no one greatest miracle. People think, because I talk about the language of the Qur'an, to me the language is the miracle of the Qur'an, no. Language is one of many.
And to a psychologist they might see something in an Ayah about the nafs, that is their miracle. To a geologist, something else. To a historian, something else. To a sociologist, something else. To a philosopher, something else that might be the miracle to them. To a linguist, something else. To a comparative religion expert, something else. The miracles of the Qur'an are actually dependent on who's coming to them. That's one of the most amazing things about the miracle of the Quran is, it's not just one stick turning into one snake, right? It's every human being has the ability to find their miracle in this book. And I subscribe to Doctor Fadl Samerai's view on this.
He says, I dive into the ocean. I find a pearl, a really big pearl. Like, not even a little, a big one. I come out, I say, "This is the greatest treasure of the ocean." Yes, this is the greatest treasure of the ocean for you. Somebody else will go, pull out another pearl and say, no, this is the greatest. No, no, no, that one's for you. Now the one I'm holding is a miracle to me, is a treasure to me. But somebody else can say, "Yeah, I don't even like pearls." Isn't that possible? So you can have, somebody can say, "There's a scientific miracle in the Qur’an." Somebody says, "No, it's not, that's not special." Somebody else can say the language and say, no, it's not, that's not special.
They can deny it. They can find reasons to deny it. I'm not saying their denial is legitimate, but when someone wants to deny, they can deny everything. And when someone is seeking to find genuine answer, they will not find one, they will find endless miracles in the Qur'an. That's the way Allah made this book. If you had a chance to talk to your 17 year old self, what would you say to him? Take learning more seriously. That would be the first thing. Second, learn to draw boundaries. Don't assume, give benefit of the doubt, but don't be blind to the harm that someone can do to you. Like, navigate the world with more caution. The world is full of a lot of good people and a lot of bad people.
And then a lot of good people with good intentions who, even in their good intentions, end up doing a lot of harm. So, don't be gullible when it comes to people. When you look at the personality of the Prophet (saw), what impresses you the most about him? His ability to inspire so many different kinds of personalities. Like the Sahaba, we think of them as one group, but they're not. They are people that are very temperamental. They're natural leaders. They are people that are, you know, hesitant and quiet and extroverts and introverts and the intellectual types and the emotional types, all kinds of personalities. And yet he's not just able to inspire all of them.
He's able to make them work with each other, love each other. How do you pull that off? It's one of the most incredible things about Rasool (as) is that he was able to build a bond between people that ended up changing the entire world. If the Prophet (saw) were to enter this room right now, through this door, what would you want to say to him? I would die, probably say, "I'm sorry." I would probably be speechless. I don't think I'd be able to say anything, to be honest with you. Because I feel like Rasool (as) carried the burden of the Qur'an. And he put that burden on us. And whatever we're trying to do, I just know it's not good enough.
How do you see the man that left you with the responsibility? So, what would be the day to witness if you had the chance, from the life of the Prophet (saw)? Hudaybiyyah. The negotiation. Rasool (as) was questioned and called insane and called wrong by kuffar, all of Mecca. 13 years of that. In Hudaybiyyah, he's being questioned by the people that believe in him, right? And it's one thing to be questioned by your enemies. It's a completely different thing to be questioned by your followers. And for him to remain firm, convinced, like a rock, you know, in that moment, and to carry on when no one believes that he's doing the right thing. Nobody.
The most loyal, the people that have risked their lives, the people that have fought beside him, the people that have bled for him. They don't believe he's doing the right thing. And he takes Shura and other things, right? He took Shura in Uhud, he took Shura [-] he took Shura in [-]. But he's not taking Shura now. They're saying, "Don't do this," and he's still doing it. He's not listening to anybody. He's doing it. I just want to sit there and just stare at his face, like, that is iman. Like, that is conviction. When you know something is right, no amount of pressure... I can't imagine that kind of pressure. And Allah could have given Surah Al-Fath, right then. He didn't. Allah waited.
Allah let him experience that and let the Sahaba experience all of their emotions. In fact, Surah Al-Fath could have been revealed before the negotiations. Would have been way easier, right? Allah's plan is to let him, like... And I think the Sahaba would be in a different, like, their respect for Rasool (as) and their admiration of his leadership and his connection to Allah probably went through the roof after the Surah came. Like, this was coming, and he didn't even know it's coming, but he just knows Allah has told him to do something and he's going to do it. Subhanallah. You know that there's a rise in atheism both in the West and even in Muslim countries.
Why do you think this is the case? And what do you think is the most effective way to fight this? My honest answer to that is it's multiple factors. But I'll talk about only one factor. We didn't do our job demonstrating the beauty and the power of this religion. And we do a bad job of prioritizing things in our religion that actually aren't even a priority in our religion. And honestly, if most of the time we're talking about our religion in unintelligent ways, then, if I put myself in the atheist, young 16 year old's shoes, and he's listening to something that's utterly ridiculous, and he's not hearing a reasonable response to his very legitimate questions.
And then, he's turning away from this religion. Do I really want to blame him? I don't. So, you know, efforts like yours, efforts like so many others that are, Alhamdulillah, trying to combat that, we have to... The Da'i has to understand we're not here to defend everyone, everything. We're here to defend the truth. Which means I have to become a seeker of the truth in our religion more than ever before. Like, every Da'i has to be more of a student of this religion than anything. So that every issue they speak about, it comes from a place of knowledge.
And if they don't know, they need to just comfortably say, "I don't know." Because when you speak without knowledge, you think you're defending the religion, you're making things worse. You're giving a bad argument, you're giving a weak argument, you're presenting false evidence, which then gets refuted. But actually you got refuted, not Islam. But for the atheist, Islam got refuted. And it's your fault because you did a bad job presenting the argument, right? So, we have to know our stuff issue by issue. We have to really know what we're talking about before we open our mouth. And not have false confidence that... Become a researcher on every issue.
Present Islam beautifully, present Islam deeply, intellectually. Even if you're going to use simple language, behind that simple language should be a mountain of complex research that you did. The rise of atheism to me, is the biggest evidence of us not doing our job enough. That's all. Atheism is not attractive. If you could have one dua that you know would be accepted, what would that be? Yeah, because if... That dua has a, it says more than it says. So, okay, if Allah accepts my good deeds from me, that actually cannot happen if He doesn't forgive my mistakes. Because accepting my good deeds necessarily comes with being rewarded. But I can't be rewarded if I'm punishable.
And I know my efforts, my work, my good deeds, my prayers, my worship, all of that is going to be flawed. It's going to have mistakes. And outside of that worship also, I'll have plenty of mistakes. But if He just accepts from me, I have that acceptance, then that is the ultimate hope, right? That we be acceptable for our Rabb. If you were given one minute in a Super Bowl commercial to tell millions of people about the Qur'an, what would you tell them? Oh, you got to think about that one. That minute would probably take me days and days of thinking before I opened my mouth.
But briefly, because it's the Super Bowl and because probably America is watching, I'd talk about Adam, and Jesus being the Savior, because that's the pivotal two pieces of Christian theology. And I'd say, did you know that the Qur'an talks about Jesus and Adam and the devil, and it's telling you things about the Bible that you didn't know? I would say more than that because I have a minute, but I would actually do a lot of thinking about those stories and pick something from it that I'll throw at the American Christian audience. One that immediately comes to my mind is, Adam was not cursed, and he didn't come here to be punished. He wasn't broken. And you're not broken.
And I can show you how. I had an additional question about this, but maybe a short answer. What do you think is the biggest mental barrier that prevents 2.3 billion Christians to accept Islam, to consider..? Salvation. It's not Trinity, it's salvation. The concept of salvation is actually the concept in Christianity. And they have a notion of what that means because of the way they framed it. It's often we think the Qur'an goes against Christianity. That's an oversimplification. The Qur'an takes concepts in Christianity that were misinterpreted. I know this is going to take two minutes. Allow me these two minutes. There's Mushrikun in the Qur'an, and there's Ahlul Kitap.
But we know Ahlul Kitap are also Mushrikun, right? So why not just call them Mushrikun? Why? Because the Mushrik says there are five gods, or gods has these many daughters, etc. This is shirk because they believe in multiple gods. If you ask a Christian how many gods do you believe in, what are they going to say? One, but three. No, they won't say three. Oh, they will say one. They will say one. I believe in God. They'll never say "I believe in gods." They'll say "I believe in God." But they misinterpret that God to be three. Understand, the Mushrik says there are multiple gods. The Christian says God is one, but I interpret in this way.
So the difference between the Mushrik outright and the shirk of the Christians is they have a shirk in their interpretation. There's a big difference. This is, like, immediately shirk and this is interpreted shirk. What does the Qur'an do? The Qur'an points out the places where they took something and they misinterpreted it. And then it starts from the same place and it interprets it in the right direction. So I'll give you one example. They believe in the beginning there was God, and then there was the Word, Logos, yeah? And Jesus is the Word of God. And since the Word of God is eternal, therefore, since Jesus is the Word of God, Jesus is also eternal. That's kind of the Logos logic, right?
What's the Arabic word for logos? Kalima, right? Did the Qur'an call Isa (as) a Kalima? Yeah, that's the starting point of their entire theology. And the Qur'an used it, it's dangerous. But then He said, no, but the Kalima of Allah is simply kun fa yakun. So instead of making the Word eternal and all of that, no, the Word just means when God says a Word, that Word comes into existence. So the Word became a miracle instead of being the eternal entity and got part of God and all of that. Allah took the same logos and redirected its interpretation. And Allah does this over and over. He did this with the Virgin Mary. He did this with Jesus. He did this with Adam.
Instead of completely dismissing Christianity, it takes all the points of divergence and redirects them beautifully. It just does such a beautiful... If you study Christian theology and then you study how the Qur'an is doing things, you'll be baffled. I did a study of the story of Adam (as). The study of Adam (as) in the Old Testament, the study of Adam (as) in the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, the study of Adam (as) in the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament, and then the study of Adam (as) in the Qur'an.
In the Qur'an, it its story, it's commenting on the Bible and the Christian interpretation and the Jewish interpretation, and correcting all of them at the same time. All of them, like, a couple of thousand years of scholarship is being addressed point by point by point in a few Ayah of Surah Al-Baqara. It is mind blowing. Like, if I started giving you examples, it would take a long time. But like, the Christian world hasn't experienced the Qur'an. And our claim should be, "Actually guys, you haven't experienced the Bible because you haven't experienced the Qur'an. Let us help you experience the Bible all over again." That's actually my claim to Christians. Come, let's talk about the Bible.
And finally, what would you like to say about Towards Eternity and how was your experience? I think you guys are doing an amazing job. I genuinely say that. And I think that the sincerity and the diligence and the ihsan you're putting into this work shows. And I pray that Allah gives this... What you've accomplished so far becomes a drop in the ocean compared to what's coming, Inshallah. And I pray that Allah brings confidence and faith to people around the world and people that are seeking. That He makes you a means of arriving at the faith and arriving at the truth. And may Allah put that in your hasanat.
And the wonderful young men that I see here that are dedicating so much of their time and energy to doing this work. I pray Allah puts barakah in their lives and the lives of their families, that Allah gives them good married lives, gives them righteous children. And just what an amazing, amazing concept. And you know, the campus you've put together here and the facilities, it's world class. It's really something special. And I think it's something to emulate. And I pray that you become an inspiration for people around the world. Just like you guys are translating your videos in different languages.
I pray this project gets translated, and you have a version of this in Afghanistan, and a version of this in Bangladesh, and a version of this in Indonesia, and your satelliting everywhere, Inshallah. Ustad Nouman Khan, thank you so much for your time and we are really honored to have you with us. Alhamdulillah. The honor has been mine. And may Allah preserve you. Ameen, and all of you too. May Allah allow you to serve the deen, serve the Qur'an until your last breath. May Allah accept, overlook our shortcomings.