Ali Dawah - December 04, 2018SINCERE EX-CHRISTIAN & MUSLIM TALK - NEW YORK
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
212.93721
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my good friend, Leonard Rock, to talk about his love of chess and how it led him to start a chess club in New York City. We talk about how chess has changed his life and how he got into the game.
Transcript
00:00:05.860
Okay, so what made you, question of faith, so you're saying you was, for example, um,
00:00:13.580
You even stopped me speaking there for a second.
00:00:21.060
Like, I just, I'm interested in the way it rolls with my tongue when I say it.
00:00:24.720
Like, when I say it's slow or fast, even if I'm not pronouncing it right,
00:00:27.600
but just the fact that it's, it's rolling with my tongue in a way that sends a certain
00:00:31.900
Whenever this game of chess was created, is there anything at all?
00:00:37.640
Is there anything in the Quran that would be related to chess?
00:00:43.440
Right, with all the hustlers, you know, sharks, wolves, and, uh, just, you know, I sat down,
00:00:52.040
started losing my money every week, you know, because at the time I was working for the telephone
00:00:56.920
And, uh, you know, uh, I would lose between 150 to, like, 250 a week.
00:01:07.660
So this would make you, this would be a substitute for gambling for you?
00:01:16.140
No, but I mean, like, did this help you get away from it?
00:01:20.340
The main reason why I like chess, because it's, you know, it's good for me.
00:01:28.400
Like, most, most cool parks, like, this is a cool park.
00:01:35.720
Those are all good parks where, like, it's, it's, for the most part, it's good energy.
00:01:40.540
You know, um, I can meet interesting people, you know, people in the entertainment industry,
00:01:45.300
dancers, you know, uh, musicians, you know what I mean?
00:01:51.000
I'm sitting down with, you know, with people that have, like, that make salaries, you know what I mean?
00:01:55.620
So, I feel important, and it's just, you know, it's just the energy that it brings.
00:02:04.300
It was just the complexity of it, and, you know, the social aspect of it.
00:02:23.700
Is this, how long have you been here, like, this theme, this theme of this?
00:02:28.520
Yeah, because me, me and, uh, four of my friends, we came out.
00:02:35.800
Thought it would be a good, good place to, uh, you know, to play in peace.
00:02:39.660
And after about three months of set up every day, one person came along and set up.
00:02:45.100
And then, like, three people came along and set up.
00:02:47.680
And then before you know it, like, within three or four months, it was, like, ten to twelve people set up.
00:02:54.160
And then it just, they never, they never stopped.
00:02:57.540
You know, a lot of people, I don't really get into a lot of my associates' personal life.
00:03:03.780
Some, uh, some really need this, you know, to make a living.
00:03:14.480
I do this, I do this for, yeah, for a good pastime.
00:03:17.000
But, you know, as a professional, I still want to get compensated for my time.
00:03:20.620
But at the same time, when I'm sitting down, you know, um, I like to just, you know, meet people that are interesting.
00:03:26.800
Like, in one day, in 24 hours, like, on my off days, I'll come out here, like, 11, 12 o'clock, right?
00:03:35.600
I probably won't leave until, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
00:03:39.920
But on a good day, warm day, you know, with entertainment, everything going on, it's cool.
00:03:45.260
But, you know, when I have to, you know, when the weather's cold, when it's crazy, I may stay out for maybe 3 or 4 hours.
00:03:52.760
Yeah, because it's raining, you can't really pay this.
00:04:05.780
It's a corner where different people from different backgrounds come and you have dialogue and discussions.
00:04:09.380
So, when you go home, if you watch, if you go on YouTube and write Speakers Corner, London, you see our videos.
00:04:14.800
So, we mainly operate on YouTube and have dialogue discussions like that.
00:04:21.320
Me, Mohammed, our teachers, Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Mohammed, Safiya, and some other people as well who help us.
00:04:31.620
It stands for sharing affection, love and mercy.
00:04:35.280
We're here to give, spread the message of Islam, doing dawah, preaching, inviting people to Islam.
00:04:42.120
So, that's the reason why I want, to be honest, I wanted to play chess anyway.
00:04:45.480
I know, hopefully, if you lose, you wouldn't have anything grudged against me.
00:04:49.500
Yeah, because, you know, because some people have that, you know, because, yeah, because he's suffered from this sometimes, you know, I slap him about it sometimes.
00:04:56.800
But, you know, he's one of my good students, though.
00:05:01.700
So, the reason he's sitting on this side is just so he can learn from you, as usual in life.
00:05:18.320
Okay, before we kind of started, yeah, you were saying that you was brought up in a Christian family, yeah?
00:05:27.940
You know, my, okay, so I have a mixed background.
00:05:38.720
I don't, unfortunately, I don't speak the language.
00:05:40.240
I was kind of, like, lazy in school when it came to, like, linguistics and stuff.
00:05:43.340
But, you know, I think most Americans grew up as Christians.
00:05:51.540
You can't get to the Creator, you know, just without, through something.
00:06:00.360
Like, I guess that's what the word Christian means, Christ-like.
00:06:02.660
So, but, but when I stopped was when I did my first semester in college.
00:06:07.640
You know, I started talking to a lot of the students.
00:06:11.380
Muslims, Muslims, Jews, you know, just the whole, the whole spectrum of religions.
00:06:16.720
And I started picking up little pieces of information here and there.
00:06:19.840
And over a short period of time, a lot of the information that's in the Holy Scriptures is kind of, like, inaccurate.
00:06:29.820
So, so, so, so, so, like, for yourself, should we play and talk as well?
00:06:34.180
So, basically, you're saying that you was, you was basically, you brought up in a Christian
00:06:43.320
Okay, so what made you, so you're saying you were, for example,
00:06:51.300
You even stopped me speaking there for a second.
00:07:02.320
A friend of mine, I wouldn't really call him a guru, but he's a real knowledgeable guy.
00:07:08.040
He was telling me a little bit of history about Islam.
00:07:10.460
Like he said that the first Muhammad, the first Muhammad, like way, way, way, way back,
00:07:16.480
he said that Muhammad at one point, and I'm talking about a one-on-one guy,
00:07:21.880
a guy that doesn't really know much about the Quran.
00:07:24.180
Okay, I'm just going off of what my friend told me years ago as a teenager.
00:07:27.820
He said that Muhammad forced religion on others.
00:07:31.280
He said that if you don't accept Islam as your faith, then you will be murdered.
00:07:41.920
It kind of threw me off, you know, because when I think of Christianity as a kid,
00:07:47.020
you go to a little Sunday school, and you sing the songs and everything, and you're thinking...
00:08:06.740
And that's one of the reasons we're here to, you know, educate people on that.
00:08:11.080
Yeah, so that kind of deterred me from getting into Islam.
00:08:16.640
Just the fact, the story you told me about Muhammad was like...
00:08:25.380
And Christianity, you know, with politics, politics, most politicians deal with Christianity.
00:08:35.540
Because politically, most people in politics that are high up, the big hand in the sky,
00:08:43.640
And then they look at Muslims as terrorists, you know, the whole 9-11 thing.
00:08:46.860
They look at, you know, anybody that's Arabic speaking or has the thing around their head
00:08:54.240
I mean, every time in time, you always need common enemies, you know?
00:08:56.820
It's just like, okay, now it's the Muslims' turn.
00:08:58.120
It was the blacks before, now it was the Japanese, and then it was the Russians.
00:09:05.560
And you realized at this moment in time that Christianity may be...
00:09:14.260
You said there was some corruption in the scriptures?
00:09:22.080
But I believe Judaism deals with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
00:09:29.460
When you listen to the stories, you know, Moses, and even, you know, when you think of all of
00:09:37.400
these, like, prophets, like, later on in the scriptures, you know, it kind of makes sense.
00:09:42.320
But then when you get further down into the scriptures, when you talk about visions, a person having visions, and even when you look at a version of the Bible, you look at the King James Version of the Bible, these are people that I've heard were martyrs.
00:09:58.040
These are people that dealt in, like, all kind of twisted sexual activity.
00:10:03.360
So, anytime you're dealing with gentlemen that dealt in that type of lifestyle, you have to question when they publish the scriptures.
00:10:14.260
You know, if you look at, like, for example, the prophet, he spoke on his life, you know, even his own enemies would testify.
00:10:20.520
And the reason they hated him so much is because he just came with a message of worship God alone.
00:10:26.320
Because if you look at all the prophets that came, we believe thousands of prophets came, yeah?
00:10:29.540
Every one of them proclaimed something with no shadow of a doubt.
00:10:36.800
So, when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, came, he came with the same message.
00:10:39.520
They didn't like that because they were worshipping 365 gods, yeah?
00:10:44.380
So, they offered the prophet, peace be upon him, and said, look, we'll give you, you want woman?
00:10:51.860
And he said, if you give the sun in my left and the moon in my right, I will not stop preaching what I'm preaching, yeah?
00:10:58.140
It wasn't about woman or this, that, you know what I'm trying to say.
00:11:02.180
He was known to be a sadaq, so truthful that he would go to his people.
00:11:12.120
So, he went to his, he went to his, I'm going to take you out first before I tell you this.
00:11:18.240
So, he went to his tribe and he said, if I told you guys, right behind this mountain, there's an army coming to kill us all.
00:11:34.240
He goes, I'm telling you, I am the messenger of God.
00:11:37.540
Do not worship anyone besides him, but you call me a liar.
00:11:40.220
If I told you there's an army coming behind this mountain, you'd say, yes, of course.
00:11:45.780
But when I come and tell you, I'm the messenger of God, you deny me.
00:11:48.880
So, that was one of the main fundamental things the Prophet, peace upon him, came with, yeah?
00:11:53.920
And when I spoke to you, you said you came to Islam or you believe in Allah?
00:12:01.780
Or would you say that you're not a Muslim, but you, like, tell me why, like, why Allah?
00:12:11.760
Well, because the, you know, from the information that I've, the minimal information that I've read from the Quran,
00:12:18.560
as opposed to the King James Version, it just seems, it makes me feel comfortable and it seems more accurate, more logical.
00:12:29.040
It doesn't seem like it's coming from a bad place.
00:12:32.000
Certain, certain, certain, certain, certain paragraphs from the King James Version kind of make me question a lot.
00:12:43.880
That may, that may be the same for the Quran, but it's just that I haven't, I haven't, I haven't dozed into the Quran that deep yet
00:12:53.640
to really, to really make that assessment to say it's, it's just as uncomfortable as the King James Version.
00:13:01.640
So, but, but, but, but the people that I see, all right, put it like this.
00:13:06.720
When you, when you, when you have a mass amount of people, that's, that's one religion.
00:13:10.960
Like, take, take a mass amount of Christians and take a mass amount of Muslims.
00:13:15.740
We're just going to deal with, with two, two, two religions.
00:13:18.120
You know, so many different denominations, right?
00:13:19.680
Like, it's the, the energy that I get from, from each side.
00:13:26.200
For example, when I was growing up, Christians used to always try to, uh, um, persuade you
00:13:38.100
It's just like, no matter what they did, it, it, it, it was almost like a Jehovah's Witness.
00:13:42.120
Jehovah's Witness knock on your door and they kind of like, they're a little bit too aggressive.
00:13:48.040
Not as aggressive as Jehovah's Witness, but it's that aggressive nature that I don't
00:13:54.780
If I was going to convert, I will convert to a religion that's, that's, uh, uh, welcoming.
00:14:04.240
So, what was, how was your take on the matter of Trinity?
00:14:06.560
Did the Trinity ever come, like, where we thought, you know what, this doesn't really
00:14:11.580
Like, you mean like the Son, Father, and the Holy Spirit?
00:14:13.580
Like, has that, because, because the thing is, like, what made you say, you know what,
00:14:19.340
What was it that said the Trinity was like, do you understand the concept of the Trinity,
00:14:23.720
I don't really understand, I never really understood the concept of the Trinity.
00:14:26.900
The, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, when you think of, when you think of the, the
00:14:32.200
Ankh, the symbol of Ankh, it's man, woman, man, woman, and offspring.
00:14:37.340
Uh, but then when you think of the Trinity, when I think of the Holy Spirit, like, if,
00:14:45.320
If that could be fully explained to me, then maybe I could have a little bit more endearing
00:14:50.280
Yeah, so the, the thing is with the Trinity, they say, it's the Father, the Father's God.
00:14:56.120
Then the Father sent His Son, then His Son became the Father.
00:15:02.280
So the Father is God, God sent His Son, then His Son became God, and the Son, God, died on
00:15:11.440
the cross for the sins of the world, but at the same time, there's the Holy Spirit, which
00:15:16.500
is also God, but they're not free gods, but they're one God.
00:15:24.580
So now, this is one of the big problems with our Christian friends.
00:15:28.200
Um, what we say is, this idea, where did this notion come from?
00:15:31.600
Because when we look at Abraham, Abraham was in a Jew, he was in a Christian, or was he
00:15:35.620
In the concept of the title that's given, because Muslim means the one who submits his
00:15:42.660
So Abraham didn't have these religions, but if you look into all these prophets, all of
00:15:48.740
All of them came and said, like, if you came to me and said to me, what is Islam?
00:16:06.660
So, this is where we come to our Christian friends and say, look, what you're claiming
00:16:22.600
Is somebody who came to earth, ate food, and had to go to a toilet deserving of my worship?
00:16:30.860
So that's the reason why you say you believe in Allah.
00:16:36.280
Like, mysticism in their cult, they consider God the all.
00:16:44.180
It's like everything that's created, it comes from Allah.
00:16:52.420
I don't consider myself a Christian now is one thing that was important is that why
00:16:57.380
is it that they say that Jesus is the Son of God?
00:17:10.640
The walking on the water and the healing the sick and all of that.
00:17:15.240
Like the thing is, we believe in miracles in Islam as well.
00:17:18.720
But yeah, like you said before, being the Son of God, God doesn't need a son.
00:17:29.000
This doesn't negate, oh, if He saw God, why can't He come to earth?
00:17:33.340
Like how is He the all-powerful, the all-knowing?
00:17:35.260
Like if Jesus is the all-powerful and the all-knowing, He was crucified on the cross.
00:17:44.780
We come to God and say, yeah, we're going to crucify you.
00:17:49.840
That He's crucified by His own creation and then He's crying.
00:17:53.640
So the Jesus that's in, I thought it was the same Jesus.
00:17:59.560
The Jesus in the Quran and the Jesus in the King James Version are two completely different beings.
00:18:03.900
I would not say two completely different because even if you look into the Old Testament, for example, in the Bible,
00:18:08.880
when Jesus came, we believe there's some truth.
00:18:11.320
Because we believe Allah, God Almighty, sent down Jesus and Moses and Abraham and sent the Scriptures.
00:18:27.780
So the Quran has come to clarify the wrongs in the Bible.
00:18:34.340
God Almighty sent the Scriptures to Moses and Jesus.
00:18:42.280
So when the message was reached, it went through corruption.
00:18:45.680
Woe to those who write the Scriptures with their own hands and say this is from Allah.
00:18:50.640
So what they're saying is, you're doing that for a bit of money, yeah?
00:18:55.660
With the Quran, the Quran is on a whole different level because it challenges people that doubt it.
00:19:01.000
It says, if you think this book is other than your Lord, then bring a chapter like it.
00:19:07.140
So the smallest chapter in the Quran is three sentences.
00:19:11.740
And God is giving a challenge and saying, look, if you can, if you doubt this book, okay, make something like it.
00:19:29.680
And when I looked at being to Christianity, this was one of my issues.
00:19:34.220
And when I looked at Jesus, Jesus said to the Jews, hear O Israel.
00:19:46.700
When somebody came and approached him and said, oh good master, what must I do to get eternal life?
00:19:54.420
So when we look into the Bible, the question that you're asking about Jesus is the same as what's in the Quran.
00:19:58.440
There's similarities because Jesus did teach the oneness of God.
00:20:07.760
Yes, he's the one who came and brought this whole thing of I had a vision of Jesus and he died for our sins.
00:20:12.860
All of this, that's why the Quran came to correct that mistake.
00:20:18.560
And yeah, that's why it sounds like, you know, the thing is you believe in the oneness of God.
00:20:30.840
By logically, you know, you're like, come on, like, God can't be free in one.
00:20:34.660
Because Allah says in the Quran, if there was more than one God, they would fight each other for power.
00:20:39.860
So logically, where you're coming from, it's like, look, there's one king.
00:20:44.600
There's not, you know, there's three of these, but there's not three, there's one.
00:20:52.020
And what we do in Islam, Islam, is we call people to worship him and him alone.
00:20:57.760
Because your mom and dad brought you to this age.
00:20:59.860
The least that you can do is appreciate and value them.
00:21:03.860
What about the one who gave you your mother and father?
00:21:07.020
All God Almighty wants from you and me is to acknowledge, be grateful.
00:21:13.540
Because we pray five times a day, you know, and, you know, we fasting Ramadan, et cetera.
00:21:19.420
So you do not class yourself as a Muslim, but you believe in Allah as your.
00:21:25.180
You know, the funny thing is about linguistics is that like, well, like, okay.
00:21:28.480
So like when I did my first semester at Burma and community college, right?
00:21:32.660
Like even, even as a teenager, certain sounds and certain words that roll off your tongue
00:21:38.220
is interested in me and it computes and it makes me gravitate towards that.
00:21:42.800
Like, like, for example, like when you say the word, uh, uh, alhamdulillah, right?
00:21:50.680
Like I, I just, I'm interested in the way it rolls off my tongue when I say it.
00:21:54.360
Like when I say it slow or fast, even if I'm not pronouncing it right, but just the
00:21:57.620
fact that it's, it's rolling with my tongue in a way that sends a certain vibration that's
00:22:02.340
Like, uh, the English language, you know, I think, you know, uh, Ebonics, which is,
00:22:06.960
which is like, like a ghetto made up, uh, uh, slang.
00:22:10.380
I, I love it and I embrace it because it's like, it's certain words that you can create
00:22:16.260
So, uh, that's one of the kind of like strange reasons why I, I gravitated, uh, uh, towards,
00:22:23.280
uh, uh, the Islamic religion because it makes sense.
00:22:26.440
It's logical and it, and it's just that, you know, I have so much on my plate.
00:22:29.800
They just kind of just, I feel like maybe I should, you know, uh, dig more deep into
00:22:37.080
You know, have you listened to the Quran before?
00:22:38.960
When you say listen to it, you mean like, you mean audio?