My (earnest, irate) thoughts

One recent morning, as I was pulling into a BP gas station and I saw a horrible sight in the middle of the road. A small brown bird had been hit by a car or landed in a puddle of oil or something, because its wing was bent at an unnatural angle and seemed stuck to the pavement. A dozen identical birds were flapping their wings, chirping and screeching all around, and seemed to be trying to help. But every time a car got near, the other birds had to fly up to the electrical wire or over to the grass to avoid getting hit, and the injured bird stayed trapped, struggling wildly.

I felt sick, watching it. I thought about helping, but I had no idea what to do. Cars came by every few seconds or so, into the gas station or out of it. The hurt bird was in the middle, so the cars passed by about a foot away on either side. Back and forth went the birds, committed to rescuing their friend. Back and forth. A wave of flapping wings knowing just when to depart, when to return. All the while chirping and screeching (advice and directives?) in their language. I went into the store to get coffee. When I came back out, all trace of the birds was gone. There was no blood or guts on the ground, no chirping birds on the wire or in the nearby sky. Not even one feather remained. They had done it, they had rescued him. I have no idea how.

I have begun to pray the obligatory prayers again. Yusuf, probably thinking it would inspire us, set up the ezan machine, a plastic mosque that sings a recorded Arabic call to prayer at the appointed times. The times are slightly off, because our city is not major enough to have its own setting: you have to be a New York or a L.A. to warrant that. When it yelled Allahu ekber Allahu ekber this morning, I jumped out of my skin.

I am used to being wrathful at the beep-beep-BEEP-BEEP of my ’70s-era alarm, and then, as I remember why I am waking up in the dark, I push my ‘just five more minutes’ nefis aside to head for the bathroom. Then, as it dawned that I was furious with what should be a lovely, if mechanical, call to prayer filled me with enormous guilt. ‘Why did you set that?’ I demanded, irate that guilt was my first emotion of the day. My husband looked taken aback. Then I noticed he was wearing the knit prayer hat I hadn’t seen in months. ‘Are you praying?’ I asked. Probably sarcastically, because it had been me going it alone these last few weeks. ‘Last night I did,’ he said softly, still looking shocked. I got up and washed and prayed, an extra two rakats — perhaps I was seeking absolution. Then I fell back asleep sort of fitfully, without explaining my behavior. I was blushing in the dark, unable to understand why my heart was beating so fast. Then I remembered why, one morning months ago, I had taken the batteries out of the ezan machine. We weren’t praying then, and the noisy five-times-daily reminder of the obligation I was shirking sent my guilt into overdrive. It was better, I had thought, to wake up to the alarm, feel a prick of guilt for not having set it early enough, and then go on with my day. But I couldn’t understand why its unexpected sound still evoked the same flood of guilt, since I was getting up to pray.

Honestly, and I swear there’s no judgment here, but I don’t know how folks who don’t pray live in Muslim countries, where the call to prayer rings out every single day whether you want the reminder or not. The guilt would kill me, I think. I’d have to start praying, or run away to a non-Muslim-majority country, where the faithful go to noiseless churches once a week, where the dead go silently to nondescript funeral parlors, eerie places with flowers and low lights and grave men in gray suits. The noises of Turkey — the ezan, and the funeral prayer ringing out for the recently deceased, washed and wrapped in white cloth and prayed over before going directly into the earth — must be an uplifting blessing for the faithful, and a crushing burden for the faithless.

When my husband said, ‘I don’t understand you’ I thought, ‘I don’t understand me, either.’

Like in Istanbul, when my non-Muslim stepfather greeted us at breakfast at our tiny hotel near the Blue Mosque, and as we gorged on fresh bread with cherry jelly, honey and white cheese and cup after cup of hot çay, he said, with a look of surprised happiness on his face, ‘I heard the ezan this morning through the window.’ And I would smile and say, ‘Me too’ but I would blush furiously, because the sound had woken me from sleep and briefly, but pointedly, made me mad. I envied his ease, how the sound was novel for him, the way wearing a headscarf at my nikah had been, a foray into something foreign, not a lifestyle to be lived.

It’s like this weekend. I went to visit my grandmother on Saturday, bringing her lentil soup and a chopped salad with my experimental attempt at vinaigrette. We made conversation, and of course it devolved into listening to my grandmother pass on hearsay and judgment about people I do and don’t know. She’s a devout Christian, but born and raised in Georgia, and for a great many Southerners, gossiping comes as natural as breathing. Afterward, I was wrecked. I felt exhausted from playing the ‘dutiful granddaughter, who behaves so selflessly now that she’s Muslim’. And ashamed that my good deed came didn’t seem to come from my heart, that I had to push myself to do it, push myself to get through it, and then try not to complain about it incessantly afterward (I failed at the last one). On Sunday, I visited my deceased grandmother’s best friend, bringing her a lobster sandwich from her favorite restaurant. And, though I thought I had absolutely no expectations from our time together, afterward I felt exhausted, again. Maybe from playing the ‘personification of perfect, contented Islam’ role, which — yes I know — is absurd. Maybe because I wish good deeds gave me that thrill of a job well done, like they seem to for my mom, whose nur shines on her face after she plants flowers in my yard or helps Yusuf study for the GRE.

My brain knows Allah loves me, and that religion is forgiveness, not guilt; Muhammad is a prophet of comfort, not gloom. Why doesn’t my heart know this?

I vaguely remember Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, saying in one of his writings that sometimes with delicate, sensitive people, Satan whispers to them that their ‘bad’ thoughts are proof that they are not really Muslim, because if they were ‘really’ Muslim, their thoughts would be pure. Is that what this is? Is this just Satan being a bastard, or is this ugliness the real me? … Another question: Must right thought precede right action, or does right thought stem from right action?

Something has troubled me since I first began to learn about Islam. It niggled at my conscience. It irked me. It made me feel as if Islam, promoted by Muslims as a ‘complete way of life’, was destined forever to be misunderstood by non-Muslims because of it.

Though I could read with my own eyes the Qur’anic position on warfare — which forbids aggression but permits killing in self-defense — it still seemed like Islam would always fall short against other religions whose theologies appear more pacifist. Though medieval Europe had Christian armies, modern Christians largely dismiss them as antithetical to the message of Jesus, blessings upon him, and avoid judgment for secular armies because they are unrelated to Christianity. On the other hand, eastern traditions like Buddhism now seem very distant from the warrior-monks of feudal Japan, and today is associated with peace and inclusiveness. Then there’s Islam, which is linked to warfare and vigilantism in every sound byte.

A partial list of hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him) about gentleness and kindness:

Truly, God is mild and is fond of mildness, and he gives to the mild what he does not to the harsh.
God is gentle and loves gentleness.
To gladden the heart of the weary, to remove the suffering of the afflicted has its own reward. In the day of trouble, the memory of the action comes like a rush of the torrent, and takes our burden away.
He who helps his fellow creature in the hour of need, and he who helps the oppressed, him will God help on the Day of Travail.
All God’s creatures are His family; and he is the most beloved of God who does the most good to God’s creatures.
Whoever is kind to His creatures, God is kind to him; therefore be kind to man on earth, whether good or bad; and being kind to the bad is to withhold from him badness, thus in heaven you will be treated kindly.
Kindness is a mark of faith: and whoever has not kindness has not faith.

In some very pacifist part of my own being, warfare and religion were forever at odds. When learning about the history of the Arab and Turkic Islamic empires, some central part of me rebelled at the idea of a ‘Muslim’ army. How could an army be Muslim, I thought. Islam, coming from the root word slm, means peace and submission. This is the vision of Islam that I had fallen in love with — a Sufi bowing to his Beloved, grinning at children and animals as tiny examples of Divine Beauty. I began to be troubled. How could a soldier and his sword fit into this picture?

It’s important to note that I have always had an overdeveloped sense of justice. As a child, after being punished for back-talking or door-slamming with time-out in my room, I would come out and say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then I would wait for my mother’s apology, since it takes two people to have an argument and clearly I wasn’t alone in my wrongness. My mother didn’t agree. And yet, anyone else’s ‘wrongdoing’ continued to bother me deeply, and I would wish that other people cared, like they ought to, about objective justice.

Though I liked reading about Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, who spoke seven languages and at the age of 21 fulfilled the prophetic prediction that one day Constantinople would be conquered by a Muslim army, I was vaguely horrified by various Turkic and Arab invasions throughout Asia, Africa and Europe under the banner of Islam. Though it’s never really fair to judge the past by present sensitivities, it hurt me that they did it for Islam, not in spite of Islam.

Interestingly, since the Crusades, anti-Turkish sayings abound in European languages, like the Italian saying for any imminent danger (’Oh my, the Turks are coming!’) and the French saying for a person who is harsh and pitiless (’He’s a real Turk’) and the Austrian way to call children in from play (’It’s already dark, the Turks are coming, the Turks are coming!’). It makes my husband laugh — Yusuf is fond of saying Europeans still wouldn’t know how to relieve themselves or take showers if it weren’t for the ‘bloodthirsty Turks’.

But a part of me couldn’t help but think, ‘How could it be ‘religious’ to take up arms?’ See, I had this idea that true religion means always turning the other cheek, always peacefully resisting violence, always striving to return evil with good. (I picture Gandhi in his loincloth, refusing to eat.) Which is true, according to all the major religious traditions, including Islam. But is it the whole truth? Is it the truth in every situation?

If a people are ruled by violent, unjust or dishonest leaders, do they have a right to rebel against their society, or ask for help from foreign leaders? If a leader has knowledge, justice and love for God — and it shows in his nur — does he have an obligation to take control over foreign lands in order to rule them more justly, to prevent those people from starving or being stolen from or executed?

And if a country is peaceful, tolerant and inclusive, is there any guarantee that other countries will respect its freedom to continue that way? Look at Tibet.

Was my pacifism a cop-out, a way of dodging responsibility for my fellow humans? Does it make it easier for me to hide behind theories to explain why our world is full of injustice? Didn’t I have a part — don’t we all — in making it so?

The Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace, said that the greatest jihad is to speak the truth before an oppressive ruler. (Due to the oppressive nature of many Muslim countries, it’s not oft-quoted in their history classes.) The Prophet also said that if we see an injustice, we must change it with our hands; if we cannot, we must speak out against it; if we cannot, we must feel bad about it in our hearts — though the last is the weakest form of faith. Faith, then, is not linked to what we believe, it is linked to what we do.

The Qur’an gives limited permission to fight, and only against persecution, which it says is worse than killing. When I think of ethnic cleansing, no matter who orders it; or torture, no matter who’s wearing the ski mask; or mass starvations, government corruption, or religious persecution, no matter who’s behind it — we do have an obligation to do, say or (at the very, very least) feel something.

Though I could never harm an innocent person, I also know that I should not be able to live with myself if I did nothing as a horrible indecency unfolded before my eyes.

I give credit to my husband for taking the time to explain to me his theory of why the Ottomans worked to spread the boundaries of their 600-year empire. At the least, it is a fresh perspective to consider historic empire-building from. At the best, it is a weight off my mind, as Islam now returns to its rightful place as a fundamentally honest religion that offers a ‘correct’ action for every human situation.