On this, the premier episode, of Raw Islam with Imam Azhar, we are introduced to the Imam, we learn about his back ground growing up in Canada and we get to understand what the Raw Islam Podcast is all about.
In the 1980s resources to learn and study Islam, and what it means to be a Muslim, were not as accessible as they are today – for the young people in the audience, this is pre-internet, so there was no Sheikh Google. As a boy Imam Azhar would go to the local mosque on Sundays to learn about Islam from scholars that traveled, but being from Canada, English was not the scholars first language, Imam Azhar explains that “we would be sitting down listening to scholars speak in a language that we, ourselves, never understood – and that was the beginning of a dilemma.”
It was always his Grandmother’s desire that her grandchildren would become hafiz, and when his brother came home from elementary school one day and made the announcement that he wanted to be trained as a hafiz, Imam Azhar was shocked, mostly because he did not come from a super religious background. A year later when he was asked by his father if he wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps, Imam Azhar knew that he wanted to do the same.
The next week he found himself in Louisiana, where he was told he would not become a hafiz – however, “I remember he told me you will become a hafiz later, you are going to be a scholar,” Imam Azhar recalls.
Join us for this first of its kind podcast which is sure to become one of the best podcasts to listen to in 2016, that takes us from Canada to Louisiana to England to Florida, and Imam Azhar answers your questions about Islam, being a Muslim, and what Muslims believe.
Do you have questions for the Imam? Drop us an email at rawislam@vennnetwork.org
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