in the name of Allah the most beneficent
\nthe most merciful
\nSalaam alaikum my name is Jaime Fletcher
\nor Mujahid Fletcher I accepted Islam
\napproximately 11 years ago after looking
\ninto many different religions and I
\nwould say bump in my head you know live
\nin what some may say as a troubled youth
\nright I was a leader of a gang when I
\nwas 13 years old and I had a lot of
\nquestions about life and I wanted
\nstraight answers and I looked all around
\nmany people had many opinions but when I
\nfound the Quran and I realized that this
\nbook had never been changed I analyzed
\nit as I had done for many other
\nreligions like Christianity and Buddhism
\nand Hinduism Kabbalah which is ancient
\nJewish mysticism and so when I looked
\ninto the Quran it I realized that this
\nbook was a bit different than everything
\nelse that I had studied and when I
\nstarted going to the mosque and
\nrealizing that they did have answers I
\nwent back and forth for about a year and
\nasked many questions and the more
\nquestions I asked the more certainty I
\nobtained and eventually I felt like I
\nwanted to change my life for the best
\nand I accepted Islam and ever since then
\nI found peace I found a life free from
\ncontradiction and I think that that is
\nsomething that everybody is looking for
\nstraight answers not just about the
\ncreator of the heavens and the earth and
\nwhat he wants from us but about life in
\ngeneral because Islam is a way of life
\nso it helped me solidify my relationship
\nwith my family some of my family members
\nhave even gone on to accept Islam and so
\nnow Islam is a way of life for us is an
\nalternative lifestyle that we don’t know
\nwhat we will do without it you know
\nthat’s become the best gift that the
\nCreator could have given us
\nthe toughest trial when a person accepts
\nIslam at least in my opinion is when we
\ncome in contact with the Muslim
\ncommunity sometimes we look at the
\nMuslim community and we think that
\nwhatever we read in the Quran and in the
\nnarrations of the Prophet is exactly
\nwhat we’re going to get from the people
\nwho are practicing that faith but we’ll
\nsoon come to realize that even in
\nChristianity or any other faith nobody
\ncan really embody every single law right
\nso with Islam because we don’t know it
\nwe look at the actions of Muslims and
\nthen if someone I remember for example I
\nwas trying to leave smoking cigarettes
\nand there was a Muslim outside the
\nmosque smoking cigarettes so all of a
\nsudden I went to him and I said is this
\nin Islam is this religion right it would
\nmake it easy for me like if he says yes
\nthen I don’t have to be smoking but he
\nsaid you know he turned it off and he
\nsaid you know you’re gonna be a better
\nMuslim than me you know and that was the
\nanswer and I was like well is it in the
\nreligion or not you know so when I
\nstarted seeing that sometimes there was
\na contradiction between what was Islam
\nand what was the action of Muslims I
\nrealized that it was a test because you
\ncan’t rely on what people are doing
\nanymore so you have to become very aware
\nof what they should be doing and what I
\nshould be doing and that leads us to
\nlearn and then comes the aspect of who
\nto ask who do we take our knowledge from
\nand so it begins a whole search and and
\nyou know reaiiy denta fine you know our
\nour belief about life and understanding
\nand so it’s a challenge basically to go
\nthrough all of these cultural sort of
\nvehicles that happen right because we
\nmay have people from different
\nethnicities and we may be from a
\ndifferent ethnicity so we have to
\nrealize that Islam is universal and when
\nwe see it from the pure core from the
\nsources from the Quran and the Sunnah
\nthe tradition of the Prophet all of a
\nsudden we realize that all the different
\nethnicities and all different people can
\nparticipate in it and we’re all
\nchallenged to be the best about what the
\ntext calls us to do in theory and try to
\nimplement it so after that the main
\nchallenge is how
\ncan I implement it without looking at
\nothers and trying to compare myself or
\ntrying to compare them then it becomes a
\njourney of you being judged by Allah
\nalone and being sincere in it and just
\ntrying to do your best
\nwhen I embrace Islam I was three months
\nbefore September 11th so sometimes these
\nnew Muslims we look at our situation and
\nsay especially young Muslims I embrace
\nIslam when I was 23
\nso I began questioning and asking myself
\nwhat am I going to do now I have I had
\nwasted a lot of time before because I
\nwasn’t focused and Islam gave me focus
\nSeptember 11th happened three months
\nafter I embraced Islam so when I was
\nlooking to see what profession I
\nactually wanted to carry out when
\nSeptember 11th happened the Muslims were
\nvery weak in media they didn’t have a
\nproper representation in public
\nrelations in the image of Islam for the
\nAmerican public and I started asking
\nmyself if I wasn’t Muslim I maybe
\nwouldn’t even like the Muslims because
\nof the way that they’re being portrayed
\nin the media so I took it upon myself to
\ntake on a profession that was unique to
\nour community which is media production
\nbasically I went and studied multimedia
\nwhich is a combination of video
\nproduction audio production web design
\nand graphic design and my wife who had
\njust embraced Islam as well found out
\nthat she loved graphic design so we went
\ninto a very the best art school
\nbasically that we have in technology in
\nHouston the audience into the Houston
\nand as Muslims there we began to educate
\nour environment about who the Muslims
\nwere the Dean of Education I remember
\nwould step out of his office for us to
\nmake Salah and our times of prayer
\nknowing that Muslims were being seen
\nsomehow in the media I did a lot of
\nprojects with video production and audio
\nexplaining what Islam was and they
\nrealized that as long as these skills
\nwent on to communicate a message to
\nsociety that’s what we’re about
\nso I think that my profession coincided
\nwith being able to do something for
\nIslam and I knew eventually I could have
\na profession where I could actually make
\na living and at the same time serve
\nIslam so at my graduation my wife and I
\ngraduated with honors we I was hired by
\na an upscale home builder as a marketing
\ndirector my first month out of
\nand I worked there for about three years
\nand I gained a lot of experience and I
\nlaunched my own business at the same
\ntime that I was working there and due to
\nthe need of the Latino community asking
\nabout Islam instead of us going and
\ncoming and talking so many places we
\nbegan to generate audio and visual
\nmaterial to be more efficient for us so
\nthat we could just distribute it and
\ninstead of speaking to millions of
\npeople we would distribute basically to
\nmillions of people online so we created
\nan organization called Islam in Spanish
\nwhich went on to educate Latinos about
\nIslam using audio-visual our
\nprofessional skills basically and when
\nwe started seeing people embracing Islam
\nasking about Islam and we started seeing
\nthat speaking engagements were lighter
\nbecause now we had some material and
\npeople could take that give it to the
\nloved ones and so that led over to us
\nwanting to build a studio production
\nstudio and how many lot of people like
\nHakeem Olajuwon and others in I’m Suraj
\nMahajan others saw the need for Islam in
\nSpanish due to the fact that we did a
\ntelevision show we should have our own
\nproduction studio where we can not only
\nproduce this but also now teach media to
\nMuslims especially the Muslim youth so
\nthat they can be the next generation of
\npeople given the message clearly about
\nwho we are so we also do media trains
\nnow in the studio it’s about a
\nquarter-million dollar studio basically
\nstate-of-the-art production studio
\nfacility and we do film screenings
\ndocumentary screenings we speak about
\nsocial issues we bring in people who are
\nnot Muslim and they speak about the
\nsocial justice issues that they’re
\ndealing with and we support basically
\nanyone that we can with media so that’s
\ngone on to be nonprofit or
\ncommunity-based work that doesn’t
\nbasically negate my very profession we
\nhave an advertising agency called focus
\npoint studios I’m a producer for Comcast
\nI belong to an organization called a
\nleap National Association of Latino
\nindependent producers so we go to
\nUniversal Studios Hollywood I was just
\nthere with Robert Rodriguez the director
\nof the sprat oh and Spy Kids and so on
\nRita Moreno from West Side Story Dolores
\nHuerta who was a social activist along
\nwith Cesar Chavez and so being with
\nthese great you know individuals and
\nseeing the advocacy for Latinos in media
\nand being a Muslim the only Muslim
\nSpanish person there in Hollywood and
\nseeing all of this and being able to do
\nwork at that level it’s a blessing and
\nso I go to New York and have friends and
\nDemocracy Now with Amy Goodman and in in
\nCalifornia I go there and your training
\nand then come back to Houston and then
\nwe try to benefit at a local level and
\nspeak through universities and so on so
\nI think the the way of giving the
\nmessage if I if I didn’t have media I
\nwould have to just be speaking and
\nsaying so many things but with media we
\njust focus on specific issues and it
\ngoes globally so I think the profession
\nis something that we should align
\nourselves with when we embrace Islam to
\nsee what we can do where we can serve
\nAllah Azza WA JAL and at the same time
\nbe able to provide for our families it’s
\nvery important
\nnow my first Ramadan was very unique
\nbecause
\nseven months after accepting Islam I had
\nthe opportunity to go to Mecca for Hajj
\nand in looking at the territory in Mecca
\nI saw Mountain Haram which is the place
\nwhere the Quran was revealed in
\nunderstanding a bit about the Quran and
\nthe power of the Quran how is revealed
\nfor twenty three years to know that
\nthere is a month dedicated to this book
\nand that every single night this book is
\nrecited in taraweeh as a congregation
\nright as a community and that you as an
\nindividual should invest your time and
\nread in the Quran and reflect him so
\nthis is the month of the Quran pretty
\nmuch Ramadan I tried my level best to
\nread the whole choir and alhamdulillah
\nhaving the zeal of becoming a new Muslim
\nI used to want to read a just a part of
\nthe Quran every single day and so when
\nRamadan came it was like that challenge
\nthat I wanted to take on and then I
\nrealized that there was so much going
\nhere and there with eating you know what
\nthe Muslims and invitations and I
\nrealized that it wasn’t just sitting
\nwith the book but also coexisting with
\nMuslims and my family who had recently
\nembraced Islam my wife and my father we
\nwere going to a lot of different
\ngatherings meeting different people
\nnon-muslims were coming to the mosque
\nbecause food was being served
\nso it became a month I was actually
\npretty busy in the morning trying to do
\na personal sort of struggling and in
\nreading this book in the afternoon or
\nevening breaking the fast and eating and
\nbeing with the congregational prayer and
\nthen the last ten nights come in the
\nmidst of prayer at night so you start
\nseeing all these different opportunities
\nand being a new Muslim you kind of want
\nto deal with everything and then you
\nrealize that you’re limited and you know
\nin time and you’re limited in your
\ncapacity and so trying to find that
\nbalance to where at least you’ll make it
\nthrough our Ramadan
\nand not you know try to hit every little
\nangle but try to do you know one’s best
\nI had a lot of friends of mine that had
\nbreast had embrace the Sun and they gave
\nme good advice and alhamdulillah I think
\nI’m out of my family members asked a lot
\nof questions as to why we weren’t eating
\nI was working professionally as a
\nmarketing director and a company they
\nwould ask why I wasn’t eating and so it
\nis a month also where we can educate the
\npeople who are in the environment and
\nI’m on the purification you start
\nfeeling a cleaner physically you start
\nfeeling even stronger because you don’t
\nhave so much that our body is processing
\nthat holds us down on a daily basis when
\nwe eat it’s like cleaning our body our
\nmind and spiritually connecting I mean
\nit’s it’s kind of renewing oneself and
\nso the the first Ramadan for myself was
\nlike embracing Islam all over again
\nthe youth in the month of ramadhan when
\nthey’re going to school they too are
\nchallenged because they are looked at is
\ndifferent possibly right they’re not
\neating the rest of the people are eating
\nin the cafeteria or whatever the case
\nmay be the youth may take a stance of
\nkind of hiding their fast which is fine
\nbecause the month of Ramadan the fasting
\nis for Allah but at the same time if you
\ntake a proactive approach and let the
\nenvironment understand why you know the
\npeople who you come in contact with why
\nit is that you’re doing what you’re
\ndoing it makes an educational
\nopportunity for the rest of the people I
\nknow in the city of Houston Ramadan
\nthey’re the the MSA in the University of
\nHouston there’s something called the
\nfastest time and they invite a lot of
\npeople who are not Muslim and they
\nbasically give in charity if if one
\nperson who is not Muslim fast the the
\norganization will give like ten or
\ntwenty dollars basically to a specific
\ncharity that benefits like poverty and
\nthings like that something everybody
\nagrees to so you find a lot of people
\nwere not Muslim fasting for a specific
\nday for that faster thing and so
\nalhamdulillah I’ve been fortunate to be
\na speaker there and so they bring in a
\nspeaker and then the speaker speaks
\nabout the benefits of Ramadan but then
\nwe bring up people who have never even
\nthought of fasting before and how they
\nfelt and so we bring them up and they
\nget to you know explain their their
\nsituation how you know they couldn’t
\ncuss and it was very tough and they
\nnever even realized that they couldn’t
\ncuss this is this was interesting right
\nsomebody else comes up they said well I
\nthought it was all about food but then I
\nrealized that you know trying to not
\ntalk about people was the most difficult
\nthing for me right and these are regular
\npeople and so I think when the one that
\nyou start looking at all that they start
\nseeing wow you know these people really
\njust for one day pondered upon all these
\ndifferent details and how many of the
\nMuslim youth are just going through the
\nmotions
\njust going to school and man you know I
\nwant you know I want to eat this and
\nthat you know in Ramadan yeah I mean
\nwe’re when I break my fast man I’m
\nhungry or they want to sleep in later
\nsometimes because they’re fasting these
\nsort of tendency sometimes may come from
\nspecific countries because I’ve lived in
\nthe Middle East and sometimes certain
\npeople look at fasting as a day as days
\nwhen they go to sleep at fudger and they
\nwake up at about 1:00 or 2:00 in the
\nafternoon so that they don’t have to
\nnecessarily go to the whole fast of the
\nday so some youth may have these
\ntendencies they don’t even know where
\nthey come from but the youth that really
\nunderstand the power of the fasting and
\nthe purpose behind it when they indulge
\nit they benefit from it friends of
\ntheirs may begin to understand some of
\nthat and then they can do specific
\nevents such as that fast asan or things
\nthat are creative so that they can make
\nsomething out of that time because it is
\na time that all of the good deeds are
\nincreased so they should somehow get
\ninvolved obviously be with family
\nspend time you know eating dinner and
\nyou know family members different people
\ninvite people to eat and and hopefully
\nbe in the spirit of Ramadan because
\nliving here in America you may be in the
\nspirit of other holidays that are being
\nexpressed in the environment from the
\nsocial culture and you may know you know
\nmaybe a Muslim may not share in a
\nspecific holiday like Halloween but you
\ngo to CVS Walgreens anywhere it’s there
\nright
\nso as Muslims if we don’t shape our
\nenvironment and have people feel
\nsomething about Ramadan then they don’t
\nget to share in the same diversity that
\nwe do you know getting the effects of
\nall the other holidays and so on so if
\nwe don’t do that ourselves especially
\nthe youth was so much energy then they
\nwill come to find out that when their
\nchildren are growing up as youth they
\nwill realize that they hope that they
\nwere children fast and they hope that
\nthey have Islam so they have to start
\nnow consciously understanding that they
\nhave to do something now for the future
\nas well
\nthe new Muslim is like a newborn baby a
\nnewborn baby is not requested by any
\nparent to just get up and run or feed
\nitself it consciously you know that it’s
\na need and you take care of it and you
\nnurture it and you do pretty much
\neverything it needs in order to begin
\ncrawling and then begin walking and then
\nyou can ask of other things the new
\nMuslim in the sense of who they are in
\ntheir new identity they are at the point
\nwhere they’re like newborn babies not
\njust because Allah cleaned their sins
\nand they embraced Islam and although
\nthat that’s great but if we all decide
\nand deal with the new Muslim with all
\nthe rules and only deal with rules and
\nmay break them the same way that we may
\ntake a baby and start giving them all
\nkinds of rules they can’t really manage
\nit so we sometimes forget as new Muslims
\nand also the community forgets regarding
\nus that the prophet sallallaahu honey
\nwas selling them he had a specific way
\nof dealing with new Muslims and it took
\nhim to teach them the Quran evil was
\nbeing revealed at that time for them to
\nnurture their heart for 13 years in
\nMecca before the ayah were revealed with
\nrules that mainly came in the met in the
\nMedina period so it took 13 years for
\nthe Companions of the process of them to
\nunderstand law His Messenger reward and
\nPunishment
\nright the day of judgment things of the
\nunseen so the new Muslim misto increases
\nfaith and believe in things of the
\nunseen that are coming from revelation
\nbefore we go to the physical and begin
\nto say you can’t do this and you have to
\ndo that
\nbecause as soon as that happens
\nsometimes it becomes very difficult on
\nthem if someone comes and says you need
\nto come and put a piece of tape on this
\non the floor here every single day at
\nthis time it’s you know maybe something
\nyou do but you don’t really want to do
\nit but if somebody says if you don’t put
\nthat piece of tape
\nthey’re right somebody may trip because
\nelderly people walk through here every
\nday right and it’s part of your job to
\ncome do that then all of a sudden
\nthere’s a reason for it right and you
\nmay understand and you do it with
\nmeaning unfortunately sometimes the
\nnurturing or educational process with
\nthe new Muslim is not there so the
\ncommunity may expect that they just go
\nthrough the motions and have all these
\nrules and they carry them out but they
\ndon’t really know so there has to be an
\neducational process and there has to be
\na social sort of effort to be able to
\ndeal with the new Muslims invite them to
\npeople’s homes educate them as the
\nactual time of Ramadan is happening and
\nfor the new Muslim as well to understand
\nthat he or she cannot amass and do
\neverything perfect because there’s a new
\nMuslim just like a little kid you know
\nyou tell them to do good they want to do
\nall good and they want to be perfect and
\nthey get kind of shattered when you tell
\nthem they didn’t do something right
\nbecause they think they’re okay so the
\nsame way like the new Muslim for them is
\njust black and white they’re either good
\nor they’re not so somebody comes and
\nsays you didn’t do this right and may
\nshatter them because nobody even told
\nthem maybe so we educate them we deal
\nwith them with ease and the new Muslim
\nshould realize that they’re going
\nthrough a process and they have to be
\nalso merciful to themselves because if
\nthey don’t have mercy on themselves they
\nmay break their ownselves and so many
\npeople come in Islam and want to do
\neverything perfectly and there’s a
\nthere’s a hadith in Bukhari where the
\nprophet saw something said not to be
\nextreme not to go beyond basically
\nmeasure and try to do everything perfect
\nbecause this deen of islam will break
\nand so what we understand by this is
\nthat you can’t be perfect right you can
\nonly try to strive for perfection so the
\nnew Muslim should know that this is a
\ntime where we try to improve and if we
\ncome in Ramadan with a vice or a habit
\nthat we don’t like and we know a lot
\ndoesn’t like it and we at least have as
\na goal that we get rid of that one habit
\nduring the month of Ramadan if we
\ncondition ourselves every single day to
\nget rid of that habit for 30 days if you
\ncan do that for 30 days then there’s a
\nhigh probability that
\nyou leave it for the rest of the year
\nand if you came in with a vise and you
\nleft without it that may be the cleanest
\nway to have gained the mercy basically
\nfrom Allah that Ramadan and is that
\nsimple with Allah because Allah knows
\nare the efficiencies and if we do
\nsomething one thing clearly for Allah it
\nmay be way beyond and trying to do
\neverything properly and right and maybe
\nmaking mistakes along the way that we
\ndon’t even realize<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WhyIslam shares the story of Mujahid Fletcher who accepted Islam at the age of 23. Soon after he became Muslim, he got to work as he realized that he didn’t want to waste time anymore. He started Islam in Spanish organization to reach out to Latino audience online. He concludes this video with reflections about Ramadan, and advise for Muslim community on how to mentor and guide new Muslims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500","testimonial","type-testimonial","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"thumbnail_link":"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/T1xqvdZOnBQ\/mqdefault.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/testimonial\/3500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/testimonial"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/testimonial"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesus-is-muslim.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}