My opinion columns turned into a speech. That speech turned into a script. And that script has been turned into a dawah, public service announcement video. (To see the video, keep reading…)

Last year, I wrote and delivered a five minute speech to my public relations class. I decided to take the easy way out of the assignment and decided to take the opportunity for dawah and picked the subject of prejudice to talk about. I chose excerpts from my past opinion columns in The Daily Reveille and made them into my speech.

After delivering the speech one girl came up to me and said, “It really does make me see how ignorant we really are. Especially seeing how it’s only the actions of few that get attributed to your religion.” Others told me it was a successful PR speech because it made them look at their own beliefs about Islam and compare them to my words. I didn’t expect that feedback. Alhamdulillah it was successful, all by the will of Allah. And only Allah has allowed me such opportunities, walhamdulillah.

Meanwhile, I was working on a media kit for Leechon and particularly the upcoming documentary, “Tufaan.” During that time, we came up with the idea of shooting public service announcement videos to put at the beginning of every documentary that Leechon would produce — especially Tufaan, since its primary target audience is non-Muslims. Hence, the idea to use my speech as a script for the PSA emerged.

So we decided to do it much like the format of the “Bear Witness” video that Br. Belal Khan had produced a while back, where every person would read two lines from the script. Here’s the Bear Witness video, which in my opinion is an really nice dawah video:

*video removed because sisters shown in video

Anyway, Br. Ahmed Eid, a brother from NJ who has been working with me and the PR team for quite a while took up the challenge of shooting and editing the video for Leechon. MashaAllah, it turned out great. Although I don’t personally know anyone in the video, I wanted to give a big jazakum Allahu Khairan katheeran for the work and effort you guys put into it. May Allah make it heavy on your scales, ameeeeen. And inshaAllah I look forward to working with you all in the future, bi’ithnillahi ta’ala.

So without further adeiu, our PSA: FREEDOM FROM FEAR

(video removed)

Lastly, in the future I would like to write dawah videos that are not on the defense. Sure there are people who hate Islam, sure there is still a lot of anti-Islamic sentiment around, but I would like to move away from being on the defense to speaking to people in general about Islam. A PSA about “Islam” why they see us prostrating on the floor when we pray, etc.

Good things to come inshaAllah. Give us your feedback and if you like it spread it around inshaAllah.

These past two weeks were stressful for ol’ egyptiangumbo.com, and I’ll tell you why:

I found this really cute video a couple of weeks ago of Kermit the frog and a little cute, adorable girl. I put it up and submitted it to Stumble Upon. I purposely put it under the “Islam” category because my blog is mainly about Islamic topics and they are my target audience.

Some stumblers thought I was “stupid” for doing so, so they changed the tag to the “humor” section. The result?

Hundreds of thousands of new visitors to my blog.

My RSS feed subscriber went from 7,000 to 20,000 then broke from overload. (I’m assuming i have close to 50,000 subscribers now)

And a load of comments came – some good and some bad.

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I’ll be perfectly honest, it caused me a little anxiety. Why? Because I have over thousands of non-Muslims subscribed to my Islamicly themed blog. Why would this cause me stress? Because of everything that I wanted to get away from due to my experience writing columns about Islam in The Daily Reveille, LSU’s student newspaper. Sure there were good comments and bad comments, but the worst part was I had no power at all to respond to those bad comments or defend Islam because of The Reveille’s policy. I worked for them for about a year and a half and I felt that It was a lot of emotional stress and that It wasn’t something I wanted to do again for a while.

Qaddar Allah wa ma sha’a fa3l. As I thought more and more about it, I realized that Allah (God) had given me another opportunity whether I wanted it or not at the moment. To display the true image of Islam, to dispel myths, and to educate others on the true teachings of Islam. I would be truly at loss if I would give up this opportunity that Allah has given me, and if I was ungrateful for it. Perhaps I did something right the first time for Allah to give me the opportunity again.

So what does this mean for egyptiangumbo.com and what does this mean for the new 40,000+ subscribers to my blog; what should they expect?

They should expect me continue my focus on Islamic Media, but to also write more posts about the true nature of Islam.

So for all the new non-Muslims to my blog, this one post is for you:

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It’s amazing how God can lead you to paths you’d never expect; when you least expect it and from avenues you never imagined. Who would have thought that a video of a green character with a hand inside of him would get you to a post about Islam?

Sometimes those random things make all the difference.

Often, you might have this feeling your heart like something is void and missing from your life and you just can’t seem to figure out what it is. Money, food, shelter, love… we could have it all but for some some reason we always seem to want more trying to fulfill something inside of us.

Allah (God) is the sustainer, and it is in the remembrance of him in our lives that not only sustains, but also nourishes and fills our hearts of any voids.

Islam is a very simple and beautiful religion. Everything revolves around one central concept — the belief that there is object worthy of worship, to be fully submitted to, and fully obeyed save Allah.

It’s that simple. We worship the one who created us, sustains us and the one who will resurrect us. We don’t worship the creation. Meaning we do not worship the noble prophets such as Jesus or Muhammad (peace be upon them) nor do we worship celestial objects such as the sun or moon.

We believe Jesus was born of a virgin birth to Mary (peace be upon her), but unlike Christianity we neither believe that he is a the son of God nor that he died on the cross.

Muslims believe that God is so high above having partners or children. Jesus, like all other prophets of God, came with the exact same message as all the other prophets — to worship Allah alone and to do good deeds and abstain from the bad so you can attain paradise.

To be a Muslim simply means to submit oneself to God. If someone believes in these six items of faith, they would be a Muslim:

1. To believe that there is no object worthy of worship save Allah, and the Muhammad is His messenger.

2. Belief in the angels.

3. Belief in all the prophets of Allah, starting from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses , David, Jesus, Muhammad and all other prophets in between.

4. Belief in all the books that came before. Meaning, we as Muslims have to believe in the Gospels and the Torah (among the other divinely revealed books) that they were sent by Allah to His messengers. However, we must also believe and only follow the Quran. The Quran is the last book revealed by Allah to the last messenger, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him.) The reason we follow the Quran only, and not the other books, is because the Quran remains the true word of God. It has not been altered by man since the time it was revealed.

5. Belief in the last day; belief in the day of judgment. That a person will be held accountable for everything they did in this life before Allah, and will either be destined to paradise or destined to hellfire.

6. And belief in preordainment.

If a person believes in these six simple concepts, they are Muslim.

And once a person is a Muslim there are five pillars of Islam that must be followed:

1. To testify that there is no object worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and final messenger.
2. Pray five times a day- at their appointed times
3. Fast the holy month of Ramadan
4. Give Alms (compulsory Charity)– 2.5% of yearly savings (if above a certain quota)
5. Make pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once in your life IF you have the means (i.e. money, transportation, accommodation, etc.)

And it’s as simple as that. Islam does not get more complicated than these beliefs and actions. It’s all about doing the things required of us and abstaining from sins to the best of our ability.

I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. I hope you will enjoy the content of my blog, and if anyone wants to ask privately about anything, feel free to email me at the email address in the “contact” section of my blog.

Bismillah,

His eyes had mischief in them. He looked like he was on the beach all day long. I was with my cousin and her friend getting gelato ice cream from this famous place in Alexandria that sits right across the street from the ocean. It’s the type of shop where you just park and have waiters come to your car and you sit in your car and eat. With sand covering his feet he walked toward my rolled down window.

I was getting ready to pay so I had my wallet in my lap. I see he has some beach items in his hands. He came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy them from him. We all declined. He was selling toys for kids. He insisted, but he kept looking into my eyes. My cousin Asmaa replies, “As you can see, we don’t have kids. What would we do with them?”

View of Mediterranean Sea with an umbrella blowing in the wind from Le Prince, a restaurant I went to today in Alexandria.

I looked down at my lap and realized why this 7-year-old boy was mischievously smiling at me. I had my wallet in my lap with some American dollars showing. I couldn’t help but laugh. The kid was mashaAllah adorable. His face, the way he tried to persuade us was just too cute to let go. So I told him to wait while I gave him some money. I pulled out two Egyptian pounds. He takes them, puts them in his pocket, pauses and then says, “No I want one of THOSE.”

“What? You want WHAT exactly? A Dollar?” I asked. “Yes.” He replied. So I agree, give him a dollar and tell him it’s worth about 5 Egyptian pounds. Next thing I know he yelled, “MUHAMMAD!” And goes running to tell his little friends to tell them what had just happened. Right then is when I realized we were about to get mobbed by a bunch of kids — so we jetted off.

MashaAllah, I don’t think I’ll ever forget his smile. Poverty here really gets to you. It was funny because my cousin was telling me how one of her professors at AUC (American University of Cairo) when he has to turn in something if for any reason and it’s past deadline he always jokes and says he could always use the “Third-World Excuse.” You know the excuse where you say since you live in a third-world country, everything always “comes late” and communication is “not that great.”

Then it hit me, “We’re in a third-world country…” The images here are enough to make you cry. An ayah from Surat Ya-Sin came to me:

“And when it is said to them: ‘Spend of that with which Allah has provided you,’ those who disbelieve say to those who believe: ‘Shall we feed those whom, if Allah willed, He (Himself) would have fed? You are only in a plain error.’”

Allah ‘az wa jal could have indeed made everyone rich in this world. But there is hikmah (wisdom) that only Allah knows why such things are done. But one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t have felt so humbled and grateful to Allah if I never saw these images or interacted with the people.

My cousin was also telling me how one time she went to this bakery and wanted a piece of cheesecake she saw on display. She ordered it and the woman behind the counter told her it was sold out. My cousin asked her about the one that was in the display, and the woman told her that wasn’t for sale, that it’s “just for display.” My cousin ordered something else but was very bothered and asked the woman what she would do with it to which she simply shrugged and told her “throw it away.”

Wallahul musta’an.