Getting to Know a Friend - How I Came to Islam

  My best friend from childhood was a mixed Lebanese/Polish American boy. I met him when I was around ten years old. I knew he wasn’t a Christian because every year for a month he would do something he called "fasting Ramadan." All I remember was seeing him and his brothers lying all over the couches in their living room, looking like they were suffering, while outside the beach beckoned and play enticed. As we grew a little older we did things we thought were risky. One summer we began to sneak out of our houses after midnight and meet on a hillside overlooking a lake to talk about life, religion and what it all meant. Sometimes we would walk the roads in our subdivision and talk about the stars. It was an awe-inspiring practice that brought our friendship to a new level and evoked in us a sense of grandeur.

     One night my father found that I wasn’t in my room and when I returned, I found him sitting on our front porch. I could tell it was him because I saw the faint glow of a cigarette ahead dimly in the darkness. I knew I was in trouble. He called my friend's parents as well. The next day we both traded stories of how much of a beating we received. I guess our parents thought we were sneaking out to do drugs or something. Many youth in our community did that so it was understandable. My father just didn’t listen when I told him that we were just walking, sitting, talking and musing over life. The late night excursions were abruptly halted.

     The deep discussions with my friend did not, however, abate, but grew in intensity. He was by no means a righteous Muslim teen. He did all the things that any other teen growing up in America with little supervision did, but unlike his two younger brothers, and his own father, he had a greater interest in the concept of Islam, though he knew precious little about it. I, too, was something of an expert in nothing in particular, at least where religion was concerned. I went to church with my grandma for years. I attended innumerable Sunday schools classes, youth camps, prayer meetings, etc… But my simple Baptist dogma lacked force and applicability and I merely followed along as a good boy.

     Eventually my friend and I began to discuss religion more thoughtfully. It wasn’t high level, by any means, for he was the only quarter-practicing Muslim in twenty miles and I was an average Christian with little Christian enthusiasm. It was fun, nonetheless, to compare ideas and what he said made me think, though I was sure I would win the arguments with a smug ‘my-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad’ kind of confidence.

     High school came and went and my friend and I drifted apart a little as the new realities of life intruded themselves upon us. He went off into the up-and-coming world of computers and I followed my dream and went to a distant college to study Spanish, Tourism, Political Science or whatever my fancy of the moment was. I looked for religion on campus because though my Christian faith was not fervent, I did pay attention on church all those years and avoided a shameful way of life. I wanted to ‘fellowship’ with others who also shunned evil (rock music, drugs, alcohol, illicit relations, etc…).

     While I was still settling in I got another taste of interfaith religious discussion. Campus preachers from the evangelical Marinatha organization stood outside of one particular college hall every Wednesday and drew great crowds with their fiery calls to Christ. Most of the students gathered in the wide circle listened politely, while a few just jeered and yelled. (I could never imagine someone insulting a worker for Christ!) But after a few weeks I noticed an older man, who looked like a professor, listening intently to the handsome young preacher, as he stood on a stone bench, crying about salvation and repentance. Then one day it happened: the evangelical made a statement about calling Jews to Christ as well and this old man virtually came to life. He walked into the center of the huge ring of perhaps eighty students and began tearing everything down that the preacher said.

     He explained that he was a Jew and that Christians didn’t have the right to use ‘his tribal literature’ (i.e. the Old Testament) for their own interpretations and theology. The debate was fascinating with the old Jew disarming every Christ-centered point with a counter verse that the obviously startled preacher tried to posit. This then became a ritual every Wednesday. The preacher, who was joined by four or five other helpers to work the crowd, would begin talking and drawing a crowd of passersby and the Old Jew would come and harass him to no end. It was then that I finally realized that Christianity was not an invincible fortress, incapable of being shown to have weaknesses.

     Well, I had to give that old-time religion another chance so I, strangely enough, went to talk to that preacher after his ‘show’ was over. He seemed nice enough and he invited me to come to one of his campus ministry meetings the next night. I agreed and as I walked away, the strangest feeling that I ever felt came over me. As I was passing under a tree my entire body went numb for a moment and I was literally racked with a heavy sensation. I couldn't’ move, literally. My chest caved in and my lungs felt as if they were wrapped in iron. I’ve never told anyone this part of my story but I still think about it. The moment passed almost as quickly as it came and I immediately took it as a sign that God was pleased with me.

     The next night I went to the appropriate building and entered a huge lecture hall that the Christian students group had permission to use. I stood in the back for a second and surveyed the scene. Before me, on a stage below, was the preacher, joined by about twenty others, all about my age. Behind him was a band set up with guitars, drums- the works. I had an uneasy feeling immediately. I sat down in a back seat and watched as more students came in, male and female. 

     I tried to remain hopeful and full of faith but my demeanor was shattered when the preacher began to ‘jam’ on the guitar. A moment later the band was in full rock and roll glory, the only difference was that they were saying ‘Jesus’ instead of the more usual rock music themes. The growing crowd of forty or more people gathered in front near the stage and were clapping and saying ‘hallelujah’.

     The church I grew up in taught that this kind of music was from the devil and here was a Christian group trying to woo faith in its members by modifying a contemporary form of expression that it otherwise would have shunned. I felt disgusted and left. I later reinterpreted my physical ‘sign’ as a warning.

     I took the opportunity of living away at school to broaden my horizons and I began to read oriental philosophy books. This was a natural offshoot of my interest in martial arts. I principally found the works of Lao-Tzu the most appealing and after a while I considered myself something of a Taoist. There was just something about that whole ‘wind in the trees’, ‘be like the great nothingness’ that sounded cool. Continuing my newfound spirit of exploration, I enrolled in a beginning Arabic course for no other reason than I thought it would be fun to say a few Arabic words to my friend’s dad when I returned home for the summer.

     Well, it would become a life changing class for my eyes were opened to a whole new syntactic expression. I really felt as if learning to write Arabic, as difficult as it was, was making me smarter. I felt like a code breaker or something. The class was also full of Muslim immigrants and people sympathetic to Muslim culture. Not that it was a proselytizing class or anything. 

     The instructor was obviously a disillusioned Muslim who had turned agnostic - he even thoughtfully questioned the validity of any universal truth in our frequent open class discussions. But the charm was in being able to learn about Islam, Arabs, Muslims and all of it in a completely neutral setting, with no pressure to convert. (The four or five Muslims present were by no means fervent believers.)  I also saw the diversity of humanity in one small setting. There was a Pakistani, a couple of Arabs, a few Caucasian non-Muslims and a very dear Irish-Muslim convert who made me feel as if the world was truly much bigger than my small, suburban experience.

     I returned home for Christmas break and was amazed to find my friend in a new frame of mind. He had recently become more serious about Islam in my absence, even as I began to drift further and further away from a mere habitual loyalty to Christianity. It wasn’t solely due to college that I fell out with the worship of Christ, however, for as early as the age of fifteen I felt uncomfortable with the teachings of my faith. I couldn’t understand how God could be a father and a son simultaneously or how Jesus could be God when he was obviously praying to God all the time in the Gospels. Anyway, my friend decided to share his newfound verve with me and he gave me a Qur’an to take back with me to college with the words, "Just read it with an open mind."

     I took the Yusuf Ali translation with me when I returned and didn’t open it for over a month. Then one day, bored with the meaningless banter of my fellow dorm-mates, I opened the book and began reading in a random surah. I don’t remember which passage I was reading but I can tell you that I was immediately struck with awe and wonderment. The Qur’an was completely unlike what I had expected, indeed, it was unlike anything I thought about any religious book. Up until then my only experience had been with the Bible. It is a jumble of histories, biographies, songs, letters- quite a smorgasbord really. Reading it is like reading a novel or encyclopedia- it’s all third person stuff obviously written for different peoples with no coherent structure.

     The Qur’an, however, was presenting itself to me as an essay, a letter addressed to me. The verses rang out with first and second person grammatical structures that addressed "O you people, if…," and "I am your Lord so worship Me." I wasn’t prepared for such a personal address and I felt a sudden kinship and tie to the Qur’an that kept me reading it, night after night for the next several weeks.

     The questions began to stir in my mind: where did this book come from? Why haven’t I seen it before? That was when I really began a desire to know who Muhammad (p) was. I didn’t have any knowledge of him prior to my Qur’anic readings as he wasn’t really covered in my public school education so I had to literally learn how to properly use a reference book and the local college library. The first place I looked was in the front of the Yusuf Ali translation where he gave a moving, almost prosaic rendition of the story of his life. It was beautiful, though cryptic, for I was not yet versed in the worldview from which Muslim thought is originated. The library came next. Now that was an adventure in itself as I came face to face with the great debate about the validity, or impossibility, of Muhammad’s being a true Prophet of God. In the second part of this article I will let you know what I found, and it was really quite an amazing journey into the last five hundred years of Christian-Jewish-Muslim dialogue.

     The Michigan State library is really quite a cavernous place. Set near the middle of the campus, it is an imposing structure of glass and stone that also includes several basements. The object of my search, the Islam section, was on one of the higher floors, thankfully. I remember passing the huge Judaica section and I almost missed the Islam selections altogether, so few books were there. At that time there were perhaps only enough books to fill up one and a half bookshelves and almost all of those books were bound in that drab green and blue covering that libraries frequently clothe books in to protect them.

     Starting with general books on Islam, I picked a couple by Western authors and took them back to my dorm to read. The first book was by Watt and the second was by Arnold. Neither of them painted an overly flattering picture of the Prophet, though they didn’t seem overly critical either. I learned the basic story outline of Muhammad’s life and got a grasp for the type of world he lived in. 

     The account of his life seemed pretty straightforward and the parameters of his environment rang slightly in my mind as almost Biblical. He lived in a harsh desert among heathen idol-worshipers. He shunned the immorality of his times and was rewarded later in life by being chosen by God to bring his people to monotheism. The seemingly insurmountable struggle against overwhelming forces and the sheer ignorance of the Bedouins is an epic in itself.

     I found that my initial assumption, that Muhammad wrote the Qur’an himself, began to fade rather quickly. In fact, that notion was all but gone a few days after I first started reading the Qur’an. It just wasn’t the sort of book a person who had author-like tendencies would write. I had already read the Bible through and through, both the Jewish Old Testament and the Greek-Latin leaning New Testament, as well as several selections of Eastern religious writing and the Qur’an did not have anything in common with any of those types of writings.

    The Bible is essentially a third person narrative of events interspersed with personal reflections by the authors and an occasional song, poem or essay on one subject or another (usually concerning laws, Israel, philosophy or commentary on events that were current at the time of that particular passage’s writing. The Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, the Sutras and other Buddhist/Taoist writings are basically high order philosophical conundrums to tease the brain. While the Ramayana and other Hindu scriptures are basically fantasy stories of gods and wars interspersed with oddball talk of nothingness and nirvana and such.

    The Qur’an, I found was none of those, and after carefully considering where Muhammad lived, it became increasingly apparent to me that an illiterate in the desert doesn’t suddenly come up with such a book out of nowhere, a book that grew with him over 23 years and had such a tone about it as to make one feel that it was a higher being talking to you. Even the structure was quite unusual for me to explain as well. This is where the notion that the Qur’an is just a poor knock-off the Bible really gets dismissed. The Bible tells stories in chronological order and rarely gives any moral to the events. The Qur’an, on the other hand, rarely tells the complete story of an event in one place, but scatters episodes of it all over the place in different chapters to illustrate moral lessons. Extraneous details such as the names of everyone’s cousins, what the maid was wearing, who begat who to the thousandth degree and what size the grapes were are all thankfully absent with only the main events of each story told and their moral significance.

     For example, I found that the story of Moses is contained in over a dozen chapters of the Qur’an, interspersed with other topics. In this way, the heart of each story is given just enough life to join with other parts of each chapter to render a completely unified moral imperative as the result of one complete essay. Looking at chapter 28 of the Qur’an, we find that the first 42 verses tell a basic outline of Moses’ life, but then a discussion of the significance of God’s revelation follows for the next few verses, moving over into times contemporary to Muhammad, asking why his tribe obstinately would reject such an important gift from God (i.e. guidance). 

     Then objections from unbelievers are answered, followed by a snapshot of their fate on Judgment Day. An appeal is made to seek God’s forgiveness before a return is made to Moses’ story, this time centering on Korah (Qarun), one of Moses’ people who rejected faith in God. The chapter ends with a discussion of punishment and reward for our faith and actions concluding with a few words to Muhammad directly not to give up and to always serve the one true God.

     Nearly every chapter in the Qur’an is set up this way. I remember reading a book by a Christian Evangelist, also taken from the same library, in which he accused the Qur’an of being disjointed and confused in its structure. After seeing the structure for myself I realized that that author must have been so used to the linear approach of the bible that he couldn’t appreciate the style employed in the Qur’an, a style I couldn’t find duplicated elsewhere, even in novels and memoir writing.

     I still didn’t convert, however, because I didn’t know one could do such a thing easily. I still felt unconsciously that one had to be born into Islam and that’s just the way it was. Undaunted in my investigation, I continued to read and among the most fascinating books I borrowed were the hadith books, those books that contains Muhammad’s sayings. I thought it amazing that you had a revelation from God (the Qur’an) and a whole other corpus of teachings spoken from Muhammad’s own volition. The hadith provided a fascinating glimpse into the real world dealings of the Prophet. From simple sayings to entire conversations with others, one could read about Muhammad through his own life experiences. As a side note I also began to read about Muhammad’s companions, or Sahaba, many of who narrated their own biographies. Yet another angle allowed me to get to know this man further.

     With Jesus, you only have the gospels. You don’t have any other writings, save for Acts, in which to read about Jesus for the early church banned hundreds of other biographies of Jesus, simply because those sometimes clashed with the Greek/Roman Trinitarian view. There was a Unitarian view prevalent in the Middle East, where Jesus lived, but the Greeks and Romans, under the influence of a converted Rabbi named Paul, turned the one God into a three-in-one God. Ironically enough, I already began to doubt the gospels when I was a teenager. You see, in my Baptist church read the Bible a lot. 

     And I developed an image of Jesus, from reading the Gospels, that was different from God Al mighty. Jesus just wasn’t God to me and the Gospels never gave me that impression. Then, one day during the regular service, the pastor proclaimed proudly that Jesus is God. I was completely at a loss to fathom such a thing. Who was Jesus praying to all the time then, himself? Why would God have to die to forgive us? Couldn’t he do it otherwise? How could God spend three days in Hell? The Old Testament never spoke of a three-in-one God. If it were so important, wouldn’t it have been mentioned before? Although I remained a Christian all through my teens, I didn’t have as much loyalty to Christian theology after that.

     Momentous change occurred when I signed up for the next level of Arabic classes, and also took a class on Islam. The professor was a non-Muslim academic who gave a dry presentation on Islam, mostly covering history, but it gave me the impression that my high school and junior high education was defective. Here was a whole world that I don’t ever remember being covered. Maybe it was sandwiched between the China and Japan units in sixth grade or something, but it seemed to me that I was not properly educated about a major world civilization. Meanwhile, in Arabic class, I began to make friends with a few of the people in there. One was an elderly Irish Muslim lady who told me of generations of Muslim Irishmen living in a small village in the countryside. Another man was an American student who was enamored of Middle Eastern culture, yet another was a foreign exchange student from I don’t remember where.

     I began to ask questions about Islam to them, even to the professor, whom I knew didn’t follow it, just to see what he said. His answers were dry and lifeless. Someone must have hurt him in his life or something for him to be so bitter and dead inside. But the students I befriended were jovial, relaxed and level-headed. Nothing like the only images of Muslims I had seen heretofore on television during the Iranian hostage crisis.

     After a while, I somehow began to feel like Islam was good for me. I continued to read books written by Muslims and non-Muslims and after balancing the arguments it seemed that Islam was reasonable and built upon a foundation I could believe in. Now, of course, one doesn’t convert to another religion just like that. In my readings I intentionally looked for anything I could to object to. Women’s rights, for example, popped up. I had heard that Muslims don’t treat women well. I couldn’t find anything in Islamic sources, however, to justify it, and I realized that if bad things do happen to Muslim women, it can’t be blamed on the religion. After all, how many women are beaten, raped, murdered, used and slandered by men with Christian names, all of it against Christianity?

     It was about this time that I realized that there was a difference between what a religion says and what its followers do. The great parallel for me is today, where the whole world seems to be blaming Islam and Muslims for the World Trade Center, when the attack was the work of fifty guys at most whose main grievance is the Palestine issue and the U.S. army in Arabia. It’s like blaming Christianity for Timothy McVeigh, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, wiping out the American Indians, abortion bombers and so on. 

     All the perpetrators are or were Christians, acting out of Christian motives, but were are the American leaders saying Christianity is a "vile" and "wicked" faith. Why aren’t the Jews waging war on Europe to this day for the Holocaust? Why aren’t they blaming all Christians for a thousand years of murder? That’s how upside down our world is and how ignorant Americans are of Islam and the Muslim world. A religion doesn’t attack another country, people do, and if it was only a small fanatical group, you don’t blame everybody, (but fundamentalist Christians and Zionists have taken this short-sighted opportunity to turn world opinion against all of Islam to "win souls for Christ" and expand Israeli control of the occupied territories.)

     It was this new found sense of tolerance that I developed which allowed me to consider Islam with a truly open mind. Previously I had allegiance to Christianity, then I drifted towards Taoism, but by that time I considered myself without a religion, or vaguely a Christian at best. Muhammad seemed to fit the mold of a prophetic figure. He was kind whenever he could be and stern in the face of falsehood. He never taught people to worship idols and even his enemies testified to his nobility and honesty. He wasn’t a poet before but suddenly at the age of 40 he began to recite what he called revelations, words that are structured unlike any book I’ve ever read. He triumphed against odds that were nearly impossible to attain and he taught a noble and good way of life centering on prayer, fasting, reflection and good deeds. He also was undeterred in his belief that faith in the one God was the most important thing to have. Even the morals are of the highest standard.

     What could I do? After about six months I asked the Irish Muslim lady about a mosque and she introduced me later to a Jordanian man who graciously agreed to take me to the Islamic Center of East Lansing. Of course, it was Friday, the busiest day of the week, so I was very scared when we went in. But the man, sensing my unease, took me into a side office and showed me how to perform the basic movements of the Muslim prayer known as Salah. It felt really weird at first to bow with my forehead on the ground, but it quickly seemed like such a natural and pure way to reverence the Creator.

     Later, during the full prayer service, I felt a sense of awe, seeing hundreds of people sitting quietly on the floor, listening to a sermon that was thankfully in English. After the speech was finished the people lined up in even rows to pray in unison and I remember distinctly feeling like this was superior to sitting on comfortable cushions in church. During the prayer service itself. when the Muslims declared, Ameen, after the Imam recited the opening verses of the Qur’an, I was stirred to the roots of my soul. Such power, I thought, and it only comes after relinquishing all your will to God. I decided that night that I was a Muslim, or a person who surrenders their will to God. My journey for faith was over, and a new life with a new Prophet, a new friend, was just beginning.

- Yahiya Emerick

The Fight for the Soul of Islam in America - Reprint of an Old Article

   If you're like me, you really care about Islam becoming a permanent part of the fabric of this nation and world. You don't want to be the last Muslim in your family tree either and you're convinced that Islam would make everyone around you much happier if they only gave it a try. You and I may not always be the most perfect Muslims (far from it!), but we do work at it and we genuinely hope in the mercy and forgiveness of Allah.

   Now if you get around, like I do, you've been to a variety of Masjids, conferences, gatherings and dinners. I say a variety because the style and substance between one and the next can be like night and day. You probably also have seen at least one copy of the several types of Muslim magazines that are in circulation. It would be hard not to given that the people who publish them usually give them away free at every gathering they can find. (No wonder no one subscribes, they always get them free.)

   You've probably also heard a lot of different types of scholars speak and heard a lot of different theories and concepts presented for how to live Islam. Some you may agree with, others you may not. But isn't it true that there's always something going on somewhere, whether it's in the Masjids, universities, organizations, magazines or centers? There's always something going on and always some idea being advanced.

   And if you've noticed, as I surely have, there is quite a lot of range in the opinion and presentation style. So much so that you would think different religions were being taught at each function! Some conferences, magazines or Masjids make you love Islam while others make you feel like grabbing your Eman and running away and hiding. Amazing isn't it?

What of organizations? The same holds true. 

   There are a zillion Muslim groups operating in North America right now. So many, in fact, that most everyday Muslims don't know who they should support and thus remain dormant. Part of the problem which is fueling this tendency to inaction is that we often don't see the members of many of the organizations practicing or implementing any meaningful sense of Islamic brotherhood, at least in the way you or I have read it's supposed to be done according to the Qur'an and Sunnah.

   In fact, we so often complain about there being too many Islamic groups who don't reflect Islamic teachings that it can be quite un-nerving. But we have to redefine this lament in order to get at the real crux of the problem. The real issue is not that there are too many Islamic groups out there- hey, the more Islamic groups the merrier! Neither is the issue whether or not the groups adhere to Islamic standards, because if you're a Muslim, you work for Allah regardless of how helpful the people around you are.

   The real problem is that each group seems to teach something different or to present Islam in their own, narrow way, to the exclusion of the rest of the Ummah. They give us their interpretation of what the perfect Muslim does and then they ardently try to get everyone else to follow this interpretation. Other Islamic groups, who may lean in a different way, are then labeled "weak" Muslims, mis-guided or even kuffar. Thus the wall of disrespect.

If you're interested in participating in the building of a healthy, self-perpetuating Islamic community in North America, then you probably look upon all this foolishness and sigh in sorrow. But if you're really an optimist, as Islam tries to get you to be, then you just don't complain about something, you try to understand the problem and then work towards a solution. So how can we learn how to cure this problem and how can we know which direction for change we must take? To do that then, requires a little analysis. 

   So let's go...

   First, we have to recognize that Islam in America is probably closer to the true teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, may he be blessed, than at any other time in the last five hundred years. No, I'm not saying that Muslims are better believers today. I'm saying that the access to pure Islamic teachings and the ability to live them to their fullest moral and social potential is more pronounced here, in North America, than in Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria or anywhere else. The Muslim world: forget about it. It's too bogged down in stupidity, corruption, nationalism, racism and every other kind of ailment you can imagine. The light of Islam has been put out in the Muslim world and has been reborn in the heart of the secular, faithless West. (Allah is truly great!)

   There is nothing you or I can do to improve the Muslim world. Nothing. Just accept it and get over it. Part of being a Muslim is to choose your battles wisely. Even the Prophet left Mecca when he saw no more change could come. In the open and cosmopolitan society of Medina, the focus of the Muslims was in building a solid community which could live in relative safety. The Medinan situation is where the ideal of the community took form and flowered. We are now in the Meccan times today in the Muslim world and Islam, like so many Muslims, has made Hijrah to safer lands where it can work on regaining its strength.

   Think about it: living in the West is the real test of a believer. You're living Islam in a place where there are no restrictions against your 'Ibadah. No one will prevent you from praying here, no one will make you shave your beard or remove your Hijab. (If someone tries, you can take them to court!) No one will make you eat pork or renounce your beliefs. No one will make you stare like a wolf at a pretty girl. No one will make you take drugs or alcohol. No one can make you lie, cheat or steal. No one will make you open a liquor store or accept interest money. No one will prevent you from living near the Masjid, etc... America today is literally Sodom and Gomorra: a place where anything, including Islam, is allowed. You are like Prophet Lut in the midst of the pit of sin. No one made him change his religion. He prayed and taught whatever he wanted. Most people just refused to listen, that's all.

   The whole matter comes down to you. It's you who will either grow in strength and Taqwa or sink into depravity and wish for your endless desires to be filled. If a person accepts Islam, they can develop themselves to their fullest moral potential even while surrounded by the most alluring temptations. The advantage for Muslims here is that no one can legally oppose you and you have access to the most accurate Islamic information from books, to audios and videos to whatever. And you don't have the stupid village traditions about wily jinns, evil eyes and palm reading and the like to dilute your knowledge as they have in virtually all Muslim countries.

   So now that we know that the Islamic potential is the greatest here, and that most of the Islamic program can flourish pretty much unimpeded, what currents are going on among the Muslims of North America and what forces are tugging at them. Well, to be blunt, we have a lot of Muslims who are trying to import the garbage of the Muslim world into North American Islam. At the same time, we have some converts to Islam here who are trying to blend the garbage of the West into Islam as well.

   Think about that for a minute. In most of our Masjids and conferences, over half of what you hear being talked about will be issues of politics overseas or the mindless promotion of sectarianism that is over a thousand years old. I'm sitting here watching the second generation out in the parking lot of the Masjid blaring pop music from their expensive cars and talking to the opposite sex while their parents are inside arguing about things that have been argued about forever. In the end, everyone goes home mad because they staked their identity on non-issues and petty sectarianism. The teens, however, have a hot date to look forward to that weekend.

   This sectarianism has no place in Islam in America whether its the Shi'a/Sunni thing or the fundamentalist/modernist clash. Let me tell you something interesting. I taught in an Islamic school a few years back in Michigan. Fully a third of the students came from Arab Shi'a families, the other two-thirds were from Sunni Arab families with the odd Indo-Pak kid here and there. By themselves, these kids mixed with each other and thought they were all just Muslims. It was beautiful. The Shi'a kids didn't think they were Shi'a and the Sunni kids likewise. Everyone was a Muslim.

   The second year I was there, sectarianism reared its ugly head. Some of the parents (and these were all settled immigrants who were involved) objected to the fact that a "Shi'a" was on the school board. Some of the "Shi'a" parents objected to the "Sunni" orientation of the school and to the performance of the Eclipse prayer in a certain manner. (Never mind that the Prophet's basic definition of a Muslim was believing in the message of the Shahadah, making Salat and eating Halal meat!)

   You can well imagine the situation six months later. Most of the Shi'a kids, at the behest of a few parents, formed themselves into a unified block and some even refused to pray with the rest of the students at Zuhr time. Some of the Sunni kids started spreading rumors about what they thought Shi'a beliefs were and on it went. By the time it was all over, the Shi'a families pulled their kids out and opened a school of their own a year later and the Sunni families rejoiced, even as their school was plunged into chaos and financial hardship from the exodus of so many tuition-paying families. The garbage of the Muslim world, brought in the suitcases of those who came here, disillusioned a whole lot of people- for nothing. (I'm not immigrant bashing, mind you, for many immigrant Muslims I know are models of the perfect Muslim. I'm talking about specific issues here only and the few who participate in them and ruin it for the majority.)

   Beyond the Shi'a/Sunni thing, however, there is a heated ideological debate going on in the majority Muslim community (the so called Sunnis). It threatens to destroy the vibrancy of the rising Muslim community and has the potential to create a wide, new gulf between Muslims as serious as the ones currently plaguing the Muslim world. This debate centers around three, powerful forces. There are the Salafees, the Sufis, and the Modernists. Most Muslims don't adhere to any of these three groups, and rather prefer to just live as good Muslims. But because the organizations, magazines, Masajid and centers are often controlled by one of these three groups, (because they're motivated by their cause to promote themselves,) it's inevitable that the regular Muslim becomes embroiled in the contentious issues and stupidity. And that's the last thing they wanted!

   We all know that Islam must adapt to this environment to survive. No, I don't mean that the teachings or beliefs of Islam must change, that's an idiotic line of thought that some wealthy secularists are pushing. No, Islam must stay intact for it to be acceptable to Allah. "Adaptation" is not the same thing as "change," however. Islam "adapted" to Malaysia, Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Bosnia and Gambia. Islam didn't change, it adapted. No one complains about that. So if Islam needs to do the same here, (adapt,) then instead of complaining that our kids love pizza and hate kabobs or can't identify our home country on a map, we must get to work and see how we can implement the Islamic lifestyle in this American context faithfully.

   What the three opposing sides in the struggle for the future direction of Islam in America want is for Islam to adapt here in their specific ideological way- in the way that is acceptable to their narrow world view. The Salafee-style Muslims, who almost always are Middle-Easterners, have a conservative vision which is usually intimately tied to Arab culture and politics. They shun everything modern or Western, unless it can be used to further their cause, and they feel nervous all the time lest some point of "correct belief" is breached by some Muslim here or there.

   When you read their books or magazines, you find everything they say about Islam is in terms of correct/incorrect. (Such and such is not correct belief, etc...) It is admirable, of course, to be interested in the truth, but in their approach there is no life, no love, no spirituality. It's all about legalism such as the legalism of the Jews at the time of Prophet 'Esa. Hence, the recently coined condition of "Salafee Burn-out" whereby people drop out of this movement after their heart has been completely drained of all spirituality.

   For the Salafees, "Everything is Haram" seems to be their primary position of Fiqh and something is only allowed if one of their Sheikhs issues a big fatwa and says it's OK. They always take the position of most hardship for people as well. Such as saying face veils are required for all women, women should never pray in the Masjid, any type of bank account, even a non-interest bearing checking account is haram, etc... All these "fatwas" are from Al Jumu'ah magazine, one of their premier party publications. (Al Jumu'ah magazine, by the way, has a checking account in a Western bank per the admission of the editor in a private phone conversation with a friend of mine.)

   In addition, their emphasis is on imitating the Prophet so closely that one's desire is to become a robot. If the Prophet wore a leather sandal, they will wear a leather sandal. If he didn't like the taste of squash, they never eat it.  If he held a staff, they walk around with sticks in their hands.  If he used a sword in battle, they hang swords all over their houses.  If he grew up in Arabia, they hang pictures of the desert all over their houses and buy stuffed camels for their children to play with.  If he wore a red cloak, they all buy red cloaks, if he said a Du'a once, they say it all day, if he used a miswak, they walk around all day with miswaks hanging from their mouths, etc...

   I like the line where they say they want more than one wife because the Prophet had more than one.  They say they are being a "Sunnah man" by doing it.   Interestingly enough, the Prophet had only one wife until he was about 53 years old, and after that he married mostly widows and other women in need of support.  So what are all these "Sunnah men" doing marrying another wife in their thirties and forties?  Follow the Sunnah exactly, wait until your old, then marry a second wife.  

   Regarding his eating habits, the Blessed Prophet ate dates, camel milk, moistened barley, coarse bread and the like most of the time.  He almost never ate meat.  Once when he and his companions were given some, they marvelled over it!   But all the Salafees I know are literally "kabab kings"- eating meat with every meal.  Where's the barley?   Where's the camel milk?  Why do dates only come out in Ramadan?  He also only used a staff to walk regularly when he was old, though some 'holy rollers' use them all the time when they don't need them.  I could go on and on and on.  Sounds like they are "Selective Sunnah" men to me!

   Indeed, they fail to distinguish between Sunnahs (both moral and behavioral) based on Islam which the Prophet promoted, and mere personal habits or the cultural conditions of the time. (Interestingly enough, the Prophet always wore a turban and told people to do likewise, but you hardly ever see the Salafees wearing turbans. Really now, is the modern-style Kufi necessarily "Islamic"?  Who invented it?  What type of head covering did the Prophet, peace be upon him, wear?

   There is big oil money behind the Salafee groups. They are funded by the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Middle-Eastern businessmen and others. The Salafees, therefore, lean towards supporting the policies of these gulf-Arab governments and have very good ties with the corrupt religious establishments in that oil-rich region. Their main celebrities are extremely conservative Sheikhs, almost always Arabs, who come from the king-supported universities in either Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Jordan. (I hope you understand I'm not "Arab-bashing" either.)  Their master is an Albanian who was raised in the Middle East whose name is, appropriately, Al Albani.  He did most of his work years ago and was so audacious that he even labelled many accepted ahadith from Bukhari and Muslim as "weak" or fabricated.  For the Salafees, there is Allah, the Prophet, Ibn Taymiyah and Al Albani.  This is their chain of authority.

   The Salafees have been reasonably good at recruiting some African Americans into their fold through the distribution of thousands of nearly free books written in their ideological style, but most native Muslims, black or white, have remained aloof, complaining of too much legalism and emphasis on ultra-correctness that tears the heart out of Iman. ("I didn't become a Muslim because I wanted to become embroiled in legal disputes and challenges all the time." is a common statement.)

   Will they be successful?  I don't think so.  Many MSA's are controlled by Salafee minded students and the first thing they do is either exclude totally or marginalize the participation of sisters.  They also drive away almost all of the Western born Muslim students, sometimes in a very shameful way.  (I've seen it first hand and have had innumerable others tell me about their experiences.)  When they run a Masjid, it becomes a hot-bed of Arab nationalism/culturalism. Even if their are African American Salafee recruits there, they orient them towards Arab political concerns.  I really feel it is a movement that can only survive with continued immigration from the Middle East.  It's not a movement that can be passed on to their children.  I've met and taught the children of Salafees many times before.  They are the most disillusioned about Islam of all.

   The Modernists are next in our analysis, for indeed, these people are the most potent of the enemies of the Salafees. They are made up principally of settled Muslim immigrants from the Indian Sub-continent (with a few from the Arab world). No, not all Indo-Pak Muslims are modernists, mind you, just a small, very powerful segment. The modernists, who are almost always wealthy professionals, follow the Western-style secular-liberal tradition. (The infamous "American Muslim" crowd. When a person places their national citizenship in front of their Muslim designation, then watch out! The priorities are made clear.)

   They were brought up in countries in which the ways of the British (and now the mythological Americans) are worshipped and idolized to this day. They are the people who are almost always in control of the suburban immigrant-dominated Masjids and Islamic schools (because only they had the money/clout to build them). What is their agenda?

In my experience, observations and travels, I seem to have identified three main goals of these modernists. They can be roughly listed as: Assimilation of Islam into the American mainstream, promoting an interpretation of Islam which is as loose and uncontroversial as modern Christianity or Judaism, and finally, curiously enough, the establishment of a class system based on status, position and a well-defined hierarchy dominated by the leader class. All three of these things are in contradiction to each other, but this fact seems to have escaped their intellectual gymnastics.

   Their goal of assimilation is easy to analyze: they want to be like the Jewish community in America. That is their model and they always reference it. They have this image of the Jews as being a "prosperous" minority which is accepted in mainstream American society. The Jews, in their eyes, control the media, government and foreign policy of this nation and therefore cause American policy to be pro-Israel. 

    They do this with no serious backlash and no one bothers them based on their religion or ethnic group. Of course, the strengths of the Jewish community in America are well known, but what the modernists fail to realize is that the Jews have no religion. They are thinly united on a loose, ethnic affiliation and there is never any talk of prayer, morality, obedience to God or anything of the sort. As is accepted by all today, most Jews are atheists or hopelessly secular. (Inter-marriage with non-Jews, according to the few Orthodox Jews in America, is threatening to destroy even that tenuous ethnic affiliation.)

   Modernists fight against communal living and never desire to challenge the validity of other religions, desiring, rather, to "live among the society" and to "dialogue" with others. Now if the modernists succeeded in getting themselves and their families assimilated in the same way the Jews are, then they would be Muslims no longer. (I have met a lot of Modernist Muslims and almost all of their children are hopelessly unIslamic.) They would be Americans of Indo-Pak heritage who are only interested in getting foreign aid dollars for their nostalgic homeland. Their spoiled, fun-loving Americanized children of course, would not continue this trend and thus their mission of foreign aid dollars for home-country X, Y or Z would dry up real fast.

   Once you give up the forms and structures of Islam, once you no longer really believe that it's true, then you defeat your original purpose, and that is to stay intact as an identifiable community. If no one prays, goes to the Masjid or reads the Qur'an, then your community is reduced to iced-tea sippers who water their lawns on Friday afternoons. Then there is no community after all. The paradox is that it's the modernists who make Americans less afraid of Islam and they are also the ones who usually make the mainstream aware of our holidays and similarities with them. Go figure.

   The second goal of the modernists is to dilute Islam so much that it becomes harmless and "normal" in the eyes of non-Muslims. They want an Islam where there are no Hijabs, no beards, no prohibition of interest, no judgments of right or wrong, no haram meat and certainly no moral restrictions on personal or social conduct. The modernist agenda is basically to make Islam as irrelevant and harmless as "Reform" Judaism. (Maybe they'll make a "Reform" Islam one day.)

   Their favorite argument against any teaching of Islam that they don't like is saying that it's based on a "weak" Hadith or that the scholars are "divided" about the issue- so they can do as they see fit! I have seen all of these ideas promoted by modernists and I'm sure you have as well. What's the point of saying you're a Muslim if you throw everything in Islam out that you don't like? This last objective is shamelessly played out everyday in our Masjids and politically-oriented "Muslim" organizations.

   What about the class system? Indo-Pak culture is very old. It spans thousands of years of civilization and has its own features and values which govern how people interact. Whereas Arab culture is usually very egalitarian, Indo-Pak culture tends to be very, very structured. I guess we shouldn't be surprised when we realize that the Hindu caste system is still alive and well in the sub-continent even as it has been for four thousand years. Of course, the Muslims also follow this caste system to one degree or another and the culture of the Saab, Saheeb, Maulana, Zamindar and Nawab has been transferred to America in the form of a hierarchy based on wealth and family status. I'm not going to go into detail about this because it's just too sickening and I'm sure you've seen enough examples to make your head spin. I just want you to think about what you've seen and why it is wrong.

   The last group which seeks to have its vision of Islam prevail in America is the Sufis. Now the Sufis are a hard bunch to define because they literally run from one end of the spectrum to the other. There are "Popcorn" Sufis who are usually white (or Jewish) Americans who want to experiment with this mysterious and cool sounding thing called Sufism. There is no Islam there at all. All they do is the chanting and dancing that they think is Sufism and then they go home and do whatever immoral things they choose. Such people are spiritual drifters who may go on to Tibetan Buddhism or Yoga next.

   The legitimate Sufis are those who claim allegiance to Islam and who don't go overboard with the chanting, weird mysticism or dancing. The "halal" Muslim Sufis in America are usually affiliated with mother-organizations which are based in the Muslim world. They organize themselves into Tariqas, or Orders, with a leader, known as a Sheikh- the followers being spiritual "initiates." Their primary goal is to develop love for Allah and to spread Islamic peace to other people. But in their emphasis on spirituality, they sometimes are as extreme in their particular direction as the Salafees are in the opposite direction.

   They sometimes resort to singing, ritual dancing and praying for long-since dead Sheikhs in ways that look suspiciously like hero-worship. While there is nothing wrong with group dhikr or molding one's self to model the Prophet's emphasis on love and understanding, many Muslims find that their style of dress (straight out of 1001 Arabian Nights) and their emphasis on tolerance at all costs can sometimes make their methodology difficult to model. In addition, many Muslims are put off by the term, "Saints," which they apply to their ancient "Spiritual Masters." (For Allah's sake, don't use the Christian term "Saint!" It doesn't mean the same thing as "Wali" does in Arabic and misleads people!)  I also find it strange that some Sufi groups, the Naqshabandis in particular, seem to wish for the return of the Ottoman empire and they venerate that dynasty as if it were a duty in Islam to do so.  (I personally witnessed the 'hero worship' of some female descendant of the last Sultan at one of their conferences where I went to have a book table!  In their now defunct magazine, "The Muslim Magazine" they refereed to this descendants of the last Ottoman Sultan as "Her Highness."  Now what is that?

   It has been noted by several contemporary writers that the Salafee approach has brought death to the Eman of the second generation while the Sufi approach has caused Eman to be reborn among the youth. But the difficulty for the youth is that the majority of them would find it very hard to dress in green turbans, flowing robes and giant beards in their high schools and colleges. If only we could take half a Salafee with their correctness and half a Sufi with their spirituality (and add a dash of modernist adaptability) and put them together in one body, then we would have the perfect Muslim!

   It's truly amazing when you really take a close look at each side. Each one of them has a serious defect which they are blinded to, but each also has a strength that needs to be present. The end result is that each side loses its followers as fast as they gain them. The Salafees drop out from spiritual draining, the Sufis drop away from to much fruitiness and the Modernists leave no second generation of believers behind them. Meanwhile, the masses of the Muslims are waiting for direction so that we can get down to the business of living Islam and building a viable, self-perpetuating community in America.

   How do these three very different trends interact in America? Well, the modernists are the enemies of both the Salafees and Sufis, for obvious reasons, and tend to shun both, preferring to participate in "bridge-building" with non-Muslims. So for now, let's discuss the current, fierce battle between the Salafees and Sufis. Its not a new one. In fact, this battle has been raging in the Muslim world for over a thousand years. The Salafees quote their Ibn Taymeeyahs while the Sufis quote their Abdul Qaadir Jilanis.

   Just what is this battle about? Basically it comes down to the difference between spiritual content and legal exactness. There are rules in Islam but don't forget that Islam is more than rules. The tragic thing is, as was outlined earlier, the two most vocal elements from among the Sufis and Salafees go to extremes. The most radical Sufis, in the history of Islam, actually began to incorporate Saint-worship, wine-drinking, dancing and hokey-mysticism into their Islam, while the most radical Salafees, in the history of Islam, actually began to suppress any expression of joy or spiritual satisfaction in Islam, equating it with unreliable emotion or suspicious beliefs. In addition, their suppression of women's Islamic rights is well-known. (Some Salafees cheer the actions of extremist groups that literally create havoc in the Muslim world, and even fund them, for example.)

   Now it must be pointed out that most Sufis and Salafees do not go to the fullest extreme, though many muddle around the edges, I'm talking about the leadership, the official ideology and the methods and practices of the loudest proponents of each pole. This same battle goes on here in America today. There are super-Sufis who talk about love ad nauseam and there are Salafee Fundamentalists who talk about punishments and legal rules so much that they make even you scared of and/or tired of Islam.

   In the end, the interaction and friction caused thereby from each group can leave us everyday Muslims confused. Where do we go for reliable Islamic teachings? How can we cause our love of Allah to grow? How do I adapt Islam to America and make my neighbors understand me? These are the questions we ask everyday. When we see the various groups at each other's throats we get doubly confused. Whither Islam?

   In this article I have tried to present a brief sketch of the main ideological elements which are battling for the future direction of Islam in America today. In the process I've probably succeeded in getting everyone mad at me, but my heart has been crying out to make these observations for some time now. (Remember, a Muslim is supposed to love getting ihtisaab, even if they don't agree with it.) As we have seen, the state of Islam in the international Muslim world is that of an unconscious invalid, whereas it is becoming more vibrant in the West.

   Now, in the same way that American Christians have given up trying to convert Americans to Christianity and are now sending their missionaries and their billions to convert the illiterate natives of the third world, Muslim activists have given up on the Muslim world and have migrated to safer waters in the West where they can bother and harass Muslims at will in the pursuit of their own particular visions. This is the condition of the battlefield for the soul of Islam. I just hope we can keep at least a few of the youth safe from both atheistic secularism and also from the overpowering influence of these three groups so that there will be some normal, functioning Muslims to carry the torch of the Blessed Prophet's Islam into the future.

   My advice to you, my Muslim brothers and sisters, is to remember that Islam is a balanced way of life, so seek balance by learning Islam from your own reading of the Qur'an and Hadith and don't let your hearts be swayed by those pulling you to an extreme pole. Join with like-minded people locally and form your own study groups, social networks and functions. You'd be surprised to learn that there is a whole invisible network of Muslims who have nothing to do with their local Masjids and organizations but who do Islamic activities all the time from different people's homes and rented facilities.

   You can do the same in your area if your local Masjid "leadership" is beyond redemption. If you live in one of those rare communities where the Masjid and school are fine then say alhumdulillah and get Muslims to live around the Masjid. Whatever your situation, let's get to work putting Islam into practice!   More on this in a future article.

Explaining the Turmoil in the Muslim World

People wonder why "Muslims are so violent" in some parts of the world. Is that a fair assessment of Muslims, however? Does Islam teach Muslims to be violent, as some shrill voices have alleged? Let's take just one nation, one such as Syria for an example. It is in the news a lot these days. So what about it? Why are the 'Muslims so violent' there? Let's see... Syria was once a land at peace. It was a lazy backwater of the Ottoman Empire for centuries - until the British stirred up the Arabs to revolt in World War I.

After the war the British broke their promises to create an independent Arab state there. Then they gave it to the French to run. The French oppressed the people, massacred any Arabs who revolted, and even after promising independence in 1944 they continued to massacre Syrians until finally withdrawing in 1946. Don't you think this might make the people a bit, um, unsettled?
The secular Syrian government then joined in the Arab effort to stop the formation of a Euro-Jewish state in their neighborhood in 1948 and lost territory to UN supervision on account of it. Eventually some unIslamic Socialists did a military coup which solidified a secular ruling elite in their power structure.
When the Syrians were alarmed at British, French and Israeli intervention in the Suez Crisis in Egypt in 1956, they aligned with the communist Soviet Union. Socialism + Communism - we know who invented it and how it misled millions. Islam was considered a backward relic in Syria ever since independence. Muslims in the cities largely abandoned it in favor of a 'modern' lifestyle.
Then Syria lost more territory in the Six Day war (1967) and was humiliated terribly by Israel. Israel even attacked an American warship with unmarked planes hoping to get America to enter the war against the Arabs. In 1973 the Syrians and Egyptians, both led by secular socialists, launched a surprise attack on Israel, and as a result of their bumbling they both lost even more land. (The U.S. helped Israel with direct military aid and intelligence. Outside intervention.)
The secular, socialist dictator, Hafez-el Assad, with the help of Soviet ideology and aid, crushed any of his people who dared ask for freedom or justice. The executions and torture prisons multiplied. The Syrians were brutalized by one of their own, a man who hated Islam. The secular elites, led by Assad's own minority sect, the Alawiyya, were firmly in control.
When Bashar, the son of Assad came to power, it looked like he would liberalize things, but then the allure of power took hold of his soul and he began his own campaign of crushing people and their spirit. In particular, those who loved Islam suffered greatly. Activists were jailed and killed. Mosques were once again monitored, like under his father's rule. Secret police were everywhere.
Intervention by Israel in Lebanon and by Iraq in Kuwait led to a period of great instability with Israeli, American and other forces on the move. Russian and American jockeying went on unabated, just like it did during the Cold War.
Being a SECULAR leader, like most others in the Arab world, Bashar followed a long line of evil men in oppressing everyone he felt challenged him: Kurds, Sunni Muslims, democracy activists, etc. Syria became more of a hollowed-out shell.
What do you do when oppression becomes unbearable? You fight back, like George Washington and Thomas Paine. The Muslims began to try and fight for freedom once again, and sometimes the methods were unpleasant, but that is the nature of asymmetric war. Bashar continued his brutal crackdowns. The second Gulf War in Iraq alarmed Syria to no end, and the paranoia grew.
Enter Obama and Hillary. As Sec. of State, Hillary fomented 'revolutions' in the Ukraine, Georgia, Libya, Egypt and finally Syria. These revolutions, funded and directed by the U.S. unleashed chaos across the Arab world. Military governments responded with brutality. Refugees began to flee to Europe of all places. From Libya to Iraq there is currently nothing but fear, despair and ashes. Traditional Islamic culture is broken in the Middle East.
Mosques are spied upon or used as bases of revolt. Muslim people are angry and afraid. There is no hope. Regular Islamic teachings are warped in the service of resistance. Cultural practices, a haven of psychological safety, are now bundled into the teachings of Islam by the common people, even if they are opposed by Islam itself!
So then people sitting safely on their couches ask, "Why are Muslims so violent?" Imagine if the American Revolution never ended. How would Americans be today if the war lasted for fifty or sixty years or more, punctuated by periods of oppression from their own Continental Congress and invasions and humiliations from outside? Imagine an endless parade of outside intervention by foreign powers. Imagine Christianity being all but outlawed by the secular government, and camps set up for torture and execution. How would 'Christians' react after they finally had enough?
I have now summarized the history of just one Muslim country, Syria, and how it has been brutalized by NON-MUSLIM ideologies (socialism, secularism, democracy rebels, communism), outside countries and evil megalomaniacs from within - all of this done outside of any influence of Islam. So Muslims start to want to fight back in Syria, and we expect them to come with muffins and cookies to the party?
Until we truly try to understand the suffering, and the effects of evil people in the brutalizing of a nation, we cannot even envision a way out or a solution. Islam does not give permission to do atrocities and kill the innocent. We all know that. But for the people on the ground in places such as Aleppo, Kabul, Tripoli, Cairo and other places, reasoned discourse is not a thing on their minds.
It's not that 'Muslims are so violent,' rather, it's Muslims have been so brutalized, practically everywhere, that they sometimes no longer remember right from wrong. During World War II, whenever Jewish resistance fighters had the chance to kill Germans, regardless of whether or not they were Nazis, they took it. Brutality has a way of clouding the mind.
I wish Muslims around the world who were fighting for their lives would obey the rules of war, as laid out by the Prophet, which forbade the killing of innocents and all that, but until the outside ideologies, evil actors, power-hungry nations and madmen stop stoking the fires, I have little hope that the average person on the ground will be able to pause for thought and change his ways. Moral teachings must be learned in safety, or they will be ignored. Islam as a religion will need decades of peace in the Middle East to restore itself to balance.
O Allah! Help Muslims to be free, and help them to reconnect with the good teachings of our religion so we can once again be a shining example and beacon for all humanity. Ameen!

On the New and Dangerous World and the Cure for Extremism

During the time of the first four khalifas, a group arose called the Khawarij. They were ultra purists who believed that Islam required perfection of deeds at all time. They believed that anyone who did a sin was an unbeliever who could be killed. They were especially enraged by the struggle for power between Ali and Muawiya I and they organized forces to oppose both men, trying to assassinate both, but succeeding with only 'Ali. (r)

Thereafter they continued to cause trouble, killing Muslims, robbing, destroying political order and generally being brutes. This movement lasted for centuries. Ibn Kathir wrote about them also, saying, "If they ever gained strength, they would surely corrupt the whole of the Earth, Iraq and Syria – they would not leave a baby, male or female, neither a man or a woman, because as far as they are concerned the people have caused corruption, a corruption that cannot be rectified except by mass killing."

Is such extremism allowed? Yusair ibn Amr, from a hadith in Bukhari said, "I asked Sahl bin Hunaif, 'Did you hear the Prophet saying anything about Al-Khawarij?' He said, 'I heard him saying while pointing his hand towards Iraq. "There will appear in it (i.e, Iraq) some people who will recite the Quran but it will not go beyond their throats, and they will go out from (leave) Islam as an arrow darts through the game's body.' "

So the Prophet (p) forewarned us that merely being religious is not a sign of truth. Some people can say the right things but then do all the wrong things. We all know this to be true, and we all know people in our lives who are hypocrites like that, or who even believe their evil is good.

Many Muslims today are pointing to ISIS and its ideology and seeing a lot of patterns that would point back to the Prophet's (p) prediction of the rise of extremists liek the khawarij. Some have even said that ISIS is nothing more than a modern version of the type of extremism the Prophet warned us against. 

 

I am not learned enough to make a judgment on this and am always hesitant to make definitive pronouncements out of fear of God. I can say, as a person who has paid attention for many years, that actions beget actions and too many people and nations take actions without thinking of the long term consequences. Innocents pay the price, sadly.

Western powers have (for decades) stirred up a hornet's nest in the Middle East with arbitrary border-drawing, foreign adventurism, supporting dictators, and have largely acted on behalf of one particular and influential group with its own objectives. 

 

Now we have an extremist group (supported by some legitimate grievances) in Iraq and Syria striking back at those who have attacked then first (The U.S. and France attacked ISIS first, without provocation, don't forget that) but ISIS is doing things in a manner that many say goes out of bounds in Islamic teachings. 

 

What are we to do when we are blamed by non-Muslims as if we are all the same? Police officers are saying that they are all being unfairly blamed for a few bad cops who kill innocent black men. Welcome to the club! We also say you cannot blame us for a few bad apples. We know the media has an agenda. We suffer the brunt of it, everyday.

We the ordinary, God-fearing Muslims who seek to be the best example for humanity get caught in the middle and our families are made to feel shame for no good reason. May Allah give us strength to stand up to the extremes of every side. 

 

There is a cure for extremism, but the medicine is strong. 

 

The first rule of medicine is to do no harm. Western nations need to stop bombing Muslims all over the world. Reign in the CIA. Stop supporting dictators for financial and strategic gain. Got that?

The second rule is to diagnose the patient. The Muslim world suffers from poverty largely due to bad leadership. Leave us alone to try and fix that. When a Muslim party won elections in Algeria, France supported a military coup. When Muslims won the government in Egypt, again a military coup. When Iran threw out the Shah, Saddam was egged on by Western powers to invade. The list goes on and on. 

 

The last rule of medicine is to give the medicine time. Don't invade Afghanistan or Iraq and expect Jeffersonian democracy overnight, especially when you support corrupt elites at the same time.

So the cure that the West could do would simply be to get out of the Muslim world, stop supporting evil rulers and let it evolve, rather than keeping it off balance with bombs and CIA-engineered coups. Why all the tit-for-tat? Why do we have to let this foolishness go on?

May Allah bring sanity back to the world, and make us a force for peace and improvement. Ameen.

Reviving the Youth in Turbulent Times

Reviving the Youth in Turbulent Times

By Yahiya Emerick

 

      “Be sure that We’re going to test you in some things like fear, hunger and loss of wealth and self, and also in the fruits (of your labor), but give good news to those who patiently persevere, who say, when stricken with adversity: “’To Allah we belong, and to Him we return.’”   The prayers and mercy of their Lord are upon them, and they’re the ones who are truly guided.

        [Qur’an 2:155-157]

 

We live in an age of great upheaval both at home and abroad.  Momentous challenges face us and our families and sometimes it can seem overwhelming and even bewildering at times. Adults who are busy with their homes and jobs often fail to consider the world from the eyes of our youth.  What are they thinking about?  How do they see the world?  Just because they often seem silent and go about their business, it doesn’t mean they aren’t affected by life in ways vastly different than us.

Many of us grew up in societies far away and especially during different times.  The idea of “smart” phones, tablet computers, social media and an online ‘presence’ never entered our wildest imaginations.  Anyone over the age of thirty is literally riding the wave of technological advancement with no idea where it will end.  What’s next – space travel?  For our young people, all this rapid change and advancement is just ‘normal’ life growing along with them.  We older folks cannot see it so organically because our frame of reference is still rooted in someplace else in the recesses of a more traditional world.

It has even been proposed that in a few decades there will be a computer interface implanted in our brains that will allow us to absorb information instantaneously.  Other predictions include virtual reality that is so real that people will prefer fantasy worlds to the real one.  The future is certainly going to be far different from what we have now.  This is the future world of our children and grandchildren – when we ourselves will be less than a memory to them.

Other great changes going on in the world today involve politics and international relations that seem esoteric for most of us, yet have a tremendous impact on the feelings, self-perceptions and everyday interactions our young people have to navigate every day.  The rise of a new organization claiming the mantle of the caliphate in the Middle East has literally caught the Muslim Ummah off guard.  In our Islamic studies classes we often talk approvingly of the old caliphs and of our desire to ‘make Islam dominant again.’  Yet when our youth hear the tragic and sometimes bizarre news from that part of the world, it often seems to have little relation to the Islam taught in our weekend classes.

Muslim youth have to interact with non-Muslims in their schools and in the streets, and they may feel defensive, apprehensive, attacked, ashamed or confused.  They cannot turn on a television or radio program without hearing the word, ‘terrorist’ used in the context of all Muslims.  Even though the anti-Muslim rhetoric is amplified by sinister groups trying to make us out to be the big boogeyman, just realizing that fact is not enough to be insulated from its harm, especially to the self-perceptions of the young. 

For the adults, we already have a toughened exterior and perhaps we’ve wrestled internally and decided that evil actions sometimes done in the name of Islam are sins or mistakes that we have no part of.  However, for the youth there is a swirling pot of emotions coupled with incomplete knowledge and the worries and foibles of youthful self-doubt.  Who can help them navigate these turbulent waters but us?

I have often seen that the way the Muslim community deals with confusing things, embarrassing events and contradictory moments is by ignoring them altogether.  It is almost as if all we need to do is go about our business and the stressful topic will pass.  Of course time does heal all wounds, as they say, yet the scars of confusion can leave deep pain or cause faith to unravel or prevent it from even taking root.

One of the strengths of our community is in our emphasis on building strong ties of family, friends, associates and brothers and sisters in faith.  Our Masjid is a focal point in this regard, but there are many who have little contact with our religious institutions or community events.  I would suggest to our parents, to take the seemingly strong web of relationships we always boast about and put them aside for a moment. 

Move a step lower on the ladder and try to understand how difficult it is for our young people in the many realms of life they must navigate.  It is no longer enough to assume your children and the children of the community will just listen like robots and believe everything we say without having to process it all through a variety of often contradictory filters.  Many of our young people live largely in an unsupportive, non-Muslim world.  Most have to traverse demands of parents, culture, religion and the secular sphere.  Most of us older folks had it far easier, as our parents, culture and religion were part of our lifestyle all around us.

So what must we do to help our youth in this strange and confusing world?  I believe that we must be willing to have real conversations with our family members and youth about the issues important to them.  These can be topics as far ranging as technology and politics to the difficulty of living Islam in a sometimes hostile environment.  We must be wise enough to hear the voices of others and not try to shut people down with our pronouncements, strong opinions, orders and edicts.  Only when we listen and restrain ourselves from making angry judgments do we allow the other person room to grow.

We may not like what we hear sometimes from the budding young minds that fill the world around us, but if we remember the manners of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who often let the Sahabah say whatever they liked and listened patiently, we can learn from them even as we teach them through good advice and considering different perspectives.  The Prophet (p) was known for gentle teaching and he was patient with people and was not known for making people feel like they couldn’t express themselves and their opinions. 

In fact, one of the marvels I noticed as a new convert two decades ago was that in the hadith books there were often long conversations recorded in which the Sahabah and the Prophet (p)were having great back-and-forth exchanges with the Sahabah confident enough to say their opinions without fear of being belittled or shut down.  We need to revive that tradition in our dealings with our youth.  Be more patient.  Don’t get angry at what you hear.  Use gentle persuasion if you want to make a point, and allow yourself to consider new ideas and to grow in understanding from the flashes of wisdom that even young people can offer.

Our lives are short – the blink of an eye and suddenly ten years are gone!  The truly wise man or woman realizes that we truly do belong to Allah, and we will return to our Lord.  Our struggles are great, of that there is no doubt.  Allah promised we will be tested in a great many ways.  Those who remain strong in faith and who help others on the path of wisdom can look forward to all the wonderful delights promised by our Great and Merciful Lord.  May Allah increase our wisdom and teach us to listen more than we speak.  Ameen!

Strange Times We Live In

   I haven't posted in a while because I have been just so incredibly busy.  My full time job is literally the work of two jobs, but I'm not complaining.  Alhumdulillah I have work when so many are desperate for a job.  May Allah bring relief to those in need!


   Anyway, I do follow the news as best I can, and I think about things when I'm driving or in between making yet another lesson plan for my students in the school.  One thing I have noticed is that there seems to be a great polarization happening.  We Muslims and issues related to our faith are now the topics of conversation nearly everywhere we go.


   Normally that would not be a bad thing, if the context was positive, but of course, as we all know, everything we hear is resoundingly negative.  It's really hard on our young people, to have their religion and Prophet called such horrible things.  I do not know where this will all lead, but I do remember an article I wrote about 15 years ago or so that many non-Muslims ridiculed.  The link is below:


http://www.ifna.net/articles/article13.htm


   In this article I attempted to imagine what would happen if all the propaganda against us came to its full fruition, and Muslims suddenly found themselves hunted by enraged mobs of their neighbors, right here in America.  Some non-Muslims exclaimed that that sort of thing could never happen here, but does any Muslim now have any doubts about the frenzy being arrayed against us?


   There was a time when we were ascendant here and the public at large either ignored us or had a somewhat positive attitude towards us.  If you were here back in the 80s and 90s, you will remember that our debaters had Christians against the ropes in interfaith debates.  Our logic was impeccable, our research above reproach, and all the contradictions of the Bible looked truly awful compared to the pristine unity of our Holy Book.


   We also were beginning to take the moral high ground in the 90s against Israeli oppression in the Occupied Territories.  People were getting exposed to video of Israeli soldiers beating, killing and harming Palestinians.  The tide was turning, if ever so slowly, and activist Jews and Christians could not best us.


    The Soviets had stirred the Afghan hornet's nest in the 80s, but it looked like Afghanistan would not affect outside regions as the Mujahideen got busy fighting each other.  The Arab world had the simmering PLO business going on, but it was more or less contained.  Lebanon was in disarray too, but manageable.  But huge geo-political forces were at play in the late 90s.  Secular, greedy, power-mad men turned the wheels of history, and the Middle East was plunged into turmoil.


   Saddam Hussein, another in a long line of American installed brutal dictators got greedy for Kuwait.  Okay, the U.S. and world banned together to oust him, but then Bush foolishly decided to fill up Arabia with hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim troops.  This, as we all know, got Osama bin Laden in motion, and then 9/11 was the result.


   From there it was all downhill.  The second Bush-inspired war was more blatantly a power grab for oil, but it was such a bungled job that eventually the Islamic State (or ISIS) came about.  How did that happen?  Who was involved?  Why is ISIS so barbaric?  These are a lot of issues, and there is a lot of information floating around, but the basic premise that opportunistic Christians and Jews have taken and run with is that somehow "Islam" is a "bad" religion "prone" to violence.


   So simplistic a message, but it resonates with simple-minded people who don't have any idea about the intense foreign meddling in the Middle East for generations.  Since World War I when the victorious Europeans carved up the Middle East into unnatural states with illogical borders, the place has been a powder keg.  The uneducated masses in the West don't know that.  Israel was established by fascist-minded Jews seeking a safe homeland for their persecuted brethren, but they had to brutalize the local Arabs to make it happen.  Again people don't know that.
See: http://www.unz.com/article/war-is-realizing-the-israelizing-of-the-world/


   Made in America bombs have been dropped on people's towns and villages from Libya to Iraq to Afghanistan for decades.  Simple folk never ask, "What would I do if that were happening to me?"  Back to the main point however, the narrative has been turned on its head from what it truthfully should be.  People are being told: "Those evil Muslims follow a demonic religion that tells them to kill everybody and do every bad thing."


   What they should be told is that "Islam is a religion that is not much different than a fusion of the Catholic Church and Judaism.  Brutalized people in the Middle East have tried every secular solution to stop the outside meddling that has caused generations of death and destruction.  Now some are using religion as a vehicle for their revenge/resistance, and they are twisting it in the same way that Christianity was twisted in the Middle Ages to justify horrible things and murders."


   There are some Muslims doing "Take Back Islam" campaigns, and there is nothing wrong with that, but what must also be blared loud and clear is that the religion is not to be blamed for terrorists, rather decades of bombing, war and oppression whose origin almost always goes back to offices in Washington, London, Tel Aviv and Moscow. 


   Ours is a beautiful religion, and we are in an informational struggle just as dire as when the Mongols sacked half the Muslim world 800 years ago.  Inshallah, we can get our message across and the shrill voices against us can see the light of reason.  Ameen.