A different view of life – Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Centre

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It’s impossible to describe the beauty of the scene. The sun is setting, and we are flying over an ocean of water in a gaseous form, which is clouds. Water is the most ancient element on Earth, billions of years older than rocks and mountains. It is continuously recycled. There’s no new water coming from anywhere. It is one of the most ancient or probably the most ancient substance on Earth, and it can exist in three states: solid, liquid, and gas. And what I’m seeing here is the gaseous wave, which is clouds. Of course, water vapor in any form is called gases. And then the liquids are the seas, and the oceans are the rivers, and then of course the solid is ice.

We took off from Entebbe Airport in Uganda, and we took off straight over Lake Victoria, which is the source of the Nile. And now we landed in Harare, in Zimbabwe. There was a delay there because of some mechanical problem with the plane, and now we have taken off on our way to Osaka in Zambia. Beautiful. You know, these delays and so on happen. Sometimes we get irritated, and sometimes we say, “Oh, why the delay? Why can’t we get to where we are getting?” Because we are all so focused; we have been trained to be result-oriented and goal-oriented, and which means that once you set a goal, then disregard everything, focus on that, and until you reach the goal. Now, nothing wrong with that. That’s not a bad philosophy, but at the same time, it is not something that needs to be applied everywhere. So, I am going to Zambia to a friend’s place there, and there’s no earthly reason why I shouldn’t enjoy the journey, even though some parts of that enjoyment may not be traditional—that nobody calls a mechanical fault in the plane and the delay ensuing because of that as being a sort of enjoyment. But I was thinking to myself, why not? So, we taxied off, went on to the runway, and then the pilot stopped, and then he took a left turn and went back onto the apron in front of the terminal building in Harare.

And then he announced and said, “There is a mechanical fault, and we are trying to get it fixed.” The amazing thing is, Samanlal, this is where culture is also. The plane is full of African people. It also has on it the Zimbabwe rugby team with massive big people, all of them black. Interesting because South African rugby has a lot of whites in it, Afrikaners as well. But these are all black people. And the plane is full; the vast majority are African people. Not a single protest. Nobody is yelling, nobody is screaming. Nobody is bad-talking what kind of laws here and this and so on, so on. Very calm, peaceful, sitting, chatting, sometimes joking, laughing. That’s why I love Africa. I love African people, I love African cultures, both Muslim and non-Muslim, such wonderful people.

There’s a whole ethos here; there’s the respect for history, respect for age. Amazing. I thoroughly love traveling in Africa. I had ordered a wheelchair because my knees were giving some trouble, as well as it’s convenient when you are flying. So, when we landed from Mumbai, we landed in Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The stewardess insisted on carrying my bag. And then she took me down the stairs, which I walked down there very slowly, and handed me over to the… she had already radioed in advance for the wheelchair to be there. Then the wheelchair was there; she handed me over to the other lady. He said, “He has a connecting flight to catch in 50 minutes. Make sure he gets on that plane.” The other one said, “No problem, I’ll do it.” And you should have seen the way they worked. Went into Entebbe Airport, cleared the place, going inside. I have these two or three of the Ugandan Airways staff who are tracking me. And they went through security super fast time. And then we got to the doorway of the airport to get out, to either get on a bus or something. And then the lady supervisor who was with me, and she’s not a sleepover girl, she’s a middle-aged woman, she ran up a whole huge flight of stairs, took my passport and so on to get it strapped, came back down, and she said, “They want to see your ticket also.” So, I said, “Okay,” I pulled up the ticket on my phone. I gave her the phone. She went up the stairs all over again, came back down all over again. And then she said, “Do you mind if I come with you to the plane?” I said, “What do you mean mind? I mean, this is an honor.” You know, I’m most grateful to you. She said, “No, no, please.” So, she came with me to the plane. They put the wheelchair on a wheelchair lift, and we got onto the plane.

I mean, amazing the quality of service. I think, Uganda Airways is, you know, hats off to them, absolutely fabulous service, very nice people, very polite, and very, very, you know, highly cooperative, very sort of intuitive, you know, you don’t need to ask anything. I was trying to find an outlet for my phone; the stewardess says to me, “If you don’t mind, put it on airplane mode, give it to me, this outlet in your seat doesn’t seem to take your plug, so I’ll take it to the galley, I’ll charge it and bring it back for you.” I mean, these are all out-of-the-way things; it’s not her job, it’s not her job to carry my bag all the way down. Why should she do that? Very, very, very nice people, I tell you, Ugandan Airways, hats off to them, brilliant people.

And so now I’m seeing this beautiful scene here of the sunset. It’s not very clear, I think from you guys, because of the lighting. And okay, so now that’s better. Um, and then this absolute blanket of clouds uh below. Uh temperatures here are around 20, 25, 26 degrees, so it’s nice. Um, and we are on the way to uh Saka. InshaAllah, should be there in I think about another 45 minutes or something like that. So this is the first of these videos. I will of course post more as we go along. The point I want to make, remind myself anew is, let us always be thankful to Allahﷻ. And I’m telling myself that the reason why the delay was, was because Allah wanted to show me this sunset. So well, I mean, if we had taken off at the time we were supposed to take off, which was around four o’clock. It was bright, bright hot sunlight. There was no sunset inside. But Allah Ta’ala caused this sunset. He wanted me to see it. He wanted you guys to see it. So, Allahﷻ delayed the plane, and here we are. Now again, don’t get stuck into how do you know are you getting Waheed. No, I’m not getting Waheed. I have a choice to interpret what I am seeing in a way that makes sense to me. And I ask Allahﷻ to make this true, because if my Rabb Jalal Jalal who wanted me to see it and I’m seeing it, what more can I ask, right?

So, let’s think about it like this. I’m lowering the light; will give you a taste of the sunset itself itself as it’s coming in. Very, very beautiful, Mashallah. And this is the, with the light back where it is. May Allah bless all of you and keep you safe. We are having the LEC, Leadership Excellence Force in Hyderabad after about eight years. And it’s a very nice brand, brand new hotel in Shamirpit. And it is from the 6th to the 10th of November. Five days. People always keep asking me, “Why can’t it be less? Why can’t it be less?” I tell them, look, the LEC is a transformational course. And we have done it for almost 15 years now in multiple countries across the world. And we have enough feedback to actually say this: is that it’s a transformational course in shell. Transformations happen within an organic time frame, right? For example, if you want to transform an egg into a chicken, it takes 21 days in the incubator or under a chicken, which is the live incubator. Now, if you say, well, you know, I can’t wait 21 days, I’m going to, instead of the incubator, I’ll put a stick it in the oven and I’ll jack up the temperature, you will get a baked egg; you will not get a chicken. So also, as far as the LEC is concerned, it’s not a bunch of lectures, right? You come there, lecture, and then you get a course book and you go home. We don’t do that stuff. We don’t do that stuff. This is a transmission course. We need people to have the time to listen, to ask questions to themselves, to seek their own answers. In that, to be confused. Sometimes, maybe also, to feel some pain, of psychological pain, which you will feel, you know, when you realize what we have done with our lives, and what Allah Ta’ala had told us to do with our lives, and instead what we did. When that awareness hits us, you know, it can be very painful. Alhamdulillah, this is a very cool pain. It’s like the pain you feel in a gym when the body is transforming. But all this takes time. So I always tell people, please, give yourself this time. You deserve five days, right? It’s not for me. I don’t charge anything. Nobody charges anything. The whole course is free. Whoever comes to the course, only pays for the largest things they use, nothing else. So it’s not for us. It’s for you. Give yourself those five days. You need those five days.

You’re living the life of a rat, you know scurrying around chasing, chasing bread, chasing cheese the whole time. You’re not a rat; you’re a human being. Allah Ta’ala made you, made you in the best form. So we have been pandering to our bodies and starving our souls, and the LEC is food for the soul. So most welcome, please come, bring your families. We welcome everyone, in welcome everyone, including small children. Bring them, and InshaAllah um it will be a good experience.