SHEIKH ALAUDDIN AL BAKARI, Imam of West Valley Islamic Centre, California, USA, talks about his childhood days, the evolution of his inclination towards Islam and the turning point in his life which makes him the man he is today. In an interview with KAMRAN SHAHID ANSARI, he advises youth to throw away ‘victim mentality’, and presents love as the cornerstone of Islam.
Tell us something about your childhood days.
I am a son of a typical Palestinian family dislocated from their home. My father had just moved to Libya when I was born. I was born in Ben Ghazi and there I spent the first 13 years of my life and then we went to the closest place from our home that is Jordan and there I did my High School and some college education. And when I was in Libya I went through the traditional learning in the Maliki fiqh as most people there subscribe to Maliki fiqh and in Jordan I got trained in the Shafai fiqh.
Have you ever been to Palestine?
No, not really, not as an adult.
Please share with us any one experience during your childhood days that changed you totally or anything that made you closer to Islam.
Although I grew up in a very religious and practising family, yet it is not the reason why I ended up who I am today. My foundation was good and great. But it happened when I was 13 and we went to Jordan. The neighbourhood kids, after their school, used to go to home, eat lunch, do their homework, play soccer till maghrib and then go to the mosque from maghrib to isha and read the Qur’ān. That was basically the most fundamentally changing thing in my life and I felt I became a Muslim by choice.
I was happy, grateful, energised to be a Muslim because of the environment around me as it was fun and faith both. It was then I got attracted to Islam and fell in love with it. Besides this the Sheikh in the mosque was just 23 years old and he had the biggest smile on his face. He was sincere, serious and energised and really believed in what he said. And I learnt to be sincere about my faith, I learnt dedication, devotion, sacrifice and to give everything for the faith from his example and not from his words. The distance from his house to the mosque was one hour and a half walk and we can imagine how much early he had to wake up to reach the mosque for the fajr prayer. Knowing this fundamentally changed my life.
From my experience I realised that Seerah is true; people are more moved by the living role model who loves them, who is part of them, who is not above them and beyond them and does not live in isolated towers. And it was then that I cracked the code that the way to learn Islam is through companionship. The teacher or the companion will change you by living with you and by letting you into their life. At the moment we have no dearth of scholars, who are libraries in their own, yet they are unable to transform people and the reason according to me is that they are not able to present themselves as role models and are not letting people into their lives. I dare ask you when was the last time a scholar let you in his life, when was the last time when a leader took you as a friend. We need to learn from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) as how he took people as friends and remained among them and displayed the outstanding morals which people emulated.
How did you end up getting a job of Imam in the United States?
I was in Jeddah where I was teaching Islam to Muslims and non-Muslims. The organisation was working to disseminate Islamic teachings, and Dawah was done in 14 to 15 different languages, including 4-5 Indian languages. We Alhamdulillah succeeded in doing Dawah and then my brother called me up and said that they need an Imam for the month of Ramadhan, which happened to fall in the year 1996. I went there and since then they did not let me go. And I grew there, first I tried to understand what America is and then I analysed what the problems people face while doing Dawah are. It took me 5-7 years to fully understand the situation and then we started doing large scale Dawah.
Is doing Dawah more difficult in the United States in comparison to that in Jeddah?
No, in fact it is easier as people are more receptive to the message as compared to the people in Jeddah.
How can we people become good Daee? What are the pre-requisites for it?
My experience with Dawah is that you do not learn to be a Daee. If you think doing Dawah is something that you can learn in a school or in a lecture then that means you have no clue about what Dawah is. Let us go back to the first example that I gave. It is about interaction, it is about you believing in yourself, it is about you really loving what you believe in and your life should be happy with your faith. People want to be with a person who is happy, at peace, energised and active; and if you can display that then people will come to you and you do not have to reach out to people. Faith and belief in God is something kernel to our existence, but the interesting thing is that people can live their life without a belief in God. The main thing that I would like to say once again is that one needs to embody all the aspects of life that Islam teaches in oneself; only then one would be able to move people as living examples are always easier to emulate.
There is a deluge of conspiracy theories and people often get demoralised knowing them. How do you see these conspiracy theories and what do you suggest to people regarding it?
Instead of sitting and doing nothing and feeling demoralised, people have to get up and do something, which means action. Act and there will definitely be a reaction and interestingly it is same as what Newton’s law says as to every action there is a reaction. We have idolised the conspiracies and made them so big that it has become another god. If we fail, we say it’s America and Israel and if we succeed then also we say it’s America and Israel; in short we have developed a “victim mentality.” Conspiracies have been made so big that sometimes we start feeling that conspiracy is god and there is no god but conspiracy (astaghfirullah). The point I am trying to drive home is that not everything is a conspiracy and often people end up committing shirk while getting obsessed with conspiracies. So I do not subscribe to these conspiracies and my answer is Allahu alakulli shai-in qadeer (Allah has the power over all the things) and Allahu bi kulli shai-in muheet (Allah is surrounding and encompassing all things). So even if someone is doing a conspiracy, it is by Allah’s leave and Allah says: “they planned and plotted and Allah too planned and plotted and Allah is the best of those who plot.”
What is your advice for the youth and what kind of strategy do they have to adopt in order to organise themselves?
My advice for youth comes from the heart and it is about developing love for the faith. You need to fall in love with your own faith otherwise you will destroy yourself or destroy others or you will run out of energy. If you follow faith based on rules and regulations and no love, you will end up being burned out, you will become dry and a very harsh person because all what you know will be rules and regulations and you may be following Islam but you will live a very unhappy life. Faith becomes very dry and emotionless if you have no love element in it and it becomes very unattractive. Hence those who subscribe to faith need to display immense happiness and love in their life and then people around them will fall in love with them as people want to be with those who radiate good vibes. So change yourself and you will be able to change humanity around you. This is the Dawah that we are after. Sometimes people while following rules and regulations sans love become so dry that they become very very dry, so much so that they crack, just as a dry pot. So when the element of love is taken away, the soul goes away. So one needs to love the faith and love is the cornerstone of Islam.