
I was born in Europe. I went back to my country of origin, to Egypt just to be far from the world and close to knowledge.
This is what I needed. I needed this, and I know how many young Muslims need exactly the same. Sometimes they feel lost in this universe: materialistic dimension, consumerism, lost, crisis of identity.
I went through all this, and not being representative of all that is going on at the grass root level, why?
Because I was coming from a family where knowledge was everywhere.
I was born in a family where there were no walls. Everything was books, books everywhere. And still books were nothing. Nothing if you don’t have this psychological strength coming from spiritual peace. This is the way I understood it, and this is why I went back.
Be Confident and Trust God
I went back to get the knowledge and to get this special understanding, and now when I’m living in Europe I’m dealing with the communities, travelling around everywhere, the same spiritual crisis, psychological disturbances and questions, the same, for the younger generations asking us: “How do we deal with this?” And then we have to face the reality of the first main crisis, how to be a Muslim in the 21st. century to look at this as it is, that what we need is really to think about how we transmit the spiritual message of our religion.
How in our societies we spread this peace and confidence and trust because as the starting point of everything is confidence and confidence is what? Confidence is not only not to be scared by the people. First, of course for a spiritual mind, for a spiritual message, confidence is to trust Him, al-Tawakkul ala Allah, to know that if you can’t do it, He can do it. And at the end of the day you have to do whatever you can, then what you can’t He can. This is confidence, this is Tawakul. It’s something which is I can do it but more than that.
It’s for the Muslims living in Britain. It’s for the Muslims in the communities living in our country not to wait for someone coming with the answers to our questions. It is to be able with confidence to say we may have new questions but we have the skills and the knowledge and the people who are able to respond to our questions, if we do what we have to do and face up to the challenges of our time.