IB_18

Page 6

The Islamic Bulletin

Issue 18

welve

ours

uslim

“What am I doing down here?” I wonder, my nose and forehead

pressed to the floor as I kneel in prayer. My knee-caps ache, my

arm muscles strain as I try to keep the pressure off my forehead.

I listen to strange utterings of the person praying next to me. It’s

Arabic, and they understand what they are saying, even if I

don’t. So, I make up my own words, hoping God will be kind

to me, a Muslim only twelve hours old.

“God, I converted to Islam because I believe in you, and

because Islam makes sense to me.” Did I really just say that? I

quietly burst into tears.

What would my friends say if they saw me like this, kneeling,

nose pressed to the floor? They’d laugh at me, “Have you lost

your mind?” They’d ask, “You can’t seriously tell me you are

religious.”

Religious... I was once a happy ‘speculative atheist’, how did I

change into this whirlwind tour through my journey.

Where did it begin? Maybe it started when I first met practic-

ing Muslims. That was in 1991, at Queen’s University, Kings-

ton, Ontario, Canada. I was an open minded, tolerant, liberal

woman, 24 years old. I saw Muslim women walking around

the international center and felt sorry for them. I knew they

were oppressed.

When I asked them why they cover their hair, why they wore

long sleeves in summer, my sorrow increased when they told

me, that they wore the veil, and they dressed so, because

God asked them to. Poor things. What about their treatment

in Muslim countries? “That’s culture,” they would reply. I

knew they were deluded, socialized, brainwashed from an

early age into believing in this wicked way of treating wom-

en.

But I noticed how happy they were, how friendly they were,

how solid they were, how solid they seemed. I saw Muslim

men walking around the International Center. There was

even a man from Libya - the land of terrorists. I trembled

when I saw them, lest they do something to me in the Name

of God.

I remembered on television images of masses of rampaging

Arab men burning effigies of President Bush, all in the Name

of God.

What a God they must have, I thought. Poor things that they

even believed in God, I added, secure in the truth that God

was an anthropomorphic projection of us weak human beings

who needed a crutch. But I noticed how helpful these men

were. I perceived an aura of calmness. What a belief they

must have, I thought. But it puzzled me.

That was before the Gulf War broke out. What kind of God

would persuade men to go to War, to kill innocent citizens

of another country, to demonstrate against the US? I decided

I’d better read the Holy book on whose behalf they claimed

they were acting. I read a Penguin classic, surely a trustworthy

book, and I couldn’t finish it, I disliked it so much. Here was

God destroying whole cities at a stroke. No wonder the wom-

en are oppressed, and these fanatics exist.

But then I discovered feminists who believed in God, Christian

women who were feminists, and Muslim women who did not

condone a lot of what I thought integral to their religion.

I started to pray and call myself a ‘post-Christian feminist believ-

er’. I felt that lightness again; maybe God did exist. I carefully

examined my life’s events and I saw that coincidences and luck

were God’s blessings for me, and I’d never noticed, or said

thanks.

I am amazed God was so Kind and Persistent while I was disloy-

al. My ears and feet tingle pleasantly from the washing I have

just given them; a washing which cleanses me and allows me to

approach God in prayer. God, an Awesome Deity. I feel awe,

wonder, and peace. Please show me the path.

“But surely you can see that the world is too complex, too beau-

tiful, too harmonious to be an accident? To be the blind result of

evolutionary forces? Don’t you know that science is returning to

a belief in God? Don’t you know that science never contradicted

Islam anyway?” I am exasperated with my imaginary jury. Haven’t

they researched these things? Maybe this was the most decisive

path.

I’d heard on the radio an interview with a physicist who was

explaining how modern science had abandoned it’s nineteenth

century materialistic assumptions long ago, and was scientifical-

ly of the opinion that too many phenomenon occurred which

made no sense without there being intelligence and design

behind it all.

Indeed, scientific experiments were not just a passive observation

of physical phenomena, observation altered the way physical

events proceeded, and it seemed therefore that intelligence was

the most fundamental stuff of the universe. I read more, and

more. I discovered that only the most die-hard anthropologists

still believed in evolutionary theory, though no one was saying

this very loudly for fear of losing their job.

My jigsaw was starting to fall apart. “OK, so you decided God ex-

isted. You were monotheist. But Christianity is monotheistic. It is

your heritage. Why leave it?” Still these questioners are puzzled.

But you must understand this is the earliest question of them all

to answer. I smile. I learned how the Qur’an did not contradict

science in the same way the Bible did. I wanted to read the

Biblical stories literally, and discovered I could not. Scientific fact

contradicted Biblical account.

But scientific fact did not contradict Qur’anic account; science

even sometimes explained a hitherto inexplicable Qur’anic verse.

This was stunning. There was a verse about how the water from

fresh water rivers which flowed into the sea did not mix with

the sea water; verses describing conception accurately; verses

referring to the orbits of the planets. Seventh century science

knew none of this. How could Muhammed be so uniquely

wise? My mind drew me towards the Qur’an, but I resisted.

I started going to church again, only to find myself in tears in

nearly every service.

Christianity continued to be difficult for me. So much didn’t

make sense: the Trinity; the idea that Jesus was God incar-

nate; the worship of Mary, the Saints, or Jesus, rather than

GOD. The priests told me to leave reason behind when

contemplating God. The Trinity did not make sense, nor was it

supposed to. I delved deeper. After all, how could I leave my

culture, my heritage, my family? No one would understand,

and I’d be alone.

I tried to be a good Christian. I learned more. I discovered

that Easter was instituted a couple of hundreds of years after

Jesus’ death, that Jesus never called himself God incarnate,

and more often said he was the Son of Man; that the doctrine

of the Trinity was established some 300 odd years after Christ

had died; that the Nicene Creed which I had faithfully recited

every week, focusing; on each word, was written by MEN and

at a political meeting to confirm the minority position that Je-

sus was the Son of God, and the majority viewpoint that Jesus

was God’s Messenger was expunged forever.

I was so angry! Why hadn’t the Church taught me these

things? Well, I knew why. People would understand that they

could worship God elsewhere, and that there, worship would

actually make sense to them. I would only worship one God,

not three, not Jesus, not the Saints, not Mary. Could Mu-

hammed really be a messenger, could the Qur’an be God’s

Word?

I kept reading the Qur’an. It told me that Eve was not only to

blame for the ‘fall’ ; that Jesus was a Messenger; that unbeliev-

ers would laugh at me for being a believer; that people would

question the authenticity of Muhammed’s claim to revelation,

but if they tried to write something as wise, consistent and

rational they would fail. This seemed true.

I E

mbraced

slam