Meet the Sushi-Master who Left the Restaurant World to Serve his Community

As part of our Professional Profiles series, we highlight members of AROPL with accomplished careers and expertise, showing how their professional paths led them to join the community of Abdullah Hashem.

Meet Rémi Huillet: Sushi-Chef turned community volunteer. His story starts in South Korea, where he was born, and takes a sharp turn at age 12 when he was adopted by a French family and dropped into a culture that felt like another planet. He went from struggling to learn French in an international school to mastering the kind of precise, almost spiritual discipline it takes to make world-class sushi under Osaka-trained chefs.

But Rémi’s life didn’t just stay in the kitchen. Behind the knives and the discipline, he was searching for something bigger—meaning, purpose, and answers to questions most people push to the back of their minds. That search eventually led him first to Islam, and finally to the community of Abdullah Hashem.

Please introduce yourself to the Divine Just State Magazine readers.

My name is Rémi and I am French of Korean origin. I was born in South Korea and was adopted by a French family at the age of 12. Due to the extreme cultural differences between Korea and France, when I landed in France, it was a huge emotional shock, to say the least. I attended an international school to learn French. 

For me, adapting to life in France was very difficult from the start, partly for the reason I just explained, but also because I was sent to France despite my desire to stay in Korea.

How did you manage to become a professional Sushi chef in this difficult environment?

In the beginning, I was attracted to scientific and technological studies, particularly in the field of aeronautics. While I was pursuing this path, I met some Korean students, and seeing them regularly made me feel nostalgic for my native country, Korea, the country I had to leave against my will. 

I asked one of my close Korean friends what kind of job would allow me to move to Korea quickly and easily without too many problems, and he replied that I should become a French chef in a restaurant at an international luxury hotel. 

So this nostalgia for my country changed the course of my life, even though cooking was not something that interested me at first. But once I discovered the amount of discipline and high levels of skill required, I just fell in love with this art. It gave me so many challenges to overcome in terms of dexterity, accuracy, managing emotions, plating in an harmonious way, and above all, being a perfect student to ensure good progress in the knowledge being passed on.

Right after finishing my studies in hotel/hospitality and French cooking school, I was looking for a job to support myself. I had the opportunity to work in a Japanese restaurant and immediately loved it, probably because Japanese cuisine is very similar to Korean cuisine, which I was familiar with and missed a lot. 

In this Japanese restaurant, I discovered sushi for the first time, the highest level of Japanese cuisine which needs a lot of skill to prepare and is a fine culinary art. I was lucky to be under the supervision of one of the famous traditional sushi masters from Osaka, Japan. He taught me the basics as well as advanced skills. Japanese people in general have this sense of respect towards everything surrounding them, the animate and also inanimate. I loved this philosophy.

Working with these Japanese chefs was an almost sacred daily ritual, repeating each movement and trying to achieve perfection in what we did. Being better than yesterday. It is a kind of meditation in our daily tasks which greatly helps to focus on what we are doing and to improve ourselves and our skills.

The first master I trained under was Chef Matsuo-san from Osaka, at a restaurant called Sakura in Lyon, France. That was where I was introduced to the discipline and artistry of traditional sushi-making. Later in my career, I had the privilege of working in Monaco at the renowned Nobu restaurant under Chef Masa Ouchi. I served as his assistant chef, which also meant that whenever he was away, I stepped into the role of head chef, leading the kitchen and ensuring that the same high standards were maintained.

This sounds like you were very fascinated by the Japanese lifestyle and cuisine.

Work has given me a sense of purpose, the realization that work is not just a job but a contemplative way of life that allows me to get to know myself better, identify my weaknesses, and find ways to improve. This ultimately affects me as a person, positively influencing my patience and consistency in the face of challenges and difficulties. 

When you consider the amount of time we spend at work, work itself is a discipline of life that gives us the opportunity to improve ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually. From there, I realized that work is one of my allies in my journey through life.

How did you hear about this religion? 

Since I arrived in France at a young age from Korea, I experienced a huge emotional and cultural shock. Having experienced these two countries, two completely opposite cultures, the extreme East and the extreme West, gave me the possibility of comparison.

I began to ask myself a lot of existential questions about life: Why am I here on earth? What is the purpose of life? Why is there so much inequality? Why are some people so lucky in their professional lives, while others fail to graduate and find themselves marginalized, having to fend for themselves to make ends meet? What happens after death? Does life continue, or do we fade into nothingness and cease to exist?

Since I arrived in France, I constantly asked myself these questions. The simple fact that I myself experienced this emotional shock and found myself in France against my will allowed me to put myself in other people's shoes and feel and understand the difficulties and injustices they may experience in life.

I understood that something was wrong with this world. And I asked God this question: “Tell me that this world as I see it is not the one you wanted. Give me an answer, because if you tell me that this world as I see it is yours, then you cannot be a good God.”

And for years I kept contemplating the word “infinite,” trying to understand it more deeply. But the more I thought about it, the more confused I became and the more impossible it seemed to grasp its reality... 

Then one day God inspired me. Finally, I understood that it was impossible for me to understand it. How? Here is the answer. How can a limited being understand and grasp the meaning of infinity, which has no limits?

Then the inspiration continued, and the answer was that the word “infinite” does not belong to the realm of created beings but to the Creator Himself, who is eternal and therefore infinite. All praise to God. 

Yes, with persistence we can find the answer to the question we sincerely want to understand, no matter how long it takes.

And I understood that God the Creator, who is infinite, created us out of love with certainty. So if He created us with love, but with infinite love, then it was clear to me that even after death, I would never be separated from my Creator Father, who loves me infinitely. One of my questions was now resolved. All praise to God. 

I also understood that if God is Infinite Love, then He is also Infinitely Merciful. 

I had zero knowledge about Islam except that I had bad feelings about Islam being very barbaric and violent. So Islam is something my heart was closed to, not interested at all in it. 

One day, one of my Moroccan colleagues invited me to her friend's house for dinner. When I arrived, I saw a small shelf and my eye fell on a small Islamic booklet. I picked it up and read it, and I came across the first lines of the pages, which began, “In the name of God, the Most Merciful and the Infinitely Merciful.” 

And there, my whole being was suddenly and mystically captivated by this phrase, which dissolved and fit perfectly with the God that I had discovered through contemplating the word “infinite,” which gave me this awareness of a God who is infinitely loving and infinitely merciful. 

Shortly afterwards, I converted to Islam, and when I recited the testimony of faith in front of a few people in the mosque, I felt that a door had opened before me and that I had finally found meaning and a clear direction in life. 

Always pursuing my learning without any external influence, my main guides were the Quran and Nahj al-Balagha. At that time, I wasn’t aware that there were so many sects in Islam; for me, it was simply Islam. Nahj al-Balagha was my favorite book after the Quran, which I read daily. I did not know, when I obtained The Way of Eloquence of Imam Ali, that he was the oppressed successor of Mohammed and that his right was usurped.

At some point in my spiritual journey, God finally answered the question I had asked Him when I was young, “Tell me that this world as I see it is not yours.” I came across the TADS series by Abdullah Hashem. It literally answered my question in detail, perfectly. I decided to share these valuable works with the French-speaking world by adding French subtitles. Then I was contacted by someone from the TADS video translation group on the Hashemstudio-board forum. I was introduced to brother Bruno, who was in charge of the translation team. The person behind this forum was Abdullah Hashem himself.

One day, in one of these TADS episodes, the messenger of Imam Mahdi, Ahmed Al-Hassan, was announced. As I listened to the Hajj sermon, my heart beat in harmony with his divine voice. I pledged allegiance when my master Aba Al-Sadiq Abdullah Hashem presented this episode to us. At that time, Abdullah Hashem was the person I could trust the most because of his sincere love and sacrifices for the Ahl ul bayt/Mohammed and the Family of Mohammed, as I myself had become a fervent believer and defender of the Ahl ul bayt. 

I have never met a person so pure, devoted, and who radiated so much love for the Ahl ul bayt. My attraction and fascination with Abdullah Hashem at that time was very mystical, but today I fully understand these special feelings towards him I had at that time. 

He is the only person who has helped me understand divine love. He has shaped and restructured my entire being. Thanks to him, I was able to discover how lost I was, still too young spiritually and with so much work to do on myself. He brought out all my dark spots and showed them to me one by one in order to purify them, but he always leaves us the choice of whether or not to destroy our darkness, no matter how long it takes.

Why did you decide to join?

Ever since I heard about my master Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq, my only wish was to meet him at any cost. And one day, I had the opportunity to meet him, and that day was a day of glory and euphoria. It was unthinkable for me to continue my spiritual journey without him and his community. Who would not want to join this person in the flesh, in whom the Holy Spirit resides? 

The purpose of creation is to become a veil of God or God in creation, the one who perfects the divine morals and manners manifesting pure divine love. The only way to do this is to join his community, live with him and learn from him and his close companions. So here I am with him, a decade later. And all praise be to God.

How can you use the skills you learned in your job in this religion?

As I mentioned earlier, at work we get to know ourselves better and, above all, we have the opportunity to develop the smart use of our mind and body, regardless of the type of work we do. Being aware of this, we can always improve ourselves in terms of self-development, which is ultimately purely spiritual. 

We face emotional challenges and must exercise self-control in various stressful situations involving interactions with people in the workplace itself. At this level, we understand that our work skills, which improve day by day, inevitably benefit my religion, either by providing service or simply by offering spiritual help to those in need.

The workplace is an ideal place to improve ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually. It also allows us to learn more about others and, above all, about ourselves.

What would you like to tell other people who are still working in your profession today?

The field of cooking and hospitality is about serving others. It is an ideal way to control oneself while serving others, but of course this is only beneficial if one is aware of it and sincere. Sincerity is the key to spiritual success. 

Difficulties are omnipresent in this world in all areas of work. Through daily difficulties and challenges, we learn to channel our emotions and control ourselves to maintain a state of peace and harmony. It is therefore a great spiritual asset. So everything is beneficial to us, because in the end we will place our ego or self under control in order to give more light to our soul. 

When we understand one of the facets of the self, that the self likes to be served, unlike the soul, whose motivation is always to serve others and make others happy, it is indeed a blessed profession that the self will never see unless it submits to the soul.