Feisty Luton

Kaab. The Fella. Tony. The Yemeni Muslim. The Serbian 

“My name is Ka’ab…!”

Hearing this my jaw dropped. I exclaimed that the podcast I was listening to this morning on my way here was about the Sahabi, the poet: Kaab ibn Zubair! 

What Qadr Allah! Br Kaab was visiting Luton & upon seeing our logo expressed his serious intent to join us as a volunteer. I recommended the series by Omar Suleiman, The Firsts. For me this is a phenomenal series that everyone should listen to. It encapsulates Islam.

The crème da la creme moment was when Tony took his Shahadah with our YC Volunteer Mihai. Who is an ex Christian revert himself! May Allah keep them strong upon Islam. 

A brother carrying a can of beer in one hand & a cigarette in the other was walking past, I loudly shouted Salaam! He stopped and turned around, I called out to him in a smiley manner saying, bro you don’t need that, throw it away man, you’re better. He smiled and stopped and then spoke to Rayyan:

“Spoke to this Yemeni brother  – he was drinking beer and smoking , at soul he was religious – me and Mihai asked him if he was to pass away now what would be made of him, he exhibited clear signs of guilt and I spoke to him about overcoming stress and bad times (had a troublesome asylum seeker case) and how Allah is the best of planners & Allah does not test a soul more than he can bear – he made a promise to slow down and stop his drinking.

I loved this interaction more because these are the youths that us practising Muslims are either ignoring or probably just get angry at! 

In street interaction you’ll meet all sorts of characters. We met some real strange and cool personas. One guy who stood next to our stall, who got upset because I called him “Fella” ! He protested saying call me by my name. I as usual in a cheeky moment, said well you’re lucky I didn’t call you “geezer” and secondly how on earth will I know your name?! He eventually did calm down but the unnecessary aggression was not needed. 

We did 3/4 hours of amazing dawah. Handed out our YC flyers sinless, fake, The fun theory, Brands & gangs. We also had the famous iERA flyers too. 

Rayyan had 2 other very long meaningful discussions Alhumdulillah:

Had a conversation with a Serbian man – spoke about differences in beliefs, taught him about the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (saw)

Spoke to a Nigerian man (Justice) – atheist to Christian, we spoke about multiple things including his claim that Jesus’s death was the most definite event in history – he mentioned a time where his friend was risen from unconsciousness/death by a prayer in Jesus’s name – I told him that this may have been appeared to be so (as Allah states about Jesus’s “death”) and it he actually saw it? Turns out he was not actually there (he was with the guy who prayed over the phone) and no one confirmed that the man was ever even unconscious… hypocrisy: took his contacts for later

Although this was our second visit to Luton, for YC, this was a much more dynamic affair. We were joined by 3 new volunteers making their street dawah debut.