Ali Dawah - December 04, 2018SINCERE EX-CHRISTIAN & MUSLIM TALK - NEW YORK
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212.93721
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3
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23
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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
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Okay, so what made you, question of faith, so you're saying you was, for example, um,
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You even stopped me speaking there for a second.
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Like, I just, I'm interested in the way it rolls with my tongue when I say it.
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Like, when I say it's slow or fast, even if I'm not pronouncing it right,
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but just the fact that it's, it's rolling with my tongue in a way that sends a certain
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Whenever this game of chess was created, is there anything at all?
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Is there anything in the Quran that would be related to chess?
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Right, with all the hustlers, you know, sharks, wolves, and, uh, just, you know, I sat down,
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started losing my money every week, you know, because at the time I was working for the telephone
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And, uh, you know, uh, I would lose between 150 to, like, 250 a week.
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So this would make you, this would be a substitute for gambling for you?
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No, but I mean, like, did this help you get away from it?
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The main reason why I like chess, because it's, you know, it's good for me.
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Like, most, most cool parks, like, this is a cool park.
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Those are all good parks where, like, it's, it's, for the most part, it's good energy.
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You know, um, I can meet interesting people, you know, people in the entertainment industry,
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dancers, you know, uh, musicians, you know what I mean?
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I'm sitting down with, you know, with people that have, like, that make salaries, you know what I mean?
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So, I feel important, and it's just, you know, it's just the energy that it brings.
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It was just the complexity of it, and, you know, the social aspect of it.
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Is this, how long have you been here, like, this theme, this theme of this?
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Yeah, because me, me and, uh, four of my friends, we came out.
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Thought it would be a good, good place to, uh, you know, to play in peace.
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And after about three months of set up every day, one person came along and set up.
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And then, like, three people came along and set up.
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And then before you know it, like, within three or four months, it was, like, ten to twelve people set up.
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And then it just, they never, they never stopped.
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You know, a lot of people, I don't really get into a lot of my associates' personal life.
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Some, uh, some really need this, you know, to make a living.
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I do this, I do this for, yeah, for a good pastime.
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But, you know, as a professional, I still want to get compensated for my time.
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But at the same time, when I'm sitting down, you know, um, I like to just, you know, meet people that are interesting.
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Like, in one day, in 24 hours, like, on my off days, I'll come out here, like, 11, 12 o'clock, right?
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I probably won't leave until, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
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But on a good day, warm day, you know, with entertainment, everything going on, it's cool.
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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.
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Yeah, because it's raining, you can't really pay this.
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It's a corner where different people from different backgrounds come and you have dialogue and discussions.
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So, when you go home, if you watch, if you go on YouTube and write Speakers Corner, London, you see our videos.
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So, we mainly operate on YouTube and have dialogue discussions like that.
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Me, Mohammed, our teachers, Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Mohammed, Safiya, and some other people as well who help us.
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It stands for sharing affection, love and mercy.
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We're here to give, spread the message of Islam, doing dawah, preaching, inviting people to Islam.
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So, that's the reason why I want, to be honest, I wanted to play chess anyway.
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I know, hopefully, if you lose, you wouldn't have anything grudged against me.
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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.
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But, you know, he's one of my good students, though.
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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?
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You know, my, okay, so I have a mixed background.
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I don't, unfortunately, I don't speak the language.
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I was kind of, like, lazy in school when it came to, like, linguistics and stuff.
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But, you know, I think most Americans grew up as Christians.
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You can't get to the Creator, you know, just without, through something.
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Like, I guess that's what the word Christian means, Christ-like.
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So, but, but when I stopped was when I did my first semester in college.
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You know, I started talking to a lot of the students.
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Muslims, Muslims, Jews, you know, just the whole, the whole spectrum of religions.
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And I started picking up little pieces of information here and there.
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And over a short period of time, a lot of the information that's in the Holy Scriptures is kind of, like, inaccurate.
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So, so, so, so, so, like, for yourself, should we play and talk as well?
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So, basically, you're saying that you was, you was basically, you brought up in a Christian
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Okay, so what made you, so you're saying you were, for example,
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You even stopped me speaking there for a second.
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A friend of mine, I wouldn't really call him a guru, but he's a real knowledgeable guy.
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He was telling me a little bit of history about Islam.
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Like he said that the first Muhammad, the first Muhammad, like way, way, way, way back,
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he said that Muhammad at one point, and I'm talking about a one-on-one guy,
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a guy that doesn't really know much about the Quran.
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Okay, I'm just going off of what my friend told me years ago as a teenager.
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He said that Muhammad forced religion on others.
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He said that if you don't accept Islam as your faith, then you will be murdered.
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It kind of threw me off, you know, because when I think of Christianity as a kid,
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you go to a little Sunday school, and you sing the songs and everything, and you're thinking...
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And that's one of the reasons we're here to, you know, educate people on that.
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Yeah, so that kind of deterred me from getting into Islam.
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Just the fact, the story you told me about Muhammad was like...
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And Christianity, you know, with politics, politics, most politicians deal with Christianity.
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Because politically, most people in politics that are high up, the big hand in the sky,
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And then they look at Muslims as terrorists, you know, the whole 9-11 thing.
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They look at, you know, anybody that's Arabic speaking or has the thing around their head
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I mean, every time in time, you always need common enemies, you know?
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It's just like, okay, now it's the Muslims' turn.
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It was the blacks before, now it was the Japanese, and then it was the Russians.
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And you realized at this moment in time that Christianity may be...
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You said there was some corruption in the scriptures?
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But I believe Judaism deals with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
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When you listen to the stories, you know, Moses, and even, you know, when you think of all of
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these, like, prophets, like, later on in the scriptures, you know, it kind of makes sense.
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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.
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These are people that dealt in, like, all kind of twisted sexual activity.
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So, anytime you're dealing with gentlemen that dealt in that type of lifestyle, you have to question when they publish the scriptures.
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You know, if you look at, like, for example, the prophet, he spoke on his life, you know, even his own enemies would testify.
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And the reason they hated him so much is because he just came with a message of worship God alone.
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Because if you look at all the prophets that came, we believe thousands of prophets came, yeah?
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Every one of them proclaimed something with no shadow of a doubt.
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So, when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, came, he came with the same message.
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They didn't like that because they were worshipping 365 gods, yeah?
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So, they offered the prophet, peace be upon him, and said, look, we'll give you, you want woman?
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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?
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It wasn't about woman or this, that, you know what I'm trying to say.
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He was known to be a sadaq, so truthful that he would go to his people.
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So, he went to his, he went to his, I'm going to take you out first before I tell you this.
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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.
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He goes, I'm telling you, I am the messenger of God.
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Do not worship anyone besides him, but you call me a liar.
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If I told you there's an army coming behind this mountain, you'd say, yes, of course.
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But when I come and tell you, I'm the messenger of God, you deny me.
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So, that was one of the main fundamental things the Prophet, peace upon him, came with, yeah?
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And when I spoke to you, you said you came to Islam or you believe in Allah?
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Or would you say that you're not a Muslim, but you, like, tell me why, like, why Allah?
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Well, because the, you know, from the information that I've, the minimal information that I've read from the Quran,
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as opposed to the King James Version, it just seems, it makes me feel comfortable and it seems more accurate, more logical.
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It doesn't seem like it's coming from a bad place.
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Certain, certain, certain, certain, certain paragraphs from the King James Version kind of make me question a lot.
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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
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to really, to really make that assessment to say it's, it's just as uncomfortable as the King James Version.
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So, but, but, but, but the people that I see, all right, put it like this.
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When you, when you, when you have a mass amount of people, that's, that's one religion.
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Like, take, take a mass amount of Christians and take a mass amount of Muslims.
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We're just going to deal with, with two, two, two religions.
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You know, so many different denominations, right?
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Like, it's the, the energy that I get from, from each side.
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For example, when I was growing up, Christians used to always try to, uh, um, persuade you
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It's just like, no matter what they did, it, it, it, it was almost like a Jehovah's Witness.
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Jehovah's Witness knock on your door and they kind of like, they're a little bit too aggressive.
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Not as aggressive as Jehovah's Witness, but it's that aggressive nature that I don't
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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?
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Did the Trinity ever come, like, where we thought, you know what, this doesn't really
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Like, you mean like the Son, Father, and the Holy Spirit?
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Like, has that, because, because the thing is, like, what made you say, you know what,
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What was it that said the Trinity was like, do you understand the concept of the Trinity,
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I don't really understand, I never really understood the concept of the Trinity.
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The, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, when you think of, when you think of the, the
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Ankh, the symbol of Ankh, it's man, woman, man, woman, and offspring.
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Uh, but then when you think of the Trinity, when I think of the Holy Spirit, like, if,
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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.
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Then the Father sent His Son, then His Son became the Father.
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So the Father is God, God sent His Son, then His Son became God, and the Son, God, died on
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the cross for the sins of the world, but at the same time, there's the Holy Spirit, which
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is also God, but they're not free gods, but they're one God.
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So now, this is one of the big problems with our Christian friends.
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Um, what we say is, this idea, where did this notion come from?
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Because when we look at Abraham, Abraham was in a Jew, he was in a Christian, or was he
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In the concept of the title that's given, because Muslim means the one who submits his
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So Abraham didn't have these religions, but if you look into all these prophets, all of
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All of them came and said, like, if you came to me and said to me, what is Islam?
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So, this is where we come to our Christian friends and say, look, what you're claiming
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Is somebody who came to earth, ate food, and had to go to a toilet deserving of my worship?
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So that's the reason why you say you believe in Allah.
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Like, mysticism in their cult, they consider God the all.
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It's like everything that's created, it comes from Allah.
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I don't consider myself a Christian now is one thing that was important is that why
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is it that they say that Jesus is the Son of God?
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The walking on the water and the healing the sick and all of that.
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Like the thing is, we believe in miracles in Islam as well.
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But yeah, like you said before, being the Son of God, God doesn't need a son.
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This doesn't negate, oh, if He saw God, why can't He come to earth?
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Like how is He the all-powerful, the all-knowing?
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Like if Jesus is the all-powerful and the all-knowing, He was crucified on the cross.
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We come to God and say, yeah, we're going to crucify you.
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That He's crucified by His own creation and then He's crying.
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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.
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I would not say two completely different because even if you look into the Old Testament, for example, in the Bible,
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when Jesus came, we believe there's some truth.
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Because we believe Allah, God Almighty, sent down Jesus and Moses and Abraham and sent the Scriptures.
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So the Quran has come to clarify the wrongs in the Bible.
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God Almighty sent the Scriptures to Moses and Jesus.
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So when the message was reached, it went through corruption.
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Woe to those who write the Scriptures with their own hands and say this is from Allah.
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So what they're saying is, you're doing that for a bit of money, yeah?
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With the Quran, the Quran is on a whole different level because it challenges people that doubt it.
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It says, if you think this book is other than your Lord, then bring a chapter like it.
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So the smallest chapter in the Quran is three sentences.
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And God is giving a challenge and saying, look, if you can, if you doubt this book, okay, make something like it.
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And when I looked at being to Christianity, this was one of my issues.
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And when I looked at Jesus, Jesus said to the Jews, hear O Israel.
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When somebody came and approached him and said, oh good master, what must I do to get eternal life?
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So when we look into the Bible, the question that you're asking about Jesus is the same as what's in the Quran.
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There's similarities because Jesus did teach the oneness of God.
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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.
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All of this, that's why the Quran came to correct that mistake.
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And yeah, that's why it sounds like, you know, the thing is you believe in the oneness of God.
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By logically, you know, you're like, come on, like, God can't be free in one.
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Because Allah says in the Quran, if there was more than one God, they would fight each other for power.
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So logically, where you're coming from, it's like, look, there's one king.
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There's not, you know, there's three of these, but there's not three, there's one.
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And what we do in Islam, Islam, is we call people to worship him and him alone.
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Because your mom and dad brought you to this age.
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The least that you can do is appreciate and value them.
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What about the one who gave you your mother and father?
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All God Almighty wants from you and me is to acknowledge, be grateful.
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Because we pray five times a day, you know, and, you know, we fasting Ramadan, et cetera.
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So you do not class yourself as a Muslim, but you believe in Allah as your.
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You know, the funny thing is about linguistics is that like, well, like, okay.
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So like when I did my first semester at Burma and community college, right?
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Like even, even as a teenager, certain sounds and certain words that roll off your tongue
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is interested in me and it computes and it makes me gravitate towards that.
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Like, like, for example, like when you say the word, uh, uh, alhamdulillah, right?
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Like I, I just, I'm interested in the way it rolls off my tongue when I say it.
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Like when I say it slow or fast, even if I'm not pronouncing it right, but just the
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fact that it's, it's rolling with my tongue in a way that sends a certain vibration that's
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Like, uh, the English language, you know, I think, you know, uh, Ebonics, which is,
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which is like, like a ghetto made up, uh, uh, slang.
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I, I love it and I embrace it because it's like, it's certain words that you can create
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So, uh, that's one of the kind of like strange reasons why I, I gravitated, uh, uh, towards,
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uh, uh, the Islamic religion because it makes sense.
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It's logical and it, and it's just that, you know, I have so much on my plate.
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They just kind of just, I feel like maybe I should, you know, uh, dig more deep into
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You know, have you listened to the Quran before?
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When you say listen to it, you mean like, you mean audio?