Original subtitles

my name is Ali uh

Muhammad Ali to everybody calls me Ali

uh I'm originally from

I suppose you'd say the North West of UK

I come from uh an area called the Wirral

which is in between Wales and England

my father was an industrialist

he owned his own company that made household goods like

uh disposable razor blades

toilet paper firelighters

that kind of thing um

my mother was housewife

I've got two older sisters and an older brother

I was privately educated till the age of 13

I went to um prep school on what have you um

it was regarded very highly in our household

to be educated

to have knowledge to know

uh I loved science

I loved chemistry and physics and all that long

because again was dealing with knowledge

I liked mathematics

it's the one subject which objective truth is taught

in our family my father deferred the pastoral uh

life bring up for the children to his wife

to my mum and so mum brought us up to be Methodist

Methodist Christians which uh

to my knowledge of Christian sex

is a seven day a week Christian lifestyle

with go to church on Sundays

when you just go to church Sunday

school in the mornings

I was brought up to believe that god is watching

everything all the time

and that Jesus loves us the way

when I was only 9

and then everything changed after my mum died

when I was 9 it all my whole

attitude on religion really started to fall apart

um

I'm to the point where I'm not gonna believe anything

unless you can be proved to me

unless it can be shown to me yeah

I should refer to those as my years of darkness

when I think about me

this is the first time I've thought about it in these

all terms

but yeah it was uh that was uh years of darkness

there was no objective um

reality that made sense to me

I was expect my father remarried a Roman Catholic

into a Roman Catholic family

I didn't find their religion very inspiring

and very limiting it seems to be governed

seems to be

that the whole community is governed by a kind of guilt

ethos and that's not how I brought up

I did my a levels when I was seventeen

and then I applied to Brighton and Sheffield

polytechnics and

I didn't find out that Brighton had accepted me

till I was already in Sheffield

and the Sheffield that accepted me

and I went to Sheffield Poly

I think it was very good move

when I look back at it now

because Islam was given to me in Sheffield

however I went to Sheffield Poly

that a year there on their applied science program

um didn't succeed in the first year so I dropped out

spent a year out

then I went back to college to redo my a levels

to get better

a level grades to see where I can get to university

just got enough points for Sheffield

University to allow me on their material

Science and technology program

which was a course I'd heard about as being very uh

very good introduction to general science

rather than doing physical specializing

and it's a Muslim brother whose name is dowdmosa

he told me about it

he's a guy who'd accepted Islam or must be good

10 years before I did he's senior to me

when I was looking for courses to do

he spoke to me and said look

do the applied science but you've done applied science

do the material science and technology

and I thought at that time

the materials meant this kind of thing

I didn't realise that materials means everything

and I found that course was fantastic

it's a really good course

I qualified in 86 and I immediately

very fortunately landed a research post

I had to I took over somebody's research project

uh

then a friend of mine who just come back from Algeria

she's gone there for the summer holiday

met an Algerian lad got married

uh come back after accepting Islam

and I went to see her the next day

to tell her about my epiphany

and she heard me out and said here

have a look at the Quran I will

I had my Bible in my pocket

I don't need to read that

I've got this and it says

be careful of those who come out of the desert

or they're in the inner apartments

don't believe them she looked at me and said

but if you don't read it

you'll never know what's in that book

I know that is an impeccable argument

pass it over to me

and I opened it up and there in front of me

I seem to remember it saying

this book confirms everything

which you possess of knowledge

and I recognised it

so she said to me their husband would come over

and they go to the mosque on Monday

they didn't turn up on Monday

they didn't turn up on Tuesday

and I thought if I don't act on this right now

I'm totally gonna be lost cause I haven't moved

now I have no truth

and so off to the mosque I went on Wednesday

and I walked into the mosque on Wednesday

lunch time it was they just made their zahud prayer

and I walked in afterwards

very strange experience when I walked into the place

it felt like I was being turned inside

out and back to fences

if I was being forced through an egg timer

at the top became the bottom

the inside became the outside is very weird

and I thought that was a trick of Satan to to stop me

and thought no

you're not stopping me not stopping me

and I said to the brothers that I walked in right

I want to be Muslim right now

they showed me how so they told me about Shahada

I told them I've had a wash

I had to clean and put my best clothes on

they gave me the words of Shahada

the witness

I said

I said