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0:04 I started drinking I was partying this into criminal activity doing a lot of bad stuff just because like these crazy terrorist people I could not stop myself from crying something happened inside my heart and my mind I told my family that I I converted and um they kicked me out of the house every single question I had God answered I'm I'm going to die I asked God to to basically save me I said if if you take me I'm I'm ready but if you do save me I promise that I'm going to spend the rest of my life on your path assalamu alaykum brothers and sisters peace be with you all I just decided to make this video to share with you guys who I am where I come from uh
0:50 what got me to Islam why I became a Muslim and why am I making the da videos that I'm making so uh to start I'm originally from Russia my family came to America when I was 9 years old and my mom is Christian and my dad is Jewish my stepdad but he raised me he's Jewish so I was raised in a semi-religious Jewish Christian family and personally I never cared about God it was never it was never a topic for me I felt like it was just you know stories of my grand grandma and whatnot and it has nothing to do with you know with reality with current reality
1:37 so religion um was never a topic that I would think of or even care about until I HD my teenage years and I hit depression and just overwhelming emotions and going through a whole bunch of stuff that I felt that I need to connect with something higher so I decided to look into God and when I I started reading the Bible it was like for the first page for example it said that you know God created the world in six days and then the seventh day he rested and got refreshed to me it was just um it didn't make sense I was like God God rested refreshed like no you know I it was not feeling right the I
2:23 felt like these are human qualities in my mind I feel like God is something you know he's our creator he's something bigger doesn't need no he doesn't need none of that so I saw the flaws in the Bible so I figured you know what I was right it is the tales of the Ancients nobody cares about it forget it but maybe it is not Christianity maybe I'm just looking into wrong religion maybe I should look into Buddhism and so I started looking into Buddhism and concept of ta which was actually very interesting but there was also things that threw me off because you Buddhism is not like it's not a religion okay you could be you
3:10 know a Buddhist Christian you could be an atheist Christian like Buddhist is just kind of a way of life I guess so there was no connection with God for me so that was also put aside so after Buddhism the next thing I looked into was actually Hinduism I figured they're very anent religion you know um they maybe they know what's going on maybe I should be meditating Kundalini and you know just those kind of things so I looked into Hinduism but as soon as I hit the whole you know monkey god forehand God God incarnate all of that it was just done I was like I can't I can't follow this you know I cannot
3:56 Buddhism is not really religion Hinduism is is to me it was nonsensical because of like their descriptions of God you know and Christianity just didn't make any sense either because I saw so much contradictions and and mistakes from my point of view from my kind of a inner belief in God so um what I looked into after that was polytheism I was like you know what maybe religions of even more ancient people are right maybe the whole you know statue worshiping thing like is a thing maybe they're just spirits that created this universe and if we have you know we have these statues that's how we
4:43 connect with them so it was a funny story because at that time I actually decided to go and buy a statue yes I went to the store it was it called Psychic Eye it's some kind of a new age store and I walk in there and I'm like I want to buy a statue of God do you have any and as I said that I realized how dumb I sound and I'm like the guy's going to kick me out of here but instead he looks at me he's like yes we do which one would you like and the whole situation was just so hilarious for me I'm like what am I doing I'm thinking to myself I'm here to buy a statue of God God Almighty and the guy is like yeah sure you like it's a
5:30 normal thing needless to say I didn't buy anything I went home I was like you know what this is the end I no longer believe in religion it's all nonsense I'm crazy and this got to stop and this is how I became an atheist I decided that there is no God there's none of this is true it's just I'm wasting my time and that led me to some of the darkest ages of my life I mean not caring led me to really not care I I was I started drinking I was partying this into criminal activity doing a lot of bad stuff just because I
6:15 felt the only way I'll could get in trouble if I'll get caught and I'm not going to get caught those deeds though the everything that I was doing eventually it made me feel miserable it made me feel like there's just nothing out there life is pointless you know I could do all this evil stuff and I could get a whole bunch of money doing it but I don't feel happy I Don't Feel Complete I don't feel I don't feel my life is worth anything and I got seriously depressed like I had a concept in my mind that I knew okay if there is God this is how he should be you know he should not it's he
7:01 cannot be a human he cannot be something that eats and sleeps he cannot have like two arms three arms or be blue green whatever like there it has to be something out there because I could feel it I didn't have knowledge of it you know the closest thing I knew to God was Christianity and that wasn't that just was not cutting it but I didn't know what it is and I remember one time me and my girlfriends we were at a actually at a bar and there was a group of guys standing there and I could hear the conversation and I've noticed one of the guy's name was Islam his name was Islam and I'm trying to listen kind of to what they're talking about because we're just all standing outside and I could hear them and they hear one of them saying that yeah there's this uh
7:46 religion like I could hear them talking about Islam I'm not sure even how their conversation about that started but what I got out of it that Islam is a religion and up until then I used to think Islam is like some some City in the Middle East where like these crazy terrorist people are from I never even considered it a religion like from the religions I was reading about Islam just never came up so for me I was like man I can't I don't even know anything about it like somebody mentioned it and I didn't feel like I could you know even go talk to them and say you know what I know what you're talking about and um anyway it just got stuck in my head so a few days later I was actually at work and their conversation kind of popped up
8:32 into my mind again and I was like you know what since I already know about all of these other views World Views I want to kind of uh top it off and I want to make sure I know everything about you know everything in my mind so I Googled Islam found out that their book they actually have a book and it's the Quran and decided to read it so the first thing I read was uh beginning of Surah bakar SEC second chapter and it was talking about how you know this message is for those who believe in in one God who believe in the Unseen and it was it was something about that message and in the end where I
9:17 stopped reading it said that basically those who do believe in prophets and do believe in inced and do believe in God and all of these things those are the successful and at that time I I can't even describe what happened as I was reading it I I started having tears floating out of my eyes like my body started shaking I start I started crying in my brain I was like oh my God this is it like I didn't read nothing else I didn't read I have no no concept of what Islam is I just read that first page and it was like a light bulb in my brain I it was just amazing for me I could not stop myself from crying something happened inside my my heart and my mind that I I just couldn't stop and that was
10:03 at work I had to leave the the office say you know tell them that something serious happened I have to be outside for a few moments I went outside and I just cried go back in there Google how to become a Muslim and it said you know you have to read the Shahar and I um in the English letters I actually read the Shahar right then and there without having no info on anything else I just felt like this is what I was looking for and this is what I was uh missing and that's how I became instantly a Muslim not realizing then yet that it's just is just beginning of this whole story of what happens after so I become a Muslim and I know
10:50 nothing about praying covering I don't know any Muslims I it's just for me it was like just like I was Christian back then now I know I'm not a Christian I'm a Muslim I didn't feel I didn't know I have to follow and actually do anything I didn't know I have to pray five times I didn't know nothing at all but somehow what happened just few months some months passed by and I get introduced to a Muslim uh Muslim guy oh pause that before before that actually happened um I told my family that I I converted and um they kicked me out of the house they told me that you know you Christian stay here or if you want to be a Muslim just go and I left I left and I was um you know part homeless I guess I
11:37 was just sleeping at the friend's house but yeah a few months after that I met a Muslim guy and fell in love and got married to him still not knowing much about Islam and um the relationship it was good in the beginning but then it just went bad because he as good as he was he came from extremely strict family who were not happy about him marrying a convert and I could not connect to anybody and all of a sudden I just got hit with like okay everything is Haram you know you cannot go out with your friends anymore you cannot be drinking you cannot be partying you canot do this and that and this and that and this and that and my I was like whoa like this is I mean okay
12:24 it's a religion I believe in God but I I didn't when did I signed up to give my whole life away like how am I even supposed to live any differently than what I how I try but it was it was too much for me it was overwhelming for me and again I was put in a position where I could not really find any friends and I could not connect with his family for six years that we were um married I felt completely I felt alone and I feel like that is what started to take me away from Islam so anytime I would see something bad from him I would actually blame Islam for it you know you're not letting me go and see my girlfriends um that's because of
13:10 Islam Islam is so I started building this because I had no knowledge in the beginning and suddenly I had a lot of negativity about it I started stepping away from the dean I started stepping away from religion and I just went astray I went severely severely astray and I ended up losing my family it was actually um a mixture of happy and very sad days for me because on one side okay the six-year marriage that I had and you know I cared about that person it was it was much more to it but I basically W even though I just I lost it all I lost that I lost my religion but inside I
13:57 still wanted to help people I still wanted to be a good person I just thought that the religion aspect is not for me because there I just don't know enough about it to care as much as I I guess should be caring so I just I went astray I stopped following anything at all you know the six years I was praying I stopped praying I just I I went astray I mean what can I say and um what I started to do was I started doing uh yoga and I got into Shamanism for those of you who don't know shamans they deal with you know
14:42 spirits and healing and whatnot and I actually come my grandmother is a Siberian Shaman so it wasn't too foreign for me so I got into learning yoga and got into you know I went to Peru for iasa ceremonies um so I got into that side of kind of a spirituality and then after a few years I started teaching yoga it was a Korean energy yoga so it was more um more so an energy practice than an actual yoga per se um I taught that for a couple of years and I got into um being what do they call the dawn Masters energy master and for a Time I was thinking this is
15:29 what I'm going to stick with because I got to help people physically and energetically and I was at peace with that group of people they were a very very nice group of people um but then again some things happened I felt like they want me to commit more they they wanted me to uh be full-time at the center you know and travel and learn things I kind of didn't want to do that at that time I was thinking more business you know I realized that okay I'm growing up I really have to focus on business more and what happened was a very difficult decision for me to make but I actually quit yoga and I started focusing on regular Sports and business
16:16 business life went actually very good for me I was working um on my own business I was helping others uh grow their businesses I was into doing um Amazon basically brand development and I became pretty successful in that field spent a lot of time behind the computer and when I was not behind the computer I would do sports like parkour like extreme sports parkour uh tricking try to do some gymnastics um Kung Fu basically a whole bunch of sports and a whole bunch of computers and that was that that's what my life was about I was making relatively good money I was pretty happy with myself um until I got bored I literally got bored
17:03 I too much computer time made me feel like I want to go into a different field where I could um interact with people more and not really have to face the screen for you know six seven eight hours a day so I got into selling cars and I met a group of people who became my friends who were own the car auction and I kind of stuck with them for um for actually for a year and I was in selling cars and uh getting them from the auctions fixing them up or whatnot and then reselling them and it was it was my most days of I would say ignorance because that group of
17:53 people I do not want to call them bad because they don't know that they're bad I don't know how else to describe it they were nice to their own but very cruel to Outsiders and um not only I would you know party with them and again there would be criminal stuff and drugs involved like we got robbed like it was it was just some insane times you know um we got into you know fist fight with some Tweakers and one of had a knife and then again like I said two robberies it was just crazy and it got to a point where they were telling me they're like um you're too
18:38 nice you're not going to you know survive this you have to be more tough you have to be more mean and so they literally started to teach me how to hate people they would say if somebody says this don't reply nicely you know reply with basically something like f off you know they would literally give me instructions on how to be mean like it just came to a ridiculous point it is at that time when I started thinking about Islam again I just realized that I went way off any good or any relatively good path like I was realized that not only what I'm doing is horrible the future that I'm going to have is also going to be
19:25 horrible because of all the stuff I was doing and everything has consequences you know I even though I still cared about them and I still really I I loved those people I don't know what was it but I cared about them but I as I I started basically listening to lectures uh Islamic lectures and Islamic music these were the two changes that I made um in the beginning and the more I would listen to them uh the more I felt like I stopped belonging in with that group basically I still cared about them but I just could not kind of um I could not stand um when they would play Bad music
20:11 anymore I felt resistance in my mind or when I would see like they would bring alcohol to the house I would feel resistance like the more time would pass and the more reading and studying I would do the more um kind of separated I felt from them and it's it it lasted for a while it lasted for a while all the all the questions I had years before that the reason you know like the questions I had when I lost my family um all of these questions would start getting answered like one by one every video I would watch would just even though it would be a random video it would somehow answer one of those questions from before and it was just mindblowing because every single question I had got answered you know
20:58 every doubt I had got answered everything that was keeping me away from Islam these years it just it just got answered to me and one day I was driving to a gas station and it hit me I'm like I cannot stay here anymore or I I have to do something I have to either guide them to Islam or leave or I have to do something but I didn't know what to do and um interestingly enough a week before this happened before the gas station trip I bought a Quran I decided to start reading Quran again I bought a Quran it came so what I did was I got home from the gas station and started to have a
21:44 serious um kind of a conversation with my own self basically I told myself that what's you know what's good a choice if it's not done now like what if I don't if I don't change what is going to happen like this is how I'm going to live the rest of my life selling cars and being with this group of people or am I going to do something you know different am I going to connect back to God am I going to do what's right but I was very confused I was like man maybe I'm just crazy like I have good group of friends I have a good job and here like I'm tripping out about something like who cares you know but I remembered one thing I remember somebody told me I heard before
22:31 that when you cannot make a decision you should ask a question and um open the Quran and see if it has good information in it then you should proceed with the decision and if it has bad information in it then don't proceed with a decision so I decided to actually do that um none of my friends were there none of my friends were home and I my first question was what will be my future if I stay here if I stay with them if I stay right there and the chapter where open it was talking the page where open it was talking about Prophet Lot's wife how she got Liv behind with a group of evil people and she was not basically of those who were saved like w when I read that I had like chills running I knew this was talking
23:17 about me and I knew this was my future if I stay and then the second question I asked was what's going to happen if I leave you know if I just stop this right now and I leave and the page that I came to came on to was talking about a group of believers who were glorifying God and who were basically happy and that was it for me it was like I was like in a Twilight Zone I was like wow I just got my answers if I stay here this is my future and if I leave this is my future and I kid you not I closed the book I packed all of my stuff everything I had put in the car and left and I left from California to Arizona I just I dropped my whole life
24:04 and I talk to you know people back at the auction and I told them I'm I'm done I'm going I'm going to Arizona I'm never coming back and um that's how I ended up in the city of Sedona Arizona driving to Arizona I had one intention I wanted to get there and I wanted to get my religion onp point I wanted to start covering I wanted to stop you know partying stop drinking stop hanging out with bad people stop doing everything that's not you know that God would not be happy with me and uh that was my intention and upon arriving to Arizona and getting a new place to live I met my roommates who were islamophobic and when I told them I'm
24:51 Muslim their first reaction was like uh I'm like it was something like this and just there was few things that they said I'm not going to go too much into it here but few things they said that actually hurt me and it was frustrating about Isam like it just frustrated me so bad but I knew that if I'm going to start responding to them first of all I still had a very short temper I knew that it's going to probably end in a fight and secondly it's not I'm not going to achieve anything so I just went to my room and I had to release the frustration somehow so what I did I started writing and and I wrote a poem called we are Muslims which was actually ended up being my first video um note here I never really went
25:39 to school my education literally consider consists of grade one to grade six of regular school and then I did not go seven or eight I went one year of grade n in Russia um for the year that I visited there and that was it I didn't go to college I mean I pretty much don't have much education at all so the night when I got to my room and I started writing and I started writing a poem it was it was like almost mindblowing to my own self because I'm not a writer and I'm not a poet I don't I can't you know that's not my thing so when I read it I was like it PR turned out pretty good and um maybe I really felt it you know I posted that poem on my Facebook
26:24 page and I got somewhat good feedback you know and and I was like maybe I should start writing more often maybe I should develop this in me maybe one day I could become a you know an English teacher or something I kind of had these thoughts uh but that was about it you know I was excited about the poem turned out to be nice but I didn't have any more thoughts further than this so a few days after I wrote that poem um it was I don't remember it was morning or or noon time I left my house I was about to drive somewhere and as I'm walking all of a sudden I see this Vision in front of my eyes like literally a vision like a screen of movie playing in front of me and in that Vision I see American flag and United
27:12 States of America right but United States of America is changing into Islamic States of America and I was like what what what is it was just such a weird thing for me because I mean you you're walking to your car you're not thinking about anything and all of a sudden it's like a movie screen to you and you're seeing this and it's not a normal thing to be seeing I mean Islamic States of America but that Vision it kind it got it made my heartbeat fast you know I feel like man maybe this is a sign that I should um I should get into dawa that I should help people see Islam from the how I see it because it's really an amazing thing you know it helped me and
27:58 cured me so many times throughout my life and I got very excited about the vision I was like you know what maybe this is it I'm going to I'm going to start doing da I'm going to start calling people to Islam you know maybe help a lot of Americans and this is what I should do so I told my Muslim friend about this vision and I was super excited I was like yo I have this I saw this Vision it's going to be you know great let's uh let's do something you know let's help people in America find Dean and and all that and his reaction though supportive it uh it wasn't as enthusiastic as as mine was he's he told me pretty much simply that you have no idea what you're getting yourself into and there's just so much of politics stuff that you don't know and even
28:45 though it's great and I support you but yeah give it some thought his reaction kind of brought me back to Earth I was like okay I saw something it's over you know like I'll just study Dean by myself and you know whatever God guides me to he guides me to and this Vision was just was just nothing I basically scrubbed it over like brushed it off and kind of forgot about it for for about two days um until I had a near-death experience so my near-death experience happened about couple of days after the whole conversation with my um with my
29:32 friend and what happened was I was driving on a highway um and the speed limit there was 75 M an hour and my car comes to an incline and I'm driving and I'm realizing the car is gaining speed so I want to press brakes to slow the car down and I press my brakes and the brakes do not work yes I am flooring them 100% to the floor and nothing is happening and because the car is in the incline it starts to gain speed so I'm terrified I'm terrified my brain starts processing this information realizing that this is it this is how most likely I'm going to die I'm panicking and there's cars around me so I'm like
30:18 honking you know turning on my um emergency lights so people get out of my way and I'm looking at my speedometer and it goes like 75 80 85 90 and it starts going past 90 when I'm realizing that I'm I'm going to die and what do I do so my first thought was I have to call my mom I pick up my phone at that point I just pick up my phone because I know that I'm I'm done there's nothing I could do I want to call her my phone has no signal so um I put down my phone and I start praying and I start asking God that if this is my time please take me painless ly and I start saying my shahada which is basically what you're supposed to say when you're you know when you're
31:04 dying uh or becoming a Muslim you say shahada so I said my shahada and I was like God if this is it I'm ready to go you know take me I don't want to feel pain I'm done and because I knew that if I try to press emergency breaks like the car might spinning I didn't want to hit anybody else so my plan was to just to throw myself off the road because there was like a big ditch in there and because of the speed I was going which is way past 90 at that point I knew there's no chance of survival um so I say that and I asked God to to basically save me I said if if you take me I'm I'm ready but if you do save me I promise that I'm going to spend the rest of my life on your path and as I say that I
31:51 press breaks one last time and Subhan Allah it works and my car starts slowing down I cried I was I literally started crying I stopped the car eventually and for a few minutes I was I was just crying nonstop I was shaking it was it was very enlightening in the morning I wake up I cannot believe I'm alive like that whole story just keeps rerunning through my head and it was I could not I I just could not believe I survived that I was h % without a doubt 100% certain that this is how I die like when you're going 95 plus an hour and you're flooring your breaks and nothing's happening you know
32:38 you're not coming out of there in one piece I was sure I was going to die but I didn't but that promise that I made it was like so sharp in the morning in my mind and I knew that I have I have to keep that promise I promised God that if he saves me I'm going to spend the rest of my life on his cause and I knew I had to keep that promise so the next morning um it was I had no more doubt about my vision and I had no more doubt about what I'm supposed to be doing and this is how I decided to uh take the poem that I wrote In the Beginning make it into a YouTube video and continue making different
33:24 videos answering the most um you know often asked questions about Islam or answering things about Islam that I had trouble with and I wish somebody showed me in the beginning um you know years ago and talking about different misconceptions and basically inviting and calling people to to one God to monotheism and since then that has became my goal and that is what I've been doing
