Interview with Master Abdullah Sabree

Hikmat: What is your history with the Muslim community in Toronto?

Master Abdullah Sabree: My story is quite extensive. I was born in Kingston, Jamaica and grew up in London, England. I have been in Toronto since 1970. I was a competitor in martials arts from the 70s up until 5 or 6 years ago. I’ve competed on the Canadian national team and won medals at the world championships.

HJ: At what point did you adopt a more teaching role in bringing martial arts to the community?

MAS: Martials arts was a tool and has always been a tool. I was with the Nation of Islam in Toronto and the minister in charge of Toronto. I then came over to Islam proper and have used martial arts as a vehicle, a da’wah vehicle, to bring people to the deen. I have had thousands of students over the years and have used martial arts for developing and growing the youth. I’ve even worked with people from ages 5 up to 70 and more! Martial arts, as it is, is just a small aspect of the development of the human being. We need to develop all 3 aspects: the physical, psychological, and spiritual. Martials arts has been a tool to develop the physical and help young people improve in that aspect. We have a lot of Islamic meetings and conferences, but the physical aspect of the human being has not been looked after at all. The development of has to be holistic; the Prophet ﷺ developed the human being physically, psychologically, and spiritually. This is the essence of a Muslim in order to grow and be the leaders of society.

HJ: What is it about martial arts compared to other sports that is special?

MAS: Martial arts is an overall development. It captures elements of the psychological, the mental aspect, as well as the physical in the development of individuals.

HJ: A lot of younger Muslims, including myself, do not appreciate the changes in the Muslim community from the 70s and 80s compared to today. What are some of these changes?

MAS: I found the community in a very strange dilemma. In the 70s and 80s, the community was small but quite together. The various masajid, and there weren’t many, worked together and cooperated. But, as we got bigger, we began to get smaller. In terms of our operations and working together as a group, we are a large entity much like sand in a barrel. You pick us up and we fall. This is what I have tried to emphasize—the necessity for us to come together and it is why we have the program in various masajid in the community. The focus is not to grow in size, necessarily, but to grow together as a whole and as one entity. Every one of us has different ideas and structures they can bring to the community. If we can come together as one entity we can become stronger. Right now, we are fragmented and doing very little.

HJ: Is this also something you believe is a problem we face as a global Muslim community?

MAS: Globally, the Muslim community is what, a quarter of the world’s population? But we represent less than 1% of the world’s population in terms of movement and change because we are not unified. This is what martial arts is all about! It’s about bringing together the different forms of the human being and working together as one person. The community as a whole can become a martial arts within itself if we bring together the different forces and varieties and make a collective effort to be a force for change and growth in Toronto and in the world.

HJ: I have noticed that often, we attach a certain ethnicity to mosques. We have the Pakistani mosque, the Somali mosque, the Arab mosque, etc especially in parts of Toronto where specific ethnic groups tend to live together. And I’ve heard both sides of the argument - some argue that it is the beauty of Islam that so many cultures can express the religion and be beautified by Islam in different cultural expressions, but also that perhaps it isn’t good that we have this compartmentalization of sorts where it fosters exclusivity. Are we, as a community, long overdue breaking down these barriers and ethnic labels?

MAS: This is something that we have to work on. If we don’t, we will continue to be split. This is a very important aspect of our growth and we need to work on this and come together. With all of our different strengths, if we put these together as one entity, we will be able to harness the forces around us and grow. The different labels attached to masajid - the Pakistani, Somali, Afghan, etc is working against us. This is actually causing a descension, rather than an ascension. Yes, we need to acknowledge our individual strengths and cultures but we need to use that to work together towards excellence. If we follow the life of Rasulullah ﷺ and the Sahaba, they were able to harness the forces of individuals as one group and achieve great things.

HJ: Presently, there are many labels attached to us. I, for example, consider myself an Afghan Muslim. Someone might consider themselves as a Canadian Muslim, or a Black Muslim, or a Bosnian Muslim, or a combination of these. With the recent news and debates around anti-Black racism in particular, what can Muslims do to combat anti-Black racism in our own communities?

MAS: The community needs to recognize the beauty of each individual. We need to enhance this beauty and ensure we are vocal about any form of racism towards any group. The Black community has faced a lot of derogatory treatment. The Black community has also struggled due to the slavery ideology placed on us over the period of years. Some of us in our community are locked into it and some of our people are struggling against it but in the wrong way. Those who are in power in society would like to keep us disunited and struggling for an identity we will never achieve! We need to recognize that they are working against us on a step-by-step basis. However, the Muslim community as a whole needs to move towards helping this in order to enhance the growth of the Muslim community as a whole. We need to play a helpful role in helping the entities struggling to get up.

HJ: A lot of our readers are young Muslims who are idealists at heart, including myself. We like to see grand actions immediately rewarded. However, the world isn’t so kind and we might not see things pan out like that always. You have changed thousands of lives in the Muslim community, so what is your advice to the idealist readers to not get discouraged and do the role that is best for them?

MAS: What we need to have is patience. We need that patience to grow and develop, but we need to be consistent. We can’t jump up in the middle and expect results overnight. It’s all about persistence and this is where we are falling down. We lack the collective unification to move in the right direction due to impatience and this becomes a major problem for us.

Allah will help us as long as we are helping ourselves. The help will come from corners and areas we can’t even begin to perceive but we need to have that determination to help ourselves. If we strive together and do what is right, then we will get help from everywhere.

HJ: Thank you, Shaykh, for giving me your time. I know we had connection issues and thank you for bearing with me.

MAS: I am speaking to you from up in the hills in Jamaica so that is probably why! As-salaamu alaykum.