Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 316: In Conversation with Islam - Dr. Akber Mohammed

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Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James. On the 21st of April, 2019, Easter Sunday, 3 Christian churches across Sri Lanka and 3 luxury hotels in the commercial capital of Colombo were targeted in a series of coordinated terrorist suicide bombings. The Sri Lankan government said the bombings might have been in retaliation for the killing of 50 people last month at the mosques in New Zealand, and that two Islamist extremist groups might have been involved, not one. More than two days after the Sri Lanka bombings, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks. The group identified the 7 suicide bombers by their names and specified which of them had gone on to target on what it called the "infidel holiday," Easter. As the first mass funerals were held, grief for some turned into anger. Some began speaking of retaliation and revenge. Muslim-owned shops were vandalized and hundreds of Muslim families fled religiously mixed areas. In contrast, members of Sri Lanka's Muslim community have reached out to their neighbors, offering to donate food and blood. The chairman of one mosque was quoted as saying, "We would do anything to help. We are so pained." But with the attack still so fresh and tensions so high, some Muslims were warned to hold back for now. But with the attack— but today, On Voices in My Head, I am so pleased to welcome Dr. Akbar Muhammad, a member of the Islamic faith community here in Springfield, Ohio, and part of the Islamic Association, and one-time president of the Islamic Association. Dr. Akbar Muhammad is a cardiologist in Springfield, Ohio, and he is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Mercy Health and Urbana Hospital. He has also been a great spokesperson of the faith here in the Springfield community, and I'm so glad to have you here with me tonight so we can discuss some of the issues around this, this evening. So thank you for being here.

I should thank you more, Mr. James. I'm so actually honored to be here sitting in the church with you. And trying to tease out the whys and whats of all this madness going on around the world. And especially when the attacks are going on for places of worship. This is, in my opinion, sheer crime against humanity. As such, and I feel that our human values should actually be higher than what is happening. And God has created us for a purpose, and to love each other. And the hate mongers are kind of misleading and leading us into disaster after disaster. And we need to come out of this pit and stand out, stand together in solidarity for peace.

I so agree, and I'm grateful that we get to have this chance to be here together. I don't take it lightly, and I know you've had a busy day of working and caring for patients, so that just means even more that you would give some of your precious time this evening to this conversation. I think we'll just start with the basic, and as I told you before, I'll be asking some questions that I think might be interesting to listeners. They aren't necessarily things that I don't know. Some things are gonna be new to me, but some of them, thankfully, because of partially events I've been invited to and been so welcomed to, such as Islamic Day of Ohio last year, my friendship with Samina and Sana Ahmed, and just reading different things, I've learned a lot over the past few years. But there's still a lot I don't know. And so part of the reason I wanted to talk to you today was for the listener who oftentimes maybe the only source is their preferred news source and maybe they'll get a little clip every now and then and they'll make some assumptions maybe about an entire faith of people based off of this one little thing that might not even be accurate. So it's important to me that we get to have these conversations. First of all, just by your explanation, if you were to give us a definition, what is Islam?

Islam, Rick Lee James, very briefly speaking, literally it means peace.

Peace.

So it comes from an Arabic root word, "salam," and "salam" comes out of that and Islam comes out of that. Salam is our greeting. When we meet each other, we say, "Assalamu alaikum," Basically, it means peace be upon you. And Islam is basically an adjective for peace.

Very interesting.

And for Muslims who actually read the scripture, the belief is Islam religion started with Adam alayhis salam, peace be upon him. Adam, like we pronounce in Arabic, So, we consider Adam to be a prophet, and we had a series of prophets culminating in Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And our faith is incomplete unless we believe in all the scriptures and all the prophets. So, if I am a true Muslim, I have to believe in Torah, Old Testament. I have to believe in Bible. And I have to believe in Quran. Unless I believe in all those books and believe that it is a continuation, I am not a true Muslim. And so it, to us, it is like an evolving process of religious thought process. God actually has sent the teachings through the agency of angels to taught us how to lead our life peacefully. So that's why how the Islam is—

Yeah, well, that's a good point for us to get into this because I don't think a lot of people even realize that the word means peace. Why do you think it is that Islam is considered to be a violent religion by so many people? I can think of several reasons off the top of my head, but I'd love for your explanation. One is just one that came up yesterday in this building when I was having a conversation with someone. We were talking about the Easter bombings that happened, and in the conversation someone said, "Well, it's Islam. They're violent." And I said, "Well, it was the Islamic State." "Well, yeah, the Islamic State." And I said, "Well, that's not the same thing." You know, it has Islamic in it, but they really— To me, that's one of the reasons, but what are some thoughts about you? Because everyone who I know, and everyone I know, I think, is in the Springfield community, and as much as I have been welcomed in community and conversation and being a part of events, I've always taken from everyone that peace is very much the heart of the religion, and it is lived out that way among your people here. So tell me some of your thoughts as to why you think it has this reputation for being a very violent religion.

Unfortunately, as they say, it's a bad rap Islam has gotten into. Whether you call it, it's like a media-propagated myth or misunderstanding or misconception about the religion itself or the people who follow the religion. If we want to look at historical background and then come to the present day, in the historical background, people say Islam was spread at the edge of the sword. But the largest population of Muslims live in Indonesia, and there was never a war against Indonesian people or against Indonesia. There has never been a war historically. Muslim rulers ruled Indian subcontinent for almost 1,000 years. Now, also, the 80% Indian population is Hindu. If the religion were to be spread with the sword, those examples really contradicted completely.

Yeah.

That's one part. The other part is people have used Islam to carry out their own agendas and giving it a bad name. So yeah, that person's name may be a Muslim name, but is he a true Muslim? Is he following the true teachings of Islam? If the people who did the bombing in Sri Lanka at the time of Easter, a religious holiday, going into the churches, which are the places of worship. People congregated there to worship God. They had gone for a peaceful purpose and loving purpose, and these people who went there to carry out their agenda of hatred, they are not Muslims, basically. When people do not follow the tenets of a religion, And they think, or they say, or they do that, "Oh, we are fighting for the cause of Islam." They are basically hypocrites. They are not Muslims. The other problem happening in the world nowadays is geopolitical problems we have, and that's a reality. Whether It has been big power and political divide with the superpowers of the world. They wanted to conquer certain lands, they wanted to keep influence in certain other lands, and a lot of strife has been created because of that. Even the Shia-Sunni divide within Islam has become so much more now than it used to be. We have an Iran and Syria and Lebanon Shiite kind of circle on one hand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates Sunni circle on the other hand. If somebody is a real Muslim, they don't have to fight between Sunnis and Shias either. Then the last but very important factor is Islamophobia. Islamophobia is undue fear of a religion without having enough information about the real religion itself. And this has been propagated at length and by various sources and various individuals for whatever reasons, I don't know. Political or whatnot, but Islamophobia is a reality. And Islamophobia is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the people who do not know the religion, they get the wrong impression and they are afraid of the people who are Muslims or the religion itself. On the other hand, when people suffer because of Islamophobia, they, in their wrong thinking, they start saying that, oh, we are being persecuted unnecessarily, we need to fight out. So it becomes like double-edged sword. And like, for the same example, I mean, in New Zealand, when somebody, misguided person, went and did the shooting in the mosque, 50 people died, if some people who do not think properly, who are not following the tenets of Islam, they think that, oh, we have to take revenge, that is totally wrong thinking, anti-Islamic thinking actually. And they go on to other places of worship and kill fellow human beings, it is totally wrong. So I think that's what has been happening historically and in in today's day and age also.

I think it's interesting you talk about that too because I know one of the most dangerous things is scripture misused and taken out of context and used in the wrong way. An example that I would think of, Christianity is also a religion of peace. Yes. But it has been misused over the years and often using scripture passages and just like in Islam, using passages from the holy writings of Islam as well. Not necessarily in context and not necessarily used among people who know the books very well. And there have been times that Christianity has been guilty, even though the early church fathers would say that when Jesus disarmed Peter with the soldier, he disarmed Christians for all time everywhere. We've forgotten that, and we've forgotten all of the ways that Jesus has told us, "Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us," and that Jesus actually lived it out to the extreme of dying, um, rather than taking a life. Um, so all of that being said, I love the way that you just described it because there certainly are times that religion can be used as a weapon, and it can be used out of context, and it can be used in an incorrect fashion. And what I've read about myself, just reading about different things like the Islamic State, for instance, they'll seem to recruit people. And a lot of this seems to be, they're people that are needing, in some ways, a community to belong to. At least that's what I sense when I read. And it happens the same way with Nazi hate groups. It happens the same way with you name it. I mean, people will misuse something but they'll bring enough truth into it that they will say, "Hey, you belong here and you can come be a part of this family." Would it be accurate to you to say, if I was to compare, say, the Islamic State to Islam in the way that I would compare the KKK to Christianity, would that be a similar type thought?

I totally agree with you. I mean, these kind of organizations have existed in the name of religions in all the religions, as a matter of fact. And these are the extremists, and their ideology do not actually come from the real teachings of the scriptures. They take the passages, as you said, out of context, and they take literal meaning of certain sentences, and they think they are on the right path. They are only— they are the only people who are on the right path, actually, and try to define the religion in their own ways. Yeah. And, you know, in their own thoughts and words. And I totally agree that Islamic State— I mean, people have used Islam and Islamic adjectives for their own agenda without realizing that they are giving a bad name to a religion. For example, Islamic State. I mean, Islamic State has nothing what Islam says in themselves when they are killing fellow human beings, when they are killing innocent women and children. Prophet Muhammad's teachings or Quran's teachings have been, even if there is a war between two nations, you don't kill elderly people, don't kill women, don't kill children, don't kill people who are not actually in combat with you. And also, you do not cut trees, Destroy fields or farms. Do not kill the animals. So these are the teachings. Now if you look at what Islamic State people have done, they have done totally, totally opposite to this, and they are calling themselves Islamic State. It is hypocrisy.

Yeah. I hope you're enjoying the conversation today. We will be right back after this brief message from our sponsor. This episode of Voices in My Head is brought to you by Podbean. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge.

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Visit podbean.com/voices to find out more. That's podbean.com/voices. Now back to our conversation. You and, and your mosque and another, uh, one of the Central Christian Church, actually, here in town. You both have a connection together that I think is unique, and I hope I'll see it more and more in the coming days in our communities, not just in Springfield, but really around the world as things like this happen. You were first introduced, really, to each other in a documentary that CBS News did, and both of you were included in a few years ago. Maybe— was it 2 years ago, I think? Yes. And it's a really interesting documentary called Beyond Tolerance. And I think you were both introduced to each other, the Central Christian Church here in Springfield and your mosque, which is— is it— I know I'm— is it masjid?

Al-Madina.

Al-Madina. I'm sorry. I apologize for— I was trying to rehearse it earlier today and I was like, I know I'm going to mess it up. But both of you kind of through this experience of being brought together through this documentary have created a special relationship. And there's even something special that's going on next week at Central Christian Church during the Sunday morning worship time that your congregation is going to be involved with. And I'd love for you to just maybe tell a little bit about to our listeners how that relationship came about through this documentary and some of the things that have continued to grow between your life together.

Basically, Rick, if I may—

Yeah, sure.

Please.

We have been in search of like-minded people in our city. And like I have found you now, we are sitting together. So CBS people, they were actually looking for a city or town where they can show the whole nation how two different communities of different religions, how they can come together, live together, and actually be friends with each other. So there is a professor called Todd Greene.

Todd Greene, yes, friend of mine.

Yes, and Todd Greene was actually having a conversation with some of the producers of CBS, and he had come to Springfield at one time to attend one of our meetings at the Global Peace Network Group, Wittenberg. Functions.

Okay.

When he was here, he did talk about Islamophobia, and he met most of our community members at that time. We really appreciated his presentation, scholarly talk, and he actually happened to mention to the CBS producers about Springfield City.

Mm-hmm.

So they took the clue from there, and they came to our mosque and they went to Central Church and spoke with our priest, our Imam, and Carl Ruby, the pastor at Central Christian Church, and suggested that will you both places of worship will come together and give a common presentation for a documentary called Beyond Tolerance. So then we started meeting with each other. We had series of meetings, and Carl Roby did a fantastic job of doing research about Islam and why Islam has gotten a bad name. And even though the statistics, if somebody seriously look at it, show it otherwise, it's still every time, anywhere, any disaster happens or any criminal activity happens, the first thing people think that, oh, maybe a Muslim behind it. In fact, we ourselves sometimes actually feel and start praying anytime any kind of terrorist activity happens. We start praying, "Oh God, please make sure that this is not a Muslim person," or name, name of a Muslim person who is doing this. So through that, actually, we started learning about each other's religion, learning about each other's families, and Coming together, the Central Church people were nice enough to come to our masjid, or mosque, to attend our service and understand what we do, how we do, what we are actually reading from the scripture. And we did the same thing. Quite a good number of our congregants, we went to the Central Christian Church, we attended the service there, and we, of course, as I said, A significant amount of Old Testament is actually incorporated in Quran because we think it is a continuation of all the scriptures. Sure. So, when that happened, now we have become so close friends. So, we meet at religious holidays, we greet each other, we in fact conduct some of our, like, summer picnics together. And we have much— we better understanding of each other's religion now through this process. Like you just said, this coming Sunday, our mosque people are going to the service at the Christian Center Church, and we want to show our solidarity with the Christian religious people about the bombings Sri Lanka at the churches and tell them that this is not what we stand for. We should be beyond or above these kind of thinking, and we should not let this happen in our communities.

Yeah, well, I think that's a powerful way to express it too, and what a beautiful gift to each other. Did I understand that they also have come over to your congregation as well? I believe maybe when the Christchurch tragedy happened? Was it something connected with that, that Central Christian also came to be with you?

Yes, they did. And Rabbi Kosberg sent a very excellent message of condolences and sympathy to our congregation., and several members of the Central Church came to our congregation expressing their sympathy and also togetherness with us. They did that. And just to continue that, when there was shooting in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, last October, we, from our mosque, we had gone to our only synagogue Temple Shalom in Springfield, and we had met all the congregants there, and Rabbi Kosberg was good enough to let us few minutes on the podium to express our sympathies, and we had done that too.

That's so— he's a good man. He's been on the podcast a couple of times now. Yeah, I've enjoyed the time. I'll get to see him again this week for an event, but that warms my heart. It makes me proud of the communities here in Springfield, the communities of faith that have been working to do this because it needs to happen more and I don't think we hear enough stories of it. We always hear the stories of the bad, but we almost never hear stories of— one of my friends actually travels extensively for the Church of the Nazarene doing compassion work and he will often come back with stories. He'll say the things you don't hear in the news, so there were numerous times in Egypt whenever violence had been erupting, where Muslims would surround the Christians when they were praying for their safety, and then the other way around, the Christians would surround the Muslims and protect them so they could pray in safety in those moments. And he said, "We always hear about the bombings," he said, "but probably 9 out of 10 times are those other stories, but the only one we hear is 'if it bleeds, it leads,'" as the news tends to say, and we don't get to hear about these good things that are happening.

Very true.

I had a friend who actually— whoa, sounds like a phone going off, but that's alright. That's okay, it happens sometimes.

Sorry.

No, no problem. I have a friend who actually is a pastor in Tennessee, and he wrote me a couple of questions that he really would like to hear from you on, if that's alright.

Sure, I'm not a scholar, but I will I try to answer to the best of my ability.

I understand, I understand. I think you're very scholarly. The fact that you're a doctor means you're much more scholarly than I am. But one of the questions that I thought was a good one that he asked, and he was asking specifically about your relationship with Central Christian Church, for instance. He said, he asked this, what in particular in your faith tradition calls you to these moments of solidarity? Like what is being displayed at Central Christian Church next Sunday?

Yeah, this actually goes back to the days when Prophet himself was doing the preaching about Islamic values. So, according to the Quran and the teachings of Prophet, the Jewish people and the Christian people are considered the people of the book. They have a scripture, so they have a special position in our faith. So we think they are brethren in faith with us, whether they are Jewish people or whether they are Christian people, number one. Number two, it has been always impressed upon Muslims that when there is a need, when there is a calamity, when there is a sorrowful situation, you have to reach out to your neighbor. By neighbor, the definition is 40 houses on your right side of your house and 40 houses on the left, left of your house. To the extent Prophet said, if one of your neighbor sleeps hungry that night, the food you have eaten is actually not the way God wanted you to eat. You should not eat a full stomach of food if your neighbor is going hungry.

Wow.

To that extent. And compassionate— compassion and mercy has to be shown at every step of our life. Whether it is in the peaceful times, so we have to fight hunger, we have to take care of the sick people. Me joining medical health profession is exactly because of the Islamic teachings. When I am a physician, when I am seeing a patient, I don't see that I am treating a Christian person, I am treating a Muslim person, I am treating a Jewish person, I am I am treating a black person or a white person. I am thinking that God has actually given me a little gift to use for the humanity. I am a little tool and I am doing God's work on earth. So, this is actually a direct teaching from Islam. That's why I have become a physician.

Wow!

So, we have to Besides the point that, okay, we follow different paths to reach God, different religions to reach God, but God is one, and we are still following God's teachings. So if we are brothers in faith, then we need to take care of each other. We need to be compassionate with them, we need to be merciful with them, and We have to be part of their happiness. We have to be more part of their, like, bad luck or things when they go wrong. We have to stand for them and in solidarity.

That's a good answer. Thank you for that. And he asked one more really excellent question, and I think this is just as relevant to any faith in our country. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, all of them I think struggle with this. But what do you think are the struggles of forming a nonviolent community in an American context? Was the question here.

It's a very important question and very deep question, I must say.

Yes, because I— and before you start answering, I— America is unique in the sense that I think we are one of the most violent places on the planet. And we tend to have a mindset of might makes right, and it almost is ingrained to us. Our children grow up playing with guns and shooting each other. It's sort of this mindset of like, it's just part of culture and part of living. And that's why I say I think it affects all of us as we're trying to talk about our religions together. But anyway, I'll let you answer, but just some of the struggles of forming a nonviolent community in America?

As I said, it's a very important question and very, very deep question, and I actually tend to beg to beg to differ from you.

Okay, please do, please do.

America is probably the best society in the world at this day and age.

Okay.

Yes, we have likes of KKK. Yes, we have other violent white supremacists, or what kind of thought process is going on. But if you consider 360 million population, how many of us are the peace-loving people here? And how many of them are there? They are minuscule. They are a minority. Yes, it's a bad thing that they get more prominent exposé in the media, but like you said, the good things happening do not get exposed that much and advertised that much. I migrated to this country. This country opened the arms and embraced me and my family. They have given me equal opportunity to work. They have given me freedom to practice my religion. Majority is peace-loving, majority is tolerant, majority is understanding. It's a minority that's causing the problem. So why do they get the upper hand sometimes? I think here comes the issue, and that's what we need to do. We need to reach out to each other more. For example, if I'm living in a house, who is my neighbor? Do I know him? Do I have friendship with them? Many a times, so happens, and I actually get disheartened, people do not know who their neighbor is, really. So we need to do that. We need to go out, meet with other people in churches, in synagogue, in the mosque. And for that matter, as I said, I'm proposing a peace committee for city of Springfield. I wish this will happen all over America. We should have membership in that committee from every walk of life, from every place of worship, and then we should actually do it in a planned fashion. Every month we should go to a different church, a different mosque, a different synagogue, and go there as ambassadors of peace. Peace. This is what we need to do, then only people will understand each other. Then once you know somebody, then these differences will melt away. The difficulty comes and the fear comes when we do not know each other, we do not understand each other, we do not have information about each other's religion or each other's culture or each other's thought process. So that's what—

Well, I agree, and I'm glad you differed with me on that a little bit. I think when I think in terms, you're right, it's not the overwhelming majority, but I get disheartened. I often see, it seems like every other day there's another weapon. I was telling, I think it was my pastor the other day here at church, I said, "You know, part of me always feels incredibly heartbroken when I hear of another shooting and another bombing and another tragedy that happens, and then part of me feels a little numb too because I hear it so often. You know what I mean? And that's why, forgive me, my skepticism at times, because I do feel that way at times, and I feel like, and I need someone to remind me like you just did, you know, and say, but look what we have. You know, look at the good. I can often be pessimistic and look on the wrong side of things, and I need reminders like that. In my own life.

Even I talk to my children, I take the example of simple, like their school exam, their educational exam. Suppose one time they had like a bad outcome. I used to tell them, listen, this should make you work harder. This should make you think that I'm going to prove that I am actually capable of doing this. Or I am better than this. Yeah. So if we get these kind of church bombings, these kind of shootings, we need to actually tell ourselves and our communities that we are better than this. We are going to overcome these evil forces. We are going to spread the message of peace. We are going to spread love and affection all over the world, and we will succeed.

Very good. Well, I'm with you on that. That's good. You know, in closing our conversation, and I'm just going to do a quick check of the time, we're already at 37 minutes. I was hoping to go 30, so we've already gone over a little bit. One thing that people say a lot, and I'm so glad for people like Todd Greene, who you already mentioned, who has written a couple of excellent books. I've had him on the podcast before. Before, and we've become friends over— since the Islamic Day last year. And he did such a wonderful job talking about Islamophobia. And one thing that I found fascinating that I didn't know about— I knew that people who were Muslim did condemn violence, but I didn't always know where to look. And he brought up at that gathering where we were together, he said, "People are always asking, 'Why don't Muslims condemn terrorism?'" And his answer was, "Well, they do." And I wanted to let everybody know about this because there's a fascinating site. It's called www.muslimscondemn.com. And it's not Muslims condemning people, it's actually all the instances, thousands and thousands and thousands of like blog entries and internet pages. And every time a disaster happens, What you don't realize if you just watch your news network of choice is Muslims are condemning violence every time it happens. And it's really staggering how much of that is going on. I would say more to the point than what those of us who are non-Muslims are, you know, whenever we see things like that. And in fact, it always hurts my heart just a little bit, you know, whenever I hear of another tragedy. Because I know that, say like the bombings for instance, the word Islam is going to get a lot of press. When it's a white person or a white Christian doing it, we just kind of, you know, it's a shooter. You know what I mean? I'm sure you must feel that sometimes in your heart because I feel it. And it always hurts me to go, why the double standard that we're not going to call out one thing when, you know, and as you already said, we pray together that it won't be a Muslim this time, you know, things like that. And so I can only imagine what effect that must have on the psyche of children who are a part of the Islamic religion. I can only imagine like a double layer of fear when something happens like a 9/11 or something that we lived through and we remember very well. It's not only that you were experiencing the tragedy of it and the awfulness of it in the moment, now you were also experiencing, "Now people are looking at me," you know, thinking, "Are you gonna do this?" So I think our hearts need to be broken, those of us who are not a part of the Islamic faith, in understanding your perspective as well and where you're coming from is that the same thing that we're hurting from is the same thing you're hurting from too. You know.

I so very appreciate what you just said, and I so very appreciate you called me to sit down and talk with me. Yes, like I said, whenever there is a terrorist problem going on, we start praying immediately, "Oh God, please, please, this should not be a work of a Muslim person. He is not Muslim, frankly, to me he is not a Muslim if he is doing that. But still, whole media, whole world thinks that, okay. The other thing bad happens and which I feel which you brought out also is whenever a person with certain name, say if it's a Muslim sounding name, does something bad, the people immediately say, oh, this is Islam. This is Muslims. They do not realize that this is an individual who is a bad character, and it has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims in general. So that one change we need to bring into our society. Like you said, if a person of other faith does, they say, oh, he is a person belonging to Liberation Army. They don't say, oh, he is like a Buddhist person, or because of Buddhism it happened. They don't say— I mean, Rohingya tragedy, it happened. Nobody says that it is because of the religion, or Buddhists are doing this. They basically say it is a political war going on. Yeah, yeah, that's a tragedy, but we need to change that.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so hopefully conversations like this will will help. We've already gone over what I wanted to do time-wise, so that's fine, but all this is just bonus material as far as I'm concerned. But let's close with one last thing. I would love for you, if you have anything off the top of your head— there must be a number of things— but is there something that comes to mind that you wish people understood about your faith that they don't? Maybe, maybe just one thing that comes to mind, misconceptions you hear, something that you'd say, "I really like people to know this because I hear this all the time and it's just not correct." Is there anything like that?

I would like to say this, and I think it's very important for people who basically gather information from news media, please go out And research yourself, and there is plenty of material available which is correct material. More importantly— important than that is meet a Muslim person. Meet somebody who is a Muslim, truly Muslim, and then gather information and then form your conception about what Islam is, what Muslims are. Without talking to a Muslim person, without meeting a Muslim person, without becoming a friend of Muslim person, if you just go by the media hype, it is a very big disservice to a 1.2 billion population of Muslims of the world.

Hmm. Oh, very good. Well, this has been a real joy for me, and I just want to thank you again for taking time. I know you're tired. You must be tired after a long day of work. Work and helping people. But it's been a rich conversation for me, and I hope we can do it again sometime.

I hope so too, and I'm so thankful to you again.

Well, thank you for being here. So I always say this to my guests at the end of each show, but Dr. Akbar Muhammad, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you, Rick.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com. Where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for your concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at RickLeeJames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.