this doesn't make any sense to me as a
child growing up with christian parents
in a christian church in a christian
neighborhood there was a new study that
came out that
half of christians 30 of even
evangelicals believe that jesus is not
god 11 that's when you realize okay this
was the truth i grew up being poor
you know and all the i was in the music
business so everything that went along
with the music business um going in
there we don't have bulletproof vests
we're going unarmed and we're going
right to the doorstep
life liberty and pursuit of jannah
that's it that's beautiful isn't it
your host
and my next guest wayne abubakar rollins
a strategic planning consultant has
assisted rural and urban communities in
developing and implementing and
evaluating successful community
revitalization strategies after more
than 20 years of providing strategic
planning services for governmental and
non-governmental organizations rollins
is engaged in an exponential
effort to share islam
in his book
america
2064 rollins examined
issues of moral
degradation in the united states from
the early 60s to today
and detailed strategies to address those
challenges from an islamic perspective
rollins is currently the project manager
for miami dade county anti-violence
initiative
a four
year 7 million
strategy that includes the national
acclaimed walking one stop
which has shifted the paradigm on how
services are delivered to miami-dade's
most challenged neighborhoods by
bringing a one-stop
victim services center to the doorstep
of residents traumatized by gun violence
rollins also serves as the director of
the south florida retny task force and
he's here with us on the dean's show
peace be with you how are you doing
brother alhamdulillah
i've heard i heard some good things
about you
many of the community members they were
telling your brother who goes in the
hood and you're like hey look you guys
better straighten up or ship
tell us a little about this no before we
get to that
what how did you accept islam
well allah
brought me to islam through a christian
neighbor
that had a copy of
abdullah yusuf ali's
rendition of the quran english
translation of the quran on the mantle
i picked it up and i noticed that it
mentioned the the prophets that i had
learned about in bible study
but then it talked about
allah's one i said this is a hawk right
from the the first time i read it that
god has won
definitely and so um
you know as a child growing up in the
christian church i remember sitting
there in the pews and the preacher
saying that god is three the father the
son and the holy ghost
i'm like huh this doesn't make any sense
to me as a child growing up with
christian parents in a christian church
in a christian neighborhood um so when i
read the court and that first time i
knew it was hard but no one was there to
give me doubt
i didn't have anybody telling me about
shahada how to pray how to fast nothing
but i had in translations i was reading
that and it wasn't until i came down
here because i grew up in new york i
came down here i was working on a job
and uh this brother by the name abdullah
muslim
he says have you taken shahada yet i
said no
i'm ready to go right now let's go and
so uh that next juma we went to masjid
alan tsar in liberty city miami and i
took shahada right away because i mean i
already thought i was muslim but i
didn't know anything about your head or
anything like that what was the climate
back then you know with all of the
islamophobia today how was the climate
you know how was islam looked upon at
that time it there was no
no conflict that i recall
even my parents who were christian and
devout christian they didn't give me any
problem with because then also
malcolm x had already kind of
tilled the soil after he came back from
mecca and um you know pronounced that he
was
muslim
you know and
um so the the climate was
gentle and soft towards islam before 9
11.
so that was before 9 11 way before 9 11
that's when you realized okay this was
the truth and what really
interested you from the get-go was the
oneness that tohi the pure monotheism
definitely you know many christians
struggle with that you know people in
our you know in
who are viewing us who aren't here right
now but people out there you know i
talked to a lot of christians and there
was a new study that came out that
half of christians 30 of even
evangelicals believe that jesus is not
god
that's a deep struggle from within you
know what i mean and here you go and you
being a christian you come across islam
the truth and now you're exposed to it
and you don't cover it up
you run with it a lot of people they get
exposed to islam they're like what's my
father going to stay my mother my
grandparents my boss my my community
those challenges weren't there you you
it was just
it wasn't like that no no not for me uh
the biggest struggle for me
was
not living to satisfy my desires but
living to satisfy the commandments of
allah
that was the biggest challenge for me um
you know
grew up being poor
you know and all the i was in the music
business so everything that went along
with the music business um
you know so giving all of those
desires because this is america right uh
life liberty and the pursuit of
happiness you know um so instead of that
it's like life liberty in the pursuit of
gender
you know a little shift that's it yeah
just shift life liberty and pursuit of
jannah that's it that's beautiful isn't
it
so now you go ahead and you're writing
this book 2064 you're doing some
wonderful work on the streets and would
you attribute this to islam
100
this is what motivated you to talk to us
about that yeah i mean like i said
before i was involved in the music
business i was producing a show called
the american jazz awards it was kind of
like the grammys for jazz
total flop
lost everything
and so uh
it was then that allah made it clear to
me
that and he brought the brother i told
you abdullah muslim to me and i took
shahada
so got out of the music business 100
uh started uh working in the liberty
city community of miami-dade county
and uh it was a job training and
placement organization that i was
working with so the young men that were
coming to see me
most have had criminal backgrounds at
least half of them had criminal
backgrounds right and so they were
having a hard time getting a job so we
were assisting them to get to jobs and
get their life together so it became a
service of humanity instead of
self-serving and that's totally
attributed you know to islam so
serving the creation serving humanity
the the the wildlife um
you know the the
the environment you know that that
became the purpose of life how can i try
and gain allah's pleasure by doing good
deeds
that's beautiful because there's a
statement by muhammad ali where he talks
about that is a man's payment back uh
something around being that this is this
is your
your payment of rent on being on earth
is to serve humanity and that's by
serving your creator by serving your
creator you're serving humanity and now
this before but it's interesting before
you were just serving your your desires
it was just about give me this give me
that you know but now taming that islam
give you the tools oh man perfectly
perfectly you know prophet muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam everything
about how we should live our life he's
laid out
you know the quran of course is the
words of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala but
prophet muhammad
he showed us how to
live the live the quran and live this
live this life so perfectly talk to us
about some of these staggering you know
very terrifying statistics about the
moral decay now coming up your
generation to what you're seeing today
it's like night and day it seems like
it's just getting worse and worse talk
about some of those facts that you
mentioned those statistics well
a few years ago when i was writing the
book
more than half of the children born in
the united states were born to unwed
mothers
people that were not married
cena
more than half
and we see the problems that we see on
the street
um we have over 2 million people that
are incarcerated
66 percent of those that come out of
prison are back in prison within two
years
we've seen gang and gun violence spiking
particularly through the pandemic
spiking all over the country
alhamdulillah miami and my catchment
area has gone down but most of the
country is going up
you know so alhamdulillah um
people are missing the dean they don't
have um the demon in their heart and if
they have it in their heart they'll know
how to live this life this this deen
this quran the sunnah of muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam is our
owner's manual for this life that you
and i have
it's an honest man
and so by taking what allah has given us
put it into practice in our day-to-day
lives
we can't go too far on just look at the
five daily salah the five times salah
how far are you going to go off track if
you're making your five times solar
that's deep man
you may go a little bit off but you're
going to come right back
it's a pristine perfect system
yeah give us some give us some examples
some stories of you going into in the
hood or somewhere you know you mentioned
okay other places it's going up but and
you're miami it's down alhamdulillah
yeah
in our catchment area of liberty city
brownsville uh south miami uh goulds
area it's gone down by almost 50 percent
over the last uh
fiscal year
so alhamdulillah
we just
introduced an initiative called the
hospital-based violence intervention
program
so
one percent of the population or less
than one percent are the ones that drive
the violence and those are the ones that
we focus in on
so
we get an alert whenever there's a
shooting that takes place
we send people to the hospital
we meet the person the victim that's the
gunshot victim
and then we meet them in the community
and we stay with them we tell them look
don't retaliate will help you whatever
type of service you want to even
relocate we did 17 relocations last year
wow so folks that had you know
bull's-eye on their foreheads we got
them out of dodge send something to
chicago
you know and uh
get them out of harm's way you know and
let them start a new life get get in a
different environment um in the
community
in a different community and so this
hospital-based initiative
it has opened my i've been doing this
work for 25 years eddie has opened my
eyes because we think we hear about the
ones who got shot and killed okay you
know that's it
what about the ones that live
the
the majority of them live they get shot
and they live
but now they may be paraplegic they may
be quiet
their whole life changes we had a 15
year old kid that got shot
actually by the police
um
and now for the rest of his life he's
confined to a real wheelchair unless a
lost upon a white dollar showers mercy
on him
you know so uh
that's one aspect of it the other thing
is the walking one stop alhamdulillah we
facilitated the 2008 south florida
anti-gang summit
and we brought together 175 experts from
around the country and one of the
objectives they said was we need to put
one-stop social and economic service
centers in all the neighborhoods that
have high incidence of gun violence and
so by the grace of allah
allah said well why don't you bring
that that system i mean allah didn't
talk to me but i'm saying my i was
inspired alhamdulillah um that why don't
you bring that social economic service
center to the doorstep
of people in the areas where they've
been drive-by shootings or persistent
gun and gang violence so we bring out
criminal justice professionals community
leaders uh my beloved brother that's in
the audience yusuf he's going out and
some of his children have also gone out
with us my children and we go to the
doorstep of the folks that are in the
traumatized areas and we bring them uh
employment opportunities health care
opportunities we bring them education
opportunities we bring them down you
know we're bringing it you know on the
in our action
you know again serving humanity and so
we're going to areas that nobody wants
to go into
and we're going in there we don't have
bulletproof vests we're going unarmed
and we're going right to the doorstep um
you know sometimes the peroxide stains
are still on the ground from where you
know the person might have been shot you
know and uh
belong to me it is we've done over 200
of them now and uh it's it's a beautiful
uh it's been a beautiful experience of
being able to
you know serve uh allah's creation in a
meaningful way i mean this is a shining
example
of a great contribution that a muslim is
making because you have a lot of the
islamophobes a lot of people the
opponents of islam who
are trying to uh flip the narrative
and make it look otherwise but you're
somebody who's you know
making a huge impact
hey but eddie we have gotten the uh the
wrath of the islamophobe network we've
gotten the full raft of it i tell you
it's when when we came out with america
2064.
oh man we uh
that's a whole nother show brother yeah
well that should motivate more people to
read the books see what all the
controversy is all about
so we're at the islamic center of south
florida and pompano that's where we're
at huh
i want to hear everybody
you guys got those questions ready
let's go ahead and get some questions
from the
from the audience tell us how is your
initiative received
by the city officials by the
national government by everybody maybe
you know do they recognize what you do
or or um
or not
well
they gave me a four year seven million
dollar contract
i guess they receive it pretty good
that's a very good question i mean the
law
the uh
law authority you know the police and
whatnot they must love you
all right
help them keep keeping miami safe
next question
it's not the oprah show it's the deen
show
assalamu alaikum
yeah that was really interesting what
you know you had mentioned about um i
guess
stopping you know violence in
communities what do you think are some
of the things that kind of lead to
violence and kind of let violence grow
versus what you know you're implementing
in some of these communities that are
actually diminishing the violence if you
can kind of you know share and expound
on that that'd be really interesting
from like a real estate perspective
that's excellent question and the
pandemic um in itself created a lot of
stresses on communities um but
you know when you
are going against the commandments of
allah
you're going to reap what you sow
definitely you know whatever good you do
you're going to see it whatever bad you
do you're gonna see it and so
unfortunately in a lot of communities
the problems are generational
you can go back
400 years
and see where the abuses
uh to populations and abuses of
um law enforcement
on some communities there's no
legitimacy in some communities
of for law enforcement and
reconciliation has to
take place i think the statistic that i
mentioned about the children being born
out of wedlock is dramatic
because i can tell you
ninety percent of those that we see in
the present no father they one dude said
he i love my father but i never met him
what's that
you know and you know my my brothers
from philistine or saudi they can go
back 2 000 years or even my wife from
china go back
thousand four thousand years of their
heritage
but unfortunately there are many in this
society
we can only go back two or three
generations
you know so when you lose that that
culture that heritage that connection
connection to your past
is tough you know and then
quite frankly
without doing us doing the dowel that we
need to be doing
and sometimes negative you know us in
business or not always in the right
businesses and that kind of thing
it gives a negative
um impression of islam so they turn to
other things like karma um
alcohol
weed all these things to
satisfy the enough's right
so i think that's uh that's part of the
contributing factors but there's many
dynamics dimensions
can you review this question again yeah
no he was saying uh liberty city is
looked at pretty much as a
depressed area how you're remedying it
more or less right michelle
well first of all
liberty city is not a depressed area you
have a few pockets
in liberty city what we call hot spots
and in those hot spots you have hot
people
only one percent of less less than one
percent are driving the violence in
places like liberty city most of the
people are good people they really are
hardworking people decent people but you
said that one percent or less and that's
who we focus in on
that's where all of our attention is is
on that one percent of this
we got time for one more question
um what can we do at as muslims to um
combat
combat this chaos because i feel like as
a
as a country we're like we've kind of
gone to hell like
i'm
basically i feel like our morals are all
screwed up and
this i'm actually a revert this is
coming from from a former secular
liberal atheist and
even just a year ago now i've
lost
to allah has opened my eyes
to to the truth and i'm so grateful but
how could what what do you think the
best way to ask
muslims if there's a way to combat this
like what you where you experience like
what do you think
even if it's not possible the best thing
we can do as muslims just just
reach out to people and do good jeets
for them you know satisfies the needs of
maybe they have a need for food maybe
they need a job um
and then you know of course the dollar
you know and the best hour is just
your beautiful manner and i can look at
you man and just tell it your mannerisms
and you know your vibe is very soft and
gentle that's it right there you know i
mean
our manners you know how we carry
ourselves and how we treat people and
allah's creation
inshallah i want to thank everybody here
we got one more question with the
what about the you know you speak about
drugs
liberty city by the way i came to
america 88 i live in liberty city
so
it used to be in that time 88 was a lot
of drugs
but now
drugs all over
and how we can treat this for muslims
how to read the drugs and
especially for the youth how to treat
these kind of problems
well
allah
when he revealed the ayat
on
kama
the first ayah
was
uh in
incoming there's some benefit but the
detriment is worse in my
poor english translation please forgive
me and then
after some time
don't approach your salah
intoxicated
and then the third ayat ayah
was
don't
use come at all
so it was a gradual process
not everybody can go cold turkey on
on certain behaviors
so it's a gradual process first of
course the dowel give the toe heed and
then once you've got them
in the
frame of mind to accept
toe heat
then you have to tell them okay well if
you're smoking you know
two blunts a day cut it down to one
cut it down to a half
cut it down to a quarter cut it out all
together
the same approach that i lost upon who
what allah had on the early muslims that
you know it's got to be gradual
can't just do cold cold turkey
i want to thank we're having a lot of
fun i want people to go ahead and get
the book 2064. i want to thank you and
everybody here at the pompano mustang
that's not a war cry
that's
the greatest creator that happens on
earth and we'll see you next time here
show peace be with you assalamu