SaqibSaab

Meeting Umar Lee at MAS-ICNA Conference 2007 – pt. 2

We stood outside the bazaar exit and exchanged salaam with Umar Lee. He was helping out with one of the charity booths that poured out of the actual bazaar area. “You guys are a little early.”

“Yeah, we’re here to check out the bazaar and stuff,” AbdelRahman told him. One of main reasons we wanted to hit up MAS-ICNA that night was to make some purchases. AbdelRahman wanted to buy some itthar, I wanted to buy the Pray As You Have Seen Me Pray DVD by 1 Islam Productions for a sister who accepted Islam.

I had only heard about the DVD and seen it on online Islamic shops, but actually found out it was a great prayer guide when a brother who recently accepted Islam from ICN told me how beneficial it was for him to learn how to pray. AbdelRahman told me he saw it for just five bucks from one of the vendors at MAS-ICNA so I was really excited to run in and pick up a copy before they sold out.

We passed up the different Islamic finance and abaya booths and found our way to the vendor selling the DVD for $5. They had one copy left among a huge line up of DVDs, so I was thrilled. AbdelRahman reminded me to bring cash and naturally I forgot, so he spotted me. Later, I opened the DVD to find a blank white DVD-R with a printed sticker label on it.

The DVD was bootlegged. How lame is that? I didn’t even bother trying to waste my time in getting my money back, although I probably should have. The booth had so many quality productions from different producers all for “only $5.” But they were all bootlegged.

When I eventually got home I put in the DVD to check its quality; AbdelRahman said to at least see if the copy is worth giving to the sister. It wasn’t. The quality was terrible. It wasn’t even a straight DVD copy. It was like those old Hindi film VHS copies with fuzzy video and sub-par phone quality audio. There wasn’t even a menu with scene select or nothing, just some standard DVD recorder menu.

And you know what was the worst part? The first thing I saw when I played the Pray As You Have Seen Me Pray feature was a slide that displayed a verse from Surah Nisa that says “O believers! Do not consume one another’s wealth through unlawful means; instead do business with mutual consent… (4:29)” and then requests viewers to not copy the DVD.

Imagine if I had given this to the sister. The first message she’d get from watching the DVD is a message saying, “please don’t steal our stuff,” yet I give her a poorly bootlegged DVD. Pretty sad display of affairs if you ask me. I’ve written about how Muslims should consider not using pirated software, but this is just something else. How can you set up a booth at a national convention and sell straight up copied media. I can understand if this was a marketplace in India-Pakistan or Egypt or something, but in Chicago, IL? Come on.

May Allah (SWT) help us Muslims to perform our Dawah with higher integrity and respect for those who work hard to create quality media for the Ummah. I’m going to see if I can contact MAS-ICNA to find out who that vendor was and advise them on this. Until then, I’ll just have to order the DVD online and pay a little extra for shipping.

After we left the bazaar, we met Tariq Musleh, Omer Hedroug, Omar Maktabi and some IFS boys, then went to go pray Isha with Ahmed Mustaffa. Then we headed back to the hallway to meet Umar.

To be continued…