Khalid Yasin: The anticipation of speaking to guys like you. No honestly, John, the work that I do, to be honest with you, coming from my background, as I told you before, I was born in Harlem, New York, raised in Brooklyn, New York, what we call the inner city destabilised and socially deprived people, and for me to be travelling around the world speaking with people about ideas such as we’re discussing today, for me to be the guest of prestigious institutions, to share my views, and to have the privilege as an American citizen to be able to do that, and to be Muslim and to feel the confidence of having something to offer, because this is the way I see my work. I see my work that I’ve got a bag full of tools, people need things repaired, so I look in my bag of tools almost like a doctor. I take out the right tool and I try to offer and try to fix that. Now in this case what am I fixing? I’m fixing human beings. Human beings have voids in their life. Human beings needs answers, whether they be Muslims or non-Muslims. I give answers, I give propositions.
John Cleary: We all need moments of refreshment though, where from the focus that drives our life, we actually step back for a moment and reflect, or even recreate our bodies. What do you do for recreation to actually help you clear and focus and just unwind from time to time?
Khalid Yasin: Well I’m a fairly avid horseman, I swim, martial arts, I box, I read quite a bit. Probably once every two years I visit Mecca and I cleanse myself spiritually by performing the Omrah or the Haj, and then daily I pray five times a day. As a Muslim that gives me the refreshment and our Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, said that the prayer is the coolness of his eyes. So I have the opportunity to recede five times a day into that inner sanctum.
John Cleary: Do you feel that coolness?
Khalid Yasin: Yes I do.
John Cleary: Do you feel that peace?
Khalid Yasin: Yes.
John Cleary: So there is an experience associated with –
Khalid Yasin: Well let me be quite honest. Faith rises and declines so there are times when I feel it more apparent than other times, but it’s a habit, I mean it’s just like swallowing, blinking, we have to pray, and we do. And there are times when you feel the presence and the outcome in the fruits of the prayer, and other times you’re just doing it mechanically, but still we have to do it.
John Cleary: How does God, how does Allah express himself to you?
Khalid Yasin: Through the Qu’ran.
John Cleary: Through the Qu’ran. What about your own spiritual experience?
Khalid Yasin: Well yes, when I look at the landscape of Australia, the scenes the blessings that providence has given to this country, when I’m in America and I go from California to New York, or from Texas up to Niagara Falls, or whatever and I see the earth, when I see India, when I visit the world and I see the presence of God in space and outer space or in science or in medicine, I mean all these things for me are reflections of the signs of God.
John Cleary: What about, and I’m asking now something that actually broadens this questioning into the whole cultural life of Islam; what about the great works of art and music, you see that expressed in say, the Middle Ages, Islamic flowering in Spain, the glorious architecture of some of those cities. Where do you get your aesthetic sensibilities from?
Khalid Yasin: We believe that those aesthetic areas exist, and they do have some benefit for human beings but they are what we call the peripherals, and we can live without the peripherals. And for me, I’m not a person that promotes the ideas of art, except within the spectrum of Islam. We don’t use figures, we don’t draw human faces and portraits so there is the issue of art within Islam, even the Qu’ranic writing, calligraphy and the designing of buildings and landscapes and nature, all of these things are appreciated but again, the aesthetic part of Islam is the peripheral. It’s like we need food for nutrition but if the food tastes good, that’s even better, but if I didn’t have a sense of taste I would still need nutrition.
John Cleary: But God’s given you a sense of taste.
Khalid Yasin: That’s correct.
John Cleary: He’s given you a sense of form, style, of beauty.
Khalid Yasin: And therefore we should exercise it and we should tune it.
John Cleary: What about music, you mentioned tuning?
Khalid Yasin: Well to be frank with you, John, I grew up in a family loving music, dancing, singing, clapping, clowning. But Islam made me a little bit more serious than that, and our Prophet peace and blessing upon him, he didn’t incline us towards music. It tends to make the human being a little less responsible, less regulated, and then it sets a platform that we can see has manifested itself in Western society in particular. Music didn’t start out in the Western societies as it is today, having now been today almost sort of the breeding ground for all the vices that have torn the society apart. We don’t say that, that this is where everyone in music or art is headed, but it’s definitely the breeding ground. So if somebody asks me ‘Kalid, what do you think about smoking a little bit of weed, I mean it does seem to be the you know’, so I would agree that probably maybe smoking a little bit of weed may be harmless in the beginning, but what does it lead to? And so what has music and art, what has it led to in the West? I mean in the core of it. Some very powerful institutions no doubt, some big lobbies, I mean there’s no place in the West where you can go where music and art is not represented, and now these are the most probably the wealthiest influential people and things of that nature, but that’s not the issue, the issue is from a civilisational point of view, from a moral standpoint of view, what has it breeded, what kind of institutions has it established, and then what historical legacy will it lead? And so for me, I tolerate the love of music within my family and within the Muslims civilisations or societies, but it’s not something that we pursue and not something that we promote.
John Cleary: For you, as you tour the world, you’re moving through your life, where have you got your sense of greatest satisfaction, and what continues to be the central ground of your satisfaction?
Khalid Yasin: I have an internal dream and one of my internal dreams is to be able to restore the idea of the father, the family, the male figure. Perhaps I haven’t done enough in that regard. My children, my parents, perhaps my siblings would probably say there’s still something lacking in my own pursuit of that dream, but through my Islamic growth and development, I am praying that one day I’ll fill some of the voids in my own life, I will sort of fill some voids in some other people’s life, and I will restore the image of the man in the society, take the instability of the female head of family, give some stability back to the people of the inner cities, give the idea of family back, of clarity as opposed to this nebulous idea, so these are some of the things that really drive me because I guess it has a lot to do with my own youth. But outside of myself, I think that I want to have something, I want to contribute towards the reformation, if not of my own society, America, the reformation of the world in some small way. I’m not looking for recognition in terms of a Pulitzer Prize or Nobel Peace Prize or anything like that, but I hope that somewhere in history it will be written, and that my children, my grandchildren, or others who may be their peers, that they’ll pick up a book and somebody would have said that this man Khalid Yasin, came from such-and-such a background, but he made a powerful contribution to the upliftment of human beings in this respect, or that respect. To me I think that would be a great gift from God, and that’s what I’m striving to do.
John Cleary: Khalid Yasin thanks for joining us on Sunday Night. It’s been a great pleasure to have you.
Khalid Yasin: Well I thank you for being a gracious non-provocative host.
John Cleary: Khalid Yasin, currently visiting Australia, here on a visit evangelising for Islam.
Produced By Noel Debien, Dan Driscoll
Guests in this story:
A former Christian, Sheikh Yasin is the Executive Director of the
Islamic Teaching Institute ; a premier organisation dedicated to the work of invitation to Islam.
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