allah
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you know that islam is based on five
pillars one is to testify that there's
nothing worthy of worship except the
creator that heavens and earth and
muhammad just like jesus moses abraham
he's the last and final messenger sent
to mankind out of god almighty allah's
love
and then you have the praying five times
a day
and then you have the
fasting during the month of ramadan the
poor do tax the zakat and then the hajj
now people used to go ahead and travel
long this is our camels on horseback
and it was long journeys now we did days
we have trained planes and automobiles
but our brother here
out of creating some awareness we'll
talk about that he actually
drove a bike
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yeah now people are like why'd you
choose to ride a bike to hajj from where
from london from london yes from london
to mecca you drove a bike is that
possible
well i thought it wasn't i thought i was
crazy but alhamdulillah with
allah made it with 56 days of cycling
now what was the the purpose behind that
the purpose behind it was uh many
reasons one of the reasons was that i
wanted to promote a healthy lifestyle
amongst muslims and also help a muslim
charity raise some
funds for children who live in the
streets around the world
and also you know i always used to hear
the stories about my grandfather used to
say how long it is to take them to go to
hajj how they used to prepare how they
used to say goodbye to their families in
the village as if they're not going to
come back return so i thought nowadays
we can get on a plane six hours and we
can go to one of the most important
place on earth and still be thinking
about all the worldly things so i said
how can i imitate that what our
grandparents or even the sahabas did and
i was sitting on a bike at that time
cycling from cambridge to london
actually for a charity ride and that's
where the idea came about
what was the the mission accomplished
were you able to raise a lot of
awareness for for charity and for for
health yes subhanallah um i newly just
discovered that ability that i can cycle
nurse trained about three years before i
did the trip and we raised substantial
amount of money 87 000 pounds it was at
the time
and the awareness that we showed the
whole world of
the children that suffer around the
third world countries was massive
and along the la is made so much
muslims in especially in uk and not just
uk internationally they're interested in
cycling we now run a muslim church who
now runs a cycling club of 400 members
who brothers cycle with us regularly
every sunday just to keep keep healthy
and we do challenges every month we've
got one during 19th of april recycling
from london to amsterdam
for to build a school in the desert in
pakistan
that is a a sad reality that
many of us i mean yeah
the key component to good health is
having a good heart but it's sad to say
that uh many of us we've there's another
component
uh to to happiness is good good health
sure and and it's it's nice to see that
you also are taking the matter serious
so serious that you actually drove your
bike all the way to the first house of
worship built by abraham to commemorate
the worship of the one god to hajj
so what what what were you seeing i mean
they say 70 this is in american
statistics that people are over be
either obese or overweight you're not
too far behind here in uh
in england huh yes
one of the good thing was the government
of here tfl transfer of london actually
sponsored our course because
where
entire homeless a lot of muslims live
the highest
obesity diabetics
high cholesterol is in that community
and so they encouraged me to actually
encourage other ethnic minorities into
cycling and this bike ride london to
makkah has really promoted that so
subhanallah we've seen so many now join
us on these
bike rides and healthy lifestyle i also
start doing other things like running i
was actually running in palestine 10
days ago and took 36 people from uk to
run a marathon in palestine
so again for of course in palestine what
was the the sort of
the journey took uh how many 30 days of
cycling so no um i ended up cycling 41
days the amazing story about this is
that i went through 14 countries
out of those 10 countries were
non-muslim countries and subana the
non-muslims was so appreciative of what
i did because i had a union jack flag on
the back of my bike
fragienza was riding us every now and
then someone stopped me and said where
are you going where are you from and i
said i'm from uk i'm going to saudi
arabia and they said why are you doing
this you're crazy and i said well i'm
doing it for a good cause and this is
what i'm doing it for um and
believe it or not a lot of them pulled
up 20 euros and said you can i donate
this i was in a restaurant eating and
just having a conversation with my
colleagues who were driving behind me in
a support vehicle and others heard the
conversation and they came over to the
table and said are you really doing what
you just were talking about yes
and they said oh can we pay your food
bill a lot of people wanted to take us
home and feed us because we were having
difficulty during some of the journeys
to eat especially trying to find halal
food some places we were there like 200
miles there's no
people around or and everyone wanted to
help us and that was the most beautiful
thing to see that human beings actually
you know we're not so different from one
another
what was the hardest part where did you
sleep uh where did you find food um yes
the food was very hard till we um turkey
and egypt etc
but we had to whilst we were going
through europe in the main cities it was
good but once we left the main cities
then we had difficulties um so we were
living on sandwiches and pizza margarita
for about two weeks until we got to
turkey
what else of a lesson can can people
take from this that you want them to to
leave off with um is that you know you
make a good intention um and uh swan
allah make good intention make dua and
allah makes these things possible
because before i did i wasn't born
athlete i never did sports actually till
i was about 38 and i did this right when
i was 42 and i i thought i'm too old to
do this and stuff but i thought you know
it's for a good cause let me give it a
try and
it was an amazing trip i had 30 brothers
join me at the first leg of the trip
which was london to paris and then there
was two of us that continued the other
side of the journey all the way down to
makkah and all through the journeys it
was beautiful to see it was beautiful to
see the masjid and the how the
architecture of every single country
much is changing from turkey to egypt to
saudi you see all the
islamic art works we we slept in masjid
at times for breaks and you know it is
really a wonderful experience what was
the total amount of days that i took
yeah average we had to cycle 100 250
kilometers but it depended if if some
days if i had problems and i couldn't
cover that mileage the next day i would
make it up so there were times i did 200
kilometers in one got 240 kilometers
average 120 kilometers a day 120 how
many mile that's
5 000 kilometers we had to cover 5 000
kilometers and just uh last you you were
able to uh pray on the road yeah i'm
sure there was uh there was did you just
being out there did this connect you
more like seeing the beautiful creation
that allah has created and did this
raise your iman definitely brother
you know once we left the concrete world
and you you're surrounded by nature and
the mountain i mean we had we climbed
the alps
in
switzerland and oh my god it was
beautiful just i was overwhelmed just by
looking at this because on your bike
you're getting a 360 degree view of the
area and just looking at the lakes and
the trees and the greeneries and we
don't get to see much of that living in
london the concrete jungle yeah yes yes
and so that was so beautiful to see
the natural beauty of allah's
creationists yeah
beautiful thank you for sharing that
with us
do you plan on doing it again i wish uh
i hope i like gives me the topic maybe
one day inshallah yeah
all right well thank you and hopefully
you guys if if if he can go ahead and
ride on a bike
to go ahead and motivate people for good
health and charity i mean allah has not
made it that difficult on you that you
go and play and and prepare
with a plane ticket ticket hajj is
coming up yes so now
you don't have no excuse if you have the
finances you have the health get
yourself the hajj prepare now to go to
hajj how's that inshallah yes inshallah
we'll see you next time thank you very
much
well ladies and peace be with you
assalamu