Islam teaches that humans were created for a specific purpose: to establish a direct, unmediated relationship with God, which provides inner peace and spiritual nourishment that material wealth cannot offer; this relationship is the only way to nourish the soul, and Islam distinguishes itself from other religions by emphasizing that worship should be directed solely to God without intermediaries like saints, idols, or nature, making it a liberating faith that anyone can understand through reason and logic.
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Finding the Peace That No Billionaire Can Buy! Subboor & Smart Atheist | Speakers CornerAdded:
Call that, right now, you're a conscious intelligent being. Yes. So am I. And we are interacting.
In this interaction, both of us are trying to arrive at what is true.
Right?
We're both trying to arrive at what is valuable.
Okay.
Likewise, don't you think it's God who's instilled values within us to make us value truth and value this type of interaction?
Most likely. Yeah.
So, one of the things that Islam teaches, are you familiar with Islam? Do you know much about it?
>> What Islam teaches is that this creator has made us for a purpose. Okay.
And that purpose is to have a relationship with God.
So, I'll give you a small thought experiment. If right now, you could be a billionaire with no friends and family, or you could be poor with lots of loving friends and family, what do you prefer?
Poor with lots of loving friends. Why?
Why is that?
Um I suppose if you've got all of the riches in the world, material wise, then you're still craving something else.
You're going to want the help and you're going to want love and stuff. Exactly.
Exactly. So, Carl, you value relationships more than you value money.
I'd like to think so, yeah.
What do you think is the greatest type of relationship a human being can have?
I suppose the correct answer is with God.
Yeah. So, Islam says we have a relationship with each other, we have a relationship with nature, and we should have a greater relationship with God, because that relationship will give us inner peace.
I'll tell you something in this world.
The richest people, with everything they have, they're still miserable. Why do you think that is?
It's their lack of relationship with God.
Do you think that >> All the great the well-defined means that they're they're not really showing up.
They're not Say that again, Tony. Uh it means that So, the question was why are some people who are rich or have got lots of gold fiber are still not happy.
Maybe they're not happy with the way that they've made the money.
There's that, too. What if they inherited the money and it's purely, um, something that they can justify as legal and is justified?
But they still are miserable because they were not created for this world.
So, yourself right now, if you're thirsty, you're going to drink water.
If you're hungry, you're going to eat.
Likewise, when your soul is thirsty or hungry, you cannot give it water.
You need to give it a relationship with God. So, the Quran teaches us the human being is made up not just of a physical body, but also has a soul.
Do you believe in the soul?
I think so, yeah.
What do you think nourishes the soul?
I'm not sure. The right thoughts, I'm not sure.
Islam says the soul is nourished with a relationship with God.
That's the only way it's nourished.
This is also why in this life we go through a lot of difficulties.
Every single person in this Speakers' Corner, they have either a financial issue, personal issue, health issue, moral issue.
They could be getting evicted, they could be facing diabetes or cancer.
Everyone has issues.
But when you have God with you, it gives you a spiritual anchor to lean on.
What do you think about that?
I think it's wonderful, and I think it's lovely. And for those who can fully subscribe to that, I've got a lot of respect for them, but I find it difficult to make that initial link.
Okay.
>> submit that there is a God and believe I can see you're a very thoughtful person, so maybe you can let me know what makes you hesitant towards making that commitment that there is a God that I need to have a relationship with.
So what if I was to say to you, Carl, that if someone comes up to you and they are a Buddhist, they're going to say Buddhism's true.
A Christian's going to say Christianity's true. Hindu's going to say Hinduism's true. Muslims going to say Islam is true.
You should adjudicate between the different options using reason and logic.
What do you think about that?
I agree to that. Yes.
So there has to be a common denominator.
It's like in science. I have a scientific theory, so does another person, so does another person.
But we have to go with what fits the scientific method. What is predictable, what is repeatable, what is empirically verified. Likewise, 10 people can come up to you and say to you, "My religion's true." So you have to use your reason and logic to do a process of elimination. Maybe they're all wrong.
Maybe one of them's right and the rest are wrong. Maybe two are right.
So we have to use our reason and logic because it's not enough to say there's too many and I'm not sure.
We need a way of working it out. What do you think?
Probably. Yeah.
But what so if you don't, then what? Say? If you don't, if you don't, if you if by the end of life you haven't come up with this uh criteria criteria or you haven't made that decision, then then what?
I would say in your life you would you would That's it. Say? Then you're nothing.
Well, you are nothing. You are nothing.
I agree with you, but also you're in a state of confusion because you now have competing worldviews telling you they're true and you know fundamentally there must be a creator and so there must be something that's true, but we don't know what it is.
Now if I was to say to you, firstly, it makes sense that God communicates with the world because if your car made a factory and are you into any sources of sports?
Is there a particular sport you like? Uh I do like yoga. Yoga, there you go.
Or something uh mountain biking or something that there's physical stuff that can be manufactured like a factory.
Hiking. Hiking, hiking. Okay, brilliant.
Hiking.
If you go down the road, Bond Street, you're going to come unless it's square and these areas, you're going to come across hiking shops.
Okay?
Inside the hiking shops, there's lots of equipment and I know that the hikers are really pedantic about the type of equipment they want to get, the type of shoes, the type of laces, the type of buckles, the type of bags.
Imagine someone makes a shop and they're selling hiking equipment and they do not send a manager to the shop. They just leave the employees to do what they want.
What would happen to that shop?
I think it would run itself, I suppose.
Very unlikely if they don't know what the prices are, they don't know what to sell, they don't know where to order from, they don't have an inventory, meaning they need a manager.
They need the boss to send a manager to tell them this is how you run the shop.
This is how you sell stuff. This is how you keep an inventory. This is how you do invoices, right? This is how you do customer retention. Now, God created the world. It's like a factory.
Is God going to leave all of us on our own? Or is God going to send to us some form of guidance from this factory?
In this case, we can't leave. In this case, we are in this world.
Where you will get guidance, right? So, rationally the the owner of the shop, it makes sense they should send a manager.
So, we believe the managers, or not managers, the messengers, they have come throughout time and we don't know how many messengers they are.
They could have been thousands upon thousands, okay?
In the ancient times, Moses, Jesus question. We believe he came with a manual and he came with a system and we are supposed to apply the manual and system.
Now, the first thing that you should ask me cuz you're an intelligent man is why should we believe in the prophet Muhammad and not Mo- Moses or Jesus or Buddha or Krishna or someone else? Why him?
The first thing to keep in mind is all of the other messengers we believe in as well. Jesus, Moses, we believe in all of them.
The difference between Islam and Hinduism and Christianity and all religions is Islam tells you to only worship the one true God.
It doesn't tell you like the Catholics do, to go to a saint who is dead and call upon the saint. It doesn't tell you like Hinduism to go to an idol. It doesn't tell you like shamanism to go through nature. It tells you to go to God directly. It tells you to go to God through Muhammad, isn't it?
No. It tells you that the prophet is only a messenger. That's all he is. So, we do not pray to God through Muhammad.
We pray to God directly.
And in fact, before the Prophet Muhammad existed in this world, we also prayed to God directly at the time of Jesus, at the time of Moses. So, Islam says between you, Carl, and God, there's no barrier.
It's you and God directly.
Now, firstly, this distinguishes Islam from all other religions automatically. Other religions say to get to God, you have to go through So, the the only way is through Muhammad and his messenger, isn't it? No, no. So, that that could be classified as a barrier. That is a barrier to to God. In order to get to God, you have to go through that barrier of the Yeah, so to get to God, you don't need to go to the Prophet Muhammad. You do not.
You simply need to go to God directly.
So, in the Quran it says when you need help, you turn to God.
Whenever you're going through any problems, you turn to God.
So, in Islam, going to God is the only thing that you're supposed to do.
Now, if you look at all the other religions, and I'm sure you you've you've learned a lot of things in your life about Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, Taoism, Tengriism. Every religion has an element of you have to go through something else beside God.
Islam's the only religion that says it's you and God directly and nothing else.
Isn't that powerful?
Yes.
So, automatically it makes you adjudicate Islam separately to the other religions. It's not saying it's What is the frame of mind you need to be in in order to get closer to God? So, praying for example, isn't that just like a conduit of getting closer to God the same way as what a a yogi might say in order to get closer to the creator that you need to be in certain poses or be in a certain state of mind. Is there You have to pray and would that not be considered sort of a yoga pose for want of a better That's a very good question, but I would say we don't believe in that because right now you're standing here in Speakers' Corner on the 24th of May, 2026.
>> Very beautiful day as well, isn't it?
Beautiful day indeed.
Right now, you could be in your heart of hearts calling upon God and I wouldn't even know it.
You could be worshipping God in your own way.
So, the fact is in Islam if I like right now look at those horses, those beautiful horses, right?
If I look at those horses and I look at the elegance of the way that they move, if I look at the elegance with the way that their hooves are designed and their knees are designed. And you know the way that the horses run and the way that they gallop.
Me thinking about that is worshipping God.
Because I'm thinking about God's nature.
Do you like going for walks?
Do you like morning walks in particular?
Okay.
When you walk out in the morning and the sun's coming out and the rays are coming out, right? How do you feel? Glorious.
At that moment, if you think to yourself "Wow, God made this." You're worshipping God.
So, in Islam, worship of God is 360.
It's happening all of the time. And we believe right now this tree is worshipping God. This ground is worshipping God. The stars above are worshipping God. The whales in the ocean are worshipping God.
So, we believe in something very cyclical.
And in the Quran it says, "The heavens and the earth are declaring the glory of God."
So, continuously, even you right now, every single day, every single day, your heart is beating thousands of times.
Every beat of that heart is not in your control, is it? No.
It's God who's running your heart.
That itself is a form of you showing your gratitude to God if you think about it. Because you think all these processes happening in my mind, all these processes happening in my heart and my liver and my legs and everything that's happening to me physiologically, all of this is happening at every moment because God commands it. Yes. It's very powerful. All religions would agree on that, wouldn't they? They would. But, one thing they wouldn't agree about is Islam says you only go to God directly, not through anything else.
So, for example, you know, we have the Catholics over there you can see.
They say to worship God, you have to go through a saint.
When you have the evangelicals, they will say you have to go through Jesus who's God's son. When you go to Hindus, they say you have to go through Krishna.
When you go through Tengri's, the religion of Genghis Khan, they will say the blue sky God. They'll worship nature.
Islam's the only religion which says it's call and Allah. Call and God.
That's it.
Isn't that liberating?
You're not dependent on anyone.
You're dependent on following Muhammad's So, the prophet It's It's based upon his teaching, which is you only worship God alone.
That teaching in and in of itself you can arrive at even without knowing who he is. So It's your relationship is between you and God alone as long as it's following these guidelines.
You Okay, I'll put it to you in another way to help you understand. If you've never heard of Islam If you've never heard of Islam, you're born on an island and you are only worshipping God. Your love, your hope, your fear, your relationship is only with God. You are already a Muslim even without hearing about the Prophet Muhammad.
So we believe a Muslim lexically is someone who simply has a direct connection with God who says only I will only worship God. I will not believe in anything else.
But if you hear about the message of the prophet, then you should accept the message once you verify its truth. In Islam we do not believe in blind following. So I cannot say to you, "Here's a book, believe in it."
We do not believe anybody should be compelled into religion and anybody should be asked to believe in something unless you can give them rational reasons why.
You should reason with them and reasons can not only be logical. We can also give them spiritual reasons. Do you see?
So look, it takes a long time with anything. Like have you studied anything like formally? Like a skill or university or anything? I'm in the process of being an electrician at the minute. Electrician?
How long does it take to be an electrician?
3 years. 3 years.
Someone like myself with no experience, if I go in and connect two wires and short circuit the system what would you say to me in return for me doing that mistake?
You need to follow a certain diagram for that.
So, God has given us a spiritual path.
We know that we should only worship God alone.
Even if you've never heard of Islam, the basic teachings of Islam make sense. For example, do you believe God is nothing like a human being? He's outside space, time, matter. He's completely unimaginable.
I'm not sure if I believe that. Okay.
>> I don't know if he's got human form. I don't know if he Do you think Muslims believe he's got human form?
And we believe it's irrational to believe God is physical or has human form.
Because Christians believe he is in human Because they believe Jesus and they believe Jesus is human. But do they believe that God Father Do they believe that he is in human form?
They don't, but they give him some human characteristics.
And they say he rested on the seventh day and that's a human characteristic to rest. God doesn't rest.
Islam says God is not human and nothing like you can imagine. And the reason why this is logical is this.
Right now to see, I need eyes.
To walk, to do anything, I need a corporeal corporeal body. I need a physical system to interact with the world.
I am within space time.
God is independent of all causes. I am totally dependent.
Anything with limitations is dependent.
So God, by definition, is the cause of all dependent things in the universe. So is God not dependent upon his creation itself? Nothing. God is not dependent upon anything.
He is therefore completely free and transcendent of everything.
Okay.
Does Does that make sense that God is nothing like his creation? He's not within his creation, nothing like his creation. Yeah.
Yeah.
In the Quran, there's four statements that God says.
It says that God is one.
He has no beginning, no end.
There's nothing like unto that God. He is eternal.
All of these things you can arrive at, Carl, if you've never heard of Islam.
If you've never heard of Islam and you are hiking on an island and all your life living on your own, you would have realized there's only one God.
Because by definition there cannot be two Gods because you cannot have one God limiting the other. God by definition is all powerful.
If one God says make it rain, the other says don't make it rain, it will not work.
Logically there can only be one all powerful God. Two, God is nothing like his creation. Three, God is the only one worthy of worship.
Even before hearing about Islam or Jesus or Muhammad, peace be upon them, you would have known that this is the logical belief. This is why Islam people arrive at even before they've heard of Islam. They arrive at the truthfulness of Islam.
Yeah, I'd like water.
Can you get me water, too?
Okay. So, I'll give you something to think about about this.
There's two things happening in a person's mind when they come to believe in God.
One is they're using reasoning and logic. The second is they're getting environmental input from their society.
If a person is raised upon logic and reason with no environmental input, they will believe in a very pure concept of God.
But if their parents and their society and their culture and their history teaches them Roman mythology, Hindu mythology, Egyptian mythology, Christian theology, then their reason will be tarnished with these ideologies. I'll give you something interesting.
In Islam, we believe in what's known as the fitra.
This concept is called the inner disposition of man.
Meaning every human being has a moral sense of right or wrong.
Now, you me and I may be raised in Nazi Germany.
And our moral reasoning may be affected by the Third Reich. However, deep down inside, despite all the indoctrination, we will know this is wrong. It is wrong to kill other people. It is wrong to do this, it's wrong to do that. Likewise, our inner belief tells us there's one God.
Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Tengriism, it may put pressures on us, but eventually our logic and reason will break through, and we will recognize it doesn't make sense for God to be physical, it doesn't make sense to worship God through a dead man, it doesn't make sense to worship God through nature, and there has to be one all-powerful God.
So, I agree with you, people have different conceptions of God, but they don't have different conceptions of God because of reason, they have different conceptions of God because of their environmental cues.
Does that make sense to you?
So, with Islam, the prophet taught us that every child is born upon the natural disposition.
The natural disposition to only believe in God and only worship God. And he added that it's their parents who turn them into something else, meaning their environment.
And if you think about it from a perspective of anthropology, The prophet mentioned the parents in particular.
But when we are doing a explanation of that saying, cuz in Islam we take the statements of the prophet and we apply reason to it to try and see what other lessons we can draw, the wider lessons.
The wider lesson is cultural impact of society, not just parental influence.
What are the specific words parents?
Yeah, so where the the Bible is, I believe it says something along the lines of that.
Is that one of the 10 It is, it is, yes.
So, is it not to make that in Islam?
In Islam we have the same thing.
And in fact, God tells us even if your parents are idol worshipers even if your parents are worshipping other than God and they are doing something completely wrong, you still have to give them respect and honor.
However, do not follow them in where they're wrong. But, if they're right, for example if someone's mom is a Hindu and they're a Muslim and the mom says to the son, "Go clean your room."
He has to follow her. "Take out the trash."
"Take out the trash." He has to follow her.
"Do this." He has to follow. However, she says to him, "Come with me to the temple so we can worship Ganesha." He says no.
So, Islam tells you respect but there's certain guidelines that you do not cross.
Have you read the Have you read the Quran before?
A few years ago, yeah.
But, some of it stuck, some of it didn't.
Some of it? Some of it stuck, like some of it resonated and then other parts What resonated with you?
To be honest, reading it I did feel good reading it, like when I when I was reading it I did feel If I can ask you to consider something I have only met you today. I've never met you before.
I can be lying to you, technically.
A Hindu can come and tell you Hinduism's true and lie to you. A Christian can come say the same thing.
God will never lie to you.
We can lie to you. We're humans.
Humans deceive each other.
That's fine. I'll go for this.
I'll go for this.
I think Carl, you should ask God for what is right and what is the true religion and you should say to God, "I'm confused.
Please guide me. Is Islam true? Is Hinduism true? Is Christianity true? Or is none of them true?"
Because I can misguide you. I can confuse you. God cannot.
What do you think about that?
Where Where did you get the quote?
It's an important question to ask yourself.
Very good question.
I This is a brilliant question and it's a spiritual question.
It's the sort of question that's usually asked by people who've had a lot of introspection because I know exactly what you're talking about.
God does not want perfection.
God wants progress.
I'll give you a small thought experiment. If you improve yourself 1% every day, just 1%, you improve yourself. I can see you're someone who takes physical care of themselves.
If you eat the right food every day by 1%, you do 1% more exercise every day, 1% better relationships, after a year, how much better are you as a person?
1% every day better.
To calculate that, if we add 1% and we do a cumulative analysis >> 365% better. 37.7 times better, right? Which is incredible.
This is known as the 1% rule. We can if we improve our 1% >> Every day 1% times 365 No, as in I'll put it to you another way.
You see these blocks over here? Yes.
Imagine this is a chessboard.
If I put one grain of rice here Yes. the next day I put two.
The next day I put four. The next day I put 16 and then I put You get it, right?
By this time it gets to that point, we're going to have hundreds of tons. Okay? So it's the effect compounding effect. That's what we're talking about. Spirituality >> [laughter] >> Shall we continue?
Okay, we'll we'll talk to you as well.
No worries.
Okay. So when it comes to the compound effect every single day, you can improve significantly. So with your spirituality, you don't need to be in the perfect state of meditation. You don't need to be in the perfect frame of mind. It's better to be in like that.
Like for example, the morning times you feel more spiritual. Not being in a mental asylum like this Chip away every day even a little bit and you will soon discover that you are getting closer and closer to the one who created you.
Does that make sense?
Sorry?
The creator.
What I described to him is even if you don't believe in Islam as long as you believe in a creator you can get closer to God.
I believe, like I said to Carl here is that in Christianity there's a barrier between you and God.
In Islam it's you and God directly.
That's why I was saying to him Sorry?
I believe I believe Christians Yeah.
So No, I did I I did actually answer it.
I did answer it. Look.
To worship to worship God yeah.
Yeah, to worship God Yeah, yeah. No, he's not. We don't believe Jesus is God at all.
Yeah, we believe Christianity is wrong, yeah.
Yeah, we do.
I answered the question.
Okay. So, look.
To get to God, you never have to pray to Muhammad, peace be upon him. You don't.
You could, like I mentioned to you a few minutes ago, you could be born on an island, you've never heard of Islam, and you could still have a relationship with God. Meaning in Islam between you and God there is no idol, there is no grave, there is no nature, there's nothing. I still struggle with uh okay.
And like I said to you, Carl, it's going to take you time to work things out. So, you have You already have a copy of the Quran, right? Or should I Should I get you another copy?
>> I'll take one. I'll take another one.
I'll get you one.
And And excuse me.
Can you get me a physical copy of the Quran, please, from the brothers?
How you doing? Get me a physical copy.
Just over here. Just over here.
It's um Sorry? I I don't No, no, so Sorry. Just to be Just to be clear. Just to be clear. I will never be condescending towards him or anybody else.
No, I'm I'm sorry. I don't particularly have a relationship with God.
Okay.
So, look, my my friend, my friend, look.
It took me a long time to get to God.
So, I'm saying it's going to take time to learn things. It doesn't mean I'm being condescending. It just means I'm telling him there's a process.
It's like anything in life. If you want to go If you want to go to the gym and you want to build your body, or you want to run for the marathon, imagine this, Carl.
We have the We have the London Marathon.
Can you run for it tomorrow? If If it was tomorrow. Probably So, if I ask you If I ask you in a polite way, every day for the next 2 years, you should work on your diet and slowly improve on your Yeah, so he's saying that's being condescending. It's not. It's not being condescending at all.
What are you talking about?
How How How is that the case?
Look, my conversation Look, my conversation with him We're We're giving We're giving each other Yeah, so we're giving each other Look, we're giving each other mutual respect.
I'm not being condescending. He's not being We're just learning from each other.
What is that? What's that?
This one What's that?
What's the sticker on it?
Muslim detective.
Muslims answer the question.
Muslims what? Muslims detective to reflect on They reflect. Okay.
So, as an intelligent person, he can come to that conclusion himself if he thinks I'm doing that. In fact, I gave him an answer which is Didn't I give you the answer um a few minutes ago where I said I could lie to you, a Hindu could lie to you, a Christian could lie to you, but God would never lie to you, so pray to God. Didn't I say that?
There you go.
You didn't answer the question.
I did answer the question.
Taqiya is a Shia belief in which they believe they can lie. That's got nothing to do with this conversation that we're having.
I agree with you on I appreciate it. Thank you. It's great speaking to you, Carl. I'm I'm here every week.
And we also have a separate stall in um in Leicester Square.
Right?
And uh if you want, I can give you my email address if you have any questions.
You can send me an email.
There you go.
You can chuck in your email.
I'll just take a photo of that. That's all right.
>> Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
I appreciate It's great speaking to you.
You have a lovely day. You too. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
No.
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