E79:The ProphetﷺLost Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean & Crows of the Arabs w. Mustafa Briggs

the last ring of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon Him s who was the third Khalifa used to wear the ring until the middle of his he was by a well and the ring fell into the well and they tried

to retrieve it from the well but they never found it again and it was said some of the commentators said the fitner that happened during the time of s's began after he lost that ring it

apparently had some kind of spiritual significance as well but it was a gift that he received from the African king Nashi what a what a movie line Mustafa Briggs alhamdulillah thank

you so much for coming on the insor podcast brother thank you for having me live oh my goodness it's a long time coming we've been talking about it for a while alhamdulillah yeah nearly two

years right two years yeah on and off just like all right man can't wait can't wait you know one of my teachers used to say like in every delay there's a blessing subh so you know we made our

intention whenever we made it but whenever Allah allows it to manifest that's always the best time alhamdulillah and it allowed for me for your most recent book to be released and for me to actually read it yeah yeah

yeah alhamdulillah yeah and I got to say man I I thoroughly enjoyed this book Subhan Allah um I was like how is he going to follow up the first one and you did Mas to be honest I was worried about

that I was thinking you know with the first book and the success and the um acceptance like the Kul that the first book had when I had the idea of writing

the second book I just did it just to it was more of a passion project I didn't have really any goals or expectations with the second book other than I wanted to provide the information that I left

out of the first book in the second book um but I didn't expect it to do as well as the first one even in my head cuz I'm just like VI is kind of alhamdulillah

now a classic yeah and Subhan Allah you're you're Amazon bestselling author and that's the real best s author right not those New York Times newspaper ones right alul yeah yeah yeah because you

with Amazon sales I'm independently published and so with Amazon sales it's literally the people who decide who the best sellers are because they're the ones that buy the books and push you up

to being the best sellers it's a true Marketplace alhamdulillah so it makes sense if you're a bestselling author there alhamdulillah alhamdulillah brother mallah and that's not all you do you're you're actually a bestselling

author a specialist in Arabic and Islamic text you have a master's degree in it and then you went on to alar University in Cairo to again uh specialized in Arabic and Islamic uh

text and literature um coming up to this one of the things that I was deeply interested in hearing from you is your perspective on Gazza and I make it a point to start off all my podcasts

recently with Gazza uh because it's the last thing uh it's it's the least I can do with a platform defitely definitely uh as someone who with with the way you write your books you you put into

perspective uh historical accounts political spiritual and you mold them all together to paint paint this beautiful picture and I'm so curious what you think where does Gaz as someone

who who specializes in Islamic history as well where does Gaz lie in the timeline of the nation of Muhammad peace be upon

s is the heart of the um andaz is the heart I would say the spiritual heart of the world what is happening is not just

a political event it's not just uh international relations Affair this is a deeply

spiritual and significant issue that reflects the spiritual state of the world and the spiritual state of the um and whatever catastrophes happen in that region are always remembered such as the

Crusades I mean you can argue there's been many crusades around the world but the one that people talk about the most is the one in Palestine definitely how do you think historians such as Mustafa

Briggs in the future 100 200 500 years from now uh will look back at this time and how the um deal with this because we're still in the middle of it and we don't know what the end result is going

to be just yet we can't really say anything or make any predictions but one thing that I feel is extremely important for Muslims and for everybody in the world not just Muslims but specifically

Muslims is to understand the history of the region and the politics of the region and global politics in relation to that region in order to understand what's going on today and I feel like

for many people we're disconnected from a deeper understanding of history and that's why we don't understand the world that we live in in the present day and why these things are happening and so

that's why it's um ironic so you mentioned my latest book which is the Beyond Bal black Muslims in the East but simultaneously

as I was writing that book last year February when I was hearing I finished another book and that book was about the relationship between Islam and the making of the modern world so that book

is called literally Islam and the making of the modern world but because I wanted to release Beyond Bal first I delayed that one and um in that book basically I

essentially summarize the relationship between the Muslim world and the west and the central area in that narrative is this area the area of Palestine the

area of sham as it was a part of the Roman Empire as it came to the Rashid as it served as the Battle Ground for the Crusades and the ideological split

between the East and the west and then as it Formed you know a central area in the development of politics in the Middle East all of this is things that I talk about in that book

and this was before what was happening inza happened when I wrote it so I feel like now is more of a time that that book is more relevant because if we understand the history of the region we

can understand what's going on now and what our role is and how we are all connected to it um inshallah and when's that book coming out in Ramadan inshallah oh oh my goodness so I'm just

finalizing the edits now but maybe by the time you release this podcast that book would already be out and it's called Islam and the making of the modern world I can't wait to read it man yeah so in that book I'm going to

discuss um all of these things and it's you know it's wider and it's deeper than just black history Islam which is the niche that I you know I'm famous for speaking about it's wider than even just

as Muslims it's about global it's a global history and a global story for us to understand the world that we live in and how that world ended up forming and

the role that Islam had to play in that sorry cuz the world we live in is globalized now exactly exactly and we live in this kind of globalized

monoculture that um is based on or is a react to the rise of Islam 100% but I think we'll talk about that later

in man this book that the black Muslims in the East uh one of the things that I loved about it one of the you know facts that you talked about is the Lost ring

of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon Him given by absans and what it signified can you tell us a little bit about it okay so um for many of us as

Muslims if you grow up Muslim and even if you didn't study the if you just watched the message for example you know the story of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam sending a group of his

companions to live in Africa before he established M because of the persecution that they were facing in Mecca and so a group of 14 Companions crossed the Red

Sea from Arabia into Africa including s the daughter of the Prophet sallam her husband San who became the third Khalifa and um the delegation was led by Jaffer

IB ABI Talib who was the cousin of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the elder brother of s Ali IB Abu Talib and so when they arrived they were hosted by Al Nashi who was the King of

the axum Empire at that time or he was the emperor rather of the axum Empire and through his interaction with the Muslims he eventually became Muslim himself and he lended a great deal of

support to the nation of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and to put this in perspective this is in the fifth year of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam Mission and he establishes m in

the 13th year of his mission so this is 8 years before he has his own City and this is at the time when the qur were in their height of persecution against the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam so

when the prophet Salli wasallam and his religion the religion of Islam did not even have a home in Arabia it found a home in Africa and it was Africans that were the first people to support and

help the prophet sallallah wasam and host the first ever openly practicing Muslim Community and so eight years later when the prophet s establishes

Medina His companion start to return and leave Africa and go back to Medina and many Africans who had become Muslim through jaff ABI Talib the cousin of the

Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam decided to follow and live with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in Arabia so in the prophet Muhammad's

early Community not only did he have um the descendants of enslaved Africans and the whole story of how they even got to that penins in the first place is something I cover in the book and I

think we'll probably talk about but you had three Africans who had come because they were Muslim and they wanted to live with the messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam and Nashi even sent delegations

of people from his from his kingdom to live with the prophet sallam to help him and protect him such as the tribe of bani arida so amongst those people he sent he also gave them gifts to give the

prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and one of those gifts was the ring that the prophet sallam used to wear and this is a ring that's spoken about in all of the books

ofar Muslim and specifically in the sh muhm of IM there's a whole chapter on the Ring of the prophet sallam and how he used to wear it and um this

ring was the ring that the prophet Sall wasallam used to use and he used to sign his letters with this ring and this ring he wore it and he continued to wear it until he passed away and when he passed

away S Abu Bakr the first Khalifa took the ring and used to wear it and then after he passed away s Omar the second Khalifa took the ring and used to wear it and then s who was the third khif

after the prophet so the third successor of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam used to wear the ring until the middle of hisa when the he was by a well and the ring fell into the

well and they tried to retrieve it from the well but they never found it again and it was said some of the commentators said the FNA that happened during the time of s's began after he lost that ring it

apparently had some kind of spiritual significance as well but it was a gift that he received from the African king Nashi what a what a

movie plotline yeah ald Subhan Allah and they tried for three days to look for it and they couldn't find it and they couldn't find it and then you know the the fitner that began in the time of s

is what split the Muslim umah into you know the different FAS the different sects and all the problems of the Muslim World essentially began really at that

time when the ring was L after the ring was lost yeah Subhan Allah and the prophet peace be upon Him Africa's significance and um black people's significance in the Muslim uh in the

prophet peace be upon him's life and Mission starts even before that as you mentioned in the book yes it does as you've mentioned uh in in the book that

uh every messenger came with Miracles that resembled whatever the people around him valued and the Arabs valued language thus the Quran and one of the people some of some of the people that

established that culture of valuing language were the crows of the Arabs um a group of black they're just black Arabs at this point some of them are black Arabs some of them are black

Africans some of them are mixed can you tell us a little bit about them the crows of the Arabs the crows of the Arabs interesting so anybody who studies the Arabic language and even the history

of the Arabs as you mentioned knows the significance that the language held in the culture and the preservation of the history of the Arab people they weren't

people who built amazingly great um structures like the Coliseum or you know Left Behind major books or anything but the thing that was valued the most in

pre-islamic Arabia was the poetry and the language of the Arab people and so we know for example there was a time before the prophet sallam established

Islam in the Arabian Peninsula that the Kaaba used to have these poems hung on the door of the Caba and they were called Al the poems that are hung up and anybody who studies Arabic you have to

once you reach past the stage of studying nah and S and grammar Etc to master your Arabic you study uh the sh the six poets and their you know the

poems that were hung on the doors of the Kaa because their eloquence and their Mastery of the Arabic language is unmatched and it's through that that you also get a lot of the like the different principles of Arabic aric language so

grammarians who wrote the rules for Arabic language after Islam used to base their rulings on oh well you know this poet said in this poem this so This therefore it means grammatically this is

correct Etc so these poets most of them were warriors who would write poetry and the status that the Poetry had is similar to

Shakespeare's contribution to the English language for example they were legendary there were poems that everybody would memorize everybody would study and history and culture was preserved through them and people you

know passed on their principles and their morals and their story essentially through these poets and their poetry and amongst those early poets before Islam

there were a group of poets called the crows of the Arabs and most of them were warriors they were saluk so they were like um you know kind of Bandits they were people who were uh

ostracized by their communities or their societies and so they went and lived in the desert and they used to kind of Rob people steal from the rich give to the poor there was like a whole kind of culture around that and they would fight

other tribes and fight other nations and they would detail their lives so they'll detail their time in the desert they would detail their relationships with other tribes they would detail their battles and their swords and their armor

so you get an encompassing view of the culture of pre-islamic Arabian society through their poetry and these crows of the Arabs theab who are the most famous

pre-islamic poets they're called the crows because of their skin color because they were black and there's a professor he's an Egyptian Professor actually in 1973 he wrote a book

called the black poets and their specialty in Arabian poetry and in that he details the biography of over 20

different black poets many of them were born to Arab fathers and African mothers some of them were completely African and some of them were completely Arab but they were considered black and you know

their skin color was black and it's important to note that their skin color their ethnicity was highlighted and it was also an essential part of a lot of their poetry so the most famous of them

is a man called ANB shad and he was somebody whose poetry was hung on the Caba and his father was the was the chief of a tribe called Banu abs and his

mother was the slave of his father and her name was zabba zabba means like a small black grape or

raisin and so zabiba gave birth to antara for her master the the chief of ban abs and an grew up as a slave he wasn't recognized by his father as his

biological son and so he grew up tending to the animals of the tribe doing all the odd jobs in the tribe and he was you know living as a slave amongst the tribe and then there was a day in which the

tribe was raided by a neighboring tribe so when they were raided by the this neighboring tribe all of the men were defeated or they ran away and an

single-handedly defeated the Knights of the other tribe and so his father saw you know the because the most important thing for a man to do at that time was

to be a warrior you you were you were I remember one of our one of my teachers uh s Omar Tani he used to say the Arabs

they have five attributes that they valued in a man wealth physical strength

poetry umm like knowledge and the fifth one was uh

trustworthiness generosity understanding fil yeah yeah so but this man so he showed you know sh he was he was a brave man he was a warrior he was able to you

know establish Authority and dominance over this invading tribe and defend his tribe and so his dad kind of rewarded him for that by by recognizing him as

his son so overnight he goes from being the slave of the tribe or the slave of the chief of the tribe to being the prince essentially of the tribe and you know being recognized by his father

which made a lot of the other young men of the tribe jealous and so an now in his Newfound position he had always had a love for his cousin abah and this

became like the equivalent of of Romeo and Juliet today in the Western World in the Arab world the romantic story between two people that is the most famous story in the history of the Arab

world is an and abah and so he falls in love with his cousin abah and now he's the prince of the tribe he's the son of the chief so he can propose to her and

so he proposes to her father that he wants to marry abah and the father even though he has been recognized by his own father he still looks at him as a slave and he looks at the fact that he's black

and you know he's the son of an African woman and all of these things and he doesn't want to give his daughter in marriage to an but he cannot deny an The

Proposal because an's father is the chief of the tribe so he comes up with all of these herculian tasks that he gives to

an to do so he says you know I want you to go to this tribe and steal this treasure I want you to go to this area and kill this monster I want you to he gives him all of these different things to so an throughout his life is going

along doing all of these different things to prove his love to abah and to win the hand of abah and every time he goes and he completes a mission he's writing poetry on the way there and whilst he's going through it and after

it and so all of these poems were kind of gathered and circulated and a lot of them are love poems a lot of them are poems about him reflecting upon his status as you know uh being racially

discriminated against being the son of an African woman and you know how that was for him in the tri and how that was for him in life the love that he has for abah and a lot of them are love poems

that he writes to abah that become you know the Quint the quintessence of Arabian love poetry and all of these poems are collected and gathered and circulated and some of them are even

hung on the doors of the Kaa and then after the prophet s's time and the of the then the of ban we see in the Abbasid period which is the Golden Age

of Islam in the court of harun Rashid one of the poets in the court writes a book about the Epic of an and he gathers all of the poetry and he kind of tells

the story of ant and that is given the same kind of status as the the Sonet of Romeo and Juliet in the Arab world it becomes the most famous love story in the Arab world and it's the story of the

son of an African woman it truly is a story it really is it's beautiful story that fascinated me and poet from the black uh from the crows of the Arabs uh

was the poet suim the M of B hases actually I'll stop there can you can you tell us about him and the significance of his story and the

prophet peace be's comments on him Subhan Allah so he was somebody that he lived during the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the prophet s wasallam listened to his poetry and commented on his poetry and

it's narrated in some Hadith the comments that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam left on his poetry we can actually even go to the book yeah yeah on up it's on page

33 and I'll read you a direct you know okay I see all the markings in the book masallah you see me you see me so soim was a renowned Nubian poet and we know

the Nubian people were people who live in what we now know today as Sudan and Southern Egypt and there are black people uh native African people who live in that region but he was a Nubian poet

who lived during the time of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam he was originally an slaved man and after his gift and his poetry was recognized

he was presented as a gift to Theif SAR SB afan and whenman declined this gift Sim was bought and freed by the Banu

tribe and became their MAA so their MAA client is like if a tribe purchases a slave and frees them that person is now considered a member of that tribe but they're not ethnically a member of the

tribe they are mola they a client of that tribe and one of sim poems were quot was quoted by the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and by S Abu Bakr and it was a poem in which he

mentioned you know old age and Islam are enough to forbid a person from unfavorable actions and so this poem when the prophet sallam heard it he said mallah this is an excellent line of

poetry and S Abu Bakr as well and then during the time of s Omar he was brought before SAR to recite this poem and when he recited the poem Omar listened to the poem and he said if you had mentioned

Islam before old age I would have rewarded you but he mentioned old age before Islam that it's enough for you to be old and then be a Muslim to stop you from doing certain things that you

shouldn't do he said no you should have put Islam first can you actually quote exactly what the prophet P said because he said it a specific way I don't want to misquote the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and I haven't memorized

that Hadith and I haven't put it in here no you did are you sure yeah I think it's like excellent and true yeah yeah it's true it's true it's true but I didn't quote it directly

oh is that okay I just paraphrased it but essentially the prophet wasam said that when he heard the poem this is a poem written by somebody who's A from amongst the people of paradise Subhan and he said how excellent a poem or a

line of poetry this is imagine being such a good poet that that the receiver of Revelation is still amazed by your eloquence Subhan Allah yeah and then uh

a lot of his other poems were love poems as well he used to write poetry for women that he was in love with but who would never marry him because he was a slave and because he was you know a

foreigner and um a lot of the names of the PO so like you know we have these generic names for if you listen to Arabic poetry like Leila and Salma and

all of these kind of romantic names that people would write poetry to in order to express their love Etc a lot of them are based on the Poetry of sim and the women

that he was in love with Subhan Allah and he speaks of uh Blackness bondage and the poor condition of the late antique Arab

Society um some black groups in America are claiming that Arabs are as racist as Europeans uh and your book's very nature is trying to discover the relationship

between uh Blackness and Arabs pre and post Islam is is that claim of racism true I I myself have been conflicted I mean I I look at Twitter and they're saying these things and I'm like no I

hope this isn't true but I'm not learned enough to know whether it is or not it's true in a sense and it's false in a sense okay it's true in a sense and it's false in a sense specifically when it

comes to pre-islamic Arabia there was racism and there was anti-blackness but a lot of it and I think it's important to add the

political and the historical context of the fact that Arabians were colonized by Africans H in the southern Arabian I mentioned this in um in Beyond below

black Muslims in the East that southern Arabia was colonized by the Ethiopians and they ruled that area if we know the story of abraha which is a story mentioned in the Quran of the companions

of the elephant they were people who had come from Africa colonized the southern Arabian Peninsula and then marched on the Kaaba and tried to destroy the Kaaba so people looked at black people with

that eye that these are the people who invaded our Peninsula these are the people who tried to destroy the ca these are the people who are foreigners in our land and are fighting us for Authority

in our land but what the you told me last episode weren't the Arabs black at that time some tribes were some tribes some original Arab tribes were black some of

them were white lighter skinned they were the the the melanation and the skin tone of the Arabs varied from tribe to tribe but there were some Arabic tribes that were known as being extremely dark

extremely black it's not fair to for us to say like a lot of Afro centrists try to make out that the entire Arabian Peninsula were all black that's not true but they weren't all white either and they weren't all lightskinned either

tribe to tribe they differed in their skin color and some tribes were known for their dark complexion some tribes were known for having lighter skin complexions so even if we look at the description of the prophet sallallahu

alaihi wasallam in tii and in all of these books the sh he sh Muhammad describes him as being not AB so he wasn't extremely white and he wasn't

Adam he wasn't extremely dark he was somewhere in the middle and they describe him as being B light skinn or white with hints of red like a red

undertone say that in AA who's also Arab was described as being ala the red woman so because of the extreme whiteness that she had and she was just as Arab as some of the other Arabs who described as

being extremely black so amongst the Arabs we see different skin tones and different phenotypes but what I want to emphasize is that a lot of the racism

that you see attributed to from Arabs to Africans during that time specifically in the pre-islamic period and in early Islam was due to the fact of the legacy

of them being colonized by Africans and the and the the feeling that they had towards their country being invaded and land being taken from them by Africans okay so they didn't have necessarily an

issue with the skin color black they had an issue with the ethnicity of African at that time I would say it was a bit of both a little bit of both it was a bit of both cuz you mentioned the tribes that they were known for being certain

colors yes did that decide the status of the tribes it didn't decide it didn't decide the status of the tribes overall but you know certain things become

Aesthetics and certain Aesthetics are more celebrated than others according to the trends of the time so for example we know like nowadays in our society what

was considered attractive in men and in women maybe 20 years ago is different from what's considered attractive now what will be considered attractive in men and women today like a certain look

or a certain phenotype right now that's popular in 2024 in 2050 when we have our kids and they're growing up it will be considered

completely different and so there were trends of lighter skin being preferred over darker Skin Within the Arabian Peninsula some of it as well and a lot of it was due to the influence of the

Greco Roman culture and the influence of the um judeo-christian tradition and some of the anti-blackness that's in those traditions reflecting on the Arab people and we see this more in the post

Islamic period in the time when the Muslim World expands into former territories of the Roman Empire and we see them reading the pre books of the previous Nations reading the books of the ancient Greeks and the ancient

Romans and the Jews and the Christians and the Bible and the talmud and all of the biblical text that surround that we see then things such as the narrations

about the curse of ham entering into the Arabian Consciousness we see we see for example the ancient Greeks um and their comments on Ethiopians and on Egyptians

Etc entering into the consciousness of the Arabs and then that affects the way they see black people and they interact with black people and it leaves even a stain on the Islamic tradition that we

see you know throughout certain classical texts in the Islamic tradition and Jonathan Brown Professor Jonathan Brown of Georgetown University he wrote a book about this and me and him did a

conference around that book and the book is called um blackness in Islam blackness in Islam he goes into more detail about this and the whole book is

essentially a uh answering the question is Islam racist or are Arabs you know is Arabian culture or Islamic culture racist or anti-black and he goes into

extreme detail in that but in summary I would say anti-blackness did become a part of Arab culture and that's something that we can't deny a lot of it though was not from

inherent pre-islamic Arabian culture but a lot of it was the influence of the judeo-christian tradition and the Greco Roman tradition on the Arab

Consciousness after the spread of Islam yeah and little do they realize and little did I realize one of the shocking facts that I learned from your book is

that some of the words in the Quran are of Ethiopian therefore African origin yes yes um and one of the ones that struck me was T yeah I've never everyone

wants to tah is some of the one of the most loved suras in the Quran obviously all of them are beautiful but people really love tah and uh you mentioned on page 54 what it means can you tell us

what T's origin is so there's a call there's a one of the sayings of some of the sahaba who were commentating on the Quran the most famous of them being I Abbas so I Abbas is the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi

wasallam and he was known for his ability to interpret and explain the Quran and so between him and between and between a few of the you know compan of the prophet and their students they

mentioned that Taha means literally oh man in an Ethiopian language we are not sure of which Ethiopian language it is and we know that there are several languages in that region but what we do

know is that many of the sahabah and there are many Hadith to this effect and I go through all of them in the book that so many words in the Quran actually come from these languages the same way

you know East African languages East African languages specific to the Ethiopian region that there are words in the Quran that are directly taken from their language and they were in use in the Arabian Peninsula and so they were

Incorporated in the Quran as well another one that is beloved to many is Yassin Yin what does yassin's Ethiopian origin what is it we have to go to the

book page uh 55 page 55 oh yeah you circled it even love so we see that Abbas who I mentioned earlier says yeah means oh

human being in Ethiopian in one of the Ethiopian languages andar narrated that he had say tah means oh man in one of these Ethiopian

languages exactly what I mentioned earlier and there are so many other words you know if you're somebody that's familiar with the Quran it's important that when you read that chapter you'll be able to see a lot of the words that

you're used to reciting and why I think as well I want to mention uh as a footnote cuz people always like to jump in the comments and be like ah how can you say that this information was information that Not only was it taken

from the sahaba but it was written in a book by Jalal Su the famous um Egyptian scholar whose tap of the Quran tap Jalal is the most widely referenced tap of the

Quran in the Muslim world yeah you're literally quoting sahabat speaking to each other Companions of the Prophet speaking to each other exactly which shows that this was all common knowledge to them yeah another one that you

mentioned is s can we see that cuz that made the the verse make a lot of sense for me that's on 56 so sigil literally means you know papers or Scrolls that

are folded up but it's not an Arabic word and in 56 I mentioned here Allah says in the Quran in uh the Surah 21

verse 104 that on that day he will roll up the sky like theil rolls up Scrolls so

it's in the Quran and sigil in the Ethiopian language meant a man or a scribe so the way that the Scribe rolls up these Scrolls is the description that Allah

gives on the way that he'll roll up the heavens and the Earth on the day of judgment like men roll up Scrolls exactly made my made the verse make a lot of sense for me

subhah and not only did the Quran use Ethiopian words but the prophet peace be upon him you mentioned was famous for using Ethiopian words exactly in fact

one of the words he used was for a Hadith narrating the end of times um you wrote about this in I believe page

58 let's check it out real quick say in page 58 the prophet sallallah wasam in musnad Ahmed narrates that at

the end of the time there will be a lot of killing and a lot of murder but the word that he uses is haraj so he says one of the signs of the end of times is that there will be a lot of haraj Trials

and haraj and the sahabah had never heard this word before so they asked him what is haraj and he said it means killing in a Ethiopian language yeah and um the prophet sallam as well there was

a sahaba called and she was one of the people who grew up in Africa during this first

migration and so when she returned to the Arabian Peninsula and she was with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam the prophet sallam would use Ethiopian words to make her feel more familiar and

remind her of you know her time in Africa so she narrates that when she came from Ethiopia she was a very young girl and the prophet Sall wasallam made her wear a sheet with marks on it or a cloth with marks on it and the prophet

sallallahu alaihi wasallam was commenting on the marks on the cloth and he said s s which means beautiful in Ethiopia so he was encouraging her telling her you know her outfit was beautiful but in a language that she was

amiliar with yeah okay I was going to ask you about that in Nar so I'm glad you talked about itah um uh where where we at Ian how how much time are we at

right now uh at 56 minutes M okay let's take a break let's take a break get you some food yeah the food's here right just so the audience knows we took a

little break and got some food in US shout out to JC's cheese steaks yeah and Carol near their chicken wings are amazing yes yes yes apparently

thoroughly impressed by the wiks if anyone's hosting Briggs just know he likes lemon pepper wings yeah yeah yeah alhamdulillah get him for there was such a smile on your face when she said it

was one of the flavors I was like [Laughter] wow well yeah man we were talking during the break about um east east and west

and the history of the Roman Empire in general and how actually the Middle East played a big part in that and recently this new docu drama has come out on

Netflix that everyone's been talking about uh about Alexander the Great um and one of the things people are upset about is well first of all

they portrayed him as gay um and they also blond hair blue-eyed white guy was alexand the great uh a blonde

blue-eyed white guy that was gay so about the blond hair blue eyes I'm not sure but he was definitely European he came from Macedonia I haven't studied his personal life too

thoroughly so I don't know about his sexual orientation but I think this is also shows a lot of people's disconnect from history because he comes from like an ancient Greek society he came from

Macedonia but it was part of that shared ancient Greek culture and a major thing in ancient Greek culture was same-sex

relations specifically pedest pestry like the older man and younger men having a sexual relationship that was like a major part of the culture and so

every major kind of important free man in that society would have a young boy that he would be engaged in a sexual relationship with

and he would Mentor them until they came to maturity and then they would go off and get married and continue the cycle but that was like a very very big thing in their culture to the point that they

had a name for it ped asraa and then when the Romans took over the area they used to call that um MOS gorum like the

Greek way of life literally same SI relations between older men and younger men it was like a sugar daddy kind of situation to the point that it's even

ingrained in there so like Plato writes about it and he says the love between a man and a boy is a better form of love and a more Superior form of love than

the love between a man and a woman what and not only that but even within their myths within their religion so for example Zeus who was the King of the

Gods and he was the major Greek god he had a boy that he fell in love with and he was described as being a young boy with no facial hair and he kidnapped him

and took him to Mount Olympus and he made him the person that served all the other Greek gods wine and was there like the cup bearer of the Gods I think his name was ganged but the whole story of

that was that Zeus who was a womanizer saw saw him fell in love with him kidnapped him and raped him and took him to to Olympus to keep him there forever

jeez and even Achilles in the you know the um The Iliad and the Odyssey one of the most famous figures of ancient Greek mythology is Achilles you know Achilles

heel we hear about Achilles Achilles was in a sexual relationship with one of his um his fellow soldiers his name was

patrus Petrus yeah so like if you read the ilad or the Odyssey I don't know which one it is in you see the relationship between so it was a big part even the Spartans like you know 300

the Spartans to be initiated into the religion of Zeus and to be initiated into like Spartan society homosexual

activity was a big part of that what yeah so it's not it's not anything new so like when people are reacting to this it's like I think they've had too many

kind of how close was that culture to the Romans demise this was before the demise of the Romans but it led up to it because you had the ancient Greeks and then they

fell to the Romans and then that's when Western Roman fell but the Eastern Roman Empire continued but it the E Roman Empire was doing this homosexual act for the most part not for the most part but

it it occurred there it wasn't a big part of the culture the same way it was in the Greek culture because in the Greek culture it was something that free men and high society men did to other

boys who were part of high society to initiate them completely nor was completely normal every man would have their wife who had their kids and they have their young boy who was their their

mistress so weird did they view it as homosexuality or no they just viewed it as a way of life I feel like the way we view sexual orientation is different from the way like you know now we have labels we have all of these different

names for things whereas with them it was just it just was what it was yeah I mean similar to Islam Islam has a different view of homosexuality than uh the West does because Islam sees

homosexuality as an act not an identity exactly and I think most classic cultures that's how it was same sex relations has never been an identity it's always been an act can you search

upim uh the is was Alexander the Great blonde blueeyed because okay now I'm over the the homos thing I'm just left with this one and as we're trying to figure it out

and one of the most fascinating tales that you speak I literally thought I was reading a a movie script yeah is it has been made into a movie if I think it is what I think you're going to ask me about going

yes it has it has uh the female Sultana of the Delhi uh sultanate in India Ria Sultan can you tell us her story so

Razia Sultan was a princess of the muga Empire you can Google her and see if anything comes up and um her father was the king of the of the Empire empire at

that time it was based out of Delhi in India and her father had this princess as a daughter and he had other Sons so typically it's always the sons that inherit their fathers and become the

next Monarch but on her father's deathbed he says Ria is more knowledgeable and she's brav and she's more honorable than all of my sons I'm making her the next Sultan so she

becomes a female ruler in an Indian Muslim empire and this is something that everybody kind of does not like in the court and in the palace specifically her

brothers her half brothers and a lot of the other Elders of the court but she rules with an iron fist she's an amazing Warrior and then she appoints an African

man as the head and she appoints an African man as the head of her Cavalry and he becomes you know one of the closest allies to

her his name is yakut and or his title rather is yak yak I believe let me check the book just to make sure yeah 158 yeah

158 yeah Jamal yakut so jamaludin Yak becomes the head of her Cavalry the closest kind

of warrior in her Army to her and some people even uh insinuate that they were involved in a romantic relationship but he's an East African man he's a man that comes from you know Ethiopia originally

and there were a lot of East Africans in India in Pakistan in bangl adesh at that time and that's something I speak about in this book even the cover of the book If you see is like a image that my um my

graphic designer made of a historical figure called Malik Amber who was a East African man that became a very very high ranking um Authority in the subcontinent

and then this is like a qut it's taken from another picture but he merged the two pictures together so Ria suan and jamaludin yakut kind of rule the empire

together she's he is her right-hand man Etc and eventually unfortunately she is defeated by her enemies specifically you know her brother and the people who are are trying to attack her but her story

become famous because you know we hardly ever see Muslim female rulers in Muslim empires it's a very very rare thing there have only been a few in history and she's one of the most famous Queens

in history and specifically for that subcontinent region India Pakistan Etc she's a a very major historical figure and so there have been movies made about her there have been books written about

her and all of this and she's you know it's an epic story I would say yeah it it is and one of the reasons that struck me that her father says that her

brothers can't be um in charge is uh he said something about wine my sons give themselves up to wine and every other excess and none of them

possess the capability of man managing the Affairs of the country Subhan Allah the same reasoning that he gave for why his sons aren't manly enough or aren't

men enough to To Rule The Empire it's the same that me and Abdullah we're talking about last week giving yourself to desire and excess vices exactly subh

alhamdulillah but she was knowledgeable she was disciplined and um yeah she became one of the greatest Kings of the Delhi

Queens rather of the Delhi sultanate she said defeated by her half brother sorry uh she he said her dad said about her she proven skills in governance

intellectual prowess and ability in Military and administrative matters so she was like a military you know mind she was riding horses she was cutting down people in battles she was like a

warrior princess yeah yeah little uh what's that Mulan thing going on there you love the Disney movie real dude what if we searched it up

right now and it turned out that was original you guys got to be kidding no no Mulan has its origins in Chinese mythology okay we won't take it away from that we won't take it away we won't

make Mulan Muslim get like this weird Asian comment um what I just noticed one of one of the chapters of your of the

book flipping back to the book that's coming out in Ramadan the New World Order yeah what what do you talk about there I think I let people wait until

comes out and they can read it but essentially um there's a Old World Order and there's a new world order so the old world order was based on you know classical

civilization classical intellectual history the legacy of you know ancient empires and cultures and religious traditions and then there's a new

culture that exists after colonization and the transatlantic slave trade and then the rise of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism and

then sec ISM exists there's a new world order that is born and this new world order is based upon flipping traditional Society on its head and that is the

challenge that we see today in the Western World in the global Western monoculture that affects every single area of the world is this tension between the

tradition and the New World Order the fact that nothing is sacred anymore nothing has any spiritual significance anymore everything is

materialistic and everything is humanistic and everything is egotistic all of these things are aspects of the New World Order which has its roots in certain intellectual

Traditions that were born in the west Traditions um such as what I mentioned earlier secular secularism liberalism liberalism all of these isms and schisms

so I talk about that in the last chapter of the book that uh reminds me do you have any wacky fun conspiracy theories that you actually believe in not that I'm willing to discuss on

camera when we turn the cameras off we can talk about that you know was the one but as a as a teenager I was like super into

conspiracy theories I watched all of the YouTube videos and I saw a lot of the things and that kind of yeah come on sure one you don't have to agree with it

you I I can't even think of any at this time M Tom when he saw that portrait of the American astronaut he he was like he started laughing I was like what you laughing about and then he was telling me about how like the the moon landing

conspiracy oh yeah there is a whole conspiracy around that and he told me he doesn't think dinosaurs are real like he was slightly joking but slightly I know a lot of people who believe in um a lot of creationists who like are against the

theory of evolution and stuff they don't believe in dinosaurs that's something I've heard that's wild yeah yeah I haven't done enough research to know what my stance on that is yet hm but

there's so many things so for example and this is something that I think the crisis that's going on now in Gaza has brought

people people's attention to the fact that nowadays because we have social media because there's no gatekeeping on

the information that's available to people if we go back 50 years when there's no media except mainstream media there's no news coverage except

mainstream news coverage you will never know the true story or the reality of anything that's going on in the world if it doesn't align with the interests of

the people who are reporting it so we know for example certain news channels certain media companies are portraying the situation in Gazza in a completely

different way than what we know is the reality on the ground and why we know the reality on the ground is because there are people who are on Instagram on Twitter who are recording live and

showing what is really happening and then we've also seen all of these fake scenarios and these fake reports being created by people and put on the news these fake like there was one thing I I

saw it was a video of somebody who entered a hospital and he said yes this is the list of the names of the terrorists who are hiding in this hospital and it literally

said it was literally a timetable of the day of the week calendar it was a calendar or like a some kind of something like that fake completely

fake we know that it's fake now because we have access to information but if it was 50 years ago and the only information you had is what is being edited and put on the television or on the

radio who knows who knows really who knows yeah this is literally it someone commented they're like do you

know that Arabs are going to see this piece of news coverage like what do you think only English speakers are seeing this yeah literally it's like a timetable it says

y it's a calendar yeah sub man but it was being presented as these are the names of the of the terrorists that are hiding in the hospital and that's why um so like we're literally seeing these

fake scenarios being pushed in front of our eyes but due to the societ due to like the technology and the situation that we're in now we're able to know

that it's false but 50 years ago 100 years ago how would we know how would we know now going to the OG

book this one the original one Beyond V yeah black Islam one of the one of some of the subjects we get didn't get to

cover last time uh is is African uh or black Muslims in the in the west uhhuh and one of the really fascinating stories that you speak about is w and

the largest mass conversion to Islam in America Muhammad M can you tell us about it is there a video of this there should be yeah if you go on YouTube I don't think there's a video of the actual um

conversion and then largest conversion in USA in history in history in history like Mass conversion people converting

to Islam in one instance at one time IM Muhammad is the largest I don't know if it's recorded or not but the story behind him is that we all know for

example Mak X and Malcolm X had a mentor called Elijah Muhammad Imam Zade talks about this Imam zade's video is really really good about this because he's a

direct result of this who Mass reverted half a million people to Islam so I don't know if the number is really half

a million but the largest kind of Proto pseudo Muslim movement was the Nation of Islam the members of the Nation of Islam they refer to

the I would love to have man Z SH on do you know him yeah I do bro put in a good word for me man I'd love to have him on inshah he would be very very beneficial and it's important for us to benefit

from our elders whilst we still have them oh yeah he was l a mentor of the pro of uh Muhammad Ali yeah he was very very close to him and um yeah we were

together in Canada just recently at RIS we spoke at R together well we didn't speak together but he spoke and then I spoke yeah I'm doing that oh bro seeing you together would be and my wife

actually grew up in his community in Northern California for a little bit Yeah so like when my when I I was alhamdulillah last Ramadan and this Ramadan as well I was the Imam at his

mosque Lighthouse mosque in um California in Oakland so last last Ramadan I was there I was teaching tap and this Ramadan I'll be back there and um there was a time I came to a

lighthouse with my wife and um everyone in the Masjid kind of remembered her from when she was a kid and so they were coming up to her Etc and she was saying I remember Imam Z and I remember this

community and she learned her Quran and her Arabic there in that community and now she's like a wife and her mother 20 something years later so he's been doing

amazing work for years and he's a giant in the history of you know Islam in the Americas but Imam War back to your question was the son and the successor of Elijah Muhammad so Elijah Muhammad

was the leader of the Nation of Islam and from the 30s all the way into his death in the 70s in 1975 he was essentially I would say one of the most influential black people in

the country and he had an organization which was one of the largest organizations in the country but as we know it was a pseudo Islamic organization it had some

extracts of the teachings of Islam so they used the name Allah they used the name Muhammad Etc but it wasn't Islam as we know Islam Imam

war was his real name was Wallace and he was named after Wallace F who was the mentor of Elijah Muhammad and the person who the Nation of Islam believed was God in person so they said he is Allah in

the form of a person that came and Elijah Muhammad was his messenger and so he grew up with that ideology but what if the Muhammad was his Seventh Son and Elijah Muhammad was the Seventh Son of

his father so there was this kind of tradition that the Seventh Son of the Seventh Son or the seventh child of the seventh child is someone that's going to be special and so in his youth when he

was a child wace F told Elijah Muhammad that this is your successor this is the person that's going to complete your mission so he was always raised with that awareness around him that he was going to be the person to succeed his

father if his father passed away but what's interesting is that with him he was arrested uh for not taking part in the Vietnam War and in prison he kind of

interacted more with Sunni Islam and he came out a Sunni Muslim not only that but even before then his father had hired teachers to teach him Arabic so he could access the Quran directly and he

kind of studied he had some element of traditional Islamic scholarship that his father didn't have access to and so when it came time for in his later life before his father had passed away he had

already kind of disassociated himself with the ideology of the Nation of Islam but he was meant to be the successor then just before his father passed away his father you know kind of called him back into the community and on the first

savior's Day celebration so savior's day is like an annual meeting of all of the Nation of Islam in one place usually in Chicago um his father had passed away

before that and so he now had to address the Nation of Islam as the new L leader of the Nation of Islam and there were literally thousands of people some

numbers estimate of over 100,000 people in the room and he tells them and he addresses them and I literally spoke to a man I spoke to several people actually

who were there in the room when this happened wow so my good friend uh Muhammad mukaram his grandfather was a member of the Nation of Islam the father

of the Atlanta businessman Elijah mukaram his father was there his father told me the the events how it happened and because he was there there was another man that I interviewed that was

there in the room he was Arabic teacher in California in Oakland all of these Elders from the war Muhammad Community a lot of them were there and when he addresses this crowd of thousands of

people he says to them you know my father was on something now we're on something else we're going to become Muslim and he makes them all take the

shahada and explains traditional Sunni Islam to them and he converts the Nation of Islam into a Sunni Muslim movement and he turns all

of their temples into masjids and he teaches them how to pra Salah and so that savior's day when he gave that groom of people shahada who some

estimate to be in the high thousands was the largest known Mass conversion to Islam in history Subhan Allah wow and that was what Imam Z was talking about

in that video did he and after that all of the temples in the Nation of Islam become mid and so many major cities in America they all have you know the old school Muhammad Masjid like there's one

here in Dallas Masid Al Islam there's one in every usually major city in America and Muhammad schools for example and the Atlanta Masjid which is one of

the biggest masjids in Atlanta they were all part of this this movement and it was only after a couple of years that farakhan who was a close

disciple of Elijah Muhammad tried to reestablish the Old Nation of Islam and so he starts a completely new organization based on the old ideology and that's the continuation of Nation of

Islam that you see today but the majority of the people that were involved in the Nation of Islam during the time of Imam War immediately after

Elijah Muhammad passed away they all mostly became Sunni Muslims and their children and their grandchildren are Sunni Muslims including my wife M my wife's grandfather was a member of the

Nation of Islam and then he became a Sunni Muslim and there are many other African-American uh families Muslim families who have been Muslim now for four generations five generations who

stem from that movement specifically if we think about as well um Imam sahaj one of the most famous dies in

America somebody who's raised Millions for millions of for thousands of mass someone who's affected you know the spread of Islam in this country he was originally a part of the Nation of Islam

and then he became Sunni Muslim so you know this is a major part of of history of Muslim history and I even think about like just recently I have a

son um his mother's African American right alhamdulillah his mother's africanamerican from one of these communities his great-grandfather was a part of the Nation of Islam and he's now

the fourth generation Muslim in his family on his mother's side Subhan Allah Subhan Allah and one of the the theories one of the strongly back theories that

you hold in in Beyond Bel is that the the West African Muslims got to the Americas before Columbus yeah and Omari

that's one of the crazy conspiracy theories that I believe yeah so I mean you said that omari's account of manam Musa in The Voyage to North America yes

so we spoke about manam Musa earlier richest man to have ever lived emperor of the Mali Empire manam Musa when he's in Egypt is speaking to the Amir of

Cairo and he tells him the story of how he became the emperor of the Mali Empire and he says his older brother wanted to see what was on the other side of the

Atlantic Ocean so he sets up 200 ships full of people and 100 ships full of food and water and sends them across the

ocean and only one ship returns so after that he equips 2,000 ships with Muslims black West African Muslims from

the milei Empire mandinka people they enter these ships and he is the general of the Navy of these ships he leads them across the Atlantic Ocean and he gives

manam Musa the kingdom and he says if I return then I'll take the kingdom back if not then you're the king and he never returns so if these 2,000 ship set off

and this is in the early 1300s before Christopher Columbus's Voyage in 1492 that means that if they arrived on the

other side three black Muslims of West African origin arrived to the Americas before Christopher Columbus and this is something that when we look at The

Narrative of the third voyage of Christopher Columbus he says we found canoes that seem to come from the coast of Guinea which is West Africa he says

the natives have come to us with cloths that are similar to The al- Mazar cloths which the mo in Spain were using the Muslims who were trading with West African Muslims and cloths similar to

the cloth that we find in the coast of Guinea and in the mountains of Sierra Leon this is all in The Narrative of the third voyage directly narrated by a crew

member of Christopher Columbus himself they interview some of the Conquistadors the Spanish explorers who were colonizing the Americas in the 1500s they say they met for example the

king of Panama and he says there was a group of black people with golden Spears who were fighting us the natives and they came from another place and

they were Shipwrecked and they came here and now we're at war with them and Christopher Columbus takes these Spears and tests them and they're made up of

Gold Silver and copper in the exact same formula that the spears of the Warriors in the Mali Empire have the espers made and all of this is documented and there's a professor in Harvard

University called Leo Winer in the year 1920 you can Google him as well he writes a book called Africa and the discovery of the Americas so he's a European Professor that moves to America

and he becomes a professor of archaeology or anthropology at Harvard and he puts this Theory forward that looking at the evidence there were definitely Africans here in the Americas

before Christopher Columbus arrived to the Americas and he provides all the evidence which of course in that era Jim Crow era is rejected and he's silenced and he's made fun of but he's a Harvard University Professor

that wrote an entire book on this subject over 100 years ago yeah and as you mentioned we're talking America South and North uh including the Pirates of the Caribbean

which is something a lot of people commented under our video about do you know the story the Muslim origin of the Pirates of the cariban yeah so the pirates of the Carib and the pirate that

the story was based upon converted to Islam and became Muslim and a lot of pirates during that period of time were converting to Islam and becoming Muslim

so if you look Jack Ward was known later as YF R he was an English pirate who later became a Corsair for the Ottoman Empire operating out of Tunis and he

converted to Islam and he's the inspiration behind the Pirates of the Caribbean so the Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Spyro is based upon a historical pirate who became Muslim was

he black or white no he was he was English he was English and he became Muslim he Englishman yeah through interacting with the Ottoman Empire who was ruling North Africa at

the time he eventually became Muslim and converted to Islam wow look at that uh Jack W was a famous he converted to Islam and served in the Ottoman Empire

in the last of his years under the Algerian Governor Subhan Allah yeah and and the so you know Muslim history is everywhere yeah I just

King is Muslim Pirates of the Caribbean Muslim Disney's after us dog the world is after us yeah for sure and I think there's some fascinating stories that

you mentioned in Beyond Bel about Muslims in South America and one of them being the the resistance in the revolutions that happened uh in Brazil

um the Portuguese also faced uh resistance by enslaved African Muslims uh specifically in a region called Baha

bah bah yeah can you tell me about it so before I even go to that region I want to actually talk about the first ever slave revolt that happened in the

history of the transatlantic slave trade was that during Ramadan it was not during Ramadan it was during Christmas okay and this Revolt happened in the

island of Santiago which we now know today as the Dominican Republic and Haiti and this was before the Haitian revolution so this island which we now

know today as Haiti and the Dominican Republic it was one Island and it was under Spanish control and the ruler of the island was Don Diego Columbus the son of Christopher Columbus and so in

the 1500s they began the transatlantic slave trade they were bringing Africans over and the first Africans that they enslaved they enslaved from the Sagal region so they were Muslims of wall of

ethnicity and so these wall of Muslims are there in this island working um as slaves on the plantations there and on Christmas day they decided to do a

revolt against the Spanish and against the son of Christopher Columbus and so they rise up they enter into the house they start killing people Etc and then they're all put to death eventually and

the rebellion was quelled but that's the first ever Revolution or Revolt that we see in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and it was done by Muslims and it's after that that the king of

Spain starts to ban the practice of Islam amongst the slave population in the Caribbean and this Begins the whole process of christianization and the

changing of the names of the slaves and making them not be able to practice their traditional religions and Islam was one of those traditional religions if not the main traditional religion so

this whole creation of the African-American people essentially and the afro Caribbean people as a people who do not have connection to their

language or their history in Africa began as a reaction to the fact that the Muslims were using Islam to inspire them to revolt the African Muslims the

African Muslims and so we see the same thing happen again in Portugal or in the Portugues Portuguese colony in Brazil Brazilian uh slave trade were taking

Muslims from Nigeria and from all over West Africa but specifically from Nigeria and amongst them were euroba Muslims and Lupe Muslims and even some a small minority of House of Muslims as

well who were sold into slavery and all of these Muslims from all of the different places coupled with the Muslims that came from Sagal coupled with the Muslims that came from Mali and

came in through Guinea and all of these areas were all living on these plantations in Brazil and most people don't know most Africans more Africans were taken to South America during the transatlantic slave trade than North

America and more to Brazil than anywhere else so Brazil brail has the largest African diaspora outside of Africa because there are more people of African descent in Brazil than any other country

in the world outside of Africa due to this because of this transatlantic slave trade that's why Brazilians have such a dark complexion some of them some of them especially in the area of Bahia

even if you Google for example Bahia and you see the people there A lot of them are clearly black clearly African descent people and Brazilians now would never think that their Origins are some

of the Muslim they would never they would never but interesting is in bahah there was something called the bahah revolt and what happened was on the plantations the Muslims are practicing

Islam still so they have quranic schools they have madas they have mosques they're fasting in the month of Ramadan they're praying Twi and in the month of

Ramadan the imams of the community gather everybody together and they declare Jad against the slave owners and they rise up they have a revolt and it

was called the Mal Revolt m a l e and this comes from the word used for Muslims in the euroba language cuz in

euroba Islam is called essim Mal the religion of Mali because Islam came to the euroba people through traders who came in from the Mali Empire so it has two meanings Mali in connection to the

Empire of manam Musa and Mal which is the euroba word for Muslim cuz there were eura Muslims mostly who were part of this revolt and so they over they try

to overthrow the slave owners but unfortunately the revolution is quelled and many of them are killed many of them are imprisoned and then a large population of them are actually sent

back to Africa and so they settle in Lagos and they form their own community and um I have a friend called Habib akand who's written a whole book

about this and an in-depth study of this so if you Google Habib aandi most of the books that he has are about Islamic

sexuality and Islamic uh uh history but if you go to his books he has one book called they don't even put it as one of

the books but put Brazil in there and then Habib aand just go to normal Google not Google Books yeah Illuminating the Blackness

this one here click that one no this black one here with the black man on it this one yeah so I do have a friend called Habib aand who's written an in-depth

study of this and he's written this book Illuminating the Blackness blacks and African Muslims in Brazil and this book details the entire history of this movement and the revolutions that

happened and it's after that that the king of Portugal starts to now crack down on the practice of Islam in the colonies and so he bans Islam he bans the slaves from being able to practice

Islam Etc the people who practice traditional African religions were able to hide their religion within Catholicism so you see these religious Traditions develop in the Latin speaking

World such as Santa and you know the orisha religions which are still practiced today in Brazil in Cuba and all of these countries where they would take their traditional West African deities that they were worshiping and

Associate them with Catholic saints so they could pretend to be Christian on the outside but they're still practicing their African religion on the inside and that allowed the religion to survive but Islam wasn't given the same chance

because we can't combine our religion with anything else and So eventually Islam starts to die out in those regions but even up until the early 1900s there's still Muslim communities in

Brazil that were descended from West African Muslim who were practicing Islam and were able to pass on their Islam Subhan Allah can you tell me about the prince amongst the

slaves uh ABD Rahman sorry so it's a there's a movie and the movie is called Prince among slaves and it's based upon the story of a West

African prince called abdurahman bin he's a fani prince from West Africa and he was captured and enslaved and he was taken to the Americas and one he's taken

to the Americas it's discovered that he could read and write and somebody who was Shipwrecked actually it's a it's a crazy story he's a slave he's enslaved

and he starts to grow vegetables in the plantation and he sells them in the market once he's selling his uh vegetables in the market one time he comes across this white man who was once

Shipwrecked in Africa and his father who was a king had taken him in and so him as a child had seen this white man and he used to speak to him and the white man had even taught him some English as

a child wow when he's captured and taken to America as a slave after many many years he comes across this white man in the market as he's selling his vegetables so he starts to recognize him

he starts to talk to him and then the white man goes to his master and says do you know this man is a prince he's not an ordinary slave and so he starts to try to campaign for him to be freed and

they cause such a rockus that the president of of America at the time hears about it and invites him to come and meet him in the white house cuz his character and knowledge was also renowned right exactly because he could

read and write he could speak Arabic everybody knew that this man was different and so the president he has a a meeting with the president I think it's John Quincy Adams at that time and

the president gives him his freedom the President says you can be free on condition that you return to Africa immediately and don't stay here in America because if he stays in America

as a free man it will inspire other slaves to also try and get their freedom and so he's given the opportunity to go to Liberia and there are two places in

West Africa where towards the end of the transatlantic slave trade there are many people of African descent who were enslaved in the Americas in North America that are given the opportunity

to return to Africa and they can return to Sierra Leon to the capital free town and that's why it's called free town because it became the town where liberated Africans could be free and

Liberia which comes from the word Liberty because it was a project by America to give African-Americans a chance to return to Africa and my ancestors on my mother's side are

actually from those communities no way yeah so my my my mother ethnically she's Creo she has woff ancestry through my grandmother's grandmother who was wof she was a wallof princess but the rest

of the family they're Creo and they identify as Creo till today anyway and so all my family on my mother's side they have last names like Roberts Jones Williams Etc because they were

African-American or afro Caribbean slaves or Liberated Africans who were given the chance to return to Africa after the slave trade and towards the end of the transatlantic slave trade so

abdur Rahman was one of them he was given the opportunity to return but what happens is that he has a wife and children and they're not given Freedom like he is so he tries to campaign to

get money to free his wife and his children he's able to free his wife and some of his children but then some of his children have to stay in bondage in America and so his family splits into

the part of the family that returned to Africa with him and the other part of the family that stayed here in America and it was the family who stayed here in America who preserved his history that

commissioned this film to be made about him with most death as the narrator of the film and the film is called a prince among

slaves incredible man incredible Subhan Allah I am I'm basically I'm out I'm out of questions I mean I have a couple more but go ahead I

feel like uh I'm here I'm here as long as you want to be here is there anything before I ask you uh another question is there anything that you feel I've left out of of The Narrative of your books

and that you want to share I feel like you've covered everything man honestly I thank alhamdulillah thank you between this episode and the last episode we

covered a lot yeah I'm like sweating a little bit this you doing all right brother yeah should we

okay uh mustfa Briggs man you uh converted to Islam when you were 13 years old uh and you've been on this journey to where now you are revered with your knowledge mallah even amongst

the Muslims who've been lifelong alhamdulillah why why are you doing all this you could have just converted to a slam you already accomplished the thing you needed to accomplish in life which is become a musl you did that why why are you writing

three four five books what's keeping you going honestly becoming Muslim to me it's a foundation and it's a beginning but it

wasn't my goal and objective my goal and objective was always to know Allah and to know the and to understand the

Revelation you can be Muslim but if you don't have for example knowledge of the Arabic language access to the Quran knowledge of the Hadith your Islam is always going to be

empty and I felt as though when I converted to Islam at the age of 13 I wanted to know as much about Islam as I could I wanted to understand the Quran I

wanted to be able to access the tradition and so that just led me on the path of trying to seek knowledge and all this knowledge that I've been trying to get and I don't feel like I've got that

much I learned it and I studied it for myself it's like Imam Malik who's one of the greatest Scholars that the umah has ever seen when he was asked why he studied knowledge he

said I studied knowledge for myself and it's the same thing with me we have this gift which is the Quran direct Revelation from Allah subhana wa ta'ala that came to us through the prophet

Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam why are we not trying to read it as much as possible why are we not trying to understand it as much as possible there's so much in there and it's inspiring to me for example when I go

and visit my sh and I see that they're in their 70s in their 80s and they still read the Quran every day I remember I had a she well I have a sheh still he's

still alive may Allah give him a long life she Muhammad Mak and he's the son of she Ibrahim Yas one of the greatest scholars in West Africa he used to spend a lot of time in England so anytime he

was in England I would be with him and one time we were traveling from England to Paris and we were on the Eurostar and so he pulls out his phone his like

Android and the whole trip on the train the Eurostar train from London to Paris he's just reading the Quran reading the Quran reading the Quran and this man is

in his late 70s reading the Quran reading the Quran until we get to Paris so I asked him because I heard that his father used to read a of Quran twice a

week so he would read the entire Quran from Saturday to Friday during the day and then in night whatever he read during the day he'd recite it in T at night so I said to him you know do you

read the Quran in the same way over seven days that your father did and he says no no so in my head I'm thinking yeah he must do less and he said I read it in six

days because Friday is a busy day for me I have a lot of guests so I can't read the same amount of Quran on Fridays as I do on other days so he says I start on s

Saturday I read five ju Sunday I read five ju Monday Tuesday Wednesday and then I finished the Quran on Thursday and I chill on Friday and then I come back to it on Saturday Subhan Allah

these are the people I grew up around and seeing them still obsessed with the Quran still reading it still extrapolating Knowledge from it from

that story recently I went to Nigeria and I saw his younger brother Abdul Ahad so I was talking to him about the Quran cuz he had his book have like even copies of the Quran that split in seven

parts so they can just read the part every day so I was asking him about his Quran and he says same thing he does it the way his father did it every week he says but when I was younger he said I

used to just read it and I'd read it quickly he says now I struggle to do myam because I'll start reading and then I'll come across a Ayah and then I'll pause and I'll be reflecting and new

meanings will be coming to me and new understandings will be coming to me and he's been doing this for over 40 years he's been reading the same Quran again and again from the time he memorized it

when he was a early teen up until now he's in his 60s he's still reading the Quran every week and every week he's saying he's learning something new he's drawing some kind of benefit from the

Quran so if that's the case you know the the path to knowledge I think never ends like just me for example I started studying early so I started studying the Quran properly when

I was like 15 and then studying the Arabic language when I was around 17 traveling to morania to Sagal to Gambia to sit with

the AMA properly when I was like 18 throughout college and throughout my masters to the point where 5 years ago I decided I'm going to move to Egypt and study full-time I just take breaks to go

on tour and write books and do all this other stuff but my main thing is I study right so for most people when they go to studying like a traditional Islamic institution or whatever it's a 4year

degree program they finish the four years they come back and they put Muti or she or IM in front of their name they get a job in a Masid or some Institute they start teaching and kalas so people

keep asking me cuz I've been there for 5 years when are you coming back when are you coming back in my head I'm like bro I don't think I'm coming back man because every time I learn every time I study I realize there's so much more to

learn there's so much more to know there's so much more that I can do and so the only time when take a break from studying is when I'm out either teaching

because that's also an obligation upon me as someone who knows something one of my teachers said to me he said you'll never be the most knowledgeable person in the world there's always going to be someone that's more knowledgeable than

you but there always going to be more people that there's always going to be people who you have more knowledge than he say so when you meet people who have more knowledge than you you learn from them but when you meet people who have

less Knowledge from than you they should learn from you and you should open open the door to be able to teach them and so and it's a zakat for you the same way you gather wealth and then you have to

give a portion of your wealth back to the people in charity as an obligation knowledge also has its zaka that as much as you study and learn you also have to give a portion of that knowledge back to

people who don't have it and allow them to have access from it to it sorry and so with that the only time I sto studying is when I'm invited to teach cuz he also said don't push yourself

forward to teach anything but if you're ever requested never reject the request so for me if I'm invited to give a talk if I'm able to go I'll go if I'm invited to go like every February you see me in

America on tour it's never that I get up and book a ticket and come to America but it's always an MSA or a Masid or an organization will reach out to me and say it's Black History Month would love

for you to talk about your book or your research or this or that and I'll come that once people know I'm here I keep getting bookings and I'll stay as long as the bookings are coming when the bookings finished I go back

home so but for me I feel like I'm going to be studying for the rest of my life because there's always something to learn even if I'm not studying directly with teachers I'll

be reading I'll be learning because there's always some new information or new knowledge so like I have a sheh in Nigeria he's the Muti of Nigeria he's

called Sharif Ibrahim Al husseini he's a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaih wasallam his answer sisters moved from Medina to Iraq then

from Iraq to Morocco and then his great great great grandfather moved from Morocco to Nigeria and they settled in Nigeria but he traces his ancestry back

to Imam Al Hussein and he's currently the muy of Nigeria just recently I was with him in Abuja and he gave me his latest

book but he's written over 500 books wow and I'm like yo this is my I haven't even read all of the books that he's written and he's written something

in every subject he's written a book in a four volumes he's written a book in S three or four volumes he's written numerous books Oni numerous books on

like anything you can think of there's a book that he's written about it Subhan he took years to write these books cuz

he's in his 80s now he was born in 1938 but I'm thinking when will I even have the time to read all of his books let alone all of the books of all of the amazing Scholars that we have in the um

you know but he's like a prime example of West African scholarship and so I feel like the journey will never end so as long as I'm comfortable in Egypt and I have access to my teachers and I have

access to travel like M has a house in Egypt he comes to Egypt couple months a year so I get to spend time with him when he's around I'll be doing that have you witnessed any miracles from being

around such scholarship alhamdulillah I've witnessed many but I feel like the scholarship itself is a miracle honestly to be able

to see someone that's written over 500 books is a miracle to be able to see someone that for example ibraim one day

he was saying there's not a single verse in the Quran that I can read without knowing all of the Hadith in the six

volumes of a Hadith that are narrated to that verse so if he gives T of any verse in the Quran he can tell you all of that

Hadith in bukari in Muslim in in in Abu da in the M of IM Malik even and in the musn Ahmed that are narrated to that

that are connected to that verse that to me is a miracle that's incredible and he's a human being he's not a computer so I feel like those are the

Miracles sure sure but do you have a like I want the juicy stories is there a bird that spoke or anything nothing like

that nah n you're not going to tell me are you come on tell me one yeah I think that's enough okay fine fine that's fair um you got any questions brother before

we wrap up uh yeah tell me about your time in Oakland cuz I'm from Oakland oh yeah yeah you said your wife's from Oakland no she's not from so my wife has an

interesting story but she's not so she's from California but she's from Southern California so her family have always been in La like her

grandmother on her father's side was one of the first you know africanamerican homeowners in like Central LA they've always lived in LA

but then um she was born in Colorado then she moved to LA then her father wanted a more kind of Islamic environment for them so she moved he moved them up to Oakland when zetuna was

starting so she memorized just amama I have had her just a certificate memorization certificate is from zetuna when zetuna was a madasa and Sh Hamza

had just started it up and Imam Z was there and shik and all of the classic you know how long have you been married for five years six years this year okay nice I heard for some reason that the

seventh year is a Troublesome year like there's like a whole thing in Egypt about how the seventh year is like a a test full year the first and the seventh okay and if you get past those two

you're good in I mean as men like you know all the guys in here trying to get married obviously and uh you got an advice for us you think um does love die does it

does it die down do you get bored of each other is that love is a choice love is a Choice love is a choice oh wow lot of gay people are not going to like okay love is a choice I feel like every day

you wake up and you choose to love your spouse especially when things are difficult when things are easy it's easy to love them but when things are difficult that's when you have to choose

to love them and um I feel like we have this whole concept of romantic love and you know love that is very much based on desires and whims and anything that's

built on and your desires and your whims will fade away so for example you can see somebody you're physically attracted to them you're enamored with their character you love the way they behave

or they speak about certain subjects or the knowledge they have on certain things or certain character traits and you fall in love with them because of that but you're not going to like 100%

everything about that person right and so it's the things that you have patience with that allow you to stay in

love with that person you overlook their faults and my wife overlooks my faults I overlook her faults and we make that constant choice to be positive in our

love and that's how the love grows and continues and that's why Allah tells us in the Quran when he speaks about the married couples he says that he brings

them together in Ma and Rah in love and in Mercy one of my teachers was explaining this and he said the ma is for the good times the love is for the

good times and theah the mercy is for the bad times the m is about the things that you love and you enjoy in that person and then the Rah the mercy is for the things that you have to have

patience with with the other person but you choose to stay married as long as the relationship Dynamic is not toxic and you know there's no abuse going on

and all of these kind of things those are things that are deal breakers but if it's simply you and this person and you love them and they things that you love about them even Allah tells us in the

Quran he tells the husbands about the wives that if you hate your wives you might be hating something in which Allah has placed abundant

good so the objective in Islam when it comes to marriage when it comes to relationships always look at the positive and the best side of a person and nurture that because what you pay

attention to is what grows if you pay attention to the small things that annoy you about your partner your marriage will never be successful but if you pay attention to the good things the positive things and you try and nurture

them and then you have communication and you try and work on the things that you need to work on your partner is like your mirror they'll show you your defects you'll show them their defects and then you both make that resolve and

that choice to work on them that's when the marriage can continue and the love can grow so I feel like when I say love is a choice you have to choose to look at the positives and invest in them you

have to choose to look at the negatives and work on them and that's something that you do every day and if you continue to do that then the love will grow and the marriage will be more

successful as time goes on the first year is difficult especially in my case with my wife and me because we didn't know each other before we got married we

had seen each other on Instagram we spoke a couple of times we said yeah we want to get married to each other I flew to La I met her dad dad and then I met

her after I met her dad and we met on a Sunday we bought clothes on a Monday and we got married on a Tuesday no way that's literally how it went no no like 3 days in a row three days in a row

literally wow I flew to LA on a Saturday how did you make that decision so quick I was just like let's try it man that was the deal between me and her when we were talking sample at Costco or

like we don't want to waste time right okay waste time getting to know each other and you'll never truly know someone until you're in the same house as them and you're married to them okay

waste time talking for months on end and you know when you're not married to someone it's easy to perform it's easy to show them the best side of your character it's easy to hide a away cuz you only have to spend a couple of hours

a day with each other or you're on the phone with each other and then the rest of the time you're in your corner they're in their corner you don't know what they're up to they don't know what you're up to but when you're actually married now and that's why a lot of

relationships fail when people move in together or even when they get married you can be dating someone for 3 years when you marry that person or you move in with that person you discover so much about them that you didn't know in the

time you were dating them because you were never around them the whole time when you're married there's nowhere to run so we had all of that in in mind and then we just kind of had a deal we were

like listen let's just get married and get to know each other in our first year of marriage let's not waste time dating or talking let's do a nikah make it

Halal so that there's no barriers between us we can know each other fully on all levels intellectually physically Etc and then if we like each other we stay married if we don't we can get

divorce no pressure okay that was the deal did you feel like Allah was putting buta in it that's why you went with it so quickly 100% okay 100% everything

that I needed to hear from somebody that I wanted to get married to my wife told me in like the first conversation I had with her M and um yeah and then seeing that and then

also my teachers were just telling me you know get married get married have trust in Allah get married and then when we came to that decision that yo we're

just going to jump in do a simple ncah there wasn't an expensive di there wasn't you know a big wedding we didn't plan it for months it was literally

within a week we went from never having met each other to being married to each other and her father Mah like he's a Imam he's a he's a he's a aad

and so he understands and he also understands the time that we live in for him he was looking at me and looking at her and realizing that she's a beautiful girl in the middle of La 21 years old

she could be doing anything except saying dad I found someone I want to get married to so as a Muslim father who vetted me and looked

at me and said okay you seem like a practicing Muslim Etc he said yeah you guys go ahead and do what you're doing obviously he had his community involved

his good friend IM Jihad Safir of Isla Masjid in La was the one that did the nikah and you know the ogs were there so you know to make sure that everything

went smoothly but generally it was just up to us and so we got married and we got to know each other in the first year of us being married M and that is the most difficult year because that's when

you start to discover all of these things about this person that you didn't know yeah yeah that's IM that's IM you

had oh he's a y fellow resarch he is so he did my nikah he did you know so um yeah the first year is difficult just because you're getting to know each other and you're crashing especially if

you're living together for the first time you have a way that you've grown up they have a way that they've grown up so for example I'm an only child I'm used to being by myself I'm used to quiet I'm

used to not having to interact with people my wife is the oldest girl of eight wow she has seven siblings so she's used to a completely different

environment than what I'm used to so the way she runs her house and the way I run my house are completely different so we clashed on a lot of things with that see our personalities are extremely

different wow like we're the complete opposite of each other in a lot smile on your face as you're saying yeah because it compliments it compliments each other I feel like it compliments each other so

the first year was it was rough I'm not going to lie and say it was easy it was rough it was tough and you get over the first year and I feel like for the six years that I've been married every year

gets easier and every year we fall deeper in love with each other I think and when we met each other we didn't love each other like we weren't in love we didn't know each other we

just thought we're a good match let's try it out and now I can firmly say yeah we're in love alhamdulillah beautiful response and reflection Mustafa Briggs but yeah my

advice sorry for you single guys cuz you ask me for advice don't be scared don't be scared just try it man try the only thing the only the reason I even ask you that question is there's so many Muslims

out there especially in America getting divorced our divorce rates are similar to the regular regular American population but I feel like um and this might be a controversial take but I

don't feel like divorce is a Bad Thing H it's not a bad thing because not everybody is going to get along with with each other not everybody's meant to stay with each other forever and I know there's some Hadith that people quote

that divorce shakes the Throne of Allah it's a Hadith anyway what about the Shan giving up his throne when uh one of his

minions gets a couple means weak we yeah it's a weak so but divorce exists for a reason and Allah tells us in the Quran let's put

Hadith aside for a second I'm not quranic only but I'm saying the Quran is the Central Foundation of our Dean Allah tells us in the

Quran that you hold on to the marriage in a good in goodness or you separate in the best way he gives you the opportunity to have both and in another

Ayah he says like you come together in goodness and you leave each other in goodness so it's like the option is there we're not Catholic where you're tied down to your

marriage for life and we shouldn't approach marriage like that because you as a human being you change every 7 years so maybe that's even why they put this seven-year mark on the marriage

because the person who you are when you get married one year you're a completely different person s years later physically even all of the cells of your bodies have changed you're literally

physically not the same person your cells renew and regenerate and your whole body changes every seven years so you're not the same person you were when you got married to your spouse 7 years ago so if you're not growing with each

other and complimenting each other or getting along with each other or figuring out a way to increase each other in that time then it's better for you to separate and find people who

compliment where you are and that stage in your life and even the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam got divorced well he attempted right he didn't actually he has got divorced the prophet s wasallam had married women and

divorced them but people don't mention them because they're not wives that were married to him when he passed away the wives that everybody speaks about are who passed away before him and Zab who

also passed away before him and then the nine wives who were married to him when he passed away but the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam had been married and divorced to several women other than those women yeah if you study

the S you see their names and you see the stories and why he married them and why he why he divorced them some of them he didn't even consumate the marriage before he divorced them did the nikar got married and then something happened

and he got divorced oh I we have to get into that so maybe in the next podcast with talk about that be a relationship podcast know but the prophet s wasam got

divorced the sahaba got divorced divorce is completely normal and it's not something that I feel should be shamed or something that we should try and

avoid at all costs obviously let's try to normalize marriage first before divorce I'm not saying normalized divorce but I'm saying a lot of people don't get married because of fear of divorce yeah they don't get married or

they placed so many barriers in front of marriage because they're scared of getting divorced and then we also see this um thing happening in society where divorcees have this stigma attached to

them that nobody wants to marry divorce nobody wants to be in a relationship with someone that was previously married and all of these kind of things which are also affecting the Muslim Community

yes so all of these are issues that I feel like can be avoided if we reframe the way in which we approach relationships so for example of a big thing is High diaries a lot of people don't want to get married because they

don't want to invest 30k into a diary and a wedding weding and scared that they might get divorced or you get engaged to someone for 3 years 4 years because you want to get to know them so

that just in case you get married and you invest all of that money you don't want to get divorced all of these kind of things are what are stopping people from getting married or stopping people from even approaching people to want to

get married Subhan Allah thank you so much that that that that was very uh helpful honestly uh so yeah don't be scared don't be scared to get married don't be

scared to get divorced get no I needed that I needed that and that was the deal I had with my wife we entered the relationship saying if it works we're going to stay and if it doesn't work for whatever reason we are free to get

divorced and there's no bad feelings and there's no kind of stigma around us separating and going our different ways if it doesn't work out and a lot of people were scared of that failure we're

scared of being divorced we're scared of whatever and that affects the quality of our marriages and that affects the ability for us to even get married in the first

place mustfa Briggs Scholastic student bestselling author and uh and a righteous historian thank you so much uh for coming on the

on podcast brother it was a pleasure to have you on alhamdulillah thank you for having me we try to finish it up with a DA up I appreciate you man keeping it

cash and inshah I pray Allah puts Bara in the podcast inshallah am I've been seeing you've been getting some amazing guests recently some amazing viewpoints

and um it's a quality of podcast that I feel had been missing in the community before so to be able to see you doing this work inshallah as a Young Man

inshah strength to strength it will only grow from here insh appreciate may Allah make you like Joe Rogan and all of these other guys the the access that their podcast have may Allah give you the same

inshallah so you can work for Islam and for the um amen keep my intention pure and yours as well thank you guys for joining the onor podcast