Khalid Yasin

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For the jazz musician who also used the name Khalid Yasin, see Larry Young (jazz).
Khalid Yasin

Born December 0, 0000 (0000-00-00) (age 2008)
Flag of the United States United States - Brooklyn, New York
Residence Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom - Sheffield, England
Other names 'Abu Muhammad',
'Abu Muhammad Khalid Yasin'
'Abu Muhammad, Khalid Yasin'

Khalid Yasin (also known as 'Abu Muhammad' [1], 'Abu Muhammad Khalid Yasin' [2]) and 'Abu Muhammad, Khalid Yasin' [3], born in the 1950's [4] in Brooklyn, New York, is a former Christian [5] who converted to Islam and is now a well known lecturer and teacher.

Yasin now lives and operates his Da'wah organisation in Sheffield, England. He founded, directs and runs the Islamic Broadcasting Corporation and The Purpose of Life Centre on Shirecliffe Lane, Sheffield. The organization was formerly known as the Islamic Teaching Institute (ITI) [6] and the Islamic Information Network Ltd [7] [8], where it is believed in the past ten years, the ITI has converted more than 5,000 persons to Islam [9] and an additional 1,700 since the September 11 attacks. [10]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Yasin was born in Brooklyn during the 1950s amongst a background of civil rights movement, he was separated from his family at an early age and placed in foster homes where "he experienced 'the full buffet' of Christianity and felt that he needed something more simple and clear to inspire him." [11]

Yasin embraced and converted to Islam in 1965 with the late Shaykh Mud Ahmed Faisal, of the Islamic Mission of America, located in Brooklyn, New York.

What many do not know is that this same Khalid Yasin was first involved with Masjid Iqwa (Jamat Ita'hadul Iqwa) which was located on Eastern Parkway in New York back in the 1980's. From here he would move onto one of the Darul Islaam masaajid named Yasin Masjid on 52 Herkemer Street in Brooklyn. He has moved through out America and finally landing in England where he set up shop as an "islamic scholar".

Having lectured throughout the world he has been able to study extensively the Qur'an, Islamic legislation and Arabic in Madina, Saudi Arabia and Cairo, Egypt. Yasin emphasises to never accepting more recognition then he is due and only ever admitsto being a 'student of a student of knowledge' and has had many mentors and teachers who tutored him in Islamic history and the memorization and recitation of the Qur'an.

Yasin has said of his organisation, "Members of the local and wider community are welcome at the centre on the weekend for an introduction, or a cup of tea with a resolve to improve links within the community and to offer a place of training, guidance or reflection." and that "Hopefully, the ultimate aim of the centre is to offer to the already vibrant Sheffield community a focal point for the rebuilding of an Islamic civilisation that did not threaten the world, but enriched it."

The main objective in all of his project initiatives is to give people the truth in the clearest, most straightforward and beneficial way to give access to people to the treasure that is Allah's Islam.

[edit] Meeting Malcolm X

According to Yasin, as with many of the young Afro-American population at the time, he was first introduced to Islam by the Black Nationalists and Black Muslims, but was "made all the wiser for the defection of El-Hajj[12] Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)." [13]

Yasin has stated in a lecture in 2006 that he is "not interested in Malcolm X at all but only in the person that he evolved into, Malik El-Shabazz, the subsequent follower of true Islam and Sunni Muslim as opposed to Malcolm X, the racist, false Islam Nation of Islam minister." [14] Yasin went on to state in a 2006 audio lecture recording in Britain that:

  • "Those of us who respect Malcolm who also respected the Nation of Islam… I was never a member of the Nation of Islam because I couldn’t accept the fact that they were saying God was a black man… I liked their habits. I liked their militant, I liked a lot of things I saw in them…. but we were all impressed when Malcolm said he had became an official Muslim, a universal Muslim, according to the doctrines of the Qur’an. When I read that as a non-Muslim I began to think about Islam" and that "When Malcolm return to America as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz I was able to meet Malcolm on January 9th or 11th of that year 1964. Myself and another group of people sat on a roof in the cold, all night, because the streets were all ready full, we couldn’t get a place in the street. We found out where he was going to stand and we stood on that roof all night. When Malcolm came out at 8:30 that morning in Harlem, the streets of Harlem were full, it was almost like it was Hajj. There had to be 35 or 40,000 people filling the streets of Harlem just to see Malcolm - not Muslim, only people who had been moved by his inspiration. We were on the roof that day, we didn’t see him on the ground, but we saw him from the top and we felt we were the luckiest people. Malcolm saw us on that roof up their and asked one of his security guards to get us down and we got a chance to meet him and shake his hand that day. That is as much of a connection I had with Malcolm X the day that we met him and shook his hand. I don’t idolise him and I can only say that from a spiritual point of view he’s like a mentor, a spiritual father for us, so many of us who were contemporaries of Malcolm X we sort of call ourselves: Son of a Prince, because to us Malcolm, or El-Hajj Malik was a Prince.". [15]

[edit] Sunday Nights With John Cleary

On September 7, 2003 Yasin appeared on Sunday Nights With John Cleary [1] being interviewed. Cleary stated that:

Right now we’re going to introduce you to someone who, well perhaps is giving a message that many people would be alarmed that is being put about. Sheik Khalid Yasin is visiting Australia at the moment speaking to Muslim groups in mosques around the country. And as this marks the beginning of the week of the anniversary of the dreadful events of September 11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center, this quite frank and some may find disturbing interview with Khalid Yasin is something that I think deserves to be heard. I spoke to Khalid Yasin on Friday. Let me give you an observation from a press release that the group who is sponsoring him brought out. This is what they say:" ‘Last month, a prominent Sydney Islamic Imam accused scholars from abroad of brainwashing young Muslims in Australia. Sheik Yasin’s response to such inferences was that “There is no established religious body in Australia that can cast aspersions on other Muslims. Let anybody come to my talks and they will see that there is absolutely nothing in them that incites others to do wrong.”’ Well on listening to this interview, you may decide otherwise. The controversial Imam spoke at Lakemba mosque on Thursday evening to a packed audience, and he pointed out that in the past ten years there have been more than 5,000 people convert to Islam through his institute and other bodies, and suggests that an additional 1,476 have converted since the September 11 attacks. That’s in the press release accompanying the visit of Sheik Khalid Yasin, our guest on Sunday Night." [16]

[edit] Controversy

Yasin also lectures with Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad[17]

Shaykh Yasin was featured on the controversial documentary Undercover Mosque where he preached allegedly against the equality of women right's and peace with both Jews and Christians. [18]. A subsequent police investigations of the entire documentary found no evidence to support this.[19]

[edit] Statement on Homosexuality

In a cover story with the Sunday, an Australian news portal, Yasin was quoted, during previous lectures he had given, as stating that:

"There's no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend. If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs over the clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that's on most of those clothings is faggots, homosexuals and lesbians...The Koran gives a very clear position regarding homosexuality, lesbianism and bestiality — that these are aberrations, they are immoralities and if they are tried, convicted, they are punishable by death.[20][21]

[edit] Views on Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks

During the Sunday interview, Yasin expressed his opinion that Osama Bin Laden is actually a creation and questioned Al-Qa'ida's role in the September 11th, 2001 attacks, stating that

"Osama bin Laden is not everywhere, omnipotent. He's, like, in the East, he's in the West, he's in the sky, he's everywhere, where's Osama bin Laden? That would warrant $68 billion in 17 countries hunting him and everyone in their houses being afraid of this kind of Osama bin Laden bogey man. This is a creation, they have created this here in the minds of the people, in order to justify a war they call on terror but is really a terror they have put inside the people. It is a war against Islam... There has been no evidence that has surfaced, no bona fide irrevocable, irrefutable evidence that had been surfaced that showed that there is a group called al-Qa'ida that did the September 11 bombings. I'm of the opinion there was a rogue operation that took place. Now, to go beyond that would say I would have to have some evidence, which I don't... An operation that took place with the complicity of some very sophisticated entities other than some Middle Eastern guys on an airplane. or being orchestrated by someone in a cave in Iraq.[21]

Regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center following the impacts from the Aircraft, Yasin stated that "We now know that the way that the World Trade Center fell the way that those buildings fell — they fell from internal explosive charges, the same way it's done in a construction site."[21]

[edit] Statement on the AIDS Virus

Regarding the AIDS (Accquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), virus, Yasin stated that "An AIDS virus, that is a classic disease that was created in Fort McKinley, United States. Fort McKinley, the AIDS virus, 63,000 gallons. Missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever and they put in the medicine the AIDS virus... I don't say [that AIDS was created] by the US Government. I say there were at least five governments that acted in complicity."[21]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Official website biography
  2. ^ Islam & the Modern World (VHS) by Abu Muhammad Khalid Yasin :: simplyislam.com
  3. ^ Official forum introduction, in signature
  4. ^ http://almuslimin.org/ISLAAM/node/46
  5. ^ http://almuslimin.org/ISLAAM/node/46
  6. ^ The Muslim News
  7. ^ The Islamic Cultural Centre & The London Central Mosque - Activities
  8. ^ IINMedia
  9. ^ UEIC - University of Essex Islamic Conference - UEIC 2008 - A Journey Into Islamic Values
  10. ^ UEIC - University of Essex Islamic Conference - UEIC 2008 - A Journey Into Islamic Values
  11. ^ Official website biography
  12. ^ an honorific title given to a Muslim person who has successfully completed the Hajj to Mecca, see Malise Ruthven (1997). Islam: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press, 147. ISBN 978-0-19-285389-9. , and The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  13. ^ Official website biography
  14. ^ 'Malcolm X' visual DVD lecture
  15. ^ 'The Legacy of Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary'/'The Life of Malcolm X: Prince of Islam' audio CD lecture
  16. ^ Sunday Nights With John Cleary transcript
  17. ^ The Greatest Converts to Islam Part 1 - by Sheikh Omar Bakri
  18. ^ 'Dispatches - Undercover Mosque'
  19. ^ BBC NEWS | England | West Midlands | C4 'distorted' mosque programme
  20. ^ Sarah Ferguson. "Khalid Yasin: The new voice of Islam? (title page)", Sunday, October 9, 2005. 
  21. ^ a b c d Sarah Ferguson. "Khalid Yasin: The new voice of Islam? (Transcript)", Sunday, October 9, 2005. 

[edit] See also


[edit] Media Production

• Purpose TV(launched 15th January 2008)

[edit] External links

[edit] News articles

Languages