{"id":2459,"date":"2018-09-23T19:46:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T17:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2018-09-23T19:46:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T17:46:33","slug":"2459","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/?p=2459","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m pro-Boris, loathe jihadis and love Islam. Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

I\u2019m pro-Boris, loathe jihadis and love Islam. Here\u2019s why<\/h1>\n

I loathe jihadis. I back Boris. And Islam is the most important and beautiful thing in my life<\/b><\/h2>\n
Qanta Ahmed<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Qanta Ahmed<\/a><\/p>\n

1 September 2018<\/p>\n

9:00 AM<\/p>\n

When Muslims make headlines, it\u2019s invariably for the wrong reasons. The fuss over Boris Johnson\u2019s burka joke is a case in point: he was making an argument in defence of Muslims, but was instead condemned for attacking us. Why the confusion? Because of how little our faith is understood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Let\u2019s start with the burka. Islam makes various demands of its followers, but \u2014 despite what you might think from the headlines \u2014 covering our faces isn\u2019t one of them. Based on the media\u2019s fascination with these strange and oppressive garments, you might wonder why any modern woman would ever choose Islam. So here\u2019s my answer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a London-born doctor, raised in a Muslim family and now working in America. While Islam always played a role in my youth, it was never something which defined me: rather a list of \u2018dos\u2019, \u2018don\u2019ts\u2019 and cultural traditions which governed various aspects of home life. It was during an assignment in Riyadh \u2014 where I was working as a doctor \u2014 that everything changed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course when you\u2019re living in Saudi Arabia, Islam is never far away \u2014 but at first its omnipresence only served to remind me of my failings as a Muslim. To the Saudis, I knew so little about my religion I was assumed to be a convert. Thanks to Saudi law (which mandates covering of the hair \u2014 something my parents never enforced), I might have looked more Muslim \u2014 but I certainly didn\u2019t feel it. Take the Hajj, for example \u2014 the holy pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are expected to undertake once in their lifetime, if their health and their means allow. Although many of my colleagues had jumped at the opportunity to do it, it wasn\u2019t something I had considered.<\/p>\n

All of that changed following a nerve-wracking life-and-death intervention on one of our most fragile patients. I was with a religious colleague (not one I knew particularly well), having a soothing cup of tea. When I confessed I had never made Hajj, he begged me to do so \u2014 after all, many Muslims wait for decades for the chance to be part of it. I decided to take his advice.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

No matter who you are, there is something staggering about seeing the Hajj up close: an endless mass of pilgrims representing every age, ethnicity, nationality and language. So many different kinds of people yet \u2014 in that moment \u2014 they are all the same and equal before God. The pilgrimage centres on the Great Mosque of Mecca, its immaculate marble walkways leading to the Kaaba \u2014 the most sacred site in Islam. Cloaked in black cloth woven with Quranic verse, the Kaaba was built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, some believe, to a blueprint by the angel Gabriel. I saw worshippers crying as they finally saw it.<\/p>\n

While the sheer beauty of the Kaaba is overwhelming, I can honestly say that, as I looked upon it, I felt something beyond the earthly: as if a tenderness was being pulled from deep within my soul as I returned to my creator.<\/p>\n

While moments like these can reignite your belief, ultimately acquiring faith is a process, and one which involves a degree of learning. After the Hajj, I began to study the Quran, as well as diving into the various schools of Islamic philosophy. With all the geopolitical sabre-rattling between Sunni and Shia, this is another thing which often gets distorted: in fact, true Islam is tolerant and respectful of other traditions \u2014 I am not a Sufi, for example, yet I am fascinated by their commentaries.<\/p>\n

There are, I should say, some quite big differences between Christianity and Islam. Take prayer, for example: while most Christian traditions are not prescriptive about how their followers pray (or indeed how often), Islam has set times and practices which all Muslims are supposed to follow. Oh, and we\u2019re supposed to do it five times a day. It\u2019s actually not too bad (even my cat likes to join me in the early morning prayer).<\/p>\n

The point of praying, we are taught, is to remind us we are here to worship God and serve our fellow humans. Islam teaches us that we have a responsibility to help those in need, to console the grieving and sick and to care for the orphaned and vulnerable (values which \u2014 while shared with many other faiths \u2014 don\u2019t always make headlines).<\/p>\n

There are many other things you probably know about Islam, all of which involve some personal commitment beyond merely professing faith. There\u2019s Ramadan, for example, during which we observe a month of complete fasting from sunrise to sunset. Then there\u2019s Zakat, the obligation for those of means to give a minimum of 2.5 per cent of our assets to charity each year (you may well have seen the Zakat appeals on public transport during Ramadan).<\/p>\n

You might be thinking, if Islam is a creed of tolerance, compassion and selflessness, how can it inspire the brutal terrorism and repression we have seen in the Middle East and many other parts of the world?<\/p>\n

While it might sound trite, there\u2019s no other way to answer this than to say that the horrors of jihadism, committed by those who claim to speak for my faith, are a complete rejection of Islam. It\u2019s hard to describe the fury and repugnance that Muslims like me feel when we see these impostors seeking to define our faith, using the name of God and his prophet to justify their totalitarian ideology senseless violence. It is heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the terrorists who twist and pervert Islam: it\u2019s also those who commandeer the faith to demand the subjugation of women. In fact, Islam is quite clear on what it expects of women: that we observe the same duties of belief, prayer and charity as men, and enjoy the same legal rights \u2014 autonomy in marriage and divorce, holding wealth, inheritance and property, and so many others.<\/p>\n

This is the Islam I love and the Islam which fully liberates my life today. It is also the Islam which the cruel and the cowardly Islamist jihadists seek to obscure from view. In the name of God, don\u2019t let them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m pro-Boris, loathe jihadis and love Islam. Here\u2019s why I loathe jihadis. I back Boris. And Islam is the most important and beautiful thing in my life Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed 1 September 2018...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-islam","tag-islam-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}