Khalil Moore at Masjid Sultan, Singapore

Khalil Moore was at Masjid Sultan yesterday, where he delivered a pre-Friday prayer talk. Praise God, He made it easy for me to finish my morning's work and scoot off at 12 pm for the mosque. I arrived early enough, and got a seat near the front, just about 10 metres in front of him. I was rapt listening to his talk. He is indeed a good speaker, and praise God for bestowing him such a gift. He spoke radiantly, and one could see the love he had for our beloved Master the Prophet, blessed be He.

All too soon, it was time for azan, and he ended his half hour speech. Ustaz Zaki was there and accompanied him. To my surprise (and I think to his too) the syaikh was asked to deliver the sermon as well. He did so (see picture above), and subsequently led the prayer as well.

At my age, I have accepted the reality that I am not able to recall and record herein what he said, so I will not try.

All I can say is that I fell in love with this young man, for he is clearly in love with our Master. If I cannot have the opportunity to see my Master, then at least I thank God that I am able to meet one who loves my Master as if he sees him.

I went for the talk later at the SingPost auditorium. I wish the organisers, my good friends from SimplyIslam, would stop using that place. The last time there was a talk there with Imam Faisal, it was the same litany of problems, not enough space, and terrible sound system. Anyway, I am not criticising the organisers, God will bless them and the Prophet would be pleased with them; I hope they will realise the issues for next time.

At the talk, in spite of a 15 minute delay in starting (which was the standard throughout all the talks I attended of the shaykh this week), I was nevertheless not at all disappointed. He spoke well about the topic he obviously loved the most about the Person he loved the most.

Towards the end of the talk, I was left with the same question I had been inflicted with since the last few visiting lecturers - where do we go from here? A foreign speaker comes, nobody knows who he is, during a few days of talks his name gets spread around, and by the time he holds his last talk there would be hundreds of people attending. And then - nothing more. We wait, and do not know what we wait for. Maybe insha Allah, another undetermined speaker, maybe insha Allah, at an undetermined time. Then suddenly a few months later, we get a weeks' notice of an unknown speaker and the whole cycle starts again.

It is like getting appetiser after appetiser and the main course never arrives. Each speaker comes, introduces himself, you fall in love with him, and then he leaves. Later someone else does the same. Yo-yo da'wah, if you will. This has to stop. We must come up with programs that follow up from these talks and visits. The root issue is our lack of English da'wah expertise locally, so I wonder whether it is possible to have videoconference sessions at least.

Anyway, none of the above detracts from the beauty of Khalil Moore.

I do hope and pray that he comes back. Soon.