My (earnest, irate) thoughts

The Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, said, “Abandon desire for this world, and God will love you. Abandon desire for others’ goods, and people will love you.”

There once was a man who stomped around in the dark, complaining that each way he turned was darker and harder to see than the place he was before. Here it is so dark, the shadows are as black as night. There it is even darker, the shadows are invisible in the blackness. And so he wandered to and fro, noting and describing and lecturing on the depths of the blackness. All this, as Turkish scholar Said Nursi might say, instead of lighting a candle.

Though we are called to enlighten, often we are content to describe the darkness instead. It’s easier. It’s safer. We feel pleased with ourselves for telling the truth about the darkness.

There are those in the West who detail the atrocities going on in the Muslim world as proof that Islam is false. And there are Muslims who note Western propaganda and militarism as proof that the West conspires to portray Islam badly and destroy the religion altogether. Fingers point, accusations fly. As Hamza Yusuf Hanson put it, Americans watch CNN and Arabs watch al-Jazeera, and the stories are 180 degrees apart. Americans watch Islamist suicide bombers maim Israeli soldiers; Arabs see a Muslim baby blown to bits by zionist shells.

…like the Chinese say, “There are three truths. There’s my truth, your truth and then the truth.” If I’m unwilling to let go of my truth and you’re unwilling to let go of your truth, we cannot see objectively this truth that’s in the middle, between us. There’s good and bad in all of us, and I want to get rid of the cartoon scenario of George Bush’s world and Osama bin Laden’s world, and I want to see it nuanced. I want to see more intelligence here.

In all of us, there is an unfortunate tendency to simplify, to reduce, to make black-and-white. If only people knew how that oversimplifying is dangerous to a fledgling faith! When I first became Muslim, one or two new friends let it drop that only Muslims go to heaven. Drawn to Islam by its light, tolerance and universality, I was devastated to uncover hellfire and exclusivism. Further reading: Islam has a progressive tradition, too.

As the first Muslim in my entire extended family (Americans of Irish, German and Finnish heritage) this careless remark made me needlessly worry for the souls of all my ancestors, none of whom had been Muslim, and the souls of my living relatives, who appeared disdainful of Islam, and the souls of my friends, who seemed indifferent to my new faith.

For months, I was sick with grief. But I kept reading, kept searching. I uncovered this article, which describes the “shades” or archetypes of mankind. It’s not Muslims and non-Muslims, us and them. I should have known that the Book that promises to be a guide for all mankind would never be so black-and-white. Even more, I should have known that the tiny inkling of compassion that I feel stems from The Most Compassionate, and so it’s absurd to worry what He would decide. Anyway, there are degrees of embracement of the divine religion: submitters, believers, good-doers. Just as there are degrees of disassociation from the divine religion: hypocrites, polytheists, sectarians. Just as there are neutral groups, and this includes the People of the Book, the Jews and Christians whose religions are authentic and whose holy books were divinely inspired. As American scholar Jeffrey Lang points out, the Qur’an even includes advice and admonishment for Jews and Christians. Why would it bother, if they were all destined for hell? I could feel the truth of this: This was my Islam, this was the religion I had fasted for, given up alcohol for, covered my hair for. This was light and enlightenment.

Here is another example of the real, unhijacked Islam: the real meaning of the word kafir, a complex word that is often mistranslated as ‘unbeliever’ or ‘infidel’.

So, what is a kafir? The noun comes from an Arabic root kafara, which means ‘to cover’. So, a kafir is someone who covers truth. To hide or cover the truth, one first has to recognise it, so the term precludes ordinary non-Muslims who do not know or truly understand Islam (and that includes people whose only exposure is the “Izlam” on FauxNews). Satan, for example, is a kafir: it believes in God but constantly rejects Him.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, said, “If a man says to his brother, ‘O kafir!’ Then surely one of them is such.” That’s how serious this business is: Unjustly calling someone else a truth-concealer means that you yourself become one.

The point I’m bumbling toward is this: Christ Jesus, peace upon him, said that we must remove the splinter from our eye before we can see clearly to remove the beam from our brother’s eye. As Muslims, we must first see what is wrong with ourselves before we can accurately assess the world’s problems. The Islamic world, which was a beacon of light while Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, seems to have lost its way. We must look to the innermost, purest form of truth. The early Muslims were devouring knowledge, seeking it wherever it might be. They were teaching by example, criticizing themselves harshly, and others lightly. Their words were so pure, so absent of regressive or repressive thought, that others were drawn to the religion like moths to a flame. That is how we must be. We must consciously remove all but pure love, pure beauty, pure wisdom and pure ecstasy from our hearts. We must consciously seek God always… every action, every word and every thought must be for His sake.