 Okay, Bismillah, in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, you can introduce yourself. Hello, my name is Manny Carbohal. So our beautiful brother Manny has been studying Islam especially the past few weeks, and he comes from a Christian background which is, you know, there's a lot of beauty in there, obviously there are certain things that doesn't sit well with the hearts. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, there's a beautiful tradition, the Prophet Muhammad said, ask your heart and your heart would never lie to you. So a lot of the people who convert to Islam, it's the journey of the heart, that it actually sits well with them in their hearts. So just to go over before we do the Shahada about what is Islam, so you know what you're getting into. I know you studied a little bit but I just want to reassure. So Islam, you know, there's a beautiful, what we call hadith or saying of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that Angel Gabriel came to him and asked him four questions. And when he left, after the questions, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, told his companions, he said, do you know who that man was? They said, no, we don't know who he was, we've never seen him before, because he came in the form of a man. And then he said, that was Gabriel, Gabriel came to teach you your religion. So all of the scholars, they take this that that is the religion, that hadith, everything that is in that, that's the religion of Islam. So there is a simplicity in understanding the religion, but also there's a sophistication when you get into the creed and you want to understand it in a deep, beautiful way. So the first question was, tell me about Islam, what is Islam? So the Prophet Muhammad's response, all of a sudden, was that Islam is to testify that there's no God but one God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. That's Islam, the first thing, right? And then to pray five times a day. So our prayers is based on the time of the, as the earth turns or as the sun rises and sits. So it's very heavenly and earthly. So we have five daily prayers and that is for us to be reconnected because the world is trying to disconnect you from God. But every few hours the prayer comes in, you take a break, you go to your prayer. It's a few minutes, but those are power minutes. And then he said to pray five times a day and then to fast in Ramadan. So the month of Ramadan comes and we actually go through a fasting period of sunrise to sunset if we don't eat, which seems very impossible, honestly. But once you do it, it's kind of like, oh, that was easy. But you try to do that without intention or fasting is very hard. So like the day, sometime I try to say, oh, I'm not going to eat anything today just for the sake of just nihilism, not do anything. By 10 o'clock I'm like, oh, I've got to have my latte, right? I've got my coffee. But in Ramadan, that's one of the miracles of the month that you just do it. And it's easy. God makes it easy because your intention is to fast for His sake. And then to pay in what we call zakat or alms that you pay two and a half percent of your excessive wealth that you don't use. So for example, if you have wealth, like for example, there is no alms in your home. So if you don't own a home for a million dollars, you don't have to pay anything. If you own a ring that has a diamond on it, the diamond has no. But the gold, the actual gold has it. Like it's excessive. So if you have money in a bank account that you're using, so as you have a business, you bring it in 100,000 a month, you've taken out 100,000. There's no zakat. There's no alms for that because it's in circulation. What's alms is that excessive wealth that you have. You have gold and you have silver and you have cash in account that you don't use. So once you don't use that for over a year, then you pay two and a half percent of that to the poor. And those poor could be your family members except your parents, your grandparents, or your children, grandchildren like that. So you can't pay your lineage up and down because they're your responsibility in Islam. So your parents are your responsibility, not a burden. But then if you have an uncle or that is poor and struggling, you know, who has to be poor people, you can give it to them. But there's eight categories of people that you can actually pay your alms to. Then it's to make the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime if you're able and physically, mentally, and financially. So if somebody is like, let's say they're poor, they don't have to go. Like it's just waved on them because you have to be financially able to go. Or somebody's crippled or something like that. So that's Islam. So it's very simple, right? It's not that complicated. Yeah. And then they can they can teach you like your friends. They can teach you the prayers. They're going to give you a really nice box set that has all of all of the books that you need for a lifetime. Then he said, tell me about E-man. What is faith? When you say I have faith, what is it? And he said, to believe in God, we believe in one God. See, the concept of trinity is one of the biggest problems that the Christians have because there's no explanation to the trinity. You can't divide infinity, infinite power into three. Because anything divided by something that's infinite is invalid. So 10 over infinity is invalid. So you can't divide infinite power because God's power is infinite into three. See, that's this is, you know, there's no answer for it, obviously. But we believe it's only one God and he's a creator of the heavens and the earth. In the Bible, they refer to him as God the Father. But we believe it's one God. He has no son. He's not he doesn't begets note. He's begotten. He has no father, no son, no daughter. No, he's he's there's nothing like him. There's nothing. Anything that comes to your mind that God is like that, there's nothing like him. God is other than that. So he's just a lot of the, you know, in many traditions like the Buddhists and the Christian to have this, this statue of Jesus that they say, okay, that's God. God has, there's no form. There's nothing like him. He's not a thing. That's it. Anything that you think about is a thing. So to believe in one God and to believe in the angels, that there's angelic world. That simultaneous to our world. They see us. We don't see them. But in the here after in paradise, we see them. They don't see us is the other way around. So there's, there's, there's gins that are made out of what we call the fire and there's angels that made out of light. So that's a, that's a, another rim that, that, that only God knows how it works. They try to figure this out with the Avenger movie, but it's not like that. But then, then you believe in the prophets. One of the thing about the beauty of Islam, you don't lose anything that was good in Christianity. You have everything in Islam. You have Jesus in Islam. You have Mary. So we love Mary. There's a chapter called chapter of Mary in the Quran. There's a whole chapter dedicated to Mary. One of the five saintly women of Islam. We believe in the version of birth. We believe in Jesus speaking in the cradle. We believe in the Bible being a revelation from God. We believe in miracles of Jesus that, that, that, you know, leprosy and and giving life to the, to the death with the command of God. We believe in all that. The only thing that's, that's different. We don't believe he has any divinity. He has no Godness in him. He's a human being, but he's a prophet. He received revelation. So we believe in prophets, 25 prophets are mentioned in the Quran, but 124,000 prophets came throughout history of humanity. So Jesus, Moses, Noah, John the Baptist, all of them are mentioned. There's stories of them in the Quran, Abraham, Adam being the first and Prophet Muhammad being the last. So that's the prophet. And then we believe that there's a day of judgment. And we also believe that there is everything is from God. Everything that happens in their life, the good and the evil, all of them from God. Everything is, he, he allows it to happen. And then we believe in paradise and the fire, fire is for purification. Those who purify themselves in this world, they don't have to go to fire in next world. Those who don't, they will experience it to get purified. If there's good in them, they will enter in paradise. I believe all the Muslims at the end will enter paradise. So that's the, that's the faith to believe in those. And then he asked him the third question. What is Hassan? What is the beauty of the religion? He said, to worship God as though you see him, even though you don't see him, but you know, you should know that he sees you. So you have this presence of mind, which in Islam we call it taqwa. You will hear these words often. The word taqwa will come up in every sermon. Taqwa is God consciousness. That you're conscious of, of him. God exists, but are you conscious of his existence all the time? Is he with you all the time? Taqwa is just being God conscious. When you pray, you're God conscious. When you give your charity, you're God conscious. When you deal with people, you're God conscious. So that's very important. And then the last one he told him about, when does the world end? The end of time. And the answer of the prophet was that the one who asked doesn't know more than the one being asked. In other words, the exact time that, you know, there was all this sect of Christianity that says the world is going to end in 1972 in the one. Because they have all these dates and they all fail. Only God knows the hour. But he gives all the signs of the hours. What are the signs of the hours? So he gives all these signs of the hours that before the end of time these things will happen. And those are all very strong in our tradition. So that's the religion, basically believing in those and knowing the signs, to see the signs of the end of time. Do you believe in all of those and you accept it so we can do the Shahada? I do. Okay, good. Okay. So I want to make sure. Are you friends with him? Okay. Why don't you sit here? And hold his hand. Hold hand, brother. We're brothers. Yes. This is brotherhood. Okay, so we're going to do the Shahada first in Arabic. Then in English. Okay. All right. So you just repeat after me. Ashhadu. Ashhadu. An. An. La. La. Ilaha. La. Ilallaha. Wa. Wa. Ashhadu. Ashhadu. Anna. Anna. Muhammadan. Muhammadan. Abduhu. Abduhu. Wa. Wa. Rasulahu. Rasul. Ma'shaAllah. Takbir. Takbir. Takbir. This is just calling that God is great. Only God can do this. Nobody can do this. I bear witness. I bear witness. That there is no God. That there is no God. God but Allah but Allah and I bear witness and I bear witness that Muhammad that Muhammad is his final messenger is his final messenger and his servant and his servant Takbir God is great God is great Hamdallah so from this moment on you have it's it's it's we don't have the concept of reborn and baptized but this is you're a new person the old you is no longer there so from this moment you're pure so you start with a plus right now so for us what it means is that if we die at this moment you're the purest amongst everybody who's here because you have no sin zero sin whatever you have done in the past that was sinful is forgiven whatever you done in the past that was good you get extra credit for it so if you give charity if you help people they all will be accumulated as you're good inshallah and then the other thing is from this moment on Islam all of the written everything is incumbent incumbent on you so the prayer the fasting when Ramadan comes they will help you remind you when Ramadan is in a few months in March so and then the prayer it's their duty to help you make sure you learn it okay their books and stuff we give you but your friends duty to to make sure that they they walk with you and learn teach you that and and that's it so then when you go home what you would do we call a hustle which means a full body shower so basically just like you do the shower you just go shower and then take every all your clothing that you're wearing take everything out and put it in the washer in wash it because you're a new man new clothes and then put on you go and then from that moment on five daily prayers do the best that you can do the best if you miss something and if you do it's not the end of the world God is the merciful and he loves his servant when they repent if you make any mistake just go to God yeah you don't need him you don't need me you don't need the Imam there is we don't have that in Islam where you go to a priest and you say oh father I've sent we don't have that you go directly to God and there's a there's there's an opening between you and God and the closest you can get to God is when you're prostrating that's the moment you go and you make you pray and you make the supplication supplicate for all your family members first and foremost all your friends you know you have friends Muslims non-Muslim all your friends pray for them and then supplicate for everybody who's here and and and for yourself that God give you the strength to carry this this banner and surely you will do great things and I want to be the first after him to give you how to go ahead is first