[Music]
nba championship champion and
in the name of allah the most merciful
especially merciful
and then kyrie he he didn't really do do
great at his time in boston but now it
seems like he's muslim so it's like all
right fine you know i gotta like kyrie
alhamdulillah
this is
where we have our special guest chris
who's here to share his story to talk to
us about why he accepted his deen
after seeing his good friend mike doing
what appeared to be yoga to him at that
time
where he was having a tension between
religion
and faith and then finding the iphones
of religions as he calls it
where there was no conflict between
rationale and faith we're going to
dig deep into this story he said it
before we're going to get dig
deeper this time to find out more with
our friend chris ceo of launch
salaam i love it you did
you did your homework alhamdulillah
so you're a fan of stephen jackson i
i am now you know anytime an nba player
becomes muslim i got to like them it's
kind of like uh
you know i'm a boston celtics fan by the
way
uh he's up in massachusetts and um
there's a basketball player you might
know his name is dennis schroeder
uh he used to be with the hawks now he's
the lakers i used to like really dislike
him
and i thought that he's muslim like okay
i gotta like this guy you know
and then kyrie he he didn't really do do
great at his time in boston
but now it seems like he's muslim so
it's like all right fine you know i
gotta like kyrie
and now stephen jackson all right good i
like steven jackson you know my my love
of
uh my muslims is stronger than my love
of my sports teams
tell me do you know this uh this other
basketball prayer
uh player irving kyrie irving
yeah that's who i was just mentioning
yeah he used to okay so that's the guy
you're mentioning that's the guy he's
not he's so he accepted islam because i
was i didn't know who he was before
but then someone was telling me he was
quoting you know allah god
and he was tweeting some things like
that so that's the one that's the guy
you're talking about
that's the guy i'm talking about and you
know we we i
have a good opinion inshallah you know
he's just he's in his uh
tweets lately he's been saying assalamu
alaikum and ramadan mubarak
and you know calling people brothers so
um
you know there's a there's a lot of uh
within the african-american community
whether it's within the
amongst rappers or basketball players
there's a strong pull towards islam
and a lot of people you know kind of in
that gray zone we hope we they they fall
into the white zone inshallah but um
it's uh you know it's really cool to see
and there's a lot of basketball players
like that it's not just kyrie it's like
jaylen brown
um carmelo anthony and we could go on
and on uh even
i think i've heard kevin durant like who
knows right but there's just a lot of
names out there shaq's a famous one of
course
shaquille o'neal huh yeah you hear him
saying salaam alaikum
you know what that's the you at a young
age of 16.
courageous brave you know just kind of
uh comparing it to
many of these famous people out there
you know the basketball players
then he gets them also some heat like
people start to like they love him
basketball player but as soon as you try
to mention islam or whatnot then it's
like oh
yeah they try to push you under a rock
or something have you noticed that
yeah yeah you know that's why it's so
important that muslims be
cool basically right i mean like
certainly when muhammad ali changed his
name like he became muslim changed his
name from cassius clay muhammad ali
you had people saying oh i'm not even
you know what's his name that box is
like i'm not even going to call him
muhammad you know his his christian name
is cassius so someone called him and
you know muhammad ali whooped him right
and he just came what what's my name
he was like what's up say my name say my
name sometimes you got to be
you got to have that kind of bravado a
little bit
um to just let people know like no i'm a
muslim i'm proud to be muslim there's no
shame in it
um nothing to apologize for you know but
then if you back it up with your game
like hakeem elijah won and when
you know back-to-back championships like
what are people going to say
you know you got to have a little bit of
that malcolm
in you just like you i mean that's what
fascinated you reading the biography of
malcolm x
right tell us about that what role did
that play
in your decision to take it back just a
little bit before that uh you mentioned
my friend mike so
you know when i was 13 we moved my
family moved to uh
amherst massachusetts amherst have you
ever heard of amherst massachusetts
their hockey team just won the college
hockey championship or something it's
the university of massachusetts
uh is out of amherst but anyway it's a
small mostly
rural kind of um town farm town with a
few colleges in western mass
about two hours west of boston just to
give you some perspective
and they're no muslims right um
or just very few muslims we should say
one of those few muslims
was you know just a quirky personality
his name's art carrington
he's an african-american muslim
who was a tennis star like back in the
70s
he played at the u.s open with arthur
ashe uh just to
if people know tennis saying arthas is
very famous
african-american tennis player art
carrington was right there with him
um and his he actually i thought he had
converted actually he was born in a
muslim family
so some of these you know we forget some
of the african-american muslims
they didn't just convert in the 60s and
70s and some of them converted way back
um especially around the new york area
and so art came from one of these
families
uh very you know very proud of his islam
although he doesn't wear it on his
sleeve you know you won't see him and
just say
oh this guy's obviously muslim you know
he just looks like a any other guy in
america but
um you know he's doing his prayers he's
he's not shy to talk about islam people
bring it up with him and he was the
tennis coach of my friend mike
um his son arts on lex was my tennis
coach so
we both kind of had that tennis coach
but uh
art basically guided my friend mike in
islam
and then when mike became muslims you
kind of indicated you know i saw him
during tennis practice doing like yoga
right i was like what is this guy doing
and then i found out no like he's
actually muslim we start talking about
what is islam
and the first thing i'll say my first
impression of islam
is it just makes a lot of sense right
it's like
kind of the superstitions are gone and
um
this kind of crazy theology is gone it
just really
makes sense uh i was reviewing some
quran this morning
um in surat yunus and it's talking about
you know got you know the people that
allah guides and
there's a verse
no soul is guided except by god's
permission and he'll
put defilement upon the ones that you
know it's interesting the ver
the verb used here is yakulun not
that you know you mean it's like the
ones that don't use their intellect they
don't use their
reason their rationale um so that was
the first thing that made a good
impression
islam that like rationally it made sense
but had no interest in becoming
muslim uh and then i started reading
autobiography malcolm x
before we go before we get to that let's
go back you know what came to my mind
was okay so mike
he's at a young age of when he acted
accepted islam around your age 16 17.
15 actually he's 15. okay so he's 15.
you guys are taking tennis lessons right
yeah okay so he's on the tennis court
obviously not doing yoga he's making
salah
yeah he's because we were on the tennis
not just ten we're on tennis team
together
for our school and so you know you have
to travel like uh
you know high school athletics right
like you got a match you got to get on
the bus
travel it takes hours so prayer comes in
during those matches
so you know in between matches he'd go
off in a corner and pray
and you know i just remember seeing him
first like what is that guy doing you
know because he would do it in a corner
you know how we do it right you you
don't want to be like in
the court like yeah you're going to find
a nice quiet corner away from people so
you can focus
but you know first i didn't notice but
then afterwards you start to notice like
what is he doing over there you know
like there's something happening
um and then then we start talking about
it yeah
now think about that i mean obviously
you know like kind of the state a lot of
times
people who are just born into a family
of islam or muslim being muslim but
now salat you know is is that's a pillar
of islam but just
think about it young young boy man
at that age and he's like got that
courage
you know to go ahead and put his
forehead on the ground
to pray many people are just i remember
just you know a lot of people you just
accept you're scared you know you know
like what are people going to say
i mean this is like you know a very
courageous young man
he was extremely courageous because one
day he came into school in the phobe and
it was like
how's that i remember i'm like mike what
are you like you wearing dresses
now bro like what are you doing right um
i've never seen a throat my whole life
at that point
and uh he just wanted to you know kind
of push his own
um you know push his own comfort zone
because he's you know these these
sisters they got to wear a scarf in the
head and they staying out stand out like
a sore thumb
he felt like he needed to do something
too you know um
he doesn't wear thobes anymore in public
like that you know maybe
taraweeh or whatever but uh you know the
teenage years are interesting
right because it can you do a lot of
stupid stuff
but you also can have the courage to
make major decisions
what the right decision without worrying
too much about what the implications of
that are
right um for me like by the time i was
ready to become muslim i just did it
it was like you know i'm not thinking
about oh how's this going to affect my
life or this or that it's like
hey maybe i'm going to die tomorrow and
i want to die
muslim that's it right like that's the
the most important thing
um you know we should never
underestimate our youth
i think teenagers they have a lot of
potential but it needs to be well
guided and well mentored um that's
that's missing a little bit but like
you know they're not idiots they can do
a lot of uh
profound stuff um for good and bad but
we you know we pray for good under the
right sort of mentorship
let's take a jump from that from mike's
version of your story
mike's highlight of your story i mean
mifta i i think about
the key to jannah is those who are not
praying
and you know they're having struggling i
mean look at this mike accepts islam
he's on the tennis court
making right sajdah and now shortly
after young man
right you know what what kind what we
don't have to go into the details what
young men are chasing aspiring to do or
be at that young age and he's connecting
with his creator that's amazing
so then you're having tension at that
time between
religion and science talk about that
yeah so i mean i grew up
uh mostly in america actually a lot of
people don't know i was born in malaysia
for two years spent two years there
moved to korea for three more
years uh and then moved to america when
i was five
um but growing up in america we were
we're christian you know we're
protestants but uh we
the kind of joke out there is priest we
were creasers have you ever heard of
that term christopher uh
what's that christmas easter yeah
christmas easter christians like you're
only going to
church twice twice a year is that is
that synonymous like
ramadan muslims yeah like ramadan
muslims that'd be that'd be exactly like
that right um
uh although ramadan muslims have to do a
lot more work right especially if
they're going to target like that's hard
christmas easter christmas you just got
to go into church couple days hold a
candle like you're done right
so anyway we didn't grow up like in a
very practicing family
um it was more cultured than faith to be
to be honest
um for example when i did become muslim
my dad said you can't
you can't be muslim you're white you
know like that's how his association is
like
faith is about you can't hold on that's
that's uh that's
amazing you can't be muslim uh because
you're white
wow that you see it's real these
misconceptions are real
well unfortunately now it's creeping
alone to the muslim community
i don't know if you've seen that but
there's a lot of like uh
uh criticism of white muslims these days
unfortunately
um but hamlet that's like the mind i i
don't worry about that but that is like
the very
very first thing my father told me i got
him and
um he's a great man he's a great father
great man but
that's just to give insight into the
perspective of
what religion even means uh in my family
growing up
and so like my sister is an atheist and
all sorts of stuff but like she
celebrates christmas right
so it's just culture and um
i i felt this tension that's very
present i think everyone is
is aware of it growing up in the west of
you know science versus religion
you know and i'm am i going to be a
rationalist or or a believer
and when i studied religion religion by
the way only meant christianity i mean
the only other religion i really knew
was hinduism because my father
had spent some time in india growing up
and and for like a book report you know
i'd studied hinduism which is clearly
like not
a true faith um you thought didn't you
didn't you think that islam was like uh
hinduism at one point i did yeah
actually
like because i just knew it was the
eastern religion so i was like oh islam
hinduism like all that stuff is coming
from like india
or the middle east like you know they
probably have these like multiple gods
of course
islam is so far from that but that's the
orientalist perspective you get growing
up in the west watching hollywood films
like
you just don't know any better obviously
um they do a really good job
uh in the west of portraying islam as
so foreign to the chris judeo-christian
values
when clearly it's so aligned you know
it's amazing
um i we used to have this uh
event in when i was in a student
university of michigan called islam
awareness week
they ever hear that yes yes yeah and
we had a jeopardy board have you ever
seen those have you ever seen that
before at jeopardy board yes the
jeopardy i know yeah the game show
the the the islam jeopardy yeah
oh if it was unique to university
michigan other places did it but
basically we'd have it'd just be like
jeopardy right so
so someone walks up during the summer
this week there's this big board
they say okay i'll take profits um for
300.
you say okay you know this prophet uh
split the sea with his staff you know
the red sea with his staff
and this is this is i'm not even
exaggerating this is exactly what they
tell say
oh you know i know in christianity it's
moses
um is it muhammad in islam you're like
no it's moses
you know like that's how far like people
really like don't
connect the dots um and i was one of
them right i didn't understand islam i
didn't connect the dots but you know
things i had mike i had
you know uh through the autobiography
malcolm x that drove me deeper to
understand islam
and actually this really helped me like
you know i used to think
that there were a thousand religions in
the world
and each were claiming to be true and
it's obviously like impossible like just
how could it be just one out of a
thousand is true
and at least for me what really helped
me embrace islam was to understand that
there aren't a thousand religions there
was one original
religion the fitra religion
and from that it's like one river from
that a lot of things broke off
and so you can see um you know traces of
that original
religion and truth in so many things but
when you come back to islam you're going
to the source
you know so it's not like christianity
is like a totally different religion
than islam
you know we believe that early
christians were muslims or judaism
was totally different religion in islam
no judith you know early jews were
muslims
um from the understanding of islam as as
the
the submission to god like that's the
faith and
love like when i really understood that
that you know there's always been
one essential faith and people you know
kind of veered off the path and god
would send new prophets to bring people
back on the path
when i understood that i really felt
like i understood islam and i could
understand like how
we ended up with these thousand
religions in the world but there still
is just
that one true faith were you at that
time would you
categorize yourself as there was a
survey done
that they found that over half of
christians today they don't believe
jesus is god so what was your state at
that time were you
one of those christians that was
struggling like with trinity
did you believe jesus was god or he was
sent by god you know what were your
views on that
so i went the complete extreme of as of
like
fully committed atheists you know
because to me again if
in that dichotomy of religion versus
science religion just
meant christianity um and
i wasn't considering like a universalist
or unitarian approach that maybe there
is religion beyond christianity it just
meant
it's either i accept christianity or i
accept nothing that it was
very black and white for me at that
point i think part of it is because i
didn't grow up with a relationship with
god
you know and and i think to the credit
of many christians in america they do
have a real relationship with god they
pray to god
um they believe in him but then they
struggle with the tenets of
of christianity right for me i just
wasn't
raised and nurtured in that way so i
remember like when i became muslim is
like is this whole new thing is like
man what does it even mean to pray to
god you know i i really had to learn
that
and and i'm still learning it like to be
honest uh even being muslim 20 years
now alhamdulillah but that's also you
know beautiful thing about islam it's
you're constantly growing in your
relationship with god what do you think
a side note what do you think drives
some of the youth today
the students in the university towards
atheism
hmm
i you know i'm not going to say i'm an
expert to speak about that um
i would say generally there's still that
strong divide between science and
religion
especially amongst uh christians um
because if you look at it
like some of the baptists and stronger
voices within christianity are still
very like anti-science we're seeing it
with a covet vaccine right it's like you
have all these
um you know uh mega church pastors that
are just like
coveted as some you know conspiracy and
their anti-vaccine and this and that
um i think it's a very important muslims
don't fall into that trap
you know we don't have that his like our
history of muslims never had this
you know thing like galileo being
persecuted by the church like we don't
you know our galileos were also leading
scholars at the same time
you know that's something when i started
understanding learning that about islam
and i say about
i became so proud you know and i
realized that like so many
muslim doctors muslim engineers they're
actually
very strong in their faith you know it's
not like
you know if you go to university in
america and you look at their phds in
science and technology et cetera
you'll find very little believers
amongst them
of any faith and you go to the muslim
world and it's the exact opposite you
know the the
engineering departments are filled with
believers so um
you know i think it's important we don't
follow uh
you know to kind of quote the hadith we
don't follow the christians into this
snake hole of creating this false
dichotomy of
reason and faith and then you talk about
finding the iphones
of religions is this where you were able
to bring that rationality and faith
together
we're opposed to before you weren't able
to do that
i like that i haven't heard of that term
iphone's a religion but i like it
because it's so simple and intuitive and
uh
but you said it didn't you say it i i
don't know
you know uh sins make us forget things
so maybe i said that before and i forgot
it but
um i like it so i'm gonna re re uh reuse
what you already said
but forgot yeah i forgot you know it's
um
what a beautiful faith like it's it's
practiced daily
it's really part of our lives you know
like even i me
interfaith people and they kind of get
jealous of muslims because it's like
oh you know our faith is so interwoven
to everything we do
the way we talk the way we dress
the way we eat what we eat you know the
way we go to bed at night the way we
like everything you know it's not um
it's not disassociated from from the way
we live our life
and yet it's not like i think when you
do find examples of that within
christianity or other
it becomes this like impossible or
almost like an outcast society like
shaker like uh
not shakers um because they're they're
dead uh
uh what's the group uh
like uh not quakers well i guess quakers
but you know like the
uh i singing the amish you know oh the
amish okay
you have to live this life that's just
like completely disassociated from
reality and
and that's not what we're called to
either as muslims
right we have to be present
in the modern world but we have to do it
from our values
not just associate the values of the
dominant majority
that's amazing so you found the
rationale
there was no conflict between now in
science
as you were having before that tension
was going away
so what was the deciding factor that you
finally
ended up taking your shahada to describe
that moment when something clicked
and then what led you to go ahead and
take that pronunciation of faith
that you had in your heart yeah so
you know just to recap first it was mike
and what i don't think i mentioned about
mike
uh at least in this interviews is not
just seeing what he was doing but
what a profound change it was you know
just
six months before that he was smoking he
was drinking he was and we're talking
about
and he started doing that when he's like
11 12 years old
and so you can imagine like he's pretty
messed up as a teenager
and all of a sudden he became this like
faithful person and he left that
you know uh filth and like he'd become a
nice person by the way and we used to we
were hanging out and we really became
friends
um and then i read the autobiography
from malcolm x another
amazing story of transformation here's a
man that was you know
basically a a junkie in prison
who came out like speaking like he's an
oxford educated
you know lecturer is amazing right and
civil rights leader
and so i'm like man this is a powerful
religion
and um uh you know he challenged he was
challenged in prison he writes about his
autobiography you take one step towards
allah allah will take two steps towards
you
and we have hadith like that you know if
you come to allah walk and allah comes
you run if you go to enhancement it
comes your arm like
so i was like okay i'm going to test
this hypothesis myself
i'm going to stop eating pork i'm going
to stop going to parties with with
alcohol
and you know i pray you know if this is
a true religion you know may god guide
me and if it's not i'm going to have a
big
big barbecue bender and i i really dove
into the study of islam at that point so
i started studying the quran
and i started studying the life of the
prophet muhammad and just very simple
questions which
hold true till today who wrote the quran
if it wasn't
from god but you just can't come up with
a good answer
you know who was the prophet muhammad
what was his motivation
why was he doing it all this you know if
it wasn't inspired by god you know it
doesn't make sense
and um so i'm reading that stuff and
then i
within the study of the quran i came
across the scientific miracles of the
quran you might know this uh
you're a bit old school like me but uh
the book
um uh brief illustrated guide
yes that's it brief illustrated guy
dislike really good book yes
very simple very simple i'm reading it
and i'm like
huh that's like an interesting
coincidence about you know let's say
bees or female or the waves and how
light penetrates the ocean what you know
different things i and i said okay it's
a coincidence
okay it's another coincidence okay so
you get through like a dozen
coincidences
and say what's the what the chances that
all of these coincidences happen with
mistakes yeah i i'm just listening to
you and it's like a mirror of of like
almost the same thing that
i the way i was dissecting it almost
identical
i you know it's it's with that same book
i was going
through the same logic you don't have to
be a rocket scientist it's just common
sense
and i was flipping through it next i
said okay maybe he guessed this flip the
next one okay
uh it's getting a little bit too close
you know here it's like
it doesn't make sense that all these
things are compiling and he gets all of
it just didn't make sense
yeah and i think going through all those
overall just
that's what really taught me i could
still be rational
and a believer at the same time you know
i didn't have to divorce these if i was
to be a muslim
and then at the end of the book you
probably remember they talk about the
hereafter
heaven and hell or gender and
you know at this age i'm so i'm at the
end of my junior year of high school so
i'm already looking at colleges to apply
to thinking about what do i want to
study as a major what kind of career i
want to go into
what part of the country i want to move
to you know i'm thinking about all my
future
and i'm reading that book and i'm
realizing well the only future i'm
guaranteed is my death
and i haven't thought about that for a
minute
you know i you know a second and and i
should it's the only guarantee i have
and i realize at that point i'm saying
okay listen either islam is true or
nothing's true
and i'd rather not take my chances you
know i'd rather
become a muslim and so if i get hit by a
bus and die tomorrow i died a muslim
and i and it's true and i go to heaven
or it's not true and i'm sure there's
if islam is not true then no absolutely
nothing can be true if islam is not true
nothing is true
and um it's called pascal's wager i
don't know if you heard that before
um and a lot of people make fun of it
but actually it's it's it comes from a
profound pace
pascal himself had a a true dream
yeah do you know about that uh the dream
tell us about it
uh this is my understanding and i
haven't studied in depth so you correct
me if i'm wrong
but he had a like a true dream where he
saw
basically hell and such a profound
you know pascal was a scientist and a
mathematician it made such a profound
impact on he wrote the whole dream down
and he um wove it into his coat
no one knew about it but it was like
right over his heart
and they only discovered it after he
died but people knew that he became a
very strong believer
at some point in his life and this was
the reason why um
but what's interesting is my
understanding is he never actually
became a strong
christian in the dogmatic sense but a
strong
you know monotheist um
which which i find very fascinating but
you know that that's
the kind where pascal's wager came from
is that you know uh
you know i'd rather take my chances that
um you know be a believer and take my
chances
that this is right then then take my
chances that you know it's wrong
like it's wrong and i could end up in
hell right
um and so that's where my journey to
islam started
and i think what's even with islam
within the quran like you know it the
allah says the
the the battle in arabs
you know don't say we believe say you
submit and i really feel like my early
journey islam was like that
you know i submitted that this is true i
don't fully understand it
you know i don't um really understand
like how to
have this relationship with god but i i
do understand that this is the first
step
towards building that relationship and
then you finally took the shahada that
was mike there when you took shahadah
yeah so that like it literally happened
all like when i'm reading this about the
heaven hell and i'm thinking about i'm
in my bed i still remember i'm in my bed
i start crying
because i realize it wasn't tears of joy
actually it was tears of
of
anxiety maybe because i'm like okay if i
believe this
it also means i believe my parents
you know could end up in the hellfire
and that was a v i love my parents
and they allow guy them like that was a
very hard
belief to to accept um
but i realized like whether i want to
believe that or not
doesn't affect the truth the truth is
truth is not affected by our whims and
our desires
the truth is the truth and so the next
day i told mike hey you know lunchtime
meet me in the library
and then i like i fumbled through the
shahada and
and he was stunned i think he's like
sitting there listening to me and
when he's trying to make out what am i
trying to say to them
you know i don't know i was having to
speak arabic so at that point and so
he's like not sure if i'm joking if i'm
serious and then i'm like no i really
want to become muslim and then that
weekend he took me to
the closest masjid as a west springfield
islamic center
and i made my shahada hamdullah so that
was i believe june 3rd of 2001.
now 17 times a day you're reciting the
verbatim word of god almighty
that's minimum there's a chapter in the
quran the opening
al-fatiha this is a miracle
it's a living miracle for anybody for
our christian friends neighbors
for the atheist the jew anybody who just
puts this book to the test like you did
can you share can you share the fatiha
the opening with us can
they hear it from you sure sure uh
in the arabic or in arabic arabic and
then you can give the english
and you can put me on the spot but we'll
say
bismillah
in the name of allah the most merciful
the especially merciful
alhamdulillah
all praise be to allah lord of the
worlds
the most merciful the especially
merciful manikin
deen master of the day of judgment
you alone do we worship and you alone do
we seek help
from
[Music]
not those who have uh earned your wrath
nor those who have gone astray
um mashallah beautiful actually
part of the praying 17 times a day for
allah to guide us on that straight path
some have never heard quran they got to
hear it for the first time
and this is pretty much you know almost
a summary you have it right there this
is the the opening chapter you know it's
that
call for the human being to have a
direct connection with the creator of
the heavens and the earth to worship the
one and only one god the same god that
jesus
moses abraham the last and final
messenger call humanity to worship to
have a relationship
the one and only you've accepted it you
you're doing great things now
um a couple more questions i just want
to ask you one is um
where's mike now what's he doing where
is he is he
you need to bring him on as a guest of
the show uh
he you know subhanallah we've been
blessed with a great brotherhood
um so to answer your question quickly
he's a uh
uh teacher a professor um at
the tastier seminary so he's helping
you know develop the next generation of
inshallah muslim leaders
in america uh tastier seminaries out of
knoxville tennessee it's a rather newer
seminary have you heard of it
oh it's very nice um and uh but you know
there's a verse in the quran al imran
um you know where allah says you know
remember when you were
enemies and god by his mercy brought you
together
as brothers and you were on the
edge of the you know the the pit of the
fire
and he saved you from it and this verse
basically
describes mike and i because we
literally were neighbors growing up in
massachusetts
we i told you he was in a lot of trouble
we we were basically like enemies in
high school
and then he became muslim and then i
became muslim and we became best friends
you know i spent how did i learn to pray
five times a day i'd walk
across my yard to his yard i didn't even
know go need to go to the street
i just walk across the yard go to his
house and pray next to him and that's
how i learned to pray
everything i learned about assam that
first year came from mike and then we
went to the university of michigan
together and we were roommates together
you know and so we got to spend four
more years together at michigan
he ended up also studying in
[Music]
morocco and egypt he ended up getting
his phd of islamic studies at princeton
university he was a professor at the
university of illinois urbana-champaign
and he made this decision last year
which i'm really really proud of him to
kind of
leave academia the mainstream academia
and and go into this uh
seminary which is really where his heart
is at you know he loves islam so much
uh if you pray with him you just feel
like man this guy is really talking to
allah um
and i o i owe everything to him like you
know i owe i owe my whole islam to him
and
he's an amazing very humble brother very
very good brother masha'allah
you got us very excited to meet
professor mike
dr mike you can make the
connection happen and now
abdullah like you know we have these
nicknames
and uh so you know he chose an abdullah
because he you know
it's just like uh it's a very good name
for him servant of god so
it's pretty much god yeah and you know
he became muslim he submitted right or
he learned about islam
he submitted to god and then when i
became muslim
uh you know i read the hadith of two
most beloved names to allah are abdullah
so he's already abdullah so i'm going to
pick abdul rahman so my muslim nickname
is
you know it's i'm very you know it's
like i have so many blessings in my life
but having that friend in my life
abdullah
dan or mike dan like it's right up there
at the very top because like i you know
i wouldn't even be muslim without him
what advice do you have for those people
tuning in now
they're hearing the word muslim for the
first time islam
they're listening to your story they can
relate
they kind of went through the first
phase maybe they're still in the first
phase drinking alcohol partying going to
clubs
they're searching for purpose they've
heard a lot of negative
stereotypes a lot of misconceptions they
have in their mind regarding islam
they like what you have to say what do
you tell them
you know two things come to mind the
first i'd say is
just imagine if you were muslim just
take a second and imagine
what would it mean if i were muslim and
do you like that version of your life
better or the one that you're living now
and i'm pretty sure you're going to like
the version of you being muslim a lot
better
um and then why not just do it if that's
the case
right the the second thing is
uh and this is actually more of my
advice to new muslims but maybe a lot of
new muslims are listening to the show
too
but i think it would still apply to
someone if this is learning about islam
the prophet muhammad peace be upon him
he said
you know a man is upon the religion the
faith of his
close friend so you know pick carefully
who's your
who you're going to have as your close
friends and
there's so much to learn life is a as a
marathon
you're going to be learning your whole
life uh inshallah
and you know what what are the first
things you should do as a new muslim
like you could pick a dozen things like
it's
you know it can be a bit overwhelming
but if you just find that one good
friend
to learn from and stick with like i
think everything will be taken care of
um and so i really encourage people like
pick good company to be around
uh even if it's just one person like
find that one person that's really going
to make a difference for your life
and uh stick to them you know and and
and uh it's the best advice i could give
great advice thank you so much tell us
about you went
and you became you started and became
the ceo
of launch good in these last few minutes
that we have share with us what you're
doing now and tell us about this project
yeah i could go on for hours so you got
to give me a time limit here how much
time we got
oh we got a few minutes a few minutes
like how long three minutes go ahead
just go ahead just go ahead go ahead
here we go really quick uh
you know sometimes you only realize
things when you reflect back on them
when i was 22
23 i went to hajj and at this point i
had been an engineer i worked for a
little bit until i was like i didn't
want to do this that's my
professional training um i'd become a
school teacher
that was okay but i've just felt like
there's something else
and a lot of my other friends were like
on clear career
trajectories you know and for me i felt
a little bit ungrounded
and i went on this hajj and my main dua
at that hajj was oh allah put me at the
service of your ummah because when
you're in hajj you're saying
you know the whole time you're just
saying like here i am at your service oh
lord here i'm at your service
and i was just like i want to live this
like i want my whole life to be in the
service of allah
and now that's like literally what i do
right that's
it's just it's such a great blessing
from allah and i
i pray that i deserve it and i can hold
on to it um but basically
uh a few years after that um i was
you know i helped one friend start a a
educational company called fawaki it's
an arabic institute
and then another one start a film
company called beyondblue productions
which is making these like muslim films
i really just loved helping muslims do
the things that i felt god made them for
right like you got the dean show idea
like that's what you got to do you know
what i mean
and it's what allah wants for you it's
like it's like a special for you so like
nobody else
and i just love helping people like you
and
then when i came across crowdfunding i
thought man it would be amazing to have
something like a muslim crowdfunding
platform that was an inspiration for
launch good like
it's just a platform where i could help
people like yourself raise money
do great things like do the thing
they're meant to do because you know
what this
is really hard just to make the ends
meet you know just to take a
modest salary um and without money
behind our ideas a lot of them can't
come to life and one of my mentors he
says good work needs to be sustainable
and that includes financial stability um
and so
that's what launch gets about helping
people raise money for good work a lot
of it's charity
but some of it is really creative some
of it is programs and
and people like yourself and um uh
that's what launchkit is you know that
people can just go to launchgood.com and
they'll i think understand it very
quickly um and uh you know i've been
blessed we've been doing it now for
seven and a half years we have a team of
105 people
across 13 countries and we're the the
world's largest faith-based crowdfunding
platform
and people can go to launchgood.com if
they want to go ahead and raise for
their project
and learn more yeah but more than that
like because a lot of people you know
they don't have a project they need to
raise money for
but we can all be donors and if they're
listening especially in ramadan
they should be donors like we should all
be giving uh you know the prophet saws
he's described as uh you know especially
you know he's an especially generous
person but the most generous
ever would be during the month of
ramadan like a like a
a a wind you know that's just blowing
and generosity everywhere it goes right
and for that we have a special ramadan
program for donors called
the ramadan challenge launchgood.com
ramadan
at the time of this you know we're
talking i think 14 000 or so people are
signed up
by time people are listening to this i
don't know how many days will pass it
might be
you know 25 000 50 000 people signed up
inshallah
that all commit just to give you know
five dollars a day ten dollars a day to
a different clause every day
but imagine you know fifty thousand
people giving ten dollars a day is half
a million dollars a day
over the course of ramadan it ends up
being millions and millions of dollars
um last year we had about 30 million
dollars donated through launch good in
ramadan
and uh you know we're hoping this year
it gets up to 60
70 million you know and the results are
in allah's hands but
you know i love studying history there's
actually someone in your neighborhood i
don't know if you've interviewed him
yeah you're in chicago right oh so he's
a historian like a muslim
and he's a historian he wrote a book
called uh um
lost islamic history is he uh turkish
descent
i don't know i got the sense he's desi
but he could be turkish i'm not sure
but he's in chicago i believe and he
wrote this book have you heard of it
lost islamic history
it's great it's a great kind of summary
of
the crazy history muslims have had for
the last 1400 years
um and one of the themes that really
come out of it is when we as muslims
work together
nothing can stop us but when we start
fighting with each other and working
apart from each other and pulling away
from each other
we we fall apart in shambles very fast
and
uh it's a great book check it out lost
the song history by ferocious
but i think in the spirit of working
together i really encourage people join
us in the ramadan challenge
launchgood.com
so you can go there and you can set in
the app
can you set can you download an app
where you can every day
you can if a person wants to give a
dollar 510
for every day in ramadan you have it set
up where you can do that it's convenient
like that
yeah yep yep and we automate your
donations and so
you can do is you can pick the campaigns
you want the
money to go to um it's very easy it's
just like you heart this unfortunately
there's not app so it's just the website
uh but uh you just choose which
campaigns you want the money going to
and or you can leave it to us some
people are really busy so then what
we'll do is we'll you know
kind of figure out what are the most
deserving campaigns out there
of the thousands of campaigns we have
we'll automate your donation and every
day you get email receipt you get to see
you know oh today you supported an
orphanage in
malaysia and then tomorrow you supported
a school in
birmingham uk and then the next days for
the dean show in chicago you know so
uh it's it's really beautiful all at the
website there beautiful thank you very
much it was a really amazing story i
really enjoyed
talking with you my brother well thank
you for what you do man i think
you know you're you're always giving
light to other people but we need to
give light to you and
alhamdulillah you're you know how many
shows have you had now
uh oh almost uh
i don't know somewhere about 900 almost
900 we we started labeling it was i
think now this one will be 8
43 but it's home it's been we started
lumbering them late so it's probably
closer to a thousand
ten tens of times no no a thousand a
thousand close to a thousand
this one this one i think is eight forty
four but we just
started late numbering them we lost a
lot in between
like that's tens of thousands of minutes
oh oh i see
you mean the minutes yeah he reviews
that people can benefit from and
you know it's really important we tell
our own stories and
uh because it's not going to be told by
the mainstream media you know we have to
do it ourselves
and uh it's not easy you know i know you
really labor at this i'm sure
uh inshallah i i i don't know are you
gonna have any ramadan fundraisers
uh ramadan yeah we have uh on launch
good actually
yeah so we gotta donate people gotta
donate people gotta support you
i know it's embarrassing sometimes to
ask for your own support
uh but i'm not embarrassed to ask for
you so people listen to this
come on man let's let's all support
eddie let's give him a donation let's
keep the dean show
not just going but growing um and you
know you got stephen jackson on and you
got all the we didn't get to talked
about steven jackson maybe
you can tell the last humanist how that
if you want i gotta listen back to it
but
you know that's amazing like stephen
jackson muslim and then also it's like
i'm like i'm thinking myself man i'd
love to hear that story
and it's like oh he's on the deen show
it's like perfect you know and so
that's that's incredible handling how
was that interview
it was great he started off with just
the shahadah it was like right off the
bat he said
he was that's it he was just you know
really excited to just express
his uh decision to become a muslim one
who submitted his will to the creator of
heavens and earth so just to see that
you know that's just uh
really exciting you know for many people
who just start and that's one of the
goals of the show is to get you know
people who are muslim
to show like hold on people who are
taking things for granted not praying
to see new muslims coming in on a tennis
court like mike
and then you see the effects of that
then you accept islam
and then also just to see like people
who are like stephen jackson who are out
there in front of like millions
nba superstars and then he's just so
excited to come out and profess you know
his decision and uh show his love for
the dean and that should motivate us
right exactly you know it's we think
they're superstars
you know and oh they win a world
championship and they play on this team
and that team with steph curry etc
and it's like you know just being able
to make sajdah and to know what sajdah
is and to know your lord
makes you a real superstar you know
because
the honor is with allah you know what
are the all that stuff going to
amount to on the day of judgment if
people don't even have
a relationship with allah it's not going
to benefit you you know
and there's a great quote by muhammad
ali
and i can't remember exactly but it's
like you know he
he got to the top of the mountain he got
all the way to the top
and he realized it was empty you know
like he spent his whole life chasing
this thing
and he got there he's like no this isn't
what it's about
and the problem is most people never get
to muhammad ali's stage
right and they're so they're always
chasing they think it's going to be a
little better if i can just get
you know a little more money a little
more prestige a little more
fans or win that championship my life is
going to be like
you know the best thing ever
and they never get there so they die
chasing that and they realize
they never realized they were chasing a
mirage actually there was an interview
recently with
kevin durant sorry to be on the
basketball topics but
you know kevin durant two-time nba
championship
champion mvp like he's you know one of
the best
absolute best bass players in the nba
in this interview he's like you know i
got the championship
it just feels like the end of a movie
like it's not like it's not that
fulfilling actually i realized like it
doesn't define me
and he's looking for something else now
you know and um that's kevin
kevin durant kevin durant yeah so he's
saying this he he won all these what uh
he's a famous basketball player and he's
saying like
what is he saying again it's just like
it's not that fulfilling actually
you know he that doesn't define him and
he's looking for the other thing and i
think people like stephen jackson have
found it they realize like
oh you know yeah championships are great
don't get me wrong and you know man
uh i'm not you know i'm not one to
criticize steven jackson and that guy
would destroy me right
on a basketball court but it means to
say we as muslims have to have
confidence
that to make sajdah is more valuable
than to hold up any sort of trophy that
you know comes from man
because you're sajdah as to allah the
creator
beautiful brother thank you so much i
really enjoyed talking with you
uh thank you man god bless your work and
and increase it and uh inshallah you're
going to have
you know find that this is heavy in your
scale of good deeds in the day of
judgment inshallah thank you brother i
mean thank you
inshallah we meet again next time in
person
in person yeah i know man we it's like
you're we're neighbors detroit to
chicago but we haven't had that chance
yet
soon inshallah