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Yusef Salaam - “I was closest to God in prison.” | DoubleTake Special
In 1989, at fifteen years old, Dr. Yusef Salaam was tried and convicted in the “Central Park Jogger” case along with four other Black and Latino teenage boys. The infamous case made headlines around the world. The Exonerated Five spent between seven to 13 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit, until their sentences were overturned in 2002.
Today, we’re sitting down with Dr. Yusef Salaam to talk about how his experiences have shaped his relationship with Allah, including his thoughts on dealing with doubt, building tawakkul, and finding sources of strength.
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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullah. In 1989, at 15 years old, Dr. Yusuf Salam was tried and convicted in the Central Park Jogger case along with four other black and Latino teenage boys. The infamous case made headlines around the world. The exonerated five spent between seven to 13 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit until their sentences were overturned in 2002. Since then, they've received a multi-million dollar settlement from the City of New York for its injustice and have been profiled in award-winning films and most recently the Emmy award-winning Netflix limited series, When They See Us. Dr. Yusuf Salam is now an author, motivational speaker and a current board member of the Innocence Project, whose mission is to free innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. His most recent book is his memoir titled Better Not Bitter. This past December at the Mass Ijna Convention in Chicago, Dr. Yusuf Salam was Yaqeen Institute's Confident Muslim Speaker and was awarded the Muhammad Ali Confident Muslim of the Year award. Confident Muslim by Yaqeen Institute is a platform which highlights everyday Muslims who are making a difference. His discussion with Dr. Yusuf Salam is unlike most you'll see on the internet. We talk about how his experiences have shaped his relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala including his thoughts on dealing with doubt, building tawakkul and finding sources of strength. Enjoy our latest episode of Double Take, a podcast from Yaqeen Institute. Dr. Yusuf Salam, Salam alaikum and welcome to Double Take. Wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. I'm so excited to be here with you. Thank you, thank you. And first of all congratulations on being named Confident Muslim of the Year. Alhamdulillah.
And alishmabaruk. Dr. Yusuf I'm going to start off, there's an incredible ayah in the Quran where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala states that every musiba, every calamity, every struggle is designed and aimed specifically for each individual. He says subhanahu wa ta'ala, ma asaba min musibatin fil ard, wala fi anfusikum illa fi kitabin min qabli an nabra'aha. Inna dhalika ala Allahi yaseer. That no calamity befalls on earth or in yourselves but is inscribed in the book of decrees before we bring it into existence. Verily that is easy for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Musiba, as I was researching this verse and thinking of your story, comes from asab. It means that it hits a specific target. Which means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala meant for this particular challenge that you faced in your life to hit you specifically, Dr. Yusuf. And so my first question to you is, you faced one of the biggest challenges in this life. You were robbed of much of your youth basically. Why do you think Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose you and chose this particular test for you? What do you think he wanted to teach Yusuf salam with this test? Yeah, alhamdulillah. I love this concept because when I think about, you know, tests in general and more specifically the tests that I had grown through, and I use that wording in particular, I realized that Allah blessed me. The blessing in disguise was that I had the opportunity to be bound to this faith, bound to the Sirat al-Mustaqim. I very early on had to focus on the Quran, had to focus on the Prophet peace be upon him, to understand why I was
going through what I had gone through. And coming across verses like that and coming across, you know, other instances of, you know, things that are supposed to be happening to you, things that shape you, things that allow you to be blessed by it, right? I'm reminded of another verse in the Quran where Allah ta'ala talks about how whenever a servant is tried by Allah blessing them, they say, my Lord has blessed me. But whenever a servant is tried by Allah restricting their means, they say, their Lord, that Allah has cursed them. And it's very interesting to think about it from that perspective because, you know, the fact that Allah, Allah created you on purpose, Allah created you with a purpose. And for me to be introduced to that at such a young age is the blessing, is absolutely a blessing, right? As I've grown up and looked out on what life is, it causes me to have tremendous sorrow for folks that don't get the opportunity to understand what this is. Understanding that there are multiple options in life when the truth of the matter is that no one leaves here alive. When your time is up, we will all be placed in the earth. And when our loved ones go away, we will all be asked those questions. And we need to know the answers to those questions, right? It's a beautiful thing to... Are you, Dr. are you, sorry to cut you off, are you saying this test is what shook you and made you realize the blessings of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Is that what you're saying?
I'm saying that this test shaped me. I'm saying that this test solidified me. I'm saying that when you're tested by Allah, you have two options. One is you can say, Oh Allah, why did you do this? And the other is you can say, Oh Allah, thank you. Help me, strengthen me in this. Allow me to be strong. Allow me to be unwavering. You know, I'm always turning back to the Quran because the Quran is the manual of life, right? Allah talks about the person who worships Allah on a very narrow margin. If good befalls them, they're fine. They keep on going forward. They're good. But when bad befalls them, then they fall off, right? They fall into the whispers of the devil. And the challenge is to make yourself strong enough to still stay on the path, no matter what is going on in your life. Like Luqman, peace be upon him. I'm going to say peace be upon him. I'm told he's not a prophet, but may Allah be pleased with him. Told his sons, your task is to worship Allah until you have certainty, until the end of your life. Never, never ceasing to worship Allah, knowing that there is only one God, not praying to the sun, the moon, the stars, not worshiping money, worshiping Allah and Allah blessing you through the means in the earth for you to be able to be a blessing to others. I have to ask though, like you were 16 years old. It's not like most people at 16 would come to that realization by themselves. What was it that helped shape your appreciation for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala putting you in this journey in this particular way?
Yeah, absolutely. I think what made me appreciate it so much was that I had a praying grandmother. I had a loving mother. I was born as a Muslim, but the fact that they were able to, you know, it's funny as a parent myself now, I think about the things that I tell my children. And sometimes you have to tell your children things over and over and over and over again. And of course, as a 14, 15 and 16 year old child, as we were known back then as the Central Park Five, now the Exonerated Five, we had the duality of living in our parents' house and also in the streets. And the lure of the streets was very, very strong. And imagine the lure of the streets today, the streets is not what it was before, but now the streets are social media, gaming, anything that distracts you from the worship of Allah or from the remembrance of Allah, I should say, you know. And so for me to be kidnapped from my mother, from my parents, from my community, and to be placed in the belly of the beast, I looked at it and understood. And you have to understand, this wasn't something that happened overnight, although it did happen fast. I had to understand that I was being lodged back in the womb of America, that I was being placed in a chrysalis in order to be able to come out of this tragedy of butterfly. And the beautiful thing about that is that when you go through something like that, you grow through something like that. And the fact that I had my grandmother praying for me, the fact that I had my grandmother constantly pumping life into me through the letters that she wrote, the fact that I had my mother there at the visits, she would come more times than the visits allowed. They changed the visiting schedule for me specifically
because my mother came maybe three times a week. You're only really supposed to get a visit once a week on the weekends or something like that. My mother was allowed over time to come three times a week. And the beauty of that transaction was that my mother got the opportunity, even though she was going through a similar prison, because she was out in the world having to survive, having to encourage my brother and my sister to keep moving forward, even though I wasn't there. The heartache and the pain of having to do that, the tragedy of not being able to get gainful employment. All of these things, all of these things were taken into consideration. But the most beautiful thing, I think, of it all was that I was placed in a space where Islam was what fed me, where the Quran was the water for the seed of belief inside of me. But Dr. Yusuf, are you saying this, sorry, I'm so intrigued by your story, Wallahi. Are you saying this in hindsight? Are you looking back and saying, Islam helped shape me and this test helped shape me? Or like, surely it wasn't so rosy back then when you were in the midst of it. You were saying just earlier that you were kidnapped and thrown into jail. Surely it wasn't rosy. Like, when was it that you felt that it was Islam that's kind of that this whole thing was a blessing? That that's it. It is it is it is a matter of reflection. That when you are going through the path, you feel like you're going through hell. But when you're going through the path and then you look back, you realize that this is actually a love story between Allah and
his people. That Allah is using this particular case, this case that was so famously known in New York at the time and really in America, the Central Park Jagger case happening in one of the most iconic places in the world, Central Park. That Allah used this story to place the criminal justice system, a system that I call the criminal system of injustice on trial. Right. He used this story to show that a people can be buried alive and forgotten, but the people will forget the system that buries them will forget that we are seeds. And instead of a social death, we can emerge like the phoenix from the ashes because every single time that man plans, Allah is the best of planners. They forget the owner of the heat that Allah told the heat to be cool and safe for Ibrahim. So if Allah can produce miracles in modern time, we most certainly know about the miracles in the times in the past, the times that have gone by. But the fact that you can look at your life and say, wow, Allah blessed me. I was in a space where I was given the worst title, the worst label that you can imagine, the label of a rapist. The only crime that Trump's rape is child molestation. Imagine me reading in the Quran, Surah Yusuf, this beautiful story about a young man who was kidnapped after his brothers, after his family didn't want anything to do with him. They threw him in a well after they were of one mind to do away with him. And Allah's plan was the best of plans. And so I look at that and I say to myself, wow, you
know, as you're going through this, the beautiful thing about it is that I recognize that Allah was making the prison cool and safe. I realized that I was growing through a situation as opposed to going through this tragedy. I never was harmed in a way that was irreparable. You understand? Like in terms of me thinking about my spiritual self, right? They say it's one thing for something to happen to you, but it's what happens inside of you that makes all of the difference. Our response is what allows us to grow. And the beautiful thing about it is that we realize that as you grow, the next time you're challenged, the next trial that Allah puts you through, you should be able to weather that storm as well. You should be able to hold on to the rope of Allah Ta'ala that Allah extends to all of us. And the only way to get through this is by the will of Allah. You know, Dr. Yusuf, Jazakallah khair for sharing that, honestly. And we could probably draw so many parallels with the story of Yusuf actually, the length that he spent in prison, his name, etc. The crime that he supposedly committed as well. As I was preparing for this interview, I wanted to try my best to put myself in your shoes. And I was trying to draw parallels from the Quran as well. And yes, Surah Yusuf and the story of Yusuf is profound and the parallels are absolutely amazing. But there's a specific incident that Allah describes in the Quran about the Sahaba that when I think of your story, I think of
this particular incident. And it's the story of when the Sahaba were in the battle of Al-Ahzab and Allah describes it so specifically. It goes into the minute details of how the Sahaba felt when they were surrounded by the enemy. He says, SubhanAllah, in Surah Al-Ahzab actually, he says, if they came from above you, and from below you, they were surrounded. Like he describes, even their eyesight, the Sahaba's eyesight was stupefied. Like they were shocked, they were in horror. They were so scared that their heart reached their throats. And at that point, when they were surrounded and cornered, and they felt helpless, some of the Sahaba, this is Allah describing them, some of them, he describes that some of them started thinking, they started having doubts of Allah, they started having weird thoughts of Allah. So I think of that situation when the Sahaba were cornered and what they must have gone through in their mind. And I think of a 16 year old, like number one, there was the arrest. Like that in itself, doctor, like I'm sorry, I'm getting a bit emotional because I can, I'm trying my best to put myself in your shoes. Like you were arrested in the middle of the night. That in itself is traumatic. Then, you know, and I watched the Netflix
series and if it's correct, man, like the interrogation in the police station, that in itself is enough trauma for a lifetime, really. Then there were Trump's ads that made this story not about you, but about a whole society. And all of a sudden, it wasn't just you, it was your community that was on trial. And that was, it was people of color on trial. Then there was the sentence. And then the judge gave you the toughest sentence you could for your age. And then there were almost seven years in a prison. I look at my life at that age, honestly, at 16, that was some of my best years. But then you were kidnapped and placed in a cell. So amidst all that, and I know in hindsight, we can say that, you know, Allah blessed us with this trial. But amidst all of this, and you had your back cornered, my question to you is, Doctor, didn't you doubt Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Didn't you get angry with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Not for a moment. Not for a moment. I had people there helping me with things. And when I say with things, Allah gives us keys in the Quran. Right? When you talk about what was happening with the Sahabas, I can't think but correlate that with the people in other wars or maybe this was the war as well, where they stayed home. And they stayed home and they made excuses. Ya Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon you. My home is exposed. I need to be able to be there because I have to make sure that the door is safe, you know, or, you know, there's the tumbleweed. I got to make sure that the tumbleweed stays in my house, you know, whatever excuse they were making. And then also the fact that they were
listening and they were trying to see what the fate of the Muslims, their brothers and sisters was. And if they had never come home, they would have said to themselves how lucky we were because we weren't with them. The Qara of Allah, right? Allah Ta'ala is in control. Like when I, my first remembrance, among the remembrances was to say, حسبن الله ونهما الوكيل. That's what I was saying over and over and over and over again in the prison. When I read Surah Yusuf, alayhi salam, what let me down was, and I'm talking about it from this perspective so that you can understand that it wasn't all rosy, right? It wasn't like I was like, yeah, Allah got my back up good. It wasn't like that. No, trust me, it wasn't. I'm reading Surah Yusuf, alayhi salam, and I'm like, سبحان الله, he came out of prison free. I thought I was going to come out of prison free. I thought Allah was telling me something, like giving me a sign. I came out of prison to parole. I came out of prison to having to be registered on the Megan's Law. I came out of prison having to tell my parole officer where I was going at every moment I was going there, having to keep going back and forth to the parole office for the next three years. My prison sentence wasn't just five to, I mean, it wasn't just seven years. It was five to 10 years, and even then some after that, because the negative residue of being labeled a rapist,
even after being found to be innocent in 2002, right, when Judge Tehada said, so granted, after we were petitioning the courts to get our case relooked at, and he said, no, we're not even going to relook at this case. We are going to let these guys go, right? The negative residue was there still. But let me tell you what's so beautiful about this. Racism is one of the most profound realities everywhere. Profound realities. Allah says in the Quran that he created mankind from black mud altered. There's many Quran's where I don't even see the word black mud in there. And I'm so surprised when I when I hear it, I'm like, wow, subhanAllah. But that doesn't do anything to a person with black skin to say that they are over and above anyone else, because that's what Shaitaan, wa'udhu billah, said. Shaitaan said, I am better than him. So racism is a disease of Shaitaan, which makes people believe that they are better than another person that Allah created. Right. We were all born on purpose and we were all born with a purpose. And the ultimate purpose is to worship Allah. The ultimate purpose is to bring about the, the what is the party of Allah, to be the people of Allah, to bring about the harmony, the beautification of the world through Allahu Akbar, through la ilaha illallah, wahdahu la sharika la. I'm telling you, like the beautiful thing about it.
And it's crazy because, you know, all of this, all of this for me, and I still say to myself, Ya Allah, bless me with more. Rabbi zidni ilmah, as Allah Ta'ala encourages the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam in the Quran and encourages us. But also, Rabbi zidni hikmah, oh Allah bless me with, increase me in knowledge, oh Allah increase me in wisdom. Rabbi zidni iman, oh Allah increase me in faith. Rabbi zidni ihsan. Now imagine that, being able to be brought to the level of knowing as you walk, that everything you do is as if you are right in front of Allah. How, how perfect will you try to be? But knowing that you can't see Allah, but Allah Ta'ala sees you, everything you do is being recorded. You're considering as you reach for something, is this towards the Jannah or Jahannam? You're considering as you're looking at something, is this towards Jannah or Jahannam? As you listen, same thing, all of these things are seeds that plant something into your heart. And so to, to, to, to have the opportunity to have Islam gifted to you, is truly a blessing. It's like, it's like plugging into the source and the owner of all. Oh, SubhanAllah. You know, I'm hearing you speak and I can't but help think, who is your mother, man?
I'm raising two kids. SubhanAllah. And I'd like to know from you, Dr. Yousuf, what did your mom do? How did she raise you? And what would you recommend we take from that? You know, for someone who's 7,000 miles away from you, what do I learn from your mom as a parent? I tell you, I wrote a book of poetry. This is my book of poetry called Words of a Man, My Right to Be. This is my first book that I ever wrote, that I ever published. And this book is a book that I never thought that I was going to publish this book. This book was created because I used to write poems and I used to write rap songs. But I came from an era where there was always a message in the music and there was always music in the message. So even though I didn't have the opportunity to have a rhythm behind it, there was always a rhythm that was being played. And I remember wanting to write a poem for my mother right here. And I simply say... Can we ask you to share it, doctor? Please. Yes, yes. I'm going to read it right now. I simply say, My mother, Bold, Beautiful, Beloved, Black, Divine, Loving, Mother, She-ro, Warrior, Queen. My earliest memories, and Alhamdulillah, my mother is still here. My earliest memories was of me feeling protected by my mother. My mother, she wouldn't wear the face covering back then, but she would wear, as it's described in the Quran,
Oh Prophet, tell the believing woman to lower their gaze and guard their private parts and to wrap their garments around them. But the idea was that in my mother's garment, I would walk. I would feel like... And it's funny because I loved, back then they had the Channel 5 Kung Fu movies. I loved Channel 5 Kung Fu movies. I mean, it was so crazy how much I loved these things. But over and above me loving them, I actually learned martial arts. So as I was learning martial arts and I'm out here watching the Channel 5 Kung Fu movies, I looked at my mother sometimes as this ninja, so to speak, a woman that, you know, because as she would walk, she would part the, it was like Moses, Musa alayhis salam, parting the sea. My mother would walk and people would just like part, you know, and I didn't know it at the time, right? I didn't realize that the secret is by following what Allah Ta'ala tells you to do. The people knew what Islam is. They knew she is a representation of something that people will lay their lives down for. She's not to be messed with. And my mother gave us that kind of upbringing in history. She would teach us various things about life. I remember as I looked at my mother's bookshelf, I could learn about Grecian art. I could learn about Swahili. I could learn about Asia. I could learn everything. It was there and she gave us the opportunity to grow and develop on a world scale. She would listen to French records as we would be waking up in the morning. We would hear her and she would be counting in French, on, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, I mean, I remember that, right?
And it's so beautiful because she was giving us a different outlook on life. We were in an impoverished situation and we felt like we were on top of the world. We knew that we had value. We knew that we had worth. We knew that this situation was not to define us. And more importantly, as we began to be confronted with the criminal justice system in America, we realized through my mother's education, who taught us that she was born in the Jim Crow South, we realized that we were born automatically fighting on the right side of justice. And how is this? The only way you can be born automatically fighting on the right side of justice is one, the condition of your heart, two, the color of your skin. Automatically, because of the color of your skin, you're being judged by your skin color and not the content of your character. You have to stand up for yourself. All of the things that I was going through, rather growing through, was teaching me that I had to straighten my back, that there was purpose in this, that the greatest gifter of life and humanity gave you permission to be. Just like Allah says in the Quran, when he decrees a thing, what he says to it is, Koon, he says Koon, and what happens? Faya Koon. It is. Allah told all of us to be. And the intentionality in that and the purpose in that is for us to look at everything that is happening in our lives and taking all of the things, the options, and allowing these
things to shape and mold us into the best that we can be. That's what my mother did. And I was listening to something you were saying, I think in one of the interviews you had, where the role of your mother after you came out, after you were freed, was more important than all those extra visits she made and helped you navigate the system. So do you mind talking to that? Like when you were freed and went back home, you were a grown man, you were 21, 22. What did she do for you then? I tell you, you know, coming out of prison, needing tremendous support. The type of support that returned citizens need is similar to the type of support that prisoners of war need. When you're in a war, you're given the opportunity to have psychological help, financial assistance, probably housing help. All of these things are afforded you, and you get the opportunity to be re-acclimated into society so that you can be a whole human being, but more importantly, so that you can be desensitized to the war that you just were a part of. Black and brown bodies have been in a war since they have been stolen from Africa itself. The conditions that we find ourselves in are ratified and solidified in such a way that the American Constitution, even though it starts with the words, we the people, we know that we were not considered part of that. They still considered us three-fifths
of a human being. And so they created this system in such a way to strangle hold us and to keep us in a condition of servitude. Right? Not the condition that Allah created us for, but a condition where you're stripped of your own identity and ability to believe in yourself as a greater part of the whole. As I looked at all of this, my mother had a plan. Her plan was to make sure that I didn't have to revisit the door of recidivism. See, Malcolm X said that he found out that individuals, our great late sheikh, I mean, they call him the Shaheed of America, Al-Hajj Malik Shabash, rahimahullah. He said, he realized that the individuals that were being educated never came back to prison. My mother had a system in place where I was allowed through self-education of technology to be the chief technology officer in her office. And there were many times where I came in and laid on the couch. There were many times where I had all of the lights off and I just couldn't show up in life at that moment. Couldn't show up to the challenges of what it was that life was showing me. And my mother never let me fall. She and my brother and sister would just prop themselves up next to me and gently
make sure that I was stayed standing. And it was a beautiful thing because I didn't recognize it at the time. They never said anything. They never asked me how was I doing? What was the challenges that I was going through? They saw what it was and they responded. And it's such a beautiful thing to have that because a lot of us don't have a mechanism that allows us to be re-acclimated back into society. Something that tells us that psychosocially we matter and so therefore we can give the best of ourselves. That's what Islam does. And to be in a family like that, to be a child of that, I try to teach this concept so much to young people because young people need to know that they are the future caretakers of tomorrow. And our elders need to instill that in the young people so that they can rise to the challenge, rise to the occasion and always bring their best selves. Dr. Yusuf, I have a final question before the rapid fire. You talk about your journey in prison but then of course after and then you know getting back integrated into society. You in this life, I can say that you've seen the two extremities. You've seen the most difficult of this life. You were kidnapped and robbed of your childhood, of your youth. And you've seen the complete opposite extreme and that is the fame. You've seen the celebrity status. You met Oprah, I can say that I think. So you've seen both. And the question I have is, when were you closer to Allah? I hope you don't mind me asking this
but like was it easier to have faith? When were you more closer to Allah? Oh subhanAllah. I want to tell you two things, two dynamics. And I love this question because this question is a question that's not necessarily for me but for the audience. My closeness, the closest I've ever felt to Allah was in prison. There was point blank period. That was the closest I ever felt to Allah. When I was growing through this trial, Allah blessed me when I was in the prison. For the first five years of my prison time, I became the imam of the facility. When they transferred me from the youth facility to the adult facility, for the next 2.x years, for a year and a half of that, I was the Qadi of the community. And just before I left the prison, I was the Naib. Now I'm saying that because when I talk about Allah making the prison cool and safe, like as I'm going through this, my closeness to Allah was because of the conditions and the pressure that I was under and me having to know that my solace was in the prayer, my solace was in the dua, my solace was in the ability for me to imagine and to believe in myself. When I came home from prison, the stumbling blocks that you experience, just like they say, you know, it's not a matter of if you fall, but my good friend Les Brown says, when you fall in life, try to land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up. When you fall, you have to remember
that Allah says, when you make a mistake, I've already written that my mercy outweighs my wrath. Just ask Allah for forgiveness. Today, what I do, which is such a beautiful thing for me, is when I go out in the world, I'm traveling with the Quran playing on the radio, both to and fro. I'm constantly surrounding myself, not necessarily just with the word of Allah, but with the angelic forces that come because they want to listen. I'm allowed to be able to take the same principle that my mother gave me going into the prison, where we said, عوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم عوذ بكلماته من شر ما أقلق I take that same prison, that same concept rather, into the world as I'm traveling throughout. I seek refuge in the most perfect word of Allah from the evil of that which he has created. That closeness, that ability for you to know that this life that you're living is a gift, the time that you have is alone, and none of us knows which land we're going to die in. None of us knows what time we are going to die.
And so it behooves us as we move further in time, that we remember that Allah is in control. So much so, Allah says in the Quran, and it's translated in English as, If you think you have control, when your soul is leaving your body and you see it leaving, try to pull it back. So the blessing is that now I get the opportunity to take what was in prison, I call it theory, I call the prison expression of Islam, the practice of Islam, the training ground. So that when I came out of prison, I needed to take the training and the theory of prison and my understanding outside of the prison into the world. And I now had to put on my Islamic reading glasses, my Islamic sunshades. I had to see things through the lens of Islam. I had to Islamicize everything. And see the beautiful thing about that is that it's two periods of time which support each other. And I look at it like that because had I not had the former time, this time now probably would not have come the way it is. But it's such a beautiful experience to, like we usually refresh ourselves with the Quran on purpose every Ramadan. But to immerse yourself in the Quran every single day that you are traveling in the world,
it reminds me where Allah Ta'ala talks about Yusuf alayhi salam. And he says, we were predominant in his career. We have to make Allah Ta'ala predominant in our career, in our life, in everything that we do. Because Islam is what guides us. There is no separation as in America, they say there's a separation of church and state. What you do in your work life is what you do in your work life. And what you do in your spiritual life doesn't mix with what you do in your work life. But we know that that's the absolute untruth. What's even truer is that everything is informing and it's guiding everything. And the best thing that you can have is the rope of Allah helping you to see with the eyes that Allah Ta'ala gave you. Because there are those who have eyes but can't see. There are those who have ears but can't hear. They can't see what Allah is showing you. They can't hear what Allah is showing you. Jazakallah khair. Dr. Yusuf, normally we finish up the episode by asking the guest to give my nine-year-old niece some advice. But this time I'm going to tell my nine-year-old niece she can't get away with it that easily. She's got to watch the whole thing, man. It was the whole thing was advice. Jazakallah khair. Subhanallah. We're going to change gears a bit. Barakallah fiqh. And we're going to put you in the hot seat. We've got a couple of rapid-fire questions and we hope you don't mind taking a maximum of five seconds to answer each one. What's the last book that you were reading? I could probably ask what was the last book you were writing, but let's stick with reading. Subhanallah. The last book I was reading was actually both too.
So I constantly revisit Better Not Bitter, my memoir, and I constantly revisit the book I put out just before that with my co-author, Ibi Zoboi, Punching the Air. I'm always reciting my book of poems. But then also I've just come in contact also with another book that I'm familiarizing myself with, The Ten Amazing Muslims Touched by Allah. You know, it's a thing where you constantly want to be reminded and refreshed. And over and above that, over and above that is the Quran. Jazakallah khair. And if you were to have dinner with one person who's passed away and it can't be the Prophet ﷺ, who would that be? You said it cannot? It cannot. It cannot be the Prophet ﷺ. Subhanallah. Then I would want to have dinner with the angel Jibreel, alayhis salam. And I know the angels don't eat. Okay, man. All right, fine. Subhanallah, they don't eat. So it's a funny thing, I guess, right? And then the final one is an embarrassing masjid story. When I say that, what comes to mind in the life of Dr. Yusuf Salam? Oh, wow. Perhaps maybe one of the most embarrassing masjid stories is when you pass gas and you have to excuse yourself. And the most embarrassing is if you're leading the salah. You pass and then you have to excuse yourself. I can't remember exactly a time when that has happened, but that is part of human nature. And it's funny because, you know, I tell my children all the time, because I have 10 children, the younger ones are more, you know, ooh, icky, that kind of stuff. But I have to remind them, like, this is human nature. Every single person passes gas. Every single person goes to the bathroom. Every single person does everything that you do.
And we make it to be like this taboo, you know, but the truth of the matter is that our faith is such a beautiful faith that it teaches us everything about everything. Even what to do when you pass gas in the masjid. If you hear it, then you gotta go. If you don't hear it, then you might be safe. If you don't smell it, then you might be safe. But if you smell it, so I mean, it's funny because like who wants to stick around, right? They want to be like, oh, let me go make fresh wudu. You know, Yaqeen named you a confident Muslim so you can come onto the podcast. You know that, right? SubhanAllah. Alhamdulillah. Inshallah we'll have you again. And on that note, Jazakallah khair and Barakallah fiqh. Gazala wa yaakum.
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