Jeffrey Lang – Americans Becoming Muslim A2
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AI: Transcript ©
Arashid.
Is this your actual name or did you
have another name in the future? No. Yeah.
I changed it when I embraced Islam.
I was When did you embrace Islam? Oh,
it's been almost 20 years now. 20 years?
Yes.
Atlanta. Are you fortunate or unfortunate? Well, I'm
very fortunate indeed. I'm getting a lot. I'm
getting a lot. I fasted in amongst the
Ramadan. I pray 5 times a day.
And I give charity.
The the hardest part about it is doing
the prayers 5 times a day. You know,
I'll be in the middle of a basketball
game or something. I ask you guys, you
know, I have to go, and they don't
understand. They say, no. Come on. You know,
what what can be more important than basketball?
So I gotta pray and, you know My
name is Diana Halani.
I am a alhamdulillah,
a new Muslim. I was raised very strict
Protestant American Baptist. Assalamu alaikum.
I am Amina Janan Asalmi.
I am a Muslim.
I am a woman.
I am an American.
I
reverted
to Islam
on May 21,
1977.
Mohammed
is the way and the truth and the
life.
No one comes to God but through him.
However, although I love Jesus as much now
as I ever did,
I did have to
change some of my basic beliefs. Something some
beliefs that would be considered sort of bedrock,
I suppose,
for for Christians.
In the name of God, the merciful and
compassionate,
I praise him.
I seek his help.
I seek his guidance and forgiveness.
And I witness that there is no God
but God,
and that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is
his slave.
Islam is now the fastest growing religion in
the world.
Richard and Asling of Time Magazine wrote in
his article, Americans facing Mecca, a steady trickle
of homegrown converts has been joining a flood
of immigrants to create a sizable American Islamic
community.
With this trend and their high birth rate,
US Muslims are expected to surpass Jews in
number and in less than 30 years become
the country's 2nd largest religious community after Christians.
Lawrence Boat, CSP of the New Catholic World
Magazine wrote, too often Islam has been ignored
by western analysts and thinkers,
probably because most of the nations in which
it flourishes have been classified as third world
countries.
Boat went on to say that it can
be no longer, and one of the best
kept secrets in the United States has been
the rapid rise in the number of practicing
Muslims.
Islam is now the fastest growing religious group
in this country, and over a 1000 mosques
and Islamic centers serve its believers.
Today,
as we inaugurate the 25th Annual Convention of
the Islamic Society of North America,
the question is no longer whether Muslims and
Islam
can survive in North America.
The question is now, what will Muslims and
Islam bestow upon the United States and Canada?
Can we fill the void?
Can we become the conscience of the West?
Can we rekindle anew, the ethics, and the
moral fiber that made this nation great?
Everyone is responsible before god almighty.
It is everyone's concern when oppression takes place
anywhere on the earth.
Oh god, creator of the heavens and the
earth,
knower of all that is hidden and open.
It is you that will judge between your
servants
in those matters about which they have differed.
Unless
our lord guides us, we shall surely be
among those who go astray.
Show us the straight way.
Bless us with wisdom,
courage,
and sincerity.
Help us become healers of humanity.
Help us to stamp out corruption in the
earth.
Bring through our efforts and
sacrifices
peace
with justice
in this land
and around the world.
With this prayer,
I now officially declare the 25th
Annual Convention
of the Islamic Society of North America,
which will examine 20 5 years of Muslims
in the West,
challenges,
and solutions
to now be open.
Let us all, everyone, release our balloons.
Release them.
And let them symbolize our prayers for peace,
rising up and spreading with the winds of
all parts
here and far.
We should remember
that praying about a thing
we want is necessary,
and we must do it.
Speaking about a thing for others is good,
and setting our heads
to the task
of making a reality
is the best of all,
my brothers and sisters, to hear you.
In what we hope will be a continuing
series of programs, we explore the growth of
Islam in the United States by profiling prominent
members of the American Muslim community.
In this inaugural program produced by Lawrence Islamic
Video, we interview professor Jeffrey Lang of the
University of Kansas.
What and I'm Doctor Jeffrey Lang became a
Muslim in 1982,
and since that time has filled his days
with the 5 Muslim daily prayers,
reading the Quran and practicing that teaching.
He received his undergraduate degree from the University
of Connecticut and his master's and doctorate degrees
in mathematics from Purdue University.
He taught at the University of San Francisco
for 5 years, then joined the University of
Kansas where he is currently a tenured associate
professor of mathematics.
Wang is well known in his field and
has published widely in national and international journals.
Sample could be Wang said that he has
always been fascinated by mathematics. It only involves
pencil, paper,
statement of a problem,
and logic
and methods of proof
to test its truth or falsity
of a certain mathematical statement based on certain
assumptions
or axioms.
Okay?
So basically, in that sense, mathematicians,
feel that their science is
the
most ancient and the purest?
Well, I mean, I think I've taught religion
like most children around the world are taught
religion regardless of what they believe. They're taught
a certain amount few details of dogma, some
several things to memorize,
told not to question what they believe,
and,
that their religion is the one true religion.
And that faith is a matter
of just accepting it.
The, like I often say, a spiritual gamble.
You put all your your your eggs in
this one basket and hope that it pays
off and that you're right. And you shouldn't
even question that. Even when I was in
grammar school, I once asked a nun, she
told us that our religion was the one
true religion. I asked the sister, I said,
but doesn't everybody believe their religion is the
one true religion?
I mean, how do you how what how
do you deal with that? How do we
know ours is true if everybody else feels
theirs is true? Or is everybody's false? Or
is there some element of truth to everyone?
Or is it just all in our imagination?
Like most Westerners, I I believe that religion
is one category, a spiritual category of thought,
and that or a life.
And that, logic is a material category, an
earthly category of,
life and thought. And that there's really no
no mixture of the 2, or very little.
But and that bothered me of course. Because
why would God give you reason if reason
played no role in you attaining to faith
in God?
But,
when I
began to study Islam,
and initially I studied it with a great
deal of skepticism,
I was an atheist at the time, I
found that this idea in the Quran that
reason and logic,
faith should unite to be at least very
interesting.
That's that's how the Qur'an
begins,
you know, inviting people to combine
reason to attain to faith. It was an
interesting proposition.
So I was fascinated by that and continued
to read all of it to see if
it stands up to this criterion.
Well, when I first
looked at the Quran, I
didn't assume that it was a book revealed
by God.
I
just looked at it out of curiosity and
because some friends had encouraged me to.
As I went through it, I did become
fascinated with it, certainly. Because,
coming from a Christian tradition, I have a
lot of experience with the Bible.
And this was definitely a scripture different from
that. So I was amazed with its art,
captivated by its wisdom and its logic,
its
style,
its beauty.
The language is extremely beautiful. And if you
compare it with its profound meaning,
it's there's really nothing like it, or at
least that I had experienced up until that
point.
And then as I,
made my way through it,
and I had some really difficult
questions concerning God and his relation
to man that kept me from religion for
many years. As I made my way through
it, I found the answers to those questions
and some I hadn't even thought of.
And in
addition to that, I found myself being
captivated by the message itself. So I found
it compelling. I found that it, hit at
the heart of human nature, in particular my
own. And I went ahead and
found myself believing
in the long run,
after going through it a few times,
that I had this was actually the vehicle
for me from going from,
an atheist
to a person who,
believed in God.
And,
that's so it wasn't I picked it up
and assumed it was a revelation. I went
through it. I picked it up assuming that
it wasn't a revelation. It wasn't the word
of God, so to speak. Went through it
and found myself slowly but surely
becoming committed to a different, point of view.
And, that's it.
Jeffrey Lang was born on January 30, 1954
in Bridgeport, Connecticut in a Roman Catholic family.
He spent his first 18 years in Catholic
schools. These schools provided an excellent education according
to Lang, but taught very little about the
Catholic religion except
for a few basic doctrines. In
the late sixties when I was a teenager
and early seventies when I was in the
university,
There was a time in the Vietnam War,
Watergate,
John Kennedy was killed.
Bob Kennedy was killed. Martin Luther King was
killed.
We had the civil rights movement. We had
riots in the streets.
I lived in
urban,
Northeast.
And all those problems were very close to
home.
So in any case, we came to question,
as a generation,
the values
and the social institutions
that existed at that time, whether they were
religious
or social or political.
And oftentimes, we just decided to
abandon
abandon all of that and try to find
a new order. And of course we failed.
Couldn't find a solution. What we attempted turned
out to be more disastrous really if we
think back on upon it than what we
were dealing with. Not that not that the
existing situation was good, but we just came
up with nothing better. But
the but at that time,
like most,
young people, I came to question my religion
along with everything else. And you've seen many
of us in those days became atheists or
left churches and and just abandoned. Some of
them have gone back and come to believe
in God again, even as I did. But
at that time, we abandoned them and and
questioned them. If they didn't make sense,
if there were contradictions in it,
we had a tendency to just lead them.
As a teenager, Lang began to doubt his
religious values and at age 17, he left
Christianity after struggling with many unanswered questions.
I came to,
ask the question,
why does God
seem to be more tyrannical
than human, more inhuman than human, except for
his superpower?
I mean, why does he expose us to
suffering,
almost arbitrarily?
Why does he want us to and rather
than just allow us to be in heaven
if he loves us so much right from
the start.
Why does he want us to worship him?
What? Does he have some? Is he lacking
something that he needs his ego to be
boosted?
Why does he demand sacrifice?
If he wants to forgive you, can't he
just forgive you? Does he have to see
you suffer first?
You know, the
if my child wrongs commits a wrong, I
don't
ask her to commit a sacrifice for me
or to suffer pain to make me,
for me to overcome that.
By the time he was 18, he was
a full fledged atheist.
Lang said that accepting man's suffering on earth
as something that happened by chance gave him
much more peace than believing that God created
and subjected people to it.
The way I was taught
God or taught about God, God was,
vindictive,
jealous,
tyrannical,
arbitrary in His punishment and in and in
the suffering imposed on us. Us. It simply
didn't make any sense when on the same
hand I was told that He was all
loving, all just, all kind, all merciful.
And so I got to the stage where,
and I think like many of us,
it just didn't make sense at all. And
the idea that
the problems that humankind
has to face,
the idea that they were by chance,
the suffering, the suffering we had to face
was a matter of chance rather than it
was imposed on us by some great superhuman
power, to me, it was a more peaceful
feeling,
and I could sleep better at night with
that thought, than somebody was ready to zap
me almost arbitrarily. So that's,
I think many of us,
you know, all over the world have that
that idea.
Wang continued as an atheist for 7 years,
and God's existence in his life disappeared until
he was 25.
At that age, he started to sense the
spiritual need for God, and he began intermittently
in various Christian churches to look for the
answers to questions that drove him away from
religion.
Not finding them, in his own words, he
gave up on the whole idea. I mean,
if you start to commit yourself to the
idea that there's no God,
well, you might be able to explain the
suffering in the world, but also you have
to come to the conclusion that life is
meaningless, your life is meaningless,
values have no value,
there are no absolute truths,
everything is chaotic,
you're just have the you just have the
capacity to make some sense out of it,
And that
the human condition is essentially miserable.
If you're truly committed to that idea that
there is no God and I was.
And when you believe the human condition is
essentially miserable, believe me, your condition becomes essentially
miserable,
especially if this is something if you have
a tendency to agonize and dwell over these
things.
So I found,
that I was between a rock and a
hard place. I didn't believe in God, and
yet I did realize that the human condition
was a miserable one. And that's where I
was when I went back to certain,
Christian churches. You know, not the Catholic church
originally. Yeah. I explored other Christian denominations.
And, but basically, although they differ in some
respects,
the solution to these age old problems I
didn't see there. Finally, I went back to
the Catholic church figuring that's where my roots
were. Maybe religion is just a matter of
culture more than anything else. That's what my
mother used to tell me. And,
and I came up empty and dissatisfied. And
you know, you can't force yourself into a
church
and find happiness if you haven't resolved the
conflicts in your in your
life.
So I gave up on the entire idea.
A change in Lang's life came in 1982
when he met some Muslim friends while teaching
at the University of San Francisco.
What amazed me about them or what fascinated
me,
again, was the fact that even though they
couldn't answer my questions,
they were certain that the answer was in
the Qur'an, although they did felt they were
limited in their ability to
unearth it. So,
I thought that was fascinating and I I
asked them for a copy of the Quran
and I just read it. Finally, it was
in the Quran that Lang's questions were resolved.
Well, like I said, I had arrived at
the state where Hylus,
for the most part, convinced, you know, that
there was a God again.
But I was a little nervous about becoming
a, certainly becoming a Muslim. But on the
other hand, I decided that
I had virtually no other alternative, you know.
But I also realized that in this society,
it would not be a popular thing to
do. Especially, I was teaching at a Catholic
university.
And I was gonna be I was gonna
be up for tenure in a couple years.
And not to say that they would use
that against me, but I certainly wouldn't make
me the most popular guy on campus.
But in any case,
I stood outside the MAF building one day
looking over at the church. And you're probably
wondering why was I looking out over at
the church? Well, in the basement of the
church,
there was a a mosque, a masjid, where
Muslims pray.
And so I
decided, standing outside the math building at the
University of San Francisco, to walk across the
parking lot and go over and at least
talk to the Muslims there, but not really
do anything about it, just talk. And so
I decided to go in around the church
and in through one of the side doors
to see, if indeed that was the mosque,
just to check with one of the people
inside the church. So I went around the
side and I met a, janitor there. And
I must have had a look of, for
some strange reason, panic on my face because
when I asked him, I said, can you
please tell me where the mosque is? And
he and he looked at me as if
he was talking to a madman. I turned
around, walked back down to the stairs, went
to put my hand on the knob of
the door,
and strangely enough,
my hand started shaking. I got
that petrified. I was that anxious.
So I I just quickly turned around, went
up to the top of the stairs again.
And then I got to the top of
the stairs and I said to myself,
I mean, I've been down every,
in and out of every door on this
campus. I've talked to all sorts of students
before. To be reasonable,
there's just no,
problem with going down and talking to students.
Even so, I couldn't get myself to turn
around. So for the first time in my
life, for many years not my life in
many years,
I
found myself praying. I I just, I don't
know why human beings do this. It doesn't
really make much sense, but maybe it does.
I looked up to the sky, of all
places, and I said, oh, God,
if this is, if this is going to
lead me to some to coming to to
know you or give me some peace of
mind, give me the strength of the down
these stairs and open that door.
And there I was waiting for either a
bolt of light to shine on me, or
the earth to shake, or a voice from
heaven. And of course, none of that happened.
And I stood there feeling absolutely nothing.
So in any case, I turned around, I
walked down the 12
stairs, and,
put my hand on the door, turned the
knob, and pushed open the door. And
there were, of all things, 2
students sitting on the floor in an empty
room with empty walls
and a tidy room in the basement of
a church. And that was their place of
prayer. And when they saw me, they were
startled.
They looked at me as if I was
a CIA agent or something. They said, what
are you doing here? What do you want?
And I immediately
thought I better
I was a little nervous again. I said,
is Omar here? Mahmoud? I was calling out
names of Arabs I knew because I thought
maybe they would recognize a name and just
let me in and I could
But they said, those people aren't here. We
don't know who you're talking about. So I
said,
oh well, thank you very much. I guess
I'm in the wrong place. I was just
happy to be leaving.
And they one of them said, a fellow
from Malaysia,
said, well, would you like to know something
about Islam?
And I turned around and said, yes. Yes.
That's that would be nice. So he said,
Well, take off your shoes
because we pray on this rug. Take off
your shoes and come out inside. So I
took off my shoes and came inside and
sat down.
Well, we talked about religion for 10 minutes
or so, and they were telling me how
I ought to become a Muslim or
how I'd be punished in the grave and
how the angels would curse me and things
like that.
And, I thought that was,
that's not what I needed to hear. I
thought they were obviously
not relating to me and I wasn't relating
to them.
And,
they asked me what I knew about Islam.
I explained it to them. They thought that
was quite amazing that I would know that
much. And then they said,
why don't you stick around and, the Imam,
our leaders, could come in here a minute
and you could speak to him.
And I said, No, I,
thank you very much. I have to go
teach a class. That was a lie, of
course. I have to get going.
I'm I have to walk. I really have
to get going right now but I really
appreciate all your time and effort and I'll
see you, perhaps around campus sometime.
Well, just then it was about 3:30 in
the afternoon, time for the afternoon prayer,
the door of the mosque
pushed open and it had very poor lighting
in there. But when the door pushed open,
the sun was setting behind the door, This
huge bolt of light came through the door
and you see the silhouetted figure of a
man.
And the strange thing is is this man
is wearing a turban and he has a
cane and a robe on these long Arab
dresses. Looked like Moses coming out of the
Sinai, you know, with this huge bolt of
light behind him. He had a beard.
And,
I thought, if anything, I I ought to
stay just to talk to this guy. He
looks like a fascinating character.
So, he came walking in. And he was
a very peaceful fellow. He went into the
room, the washroom that was right next to
there for a second. Very tiny washroom.
Didn't seem overly concerned, and he walked over
to me and he sat down. Then he
said something in Arabic to the one Palestinian
student that's there and he responded in Arabic.
Obviously, they wanted to know who I was
and what I was doing there.
And it looked like it was of no
concern of his and then he said, finally,
he said,
he sat down beside me, put his,
hand on my knee just to make me
relax. And it did help me relax. He
just put it there and said, who are
you? How are you?
And he asked me what I did at
the university. I told him I was a
professor.
He looked at the other students,
like, surprised that a professor would want to
be here,
talking about Islam. There was an evident surprise
on his face.
But in any case, he said,
what have they told you about Islam? I
told him. He said, what do you know
about Islam? I told him.
And then he talked to me for about
2 minutes
and then he
the conversation
died.
Then he said,
Well is there anything that,
you would like
to know? Anything more that you would like
to know about Islam?
And I,
thought of it in my head for a
few minutes and then I looked at him
and I said, well, frankly, the only thing
I could think of asking you
is, can you tell me what for you
it is to feel what do you feel
like as a Muslim? What do you think
Islam does to you? You know. What's your
relationship between God and you? You know.
And so he,
thought for a moment and he looked down
and he looked up at me. And then
he what he was about to say, it
was so beautiful, at least it was to
me at that time, that I thought he
either had memorized it and was practiced in
delivering this short speech,
or else it was,
something
spontaneous. But in either case it was obviously
he was deeply moved regardless of what he
was about to say.
However it came about. And he said, he
looked down
and then he looked, didn't look at me.
And he said, for the Muslim, he said,
God is
so great
that man, in comparison,
does not even work. And he picked up
his hand like this with nothing in it.
And he said, not even worth this little
tiny speck of sand. And he took that
nonexistent speck of sand and put it on
the carpet, took his finger away, which made
the whole thing all the more emphatic because
here I am looking at a non existent
speck of sand and this is how he
views himself in relation to God. And he
says, yet, he he said,
God loves us
so much. And
everything
we do
is by His grace and His love and
by His,
dominion over our lives. He said, for example,
he said,
even when we take a step,
when we lift our foot off the ground,
that is done
by the will of God. Allah, he said.
The Arabic word for God. And when we
put it back on the ground,
that again is by the Will of Allah.
And he said, and when,
when your heart when you take a breath
and you breathe
in, that's by the will of Allah. And
when you release
that air, that that releasing
of the air would never even take place
except by His
command. His exact words.
And he said even when a leaf falls
from a tree and as it twists and
turns and makes its way to the ground,
every segment of that journey
takes place
by God's command.
And he said
and obviously the point was is this is
how much God is intertwined with the human
existence.
Everything
takes place
according to His will, and yet
man has the the free will.
And God's existence is so great, it's so
powerful, it's so compelling.
And he's finally said, he said, and when
we pray
and we put our nose on the floor
in utter submission to Allah,
he said, we sense a a warmth
and a peace and a tranquility
and strength
that is
outside of this world. And he said, to
that I can't,
relate to you so very well. You just
have to experience it.
So in any case,
he was done speaking. It
it was apparent that he felt his words
didn't make a connection. But for some strange
reason, they did. I mean, if he could
look inside my heart, he would see that
I was deeply moved. And in a lot
of ways, was fighting back even in an
emotional display. I don't know why they happened
to touch me at that time. Maybe because
it's been so long since I felt any
spiritual anything in my life.
So in any case, he finally said,
almost in desperation,
it seemed like he didn't really feel that
this had made a connection,
he seemed to say, well, just giving it
a shot, would you like to become a
Muslim?
And I looked at him. And just then
again, all the panic seized me again. And
my back was
wet, and my hands became cold cold, and
sweat was on
my forehead.
And I said,
no,
not today. I really don't think this
is good. You know, I I was stumbling
over the word. And I was hearing in
my mind things like,
what will my faculty members think? How will
my job go? What will my parents possibly
think? I mean, they they took my becoming
an atheist bad enough, becoming a Muslim. They're
not they're gonna think even worse.
I I saw people that I didn't even
like how I was gonna explain to them,
how this happened. I saw my ex wife.
Not that I don't like her, but she
just happened to be a person I saw
in my past. A friend of mine that
was dead. You know, it's strange the ideas
that come into your head in a moment
of panic like
that. So in any case, like I said,
I told him, no. I really just don't
think this is for me today. And he
said to me, finally, he said, but you
did seem to you do seem to believe
it.
And I looked at him and I said,
I thought, yes, at all. It does seem
that I
I knew that I did but nonetheless
I
still could hear all those voices that I
had. So finally,
I remember something my parents had taught me
ever since I was a kid. And they
said, if you believe in something and are
certain it's right,
just live by it
even if the entire world is against you.
That's what they taught me. I I
I think they wished when they first started
becoming a Muslim, they didn't teach it so
well that I believed it.
And so I shocked all 3 of the
fellows sitting there. I told them that,
yes, I think I'll become a Muslim.
And then they,
told me what to say. They said, You
merely have to say that you believe that
there are no gods but God And that
you witness that Muhammad is the messenger of
God for whom this Qur'an was revealed, the
scripture.
And I did, and they taught me how
to say it in Arabic, and I thought
I became a Muslim.
Since then, faith has been a matter of
practice for Lang's spiritual growth. He goes to
the masthead almost every day to perform his
prayers.
Ahmed Ghazali, Muslim Student Association president and its
central zone representative, states that doctor Lang is
completely involved in their activities and decision making
process.
Doctor Lang is,
completely involved in the decision making process we
have. He's also one of the, 3 emails
we have who will get Friday speech.
He's really,
very active in our community.
Truly God and the angels send peace and
blessings
down on the prophet. Bid,
all you who believe, bid in peace and
blessings in all due respect.
Oh, Lord, forgive us if we or make
a mistake.
O Lord, please do not burden us as
you did those before us.
O Lord, please do not task us beyond
our capacity.
And pardon us, and forgive us, and have
mercy on us. For you are our Lord
supreme.
Help us then against those who deny the
truth.
Someone please make the call
for the prayer. Lang is also faculty adviser
for the Muslim Student Association chapter at the
University of Kansas.
While he insists that he should not be
thought of as a theologian or religious scholar,
he has accepted invitation to present a few
lectures on campus about Islam. His lecture, Islam
Between Faith and Reason, received excellent reviews according
to Ghazali.
It says, God strikes a parable for you.
He strikes a parable of how people come
to deny the truth.
And this is the parable of the story.
It says, if you kick a dog,
it'll run with its tongue hanging out.
And if you leave a dog alone, it'll
run with its tongue hanging out. And it's
a very interesting reference. You know, at first
you first time I read through that, I
thought, what could this possibly mean? And then
I just thought about it for a minute.
God strikes a parable for you possibly mean?
And then I just thought about it for
a minute. God strikes a parable for you
how people come to deny the truth. How
do they do it? Here's an example. If
you kick a dog, it'll run with its
tongue hanging out. And if you Here's an
example. If you kick a dog, it'll run
with its tongue hanging out. And if you
leave a dog alone, it'll run with its
tongue hanging out. So the one who denies
the truth, when he sees a dog
running with its tongue hanging out, he says,
oh, somebody kicked it. You see what I
mean? Oh, somebody kicked the dog because if
he kicked the dog, it'll run with its
tongue hanging out.
The mistake he made is he didn't consider
all possibilities.
He didn't consider the possibility that if you
leave a dog alone
it'll run with its tongue hanging out. The
Quran is telling you don't make hasty judgments
based on circumstantial evidence.
Consider all the possibilities. There are many examples
where it gives strikes these sort of parables
for you in the Quran.
People will say, oh, he did a miracle
on television. My god. He must have angelic
power.
Well, maybe he does or maybe he's just
a sham or a trickster or a magician.
See what I mean?
In another verse, it says,
why do not the believing men and women,
whenever they hear such a remark or rumor,
why don't they think the best of one
another and say, this is an obvious falsehood?
So on the one hand, it's condemning spreading
of rumors and entertaining bad feelings about each
other. But on the other hand, there's a
logical point too.
Why when you hear a rumor do you
always assume the worst?
Why don't you assume the best?
You know? Why don't you consider the full
range of possibilities,
you know, before making,
a decision? Aside from the fact that it
shows that person is innocent until proven guilty.
But aside from these few obvious examples, a
great part of the Quran is precisely an
argument,
appealing to reason for the existence of 1
God and the need for people to surrender
unto his will.
And,
I think anybody who's familiar with the Quran,
if you read through it carefully, you'll notice
many discussions with prophets and tyrants.
I love those discussions because I find that
many logical beautiful logical points are made. You
know? When you read the Quran, you should
read it very carefully. Because if you notice
the dialogue that takes place between somebody who
denies the truth and somebody who's trying his
best to follow the truth, it's beautiful.
It's always interesting that the one who tries
trying to follow the truth, oftentimes
the denier of the truth will start to
make some good points,
but he'll be overcome by the stark reality
of truth. Alright. And there are many examples.
Just this one just popped in. I wasn't
gonna say this, but this one just popped
in right now while I'm talking to you.
And I was thinking of the famous example
where Abraham is discussing with 1 I think
it's Abraham. He was discussing with a tyrant.
And the tyrant says, and Abraham says they're
trying to convince him of the duty to
surrender to God and the power of God.
And he says to him,
my Lord God deals life
and He deals death. You know? He can
make live and make die. And the ruler
responds,
Hey, I can make you live, and I
can make you die. I can allow you
to live and I can allow people to
die.
Then Abraham comes back and says, Well, my
Lord makes the sun rise from the east.
Could you make it rise from the west?
You see, the ruler came back with a
pretty good response. You know? He thought about
it for a second. Boom. He had one
of made a logical point. Then they, stuck
him. You know? These sort of dialogues are
always taking place in the Quran. And if
you read them carefully and apply them into
your own life, you can learn a lot
about how to argue
and how to present an argument,
even how to trap people in arguments sometimes.
Like that example.
He also appeared on local cable television in
the programs Islam Between East and West and
Men's and Women's Relations in Islam.
Is he on the air?
Hi. Yeah.
I heard you allude several times this evening
to
the respect that Islam has for other religions
and other religious viewpoints.
And yet, I have 2 friends who spent
a number of years in Islamic countries Right.
As missionaries, and they tell me that
the Islamic countries are among the most difficult
Christian mission fields in the world because of
the organized oppression of other religious viewpoints, not
from being practiced, but from being spread into
the community.
My question is, if Islam has such a
high regard and respect
for other religious viewpoints,
why this oppression and why in most Islamic
countries
would I not be allowed to have a
television show such as you're having here to
represent Christianity
as you are in our country? Thank you.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, again,
that's a good question, and I think
it points to the importance of
these dialogues because there have crept in to
many Muslim societies,
practices that are not Islamic. And what I
like about these shows is that American people
will call
and raise the type of questions
you are,
and and then the Muslims themselves will realize
that perhaps they're not doing something that's right
in terms of their religion.
The Quran
calls for the Muslim to invite
the people of the book, that's the Christians
and the Jews for example, to a dialogue.
Invite them
to their own land, to their own base,
and to invite them to a dialogue, to
their own cultures, and invite them to a
dialogue, just like the type that is taking
place here, and just like the type you
described,
where you present your views
and then you, discuss them. There are many
verses in the Qur'an that emphasize that point.
The point of attaining to truth
through
a dialogue. There's another verse that I quoted
earlier in the,
program
where it says,
tell them what you believe, telling the prophet
and then all his followers from that time
on. Explain to them what you believe, and
if they turn away from that,
leave them alone,
and God knows best best what's in people's
hearts. In other words, don't leave them alone,
don't judge them. God knows best what's in
the hearts of people. God knows how people
are gonna be guided. God knows what people's
circumstances are, so just leave them. Just state
your position and leave them. So,
the point I'm trying to make is, is
that from the standpoint of Islam,
discussions like these
are not only possible, but they are,
encouraged
extremely,
very much are these type of things encouraged.
In the United States,
my wife is often referred to incorrectly
as missus Lang.
I say incorrectly because Muslim women do not
take the name of their husbands,
but keep their family names after marriage.
Part of the reason for this is that
Muslim women are to maintain their own economic
identity and independence.
As I already stated, Islam guarantees all men
and women the right to own property
and the right to own businesses.
Rights that were not extended to Western women
until the last century.
Recently, you made a critique review of the
satanic verses. The point I wanna make is
when we're faced with a situation like this,
I take the steps of to approach a
problem like this, are first to read the
book or if we don't read it, at
least talk to someone who has and has
fully understood the subtleties of language.
Then reflect on what we've heard and then
act and not in the reverse order.
But nonetheless,
I do wanna say and I commend the
Muslim Student Association of KU for this
that they took the first first alternative.
When the press was hounding them for weeks
after weeks trying to get an opinion, they
continue to say, well we have to read
the book, we have to discuss it with
ourselves and then we'll finally have an opinion.
So I have to commend them for that.
First point.
Muslims are not threatened by the various orientalist
criticisms
that Rushdie has
brought up
or almost has brought up from the grave
the century old
orientalist criticisms that he used.
These are old
time worn
orientalist attacks
that have been easily refuted
by Muslim scholars, and I think they even
enjoyed it.
Lang is now enjoying his social life in
the Muslim community of Lawrence, getting himself involved
in the practice of Islam.
I think there must have been community. An
essential component of Islam is the community.
Because it's,
through the community that you get to implement
all
the life of Islam. Islam is not just
a belief or a faith or a commitment
to an idea, it's actually a life.
A life that people live and they live
it together. It's in that togetherness that
that that Islamic life really comes to flourish.
So
I found that I find, and I think
every Muslim does, is that in the community
life, he finds the strength of his faith
faith. He sees the practical implications of his
faith.
And,
and myself included,
I find that I get through the community
and, hopefully the community with me too. I
help contribute to that.
You get, intellectual stimulation, of course. You're with
people that are committed to the same ideology
that you are. And aside from that, I
mean, it's just an extremely peaceful and,
environment of brotherhood and and,
people working together for a common
goal. The common goal being, in the words
of the Quran, to try to become the
best
community created for,
your fellow man,
enjoining what is right and forbidding what is
destructive or wrong.
When you live in a community in the
United States, religion has a part to play,
but it is not a major part to
play. The community exists apart from religion.
We get along together and we exist as
a community in the United States with
many different,
religious differences. So religion is not the core
of the community. It's not the motivation of
the community. It's not what keeps it together.
It's not the cohesive unit. It's not the
co what binds the community together.
That in Islamic in a Muslim community, you'll
find that although it consists of people from
almost virtually every country on the globe, like
our own community, I think we represent some
30, 40 different countries here.
Although that may be the case, it's a
community that has a great deal of cohesion
and,
brotherhood and comfort in each other because
the unifying force is an ideal. It is
Islam.
It's this commitment
to this community built
on belief in God and commitment to trying
to know and live by His will.
So that is the strength of it. It's
not like,
various Christian fundamentalist
communities,
that I've seen and had some experience with.
It's much different.
Islam is not just a,
faith that you just completely dedicate yourself to
some spiritual aspect.
It is,
it's a life, as I said before, and
it exists in a community, but it is
not some sort of extremist
type of community. It's very balanced, I think.
In the next portion of our program, we
will talk with professor Lang.