Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 1 to 7)
EsinIslam
Heralding New Muslims:
A Personal Account
Of Revert Muslim:
Islam evolving in the heart.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Jeremy Ben
Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 1 of 7)
My disbelief
before Islam
When I married
my Portuguese wife, Anabela, I had a philosophy which,
though I believed in God as the Creator and Power that
drove the universe, did not acknowledge that I was
obliged to worship Him (I conceived the Power as It –
that is, sexless).
I had been born
a Roman Catholic, and brought up believing in Jesus as
my God and Mary as my God's mother – but this did not
sit well with me. Rather, I saw Jesus and Mary as a
meansthrough which to reach God, who was
the God of the Old Testament.
As I grew older,
I began to despair at understanding vast tracts of the
Old Testament. The material was dense, and so called
‘prophetic' passages appeared to be in the present
tense – addressed to those people thousands of years
ago, as happening to them or in their lifetimes. More
confusion arose because personal addresses or actions
sometimes seemed to be assigned or directed not to
people, but to cities and nations. God, for example,
seemed to regard Jerusalem as his wife, and the
actions of her people congruent with her actions. God
called her a whore, and appealed frequently for her to
repent and turn back, and become His queen again. The
same was true of people, such as Jacob, who assumed
the name of a nation, so passages addressed to Israel
sometimes meant Jacob. Jacob often symbolized his
descendents, which were split into two camps: the camp
of Ephraim and the camp of Judah. Again, the names of
these descendents of Jacob reflected the split in the
children of Israel, between the city state of Zion and
Samaria.
Other passages
seemed to refer to supernatural events, and
supernatural encounters. The raising up of Elijah and
the appearance of God before Israel seemed to describe
events that could be explained as meetings between
races of advanced technologies and simple, non
technological, men. Given that many other religions
described the same kind of encounters with their
‘gods', I began to suspect these stories of the Bible
were but legends, gathered together, and made to seem
coherent for the sake of a constructed hierarchy, the
Church.
On top of this
suspicious view I had begun to hold, I also learned of
the historical persecutions that took place during and
since mediaeval times, particularly the events of the
crusades and the inquisition, which followed them. In
fact, the ethos of the inquisition was exported to the
New World by Spanish and Portuguese ‘Conquistadores',
and the Roman Popes manoeuvred to establish riches and
power in Europe by a reign of Machiavellian terror.
The Family of Borgia[1] were particularly
exemplary figures in this respect.
Finally, I
learned of the attempt of the Church to stifle and
deny scientific advancement well into the reformation,
and that change only manage to establish itself
through the renaissance at a later date.
All these
factors led me to believe that the God of the Bible
and the descriptions of Heaven and Hell taught by the
Church were forgeries, designed to subjugate and
pacify the vast majority of the population under the
rule of a minority elite.
Tortuous
Confusion
There is a
primal urge in men to worship that which created them,
and turn to Him when in need and nothing but Him can
be appealed to sort out ones peril or confusion. I
have heard people exclaim in extremus, "For the
Love of God," "Oh, God!", "For God's sake," and the
like, appealing for succour. Yet when aid comes, and
they feel secure again, they thank the living agents
who helped them in this world, or their favourite
deities in the world of the unseen. In my own sense
trackless waste, my lack of orientation, I took refuge
in the concept of the Force, or Power I
described earlier – the single and
non-materialCreator, whom men (individually)
interacted with at a personal level, with
neither mediation from unseen agencies,
nor help from other human beings.
The route took
in coming to this conclusion was long and tortuous,
concepts building on one another from my reading of
science fiction and primitive conspiracy theories. I
read, for example, Erich Von Däniken's "Chariots of
the Gods?"[2] and "The Philadelphia Experiment"[3]
by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, the first of
which gave credence to religion being ‘made up', and
the second of which opened my eyes to what can be
covered up by the elite society and their governments
in the world. However, not every nation and government
can be in on the grand conspiracy, if such a thing
exists, so the natural place to look for confirmation
or contradiction was other religions. To me, the
‘other religions' were Hinduism and its offshoots, in
particular Buddhism, so I sought to find out more
about them from the inside.
The most visible
of the branches of Hinduism in London, where I lived,
was the orange coloured monks from the temple of
Krishna[4], so I duly found myself recruited into
their sect. Although the ritual meditation felt good,
its wide use definitely provided a calming effect on
the devotees – confirming that it preached a kind of
placation of the people. Its creation story was also
rather repulsive; who wants to acknowledge the origin
of the world being a vast, but dead, cosmic cow, or
that we evolved from her excretions? I soon left the
sect as abruptly as I entered it, and read up on
Buddhism. I knew the latter was an offshoot of the
mother of the other, so I wasn't tempted to try and
practice Buddhism. Instead I tried to discover its
key concept of life and life after death. I soon
discovered that, like Hinduism, the hereafter was
conceived to be a series of reincarnations, and that
we were bound to our lives on the wheel of fate.
However, instead of seeking unity with the cosmic mind
of God, the perfection of Nirvana, the Buddhist seeks
to attain enlightenment and freedom from the cycle of
birth and death. This enlightenment negates the ego
because it must surrender its jurisdiction over time
to achieve it and let the infinite and unknowable take
over. Strictly speaking, Buddhism is a religious
philosophy, taking the human ego as the only god that
dominates life, whose way is to a Godlessness goal in
the afterlife.
Again, in
seeking to eliminate ego orientation, Buddhism can be
seen as the Marxist concept of "opium for thepeople"[5]. It makes them tractable and
controllable by the elite in society; but what about
ways of ‘bucking the system'? What about,
pre-historical religions, or religions that had died
out? One of the earliest forms of religion I learnt
about is totemism[6]. Totemism postulates the
existence of a spirit equivalent to a sign in the real
world, usually an animal. A whole tribe can have a
collective spirit totem, such as the cave bear, whilst
individuals may possess an individual totem, such as
the grey wolf. Furthermore, if one is seeking help in
a particular endeavor, such as hunting, the totem of
the hunted animal can be consulted for signs of where
the quarry might be.
There is a clear
connection to magical oracles in the use of totemistic
rituals, pointing to the existence of unseen forces
existing in the world. There are also other avenues to
these forces, such as astrology and nature worship.
One of the latter means of worship envisages the earth
as Gaia[7],
the mother of everything in nature, and the patterns
of interaction between creatures of the ecological
system. I rather liked this idea that earth was a
viable individual who must be respected, and was
capable of guiding us and protecting the guided, while
punishing those who work against her and will not take
guidance. Not long ago, a man named James Lovelock was
able to express how I felt then in a book called "The
Revenge of Gaia"[8], which he published in 2006.
However, the
earth is too narrow a canvass for a universal creator,
so the second avenue was even more attractive to me.
It pertains to the heavens, and the heavens are much
wider. Astrology[9] assigns meanings and
influences to celestial bodies and their position in
the skies at the time of birth to determine the fate
of an individual being. They also rely upon the
position of the celestial sphere at any given point of
time and space on the earth's surface to venture
predictions of what might occur on the path of fate,
and therefore give advice on decisions of the people
within the sphere of influence from those predicted
events. For a while, I became an amateur astrologer,
because I felt I was in touch with a universal, rather
than local, force.
Then I met a man
who turned me back towards my religion of birth in
order to seek universal answers. I can't remember his
name, unfortunately, but his origin was Ireland, and
his religion Roman Catholic, as I had been. His
outlook, however, was not as hidebound as some staunch
Roman Catholics I would meet later. He happened to
meet me while I was reading a book called Omegaby Stewart Farrar[10], which
gave me an insight into witchcraft and the religion of
Wicca. We had a huge discussion that lasted nearly a
day, while sitting on a beach in the Algarve,
Portugal. He was trying to describe the concept of
God, and readily agreed with me that Jesus was not
God. God was something immaterial and invisible power
and Lordship over everything. With the input I had
from Stewart Farrar, I described what I felt was the
essence of Divinity and my relation, or the worlds
relation, to it. I felt that "God" was the Devine
initiator, whose "way" was the Laws of the natural
world. I said I believed that every world was
different and behaved after its own proper laws, but
that there was a general guiding Law of the Universe,
which was God and His Guidance: working ‘with the
flow" signified "good" while working across the flow
signified evil. Examples of working "with the flow" is
using nature's medicines for healing, whilst "across
the flow" is manufacturing chemical agents that mimic
the effect of nature's medicine; working with the flow
would be environmentally friendly whilst across the
flow would cause pollution; etc.
This was my
state when I married my Portuguese wife. She was Roman
Catholic, but largely non-practicing. Before long,
she was pregnant, and my first child came into the
world.
Jeremy Ben
Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 2 of 7)
Returning to
God
During my early
years of marriage, I was friends with a man who loved
hiking in the mountains and going nude in seclusion.
He was both naturalist[11]
and naturist[12]in outlook, and he took me and
my wife in that direction. Naturally, when Andrei
Micael was born, I advocated a more natural baptism
than one with ‘holy water' from a cold stone basin
being poured onto his head by a Roman Catholic
priest. Instead, I wanted to trek into the mountains
and dip him in a stream, just as John the Baptist[13]
baptized the repentant Jews in the River
Jordan. Of course I did not realize that baptism was
something one should do when an adult, rather than a
child, for how can children repent? They have done
nothing to repent from. My true baptism I would make
on myself, when I bathed away my past state in ritual
purification on becoming Muslim.
My wife's mother
started to visit us in the summer, the first time just
to see Andrei, I think. Like my wife, she was a Roman
Catholic. Unlike her, however, she was an avid
believer in the mediation of Mary, the mother of ‘God',
the saints in their graves, and the boy Jesus. To
this end, she wore a crucifix around her neck and
assiduously visited the shrines of Mary (including the
Sanctuary of Fatima[14] and
Our Lady of Lourdes[15])
at least once a year, and made pilgrimage to the
Sanctuary de Saint Benedict[16]
every time she came to Braga, where my wife and I
lived. She had a small statue of Mary with child that
she used to set up on its own special table (like an
altar) in the corner of her bedroom, and she kept a
battered old photograph of a fresco of Mary (the
mother of Jesus), holding a cup with a bleeding heart,
in her wallet. The former she used to kneel to before
going to bed every night, and the latter she would
keep while travelling, taking it out to kiss when she
wanted to pray.
To me, all these
actions were abhorrent, totally against both my
primitive concept of the Universal Force or Power, a
Unique Creator and Sustainer that permeated the
Universe, and also to God as He is described in the
Bible. I became determined to persuade my
mother-in-law to stop her idolizing worship of (dead)
human beings as mediators to the One Who Hears. But
how?
Back to the
Bible
I first tried by
using logic. How can dead men hear? How do we know
their piety? Was it not men who made them ‘saints'?
And by whose authority were they made saints? Were
they not men, like us? But all to no avail. So
finally I decided I would use the weapon of her own
scripture because I knew that the First
Commandment[17] in the Bible was,
"I am the Lord
your God, Who took you out of Egypt and from bondage.
And you shall not take any gods besides Me. You will
not make graven images or likenesses of any creature
that lives in the heavens above or the earth below, or
in the water under the earth, nor will you bow down to
them, or serve them." (Exodus 20:2-5[18])
If that were the
case, then there would be more evidence that God is
only One, and immaterial, and only He could hear us.
Over the years
that I sustained my regular (summer) persuasion with
her, I began to appreciate that the Bible actually
contradicted what the Church taught about the ‘god-ship'
of Jesus, and affirmed clearly that God was One. It
completely denied the license[19]
we have taken to worship idols[20]
or use them as a focus of our prayer. So my belief
in the God of Abraham slowly increased until my only
fear was that I might be wrong. What if, despite my
strong belief that it was not true, it was Jesus who
sat on the Throne of Judgment on the Last Day? Then I
would be in a pickle. The evidence in the Bible was
ambiguous on this point, since ‘The Revelation of
St John[21]' seemed to indicate
that it would be him.
Debts
This was my
state when I found the need to look for a job that
would help me escape my heavy debts at home. During
this period, I decided to give up my job at the
British Council in Portugal and venture a language
school of my own in Braga. I wanted to be near at
hand for the raising of my son. At the same time, I
decided to buy a home, which would be like renting a
flat, except that I would own the place at the end of
the process. My school, however, did not work out,
and I ended up not only owing a lot of money to the
bank for my house, but also for the starting capital I
had borrowed. When I closed my school two years after
I opened it, I foolishly did not declare bankruptcy,
instead using my ‘business card' to become a freelance
English teacher. Although this helped me keep my feel
I might just be able to survive, the capital I owed
did not diminish appreciably. I needed some get out
plan. My wife then suggested that I look for a well
paid job abroad to deal with the problem, pointing out
that many acquaintances had husbands abroad, and had
amassed enough money to build homes for their families
in the home country.
The day I
decided I needed to find such a lucrative job abroad
was a black day indeed. I was in deep gloom because
things were coming to a head. I was unable to keep up
with the interest repayments on loans from domestic
appliances, the mortgage, our cars and the debts I had
accumulated running a language school for three years
at a loss, I saw blackness ahead of me – and no local
means to climb out of the debt hole I was in. I felt
almost suicidal, thinking death would allow me to
escape from debt. I didn't know, at the time, that
debt was one of the things a person could be barred
from paradise for, and that death did not mean you
escaped your obligations.
One night I
knelt by my bedside, facing the east, and poured out
my trouble to God. I told him I was in despair, at my
tether's end, and could not see myself able to support
my wife and children, let alone myself. I begged him
to give me a way out, a way to a good life for us
all. Somehow, I knew he was listening, and my heart
eased as I prayed. Eventually, I felt comfortable
enough to lay my head down again, and fall back to
sleep.
The next few
events proved He had answered my prayer. The very
next day, I was looking through the EFL Gazette and
found several advertisements for British Council
placements abroad. When I pointed them out to her, my
wife advised me to look for work in the Middle East or
Far East where salaries were relatively high. There
and then, I applied to institutions in Oman, Saudi
Arabia, Brunei, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. The British
Council gave me an interview, but I was not chosen for
any of their places. An employer in Taiwan chose me
and offered me a job, but when I accepted, the process
was never followed up by them. Just as I was
beginning to feel all the doors were closing in my
face, one of my last choices, a university in Saudi
Arabia, offered me a position as a lecturer of
English, and I took it. Praise be to God! I thought
He had answered me financially, but his real gift was
to come from an unexpected direction.
The Book
When he came
back, he was carrying a thick book in a shiny jacket.
He held it gently, cradled in his hand. He told me
this was not a translation, but an explanation of the
meaning of the Noble Quran[1] in English.
That confused me, and I re-iterated that I wanted a
translation. He said that it was a translation, but
no translation was the same as the original, which is
why it was called ‘an explanation of the meaning'.
Not really
following his train of thought, I accepted. It
crossed my mind that it was better than nothing. He
seemed to know what was going on in my head. So,
being the good psychologist he was, he started to hand
it to me, and then withdrew it as I reached out to
take it.
"There are three
– no, four – conditions I want you to agree to before
I give it to you," he said.
"What
conditions?" I asked, nervously.
"First, please
don't put it down on the floor or even on a chair.
You might accidentally step or sit on it, which is
disrespectful to the holy book." Well I could
understand that condition.
"Secondly, I
know it is the habit of some people to read while they
are doing their business sitting on the toilet." He
was right. I sometimes did it myself.
"Why?" I asked.
"Don't do it
with the Quran. The place where you eject your waste
is not the place to read it. You shouldn't even take
it into the toilet with you." Well, I could see what
he was getting at, though I thought it a bit picky.
But I was willing to follow that condition too;
anything to get hold of it, I thought.
"Thirdly,
whenever you stop reading it, place it in a shelf,
rather than leave it out. It demonstrates more care."
No problem, I thought. It shows that the Muslims
cared for and respected the Quran a great deal.
"Fourthly, try
not to put the Quran open and face down in order to
keep your place." That was very picky, I thought.
"Why?" I asked.
The question was getting to be repetitive.
"The word of
Allah should not be facing down; it should be facing
up. If you need to keep your place, there is a place
keeping ribbon attached you can use." Well, of course!
I thought. That must be the reason the Bible has one,
too!
"I accept those
conditions," I said, aloud.
He asked me to
come and tell him how I got on, which I took lightly
at the time, and I hurried off with my prize. I
couldn't wait to get home and really get my head stuck
into it that very day, especially since the next day
was going to be Wednesday, my last free working day
before the Saudi weekend, which was Thursday and
Friday.
The Catalyst
During the next
week, I went through the Quran. I started at the
beginning, and read steadily through the second
chapter. Somehow, I had expected the book to be an
account of the Muslim prophet's life, something like
the Gospels or the books of Moses in the Bible. But
that is not what I was reading.
Right from the
start, it captivated me by apparently speaking
directly to me. There was no, ‘God said "such and
such",' or ‘The prophet said "such and such",'
as if it were reported by others concerning what
a prophet had said about God or what a prophet
had reported of God's very words. Indeed, I rather
felt like I was receiving revelation direct from God
Himself. He was talking to me direct, and His words
impinged directly upon my heart.
Soon I found
myself crying, as I recognized myself, and members of
my family, in the descriptions of the people of the
book and their (mistaken) beliefs and obdurate
stances. Even some of the attitudes and beliefs of
the disbelievers, hypocrites and polytheists echoed
some of my attitudes and the attitudes of people I
knew in the West. My heart ached with concern over
the possible destiny of my relatives, and quaked with
fear over my, by now undoubted, destiny if I remained
on the way I had been treading.
After reading
the first big chapters, Al-Baqarah[22],
Ali-'Imran[23], An-Nisa[24], Al-Ma'idah[25] and
Al-An'am[26], I skipped through
the book, looking for shorter chapters. But even the
shorter chapters of around 60 verses echoed the big
five. However, when I arrived at the final part, the
30thJu'z,
the chapters were suddenly no more than two or three
pages, some only a page and a half. And the topics
were now more restricted.
Then the
chapters fitted one page, or less than a page, until
there were more than one chapter on each page. At
that point, one of those tiny chapters suddenly
illuminated
‘Say He is
Allah, the One,
Allah the
Self-Sufficient.
He begets not,
nor was He begotten.
And there is
none comparable unto Him.'
This was the
heart of the Quran; what I understood as its True
message[27]. It sounded so
right to me. It was just the way I felt about God in
my own, made up, religion despite what the churches of
my religion taught about the divinity of Jesus and the
concept of Trinity.
The Last
Straw
Could it be that
Muslims really believe in a single Creator, Unique,
the Foundation and Mover of the Universe? Is it really
true that this God repudiates any possibility of
procreation, either from Hisself or being procreated
from another? Does this religion truly confirm what I
think is true anyway? And, if it does, doesn't that
mean I have a duty I have neglected all this time?
These thoughts
and questions stumbled through my mind. I had to
check against the only Muslims I had more than a
passing acquaintance with; two colleagues at the
University College.
I stopped them
on the stairs leading up to the main gate of the main
building. They had been aware I was reading the
Quran, and they readily stopped, happy to be able to
answer a question I might have. I apologised for
taking their time and got right down to this amazing
discovery I had made.
"I've been
reading your Book," I said, "and I've come across a
verse which seems to sum it all up."
"Which verse is
that?" It was Isma'il Rostron, the white convert who
asked.
"Here. Right at
the end. It says,
‘Say He is
Allah, the One,
Allah the
Self-Sufficient.
He begets
not, nor was He begotten.
And there is
none comparable unto Him.'
It's what the
whole book is driving at!"
"Yes, that's
right," said Isma'il.
"Funny you
should say that," said Jamal. He was British from
Pakistani origins, and a born Muslim.
"There is a
story about one of the Prophet's companions[28],
handed down to us through the traditions of the
Prophet, may Allah praise him."
"What story?" I
encouraged.
"There was a
man, a commander of Jihad, who used to lead his
companions in prayer with a recitation. Upon
finishing the portion of the Quran after reciting The
Opening, he would complete it with the recitation of
‘Say, He is Allah the One'. So, when they returned,
they mentioned this to the Prophet, may Allah praise
him, and he said, ‘Ask him why he does it!' he told
me. "So the people went and asked him, and the
commander said, ‘Because it is the description of
Allah, and I love to recite it.' So, when the people
came and reported that to him, the Prophet, may Allah
praise him, said, ‘Inform him that Allah the Most
High, loves him'."
"Really?" I
asked, feeling a little dazed by this confirmation.
"Yes," said
Jamal. "And there is another which tells you
exactly how much of the message this chapter of the
Quran is."[29]
I was on
tenterhooks.
"A man heard
another man reciting ‘Say, He is Allah the One' over
and over again through the early morning hours of the
night. So, when morning came, the man went to the
Prophet, may Allah praise him, and mentioned it to
him, and it was as though he was belittling it. The
Prophet, may Allah praise him, said, ‘By He Whose Hand
is my very soul, verily the chapter and its message is
equivalent to a third of the Quran'."
"So, you see,
you are right. It is what most of the Quran is
driving at," he continued.
I was
convinced. The Muslims really believed in this
principle, no ifs or buts, and no shading into trinity
or mediators allowed. This was The God I could really
relate to.
"What about the
other thirds?" I asked.
"One third
consists of the stories of the Prophets and the
lessons we learn by their example."
"What do you
mean?"
"What the
prophets did and said, how they proclaimed the message
to their people and how they interacted with their
families and communities."
"I see; and the
last part?"
"That's the
ordainments of Allah concerning how we live
individually and as a community," he said. "Things
like the legal statutes concerning marriage, divorce,
parenting and child rearing; purification, prayer,
fasting, and pilgrimage; the lawful and the prohibited
in alimentation and social interaction; law and
punishment."
I decided I had
to go away and think about the implications.
Jeremy Ben
Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 5 of 7)
Three
Conditions
I ended up
thinking about the heartache I felt for my family, so
I decided to wait until three things were clear before
I would embrace Islam.
1. My wife
accepted the religion as I had done.
2. She agreed
to leave her job and come and live with me in Saudi
Arabia.
3. A
(personal) problem she and I had between us was
overcome.
In other words,
I vowed I would wait until all conditions were optimum
and would not become officially Muslim until they
were.
I began talking
to my wife about what I had found out. Although I was
trying not to sound overboard, my amazement at what I
had found and my endorsement of it must have been
overwhelming. I wrote e-mail after e-mail, and
chatted lengthily on msn. I read constantly and
widely anything about Islam I found on the net,
especially arguments Muslims made through Biblical
support for the religion. My enthusiasm for the
discovery that Islam was just an extension of our
religion purified, you might say, from its errors,
must have impinged sharply on her to the extent that
she became dismayed, and she was finally driven to
comment, "it sounds like you have converted."
This made me
pause because I realised that I had already made the
step in my heart, if not by my mouth, and my response
reflected that.
"Actually, I
have."
From that moment
on, my wife kept on criticising me for not consulting
her before I made such a big decision. My constant
defence was that I hadn't officially converted yet,
though I had in my heart. This argument derailed my
efforts to convert her, and led to very tense and
painful cohabitation during the next few holidays I
took that Christmas and the following three summers.
But that is another story.
The Mosque
and the Orphans
In the
meanwhile, I had my first experience of praying with
Muslims. One weekend, I was walking back from the
centre of town in the evening after an afternoon of
shopping. I had bought some ‘native' clothing, and
wanted to try them out. In fact, I was wearing one of
the dress-like ‘thobes' I had just bought, and
carrying the other with my ‘western' clothes in a
carrier bag. The sun was westering as I started for
home, and set when I was about half-way there. The
call for prayer blared from a small mosque I was
approaching, and was echoed by the hundreds of mosques
near and far through the city. Shutters were rattling
down, and goods in the street were being covered with
plastic and sail cloth. Men started streaming from
the shops and houses to the mosques. It was
impressive! A call from the minaret responded to in an
instant. I decided I wanted to see what Muslim prayer
was all about.
I tentatively
followed the stragglers in as the prayer began and
watched them line up behind the two lines already
formed. They raised their hands as they joined the
line and then folded them over their chests. It
looked easy enough, and I tagged on to the end of the
line. Several children joined the line after me,
forming a kind of restless addendum. As the men
alongside me bowed and prostrated, I copied their
movements as best as I could, looking sideways out of
the corner of my eye. They were oblivious to me, each
one concentrating on some point directly before them,
eyes lowered. Their communion with God was palpable,
and I tried to share in the channel they had tapped,
despite not having the same words to do so.
"Oh God! Help me
to fulfil my vow, and persuade my wife. Guide me to
You, and guide my family. I believe in You, the only
God, and not in human beings as gods."
I repeated the
prayer, over and over, like a mantra. I don't think I
reached the same level of communion as my companions,
but my heart felt better when the prayer was over. As
I pulled on my shoes and socks, two of the children
who had lined up beside me came over.
"Anta Muslim?
Limada tusalli? ‘adam wa'dha al yedduka al yameen ala
shimal."
The kids had
spotted that I was a total greenhorn, and had serious
doubts whether I actually belonged. They showed me
how I should have positioned my hands, how I should
have prostrated and bowed, how I should have placed my
feet and so on. Of course, I didn't have a word of
Arabic, so I was just aware that they thought I needed
a lot of coaching if I was to pass off being a bone
fide member of the congregation. They signalled that
I should follow them so they could take me to their
home and hand me over to their elder brother.
I was a bit wary
of going into the door, in case they meant for me to
wait outside, but one of the children came back when I
didn't follow them in. He made the ‘come on' motion
again, and then signalled that I should go right as I
entered, and through a hanging bead screen. Inside
was a sitting room with typical Arab floor cushions.
A young teenager, maybe 15 or 16, stood up from his
comfortable lounging position to greet me.
The older
brother was very hospitable, but couldn't help me
understand the children and what they were getting
at. He served me Arabic coffee in tiny cups and
invited me to share some dates. I was curious why
children were entertaining me, the older boy being
just a teenager. Where were their parents?
"Where's your
mama and papa?" I asked.
But he either
didn't understand or could not explain in sign
language. He gestured that I should wait, so I
guessed they would be home, soon. However, instead of
a grown man, it was another youngster, barely out of
his teens, who rolled in just before the evening
prayer. He looked surprised at seeing me in the
sitting room with his brother, and a few words were
exchanged.
"Ameriki?"
I shook my
head. "No, British."
"Welcome.
Welcome. Coffee?"
Again I shook my
head; I had had enough.
He stood up and
indicated I should follow. "Tawadha,"
he said, meaning "let's make ablution!" He rubbed his
hands together. "Wash; gomasjid."
He wanted me to
get ready to go to the mosque for the evening prayer.
"Put hand," he
said, lifting my right hand, "on this!" he said,
placing it over my left hand and then lifted them both
so they rested on my chest. We were walking across
the road, and we stopped right in the middle of it for
the lesson as if cars did not exist. He indicated the
prayer by lifting his two hands to his ears. "Do like
me!"
I lined up
beside him, and this time made a better job of the
movements.
When we got back
home, dinner was served on a kind of tablecloth on the
floor. I asked him, "Your mama?"
‘Mama' seems to
be an international or universal means of indicating a
mother. He shook his head, and made a sleeping
gesture and then a downward movement of the open palm
towards the ground. "Baba wa mama fiy
mout,yarhamhummullah. Sister make."
So they were
orphans, and this young man and his sister had
shouldered the responsibility of the family. His
English was not the best, so the conversation was
desultory. He asked, "You like Islam?"
I said I did.
"Why you not
Muslim?"
I needed time.
He offered me a
lift home. "You need help, any time visit," he said
as he dropped me off.
I thanked him.
Then the words I
was to hear a thousand times over emerged from his
mouth. "Any Service?"
The kindness of
that orphan family has never left me. I was really
touched at the care they had shown, and appreciated
their sincere attempts at guiding me. But the person
who had the greatest effect in my initiation was a man
yet to arrive on the scene. He was a green card
Iranian looking for American nationality, and he was
about to blow into my life.
Jeremy Ben
Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 6 of 7)
Ali Jamily
Ali Jamily was
the fourth ‘western' Muslim colleague, just out from
the United States. He had driven up from Jeddah
because his first action on arriving in Saudi Arabia
was to pay a visit to God's house and walk around it
(the lesser pilgrimage called ‘Umrah').
This was one of the characteristics of Ali that I
would get to know well: his obsession with visiting
the House of God as often as he could. He was wearing
shades, and looked ‘cool'. A second thing I would
learn for him was his admiration of American social
and legal norms, which he compared favourably to his
experience of these norms in Saudi Arabia. Yet under
that ‘western' exterior was the heart of one who loved
God passionately. Soon after he met me, he asked me
if I knew about Islam, and I told him I had been
reading his Holy Book. Of course his next step was to
ask me if I was going to embrace Islam, and I told him
about my three conditions.
"Are you mad?"
he said. "You can't make conditions with God." He
used the name for God I had begun to become familiar
with in the Quran. "Prostrate right now and beg His
forgiveness! If you know this is the Truth, make your
declaration of faith now."
"Why shouldn't I
make conditions?" I asked. "I want my family to be
Muslim, too. Is that too much to ask?"
"Guidance is for
whomsoever God wills. Are you refusing his guidance
because of family concerns? Even the Prophet, may God
praise him, could not guide all his family, and his
uncle died a disbeliever despite him being at his
death-bead begging him to bear witness that there is
no God but Allah, and Muhammad was His messenger," he
informed me.
"But I want to
talk it over with my family first!" I argued, knowing
that they should know my frame of mind before I took
such a gigantic step as to formally embrace another
religion seriously.
"What if you die
before you get the chance to submit?" he asked me.
"If you die having known the religion and refused it,
your destination will definitely be the Fire! Have
you any idea how lucky you are? Not everyone is
touched like you have been. You cannot refuse the
chance He is giving you," he argued persuasively.
At the time, I
was taken aback by his attitude. On reflection,
however, I knew he was right. I would be a fool if I
let the chance slip.
My next step was
to go back to the Islamic Propagation Office and ask
them how to formally embrace Islam. When I stepped in
the office for the second time, there was a look of
surprised bafflement. I don't suppose they had many
white Europeans invading their office, so they were
trying to make out why I had come.
An Indian man,Shaykh Farooq,
spoke first.
"What do you
want?"
His English was
good, I could tell. However, I was just as surprised
they didn't understand why I had come to their office
as they were that I had. When I told him the reason,
he told me that I had to receive full disclosure of
what the religion of Islam was and the conditions of
avowal.
It sounded a bit
ominous. I had expected to be welcomed, and sworn in
straight away, but they insisted I needed some
coaching.
There were two
other people interested in being Muslims in the office
before me, both from the Philippines. David was a
born again Christian who had become convinced of Islam
during his Arabic language classes which the centre
ran. Coincidentally, he was the electrician who
serviced the apartment/hotel that I was staying at.
John, however, had been persuaded to become a Muslim
because his wife was Muslim. He had been dragged to
the office by David, who was his friend.
Arrangements
were made for all three of us to make the double
declaration together in the presence of two Muslim
witnesses. After that, we would be officially
Muslim. They arranged for a religious propagator to
explain that very weekend coming up, after the noon
prayer on Thursday.
Since David and
I lived in the same apartment/hotel, John came by us,
and we went to the centre together. They showed us
into the main rest area, which now had low floor
cushions set around the walls with armrests to lean on
for the occasion. Shaykh Ehab,
orAbu
Abdurrahman, as I now knew him, a man who I had
given me the Quran in the first place, andShaykh
Farooq, who I had met when I came to the office to
ask how to become a Muslim, were both there, waiting
for us. Then Shaykh Ibrahim, the manager of
Ha'il Propagation Centre, brought in two men I did not
know. Apparently, they were volunteers. Shaykh
Sa'udworked
for the Saudi Electric Company, and Shaykh
AbdulAzizfor
the Saudi Telecom Company. It wasShaykh
Sa'udwho
did the disclosure.
He explained
carefully that Islam was a monotheist religion, and
taking the step of formally embracing Islam was a big
step. Once I had done so, there was no turning back,
and if I did turn back, I would be subject to the
death penalty for apostasy.
I said I knew
the seriousness of the step.
Then he told me
the six points concerning the creed. "First, you must
know and believe in your heart and in your prayer that
Allah is your God, and there is no God but Him."
"This is the
basic reason I am here," I thought.
He held up his
hand. "This means that you should not look to any
object or image as a focus for your worship of God,
for they are idols. Also your worship should be
direct to Him, not through any human being or spirit:
prophet, priest, angel or elemental. Do you
understand what I mean?"
We each agreed
that we did.
Then he went
on. "You must believe also in His angels, who are the
messengers and errand doers of God. They carry His
word to the Prophets and do whatever He commands them
on the earth and in the heaven."
I nodded along
with David and john. It was the angels that destroyed
Sodom and Gomorra on God's command, and the angels who
communicated with Mary about Jesus.
"And you must
believe in God's message, which you can find in the
Quran, and in that which was sent to different
Prophets in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel,
before it. We believe all of these Books were
revealed to the Prophets by God."
‘Very fair,' I
thought.
"Do you believe
that these are all revealed by God through His angels
to His Prophets?"
We affirmed it.
"Muslims have to
believe in all the Prophets, naturally, and they are
the ones who have given us the Message of God from the
time of Adam. Muhammad is the last of the Prophets
because the Quran is the final message to mankind, and
it tells us he is the end of the Prophets. And you
must believe that Jesus, Peace be upon him, is not God
or the son of God. He is a man, like us, created by
the command of God in the womb of Mary, and a
Messenger of God, just like Muhammad,may
the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.
What do you say."
"Jesus was a
Prophet, like Muhammad," said David. I nodded. ‘Of
course,' I was thinking.
"You must also
believe that we will be resurrected and judged on the
Final Day, and that in the Hereafter there is one of
two destinies awaiting us: the Garden or the Fire.
This is the basis of our free will. We choose where
we go by our deeds in this mundane world."
This is an
integral part of Christian belief, too, so there was
no trouble to assimilate it. We agreed we understood.
Jeremy Ben
Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 7 of 7)
Islam evolving in the heart. Part 7.
"Finally, you
must believe in predestination, which means ‘fate'.
That is, all that befalls you in themundaneworld
is by Allah's Will. If you like it, then say ‘Praise
be to Allah'. And if you dislike it, it is
a test or punishment from Him. Again you should say ‘Praise
be to Allah', and repent and correct what
you are doing wrong. Above all, you should have
patience, and hope for what is better, just round the
corner."
This last was a
bit beyond my understanding, and is quite difficult to
grasp. Even the companions asked the Prophet, "Why
should we bother to work, if we cannot avoid our fate?
Should we stop doing works and trust in Allah?"
His response was
that we should not give up working. He said that the
man or woman destined for hell, even if his works were
good up to a certain point in his life, would start
doing the deeds that would land him in the fire as he
approached his death. And the man or woman destined
for Paradise, even if he had no good deeds to his name
until a certain point in his life, would start doing
the deeds that would land him in Paradise as he
approached his death. What that meant to the
individual is that he should do the good deeds now,
for no one knows when he will die. We do not know what
we are destined for, so we exercise our own will in
what we do. And if we want to be among the ones
favoured, we should endeavour to be doing good deeds
in the present, in case death comes upon us
unforeseen.
Even though I
was not clear on the last point, I was on the first
five points of the creed, and both David and John also
did not demur. Each one of us I told him "I am ready."
He took each of
our avowals separately. When it came to my turn, he
said, "repeat after me."
"Ash-shaddu
an laa ilaha illa Allah, wa ash-shaddu ana Muhammadan
nabiyyan wa rasulu Llah."
The
Purifying Bath and a New Life
He explained
that anyone who avowed the testimonies not only became
a Muslim, but Allah promised them Paradise, even if
their deeds were few. Then he said, "Now you should
bathe yourself and make your first Formal Prayer,
which will be the noon prayer followed by the
mid-afternoon prayer. Yusuf will show you how."
Even before we
learnt how to make ablution, the brothers came up and
hugged us, grins and congratulations being poured on
each one of us. Then I heard a question I would hear
often, so often I thought it was a necessary part of
embracing Islam. "What name are you going to take, now
you are Muslim?"
"Why should we
take another name?"
"You are
starting life anew, like a new born baby. You are only
one minute old!"
Well, I hadn't
decided, because I hadn't thought about it. However,
when it came to the certificate, I did choose – and
action that I regretted later. David and John kept
their names, simply translated them into Arabic for
their Muslim nicknames,DawoudandYahyah.
I just delayed my decision.
It was still
daylight, but nearly half past three in the afternoon.
Yusuf was a Chinese propagator, one of the acolytes of
the centre. He showed us how to make ablution in the
public ablution trench explaining each part. It was
both clearer and more regulation bound than how the
orphans had shown me.
He made sure I
was doing it right, and then told me to go to the
toilet. "When you pray, you should be free of
distractions such as hunger or thirst, or the need to
go to the toilet. You should also be wary of
flatulence, since it breaks purity and forces you to
make ablution again."
After I finished
relieving myself, I should take a bath. The bath would
be my purification, which would purify me and signal
my entry into Islam, and prepare me for my combined
afternoon prayers. I suppose that it is much like the
baptism that John the Baptist insisted his followers
should take if they were to follow him and the
religion he preached. No formal brushing of the head
with ‘holy water' as a sign of being born into
Christianity, this, but full immersion in flowing
water submitted to voluntarily by adult people who had
chosen their religion. I, too, would have to wet all
my body, but not by immersion in a stream or river;
there aren't any in Saudi Arabia. What I was required
to do consisted of four basic stages. I
would have to wash my private parts thoroughly and
then make ablution again, wash my body with a basin of
water starting on the right, and finally pour a jug
full of water over my head, making sure every crevice
of my body received a douche of water. I did what he
told me to do and came out for my first experience of
being a practicing Muslim.
Yusuf called us
over and told us he would show us what we should do.
Then he said he would lead us in the Prayer as it was
our first time.
The direction of
prayer for the Formal Prayer is facing Mecca, where
the Kaaba is, and consists of standing with hands
folded on the chest, bowing (once within one unit of
prayer), prostrating (which is done twice) and sitting
on one's feet (done between pairs of prayer units and
between prostrations and at the end of the Prayer).
The outline of the Formal Prayer I learned and the
recitals, invocations and supplications needed in the
Prayer are reproduced in a separate article on
Purification and Prayer.
The story of my
adopting Islam as my religion finished with this first
formal prayer. However, many trials and tribulations
followed, but these are another story. If
you also feel you must embrace Islam, remember – Islam
is the spiritual refuge, the surety of Allah's
support. It is also the beginning of many tests, for
Allah makes life a constant test for believers. Your
problems in this world will not go away automatically,
but they will melt away one by one with Allah's help.
So submit, and be patient, and Allah will make you one
who He rewards twice. My favourite verses in the Quran
are from The Stories (Al Qasas),
in the 28thChapter,
verses 51-55.
"Indeed now We have conveyed the Word to them, so they
may remember. Those who to whom we gave the Scripture
before it, believe in it, and when it is recited to
them say, "We believe in it. Verily, it is the Truth
from our Lord. Indeed, even before it we were
Muslims." These will be given their reward twice over
because they are patient and repel evil with good; and
they spend(in
charity)out of what we
provided them. And when they hear vain foul language,
they withdraw from it and say, "To us our deeds, and
to you your deeds; Peace be unto you! We seek not(the
way or company of) the
ignorant."
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