My father inspired, motivated and supported me to make the very best of my life.
For him, life was all about Allah and helping other people to get in touch with their spiritual side.
He loved teaching people, young and old, and he was at a training camp when he had the stroke from which he eventually died. He’d gone to learn to become a teaching inspector, because he wanted to train teachers. Wherever he went, he loved teaching, even when he just met children or men that he didn’t know very well, he would ask questions and try to teach them even a little.
Not only did he teach other people, he was mine and my family’s teacher. He taught us all how to read and write in Arabic, which was a bonus when we went to Madrasah ourselves. We knew things other kids didn't know which made us feel very special, especially when it came to reading Quran with its proper pronunciations, and the Subject of Basic Islamic knowledge. It was all thanks to my beloved father.
My younger brother Ashiq and I had to join him at every tuition he gave at the weekends and at the evening classes he ran on weekdays in Burner Hall. It all seemed very daunting to me at that time, as I was missing all the fun of playing with my toys. Nevertheless, he taught me how to teach kids myself, which was very beneficial because my first job was teaching two young kids and I continued tutoring until I started our new business Sunnamusk.
Today, I have a successful business, but I know that Dad was upset that I didn’t stick in at school, for some reason I just didn't like studying at all. It just wasn't in me, but I loved doing more practical things such as design and technology and ICT at school.
I am the third of five brothers and I have two sisters. Dad sent us all to private schools, because he wanted us to have the best educations. My second brother Sheikh Kazi Luthfur Rahman is a graduate of Al Azhar University in Cairo, one of the oldest Islamic universities in the world, and my fourth brother Kazi Ashiqur Rahman is still studying in Azhar.
It’s all very different to the world my father was born into, in a remote village in Bangladesh called Kolakuta. Dad’s family were very, very poor, but he educated himself with very little money – he didn’t even have the money to travel to his school. But he overcame that and eventually became a well-respected Islamic scholar and Nadia qualified teacher.
The Enfield Mosque sponsored him to come to the UK in 1986, the year that I was born. In 1997, he brought us all over to join him and be a full family here in UK.
Dad was an imam, and in the evenings, he would teach children. He had so many students, and he was so proud when they did well. One is now the CEO of the Ebrahim College in London and many others have progressed into different fields, such as Abdullah who is currently our flagship shop contractor.
I didn’t make dad proud through my education or my spiritual life, but I know I made him proud in other ways. He loved to tell people about my creativity – if a kettle or a light stopped working, just by looking at it I can see what’s wrong with it and fix it in minutes. He used to find it fascinating that a boy who hated to study could fix things so easily, things that would take other people days to work out or have no hope of fixing at all.
When I was small, I made a little cart back home with three wheels which was supposed to look like a plane. He thought this was fascinating and he told everyone about it right up until he passed away.
Dad came from a very traditional background and he was amazed at the things we can do today with the internet and other technologies. Talking to people in China online and making business deals when we’re not in China in person was all a wow factor to him, because he was more used to seeing people in person to get things done.
My father was delighted that we have a thriving business, Sunnamusk. I will always be grateful for the help he gave us to start the business in 2008. We spent only £400 to buy stock, which we sold on market stalls, at Islamic events and from car boot sales. Ebrahim College is where we had our first stall, by the way, which marked the beginning of Sunnamusk. We grew very fast and we are now turning over £0.5m a year. Praise Be to Allah as this is all thanks to my mother and father’s prayers and support in hard times.
Dad was very independent, he always tried to do things himself; he tried to have breakfast himself, he was not a burden on anybody - not even my sister in laws, and we all know daughter in laws look after the parent in laws. He did everything himself including the household shopping and let me tell you, he did a damned good job. It’s a very hard job doing the household shopping – I did it after he passed away and felt the hardship of carrying those shopping bags home. Those meat, chicken, fish and vegetable bags were so heavy that I would stop halfway and continue after a minute’s break. It just shows how much he did to raise the family.
Dad never gave us money for free like some other fathers do. Instead, he lent us money and we had to return it. I now see the wisdom in paying back the money because he taught us what it was like in the real world and how to be responsible. I'm sure it was not his intention that we just had to pay him back because he was not stingy; in fact he was a very giving man and he helped countless people back home, which we only realised after he passed away. It was such a good feeling to see how many poor families he had helped though he did not have much income himself.
He taught us to be independent and that’s what we did. In terms of business he would say, ‘do your business, but don’t lose your connection with Allah. Whatever you do, you have to keep Allah and the Prophet SAW happy, as if you have the intention of pleasing Allah via business then you business will be a form of worship’. That’s something I always try to remember, and I strive to stay on the path, the Prophet SAW and my beloved father took.
Discipline and punctuality were so important to him. He taught us to do the things we said we would do, and to do them on time. He was a very disciplined man himself and he was never late for appointments. He had his set timetable for doing things - and only disciplined people have timetables. He would wake up before dawn every day and pray before morning prayers. That’s what happened the day he had the stroke, which eventually killed him.
I was getting married in April, and before that the whole family went to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and then on to Bangladesh. I went back to the UK, because I had business, dad and the rest of the family came back 15 days later but he suddenly felt an urge to go back home again.
He bought his ticket to return after five days, and he told everybody he would not come back to the UK again. We all thought he just joking because we thought that wouldn’t be able to stay by himself, especially without my mother. But dad insisted on going, so on 19th March 2012 me, my brother Ashiq and my big brother Abdur Rahman dropped him off at Heathrow Terminal 4 to put him on his Qatar Airways flight.
On the way to the airport he gave us a very long lecture, it almost felt like somebody is giving their final will. He told us not be like cats and that we should be like lions, as his life was that of a lion – he feared no man apart from Allah the almighty.
He flew to Bangladesh, then travelled to India to visit his family over there and finally went to Comilla in Bangladesh to train to be a teaching inspector.
One morning, he got up as normal to pray, then he must have fallen asleep again, and while he was asleep, he had a stroke. He was found by the imam of the mosque he had built back home for the sake of Allah. The imam couldn’t wake him. Dad was only young, he was very healthy and very strong. We just couldn’t believe this had happened to him.
He was treated in a number of different hospitals in Bangladesh. While he was in hospital, I got married and rather than the big wedding we’d all planned, it was a small event. The very next day, my wife and I flew to Bangladesh. We were there for 15 days and the rest of the family dropped everything they were doing to be with him. He was in hospital for nearly two months before he passed away, and he was buried in front of his mosque that he had built. He’d always said: ‘That’s a very nice place for a graveyard’, and that’s where he’s buried.
In February 2013, the whole family went back to Bangladesh to visit his grave. As father and son, we had had quite a distant relationship – if he would go one way, I would go the other way, but being there beside his grave, I felt connected with him again.
My father was loved and respected throughout our community, and he will always be a huge inspiration to me. I love my dad for all that he did for us, especially for me, I feel he taught me every lesson I need in life to live a good life.
I will always remember Dad walking down to East London Mosque near the shop that we are launching on Greatorex Street on cold snowy days, in his massive cream coat, his head wrapped in a scarf and his big shoes that looked twice the size of his feet.
I love you dad. You're always in a precious place in my heart.
