Jeffrey Lang – Struggling to Surrender 260
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Islam in America, they
will, Insha Allah, see the second part,
which is titled
struggling to surrender.
Doctor Jeffrey
is
professor of math at the University of Kansas.
He,
did,
he wrote some books in mathematics,
many papers.
He's a 10 year professor, so he's famous
in the world of math.
And the
world of Islam, Alhamdulillah,
he finished
his first book, which was titled
struggling to surrender, which is the title of
this lecture.
And it will be published by it is
in fact published
by Amana
Trust Publications,
and I think it's ready to go, isn't
it?
National practice.
Mhmm.
Okay. Anyway, it will be in the market
soon.
And it's gonna be very effective in terms
of among the non Muslims.
Explains his story and how he what he
found good in Islam, and
the rest of his story.
Though he's not going to mention this in
this title, we just picked up the title
because it does
represent
to us
most of what's going to be told in
in this
lecture insha Allah.
He is going to talk first
about
the
conversion itself
and the suffering that people have, the decision
making process,
how they make the decision, the hesitation they
have,
and then finally overcoming all the hesitation
of becoming a Muslims,
and overcoming this difficulty
and becoming a Muslim.
And once they become a Muslim,
the pain of becoming a Muslim,
or struggling to survive as a Muslim
in a Muslim community, and the difficulties he
would have in adapting himself or herself
as a new Muslim
in the new world.
So it is a life between 2 worlds,
the world before and the world
after.
His second book was titled, as he mentioned
it this morning,
even the angels asked,
and this is inshallah
his second talk. So would you kindly come
and make the presentation please?
Actually, I okay. That's a good idea. Yeah.
Because I don't need that.
Pepper is talking.
Okay.
Lots of stuff up here.
I need a minute to get
Sounds like one of my children.
Peace
be
unto
you.
In the name of God, the merciful, the
compassionate,
this is Malay Armani Rahim.
The books that Hamid
Ghazali was talking about,
I didn't really write them for the purpose
of
introducing non Muslims to Islam.
I wrote them for my children originally.
So that someday when they grow up and
they face
the conflicts that I expect them to face
as young American
Muslim children,
the dilemmas, the questions, etcetera,
that in some sense, my experience, I hope,
will help them.
I wrote it really
for that purpose. And I originally didn't intend
to publish them at all. I just found
them myself
and put them in our home library, and
I hoped that someday they would be interested
enough to look at them.
But then later, it fell into the hands
of a publisher, and now they're gonna be
published.
What I do brother Hamid asked me to
talk about trials and tribulations that Muslim converts
go through.
I told him, but, Hamid, I'm not really
excited about this topic.
First of all, there are a lot of
Muslims around the world that are suffering a
lot more than any convert does in the
United States of America.
And I think their trials and tribulations are
much more significant.
That's the first thing. The second thing is,
I said, this is not the most inspiring
lecture in the world.
Because if I deliver it truly and accurately,
I have to talk about the upside and
the downside.
The successes and the mistakes.
And Muslim audiences love to hear about the
heroics,
but we don't really enjoy hearing about some
of the some of the weaker realities.
So I'm warning you in advance, this will
probably be the least popular lecture I ever
give,
and I'm also not sure what benefit this
lecture is to anyone.
But rather than implicate other
non Muslim I mean, other Muslim converts,
I'm gonna try to restrict my sort of
criticism
to,
myself.
I do mention a few other Muslim converts
that were very close to me at times,
but I've changed their names just to protect
the innocent, as they say.
So,
let me begin. The lecture begins on a
very positive note.
It's a part of the the beginning part,
Muslim audiences seem to love very much.
The end part sort of ends on a
an anti climactic way.
It ends, I think, in a very realistic
way.
Sort of ends open ended.
Because
when you convert to Islam,
you'll find that that first few days after
conversion or the first few weeks or months
are perhaps one of the most exhilarating and
amazing times in your life.
But when your feet eventually touch ground again,
and they do,
you find out that
becoming a Muslim is more than just making
the shahada.
It's a lifelong commitment and struggle.
It's a day by day continuous
effort to surrender yourself
to God. It's not just a joining of
a religion,
it's a continuous action.
Which of course the word Islam means. It
means a surrender.
It's a verbal noun.
And
and so the lecture I think has to
end sort of in the middle of things,
because I'm not dead yet.
But in any case, so let me begin.
This is highly personal information.
At times I'm gonna talk about a few
aspects of Islamic law.
It's not because I wanna argue a case.
It's not because I'm trying to present a
fatwa here today.
I only and I'm not going to argue
a case. I'm only presenting it to let
you know what sort of tensions, what sort
of
anxieties
Muslim converts face.
The tensions between sometimes what they think and
what they feel they must do.
So when I discuss them some things, it's
not because I'm trying to argue a point,
I just wanna accurately present to you the
way I felt about something at a particular
time and then how I acted. So with
all that introduction,
let me begin.
The first time I
my first encounter with Islam
may sound to you a little bit strange.
It's really not so strange, other people in
other religions,
even people
who are not believers at all, have had
similar type of experiences,
but different.
My first encounter was in fact in a
tiny room with no furniture,
and there was nothing on its grayish white
walls. The walls of the room were bare.
Its only adornment, its only decoration
was the predominantly red and white pattern carpet
that covered the floor.
There was a small window,
something like a basement window,
facing above us,
which filled the room with brilliant light.
We were in rows,
I was in the 3rd row.
We were only men, There were no women.
We were all sitting on our heels in
the direction of the window.
It felt foreign.
I didn't recognize anyone. I thought I may
be even in a foreign country.
We uniformly bowed down in prostration with our
faces to the floor.
It was serene and quiet, as if the
sound had been turned off, like when you
turn the sound off on a TV and
you watch the picture.
At once we all sat back on our
heels.
As I looked ahead, I realized we were
being led by someone in front of us,
off to my left, in the middle, below
the window.
He was alone in his row,
I only had the briefest glance at his
back.
He was wearing a long white gown and
on his head was a white scarf with
a red pattern or design.
And that's when I awoke.
It was a dream. I had this dream
several times,
beginning when I was around 16 years old.
It was a rather remarkable dream because at
that age, I was moving very very close
to becoming an atheist, and eventually became one
when I was 17.
But I would continue to have this dream
every once in a while, say once a
year or so, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less,
for the next 10 or 12 years of
my life.
And it was always that brief and always
the same.
At first, it made absolutely no sense to
me. But later, I came to believe, as
I reached the ages of mid twenties or
something, that it has seems to have some
sort of religious connection.
And although I shared it with persons close
to me, on at least one occasion or
maybe 2, I remember telling my mother about
it, it didn't be appear to be worthy
about bothering about or making a fuss about.
It didn't trouble me at all. And as
a matter of fact, I when I awoke,
I felt strangely comfortable.
But in some sense, looking back now, I
realized that perhaps, in some sense, that seems
like my first encounter with Islam.
Over the years, I was an atheist. I
was an atheist from the time I was
about 17 until I was 28.
I wasn't a belligerent atheist.
I didn't hate people of other religions.
And I was a curious atheist. I was
sincerely
willing to listen to what somebody had to
say, their religious point of view. And I
was sincerely curious.
But generally, when I talked to people, I
found that they confirmed
my point of view, that religion simply doesn't
make sense.
Over the years, I met many Muslims.
I had many Muslim friends.
And frankly, I have to admit, while they
were some of the friendliest and kindless kind
kind, most kind, and most hospitable people I
ever met,
and I loved being around them,
I found that when they talked to religion,
they
To me, they made the less sense least
sense of anybody I've spoke to.
I found that when I talk to, for
example, Hindus
or Buddhist
or,
people from,
somebody who know knew something about Taoism or
what I read about those religion,
I found that
people from other religions did a much better
job of relating their beliefs to me
than my Muslim friends.
And so I very quickly dismissed Islam.
But I continued to have these friendships.
Well strangely, one of the one day I
walked my office at the University of San
Francisco. I was a new assistant professor there.
And apparently, some student or some Muslim
left a copy of the Quran on my
desk.
I had the habit of leaving my door
unlocked.
And I walked in my office one day
and found it there.
Later I found out who it came from.
But in any case, I kept it for
a while and out of curiosity one night,
I picked it up
and I began to read the Quran.
And you can't simply
read the Quran.
You don't just pick it up and read
it like you read a novel.
Not if you take it seriously.
You've either already surrendered to it
or you fight it and combat it.
The Quran attacks
you and it attacks tenaciously,
directly,
personally.
The Quran debates,
criticizes,
shames, and it challenges.
From the outset,
it's very beginning, it draws the line of
battle.
And I knew that I was on the
other side.
And I also felt somehow that I was
at a severe disadvantage.
For it became clear to me that the
author somehow
appeared to know me
better than I knew him.
Painters can make the eyes of a portrait
appear to be following you from one place
to another.
But what author, I thought, can write a
scripture
that seems to antist anticipate your daily changes,
the shifts and changes in your thought?
The Quran was always a way ahead of
my thinking.
It was erasing barriers that I had built
years ago, and was addressing my questions and
my doubts.
Each night I would formulate
key questions and objections as I read along
with it. Following along in this sort of
dynamic relationship, this dialogue I was having with
the Quran.
Only to discover the answer the next day
or 2 days later, as I continued on
in the accepted order.
As if the author was reading my ideas
and writing in the appropriate responses before I
got to it the next day.
It was a frightening experience,
I must admit.
I had met myself in the pages of
that scripture and I was afraid of what
I saw.
I was being led and I knew it.
But by whom? I wasn't sure. I felt
like I was painting myself in a corner
which contained only one choice
and one decision.
I needed to talk to someone,
but no one I knew. I couldn't talk
to anybody that knew me, especially no Muslims.
Friends of mine. Because I didn't want there
to be any expectations.
I knew if I went to a Muslim
friend and told him I was really seriously
affected by what I read, he might get
his might get his anticipation up. He might,
you know, get excited about my becoming a
Muslim or something. So I didn't want to
disappoint him, and I certainly didn't want to
clue him in.
I needed to talk to someone that didn't
know me, so that there would be no
expectations.
Well, in any case, it was Saturday, I
was in San Francisco in Golden Gate Park,
heading back to my apartment in Diamond Heights,
for those of you who know the Bay
Area.
On my daily walk, I used to take
a 7 mile walk everyday and I still
do, and then I came to a solution.
I would go to the mosque or where
the Muslims pray on Monday, I thought,
at the University of San Francisco.
I assumed no one would know me there,
and I could go in and just ask
a few questions.
Well, it wasn't really a mosque.
It was a room of prayer lent to
the Muslim students by the Society of Jesus
at the University of San Francisco.
And it was in the basement of Saint
Ignatius Church.
Let me just say a word about Saint
Ignatius Church. It's located at the peak of
Golden Gate
in San Francisco.
It's a source of great pride to the
University.
The University catalog
includes several shots of it from different angles.
Now I've seen more majestic churches, but when
the fog rolls in over Saint Ignacio's church
and descends over it,
Its steeples appear to be reaching into heaven.
It's a beautiful church.
This Wednesday afternoon was clear and breezy. Notice
I say Wednesday. I promised myself I would
go Monday or Tuesday Monday to talk to
the Muslim students, but now here it was
Wednesday and I still hadn't gotten up the
nerve to do it.
It was a Wednesday afternoon and it was
clear and breezy and I was standing outside
Harney Science Center where my office was,
trying to get up the nerve to walk
across the parking lot to go to Saint
Ignatius Church.
And I just couldn't get myself to do
it. Finally, somehow I seized some resolve
and started across the parking lot. I promised
myself I was only going there to ask
a few questions.
I wasn't gonna convert and I definitely wasn't
gonna make any decisions. Just ask a few
simple questions, get sort of an insider's point
of view,
and that's it. And that seemed to suffice,
it gave me enough courage to walk on
over there. Why I was nervous,
I didn't know.
I I rehearsed my introduction
as I headed across the truck the parking
lot. I was trying to think of what
I would say as I got inside.
Then I saw the stairway down to the
mosque. It was up ahead by the statue
of Saint Ignatius.
An American student had pointed the mosque out
to me once, female student. She said, the
rumor is they keep corpses down there.
It was only a joke,
but I was thinking about that while I
stood at the foot of the stairs.
I arrived at the top of the stairs
and eyed the door below.
And the writing on the door was definitely
Arabic. That much I knew from my reading
of the Quran, I recognized
the Arabic writing.
I could feel my heart racing as I
stood there hesitating,
allowing my anxiety to grow.
I thought I'd better ask somebody in the
church if this was the right spot.
I went around to the side entrance. I
was feeling quite nervous.
It was very dark inside the church, and
the stained glass was sending down bold pillars
of beautiful red and white colors that I
remembered from my childhood,
more than
12 years ago.
To the left of the author, I saw
what had to be a janitor.
As I darted over to him, I passed
front of the crucifix without genuflecting. You're supposed
to kneel and you go to the pass
the crucifix if you're a Catholic,
which I was when I was a child.
And I almost went ahead and and did
it. It's amazing how these lessons get ingrained
in you.
Can you tell me where the mosque is?
I said to the janitor.
I must have looked very unbalanced
for his expression on his face was a
combination of surprise and and sort of anger
and indignation.
I didn't even wait for an answer. I
went outside and drew a couple of deep
breaths.
Breathing deeply, what a relief it was to
be out in the sun again.
I needed to relax a few minutes. I
don't know what
was seizing me.
I circled the church a few times to
see if there was any other possible entrance
to where the Muslims pray. Maybe I had
found the wrong place.
Also, it gave me time to catch my
breath.
There was another possible entrance, but the door
was locked. So I ended up back where
I began,
in front of the stairs by the statue.
My chest tightened and my heart was pounding
midway to the door
as I went down the steps. I I
quickly turned around and climbed back up the
stairs.
Wait a minute.
I scolded myself. You go in and outdoors
every day at this university.
There are only students in there for goodness
sake.
I took another deep breath and backed down
the stairs.
The midway point was worse this time.
When I reached the bottom, I felt constricted
and sick. My legs that carried me 7
miles every day on a walk were weakening,
were almost buckling. I reached for the doorknob.
My hand was shaking. I was shaking. I
was sweating. I ran for the top of
the stairs.
I froze
there, like a child, with my back to
the mosque. I didn't know what to do.
I felt embarrassed.
I was embarrassed
and defeated.
I considered returning to my office, forgetting the
whole thing.
Several seconds passed.
I don't know why people do this but
I gazed up at the sky.
It was vast, mysterious,
and comforting.
I have fought the urge to pray for
over 10 whole years,
but now my resistance was spent and I
just gave it a shot.
Oh god,
if you want me to go down those
stairs,
please just give me the strength.
I waited.
I felt nothing.
I felt absolutely nothing.
I was hoping that the ground might shake,
a bolt of lightning might surround me, at
least goosebumps. I felt
absolutely nothing. I didn't feel anything.
I turned around, I made a 180 degree
turn,
walked down the stairs,
put my hand on the doorknob, and pushed
open the door.
Are you looking for something?
I apparently interrupted these 2 gentlemen's conversation.
They were standing directly ahead of me near
the left wall. They both were bare footed
and considerably shorter than I.
1 was dressed in what appeared to be
a traditional sort of Middle Eastern, Far Eastern
costume with a round white cap on his
head.
The other young man wore Western clothing, and
I had completely forgotten my lines.
I knew I had to say something, so
I just started spotting out Arabic names. Is,
Omar,
Mahmoud here?
I was getting nervous again.
What's their last name?
Was the response.
Now I was trapped.
The one with the cap looks suspicious.
I I can't really remember.
It didn't help.
Finally somebody, one of them volunteered. There's nobody
else here, just us.
I thought this isn't gonna work. I'm sorry.
I must be in the wrong place. Thank
you very much. I started to turn around.
Do
you want to know about Islam?
The fellow in the cap asked.
Yes.
Yes.
As if it just suddenly dawned on me.
Absolutely. I would. That would be nice.
I took a step in towards
inward. Would you please take off your shoes?
We pray here, he apologized.
The traditional fellow was doing all the talking.
The other decided to merely
unusual.
We sat on the ground in the left
corner.
They let me choose the place, so I
I positioned myself so I was facing the
door with my back to the wall.
There was a small washroom off to my
right and a closet side room and it
said, for the ladies to my left.
Abdul Hanan, a student from Malaysia,
was the young man with the white cap.
Mohammed Youssef,
the other student was from Palestine.
I told them what I knew of Islam,
I didn't have done considerable reading,
and they seem to be pleasantly surprised.
Although we talked for about 15 minutes,
I asked some superficial questions,
nothing was as I expected.
All my plans, how I expected to go,
this was completely out of sync.
Abdel Hennan began saying something about angels beating
the souls of dead believers and the tortures
they are subjected to in the grave.
I only pretended to listen. I only half
listened.
I said that I had to get back
to my office. I didn't really, but that
excuse always worked.
And I thanked them for their time.
I was about to stand up to leave
when the doorknob turned.
It was now late afternoon and the sun
was descending so that it was stationed somewhat
behind the door.
The the lighting in the room was dimmed
so that when the door opened, the entrance
was engulfed in light.
Standing there was this silhouette, this
all you could see is this black image
of a man with all this light around
him. He had a straggly beard, ankle high
thobe, sandals, turban, and a cane.
To me he reminded me of the pictures
I saw when I was a kid of
Moses coming out of Mount Sinai.
He was biblical looking and fascinating.
Entered quietly and he didn't seem to notice
us. He was whispering what must have been
a supplication or something, with his head raised
slightly and his eyes almost shut.
His hands were near to his chest with
his palms turned upward, as if he was
waiting for his share of something.
When he finished, he asked Mohammed, the brother
from Palestine, something in Arabic,
and then unassuming walked into the washroom.
I assume the question must have had something
to do with me.
That's brother Hassan.
My two friends looked
revived and optimistic.
He's the imam. He leads the prayers.
I knew from my re reading that Muslims
had no official clergy. Anyone could lead Mohammed
Alford.
Abdul Hanan, myself, anybody.
A moment later, Hassan came into the room.
His head was lowered meekly as he came
over to us.
He had a slight sort of Gandhiish kind
of frame.
His complexion was very fair and his eyes
and face were simultaneously
peaceful and desolate,
as if he had resigned himself to some
great personal tragedy.
The other 2 students made room for him
and he sat down next to me.
He placed his hand on my knee.
What's your name? He asked.
He was the first to ask that.
And unlike Abdul Hanan and Mohammed,
he wanted to talk casually at first, apparently
to reduce the tension. And I certainly appreciated
that because my nerves were shot.
His voice was low toned and strong and
had a certain special resonance
that gave him sort of an aura of
inspiration.
His accent told me that he was from
Arabia.
He was somewhat shy and tried not to
look straight into my eyes.
Jeff Lang, I told him. Are you a
student at USF? He asked.
At that time, I looked much younger in
my than my age. I was 28 at
that time, but people often mistook me for
an undergraduate. As a matter of fact, I
was thrown out of a faculty meeting once
because they thought I was an undergraduate.
No. I'm a professor in the math department,
I told him. His eyes widened. He glanced
at the others. I don't know if that
many thought I was lying or just surprised.
We spoke a few more minutes, then Ghassan
politely
asked me if I would excuse them while
they prayed the afternoon prayer.
It was the first time I saw a
Muslim pray together. I used to break to
stretch my legs, which were now very stiff
from sitting on the floor.
We returned to our places when they were
done.
The sun resumed the conversation.
So how did you become interested in Islam?
I didn't really know quite what to say.
I'd said, I've been reading about
it. And that answer apparently sufficed.
We continued on for a while discussing mostly
technical matters,
little aspects of Islamic law. I don't know
how we got into that.
But we were real we really weren't communicating.
I was running out of questions
comments.
We were both disappointed. I could see it
on his face and I could feel it
inside myself. And I thought of getting back
to the math department.
Do you have any other questions? He said
rather desperately.
I looked at him and said, no, not
really.
But then something did pop into my mind.
I do have one question, I told him.
I waited. I wasn't quite sure how to
formulate
it. It was sort of a gut question.
Can you tell me what it feels like
to be a Muslim, my told him?
I mean, how do you see your relationship
with God?
What is your relationship with God?
Now I could already see that Hassan had
fantastic charisma and intuition,
indispensable qualities to a spiritual leader, and I
would later discover
that he had a huge following both in
and out of the United States.
He even had a following in Pakistan.
He was acutely sensitive to your inner pain,
but he would never let you ignore it.
He would magnify it in front of you
and force you to focus on it.
And this is a tremendous power that few
possess and that every great religious leader must
have, but it carries terrific responsibilities and dangers.
His eyes met mine, and he didn't answer
immediately.
Maybe he was surveying the source and the
intent of my question.
And then he lowered his head as if
he was praying, summoning his spiritual energy.
And then he slowly started to shake his
head from left to right, like when you
want to indicate a negative response.
And then he began to speak.
And the first word he said to me
sounded more like a prayer or a call,
a call than part of an explanation.
Allah,
he exclaimed.
And he and he exhaled a deep breath
is so great.
And we are nothing compared to him, he
said.
In comparison to him, we are less than
a single grain of sand.
And as he spoke,
his thumb
and index finger I have to have it.
This is 12 years ago. He's saying don't
look at your notes. This is I got
a can hardly remember the details.
And as he spoke, his thumb and index
finger tightly squeezed a non existent speck of
sand, which he lowered to the floor.
And then revealed
released to reveal nothing.
And it made a symbol all the more
effective.
And yet he said, Allah loves us more
than a mother loves her baby
child. Ghassan was fighting back his feelings. His
eyes were nearly closed and his head was
still lower.
From here until he finished, his words were
like the possession of a spirit that was
burning with fear, hope, and desire.
Each remaining sentence would be a wave of
emotion, rising and then receding,
rising and receding. And nothing he said happens,
except by the will of Allah. When we
breathe in, and he put his hand to
his chest, it is by his will. And
when we breathe out,
it is by his will. When we lift
our foot to take a step, it is
by the will of Allah. And we would
never be able to put that foot back
on the ground except by his command.
Even when a leaf falls from a tree
and twists and turns on its journey to
the ground, no segment of that journey takes
place except by Allah's will.
And when we pray and put our nose
to the ground, we feel a joy,
a rest,
a peace that is outside this world.
And no words could ever describe.
You just have to experience it to know.
And Hassan remained quiet for several seconds, letting
his words sink in. And how much I
wish that I could change places with that
young man, if only for a few minutes.
So that I could feel that desire,
that passion, that anguish, yearning,
yearning for his Lord. I wanted to know
the serenity and the torment, the trust and
the fear, rising from insignificance
and aspiring for surrender.
I wanted to be resuscitated
from this death that was my
life.
So would you like to become a Muslim?
He asked.
His words cracked the air like thunder. It
exploded in my mind. Why did he have
to say that?
That's not why I came here.
I could see myself trying to explain it
to my family, to my colleagues,
to my friends.
I was working at a Christian university for
goodness sake.
What about my job?
Faces and voices crowded my mind.
My ex wife,
old acquaintances,
a couple of them even dead. Well, I
stumbled over excuses.
I felt panicked again. My lower back
and the back of my neck were hot,
my palms were wet.
What business was it of his anyway?
Why not just leave it alone? Let his
post walk out of there.
He wasn't going to lose anything.
I did my best to conceal my anxiety
and alarm. I suffocated all that turmoil, stepped
on my emotions and spoke calmly.
No. Not today anyway.
I I really just came to ask a
few questions.
How I hoped that that would end it.
I wanted to get back to my office.
What was I even doing here?
My body was locked in tension, braced for
the next attack. I knew I'd have to
be firmer this time because these type of
people never give up.
But a part of me was straining to
hear him say it again. A part of
me was groping, pleading, begging, praying.
Don't leave me.
Not after having come this far.
Hassan had been through this before, and he
knew better than to give up so easily.
He was a veteran.
He tried again softly.
I think you believe in
it. Why don't you just give it a
try?
The voices and faces were gone.
There was no need to get so upset.
I didn't owe anybody anything. Not Hassan, not
my friends, not my parents, no one.
This decision was exclusively mine, I thought. And
then I remembered my mom and all those
lessons you taught me about being quote unquote
German or German Americans.
That they taught, my 4 brothers and I.
And every culture has the same lessons, and
they identify them as distinctly their own.
But they're true in any case. And the
lesson was,
do what your heart feels is right. Follow
your feelings.
Follow your feelings, you used to say.
The first time I applied that philosophy when
I switched from engineering into mathematics,
but now this decision seemed infinitely harder.
I looked at my 3 friends,
and to their amazement and shock, I nodded
up and down and said, yes, I'd like
to become a Muslim.
2 days later, I experienced my 1st Friday
weekly congregational prayer.
It was a beautiful, warm, picture perfect San
Francisco Indian summer day.
We're in the second of the 2 cycles
of prayer.
Ghassan was reciting the Quran in its unique
and distinctive style. Most Quran recitation, I'm sure
you all know, is sort of slow, melodic
and controlled.
But Ghassan used to just release it from
the deepest and depths of his needs.
He was like an abandoned child calling for
his parents. He would pound out his pleas
in a tense rhythmic
chant. We stood there shoulder to shoulder, foot
to foot behind him. Allahu Akbar, he called.
On hearing the command, we bowed with our
hands on our knees, backs perpendicular to our
legs. And I whispered the divine praise,
glory to my lord the great. And I
thought to myself, thank you for bringing me
here.
God hears those who praise him, he called.
We all stood straight and responded,
our Lord and to you the praise.
Now we were standing in rows in tight
formation. We had been moving as a single
body. I had prayed 4 of the prayers
on Thursday in the mosque, but never with
so many people.
There must have been 80 students packed into
that tiny room. Young men from all over
the world representing maybe 20 countries celebrating our
unity and brotherhood.
Called again.
I recited quietly,
glory to my lord the highest. Repeating it
several times and thinking to myself,
please never let me turn away.
Allahu Akbar, he recited again.
Called out again, God is greater. And we
sat back on our heels. We are in
rows following the sand. I was in the
3rd.
Alaletbar, he called. We uniformly bowed down in
prostration with our faces to the red and
white carpet. It was serene and quiet. It
is if the sound had been turned off.
At once, we sat back on our heels.
I looked ahead and I could see Hassan
off to my left, in the middle, below
the window, which was flooding the room with
light. He was alone in his robe. He
was wearing a long white gown and on
his head was a white scarf with a
red design.
The dream, I screamed in inwardly. Exactly. My
dream. I had forgotten it completely and I
was stunned and frightened.
Am I dreaming? I thought. Well, I awaken.
I tried to focus on what was happening
to see if I was sleeping.
A rush of cold flowed
through my body. I shuddered.
My god, this is real, I thought. Then
the coldness subsided and it was succeeded by
sort of a gentle warmth radiating from within.
And tears welled in my eyes. Assalamu
Alaikum
Peace be upon you in the mercy of
God. He called over his left.
The prayer had finished.
And I sat on the carpet studying the
grayish white walls, trying to make sense of
what had just happened.
And I don't want to make more out
of it than it is. Dreams are very
strange. Many people have premonitions.
They're not and many of them are not
Muslims.
And there is yet so much that we
don't know about dreams.
But whatever is the mechanism behind them, through
that one I saw the pieces of my
life, things that I did, people that I
met, opportunities
I had,
choices that I made that at the time
didn't make sense,
leading to this prayer and culminating in that
frustration.
I perceived that in fact, God was always
near, manipulating and directing my life, creating the
circumstances as he does for anybody
and the opportunities to choose.
Yet always leaving those crucial choices to me
and to us, as he always does. And
I was awestruck by the realization of the
divine intimacy and love that that reveals.
Not because we deserve it,
but because it's always there.
We only have to turn to it.
To this day, I can't say with certainty
what is the meaning of that vision, but
I couldn't help but see in it a
sign, a favor,
and a new chance.
Well,
that was how I entered the Muslim community.
And if you ask me at that time,
or a week, or a month, or even
2 months after that, what was the toughest,
hardest decision,
the most difficult time in my life ever,
I would have told you the day I
became a Muslim.
But in fact,
in time I came to realize that in
some sense that was not quite correct.
You know, that once a companion of the
prophet, peace be upon him, in returning from
a military expedition said,
we return now
from the lesser Jihad,
lesser struggle to the greater struggle.
And his companions,
I mean,
his troops were confused. They expected a more
difficult battle that they were certainly gonna be
asked to go out on.
What greater struggle?
And I responded,
the struggle within yourself,
the jihad and ness.
That's a lesson I learned the hard way
in the days after I converted to Islam.
The struggle to
make the Shahada
was really turned out to be in the
long run, not the most difficult struggle.
All my fears about my parents and my
job and etcetera, were what the I have
faced some difficulties with the non Muslim community,
but nothing that I expected.
Never I still got tenured, I still got
promoted, I still got research awards.
My friends did back off from me somewhat.
When I went to the University of San
Francisco, I was like a star.
I remember the president of the university who
was a priest,
even though I was an atheist, but I
was once a Catholic. He put his arm
around me and was hanging on to me
all the time around the when they introduced
the faculty.
Now, he was extremely upset.
That one of one of these new faculty
members had become a Muslim at a Catholic
University, and they're trying to teach Catholic bad
doctrine to these children.
They thought it might be a bad influence.
My friends backed off from me to some
extent. They were I think they were genuinely
thinking that I might have flipped out. Lots
of people do when they go to San
Francisco.
But, they also felt that I would probably
get over it.
But nonetheless, in time, there was always a
certain distance between me and my friends, my
former friends.
They never really could quite understand my conversion,
and they were always a little bit,
at the very least, suspicious
or nervous.
I mean, at the very on the worse
end. And at the lighter end, some of
them just thought I was terribly eccentric.
I just did some really crazy things.
But nonetheless,
the
struggle against the American community turned out to
be rather easy. I
know some brothers and sisters
meet tremendous hardship, but mine turned out to
be not so hard at all.
Maybe because I was so American looking and
acting, they assumed.
His his culture has to reassert itself sooner
or later.
He'll burn out. He'll get back to it.
I think that's what they actually thought. To
this day, I mean, people say that to
me. Oh, Jeff, you'll get around. You'll get
over it sooner or later.
How many years you've been a Muslim? 12
years? You'll get over it.
You know?
But nonetheless, people still like me. They just
don't invite me out to parties and things
like that anymore. But the poor guy, he
doesn't drink.
But the difficulties encountered with the non Muslim
community, honestly,
were never what I anticipated.
But entering the Muslim community,
this is the part I hate to say
because I don't think it's gonna be popular
what I'm gonna say. Entering the Muslim community
was very difficult.
When you enter the Muslim community, you have
to realize it's like entering a family in
a crisis situation.
It's like walking into a family argument or
a family crisis,
where the parents are fighting with each other
and the children are going crazy and nobody
could seem to get along with each other.
It's exactly what I would compare it to.
No one wants to walk in to a
family when people are battling it out.
And that's sort of the way it felt.
I understood where it was all coming from.
A large, large percentage of our community
had suffered terrible shock. Culture shock,
colonialist shock,
racial
oppression and discrimination,
centuries of it.
The humiliation of colonialism,
the relegation
imposed on them
by the Western world of third world status.
Many of them were suffering from a terrible
deep seated cultural
inferiority,
I'm sorry to say.
There were deep seated hurts and pains,
and it was difficult
to walk into that situation.
I very quickly came to realize that every
American convert,
or at least I came to feel I'm
not saying this is right, but this is
the way I felt.
Every American convert,
maybe even more so if he's white,
although the black brothers have to put up
with a lot worse than I do.
But especially if he's white, he becomes in
a certain sense a battleground or a small
piece of a very large battleground
of a conflict of a war that has
been going on for centuries
and centuries,
between Occident
and Orient,
between
colonialist
and colonizer,
between Muslim
and Judeo Christian.
Each side has a stake in that little
piece of battleground.
Each side is very carefully watching it to
see how things are gonna turn out.
Each of them is looking for cultural manifestations
of this person's commitment.
Each side is wanting to see which culture
is gonna come to dominate the others.
Many a convert feels that and falls into
the sort of culture trap.
He finds himself taking up certain cultural practices
that may not really strictly be necessary from
a religious point of view.
But he's vulnerable and he's weak and he's
just left the community and he's he's lost
all his friends. Nobody quite reacts to them
the way he's used to. He suddenly feels
alone.
And he needs
caring, he needs compassion, he needs support.
And oftentimes, we give into our weaknesses and
we do what's necessary to gain that support.
Not consciously
so much, but also unconsciously.
That's why you'll often times I noticed that
many of my friends, perhaps I fell into
this pattern in a number of times,
you notice that often times you'll find many
a young American convert, a convert of 1
year or 6 months or so. Strangely enough,
even though he's never left this country, even
though he's been a Muslim for only 6
or 7 months, speaking with foreign intonation patterns,
sometimes even speaking with a foreign accent.
I remember taking a good friend of mine
from Yemen to see a lecture of another
friend of mine.
And my friend from Yemen said,
when he was hearing him speak, he said,
What part of Pakistan is he from?
I said, What makes you say that? He
said, I've been in Pakistan for several years,
and I could recognize that accent.
I think that's from Northern Pakistan.
I said, well, to tell you the truth,
he's from San Diego. He's
a he's a 6th generation American of Scandinavian
descent.
But these type type of things happen.
You do feel a certain pressure to conform.
When I became a Muslim, I got like
30 folks within a week.
Well, strictly speaking, I mean,
even the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the people
of the Hejaz, generally, I don't think wore
thoat.
Hejazi dress is quite different than the modern
day thoat.
But somehow, I felt the need to put
this on to identify myself as, I'm in
with you guys. Please, trust me.
You know, stop being suspicious. Don't be nervous.
I'm one of you. Don't worry about it.
What else can I do?
Some people have a very difficult time growing
beards.
American Indians, some Scandinavians,
Chinese.
I did too. I tried. Believe me, I
tried.
I had more bald spot than beards, but
I did my best.
I tried everything.
I thought, if one way or another, I
am going to prove myself a Muslim.
If there was a behavior no matter how
extreme,
I would adopt.
If there was an attitude no matter how
exclusive it is, no matter how severe,
if it set me apart from anyone else,
that was me.
I became one of the harshest, most exclusivist,
one of the most judgmental, one of the
most fire and brimstone preaching Muslims you ever
saw.
Because they tell you the best defense is
a good offense.
I think that's a psychological
thing. And I thought, my God, if I
am going to be accepted in this community,
I will prove to them.
That not only am I worthy of acceptance
but they're not.
And so I would get up and give
speeches,
long, laborious,
vehement speeches
about how we are not living up to
the standards of the faith. How we never
show up in the mosque. In fact, I
was there 5 times a day. Subtle message
was, perfunctory, I'm saying we, when in fact
I'm saying, you guys don't, but I do.
But out of For humility's sake, to project
a humble image, I would say,
we. We do not fast Ramadan.
We do not fast, you know, on the
side. Of course, everyone knew I was.
Or we don't grow beards. Well, I was
growing something there.
We're ashamed to dress like Muslims.
But there I was,
you know,
I was one of the most aggressive
speakers I've ever seen.
And that was probably my first mistake,
getting into giving speeches. And now you brothers
know why, and sisters know I'm so reluctant
to give speeches today, because speech making is
one of the most dangerous things you could
do,
especially to somebody who's new in the faith.
When you stand in front of an audience
like this,
the challenge is to sincerity.
The challenge is to telling what you feel
is the truth.
When you feel all this pressure to can
make your opinion conform to the masses in
front of you. That type of challenge of
sincerity is so great,
that you find yourself compromising yourself time and
time again, unless you could be very careful.
Unless for months you build up the strength
to get up there and hopefully represent.
And you never really know. There's times I
get off the stage and say, was I
honest today?
It's very difficult.
But the worst thing is, I fell into
the speech making trap very early on.
People saw me and they looked at me
and they said, my God, this guy has
blonde hair, blue eyes,
6 feet tall, this guy is perfect.
People used to come up to me, you
know, with your blond hair and blue eyes,
if I took you to my country and
you gave a speech, people would start crying,
etcetera, etcetera.
The first time this happened
was I was at a meeting much like
this one, and I was sitting in the
audience, much like you are.
This will only take about 15 more minutes.
I know you're all tired.
I was sitting in an audience much like
this one.
Suddenly, I realized that the speaker was mentioning
my name and I heard it over the
loud speaker.
Suddenly, I was alert and listening to what
he was saying.
He was obviously inviting me to come up
on stage
and tell my story.
I'd only been a Muslim for a couple
of months.
As I as he was saying, and doctor
Lang,
would you please come up now? I was
standing there shaking my head going,
no, please, please.
The reason I didn't wanna get up there
is because I knew
that I didn't belong there. I knew that
I was still struggling a lot against many
difficult vice that I had acquired over those
28 years of being a non Muslim.
I knew that I, by far, had not
perfected myself yet to any degree.
And that I really was ashamed of myself
and truly at that moment, extremely humbled, I
didn't wanna get on that stage.
I wasn't any hero. I was somebody desperate
who took a leap,
who did that converted out of desperation.
And I certainly wasn't very brave about it
at all.
But in any case, I got up,
and I told just about the same story
I just told you,
that I began this speech.
And the reaction was amazing.
I looked at that audience,
and I never saw so much so many
tears dripping down people's faces
ever before in my life. I gave a
lot of math lectures, but I never got
that reaction.
As I stepped down from the audience, I
was surrounded by all these faces and tears
and embraces.
I was getting exhausted, I was being pulled
from one person to the next, hug, the
triple the triple hug routine.
Kissed on my face, tears dripping on my
face. I never saw anything like it before
in my life.
I was just trying to get to my
car. It took me 45 minutes to get
through the hall to get to my car.
I was still dragging brothers with me into
the car. As I got in the car
and drove away.
But that was the worst thing for me.
Because when I went to give that speech
on the stage, when I walked up to
that stage and delivered that speech, at least
I was in a stage of sincerity, of
of honesty, of humility.
When I got off that stage and saw
that reaction,
I felt loved.
I felt important.
I felt like I was gonna be the
next Mahdi or something.
You know, there's a saying about
every 100 years there comes a reformer, I
thought, well, it's 1402
in Islamic calendar.
It's amazing what something like that could do
to you.
Suddenly, you go from serving God
to serving yourself.
So easy f And when you're in that
state of vulnerability, when you're in state of
loneliness, when you're in that state of isolation,
to slip into those feelings.
I needed that.
And I would do anything to keep it.
And
so I became a speaker like you've never
seen before.
And combined with my own
insecurities
and paranoia,
like I said, I gave very,
very violent difficult speeches.
You know, there's lots of infighting in the
Muslim community.
In my particular community, there was a real
battle between the Tabliki Jamaat,
the Celafis,
the Mus the MSA, Muslim Brotherhood, etcetera. They
were really worrying it out with each other
at those days.
And I found little by little, I was
being dragged from one group to the next.
And as I did, I became a spokesman
for that group. Here I was, a Muslim
convert of only several months. And when I
was at the Tabliki Jema, I was I
was exclaiming
and proclaiming that there's only one way.
Meaning this way, of course, the group I
had joined
to the exclusion of all others.
Notice how I became very exclusivist.
You push people away and elevate yourself.
Whether you do it consciously or subconsciously,
you find yourself falling into the trap.
Then I went with the selfie group for
a while. I got burned out on the
tablikijima.
I couldn't keep with them.
They
they really
they really go at
it. And I became exhausted.
I remember once, on one Saturday, I just
couldn't take it anymore. I was so burnt
out that I I asked the brothers to
give me a ride down to the bus
station. They said no, so I I just
picked up my things. I walked down myself
5 miles, got to the bus station, I
went back to San Francisco.
And I'm not putting down the brothers, by
the way. I'm not criticizing the organizations. I'm
just letting you know what my mindset was.
They probably do very good things,
but I wasn't doing very good things to
myself.
Next thing I know, I found myself with
the Salafi brothers,
and I'm not criticizing this organization.
And I certainly don't wanna get involved in
the Shia Sunni controversy. I don't even wanna
discuss
it. But this was a big issue back
in those days.
The Iran Iraq war was really going,
lots of people were dying on both sides,
heavy propaganda being put out by both sides.
I fell into sort of the propaganda put
out by one side, and I began reading
it and then
giving speeches about it in the messenger.
Then I had a very excited audience listening
to me, and they gave me a lot
of support.
My my speeches would become so enraged,
and I would get so excited.
I remember saying once that,
I forget exactly how I put it, but
I put something like that the greatest
danger to Islam
today and at any time in its history
is
Shias.
And I said, right after that, it is
a what did I call it? A virulent
parasite
in the body of the Muslim community.
Well those are pretty strong words.
And as I walked down, stepped down, and
I was walking out of the Masjid that
night,
a brother from Iraq stopped me.
And he said to me, brother, can I
talk to you for a minute?
I said, certainly, please go ahead.
I knew this was a Sunni audience.
He said,
I'm a Sunni Muslim,
and I grew up in Iraq, but my
whole family are Shia.
And most of the things you said are
just not true.
I never heard any of those before.
You see,
what I read and what I was repeating
and reciting,
I knew was propaganda.
I mean, I have been around universities my
whole life.
I know when something is written critically and
analytically,
and a scholar is try striving after objectivism,
and I know when somebody is just selling
you a bag of goods.
And I knew from my experience that what
the information I was relying on was not
really careful
scholarship.
It was very weak scholarship.
When I went back and researched the matter
more carefully, I found out that a lot
of things I was saying were exaggerations,
were things taken out of context.
A lot of things I was spouting out
were half truths.
A lot of those things I was saying
and declaiming
were true at one time with particular Muslim
*, but those * no longer
existed. I don't wanna get involved in the
controversy, and I certainly don't wanna discuss the
differences of point of view. But I'm trying
to help you understand
that what I was doing was very self
destructive
because I was knowingly
I was knowingly and willingly
closing my eye to truth.
I came to Islam by critical study,
by weighing and comparison.
Comparing.
Reading what Muslims had to write about Islam,
reading what non Muslims had to write about
Islam, reading what Muslim scholars had to write
about it and orientalists had to write about
it. And by comparing the arguments back and
forth, back and forth, back and forth,
and by analyzing them, and studying the Quran,
very closely and critically,
I became a Muslim.
And now at this stage of my life
I was tossing all that behind,
and becoming a fire and brimstone,
ranting and raving,
Muslim version of almir gantry, if you knew
what I, what I'm talking about.
And I was
purposely
allowing myself
to not be more critical in my approach
because I wanted to be loved.
You know that verse in the Quran?
The first one that talks about Satan, the
originator of sin?
What is his flaw?
Pride.
And it was pride and weakness and insecurity,
self centeredness
that was allowing me to do that.
I decided never to attack
another group of Muslims again.
I would still give speeches in the mosque
and lectures about how nobody lives up to
the demands of faith,
except me, of course.
I continued to give those.
But now I I directed my attack towards
Christians.
Christians and Jews.
My first wife was Jewish. I knew that
a lot of things about Jews that people
say are not true,
but I became one of the greatest
Jewish
haters in
America.
Against Christians, I used all the famous arguments
that we use against fundamentalist Christians.
You know, the arguments you see on tapes
and things. I'm not complaining about the arguments.
But brothers and sisters, I knew better.
I've studied Christianity.
I know what modern Christian scholars think.
And the arguments that we often use are
arguments that were first developed
by very critical, very good Muslim scholars.
They gave very elaborate arguments for their positions.
Of whom am I speaking?
The arguments that we use today, most of
us are using and repeating
when we argue with fundamentalist Christians,
are arguments that were developed many centuries ago.
And what we are often using are boiled
down, digested
versions of them that are nowhere as good
as
the versions produced by those scholars.
But more importantly, Christian thought has changed a
lot in the last several centuries.
Christian scholars
no longer think
the way Christian scholars did 7 centuries ago.
The arguments
that Ibn Hazm used against Christian scholars
no longer apply because Christian scholars have evolved,
they've changed their opinions over the years. It
might work against an ignorant Christian, someone who
doesn't know anything about modern Christian doctrine.
But the arguments will not work against a
legitimate Christian scholar.
You've you've probably seen it many times when
you see a Muslim speaker
get against a real Christian scholar, not Jimmy
Swagger,
because he's not a scholar,
or one of these guys from the Zwemer
Institute,
a real Christian scholar, the argument seems to
go nowhere.
They're not communicating with each other. The Muslims
always say to me, is he purposely dodging
the arguments?
No. Because the arguments are not have nothing
to do with what he now feels.
His positions are different.
So we either have to update our knowledge
and learn those,
or else, when we do give some discussions
to most to the general audiences, we should
mention that this is not the opinion of
all Christians. There are many other opinions and
we should at least allow the audience to
know what the varied opinions are.
To be honest. But I wasn't doing that.
I was only letting them know a piece
of the picture.
It's only that I knew the audience were
probably unknowledgeable Christians.
And I was using arguments that I knew
would work against them.
Because they knew nothing of Christianity.
And they knew nothing of Christian scholarship.
And it worked.
They were impressed.
But I knew that I wasn't being wholly
honest.
But the Muslim audience was ready to carry
me out on their shoulders. They took me
as some sort of hero.
The Christian audience was completely shocked and afraid
of me.
But then I sort of experienced a turnaround,
for better or for worse. I don't know
how you feel about it.
And what made me
sort of back
off? And remember, by now I was a
real extremist. I mean, I was extreme as
they come.
Well, are you exhausted?
What made me back off? Well, first thing
is is that
even though I was becoming more and more
extreme, even though my practices
were the hardest and the harshest of almost
any member in our community,
Even though I could out pray, out fast,
outperform
almost any brother there was,
I was feeling terribly empty inside.
My prayers, I didn't feel hardly anything anymore.
I felt like I was distant from God.
I felt lost.
I felt lonely from God.
I remember the days when I first converted,
when I was nobody,
when I was nothing,
when I had no good practice,
when I was still had many, many wrongs
that I had to correct. I remember those
days that I made the Shahada, just took
that Shahada even though I know that I
had to struggle against so much inside myself.
I remember how beautiful and how sweet and
how powerful
those prayers were. I recall that wonderful,
beautiful,
fantastic divine embrace.
That feeling like you're in the presence of
this tremendous
love. I remembered that.
I missed it terribly.
No matter how good I felt I was
becoming,
I wasn't feeling anything anymore.
Like when I was bad,
but struggling.
And then second,
Grant helped straighten me out,
in a very strange way.
Grant converted
sort of a month after I
we
we were just like 2 peas in a
pod. Our ways of thinking, everything were identical.
It was so great. He was the first
American Muslim I saw
ever. I mean, of course, it was only
a month, but I wouldn't see another one
for another 6 months. He seemed like the
only other yep, American Muslim of European descent
in the world.
And we got along great. There's something about
somebody from your own culture.
Sometimes, you could share an idea just by
a glance.
Well, it might take you an hour to
explain it to somebody else, it's not from
your background.
This is how close we were. We ate
dinner together, we did everything together. We analyzed
each other together. We helped
criticize each other in a positive sense, our
growth and development in the religion.
He was for me a true brother. I
helped him and he helped him. And I
I helped him and he helped me.
In any case, I got married.
And I sort of you know how it
is when you first get married, you're very
busy. I lost track
contact with Grant for a while.
And then one day, I invited him over
for
dinner. And there we were, sitting there.
I was I was now a Muslim for
almost 3 years.
And I said, so Grant, how have you
been? I mean, I haven't seen you for
several months.
He said to me, Jeff, I left a
religion.
I was in shock.
What it was he trying to do to
me? I thought, what do you mean you
left a religion?
It's just not working out. So actually, this
is the second time I left a religion.
First time, I just got burnt out. I
left it for a few months. This time,
I've converted to Buddhist.
And I was just so hurt, I hardly
even heard any of his explanation.
But that moment caused me to search deep
inside myself.
I had to determine why I was a
Muslim.
I had to retrace my footsteps. I had
to go back and remember
why I committed myself to this religion. I
had to do a tremendous amount of soul
searching
and find myself again.
Grant helped me in one final way.
He came to a speech my speech I
gave to Christian audience a few months later.
It was the usual fire and brimstone,
Christians, you're
you're not worthy speech.
It was the usual, humiliate the Christian speech.
After the speech,
I met Grant. Grant was in the audience,
I was to my surprise.
I said,
Grant and I went out for coffee. Grant,
how did it go?
And when I asked Grant that, I wasn't
looking for,
for praise.
Grant knew when I asked him that question,
he knew that I really wanted his sincere
response. That's the kind of relationship we had.
He said, Jeff,
that audience of Muslims,
they don't wanna hear what you have to
say.
They wanna hear what they have to say,
they just want you to say it.
And that's what you're doing,
and you're sounding irrational.
And it was the best thing he could
have ever done for me
because it made me realize
that I was not on the right
track. So these three things
made me decide
I gotta start from scratch.
Gotta get away from the pressure.
I gotta get away from all the groups.
I gotta get away from all the in
fighting. I gotta stop trying to be what
I'm not. I have to go back and
be what I am, to define myself again.
And find that
light that brought me back to Islam. And
that love and power and that greatness
that is that Islam could bring out in
a person, rather than what my ego could
bring out in me.
So what did I do?
I decided to stay away from the mosque.
For 7 months, I didn't go to the
mosque, except for Friday prayers.
I went for Friday prayers.
I just kept up with my worship,
but I did a lot of soul searching,
a lot of reading, a lot of study,
a lot of long walks, even 10 miles
some days.
And I really thought very deeply about
my progress or lack of it in the
religion.
The brothers, of course, sisters were nervous.
They would call my wife, what's happening to
your husband?
Alright. Is he relieving the religion? The brothers
too were extremely nervous. Where is he going?
What's the matter with
Jeff? What's the matter with doctor Jeffrey?
You know, I knew that was gonna be
the reaction, but I had to find myself.
And so I took that 7 month vacation.
After about 7 months, I noticed 1 Friday
in a Friday prayer that there was a
new brother in the mosque.
His name was Matthew.
He certainly quickly took the name Khaled shortly
after that.
We really hit it off right from the
start. He was younger than me,
but he was new to the religion. And
he always had questions he was asking me
again and again and again. Got me involved
again in the community. I started coming more
often, mostly to be of help. See, I
have a younger brother made Matt named Matthew.
He's 6 years younger than me. This Matthew
was also 6 years younger than me. Well,
I like my younger brother.
And he had a personality just like him.
I just instantly loved this guy.
And so so I stayed, just like with
my younger brother, I stayed very close to
him. I didn't wanna tell him where to
go or what to do or what direction
to go in. I thought every person has
to learn that for themselves.
But I did try to
at least warn him about potential dangers along
the way.
I've seen people go to the extreme end
of things and do it very successfully and
seem to be very happy. It didn't work
for me. It might work for Matthew, I
don't know.
But at least if I felt that he
might be slipping or hurting, I wanted to
be there to help.
So I came to the Masjid
quite often those days. And Matthew and I
became very very close.
And he had a wife, I had a
wife. He had 2 children, I had 2
at the time. We were a perfect match.
So we were always together. Picnics, everything. It
was working out great. Matthew converted to Islam,
then his daughter did.
His son, Alex I won't mention his name.
His son also did. He was only a
couple of months old.
But, you know,
he considered and converted to his son.
His wife needed some work.
I volunteered to help,
explain things to her at least, but not
push her.
Several months later, she converted to Islam, an
entire family of converts,
and we were extremely close.
Well,
it was now about 4 years into my
conversion,
and I was feeling sort of smothered by
the community.
And I needed to get away.
I can't explain it, brothers, but I just
felt that I just couldn't stay in that
community anymore. They were good brothers, but they
had known me from the start and I
was
just not feeling good about it anymore.
So I decided to move away from San
Francisco.
I looked for jobs. I got a job
at Lawrence, Kansas at the University of Kansas.
I decided to jump at it. I took
it. It also meant a slight increase of
pay. But frankly, my biggest reason for leaving
was I needed to get away from that
my first Muslim community,
sad to say.
And so I left.
But before I left, I would see Matthew
quite often.
Like I said, Matthew took the name Khaled.
And then he named all the members in
his family with Arabic names. I told him,
Matthew, please. I mean,
you don't have to go that far. He
said, no. I'm gonna We're gonna change our
names legally. All of us.
I said, yeah, I know. But you have
a child, 6 years old. You know, children
are kinda confused about their identity and, you
know, this could be a beard a burden
greater than she could bear. Maybe you should
take it easy about that.
He said, no. I'm gonna do it and
that's it. I could already see Matthew was
becoming extremely tough. I admired him for it,
but I was also worried about him.
He was extremely zealous.
I told him, look, you have a perfectly
beautiful name. Matthew means a gift from God.
Khaled
is also a wonderful name. It's one of
the great Muslim generals and leaders,
one of the companions of the prophet, peace
be upon him. But there's nothing wrong with
the name Matthew.
It's a beautiful name. It means a gift
from God. Your daughter's name is a beautiful
name. It's not offensive to the idea of
the oneness of God.
Salman al Farsi never changed his name to
an Arabic name, neither did Bilal.
Why are you doing this?
He said, well and then he gave reasons.
And there were good reasons. I want the
people in the community to be at ease
with me and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
I said, okay, fine. But give your daughter.
Let her make that decision herself.
No, I'm going to do it. And he
did.
Later on, I found out at another dinner,
he got his wife and his daughter, 6
year old daughter, to cover their hair.
And she did,
out of respect for her parents.
And she went to school that way. I
remember that dinner very well because there was
another couple there.
And
the fellow asked his 6 year old daughter,
what's your name, sweetie?
What's your name, honey?
She just froze there. She didn't know how
to answer.
He asked again,
the mom and dad sitting there. Her mom
and dad sitting there looking at her sternly.
What's your name, honey?
She was very uneasy.
Please, what's your name? Can't you tell me
your name? She looks up very nervously.
Ayesha?
She had a very difficult time pronouncing it.
The parents nodded their approval.
Well, she had a difficult time at school.
They took her out of school for a
while and put her in a Muslim school.
I don't know what didn't work out there.
There was a lot of fighting, a lot
of conflict in the community. It wasn't working
out. They put her back in public school
again.
Still making having her cover her hair. She
received a lot of abuse from the children.
It was a very difficult time for her.
Finally, when we left
San, San Francisco,
I had one last dinner at Matthew's,
Khaled's house.
And when I when we went over, I
noticed that this time we were segregated.
Well, he had several families over, but the
men were all sitting in one room and
the women in another.
Now, I told him, Matt Khaled
and that's the way I usually did things.
Matt Khaled, because Matt is such a
close personal name for me.
Matt Hallett,
why are you doing this?
I mean, is it really necessary?
He said, what do you mean? It's demanded
by the religion.
I said I said, I'm not trying to
sway you, but it might not be, I
said.
I mean, for example, I mean, in Imam
Malik's Muwaddah, in the section about etiquettes of
dining.
Imam Malik writes that,
and I'm not trying to argue with your
brothers a case, I just want you to
understand my mindset at the time.
I said, Imam Malik writes that there's no
problem if males and females, a woman eats
in the presence of men,
as long as a male relative is present.
And he gives examples like an uncle or
a brother or something like that.
And then he says, this is the sunnah
of the people of Medina.
In those days, they didn't make differentiate so
much. The sunnah didn't exclusively mean the sunnah
of the prophet in the early law books,
peace be upon him. Could also mean the
prac the local practice of the community.
But in the 2nd century, Imam Malik, I
told him, was writing that this is not
what we do in Medina.
200 years into the history of Islam.
And I've quoted for him hadith where men
and women seem to be present in the
same room.
He said, Yes, but there are also hadith
where they're not. I said I know, it
seemed to be an anarchic practice. Some some
people did it, some people didn't. Didn't seem
to be a big issue.
You know, it didn't seem to be written
down that everyone had to.
Some some of the companions did, some of
them didn't.
So what?
In your case, why why are you adopting
the hardest line?
Like I said, I'm not I don't wanna
get embroiled in an argument about this
after. I'm just presenting my argument to Matt.
Sorry. I don't I really don't wanna deal
with it. But in any case,
Matthew
I'm not reading. Matthew,
he continued on. I left San Francisco.
Hamid says I have to get done in
5 minutes.
He doesn't like this line of line of
talk. But in any case,
when I arrived in Lawrence, Kansas, I wanted
to keep contact with the brothers back in
San Francisco. It's natural. You're new to a
town. So I kept contact with them by
phone.
Grant, I tried like crazy to get in
touch with. With. But Grant, I realized, was
being kicked out of his house. He had
lost his job.
He felt he was gonna end up a
street person. I don't know if he ever
did or not, but nobody ever saw him
again.
And he was one of the closest friends
I've ever had.
And then
we spoke to Matthew,
Khaled.
And we spoke to him and his wife,
and it turns out their daughter became very
ill. She lost very lot of weight. She
had to be hospitalized
with eating disorder.
And that was the first great shock to
their family. Shortly after that, we heard a
couple months later that
Matthew had resigned from the leadership of the
Masjid. He was the leader for a while.
Several months later, we heard that he had
completely left the Muslim community, his wife told
us. Long aft in that conversation, she didn't
know how long she was gonna hang out,
hang in there.
Finally, we heard a few months after that,
we couldn't get in touch with them. They
had their number enlisted and they moved.
But the last anybody in the community remembers,
and they were pretty unanimous on this, is
that the whole family had, renounced Islam.
Well, needless to say, that was some of
the most depressing news I ever heard.
And I guess I just felt tremendous
pain
and hurt.
Not because 2 people left Islam. Believe me
brothers and sisters, I saw many, many
people come
and almost as many leave.
I've seen lots of converts,
and I've seen lots of people go back.
More than more than not.
It's just that these 2 were such close
personal friends. We had grown in this religion
together. We
we were just extremely close. I felt such
hurt, such pain, such anger,
and I didn't even know who to direct
it to.
At first, I felt anger towards the community.
But then I thought, my goodness, they're going
through their own crisis.
They're going through their own problems. They're going
through their own crisis
experience. Why should I blame them?
And then I felt angry at people like
me and Matthew and or Khalid and Grant.
Isn't isn't it Muslim name was Saladin for
a while.
Because we go to such extremes
as Grant did.
For several months, he was worse than I
was.
And we put ourselves under such pressure, and
then we can't take it and we burn
out.
But then I thought,
what's the use of being angry at anybody?
There's no blame you could give anybody.
So I just felt hurt.
I felt hurt at the loss of Grant,
And I felt hurt at the loss of
my brother Matthew,
who for me, at one time,
really was
a gift from God,
at a stage when I really needed one.
And so I wanna end this by just
sharing with you
a few thoughts I wrote down right around
that time. And the night that I was
extremely depressed,
I just wrote a couple of lines in
my diary
about a good friend of mine
and our experiences together. And I wrote it
very briefly, it takes 3 minutes, Hamid. It's
a page and a half,
and I'll share it with you.
It's somewhat incoherent. You have to remember this
is sort of like what you would expect
in a diary.
Maybe yes. And and I'll end with this.
He hates to have me read from my
notes, but I'm a writer. And once you
write something,
you can never say it as good again.
So this is just about Grant, and I'll
end with this.
Grant lived on the outskirts of the Mission
District in San Francisco, one of the poorest
sectors of the city, where he rented the
bottom floor of a small aging 2 story
house.
It had been his home for over a
decade, and thanks to rent control, was too
good a bargain to let go of.
Even if the neighborhood was steadily deteriorating, and
it was.
A block from his flat, and from the
turnpike was the San Francisco Islamic Center, which
in more prosperous times, probably was a warehouse,
and which could still be easily mistaken for
one. Unless one happened to see the small
marker above the side entrance.
Grant walked past that center almost every day
on his way to the bus stop, so
he knew what it was and why Middle
Eastern and Indo Pakistani costumed men frequented there.
His fascination with religions led him to his
first first visit to the center, which would
inevitably lead to his conversion. For Grant would
never be fully satisfied with a religion until
he immersed himself in it. He wanted to
experience it through and through.
His fascination oh, I said that. He proceeded
as always, cautiously,
requiring several visits before he made his shahada.
It's better to take your time before deciding,
they warned him, because the penalty for leaving
Islam is death.
Grant ignored the death threat.
I met Grant a week after his conversion,
which was about 3 weeks after mine. And
at that time he was only the 2nd
white American Muslim I had ever seen.
6 months later he quit Islam for a
short time, then returned to it.
A year after that he left it again
to join the Sikhs for a short stint.
Then he became a Buddhist.
Before Islam, he had tried several other religions,
Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism,
among them. But tonight he was in limbo
again, neither here nor there.
He's had no religion at that time. He
told me, I change religions more often than
I change my socks.
But for Grant, it was hardly a joke.
It was one failure after another to quench
his love for God, to find a community
of faith where that love could be known
and lived.
Islam has the best religion, he said, but
the worst believers.
He was quoting a well known Muslim writer.
I didn't completely agree,
but I never had much hope in humanity
anyway.
Yet for Grant, the religious community was as
least as important as the religion's ideology.
For me, the ideology was all that mattered.
Through as many conversions we remained friends, and
we frequently had dinner together, before and after
I got married. And our conversations almost always
led to religion.
Our strong friendship, together with his rejection of
Islam, and his general undecidedness
about religions, had me always scrutinizing
and questioning my own commitment, and I learned
a lot about about myself from it.
Grant, for me, in a very strange,
weird way became a spiritual guide.
Asking questions I hadn't thought of, but I
needed to.
Unintentionally forcing me to explore deeper and deeper
into myself through his conversations.
He was almost like a spiritual
hitter.
My blue eyed, sharp, and witty Irish green
pilot into so many contradictions.
What was it going to be like without
him, I thought, as I veered towards the
exit that would take us to his house.
I was dropping him off at his at
his house, I was leaving San Francisco, this
would be the last time I would see
him. Grant said, it's awfully hard to serve
God, Jeff, to truly serve
him. My first impulse was to agree with
him.
But the line between serving God and ourselves
is so infinitesimally
thin as I had come to learn.
Maybe we're more demanding than God is, Grant.
Maybe God only wants us to keep trying.
I do love God, Jeff, he told me.
I knew Grant was trying to explain.
Explained to me finally on our last time
we'd ever see each other why he left
the religion.
He knew it hurt me deeply, and he
was trying to address that hurt.
But by now, I had gotten over it.
I told him, Grant, there's no need to
explain.
I know you tried.
I know you searched hard.
Passing the Islamic Center on our left, we
made a right onto Ogden Street. I stopped
a car in front of Grant's apartment, turning
the tires into the curb.
Some people could express themselves so effortlessly.
They could capture, order,
analyze, interpret, and relate their feelings in a
single breath.
I hadn't planned any parting words, and if
I had, I probably would have told Grant
how glad I was to have known him.
How much I gained from our friendship, that
I looked forward to Kansas because a new
place is a chance to grow, but that
I would always remember him and miss him.
The dream which I wrote about in the
first chapter of this book, in which I
told you about
in the beginning of this lecture,
long sustained me through the turmoils and certainties
of conversion.
Kept remembering it, I wrote it down, so
that I would never forget it.
In time, the dream gave way to my
daily reading of the Quran,
supplanted by its captivating call from heaven. Somehow,
the the importance of the dream faded,
and the experience of reading the Quran daily
became more powerful.
Both both the dream and the reading of
the Quran are still very important to me.
But the experience of God's love in prayer
and contemplation
now far overshadow those. And yet I am
ever more aware of my weaknesses and failings.
And believe me, I have a ton of
them.
I know now that if I lose God
again, then I will have surely lost it
all.
And I plead like the famous famous poetess,
Rabia al Adawiyyah,
Oh, my God. Would you really burn this
heart that loves you so?
And I find comfort in her answer.
If you know the poem.
I walked Grant over to the stairway to
his apartment.
Take care of yourself and keep in touch,
I told him, as we shook hands.
Something in a moment told me, and I
think Grant too, that we would never hear
from each or see each other again.
Over the years, I tried calling him and
writing him. I had friends in the Bay
Area try to locate him, but to no
avail.
Assalamu Alaikum, Jeff.
He smiled assuringly.
Wa Alaikum Salamu WaRahmatullah.
And may God's peace and mercy be upon
you always.
And thank you so much for bearing with
me. Assalamu alaikum.
Sorry, I have to read it. It's a
long time.
May Allah bless you for this story. I
think, the purpose of,
giving this story is to learn from it.
I think he talked to us as an
outside
insider.
So talking from the inside and at the
same time, from the outside.
So this gives us a chance to learn
about the difficulties,
the journey,
and Insha'Allah it will help us take some
lessons
in making Dawah Insha'Allah.
Now you might be
sleepy, so let me maybe tell you a
joke in the Egyptian way, always
give jokes at this time.
One time,
the
No. I'm sure people love this time.
You're from Egypt, aren't you?
They
caught somebody from
Muslim Brotherhood.
They put him in jail,
and he was telling me some of the
funny stories that he had. And among them,
they
give him meat. It's
too, you know, too old. It cooks for
too long.
And he was telling me, they used to
tell them, we only respect this meat because
it's too old.
So,
they caught somebody with
the jail, and then they take him, they
took him out of jail. They found out
that he was a Christian.
So they
they hate him strongly,
and they said, a Christian and joining them
too, you deserve more.
We inshallah, we will take some questions. I
know it's too late,
but,
will not take too long inshallah.
Somebody wants
to,
speak, please come to the mic.
Brother, Shaker, he wanted to talk, so come
in.
Brother Jeffrey doesn't like,
arguments too much, so most of the things
he presented presented as part
of the history that he had in his
life.
So we don't want to go into elaborate
discussion
or anything of that sort.
Yes.
Yeah.
Can you do that one?
Please go ahead. K.
Out of the times,
I mean, the hard times you've been through,
you mentioned your friends who converted to, from
Islam.
Like, what thing that's,
kept you
from converting the most? What thing that stick
you the most to Islam?
The thing
yeah. Well, I mean,
no. Yeah. I'm I'm I don't mean that,
like, but just,
I want to know the thing that give
you the feeling that I should stay, I
shouldn't convert.
I have to think about that.
You do.
See, my, experience
of conversion was different than the others. The
other 2. Not better or worse. It's just
was different.
When I thought the question was why didn't
I leave?
Believe me, brother,
there were times when I thought about
it. There
were there were times when I definitely contemplated
just
going away, hiding somewhere, leaving this community, moving
to try to get a job at Purdue
University. Get away.
And just wherever I go not tell anybody
that I was ever a Muslim.
I mean, there were times when I just
wanted to be just Jeff Lang again. Where
where everybody would just relate to me like
they did in the old days when everything
would be familiar, when I would be everybody's
best boy, you know, guy.
The old, you know my professors used to
say, Jeff, you're such a red blooded American
boy. The typical
I wanted to be that again sometimes. I
really missed that camaraderie, that that friendliness.
There was always this barrier now. And also,
the Muslim community, I was having a very
difficult time fitting in. So there were many
times, as I mentioned in the speech, there
were many times I definitely contemplated leaving. I
gotta admit it.
And I thought about it long and hard
before and after I was married.
But, see, I mean, as I mentioned in
the first lecture today, and I don't say
this to get, you know, this is not
to gain credit or anything. It's just an
explanation.
I converted to Islam when I thought about
it. I converted to Islam on the
on my reading of the Quran.
And it was that experience of reading the
Quran
and coming to know
God and experiencing his
mercy and compassion and love and kindness
through that experience.
That's what made me a Muslim.
When I got through, I knew
better than I knew my own self. I
mean, this is a subjective statement. I'm not
pretending this is a scientific statement. But I
knew better than I knew my own self
that the Quran was a revelation of God.
That there was a God, this was his
revelation.
I knew it as as firmly as I
could walk with my feet on the ground.
So
the long and the short of what I'm
saying is I could run from a community.
I could even run for myself,
but I couldn't run from God.
You know, I I knew it.
I
I knew there was really nowhere to go.
I knew I had to stay.
Because like I said before, if I lose
that, I lose it all.
You know, so I couldn't leave. Know, even
no matter how strong was the inclination, I
had to stay. And believe me, the inclination
was strong. I'm I'm embarrassed to admit it,
but it was strong. But when push came
to shove, I knew there was nowhere to
go.
Okay.
Doctor
Jeff
or Jeff,
Matthew, or Khaled,
I have heard But the way that the
gift is the name is John.
I'm very grateful
for the opportunity to hear you.
To hear you speak without being asked,
and to speak your heart as
you've done. I enjoyed your presentation,
during the day.
I I I enjoyed this one even much
more.
And I would like to
just, if I may
I'm not gonna ask you a question, so
don't be scared.
And it's not gonna be a fiqh issue
that I'm gonna address,
so don't worry about it.
I'm really impressed,
with
the whole
struggle that you've gone through.
What I really want to share with you
and everybody here is that
this is
and I'm sure you know that, this is
what life is all about.
The pain you're through, the pain you've gone
through, the pain
that you will go through
is what life is all about.
And the simple
verse
that has summarized all of that
is just in Surat Al Balat.
I'm sorry.
O man, you are just struggling,
Painful struggle
and you will find it when you meet
your lord.
So
just hang in there
and life is not longer than what has
gone by.
And, Insha'Allah, we hope we meet you in
paradise. Thank you.
I would like to say one thing.
What you said
is not only
what you said is not the only one
experience. I'm a Muslim from Egypt.
I came 1979
with exactly what I'm wearing. I went to
Catholic University of America to continue my, master
degree.
All what you said, I experienced.
Not because of my Muslim, because of my
look also.
American did not accept me. I have to
struggle, or I struggled.
And I win the case. I'm graduate.
And they respect me the way I am.
So I want you to know, it's not
because you convert
your fighting
or your suffering. I think most of us.
Yes, ma'am.
Yeah. I mean, we're all sort of in
the same boat. Different
different we just walked in through different doors,
so to speak. Yeah.
I I think that
yes,
different.
Yes. From different oceans.
I yeah. I think that
every human being, like it says in the
Quran, you know, do you think you could
have entered paradise without having gone through what
those have gone through before you?
You know,
you got to you got to expect that
it's going to be difficult.
And the part the part I was trying
to make
is that biggest challenges sometimes come
from where you don't expect them.
You know, the biggest challenges usually are challenges
to sincerity,
to honesty.
Those are the most difficult ones.
You know, pride,
self centeredness,
ego.
That's that's what I was trying to
so that's the first thing I always tell
my new Muslim friends that, recently converted.
You know, I try to warn them. That's
gonna be the, I think, the most difficult
part.
But I would have appreciated if somebody told
me that when I converted. It would have
helped.
You know, if somebody said watch out for
this, you know. These are the sort of
traps that are there for you. Try to
be careful. Yeah.
Especially in a community which, like ours that
has so many conflicts, so many tensions, so
many pains.
Go ahead. Please. Mister Alvaro,
I must admit,
that I have been really moved
with your speech
and your
the eloquent words that you have been
used to express
the way that you came to Islam and
what have you.
However,
we must know the fact
that,
you have
came to Islam
not
because
yourself,
but because
Allah wanted you to be Muslim. And this
is as you believe in the Quran.
And at the same time, there is no,
compulsion in Islam.
You can be Muslim,
and you cannot be Muslim. And at the
same time,
Islam
has no
impact or significant
as to
individual.
Even the prophet himself,
alaihi salatu wa
sallam,
he came and died,
but Islam is still alive,
and since the time of Adam and the
time of Ibrahim alaihis salam.
And at the same time, your speech
remind me of other
prominent
famous individuals
who converted to Islam.
And it just really remind me of,
brother
Yousef Snap, Cat Steven,
the famous,
rock music
who,
shook the ground under those
who went in love with the rock music.
He came and the media here in Washington
DC, they asked him
the question,
why did you become Muslim and how you
became
a Muslim?
And he
answered, he said,
this question has been asked to me
100 and 100 of times.
But the simple answer is
that I search
and I search everywhere.
I could not find
one
religion
can satisfy me
as much
as I found it in Islam,
which is
I found
it 50%
convinced me that I could not find
any
percentage in any other religion.
This man, he you can I don't know
if you've seen him or not, but you
can see the faith
and the deep iman
in his behavior and his characteristic, and he
gave up all his fame?
He went through what you have been through.
He went to South Africa,
and he declared Islam there, he stayed 1
month in the community
of South Africa. Just one
second. They always have 1 month every year.
Everybody leaves his own
business
to
get together
and discuss Islam together, and during that time,
he became Muslim. What I'm saying is
that
Allah
will hopefully will give you
the power and the strength
to use that for your own
benefit.
Because
by being Muslim,
it's, it's a blessing to your own self.
And,
the final question is, what's your advice
to those brothers
who has been converted to Islam,
who are,
I should say,
white Anglo Saxon American that sometimes
one of them express the same feeling of
being lonely. What's your advice to them? And
what's your advice to the Islamic community?
How can they
help them to overcome
these obstacles?
Uh-uh. Let me just put
it for you.
Well,
I I think the advice would be more
or less the same to white or
black or Hispanic or whatever.
I think
basically, what happens is when a person converts
to Islam, those nearest to him,
he, in some sense, feels that there's suddenly
a barrier. So I think that loneliness,
that feeling of isolation, that feeling of unfamiliarity
is there for all of Americans when they
convert to Islam. I I think so.
My advice really is
to all
converts to Islam if I could give it,
although I I've gotten much better advice than
I give.
But,
my advice really is to not adopt
any and this is just simple. Not to
adopt any
position
or behavior
or
attitude
towards others
unless you're absolutely
certain that you must.
See, what we have a tendency to do
is we take on certain behaviors,
attitudes,
positions
without really being
just sort of we take them on, just
to sort of prove ourselves.
Then you get into difficult situation where then
you realize you might have been wrong, or
you feel that you're burning out, and then
you have to try to figure out some
way out of this corner you painted yourself
into.
And then you start to create a situation
much worse than you originally were trying to
avoid. Now everybody doubts you. What is he?
What? He's changing? He's going crazy. He's leaving
the religion, etcetera.
You know? And so you just deepen your
problem.
Also, in terms of integrity
and sincerity,
try to be sure of yourself before you
take on a behavior,
insist start insisting on things.
Before you start making personal judgments,
try to be very
sure of your information.
Try to
not just,
you know, jump into something without giving it
really deep. And if you have just a
wrinkle of doubt,
don't take a position. You
know, give yourself time. You know, you you
end
up,
you know, creating fewer barriers for yourself.
You know, I really honestly, the best advice
I could give to the Muslim community when
it comes to converts,
kinda leave them alone.
Don't try to impose a particular
way of thought on them.
You know, when I became a Muslim, these
these were grabbed one guy would grab me
over here and say, you know, why don't
you come over to my house for dinner
tonight? I have to talk to you. And
I'd get there and he would be trying
for several hours to get me to understand
Islam his way.
I would go to the Masjid the next
day, another brother would say, come you have
to come over my house for dinner. And
he knew what the other brother probably was
saying, and he wanted to correct me so
that I would understand it his way.
And I found myself being dragged from here
to here to here.
It's very bad. Also, don't put the person
on stage.
Speeches
could kill a person. You could destroy a
person's sincerity in a in a instant.
That's why I keep telling brother Hamid, brother
Hamid, I don't wanna speak anymore.
You know, honestly. But, sometimes I do. But,
you know, it's really difficult.
I think we would kindly ask you, we
wanna conclude. So Yes, please.
These two questions came from the systems. And,
no. I wanted to conclude, but I'll give
you the option of answering one of them.
We, found this,
watch.
It belongs to any brother or sister.
I think it was found
the brother's restroom, sir. It should be for
a brother.
Oh, this is a very good question. If
you would please come and, pick it up.
You know one thing you did,
good today? Yeah. I didn't talk about Florence
Kansas.
It's my own town.
Purdue is very nice. It's my alma mater.
He's working.
Oh, I love Purdue.
Purdue. The boilermakers.
Let me see. This,
this note says
many African American
many African Americans are influenced,
and become Muslims through nationalism.
What do you believe will be a formidable
influence to lead
Euro Americans to Islam here in America?
They can't all stumble into it by accident.
Is this true? Can you explain the question?
Well, the question is is that
many,
African American Muslims, if if I understand this
correctly,
have been
one of the motivations that gets
African American people in America interested in Islam
is
there's a number of issues, but it seems
to indicate that and I hope you could
you'll correct me if I'm wrong. So, sort
of
searching for a cultural,
identity background. Number 1. Number 2, it's also
very much a movement in the black American
community, in the,
Islam.
And so,
many African Americans
see that as a real viable
movement and option.
More or less. Am I right or wrong?
I'm not a black Afri I'm not an
African American, so it's difficult for me to
to be quite accurate about. But it's something
for that effect. There's strong motivation within that
community to consider Islam,
right?
As an alternative way of life.
And it's a strong alternative.
And there's a considerable
community.
But in the you'll notice that,
there are very few European American Muslims
and most of enter leave.
What
would be some way What would be a
formidable influence similar to the one I just
mentioned for the African American community?
What would be a formal influence
on American Muslims? I mean, Americans to get
them to
think about Islam
as
a as, you know, to really consider it
seriously.
That's a difficult question. I haven't really thought
about it
average
European American sees himself as this is his
culture.
It's a prejudicial
position,
but he sees this as
his. America was founded by his forefathers.
They may have had to practically wipe out
the American Indian population to do it, but
he sees it as his structure.
He sees it as a superior structure.
He sees it as an intellectual leader.
He sees that the European American is superior
in his mind.
So it's very hard
to get
him or her
to take a close look at Islam. Because
he is he or she has already put
it in their mind that we have we're
apparently superior.
What do I need another system for? We're
leading the world.
Why do I have to consider Islam?
Look at these dictatorships in Muslim lands.
We have freedom
here. Look, they're depending on our intellectual achievements
to improve their countries.
We're sending our scholars over there. We have
great scholars.
And he sees them as
European American mostly, or European strongly European American
influence. So this strong feeling of superiority
is difficult to get them to consider Islam
as a
seriously.
Now
there was a famous
western scholar of religion
called
C. G.
Jung, and he once wrote something that is
extremely true.
That
the ideas
of the scholars, I told this to one
brother today,
eventually become
the ideas
of the
masses. If you want to convince a dominant
culture
of something
you have to convince
their scholars, their intellectual leaders.
So if you want to win
to get
European American
Americans to seriously consider this is this religion,
you have to challenge them intellectually.
You have to show that this religion
deserves to be considered on an intellectual level.
You have to show them and that's why
I gave give speeches about questions of faith
and reason. Questions about Islam
and philosophical problems.
Questions about Islam and Western objections to religion.
Because I think that if we are ever
to
get
European American culture to seriously consider this religion,
or Western European culture to seriously consider it
a religion, or even Japanese culture to seriously
consider the religion, Or even most cultures, because
most are now have are very anxious to
adopt western culture.
If we're going to do that, then we're
gonna have to make a scholarly intellectual case
for the religion.
And that means producing
real
scholars
who could relate to people in the West
in ways that they could relate to.
With the same critical standards,
the same
attempt at objectivity,
the same compelling
type of case,
same scrutiny,
criticism,
etcetera. I know that type of scholarship is
always culturally biased. That's
and to some extent unavoidable.
But at least the attempt is usually made.
If we're going to do that, we're going
to have to win this case intellectually,
which means that our children, because I don't
think this generation could do it very well,
we have to hope our children produce that
type of scholar. That they become educated,
that they are both American and Muslim, and
that they could take this case to the
halls of learning
because that will then influence the culture.
Influence the culture. There's currently political correct movement
in the United States.
These were ideas held by university professors for
the last 50 years.
It takes time.
And if Muslims are gonna have an effect
they're gonna have to win that case there.
We have to produce writers, we have to
produce intellectuals, we have to produce scholars.
We have to start doing this job seriously.
Getting up and screaming about our religion and
cheerleading is not gonna take us very far.
Okay. Thank thank you for that beautiful question.
The last question is and I'll stop with
this. You don't want me to do this
question? No. You started it. Okay. When we
give dawah to non Muslims,
how can we avoid falling into con the
common trap of being defensive?
And sometimes even apologetic about our certain aspects
of Islam?
What is the ultimate purpose of Dua in
your opinion?
Well, I'll just say briefly. I've never really
set out to
convert anyone.
Because, personally from my own experience, I know
that I never have converted anybody to any
to to Islam in my life.
Because we don't convert to Islam.
God
guides.
But our job is to deliver
the perspective as sincerely,
honestly, as accurately as we can.
I think we fall into problems of apologeticism.
I think we fall into various traps, defensive
traps, by
giving ourselves too much credit.
We assume that if we have the right
strategy,
if we address the right issue, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera, will
somehow, within our power, win this person over.
But, actually, I think the most I'm sorry.
I won't be able to take that question.
I think the most effective thing we could
do is
sincerely
and honestly
express our
living of the religion,
our experience
of the religion. Because most of us are
not scholars, but we do have a lit
a very rich experience of faith.
If we sincerely and honestly share that with
others,
with no punches pulled,
but
being respectful of the people's opinion and their
mentality,
I think that's the most successful. If you
remember my st- that story I told you
about when I converted to Islam,
They were talking to me about thick issues.
They were talking to me about punishment in
the grave. They were talking about believe me,
if they kept along those lines I wouldn't
be a Muslim today.
What was the question that influenced me?
What is your relationship to God?
Suddenly all their strategizing
stopped.
And this guy just lowered his head and
pulled out from his heart
his most sincerest and deepest
feelings about himself and God. That moved me.
That was the catalyst.
I think if you when you could reach
that level of sincerity and
not they're not fooled. People are are not
easily fooled. They know when you're trying to
convert
them. But if you just sincerely and honestly
share your perceptions and your experience
with no effort to try to win this
person over but leaving that up to God,
I think you'll
be you'll benefit humanity much better and benefit
yourself much better. I'm sorry this took so
long. I thought it was an important question.
I thank you so much. I'm very tired.
You're very tired.
Assalamu alaikum.
Have a good night.
Sis,
and then,
we'll we'll Will tomorrow be okay?
Inshallah.
And will you have the hamma for fajr
prayer at 5
45?
I'll be close so that the people go
and then you