Ali Dawah & Yusuf Estes ｜｜ Why we chose islam？
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, we speak with Ali Dawah, a well-known figure in the UK's Dawah scene. Ali shares his story of how he came to Islam and his advice for those on the verge of accepting Islam.
Transcript
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It's very lovely to be here in England, especially in this part in Blackburn.
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I wanted to ask you, a lot of folks know who's Yusuf Estes.
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I've been involved in the Dawah scene for over a year now.
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Do you have anything like on YouTube or anything?
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Yes, I'm quite like known on the YouTube with the Dawah scene.
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But what I really want to touch up on is basically, I can remember back in the days, I spent about
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three and a half years to four years looking into Islam.
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And standing here today, I just wanted to like tell the viewers how, you know, sometimes
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But subhanAllah, I'm standing here today with you.
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And I used to watch your videos before I came into Islam.
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So basically, it's just amazing to be here with you.
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And obviously, I would really want your advice because I want to follow the footsteps of what
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And it would be really good if you can kind of give me an advice.
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And at the same time, to the viewers that are watching who are maybe on the verge of
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And a couple of things that you can maybe touch upon as well.
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Well, first and foremost, I think what I would tell you is, let's all follow the footsteps
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And of course, that's implied from the beginning.
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For the benefit of your viewers that come to your thing with, you know, with a bad image
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of Islam or not the correct ideas, we'd like to just mention to them that everything
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The biggest and foremost of all things, Tawhid al-Islam is what in English?
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It's in the believing in the oneness of God Almighty and that he has no partners.
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And we will take that from the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
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If I'm not mistaken, it's something like this that he told Muhammad ibn Jabal, I'm sending
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And when you get there, teach them the oneness of God, the Tawhid al-Islam.
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And then, if they accept that, teach them how to make connection, which would be Salah.
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And if they accept that, then teach them about fasting, Salam Ramadan.
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So this is what we would do first and foremost before we talk about newcomers to Islam.
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Let's be sure that they are understanding it is about oneness of God.
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And I think most of your opposition comes from those who are either atheists or Christian.
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Mostly from Christian background and atheist backgrounds.
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And who do you see as being more amenable to your message, to take time to talk with you?
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Well, to be honest, for the people that are really seeking the truth, they are the ones
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Like, for example, we was in Brazil about a couple of months ago to do Dawah and they
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And those kind of people, they did not know about Islam.
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And they would spend a great amount of time, like, really listening and, wow, we didn't
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So these kind of people were the ones that would really be inclined to listen.
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So, those people there in Brazil are primarily, you've got people there that are Catholic.
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For the Catholics, we have something called, a website, it's called Bible Islam.
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And what we did there was to take pages and pages from the Catholic Church itself.
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And then I put commentary with it to say, look at this.
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During the same century that our prophet saw Islam was propagating Islam, which would be
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There was a council convened by the Catholic Church for the bishops and cardinals to decide whether
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Here's these guys deciding whether or not a woman has the right to do anything because
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Another thing, when they talk about the age of Ayahu, when she married our prophet,
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Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the age of Mary, Mary, the mother of Jesus, peace be upon
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But Joseph, which is known to be her husband, according to Christianity, is in his 90s, and
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This is, go to the website, and you'll find so many things, especially about the Council
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of Nicaea, when they actually accepted a form of paganism that the rebels against them
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in the 16th century, during the 1500s, those people protested against a lot of stuff.
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So, you get all the feel of that, you're going, I didn't know that, I didn't know...
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And they're not going to stand there and tell you.
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Because they know it'll make people start thinking about, well, what about this oneness
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And who was it behind the Crusades, pushing so hard?
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Well, these were people that were at the top of the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church
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There's really another religion out here teaching the same thing that our prophets taught,
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Yes, they don't want people to know that there is something out here already, and it's
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more in line with what you're reading in your Bible, and they'll be like, mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.
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Especially when you can prove that their translations are not accurate, especially when they have
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So that one website could help, but you have to let people read it on their own.
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Don't stand over and tell them, you have to think like this, you have to think...
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Yeah, of course there's no compulsion, but I'm saying that the style, methodology, or called
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Menhaj, the way you approach somebody, you know, you gotta be fair.
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And you're talking to somebody, an intelligent human being, who's been lied to, that's all.
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But he don't want to hear that his mother lied to him, his father, his preacher, his teacher,
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the people that I love and care about, how could they possibly lie?
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And the link will be below to your website, which they can check out themselves.
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What was the main factor that kind of made you realize that, look, Islam is the truth.
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In a quick summary, if you could summary up to us.
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You know, oftentimes, oftentimes when people will ask me, what was it caused you to leave
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Jesus, to leave Christianity, to go to some religion out here all about terrorism and
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As a Muslim, we are closer to the real Jesus, and we're closer to the way of Jesus, which
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was to pray to God, and we pray to his God, that he told us to pray to.
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You know, worship your God and my God, your Lord and my Lord.
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Well, we have it in the Quran, but that's coming right out of Christianity.
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Number two, when you talk about Islam being about a religion of promoting aggression, it
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clearly states in Islam that if you exceed, even forces coming against you, the evil coming
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against you, you're only allowed to fight back equally.
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But if you exceed it, then you're the aggressor.
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This is found in chapter two of the Quran, Surabakara.
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It started at verse 189, because you get the feeling of the prophet answering some questions.
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Then, verse 190, he's telling people about combat.
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And then, in 193, people try to tell you, it says, force everybody to be a Muslim.
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Fight or be in combat until these people cease and allow you to practice your religion and
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And not only that, if they stop fighting you, you're supposed to take them to a place of
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Because we're not here about trying to take land away from people.
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We're not here trying to take rights away from people.
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What we're trying to do is make something clear so you can understand.
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And then, if people are aggressive toward us, we're not allowed to fight them until it becomes
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Well, first of all, the Bible you have isn't the original.
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And the Quran is original and it quotes the original Bible.
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So, if the Bible came from God, the Old Testament was from God, it says in the Old Testament
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that they lost all of their scrolls during the Babylonian occupation.
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But that means it's not the real thing for Moses, Abraham, and the previous prophets.
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Take a look at the beginning of the book of Luke.
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And it said it seems fair to him that everybody else has got an opinion.
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Here he wants to tell Theophilus about here's how it is and blah, blah, blah.
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So, you understand that they didn't actually have Jesus on the spot with a recorder
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And they didn't really have anything from his hand that had been written.
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What we do know from the very oldest manuscripts is not what they have in some of their stuff today.
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Things were added over the centuries for clarification, better, maybe beautification,
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Especially when you want to embellish an opinion that doesn't really exist there or is not that clear.
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For instance, we'll take the first book of John 1.
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And in one case they said they're not even sure it was somebody named John.
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That's the only place in the entire Bible that they can point to and try to come up with a trinity.
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And how they did it was to take a verse that preceded it and manipulate the words.
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What it originally said was, again, it's still a translation.
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Which is the Father, the blood, and the Spirit.
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And there are three that share the same witness.
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It said, There are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
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And even then, it would have to be their one in agreement.
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So, these kinds of things are clarified in the Quran.
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There's another one, though, where I went into detail about the Bible.
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Well, listen, Ali, it was great to be with you today.
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I hope that all of your viewers will take a chance to come and use our new app.
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Because then they can do anything they want to.
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Or if you don't have that kind of phone, if you've got a dumb phone, don't have a smart one,
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you can go to the internet, searchforislam.com.
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Type in a keyword like jihad, sharia, war, terrorism, wives, beating people, anything you want to put in there.
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Because we have over 2,500 websites to help people better understand really slam and simple English.
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Because you have to put in that school, if you want to finish up, if you summarize a couple of words,
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what a person that's ready to accept Islam or is on the verge of what steps should they take?
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When people ask me this question, somebody's close to Islam, what does he need to do?
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Our only advice to them is, this is not between you and God.
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And if it is sincere and you're doing it for God, then who should you talk to?
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And you should be alone without anybody around you bothering you.
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And when a person does that, then there's nothing else you and I can say.
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Like I said to you, and I've said it before, I've never in a million years before I'll be here talking to you.
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And we should not underestimate the power of Dua and where you can be and where Allah can be with you.