Radical Middle Way Transcripts

Usman Raja on:

‘Futūwwa’
Al-salām ‘alaykum wa rahmat Allah wa barakātuhu

I know it seems a bit odd Abdul-Rehman inviting a fight-trainer and ex-professional

fighter to speak about something like futūwwa because it’s about giving. First thing
I’ll do is start with is a bit about my background.

I look around the room and I see that most of you are Anglo-Asians with your two-
parent families and BMW’s when you’re 17 years old. My father left when I was 11
years old; he moved us into a white area called Farnborough and we were living on a
council estate. He left my mother to fend for us. Me and my brother grew up as
council estate kids in an army area that was completely white. There was no Asian
families around, no mosque to go to, no Muslim identity. My mum prayed 5 times a
day; she tried her best. She told us there is one God, Muhammad is the Messenger of
God, all these things. But when you’re getting your clothes from Oxfam and trying to
keep up with wearing designer clothes and trainers in a culture where you’re on the
outside. From the age of 11 we faced racism. So on top of not having much money in
an area where – and I hope Habib Ali will forgive me for saying this – a kid came up
to me when I was young and said ‘Is your face brown because someone spread – I’m
going to use the word – ‘excrement’ on it?’ I remember walking down the street and
being threatened by adults; at the age of 13 a guy came up to me with a milk bottle to
smash it round my head. We were living in this army area where they’re taught that
anything foreign is your enemy and you’re constantly having to explain yourself. So
what starts happening when you’re growing up without role models, is that your
friends become your role models. Your friends are a bunch of council estate kids who
do shop lifting and progress onto drugs and some of my friends are dead, a lot of my
friends are in prison, a lot are coming out of prison and having to deal with life.

Al-Hamd lillah, one of the things that saved me, was one of my friends who started
studying Islām, which sounds really odd. At the age of 16 one of my friends turned
around and said I read a book about that stuff that you lot are supposed to be
following. I looked at it and thought, yeah, but you’ve got this messed up religion
where you ask women to cover up their heads, they have to stay at home and 50% of
this religion is stuck behind doors, and the men, they’re out there doing what they
want. The model I saw in my father was someone who did pretty much what he
wanted and the good bit of advice he once gave me was ‘Son, always use protection.’
You see, so that was my experience of Islām.

Seeing my friend progress and be inspired by Islam woke up my curiosity and from
there, at the age of 16, my father actually came back into my life and we moved to
Huddersfield and in order to civilise us he got us involved in boxing and Thai boxing.
This is 14 years later and I’ve had fighters on the UFC Ultimate Fighting
Championships and most of you know what that is, James Zikic Remedios who
fought on UFC 38, Jess Lowdon who’s currently fighting on the UFC shows in
Englad, James Zikic who’s ex-Cage Rage Champion, Alex Reed. My brother is the
British Light Weight and Southern Boxing Champion, just to mention a few of the
students, and Victor Holt who is the best Wing Chun fighter in the country. I could
go on and on but we’re not here for an ego fest.

I hate talking about fighting; here’s a guy who’s involved in Cage Fighting and it’s to
do with futūwwa...but the best way I can come across with this is that the way we
justify what we do is that when you’re in that ring, you start of as something really
bestial. You’re really trying to glorify yourself. There’s probably guys who watch
boxing shows, and I trained down at a place that is considered the best pro-boxing
camp in the UK – so that’s just the pro-boxing side of things with guys like Ross
Minter, Kevin Mitchell, so I’ve had a taste of all these combat sports and when you’re
in the arena people are calling your name. Now what happens when you do this is
you spend years trying to glorify yourself but then the morning you wake up after
you’ve knocked someone out, you feel great. But the morning afterwards, you realise
that you have to get back on the horse again and start saying ‘I have to get myself
another show and get myself another title. You realise that your ego is your
opponent.

One of the things, especially when you’re training at a high level, is that when you’re
sparring someone for 12 rounds and after 6 rounds you realise that this machine isn’t
doing what you want it to and it will give up on you. So what it comes down to is the
way that we train now is to get wayward Muslims brothers, or Muslim brothers that
are practicing, to put in them the ability to defend themselves if they need to, and
they can access neurological pathways; repetition of a movement gives you a
neurological pathway, hence you can just respond, instead of using aggression and
ego and thinking to yourself ‘OK I’m going to smash this guy into the floor and then
stamp on his head.’ This is the response of people walking around out there in rage.

So basically it’s about having the confidence and walking around without having that
rage, but walking around knowing that if anything happens, you can just respond. So
what does this have to do with futūwwa?

One of the famous stories we are told is that when Seyyidnā ‘Ali had a sword to a
man’s throat, and the man spat in Seyyidnā ‘Ali’s face, and Seyyidna ‘Ali walked
away. The man said ‘Aren’t you going to kill me?’ And he said ‘No, because at that
point I would have killed you for myself.’ So we need to ask ourselves why Seyyidna
‘Ali was out on that battle field. Was he thinking to himself, ‘I’ll go out there to
increase my body strength so everyone can call me Ali the Invincible’? and they did
call him that. But he wasn’t there for that; he was there doing it for Allah.

The way that we train is to remember that this machine that your rūh, soul, is
occupying, is something that you need to get disciplined, especially in this society
which is all based on consumerism. When we talk about futuwwa, we’re talking about
giving. We’re talking about being in 15% of the world’s population and using up 85%
of the world’s resources. Everyone’s sitting here probably thinking ‘Ive got my own
stress, I’ve got my pharmaceutical exams coming up, I’m not married yet.’ To you,
your issue is a big issue but as the brother said, there are people in Burma without
heating, without clothing. Now, futuwwa was a sufi code that taught warriors about
giving. If you think about it, what does a truly selfish man want? He wants
tranquillity. At the end of the day, if you have a 5bedroom house, a merc outside and
a beautiful wife, you’re thinking this will make you tranquil. But hang on a minute,
you don’t have a yacht.

So how does a truly selfish man get tranquillity? Well that little hole you have inside
of you – and one of the root meanings of the word Īmān is void – needs to be filled
by Allah. So what happens is that the truly selfish man needs to find his way to Allah
by negating these worldly things. Part of that is to discipline your body and not want
to get up and eat five packets of walkers crisps, and that’s probably what you guys
had for lunch, but look at the state of you lot [Audience laugh]. I’m used to walking
into a room full of brothers and they’ll think, ‘OK, this guy trains UFC fighters, he’s a
fighter’ but you’re sitting there thinking, ‘He’s not so tall, he’s not so big’ but this isn’t
about ego. I’m not here to prove to you that I’m tougher than you, because as Allah is
my witness, I have no need for admiration. Al-Hamd lillah, I’ve got my mercy with
my family, I’ve got my mercy with my Shaykh, but the root of all that mercy is Allah.
It allows me to go out there and give, whether it’s physically or spiritually in Islām.
The whole point is about emptying out your closet. You’re on a journey and a lot of
you are walking around with a rucksack of rocks. I’m dealing with brothers right now
who are part of the Kurdish Mafia and are going out into North London having fights
with Turks, and I hear these stories of ‘I cut someone’s hand off today.’ Going
through what I went through, and the violence I grew up with, that all seems small
when you’re hearing someone else’s issues. You have no right to have an ego about
how strong you are, how tough you are, because of the fact is that the only person you
have to deal with is yourself. When you’re in that fight, it’s you that gives up. When
you’re in front of Allah and told to pray 5 times a day, who’s the person who thinks to
himself, I’m not going to get up for Fajr? It’s you.

So you’re your own worst enemy. And how do we deal with that? Well, one of the
ways is to physically train, and also physically train through your dhikr. I would
advise you to find someone who can reflect that mercy to you. Al Hamd lillah we have
Habib Ali sitting right there. These talks are not for your entertainment, they’re not
for you to sit down and smile about, but go back and say to yourself ‘I like what that
brother said’ whilst sitting with a coffee or shisha in front of you, do you understand?
It’s about waking up that soul and waking up that Īmān. And that’s what the aim of
this is; to get you to wake up and go out there and make a difference. We’re living in a
community that is suffering from dislocation. Every person sitting here is going
through dislocation, thinking that this brother standing here doesn’t know what I’m
going through, but guess what, every single problem you have has been addressed
here. In Islām every single one of your issues has been addressed. And most of those
problems starts with over consumption – like Prophet Adam and Hawa; taking that
apple was over-consumption. And since that time, our greatest and only sin has been
over consumption.

So when we come here talking about futuwwa and becoming men, and this is about
learning to give rather than take. If you’re out there, then be a role model for Islām,
rather than someone out there with an Islāmic identity. There’s two types of Muslims
– the extrinsic and the intrinsic. The extrinsic is the person who turns up to a lecture
to be part of a group – he’s part of that community. The intrinsic Muslim is the one
who is looking for Allah and is looking to fill that void, and he’s the one that goes out
into the Community. The kindness that I got growing up was from non-Muslims. My
family are converts; this is the first time in five years that I’ve been around a Muslim
Community. Aside from that it’s the brothers who came from around us. The main
thing I’ve seen coming into the Muslim Community is that the worst consumers that
are there are the people looking to marry. You’ve got the guys out there doing what
they want, but won’t marry the sisters who are doing the same thing as them, because
all of a sudden they become holier than thou. As a singular person you have to ask
yourself, what are you representing in your community? All of you have a domino
effect on each other. If you find out about these communities, you can get someone
who can tell you who the weed dealer is. If you ask them who is was who took the
sisters’ innocence, it’s ‘brother Ahmed’. When I sit around in the Muslim
Community, it’s the Muslims who hurt the Muslims. I grew up knowing that Usman
wasn’t the same as Andrew, when I was sitting in a pub thinking, something isn’t
right here. I didn’t fit in there. Thank Allah that He had the mercy on me to not allow
me to fit into that group that was deviating. But the problem now is that the group
that are deviating are the Muslims.

I’m here supposed to be some example of Muslim manhood, I don’t know, but what I
am and what some of these other brothers are, aren’t what you are. If you ask me
what religion I’m from – and religion comes from a root word religios – then this the
word Muslim has become an identity who’s from South Asia or Africa. When you
look at the Prophet (saw), the thing that brings them together, their religios, is
spirituality. Your individualism is the individualism that reflects the Oneness of
Allah. Your oneness reflects the Oneness of Allah. We can be like the Prophet (saw)
in the sense that we give out mercy, in the sense that we don’t take. But we’re at
home drinking bottles of mineral water, we’re at home taking long showers. I’m not
here to beat you down, but just to say that at the end of life, you’ll have Allah saying,
‘This is how much you used, justify it. How did you fine Me? What were those five
Cadbury mini eggs for?’ We are using 85% of the World’s resources, and we have to
justify that to Allah. So when we talk about futūwwa we’re talking about learning to
give and detaching from these physical ones.

I’ve been saved. I have 2 minutes. What I never do is plan a talk. Once I prepared
something and a guy said to me, ‘You can’t go out there and do a generic talk. Talk
about fighting.’ So this was my improvisation and if I had planned it, I probably
would have stuttered. As Allah is my witness, I don’t like standing up in front people.
I’ve spent the last 10 years with people coming up to me and saying ‘Yeah man, you
did well.’ I’ve been in an auditorium where everyone screamed my brother’s name
and banged seats and things. And you know what it is, it’s completely empty. That
kind of respect means nothing; the only type of respect you can get is self respect.
The only way to achieve that is by being tranquil and not being the person who over-
consumes. I’ve come here and put a spike in your soul and hopefully one that you
have to pull out your over-consumption with it, then Al-Hamd lillah. If it hasn’t then
hopefully tomorrow you wake up with a headache and you do something about it,
and there’ll probably be one less doughnut coming off the conveyor belt at Tesco’s.
Anyway,

Al-Salām ‘alaykum wa rahmat Allah.

About Usman Raja

Usman Raja is the Director of the Unity Initiative and works as an Interventions
Consultant rehabilitating TACT offenders, providing Offender Manager training to
Probation Centres and delivers community based projects. He is also one of the most
prominent professional championship trainers in the sports of Muay Thai and Mixed
Martial Arts, otherwise sensationally known as cage fighting. He has been a student
of Sheikh Aleey for 5 years.

For more information about this event or to view the video, please visit
www.radicalmiddleway.co.uk