Had a beneficial day spent with a daiyah from Mecca in a small town in the middle of nowhere America. He has lived in that town for years and still goes about it with incredible passion ma sha Allah. What was refreshing was that he is the type to give dawah to anyone, not waiting for the controlled environment of a masjid musalla or a lecture hall, and he had a flare for the dramatic that kept things interesting. After a salah in the masjid a young black male walks in- tattered shirt, disheveled hair, and the shaykh asks, how may I help you? to which the young man responds, Im just looking for some guidance. The Shaykh jumps forward and walks up to the man staring directly into his eyes as if attempting to peer into his soul and then with all the drama in the world says, Guidance? You have come to the right place! He whisked him away and explained Islam to him, when the man finally needed to leave, the shaykh offered him a ride to his destination and next thing I know we were all going somewhere in the middle of nowhere America. I was wondering throughout the ride if the Shaykh knew the unspoken rules here of not giving rides to strangers, especially if they are young poor men, especially if they are young, poor men of minority backgrounds. I was wondering if either of my two companions appreciated how rare this scene was, and then I wondered if this scene was in fact rare to them, or maybe I was the one who was alien to small town culture. At lunch our waitress who was a chinese student asked where we were from, to which the shaykh immediately said, I am from the holiest of holy places...Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The waitress to our surprise waved at us with a smile and said, Assalaamu Alaykum! then threw up both her hands to the sky and said, Hela Wallah! (Welcome, by God!) She had some saudi friends who had taught her some phrases.His facial expression never changed, I could tell he was zoned in, and said, Did your friends ever tell you about the wonderful religion of Islam? Boom, five minutes later she had been invited to the communal dinner, had been promised books on Islam and the works. Lol, it was the strangest thing to watch, like the more dawah you give, the more dawah comes to you? It was inspiring to see him work in that town, may Allah preserve him, undaunted by the barriers of culture, language, ethnicity. And a reminder of the dialogues we are able to have with people if we simply choose to have them.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 23:02:40 +0000
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