Religious Extremists on Devon?

I want to share an experience I recently underwent that really helped solidify a preexisting stance that I had on an approaching dawah or calling to the way of God.  I have a cat and she is sweet and playful.  I love to chase her around my house trying to catch her as she craftily works her way over to her favorite petting spot in our home.  Every know and then I am able to trick her and put an obstacle in her typical escape route.  She runs because she feels like she is on the defensive.  She isn’t sure what to expect from me and attempts to get to a place where she feels comfortable and secure.   When she hits this unexpected roadblock in her escape route she quickly does a 180 degree turn and looks me stern in the eye.   As I get closer, this wonderful cat changes it’s personality by hissing and raising its claws in ultimate defense mode.  I suppose this is where the saying of “cornered like a cat” comes from.  Something beautiful and enjoyable can easily turn into something mean and irrational when placed in a situation of feeling “cornered.”

The same is true for humans.  I was on Devon wearing a shirt that said “sabr” (patience) in Arabic script.  As I was walking to my destination a woman passed me and said “Excuse me sir, Excuse me sir, I read your shirt and it says “sabr”.  Can you please explain to me what this “sabr” means.”  I asked her, “You can read arabic but you don’t know what this common term means?”  How obvious can you be that you are trying to play someone? It instantly registered with me that she was an Arab Christian who then attempted to proselytize me.  In my opinion, her points were ridiculous and actually entertained me.  My purpose for writing this is not to highlight her flaws in thinking, but rather something more important.  Although her thinking was flawed, her methodology was more flowed and was actually offensive.  Here I am, on DEVON, Pakistani part of devon on my way to an EXTREMELY important meeting and some woman decides she has the right to not only interrupt my day’s business but also offend me.

Her methodology was this:

1. To assess my level of knowledge/intellect.  How did she do this? She asked me to define terminology in an attempt to see if I would trip myself up.  What terminology you might ask? Allah, who is Allah? Sabr, what is sabr? You follow Muhammad, don’t you know what kind of man he was?  She was trying to find out if I was knowledgeable or if I was susceptible to her weak arguments. 

2. To affirm that her perspectieve was superior to mine by demeaning mine.  This was done by her talking AT me rather than WITH me.  She said things like  ”Where do you get your sabr/patience? Surely Jesus the lord must have given you patience and he gives all to everything.”

3. To pass out literature to convince me of what her words could not.  She said “I hope by the lord Jesus Christ that you will read this pamphlet.”  I said, “I would love to read this booklet, thank you very much!  I hope that you too will show respect towards me and pick up the Qur’an to read.”  She said, “I have already done that!”  I replied “And I have read several pamphlets by evangelists as well as the bible and many other books of Christian theology, but it is of my ettiquettes to respect you, your papers, and your faith and I will unquestionably read your pamphlet regardless of whether or not I already know the information.”  At that I said, “May God protect you” and walked away. 

4. When all else failed, to insult my beliefs.  As I walked away she repeated “Your prophet married a 9 year old and is a dirty pedophile!”  (For the record, I set her straight about this earlier in our discussion when I told her that her Christian Arab ancestors did the same thing and of all the accusations the people at the time of the Prophet made against him, not one accused him of pedophilia.  As a matter of fact, as of 100 years ago the minimum age for marriage in the US was 10 years old in several states!  Christians, Jews, and polytheists all supported the idea that it was ok to marry a girl who has reached puberty and at that time in that part of the world that was the typical age of puberty for women. Let us not hold our modern standards to earlier ages.)   I smiled and continued to walk away saying one last time “May God protect you.”

Her methodology resulted in me wanting to pull out my claws and hiss just like my cat!  I held back; however, she further reinforced my hesitancy to discuss matters of religion with “message delivering” Christians closing yet another door for Christians to attempt to make me accept Jesus peace be upon him as divine.  I do not waste my time talking to people of this methodology for they are extremists in their religion and intolerant of differing beliefs.  By the way, it has been told to me that there are a group of Christians that go to Devon a few times per week (Sam Shamoun’s peoples) and adopt a similar methodology to this woman in order to harass and terrorize Muslims.  They think they are saving our souls but are merely giving us headaches…

Well let me tell you what. For all you evangelists out there, you should already be aware of the fact that your actions bring people FURTHER away from your cause.  When you do not have proper etiquettes in this secular society you actually offend people and force them to create shields  not only towards you, but also towards all who are similar to you.  Poorly inviting people to share your beliefs hinders your effectiveness. This is a fact that cannot be denied …

Now to the reason why I shared this story.  Muslim’s also be aware of how you do dawah or invite people to Islam, because you too can become an “evangelist” or proselytizer.  Many of us unintentionally come across to non-Muslims in the same manner that the woman described above came across to me.  We should not forget the ayaat in Qur’an specifically referring to the proper guidelines of dawah. 

“Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious.”   

Noble Qur’an 16:125

Now, I do not mean to be inflammatory but merely realistic.  If we go out in groups, pass out literature to people, and are confrontational then are we living the verse of the Qur’an listed above? In my opinion, no!  We must understand that this in your opinion might be dawah, but in all reality it is counterproductive to our cause.  I understand that people come to Islam through this avenue or at least it appears as if they do.  I hear stories of people who go out and get several shahadahs in a day.  As a convert, I simply do not come across any other converts in our community who came to Islam this way.  Perhaps they recited shahadah, but then where have they gone?  The practicing converts I personally know almost all have the same story.  They were not compelled by words of others to accept Islam, but rather the truth of their words via validation through their actions.  This leads me to another ayaat:

“Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity (bliss)” 

Noble Qur’an 3:104

In this ayaat the concept of our actions speaking louder than our words is reinforced.  Why has Islam become so vilified in the West? Because of ACTIONS not by words or by pamphlets.  I personally believe it is a disservice to Allah Azza wa Jaal  to say that going out in public and passing out literature is dawah.  For, dawah must be done through wisdom and beautiful preaching.  Through my experiences I have concluded that the most effective invitation to Islam is through our good conduct and impeccable characters. After all, is this not how Prophet Muhammad salAllahu alayhi wasalaambrought others to Islam.  If he had not been the amazing person that he was and his conduct as stellar as it was, would God have chosen him to be his Mercy to mankind?  So we should follow this in our approach to introducing Islam to others.  Be cautious that you do not fall into the pit of proselytization use this impedes our ability to spread the truth about what Islam is.  Let us not turn others away or offend people by being rudely argumentative and disrespectful to their beliefs.  Instead of doing street dawah you may be more effective by joining a charitable organization as a volunteer and using your character to validate your beliefs to the people you work with and the people you encounter through your charitable efforts.  If you engage society or your community with the beautiful embodiment of  Islam as your character, the community has NO evidence to indicate that Islam is not beautiful!

So, proselytizers of all faiths! Do not think that passing out paper ir standing on the corner with a megaphone is truly propagating the Message of God. If you want to convince me that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Athiesm, or any other ism is the true way to worship God then your actions better speak louder than your words!

End of story…

May God protect us all!

For those of you familiar with America’s Bad Boy, Loon, he now goes by the name Amir Junaid Muhadith.  He accepted Islam and left his life of ignorance and hedonism.  Check out this 30 minute interview he touches on the effectiveness of true dawah which is through the actions of people not just through words.  Dawah should be a pleasant experience for the receiver or else their displeasure will be manifested throuigh their rejection of your invitation. Enjoy…

 

Ibn Yahya

theoryofheart.wordpress.com

disclaimer- this is merely my opinon, I would love to hear other opinions!

Who are these Muslims?

A question asked quite frequently by many Americans is who are these Muslims?  Not to mention the even bigger question that I am frequently presented with, why are you a Muslim?  The answer to this first question is easy.  Muslims are a diverse body of people with strong moral convictions, yet are still socially progressive.  They come from all over the world and speak a whole variety of languages.  Even though this group is so diverse, these 1.2 billion people have core beliefs that they share.  Most importantly, they believe in only ONE God.  One God with no partners, no sub-gods, no convoluted explanations of divine manifestations of God.  We also believe in hundreds of divinely inspired humans known as prophets that have been sent to spiritually rejuvenate people of their time.  There are a select number of prophets, known as messengers who have brought actual ways of life that God instructed them to teach their various communities.  (i.e. Moses – Torah, Jesus- Bible, Muhammad- Qur’an, peace be upon them all)  These are essentially the core fundamental beliefs of Islam.  There is much more to be said, but this is a brief explanation. 

This brings us to the next question.  I found this book that was written that documents the lives of converts to Islam all around the world.  Some of these people are persently scholars in our community, others are activists, others are jsut your normal run of the mill Muslims.  Yusuf Islam or Cat Stevens is discussed in this book as well.  Enjoy it!!

Why Normal People Accept Muslim…

muslim or mozlem- a lesson for the lazy tongue

SCREEEEECH (nails scratching on a chalk board), we are all familiar with that hair-raising auditory sensation..  For many non-muslims, they do not understand that most muslims have that exact same sensation, plus a little bit of frustration, everytime we hear someone label us as “mozlems.” 

There are many reasons. One, being a speech pathologist, I do not understand how anyone who was raised speaking the English language can read a string of orthography m-u-s-l-i-m and somehow come up with their own way of pronunciation.  Secondly, that word is almost always used when people are trying to insult muslims. I have seldom heard someone use the aberrant pronunciation of “mozlem” to speak anything good of muslims.  For example, the videos that can be seen almost weekly on the news of frightened voters saying, “I don’t want no mozlem as president, this is our country!”  Contextually, anyone can see that this term is typically used in a condescending manner.  Thirdly, most people are not aware of this, even muslims.  The allophonic expression of mozlem for muslim has no linguistic significance in English; however, in Arabic, this term not only has a linguistic significance, but it the two words are polar opposites.

Let me explain this third point in more detail.

A Muslim is an arabic term for someone who submits to God.  The belief held by Muslims is that all of the previous prophets (Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Jesus, etc ‘peace be upon them all’) were all Muslims in the sense that they submitted themselves entirely and unselfishly to their Lord, the Most High out of love and obedience.

In the past few decades and in most western literature, Muslims have been labeled Mozlems or Mohammadans.  I am not going to argue why the term Mohamadan is incorrect in this post; however, it is a term that does not apply to those who submit to God, for they are followers of God and God alone.  Academically, this term is no longer used due to it being a false label.  So, when it comes to the prononcuation of Muslim as Mozlem, we have changed the meaning of the word in Arabic.  Muslims means one who submits to God, whereas, the word Mozlem is the name for a person who is evil and unjust.  One who submits to God vs. one who is evil and unjust.  The meaning of Mozlem fundamentally goes against the true teachings of Islam. 

Another illustration of this point is that a simple google search of MOZLEM will yield thousands upon thousands of hate posts.  It is a term that enemies of humanity use to offend and degrade Muslims.  This gets to a larger issue that people truly believe that Muslims should be labeled as MOZLEMS.  This is of great concern to me and should be to any other conscious Muslims.  The people and enemies at the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) would have never considered him a man of evil nor an unjust man.  The people of Quraysh who hated him and wanted him dead did so not because he was evil or unjust, but because he was bringing justice, introducing a  path to get closer to God, and taking the power away from the aristocratic elite and putting it into the hands of the people.  We as Muslims should realize that we are fighting for the soul of our religion and we must not ever stop.  We can no longer allow a radical/puritanical minority to define a religion of purity and peace such as Islam.  Nor can we allow the media to define something they have no true knowledge about.  My suggestion, work on perfecting your actions through consistency, sincerity and pure intentions.  Islam spread not via the sword as many ill-informed people may suspect, but rather through the character and beauty of Islam as portrayed by the submitters of God.  There are countless stories of people who accepted Islam purely based of off the character of the Prophet (pbuh) and seeing how sincere and truthful he was.  May God give us all the ability to follow the true Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad pbuh.

Read this short story to truly understand why Prophet Muhammad pbuh was considered ‘The Prophet of Mercy.’

After Muhammad’s (pbuh) revelations began in Makkah, persecution and plots arose against him as well as the growing number of people who knew his Message was from God.  Due to attempts on his life, he migrated to Yathrib/Madinah to live with the people of that community who promised to protect him.  After several battles, resulting in a minimal number of casualties, Prophet Muhammad and the Muslims finally took back the city of Makkah. Despite the atrocities commited against the Muslim community, Prophet Muhammad entered Makkah seeking total peace and while he rode into the city on the back of his camel prostrating in humility and prasing God, the thought of revenge never crossed his mind.  He said to the ruling tribe of Makkah(the Quraysh) who had persecuted the Muslims and tried to assasinate Prophet Muhammad several times with a voice full of compassion and tenderness:

‘0 people of Quraysh! What do you think I will do with you?

One of them, Suhayl ibn Amr, who had fought against the Prophet replied on behalf of the makkans:

‘We think (you will treat us) well, noble brother, son of a noble brother.’

A radiant smile flashed across the face of the beloved Prophet of God and, in a spirit of magnanimity and tolerance, he said:

“I shall speak to you as Yusuf [Joseph] spoke unto his brothers: ‘There is no reproach against you today; God will forgive. He is the most Merciful and the most Compassionate.’ ” (Quran,12:92)

And he added:

‘No more responsibility burdens you today.
‘Idhhabuu… wa antum at-tulaqaa – Go, for you are free.

 When in history has an oppressed community peacefully overthrown an aristocaracy and implemented a just and faith based society.  Prophet Muhammad pbuh, showed the Mercy of God towards humanity through his very own actions.  Overnight, virtually every member of the Makkan society had embraced Islam. Why? Not because  a sword was at their throats, but rather becuase they were captivated and their hearts melted by the very character and conduct of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. 

So, when you hear someone mislabeling Muslims, please tell them how disrespectful they are being.  Thank you for your time!

For more info regarding the Muslim vs Mozlem issue, please visit this website http://hnn.us/articles/524.html

A Case of Illegitimate Censorship

This is America and I am a Muslim-American.  A nationality and a way of being that I proudly proclaim and will always defend.  America is the land of free and the home of the brave.  As Americans, we are protected on so many levels, that people in other locations could only dream of. We are protected by skyscratching walls of intellectual, religious, physical, and even emotional security, just  to name a few.  I could only wish that people could experience the security that we do. 

Overprotection does have its consequences. We see in our friends and family what overprotection can do to one’s mind.  It can so easily distance you from the harsh realities of the world that we live in.  The worldview of the overprotected is more than obvious, in fact, it stands out like those fuzzy ugg boots that the females sport.  We have all met people and instantly thought “Wow, they are totally from the suburbs!”based on nothing more than the deviant or unrealisitic responses that they provide about a given situation.

I can’t help but think that as a nation, we have crossed a line and been distanced from reality and reason.  The source of this disconnect is simple, it is “illigetimate censorhsip.” A human with even the slightest amount of intellect should be able to understand that people are and always have been easily misrepresented.  Spreading terror thorugh the media is easier than one might think. In the late 1800’s mexican workers in America were labeled as drug addicts because of the medicinal use of marijuana that they introduced to the US.  The government set a huge campaign to make the American public afraid of the Mexican workers in order to reduce the risk of having an abundance of Mexican-Americans in this nation. Japanese Americans were depicted as the threat of the world and set into internment camps, during the cold war Russian Americans were portrayed as the emobiment of the “Red  Scare,” and more recently, Mexican Americans are presented as the threat to our work force.  This is just a limited number of examples that I have mentioned, we are all aware of the countless other examples.  It is understandable that with every period in time, there are different ways to react to a specific situation.  What is the most troubling fact, is that so few people question the validity of these accusations.  A small or rare threat has been thoughtlessly generalized to an entire peaceful and productive community.  Some of the worlds greatest tragedies have occurred because people have not searched for the truth or have simply denied it. 

I have been assisting this organization named ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America) and have encountered a dilemma.  I was requested to contact billboard companies and locate a billboard for the organization to advertise Islam (the “new great threat” to the west) and their 24 hr 1800 number designed to answer ?s about Islam from people who actually practice it.  For all of the negative media, which just so happens to be all of the media, that Islam and muslims receive, the biggest struggle is to combat it.  So, this billboard had the names of our Prophets (peace be upon them all) across the top with ISLAM across the entire board.  The lower corner had the 1800 # inviting people to inquire about this thing called Islam.  After having one billboard setup on I-294, problems arose as the second billboard was to be placed in Lombard.  The company refused to publish the billboard with the names of the Prophets (peace be upon all of them) and claimed that it is secondary to their risk of being sued.  So this began to resonate in my mind and really frustrated me.  I could not understand how strip clubs and exotic massage parlors can advertise their horrendous businesses and portray half naked women resting over the higway, but muslims could not list the names of the amazing characters that they try to emulate. Moreso, the histrocial figures that muslims hold in common with other religous traditions like Judaism, Christianity, and Bahai. Why is it that we are being limited in the defense we can provide for ourselves?  People across the world are dieing, and  for no apparent reasons very few people seem to care. Yet we can not even even have the freedom of expression to defend our ways of life.  I cannot blame the company for their fear of being sued by other religious organizations.  However, I can blame my finger at this idea in our society that limits us from looking objectively at situations. 

Dr. Scott Alexander once spoke about this concept of the master narrative of supremacy.  This is an idea that is established in every single persons mind.  It’s most apparent manifestation is when a person refers to a different group as “they” or “them.”  Using these words is a covert method to display an endogenous belief that you are better than another group of people.  History is riddled with such examples of this subliminal form racism or prejudicial beliefs.  I believe that a nation that prides itself on it’s intellectual vigor must begin to reclaim that phenomenal quality.  It begins by learning about concepts from a holisitc approach.  Don’t just read the books you find at Borders or Barnes and Nobles, but venture out and find the real sources of knowledge about a specific subject.  I am sick of being victimized by ignorance and pray that no other groups of people will ever have to endure this victimization in the future.  A common Islamic principle is to fight injustice wherever it may be found even if it has a negative impact on yourself.  This is a concept that all moral people practice and most people are oblivious to the existence of this ancient Islamic tradition.  The main point I am trying to illustrate, is that living in this amazing country, every American should strive to be virtuous and stand up for their fellow Americans regardless of how different they may be.  Speak out against any ridiculous illegitimate censoring of the truth. 

 "The greatest jihad is to speak the word of truth to a tyrant."
-Prophet Muhammad 'salAllahu alayhi wassalaam' (Mishkat)

"Knowledge is of two kinds: that which is absorbed and that 
which is heard.  And that which is heard does not profit 
it is not absorbed" 

-Ali ibn abi Talib (rAa)