Sincerely, Yours
20 / 25
Sincerely, Tom Facchine
Join our live talk-show hosted by Sh. Imam Ibrahim Hindy and Sh. Abdullah Oduro every Wednesday starting at 7 PM EST.
Share your thoughts, questions, and suggestions for our talk-show: https://yqn.io/sincerely
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Jazakumullahu khair for joining us for another episode of Sincerely Yours. This is your host Ibrahim Hendi and this is not Sheikh Abdullah Duru with me. Salamualaikum. This is Dr. Tasneem. How are you doing, doctor? Wa'alaikumussalam. I'm as good as Sheikh Abdullah in ping pong, but I'm happy to... Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Just in case, you know, I thought people might get confused as to who... As to whether you're Sheikh Abdullah. Yeah, Alhamdulillah. He's traveling, but inshallah he'll be here in the future, biidhillah, for our future sessions. But we're really happy to have Dr. Tasneem with us. And I know when you were on the show, we had some of our best numbers and lots of people putting comments in the chat. So inshallah, the audience will feel very energized. As is always, we want to hear from everyone. So give us your salam. Say salamualaikum to us from wherever you are. We want to hear from you. This is your opportunity as well to interact with us and to interact with our guests. Any questions that you have, put them in the chat, biidhillah. And at some point in the session, we will ask some of your questions for our guests, inshallah. I see Sister Alicia. Salamualaikum. Alhamdulillah. Great to see you. Afreen from London. Salamualaikum. Umm Mohsen from Toronto. Yes, thank you. Also Hassam from Toronto. Dr. Tasneem, you were just here. To be, well, I was able to get out this morning, so that's good news. But I was happy to be there. Awesome weather, good time, great people. Alhamdulillah.
I see from Udaka, Umm Ibrahim, which brings us to, inshallah, our guest. We can introduce, biidhillah, we have a great guest today. Someone who I've been listening to his talks for a while. So I'm excited, alhamdulillah, to bring him on the show. We have Imam Tom Fakini, who accepted Islam in his early 20s. He holds a bachelor's in political science from Vassar College and a BA in Islamic law from the Islamic University of Medina. He also holds a chaplaincy certificate from the chaplaincy program conducted by the Prophet's Mosque. Imam Tom currently serves as the Imam and Director of Religious Affairs from the Udaka Masjid in Udaka, New York, as Udaka, New York, as well as the Imam of Hamilton College, where he does part-time chaplaincy work. He also teaches tafsir to middle schoolers online through Legacy International Online High School. When not engaged in study or da'wah, Imam Tom's idea of a good time includes espresso and taking long hikes deep into the woods. Check out his short reflections and khutbas on YouTube or Facebook. You can follow him on YouTube by searching Udaka Masjid and on Facebook at his page, Seeker of Knowledge Medina. As-salamu alaykum, Imam Tom. Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullah. Thanks for having me. JazakAllah khair for being with us. Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullah. I'm so excited. I didn't know who was coming to ask me to fill in. I found out it was you and he's from Philly, knows you well. I'm excited to have this opportunity to chat and learn more about the mountain hikes. I mean, I love it. So plenty more to learn about you, but all good. Alhamdulillah. It's awesome to have you with us, Imam Tom.
And part of the whole purpose of this segment is that we want to learn more about our guests and give the audience an opportunity to interact with you. And so we want to know your story. And so I got to say, by the way, I appreciate that in your bio, it gives me the phonetic ability to say your name. Yeah. I love the change on it. No, I mean, I think every single teacher I've ever had, except for one teacher, has found a new creative way to pronounce it. And it's not anyone's fault. It's just a fairly rare Italian last name. I mean, even us growing up, we used to pronounce it in kind of an Americanized way. People used to call me Fasheen growing up. But when I started studying Italian and getting kind of more interested in my roots and my heritage and stuff like that, I realized that I had been pronouncing it completely wrong. And so I just decided, you know, I'm going to take it back. I'm going to take it back. And it actually, you know, so it's CCH. It's like zucchini, like zucchini. This sister, Dr. Tasneem, is having some technical issues. I think she's really filling in the role of Sheikh Abdullah Duru. So she's just refreshing, inshallah. She'll be back shortly, biidillah. Yeah, you know, living in Toronto, there's a good healthy Italian community. So I knew there was a pronunciation to it. But the, you know, the guide there helped for sure, inshallah. So Sheikh, let's go back to the beginning. You know, it says in your bio that you accepted Islam in your early 20s. So before you were Imam Tom, in your early 20s or, you know, before you accepted Islam, who were you? Yeah, okay. So that's really interesting. So when I came, I was many different people.
Okay. So when I showed up to Vassar College in whatever it was, 2008, I guess, is when I started there. I was an anarchist. I was an atheist. I was far left politically. I didn't think much of religion. I didn't think much of God, which is very much a kind of reaction to how I had grown up. I had grown up very religious. I was always like the good kid and in Bible study and, you know, wanted to be in the front row in church on Sundays and things like that. So obviously there was something of a rebellion stage that I went through when I was a teenager. And by the time I got to college, I was just kind of starting to pull back from that a little bit. So, you know, the story is quite long. We can get into as much detail as you want. But I think it's been really useful for me in Dawa because I can relate to a lot of different people, depending on kind of the stage of my life that I was in, you know, at certain points in my childhood and my young adulthood. I was a very, very believing Christian. And then for a while, I was a very, very strident atheist. And I kept on kind of shifting around and trying to find what fit. And I never kind of found that fit until I bumped my way into Islam. Wow. So like you grew up then like in a pretty religious household, though. Yeah. Yes and no. I mean, so my dad's kind of like a relapsed Catholic. Like he doesn't actually go. He was the kind of guy that he went to, you know, Catholic school. He got beat up by the nuns or, you know, they used to put like their knuckles on the desk and slap him with the ruler and things like that. And so he was culturally kind of Catholic, but he didn't really necessarily have much religion in him in some sort of sense.
It was my mother who really was the one who took responsibility for me and my sister. They're just two of us, our kind of religious upbringing. And she was not a Catholic. She was a Presbyterian. And so she used to bring us to church every Sunday and get us involved. And I was doing the Bible studies there and I was in the choir and all these sorts of things. And I definitely took it from her. I was very, very serious about it for a while. I used to try to—I remember getting my own Bible when I was, I think, 12 years old. And I would stay up at night and try to read it. And I never really got very far, but I had the intention to do it. And that was something that actually would come back around later when I ran into Islam, is that I always kind of was drawn towards worship. I always kind of felt like there's got to be more than this. Like we come once a week and we sing some songs and we listen to a little speech. Like where's the—where's the rigor, right? And so even at a young age, I was kind of attracted to the monks and the monastic tradition and things like that. I didn't necessarily think it was very practical to go off and live on a mountain by myself, but it was kind of a romantic idea. And it wasn't until I kind of became—so that was kind of where the religious influence came from primarily. So let's take like a slight step back and let me ask, you're a committed Christian, you're going to Bible study, all this is important. What makes the transition then from being a religious Christian to an anarchist in an atheist? Right. Well, yeah, it was part teenage rebellion, but it was also a lot of other things, kind of tributaries of a large river, right? So one of those sort of tributaries is kind of like my—what am I going to say? My family is kind of like a very working class family.
Like my dad was a trash truck driver, okay? And a very kind of humble profession back in a time when that was still enough that you could actually provide for a family with that sort of job. Now it's impossible. You can't do that. And so my dad's big message growing up was just, you know, I'm going to take care of all your material needs. You just study. You just study, study, study. Don't worry about anything. Don't worry about trying to get a job. Don't worry about anything. I just want—he hated his job so much, and part of it was because of his bosses and how they treated him. My dad's a super smart guy, but he doesn't have education, right? He never went to college. And so he always wanted me to kind of like make it in some sort of way and to kind of do better than he did. So all of that study and kind of emphasis on those sorts of things. Yeah, I eventually, when I became a teenager, like started taking things really seriously and educating myself and learning, but it had a big drawback. And that drawback was that I didn't really have a super strong moral compass, and I actually became very, very arrogant. And I actually kind of took that education that, ironically, my father had really, really encouraged me and helped facilitate and kind of almost turned it against him in some sort of way. And I just thought—I just like wanted nothing to do with my dad when I was a teenager. And I just thought that he was like the most ignorant, like backwards guy. And we used to really get in terrible arguments and shouting matches and stuff like that. So that was a big—there are a couple streams there. So one of those streams is kind of like my path towards, you know, kind of getting into more academic and intellectual sort of spheres. Another stream was like kind of the social mobility thing, right? Like trying to crack into this world of college admissions. My parents have no idea how to do college admissions and, you know, this sort of thing.
And me thinking that I'm hot stuff. And then also sort of the—I guess those were like some pull factors, and then maybe some push factors that I had were different things once I started getting older that I kind of was, let's say, dissatisfied, you know, with the church, and definitely the people who were going there. So there's that in and of itself. There's multiple things going on. One of them was that as I became more and more sort of politically aware and politics started meaning more and more to me, I started becoming very, very frustrated with the political positions that Christians around me and even my local church was taking. And I'll never forget—I'll never forget it was, I think, when Israel was at war with Lebanon, there was some sort of flare-up, you know, happening in Palestine. And I remember that our pastor at church gave an entire sermon about how it's our Christian duty to support Israel. And I was just shocked and very upset. And I remember approaching the pastor after the service was over, and I was just like, how can you say such a thing? Like this is such a horrible, horrible, you know, position to take. And the response that I got was that, well, they believe in this— the Israel, the Jews, they believe in the same God that we do, and Muslims don't. That's what she told me. And I knew that that was wrong. And so I was just so—that left a really, really bad taste in my mouth. And I was very, very upset. And so I started kind of getting really, really disillusioned with Christianity itself and the kind of Christians that I was in regular contact with. I still had that thing from when I was a young person. I still felt like there had to be more, like we have to be doing more. We can't just show up like once a week and, you know, think that we're saved or something like that.
But I was starting to get to the point where I was disillusioned to the extent that I thought maybe, well, maybe this is all just made up. Maybe this is all just kind of, you know, convenient lies that people tell themselves because they don't want to reckon with having to die or thinking that their life is going to end or their consciousness is going to end and these sorts of things. So in my teenage rebellion, yes, I became like a full-fledged atheist. I started getting really involved into, you know, leftist politics. I was really into political activism. I would go down to, you know, we're very, very close to Philly where I grew up. So I would go into Philly a lot. Actually, you can see the Philly skyline from like my bedroom window that I grew up in. And like go in protests and anti-war protests. You know, this is after 9-11. This is invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq and different places like that. It was just like very, very politically charged time. And I just, that was like, those were like my causes. Like, so I was very, very politically active. And that's kind of all the different streams that led together to get me to where I was at college. Dr. Tasneem, you're back. It's cutting a little bit, but I think it's better than before. Well, I was mentioning, you mentioned Philly. So I've been reading about you, so very happy to be here with you. Learn more about your stories. But so what ended up happening? You, you know, went on politically active. At what point did you, something else missing here? I didn't catch the last part of that question. Sorry. At what point? At what point what? Something was missing. Oh, yeah. Well, that's super interesting, right? So two things happened. And again, I always make sense of it as like push and pull, right?
Like there's certain things that pushed me away from like the understandings maybe that I had developed. And then there's other things that kind of pulled me in a new direction. So one of the things that I could never shake, no matter how hardened of an atheist I was, was this kind of feeling that I was being taken care of. This kind of feeling that I was being kind of like saved from bad consequences of certain things. Like I was a jerk as a teenager. Like I, they said horrible things to my father. Like I just like, I was so filled with remorse even to this day. And we've, you know, obviously this is water under the bridge. Like we have a great relationship now. And he understands. But it's like, you know, these sorts of things, I did things and other things that, you know, in my life as a young man or coming into young adulthood. And the results of them, they could have been a lot worse, right? They could have been a lot worse than they actually were. And every single time, everything just turned out okay. And I didn't deserve that. And I knew that. I knew I was honest enough with myself that I knew I didn't really deserve any sort of being saved from anything. So there was this kind of feeling in the background that I couldn't quite shake that no matter what I was doing, even if I was making mistakes, even if I was kind of whatever, being a jerk or being selfish or just not really living very intentionally or according to like very good principles, I could feel myself kind of being, I don't know, saved from some sort of worse consequences that might have happened. And the other thing was that as I started getting more into the study of politics and political theory, you know, my major in college was political science and specifically political theory. I came to see how even the things that I believed in were kind of what I like to call like a third wave of colonialism. That was sort of a big realization for me in college. And one of the big things that actually led me to Islam, oddly enough.
So, you know, if you think about colonialism, you think about kind of the incursions of the Western world on Africa and Asia and other places, it kind of happened in waves. So the first wave was like the wave of conversion. Right. It's like you're going to convert to our religion or else. And then the second one was more of like a secular colonization. Now you have to modernize and you have to get with the times and you have to adopt secularism often. Or you have to, you know, this is like the late 1900s. And then, you know, the sort of things that I saw are the sorts of things that I noticed, even sort of the positions that I had. I started to see how even they were being kind of part of a third, a new wave of colonialism when it came to human rights discourse and things like that. If you go back to the invasion of Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq, you saw many of the arguments that were being put forth at the time were on human rights grounds. Right. Nobody will ever forget who was alive at that time. The arguments that were made for trying to rescue like Afghani women from the Taliban and stuff like that. That was like a classic one that recently, you know, with everything that's going on, made its way back into public discourse. And so obviously, you know, they don't care about Afghani women. Right. It's just it's just, you know, it's a it's a discourse that enables a sort of political violence for various other sort of reasons and things like that. So I kind of had this realization, you know, when I was when I was in college that, wow, OK, the things that I thought were super, you know, I wouldn't call it sacred. But the things that I kind of had cherished, right, the different political stances and human rights or autonomy, you know, these sorts of things, I started to see how they were being wielded against, you know, other places, Africa, Asia and specifically the Muslim populations in a colonial way.
And so that made me just really just kind of like unsettled me and like what I kind of believed in. And I wasn't really sure what I believed in anymore. And it created a vacuum that ended up being filled by Islam, which was just by the grace of Allah. And I was the last person to deserve guidance, at least for who I was at that point in my life. But, you know, I happened to meet some Muslims. I had actually one professor who was who was a Muslim. And. The thing that. Is that I sort of very, very, very initial few things that I became familiar with about Islam kind of blew me away because they really disturbed my sense of what a religion could be. Right. So with Islam, for example, one of the things that impressed me the most was how comprehensive it was, is that it had guidance for every single aspect of human activity in every single sphere of human life. And, you know, with Christianity, it's kind of like after they abandoned mosaic law. Right. It's just like be kind to your neighbor and, you know, be a good guy or a good woman and come and pray. And that's kind of it. And I was into for a while Christian liberation theology and these sorts of things. But it's really just like it's very, very extrapolated. It's very derivative. You know, they're they're they're they're wringing those books dry to get to get anything like that, like a just war theory out of out of Christian scripture. And then when I came to Islam, I was like, whoa, wait, wait a second. Like, this is telling me how I can like build an economy and what to do in sales and what not to do in commercial law and how to split up inheritance and the rules of war and what's just war and what's not just war. I was shocked. I was like, wow, well, that makes sense if there's going to be guidance that's supposed to be universal. Right. Because every religion claims that it's universal.
If it's going to supposedly be for all of humanity horizontally and it's supposed to be for all time, right, vertically until the day of judgment, then it better account for everything or nearly everything, at least all the big stuff. And so when I saw that, you know, it did basically, I thought that was extremely interesting. I was like, OK, I need to take this thing seriously. This is something that needs to be studied. It also kind of solved, I think, a tension that I had felt but not really realized of like personal development and then societal development. So when I was a Christian, it was all about the individual kind of personal development. And then when I became an anarchist, you know, and sort of all these things with politics, it was all about society. You know, it was all about, you know, power and structure and the superstructure and all these sorts of things. And each was like an incomplete half of the other. Right. It's like you're dealing with individual life and then you're dealing with collective life. But each one is very blind to the other. Like, for example, like, you know, with among communists and anarchists and stuff like that, there's very poor personal discipline. You know, people are smoking and doing drugs and, you know, having illicit relationships and, you know, all these sorts of things, children out of wedlock and whatever, all these sorts of, it's chaos. And so when I came across Islam, it was like, huh, OK, it's almost like you have the two spheres, like, you know, completion. Right. You've got both halves. Now I've got guidance for individual life and I've got guidance for collective life. And that was something that blew me away. And the second thing I think that really impressed me about Islam right off the bat was how specific it was. And this kind of appealed to me when it came to that old sense that I had of like, OK, we should be doing more. We should be doing more. What should we be doing? And so the fact it's like, OK, you're going to pray five times a day, right, not just once a week, you're going to pray five times a day and it's going to be at specific times. Here's what the sun's going to be doing. Right.
They're in windows. And then you've got to clean yourself like this. You've got to go to the bathroom like this. You're going to eat this, but you're not going to eat that. I was like, wow, like this is super specific. And that really resonated with me. I think I was always looking for a sort of like regimen, something that I could kind of subscribe to and implement and something that seemed like it was deep, you know, deep enough to kind of sink my teeth into. I don't mean to interrupt you, but this is very interesting because what you meant in saying that this is exactly why I sound like a fuck all. I mean, because they make me have to pray to like it's a mentality that you have to be as no as me. A regimen. I mean, I think that's the solution. Right. No, that's super interesting. I was actually talking to somebody who's considering accepting Islam just the other day. They're from up, up, upstate New York, like close to Canada. And, you know, as many people and I was to it's like this person was more kind of attracted by the far eastern spirituality, right? The Taoism and the Buddhism and the stuff like that. And that's a very common thing for for people in North America and in Europe, too. And so we were talking about like, what's the need for worship and what's the need for a regimen? All right. Because he was just like, well, I should be able to pray when I want to pray, how I want to pray. If I want to pray by sitting in the woods like that should be that could be my prayer. Right. And if I want to pray by going for a swim in a river, then that that should be my prayer. And so I gave him the analogy. I said, well, you know, because he looked like he was like athletic. I was like, you go to the gym, right? And he's like, yeah, I go to the gym. I was like, OK, what if you just went to the gym when you felt like it? Right. How would you benefit? Like what type would your benefit be regular? Like is like, is like, no, like it would be very, very scattered. Right. The benefits would be very marginal. I was like, OK, what if you didn't go to the gym?
Right. And but you told yourself, you know what, I'm going to go for a walk later. So that's kind of like in replacement of the gym, you know, like would it really replace the work that you would do in the gym? He's like, no way it wouldn't. He's like, I'd get a little bit of cardio, but it's not the same thing. It's like, OK, so when it comes to Islam, you've got the gym and you've got the walk. OK, so the gym is your regimen of work that actually is the base level that you have to do for your own benefit. Right. And that's another big hang up that a lot of especially Christians have. It's like they have this feeling like God needs our worship. God does not need your work. You need your worship. Yeah. It's that's why also the gym analogy works. It's like nobody. If I wake you up for gym, you know, to go to the gym every morning at five, am I benefiting? You're benefiting, buddy. You got to get get the gains. So I was basically trying to say it's like when it comes to worship. Right. It's like you need to have some sort of program. And the program has to be sourced outside of yourself, because let's be honest, you know, if it just comes from within yourself, you have a conflict of interest that day that you feel lazy, that day where it's like, oh, too late. Right. You're not going to find the motivation and you're going to suffer. Your results are going to suffer. If you take care of your obligation and then you want to go for a walk later, then go for a walk later. Right. It's like you can you can pray by taking a walk through the woods in the sense that you can connect with the creator and you can marvel at his creation and you can feel connected. And you can feel connected to him. Sure. But that's not a substitute for getting getting in the gym. Right. You have to be able to do both. And I think that for I assume obviously it's not my background, not being born in a family that is a practicing Muslim family. But I think with a lot of these things, you don't know what you what you have till it's gone. Right. Because for somebody who grew up as a non-Muslim with a non-Muslim family, it's like when guidance comes to you. You never want to let it go. Like it's so scary to not know what's right or what's wrong.
If you wanted to become righteous, you wanted to repent. To not know how to do it is a really, really scary thing for everybody who was born into a Muslim family. It's like you pretty much know what to do to get right. Even if you're living a life of sin. Right. You know that. OK, if things get really bad, you can start showing up in the masjid and wear the kufi and get the tasbih and whatever you have to do. Right. To start kind of being, quote unquote, more religious. There's a there's a very apparent path that's open for you. So it can be something that you take for granted. But somebody from an outside perspective that didn't know and that had no idea, it's it's it's actually very comforting. It's very comforting to know that you have that safety net underneath you. Right. That this thing is there for you if you choose to take it up, if you choose to make it your thing. It's always there. So, Pamela, I have had experience with someone who told me the same thing, like they converted because they felt like Christianity didn't ask much of people. Whereas they said, like, if God would send a revelation, he would have expectations of us. So they found that like Islam having five daily prayers and fasting Ramadan is like these are expectations that our creator would have of us. And so that almost spoke to them the truth of Islam just by itself. It's like a relationship, right? It's like if you have somebody who's like an extended relative and you kind of feel duty bound to like keep up a relationship with them. It's like think about the quality of your communication, how often you're going to communicate, right? Maybe once a month or once or twice a year or something like that. And, you know, it's going to be very like fairly formal. Compare that to like being in love. Right. It's like if somebody falls in love, it's like you're checking that phone out. It's like you're checking that phone for every notification. It's like your heart leaps in your throat. Like when you, you know, you see the other person's online or you get a chance, it's like.
How should our relationship with our creator be right, should our relationship with our creator be like a distant relative or should it be like falling in love? Yeah, it should definitely be like falling in love. You know, we should try to have that level of attachment. And, you know, that's why we have so many types of worship, first of all, in Islam. And then we also have a pretty high bar when it comes to even the bare necessities of what we're supposed to be doing. You know, I'm going to be asking since perspective back in your 20s, I think, what is your favorite form of worship? And. I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? It's still cutting it out for me. I'm sorry. I was saying that what what form of worship coming into it with that? I didn't get that, I'm sorry. You guys hear me now? Yeah, I can't hear you. It's just like the very end of cutting out. You said what form of worship? But. And in trouble. So let's go back to you, you get exposed to Islam and university, you have this Muslim professor who's talking to Islam to you. Is there something that kind of pushes you over the edge? Is there a book you read or an interaction with someone in the Muslim community that kind of like tells you, OK, this is the truth, not just this is an interesting religion? Yeah, no, definitely. But I mean, maybe not one particular moment, but but lots of stuff happened. OK, so I had a very non-traditional path where I actually got married in my undergrad. OK, so I was married before I accepted Islam and before I graduated.
And in addition to that, I was able to go abroad and study. I did a semester abroad in Turkey. Right. So there were different sort of things that that coalesced. I started basically experimenting. The more I learned about Islam, like, OK, this is really cool. Let me try it out. Right. And I started trying to learn how to pray. I started trying to fast and these sorts of things. And I had a really, really positive experience with the acts of worship. And then I come back right to finish up my my degree. And basically two two major things happened. One is that. My my wife and I, we conceived, so we were about to have our first child. And this is my last semester of undergrad. And the second thing was that as in my last semester of undergrad, I attempted to. I was so interested in Islam that I attempted to take a college course on Islam. OK, which was a fateful decision, actually a very important decision in my life. Not for the right reasons, actually, it ended up being a horrible class. It was taught by somebody who wasn't a Muslim. They taught it in a very disrespectful way. And I basically ended up failing the class. But it was a it was an F that I took with pride because of the sort of narrative that the professor was pushing and perhaps if we if you would indulge me, I can I can just tell one small story from that class that kind of illustrates what was going on. So this the title of the class was Islamic autobiography. OK, quote unquote. And so the idea was that we were going to read different autobiographies of Muslim authors. That was just what the the syllabus was. And so one of the authors was somebody who became a Muslim and then apostated.
And in the course of this book, they actually take a Musaf, right, a copy of the Koran, and they take it out into a field and they urinate on it. And this is supposed to be like some big symbol with for the author about, you know, whatever. He's got this whole argument about why it makes sense. And it's not really disrespectful. It's actually like, you know, very enlightened thing to do. And there's other Muslims in the class. OK, and I'm not a Muslim at this point, but I'm like pretty much on the edge. And by the way, the professor and the author of this book were friends. OK, and I knew that kind of going into it. And so it's time to discuss the book in class. We all get to class that day. And the teacher says, OK, so what did we what do we think of the book? And there's like silence. You know, nobody wants to say anything. So I raise my hand and I say, you know what? I disagree with what he did to the Koran. And the teacher was very, very upset. He's like, what do you mean? And I said, I don't really know how to articulate it. I just think that it was very disrespectful and was wrong what they did. And she said something to me that I'll never forget. She said in front of the whole class. So what should we do? Should we issue a fatwa to have him killed? That's what she said. That from that point on, it was like war between me and this professor, because Tom came out so, so disgusted by the colonial narrative and the imposition and oh, man, so many things bothered me. And what was funny, what was funny is that after the class, like all the Muslim students, there's maybe like five Muslim students in the class. They were just completely silent the whole time. But after class, they're like, oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. For what you said, like, we really appreciate it, you know, and that kind of made me feel good, but it was kind of like you guys hung me out to dry. Like I was there, you know, fighting the professor by myself, basically at the
end of the class, you know, like she failed me and I take that as one of the. My highest achievements of my academic career that I would fail such a class. Um, so that was like a push factor. Like that made me even, I had like, right for Islam and I wasn't a Muslim, but like, I was like, you know, like these people are teaching it wrong and they're like trying to brainwash people and all these sort of narratives that they're importing. And it's like all this sort of stuff. So those two things I think were the big major, you know, the last straws, right? Like, so when my son was born, um, I just felt like I just snapped into like responsibility mode and I was like, it really hit me. It's like, wow, you are not ready. To raise another human being and put them on a better path than what you had. And then at that point I just had to have a reckoning with myself. That's like, you worship in this way. You believe all these things are true. Why don't you just do it? And so that was kind of my, I guess, moment. Right. Um, yeah, so I'll, I'll leave it at that. Those were the two big things. That kind of pushed me over the edge. I didn't know what the Shahada was. Okay. I didn't take Shahada. I didn't know that there was such a thing as taking the Shahada. I just like from now on, I'm Muslim. All right. There it is. Do you want to take it down? Just joking. That's another story. Eventually I did. Actually, it's interesting. Last week we had Sheikh Jamal D. And he was saying the same thing. Like he just kind of became Muslim and he doesn't even remember if he particularly like said the Shahada in front of people. It's just, he's like, yeah, I believe that's it. I'm Muslim. Right. And yeah, subhanAllah. So how do you end up going now to University of Medina? You accept the Sunnah. What's that like transition like? Yeah. So, I mean, there were, I mean, it was, it's riveting, right?
When you embrace something that's new and you feel like, you know, there's this kind of this watershed of, you know, watershed of there's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of possibility that's opened up at the same time, you know, I was married. And so I had a relationship to navigate. And my wife is very, very supportive of the changes that I was making in my life. Like, you know, no more alcohol, no more pork, no more like, you know, hugging, you know, friends that are girls and stuff like this, not going to concerts anymore, stuff like this. But yeah, she was also concerned and alarmed because of the changes that I was making. Now, I had the benefit of good counsel and good mentors to stop me from doing anything really stupid. When it came to my relationship with her, I'm very thankful for that. But definitely, like I was changing myself very, very fast. And so anybody in that situation would be kind of alarmed. But so, boy, let's see what happens. I finished my degree. We go back and live with my parents close to Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey for about two years. I'm working in restaurants, making money. And the last thing I did, I do take my Shahada at that time, by the way, officially. Actually, after I graduated, the same professor that I had that had initially kind of introduced me to Islam, what happened to be passing through Philly and call me on the phone one day. And she was like, like, Tom. I was like, yeah, I was like, like, I'm in Philadelphia. Do you believe like that? There's no God except Allah. Like, yeah, I was like, and you follow the prophet. I was like, yeah, like, then you have to come and take your Shahada. So I actually went to a Masjid in Philly in West Philly on 45th and Walnut, and I took my Shahada there. Wasn't the best experience. Not going to lie. Much love to the people in West Philly, but it was not the best Shahada experience. I was taken down into a dark basement and basically made my Shahada to somebody. I don't know their name. I never heard from them or saw them again.
And things were said to my wife is there with me and things were said to my wife that made it very difficult for her. It was like very, very much a pressure situation. So it was not the best Shahada experience. But Alhamdulillah, everything happens as it should. I was there and the last, so we're in Southern New Jersey. The last piece of the puzzle for me was going to the Masjid. So I basically, maybe it was just my pride. I don't know what it was. But I didn't want to just show up at a Masjid and have people yelling at me or tell me I'm doing things wrong. Right. So I tried to learn as much as I could on my own until I was ready for like the community experience. And when I first started going to one of the Masjid that was close to that area, I probably went for a couple of months without just attending Jumma prayer, without anybody saying Salam to me, which I was happy with at the time. Now I look back at them like that's kind of messed up. But at the time I was like just trying to fly beneath the radar anyway. So but eventually, finally someone said Salam to me and then eventually I met the Imam. And the Imam was actually a graduate of the University of Medina. Also a convert. I don't know if you're familiar with John Starling, but he's in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He's probably my first real mentor as a Muslim. And I started showing up to his classes and studying a little bit here and there. And then circumstances happened where we had to leave the area for work basically. And basically right before we moved, my wife and I and our young son, he suggested that I study abroad in Medina. He was like, you know, like you should really think seriously about this and I'll write you a letter of recommendation if you decide to go.
So I thought about it. I was always inclined. I always I knew from the minute that I accepted Islam that I wanted to study it in a serious way. I didn't know how that was going to happen, but I just the curiosity just doesn't stop. Like I just want to know. And so that gave me kind of the in and the opportunity. So I prepared my paperwork and I applied and then one thing led to another. It took some it took a fair bit of time, but eventually I did apply and eventually I did. I did get accepted to go. So. Sorry Tasneem, did you want to try? I just need one last shot. Can you guys hear me or no? Yes. Awesome. Awesome. You know, someone had asked a question and that was a question that I wanted to ask myself that now looking back and as Imam yourself, what is sort of the first thing that you want to share for a new convert? What is that one thing that you think that they should know? Any resources, any ways we can support, of course, our convert community? Yeah, the thing that I usually tell people is that converts need support more than they need information. Usually, usually. Right. So there is social consequences to becoming a Muslim. And I had it pretty easy. I had my fair share of trials, but I knew people that got kicked out of their homes. I knew people that, you know, lost jobs, lost wives, their spouses and things like that. And they really just need a new family. Right. That's basically it. They need new siblings. They need new friends. They need new cousins and uncles and even parents. And for the average masjid going Muslim that wants to help converts, that's your role, to be frank.
When it comes to the Imams and relating to the new converts, then you can, you know, the Imams can put them on a situation or put them on a path to learning and developing themselves sort of in the educational sort of way. But right now, I feel like we're teetering more to the side of educating and the social aspect isn't there in the way that it needs to be there. And especially, you know, converts today are very much like the converts at the time of the Prophet ﷺ, that many people who are very poor or in a hard situation, socioeconomically or financially, accept Islam. And they are maybe getting evicted from their apartment or they're behind in bills or they are in an abusive relationship or they have all these sorts of things that they have to deal with. And it can be tricky. It can be tough for you to extend trust to a person that you don't know, you've just met, they just kind of came off the street or whatever. But you should not use that as an excuse to not take the means to develop that trust so that you can put yourself in a position where you can be a significant, even a game changer in people's lives. So Shaykh, when you accept Islam, and you know, between that point and, you know, I have two thoughts in my mind, two things I kind of want to question you about. The first is, you know, do you get any times of doubt? Did you get any moments of doubt? Any times where you're like, man, what did I do? And thankfully, not so much. I'll say this, my relationship has always been one of like research. Okay. So there were times when I came across something I didn't understand.
But this is just from Allah and I thank Allah for this, that I had the intellectual maturity to be like, okay, I don't understand that. I'm going to put that in my back pocket, and I'm going to think about it, or I'm going to ask somebody. And that was a really, really healthy way to relate to sort of the things I didn't get. I used to even keep a notebook, even when I was in Medina, I had a notebook of like unanswered questions, like things that I didn't quite understand, or you know, how to make certain things jive. And I would ask different people that I respected. Sometimes we would go to Masha'ikh, or sometimes they would come to Medina, and I'd just throw a question out. And sometimes you don't get a good response. You know, the Masha'ikh, they're not like perfect. They don't know the answer to everything. And so sometimes you hear an answer, and you're like, okay, that wasn't what I was going for, but like, okay, thank you. You know, and then you keep it in your notebook, and you just keep on going, and you ask the next Masha'ikh, and you wait, and you see. So that's kind of always been my method. And that has really, really helped me a lot. So there weren't really any sort of doubts where I was like, whoa, wait a second, what did I get myself into? But there were things that I was curious about, like why, you know, and they're, you know, mostly the things that most people these days, from the modern sensibility, you know, try to reconcile themselves to, like, how can, you know, the books that the parts of the fifth chapters that deal with slavery, and then the, you know, polygyny, and all these sorts of things. But I was, alhamdulillah, I was able to just put them in my back pocket and wait and realize that understanding everything in a holistic way was going to take some time. I might not be in the position to understand everything right away. But I understood the fundamentals, and I agreed with the fundamentals, and they made a lot of sense. And I was seeing a lot of results in my personal life and my personal development. And so it was worth to keep on going and then see where things led.
That was the thing. And I think that's the key. You're not going to be the same person three years later. And you're going to, you're not going to be able to understand certain things until you've gone through certain things in your life. And so sometimes it's just a matter of being patient and waiting it out and waiting to see what happens. I love that response. I love that response because I always get asked that question, like, Tasim, how can you reconcile, you know, this with your understanding of Islam? How do you respond to this? And I always respond, I'm like, just take a second, take a breath. It's okay. You know what, I don't know the answer to everything. But again, it's back to that, going back to that fundamentals that provides me my purpose. It provides me clarity in my day-to-day actions. And I know it's the truth. I just might not know the answers. And so the fact that you have that lived experience is great. And I'm glad you were able to share that with us. And I think it goes like a little bit between like arrogance and humility, where I find that people tend to be atheists or kind of like extremely skeptical. Anytime there's something they don't understand, they're like, this must not make sense. Right? It's like, maybe it does make sense, but you just didn't get the understanding of it. Right? So that's beautiful what you said, because the student of knowledge has to have that humility of, I came across something I don't understand. Let me just, you know, wait and keep asking and keep searching, keep seeking until I get that knowledge. So the other question I wanted to get to is, you mentioned you're married and you have a son when you accept the SNAM. So how do you manage, like, it's hard enough to convert on your own. How do you manage that relationship when you accept the SNAM and you're changing yourself and you're changing your life? And how do you try to bring them along with you? Because it's such an important relationship, obviously. And how did you manage that in that time of your life?
Yeah, I mean, in certain ways, that was kind of the difficulty that I always tried with, not because of any sort of like animosity. Like my wife is very, very supportive of my path. She just wasn't sure that it was the path for her. Right. And then that was kind of stressful, obviously, because you're a new convert. You want to raise your children, you know, in this faith. And actually, that is something that we had agreed to, even though she was not at the point in her life where she was ready to embrace it. She understood it, even from the beginning, that it made sense that our child be raised in that sort of way, which is something I'm very, very grateful to her for and the foresight that she had. But it basically, I think what I had to reconcile myself to is that you just can't control the people. You know, you just have absolutely zero control about what other people are going to do. And so there's kind of a maybe a control paradigm where we're like, well, if I say the right thing and make the right argument and, you know, bring up the right points for the temperament or the personality type or this or that, the other, right, 10 minute shahadah or whatever those videos are. Right. It's like I can, you know, whatever. And I can, you know, score another convert for the for the dean. And it's just not that simple. That's my experience. And that's what I had to quickly reconcile myself to is that this is, you know, a person that's that's not me on their own path. And they have to come up to it on their own. And if they didn't come it come to it on their own, it would be worthless. It would be absolutely literally worthless before their creator if they were pretending. And so, again, I had wonderful mentors and I, you know, I'm very thankful to this day, you know, that I had the right people in my life at every step of the way to save me from making really bad mistakes. I have my fair share of mistakes, of course, you know, but I wasn't pushy. I wasn't trying to be like, you know, you have to do this or you have to do that or you have to do that.
At the same time, you know, I had the aspiration of studying in Medina. And at the time when I applied to go to Medina, you know, my wife still wasn't still wasn't a Muslim. So I was just, you know, everything that we're given is just an opportunity to draw closer to Allah. And that was the thing that I think I realized is that you never spend more time with your forehead on the ground, right, or more time making up the extra fasts unless you really, really want something. I mean, that's what Imam al-Shafi'i said, right? He said, if you're not making tahajjud for it, you're not making night prayers for it, then you don't really want it. Right. Which is like a crazy standard to think about. We're not, we don't live like that. But that was something that I wanted more than anything. And I devoted so much energy and prayer and hope in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala towards that end. And then one day, I think it was about three years after I accepted Islam, a short time before I left to go to Medina, she accepted Islam and took a shahadah as well. And we never looked back. So it was difficult, but Allah has a test that's meant for every one of us. And the religion, you know, Islam doesn't mean anything. It's not valuable to you. If it's handed to you on a silver platter, right, you have to sacrifice for it. And you have to be patient and you have to suffer. Right. It's like a soccer game. I don't know if you guys like soccer. I like soccer. So like there's certain people who play the counterattack and they say, one of the teams I follow, it's like they play a lot of defense. And it's like, you have to suffer. You have to understand how to suffer through a soccer game. Sometimes the team's better than you. What are you going to do? Sometimes you just have to suffer. You just have to turn to your Lord in prayer and do what you can control. Take care of what those things that are in your power and then leave the rest up to Allah and Allah is going to find a way.
That's awesome. I just want to ask a quick question just to give our audience a little thing to be excited about. You are currently working on some things for us at Yafeen. If you want to give us a little inside scoop as to the paper that you've been thinking about, just any general thoughts that you look forward to sharing with us. Yeah, this paper has been haunting me, but inshallah, I have to keep wrestling until I defeat it, inshallah. So it's a paper on perennialism and perennialism is a super, super interesting movement. Basically, there's two really important books, both by an author and a scholar named Mark Sedgwick that I was able to read this summer in preparation for this article. And among other things, it's significant to Muslims for this reason. So we have certain points in the history as Muslims or through the history of the ummah where there were certain intercultural transfers that were going on. So we have outside influences. You think the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and things like that, the Abbasid period. You have all these scribes that are translating the Greek philosophy and all these sorts of different sort of philosophies and traditions of reason and ways of thinking about things. Okay. There's a really important influence that goes on during that time and the importation of certain ideas and certain ways of thinking about them. And those sorts of ideas are basically the, they're going to be wrestled with for hundreds and hundreds of years after that in various ways. And so some of those influences that come from Greek philosophy, they keep on popping up in different places, right?
They really, really did a number on Christianity and Christian theology in a way that Christian theology never really recovered from. They had a significant influence on certain Muslim thinkers, but other Muslim thinkers tried to rebut and repel this sort of influence. And the influence kind of keeps on popping up and popping up, popping up. Why is it significant? It's significant because when we get to the later period of like the 1800s and 1900s and people in the West start to translate for the first time and have access to ancient texts that are both from the Muslim civilizations and elsewhere. You know, Christianity is very much on the back foot. Christianity is very much retreating from its role of cultural authority, even after it had retreated from its role of political authority. And this is kind of an interpretation of religiosity that a lot of people fall into or that they grasp onto, which is basically the idea that all religions are just different expressions of the same truth. That they're all sort of on the same plane. That they might all be either equally valid or that there is some sort of super truth that's beyond all these religions. Religion is man-made, right? But the actual truth is something that's quite distinct from that. So a lot of people rally around this idea and very influential people, people like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and then Aldous Huxley. And you got a lot of different people to the point. It goes on to influence the New Age religious movement and we all know where we've gotten to today. So kind of tracing the historical kind of meandering path of this kind of stream of thought and the implications for us as Muslims. That's what the paper tries to wrestle with and tries to deal with in a way that is somehow both succinct and substantial. So I need your du'a to finish that sort of work.
Plenty of du'a and any support we can have, we can give you inshallah. We're very excited for your contributions inshallah. It's such an important topic. I think a lot of Muslims are influenced by it in different ways. Recently I gave a khutbah. It was about the hadith, the seven who are given shade of Allah on the day when there's no shade but his shade. So I mentioned the first one, the just ruler, Malik al-Adl, Iman al-Adl. So as I'm giving a commentary of this and I kind of mentioned offhand, I'm like can someone say, okay, non-Muslim ruler who is just, will he be given shade on the day when there's no shade but the shade of Allah? I said, no, you can't say that because the implicit meaning of this hadith is these are people who are doing these good deeds for the sake of Allah alone. And would you believe it, right after the khutbah, there are some people who are, you know, they are Muslims attending, who are like how could you say this? Which of course made me give another khutbah about exclusive salvation after that. But this issue is important. Like people are affected, even Muslims who are in the masjid are affected by perennialism to one degree or another. And so inshallah, may Allah give you the tawfiq in addressing this issue and help guide the Muslims. I mean, there's many different, again, tributaries to that sort of phenomenon. The other one is obviously the political moment, right? Because, you know, Orientalist scholarship has done so much to try to construct the, you know, Takfiri extremist Muslim, right? And so we have, for those of us who internalize that imagination of that's what Islam is or that's what Muslims are, traditional Muslims or whatever, then there's a response to that, right? So then there's a dialectical relationship with that sort of thing. So now out of concern that we're following, that we're falling into that sort of thing, we're going to almost prove to everybody that that's not us.
And so then we actually overcorrect and go to the other extreme, the pendulum swings to the other side. And now we're like, no, no, no, because I mean, so much of, you know, sort of the security minded political science sphere is very, very convinced that Takfiri is the modus operandi of extremism. Right. And so anything, if you even say that word, it's like, oh, my God, violent, violent jihad and terrorism and this sort of stuff. Right. So those of us who have internalized that and believe that either explicitly or implicitly, we're going to now overcorrect and go on the other extreme or say, well, no, no, no, no, no. Anybody can be can get into paradise and everybody, you know, as long as they're, you know, intend good or whatever that means, you know, then this is going to be something that that Allah accepts from them. Then we make all the tributes to all of the non-Muslim celebrities that die and this sort of thing, you know, happens every couple of weeks. So it's it's got a lot of different kind of aspects to it as tricky to unpack. But, yeah, the perennialism is definitely one of them. Our sense of, you know, religion as a construct or religion as a something that people have done, the adventure or an endeavor of human effort versus religion as something that's a divine communication, something that's communicated by the divine and meant to be followed. And a lot of these things are just us importing Christian understandings of these sorts of things. Again, when Christianity was on the retreat because of its own epistemic sort of, you know, faulty ground or shaky ground. And then in order to save face, it's almost like perennialism was a very attractive sort of thing because it allowed them to give sort of recognition or legitimacy to Christianity through a back door. But anyway, I should wait for the paper, I guess, to go into all that. So now we usually play rapid fire questions, but you got so many questions from the audience as well.
And so let's make the rapid fire really short and then try to get some of these questions, because some of these questions are really good. And you seem to have a lot of fans out here. Here we go. This one, the easy one. Tea or coffee? Coffee. It's in your bio, right? Wait, it's very important because I learned this recently. Sheheryar Rahim apparently does not drink coffee. And that was shocking. I don't know how you function. I mean, I can enjoy tea. I enjoy tea, but coffee. But what I understand is he doesn't drink tea either. It's the problem with my wife becoming friends with Dr. Atis' name and now all the secrets are coming out. I learned everything. She said no coffee or tea. Like how? How is that possible? I don't know. I have to be having like a really bad day. Yeah, I have to be having a really bad day to start drinking coffee and need to wake up really badly. But okay, mountains or oceans? Mountains, easy. Because you like to hike. Yeah, I do. Okay, your favorite city, but you can't say Mecca or Medina or Jerusalem. Yeah, that's tough because I've gotten more like rural as I get older. I like the backwoods and the stuff like that. But, you know, I've always got love for Philly. I've always got love for Philly. Philly is different. Philly people, you know, it's like, it's got a vibe. What was your first job? Painting houses. Painting houses when I was 16 years old. Then I was a waiter for a long time. Then I worked on organic vegetable farms. Nice. What else we got here? Okay, if you had a superpower, which one do you wish you had? That I'd never forget anything. That's a good one. For an academic. I'd want to forget what people said to me sometimes. That's true. Okay, so let's see. There's some good questions here. I want to get to. Let's start with this one.
What is the most important sacrifice you made during or on your Islamic path? Yeah, that's great. I left jobs for Islam. That was definitely one of the best things, especially so I was a waiter for a long time. And I was a pretty good waiter too, just to, you know, pat myself on the back. But the environment in restaurants is very un-Islamic. And it's, you know, there's alcohol involved. There's mixing with the opposite gender. And there's all sorts of things that happen. And that was one time in my life where I started becoming more practicing, right? Like I was going beyond just learning the basics. I was now trying to do things by the book. And I wasn't comfortable. I wasn't comfortable with my profession. Even though it was great money and it was supporting me and my family. And so I did not have another job lined up. I just quit one day. I just said I can't. I just can't keep going with this according to my conscience. And I walked away. And it took some weeks, but I found another job. And then eventually I got moved and that's when I started working on farms. And working on farms was difficult. And that might be the second thing, the sacrifice that I made, because it was hard work. And, you know, fasting Ramadan in the middle of summer, working 10-hour days on a farm was not easy. But it was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life. Like it's just about sacrifice. Like everybody, if you want to feel closer to Allah and closer to your deen, start sacrificing things. Just start giving up things for Allah. And you are going to see it. You can't describe it until you've lived it. And so I guess that's my answer. Shamba. Okay, this question says, some of my convert friends say raising children is difficult when you haven't grown up as a Muslim yourself. Any advice do you have for convert parents? Yeah, I mean it is difficult. It depends.
You know, things depend a lot. They depend a lot on how far along you are in your path. For me, having a child was like a fire under me. So I felt the need to educate myself so that I could be in the position to correctly guide or at least not totally screw up guiding my children. And so some people need that pressure. And I was that kind of person where I needed the pressure. So let it motivate you. Let the responsibility kind of sink in. And yeah, raising a child is hard anyway. There's no easy raising a child. So at least you're going to be having your hardship and be a Muslim. Okay, so this question says, I wanted to ask, how did you manage being a husband and supporting your wife while studying in Latina? I didn't. Allah did. That's all I can say. You had no idea. There were some weeks where I literally did not know where money was going to come from. There were some weeks where I had to leave my laundry at the ghassala because I didn't have money to pick it up. And yet every single time somehow my rizq found me. Allah sent it to me some way. The nuts and bolts answer is that I did a little bit of everything that I could. I taught English on the side. I did hajj and umrah. I was a tour leader or a group leader. And I did this and that and the third, whatever I could. But it was extremely difficult. But that difficult is extremely necessary to breaking the nafs and trying to rely on Allah subhana wa ta'ala. And so yeah, Allah takes care of it at the end of the day. This question is how does Imam Tom think his background in political science helps him as a Muslim and as an Imam? Yeah, a lot.
Because, you know, I again, and you know, there's different types of political science. I was more on the political theory side of things. But I think definitely the political dimension of Islam is something that there hasn't been enough attention paid to. And there's a lot of energy that's now being directed in it when it comes to, you know, sacred activism and these sorts of things, you know, concepts and ways of thinking about it that are quite new that are on the scene to try to make sense of these things. I mean, we have to believe that Islam is the perfect way for everybody. Right. That's what I believe. And so we live in a society where you get to argue your case and try to convince other people. And I very much believe in that project of trying to convince other people and trying to think through how to explain and how to convince other people. And so there are solutions for many of the things that North American society struggles with that are found in Islam and in the sort of different political things that we have in our faith. But they need to be explored. And so, yeah, so a lot of people, they might not be privy to those things without that sort of background. Allah knows best. OK, this question says, Salam alaikum. How can the average Muslim know which sheikh is teaching Islam correctly? There are so many different explanations and interpretations for the same question. Sadly, scholars are canceling each other. And this is a tough question, but I thought I'd just put it out there. You can't know. You can't know. That's daur, right? That's complete, like, circular reasoning. If you don't know about Islam and you need to study Islam, how are you supposed to be able to evaluate who knows about Islam to teach you correct Islam? That's circular reasoning. It's impossible. So you take somebody who has good manners. You take someone who has good manners, because anybody can lie to you at the end of the day. Some people, they ask, oh, Imam Tom, what's your menhej? What's the benefit of that question? I can tell you what you want to hear, but it doesn't mean that I actually represent the thing that you want to hear, right? It's like anybody can claim to be anything. I can claim to follow the sunnah.
I can claim to follow the companions. Now, until you get to a certain level of study, you're not going to be able to evaluate me, whether I am or not. So the most important thing for somebody, if you're just getting into it, is to judge someone by their character, okay? Somebody who's honest, somebody who's humble, somebody who, yeah, you can use other people that they recognize this person as an authority. That helps. But the most important thing is the character, because even if you find someone who teaches you the correct version of Islam and their character is poor and they're arrogant, then you might be building your mountain of evidence against you on the day of judgment, right? You want the knowledge that you gain to be useful to you, actually, to save your soul in the afterlife and not to be used against you or to be an indictment against you. We'll end with this one. As-salamu alaykum from Malaysia. I'm a reefer and it is a struggle when my own mother has never given up trying to convert my kids and now my grandkids. And she went on to say her mother lives with her and she's asking for advice on how to deal with this. As-salamu alaykum. Apa kabar? Apa baik? My wife's actually half Malay, so I'm studying Malay right now. Okay, yeah, family relationships are super, super tricky. When it comes to – okay, I'll tell you a little story. When my – I couldn't bring my family with me to Medina right away, okay? So my wife and my son were left behind for about a year and a half when I was studying over there until I could get the paperwork and things like that. In the absence – in my absence, one time my grandmother asked my son or basically said to my son, well, you're like half Muslim and half Christian because we're Christian and you're Muslim. And my son said, no, I'm just Muslim, right? Which I just like to this day, just like, yeah, yes, my man. So you need to realize that these things are going to happen, right?
But you need to put yourself in a position where you are more concerned with showing people the right way instead of telling people the right way and instilling in your children the right values so that they're able to fend off and ward off sort of influence from outside. And there might come a time and a place for limiting certain influences in certain ways if you know that somebody has a particular sort of either a missionary attitude or a particular sin that they do in public that is having an influence over your children. You might need to use discretion. For example, like I have relative – I had relatives that drank alcohol, right? So I was going to make sure that I only showed up with my kids to them in the morning, right? Because I knew that in the evening maybe they'd be drinking. Things like that, right? So you kind of need to – you can't subtract without substituting, okay, when it comes to relationships with your non-Muslim kind of family. Whether it comes to holidays and all the other stuff, you're going to come to a time when you make a decision to take away something, but you should really, really, really try hard to substitute something else, okay? If I can't be with you during this time and this situation, then I'm going to be with you in this other time and this other way. Hopefully that gets to some of that. It's a tough question. I know you're not on the phone, but if I can just ask one more question. How many languages do you know? I think you gave us a little taste right now. Okay, so in the order of my fluency, English, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Turkish. I've forgotten most of my Turkish. I used to know Turkish, but I don't have anyone to speak it with. All I have is Ertugrul. And then I'm studying Malay now. Wow, mashallah. Well, on the next episode, we've got to get your advice for picking up languages and putting them down, mashallah. We can talk about language all day. I love language. Maybe I'll get you to translate some of our Yaqeen articles too.
If you can find out how to clone me, find out how to clone me first. Inshallah. JazakAllah khair, Sheikh. We usually try to go for an hour. We're above an hour, but subhanAllah, people had more questions as well. And we really did benefit from your time. And jazakAllah khair for being with us. And I hope inshallah we can have you back again to kind of dig deeper through some of these questions. Yeah, the benefit was all mine. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Very, very touched and humbled. And thank you everybody for tuning in and for your questions, inshallah. I hope we can get back to answering some of them, inshallah, another time. Inshallah. JazakAllah khair. JazakAllah khair. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Wa alaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh.
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
50 items
9 items
