188: Safeer Khan

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet Safeer Khan. Safeer is Imam at a mosque in Gillingham where he has been based since 2014. He leads the prayers every day and takes classes at the mosque. We learn about the Indian origins of his Ahmadiyya community which has about 35,000 members in the UK. Safeer talks about misunderstandings around caliphs and the role of the mosque as helper for the wider community and the importance of challenging misconceptions. We discuss Islamophobia, and how Safeer tries to combat that, and Safeer recounts confrontations he has experienced with Britain First. We talk about different ways of dealing with violence and what happens when people are fed hate, and why we should never give up on people. We talk about Israel-Gaza and whether it’s a political or a religious war and Safeer recounts his experience of meeting a former IDF officer on Rochester High Street. We talk about whether the conflict in Israel and Gaza will ever end, and the dangers of future generations being radicalized. He talks about the importance of holding our political leaders accountable and why he dislikes politics, and Safeer talks about what Muslims believe, including the different meanings of jihad. He was born in Norway and we find out about Safeer’s own journey to where he is now, including living in Sierra Leone, and why the people from that country, with whom he played football, were spiritually strong. He has also lived and worked in Spain and Pakistan. Safeer reflects on the importance of gratefulness and whether we can be nostalgic for negative experiences and how we can learn from the past. We also discuss whether they can bring people closer to God. Then, at the end of the interview, we learn why Safeer is both a looking back and a looking forward type of person, and how we cannot change the past but can change the future.