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By Jerald F. Dirks<\/p>\n
One of my earliest childhood memories is of hearing the church bell toll for Sunday morning worship in the small, rural town in which I was raised.\u00a0 The Methodist Church was an old, wooden structure with a bell tower, two children\u2019s Sunday School classrooms cubby-holed behind folding, wooden doors to separate it from the sanctuary, and a choir loft that housed the Sunday school classrooms for the older children.\u00a0 It stood less than two blocks from my home.\u00a0 As the bell rang, we would come together as a family, and make our weekly pilgrimage to the church.<\/p>\n
In that rural setting from the 1950s, the three churches in the town of about 500 were the center of community life.\u00a0 The local Methodist Church, to which my family belonged, sponsored ice cream socials with hand-cranked, homemade ice cream, chicken potpie dinners, and corn roasts.\u00a0 My family and I were always involved in all three, but each came only once a year.\u00a0 In addition, there was a two-week community Bible school every June, and I was a regular attendee through my eighth grade year in school.\u00a0 However, Sunday morning worship and Sunday school were weekly events, and I strove to keep extending my collection of perfect attendance pins and of awards for memorizing Bible verses.<\/p>\n
By my junior high school days, the local Methodist Church had closed, and we were attending the Methodist Church in the neighboring town, which was only slightly larger than the town in which I lived.\u00a0 There, my thoughts first began to focus on the ministry as a personal calling.\u00a0 I became active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and eventually served as both a district and a conference officer.\u00a0 I also became the regular \u201cpreacher\u201d during the annual Youth Sunday service.\u00a0 My preaching began to draw community-wide attention, and before long I was occasionally filling pulpits at other churches, at a nursing home, and at various church-affiliated youth and ladies groups, where I typically set attendance records.<\/p>\n
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By age 17, when I began my freshman year at Harvard College, my decision to enter the ministry had solidified.\u00a0 During my freshman year, I enrolled in a two-semester course in comparative religion, which was taught by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, whose specific area of expertise was Islam.\u00a0 During that course, I gave far less attention to Islam than I did to other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as the latter two seemed so much more esoteric and strange to me.\u00a0 In contrast, Islam appeared to be somewhat similar to my own Christianity.\u00a0 As such, I didn\u2019t concentrate on it as much as I probably should have, although I can remember writing a term paper for the course on the concept of revelation in the Quran.\u00a0 Nonetheless, as the course was one of rigorous academic standards and demands, I did acquire a small library of about a half dozen books on Islam, all of which were written by non-Muslims, and all of which were to serve me in good stead 25 years later.\u00a0 I also acquired two different English translations of the meaning of the Quran, which I read at the time.<\/p>\n
That spring, Harvard named me a Hollis Scholar, signifying that I was one of the top pre-theology students in the college.\u00a0 The summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Harvard, I worked as a youth minister at a fairly large United Methodist Church.\u00a0 The following summer, I obtained my License to Preach from the United Methodist Church.\u00a0 Upon graduating from Harvard College in 1971, I enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School, and there obtained my Master of Divinity degree in 1974, having been previously ordained into the Deaconate of the United Methodist Church in 1972, and having previously received a Stewart Scholarship from the United Methodist Church as a supplement to my Harvard Divinity School scholarships.\u00a0 During my seminary education, I also completed a two-year externship program as a hospital chaplain at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.\u00a0 Following graduation from Harvard Divinity School, I spent the summer as the minister of two United Methodist churches in rural Kansas, where attendance soared to heights not seen in those churches for several years.<\/p>\n
Seen from the outside, I was a very promising young minister, who had received an excellent education, drew large crowds to the Sunday morning worship service, and had been successful at every stop along the ministerial path.\u00a0 However, seen from the inside, I was fighting a constant war to maintain my personal integrity in the face of my ministerial responsibilities.\u00a0 This war was far removed from the ones presumably fought by some later televangelists in unsuccessfully trying to maintain personal sexual morality.\u00a0 Likewise, it was a far different war than those fought by the headline-grabbing pedophilic priests of the current moment.\u00a0 However, my struggle to maintain personal integrity may be the most common one encountered by the better-educated members of the ministry.<\/p>\n
There is some irony in the fact that the supposedly best, brightest, and most idealistic of ministers-to-be are selected for the very best of seminary education, e.g. that offered at that time at the Harvard Divinity School.\u00a0 The irony is that, given such an education, the seminarian is exposed to as much of the actual historical truth as is known about:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the formation of the early, \u201cmainstream\u201d church, and how it was shaped by geopolitical considerations;<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the \u201coriginal\u201d reading of various Biblical texts, many of which are in sharp contrast to what most Christians read when they pick up their Bible, although gradually, some of this information is being incorporated into newer and better translations;<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the evolution of such concepts as a triune godhead and the \u201csonship\u201d of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him;<\/p>\n
4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the non-religious considerations that underlie many Christian creeds and doctrines;<\/p>\n
5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the existence of those early churches and Christian movements which never accepted the concept of a triune godhead, and which never accepted the concept of the divinity of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him; and<\/p>\n
6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 etc. \u00a0(Some of these fruits of my seminary education are recounted in more detail in my recent book, The Cross and the Crescent:\u00a0 An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity and Islam, Amana Publications, 2001.)<\/p>\n
As such, it is no real wonder that almost a majority of such seminary graduates leave seminary, not to \u201cfill pulpits\u201d, where they would be asked to preach that which they know is not true, but to enter the various counseling professions.\u00a0 Such was also the case for me, as I went on to earn a master\u2019s and doctorate in clinical psychology.\u00a0 I continued to call myself a Christian, because that was a needed bit of self-identity, and because I was, after all, an ordained minister, even though my full time job was as a mental health professional.\u00a0 However, my seminary education had taken care of any belief I might have had regarding a triune godhead or the divinity of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him. (Polls regularly reveal that ministers are less likely to believe these and other dogmas of the church than are the laity they serve, with ministers more likely to understand such terms as \u201cson of God\u201d metaphorically, while their parishioners understand it literally.)\u00a0 I thus became a \u201cChristmas and Easter Christian\u201d, attending church very sporadically, and then gritting my teeth and biting my tongue as I listened to sermons espousing that which I knew was not the case.<\/p>\n
None of the above should be taken to imply that I was any less religious or spiritually oriented than I had once been.\u00a0 I prayed regularly, my belief in a supreme deity remained solid and secure, and I conducted my personal life in line with the ethics I had once been taught in church and Sunday school.\u00a0 I simply knew better than to buy into the man-made dogmas and articles of faith of the organized church which were so heavily laden with the pagan influences, polytheistic notions, and geo-political considerations of a bygone era.<\/p>\n
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As the years passed by, I became increasingly concerned about the loss of religiousness in American society at large.\u00a0 Religiousness is a living, breathing spirituality and morality within individuals and should not be confused with religiosity, which is concerned with the rites, rituals, and formalized creeds of some organized entity, e.g. the church.\u00a0 American culture increasingly appeared to have lost its moral and religious compass.\u00a0 Two out of every three marriages ended in divorce; violence was becoming an increasingly inherent part of our schools and our roads; self-responsibility was on the wane; self-discipline was being submerged by a \u201cif it feels good, do it\u201d morality; various Christian leaders and institutions were being swamped by sexual and financial scandals; and emotions justified behavior, however odious it might be.\u00a0 American culture was becoming a morally bankrupt institution, and I was feeling quite alone in my personal religious vigil.<\/p>\n
It was at this juncture that I began to come into contact with the local Muslim community.\u00a0 For some years before, my wife and I had been actively involved in doing research on the history of the Arabian horse.\u00a0 Eventually, in order to secure translations of various Arabic documents, this research brought us into contact with Arab Americans who happened to be Muslims.\u00a0 Our first such contact was with Jamal in the summer of 1991.<\/p>\n
After an initial telephone conversation, Jamal visited our home, and offered to do some translations for us and to help guide us through the history of the Arabian horse in the Middle East.\u00a0 Before Jamal left that afternoon, he asked if he might use our bathroom to wash before saying his scheduled prayers; and borrow a piece of newspaper to use as a prayer rug, so he could say his scheduled prayers before leaving our house.\u00a0 We, of course, obliged, but wondered if there was something more appropriate that we could give him to use than a newspaper.\u00a0 Without our ever realizing it at the time, Jamal was practicing a very beautiful form of Dawa (preaching or exhortation).\u00a0 He made no comment about the fact that we were not Muslims, and he didn\u2019t preach anything to us about his religious beliefs.\u00a0 He \u201cmerely\u201d presented us with his example, an example that spoke volumes, if one were willing to be receptive to the lesson.<\/p>\n
Over the next 16 months, contact with Jamal slowly increased in frequency, until it was occurring on a biweekly to weekly basis.\u00a0 During these visits, Jamal never preached to me about Islam, never questioned me about my own religious beliefs or convictions, and never verbally suggested that I become a Muslim.\u00a0 However, I was beginning to learn a lot.\u00a0 First, there was the constant behavioral example of Jamal observing his scheduled prayers.\u00a0 Second, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal conducted his daily life in a highly moral and ethical manner, both in his business world and in his social world.\u00a0 Third, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal interacted with his two children.\u00a0 For my wife, Jamal\u2019s wife provided a similar example.\u00a0 Fourth, always within the framework of helping me to understand Arabian horse history in the Middle East, Jamal began to share with me:\u00a0 1) stories from Arab and Islamic history; 2) sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him; and 3) Quranic verses and their contextual meaning.\u00a0 In point of fact, our every visit now included at least a 30 minute conversation centered on some aspect of Islam, but always presented in terms of helping me intellectually understand the Islamic context of Arabian horse history.\u00a0 I was never told \u201cthis is the way things are\u201d, I was merely told \u201cthis is what Muslims typically believe.\u201d\u00a0 Since I wasn\u2019t being \u201cpreached to\u201d, and since Jamal never inquired as to my own beliefs, I didn\u2019t need to bother attempting to justify my own position.\u00a0 It was all handled as an intellectual exercise, not as proselytizing.<\/p>\n
Gradually, Jamal began to introduce us to other Arab families in the local Muslim community.\u00a0 There was Wa\u2019el and his family, Khalid and his family, and a few others.\u00a0 Consistently, I observed individuals and families who were living their lives on a much higher ethical plane than the American society in which we were all embedded.\u00a0 Maybe there was something to the practice of Islam that I had missed during my collegiate and seminary days.<\/p>\n
By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself some serious questions about where I was and what I was doing.\u00a0 These questions were prompted by the following considerations.<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Over the course of the prior 16 months, our social life had become increasingly centered on the Arab component of the local Muslim community.\u00a0 By December, probably 75% of our social life was being spent with Arab Muslims.<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By virtue of my seminary training and education, I knew how badly the Bible had been corrupted (and often knew exactly when, where, and why), I had no belief in any triune godhead, and I had no belief in anything more than a metaphorical \u201csonship\u201d of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.\u00a0 In short, while I certainly believed in God, I was as strict a monotheist as my Muslim friends.<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My personal values and sense of morality were much more in keeping with my Muslim friends than with the \u201cChristian\u201d society around me.\u00a0 After all, I had the non-confrontational examples of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa\u2019el as illustrations.\u00a0 In short, my nostalgic yearning for the type of community in which I had been raised was finding gratification in the Muslim community.\u00a0 American society might be morally bankrupt, but that did not appear to be the case for that part of the Muslim community with which I had had contact.\u00a0 Marriages were stable, spouses were committed to each other, and honesty, integrity, self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized.\u00a0 My wife and I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for several years I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a moral vacuum.\u00a0 The Muslim community appeared to be different.<\/p>\n
The different threads were being woven together into a single strand.\u00a0 Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral society, and my contact with the Muslim community were becoming intricately intertwined.\u00a0 My self-questioning came to a head when I finally got around to asking myself exactly what separated me from the beliefs of my Muslim friends.\u00a0 I suppose that I could have raised that question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn\u2019t ready to take that step.\u00a0 I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with them, and I didn\u2019t think that I wanted to introduce that topic of conversation into our friendship.\u00a0 As such, I began to pull off the bookshelf all the books on Islam that I had acquired in my collegiate and seminary days.\u00a0 However far my own beliefs were from the traditional position of the church, and however seldom I actually attended church, I still identified myself as being a Christian, and so I turned to the works of Western scholars.\u00a0 That month of December, I read half a dozen or so books on Islam by Western scholars, including one biography of the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.\u00a0 Further, I began to read two different English translations of the meaning of the Quran.\u00a0 I never spoke to my Muslim friends about this personal quest of self-discovery.\u00a0 I never mentioned what types of books I was reading, nor ever spoke about why I was reading these books.\u00a0 However, occasionally I would run a very circumscribed question past one of them.<\/p>\n
While I never spoke to my Muslim friends about those books, my wife and I had numerous conversations about what I was reading.\u00a0 By the last week of December of 1992, I was forced to admit to myself, that I could find no area of substantial disagreement between my own religious beliefs and the general tenets of Islam.\u00a0 While I was ready to acknowledge that Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, was a prophet (one who spoke for or under the inspiration) of God, and while I had absolutely no difficulty affirming that there was no god besides God, glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any decision.\u00a0 I could readily admit to myself that I had far more in common with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with the traditional Christianity of the organized church.\u00a0 I knew only too well that I could easily confirm from my seminary training and education most of what the Quran had to say about Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.<\/p>\n
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Nonetheless, I hesitated.\u00a0 Further, I rationalized my hesitation by maintaining to myself that I really didn\u2019t know the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that my areas of agreement were confined to general concepts.\u00a0 As such, I continued to read, and then to re-read.<\/p>\n
One\u2019s sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful affirmation of one\u2019s own position in the cosmos.\u00a0 In my professional practice, I had occasionally been called upon to treat certain addictive disorders, ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to drug abuse.\u00a0 As a clinician, I knew that the basic physical addiction had to be overcome to create the initial abstinence.\u00a0 That was the easy part of treatment.\u00a0 As Mark Twain once said:\u00a0 \u201cQuitting smoking is easy; I\u2019ve done it hundreds of times.\u201d\u00a0 However, I also knew that the key to maintaining that abstinence over an extended time period was overcoming the client\u2019s psychological addiction, which was heavily grounded in the client\u2019s basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to himself that he was \u201ca smoker\u201d, or that he was \u201ca drinker\u201d, etc.\u00a0 The addictive behavior had become part and parcel of the client\u2019s basic sense of identity, of the client\u2019s basic sense of self.\u00a0 Changing this sense of identity was crucial to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic \u201ccure.\u201d\u00a0 This was the difficult part of treatment.\u00a0 Changing one\u2019s basic sense of identity is a most difficult task.\u00a0 One\u2019s psyche tends to cling to the old and familiar, which seem more psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and used it on a daily basis.\u00a0 However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to apply it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding my religious identity.\u00a0 For 43 years, my religious identity had been neatly labeled as \u201cChristian\u201d, however many qualifications I might have added to that term over the years.\u00a0 Giving up that label of personal identity was no easy task.\u00a0 It was part and parcel of how I defined my very being.\u00a0 Given the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that my hesitation served the purpose of insuring that I could keep my familiar religious identity of being a Christian, although a Christian who believed like a Muslim believed.<\/p>\n
It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle Eastern journey could become a reality.\u00a0 One of the questions had to do with religious affiliation.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even think about it, and automatically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in \u201cChristian.\u201d\u00a0 It was easy, it was familiar, and it was comfortable.<\/p>\n
However, that comfort was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me how I had answered the question on religious identity on the application form.\u00a0 I immediately replied, \u201cChristian\u201d, and chuckled audibly.\u00a0 Now, one of Freud\u2019s contributions to the understanding of the human psyche was his realization that laughter is often a release of psychological tension.\u00a0 However wrong Freud may have been in many aspects of his theory of psychosexual development, his insights into laughter were quite on target.\u00a0 I had laughed!\u00a0 What was this psychological tension that I had need to release through the medium of laughter?<\/p>\n
I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I was a Christian, not a Muslim.\u00a0 In response to which, she politely informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written \u201cChristian\u201d, or \u201cProtestant\u201d, or \u201cMethodist.\u201d\u00a0 On a professional basis, I knew that a person does not defend himself against an accusation that hasn\u2019t been made.\u00a0 (If, in the course of a session of psychotherapy, my client blurted out, \u201cI\u2019m not angry about that\u201d, and I hadn\u2019t even broached the topic of anger, it was clear that my client was feeling the need to defend himself against a charge that his own unconscious was making.\u00a0 In short, he really was angry, but he wasn\u2019t ready to admit it or to deal with it.)\u00a0 If my wife hadn\u2019t made the accusation, i.e. \u201cyou are a Muslim\u201d, then the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was the only other person present.\u00a0 I was aware of this, but still I hesitated.\u00a0 The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of identity for 43 years was not going to come off easily.<\/p>\n
About a month had gone by since my wife\u2019s question to me.\u00a0 It was now late in January of 1993.\u00a0 I had set aside all the books on Islam by the Western scholars, as I had read them all thoroughly.\u00a0 The two English translations of the meaning of the Quran were back on the bookshelf, and I was busy reading yet a third English translation of the meaning of the Quran.\u00a0 Maybe in this translation I would find some sudden justification for\u2026<\/p>\n
I was taking my lunch hour from my private practice at a local Arab restaurant that I had started to frequent.\u00a0 I entered as usual, seated myself at a small table, and opened my third English translation of the meaning of the Quran to where I had left off in my reading.\u00a0 I figured I might as well get some reading done over my lunch hour.\u00a0 Moments later, I became aware that Mahmoud was at my shoulder, and waiting to take my order.\u00a0 He glanced at what I was reading, but said nothing about it.\u00a0 My order taken, I returned to the solitude of my reading.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Mahmoud\u2019s wife, Iman, an American Muslim, who wore the Hijab (scarf) and modest dress that I had come to associate with female Muslims, brought me my order.\u00a0 She commented that I was reading the Quran, and politely asked if I were a Muslim.\u00a0 The word was out of my mouth before it could be modified by any social etiquette or politeness:\u00a0 \u201cNo!\u201d\u00a0 That single word was said forcefully, and with more than a hint of irritability.\u00a0 With that, Iman politely retired from my table.<\/p>\n
What was happening to me?\u00a0 I had behaved rudely and somewhat aggressively.\u00a0 What had this woman done to deserve such behavior from me?\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t like me.\u00a0 Given my childhood upbringing, I still used \u201csir\u201d and \u201cma\u2019am\u201d when addressing clerks and cashiers who were waiting on me in stores.\u00a0 I could pretend to ignore my own laughter as a release of tension, but I couldn\u2019t begin to ignore this sort of unconscionable behavior from myself.\u00a0 My reading was set aside, and I mentally stewed over this turn of events throughout my meal.\u00a0 The more I stewed, the guiltier I felt about my behavior.\u00a0 I knew that when Iman brought me my check at the end of the meal, I was going to need to make some amends.\u00a0 If for no other reason, simple politeness demanded it.\u00a0 Furthermore, I was really quite disturbed about how resistant I had been to her innocuous question.\u00a0 What was going on in me that I responded with that much force to such a simple and straightforward question?\u00a0 Why did that one, simple question lead to such atypical behavior on my part?<\/p>\n
Later, when Iman came with my check, I attempted a round-about apology by saying:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m afraid I was a little abrupt in answering your question before.\u00a0 If you were asking me whether I believe that there is only one God, then my answer is yes.\u00a0 If you were asking me whether I believe that Muhammad was one of the prophets of that one God, then my answer is yes.\u201d\u00a0 She very nicely and very supportively said:\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s okay; it takes some people a little longer than others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps, the readers of this will be kind enough to note the psychological games I was playing with myself without chuckling too hard at my mental gymnastics and behavior.\u00a0 I well knew that in my own way, using my own words, I had just said the Shahadah, the Islamic testimonial of faith, i.e. \u201cI testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.\u201d\u00a0 However, having said that, and having recognized what I said, I could still cling to my old and familiar label of religious identity.\u00a0 After all, I hadn\u2019t said I was a Muslim.\u00a0 I was simply a Christian, albeit an atypical Christian, who was willing to say that there was one God, not a triune godhead, and who was willing to say that Muhammad was one of the prophets inspired by that one God.\u00a0 If a Muslim wanted to accept me as being a Muslim that was his or her business, and his or her label of religious identity.\u00a0 However, it was not mine.\u00a0 I thought I had found my way out of my crisis of religious identity.\u00a0 I was a Christian, who would carefully explain that I agreed with, and was willing to testify to, the Islamic testimonial of faith.\u00a0 Having made my tortured explanation, and having parsed the English language to within an inch of its life, others could hang whatever label on me they wished.\u00a0 It was their label, and not mine.<\/p>\n
It was now March of 1993, and my wife and I were enjoying a five-week vacation in the Middle East.\u00a0 It was also the Islamic month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from day break until sunset.\u00a0 Because we were so often staying with or being escorted around by family members of our Muslim friends back in the States, my wife and I had decided that we also would fast, if for no other reason than common courtesy.\u00a0 During this time, I had also started to perform the five daily prayers of Islam with my newfound, Middle Eastern, Muslim friends.\u00a0 After all, there was nothing in those prayers with which I could disagree.<\/p>\n
I was a Christian, or so I said.\u00a0 After all, I had been born into a Christian family, had been given a Christian upbringing, had attended church and Sunday school every Sunday as a child, had graduated from a prestigious seminary, and was an ordained minister in a large Protestant denomination.\u00a0 However, I was also a Christian who didn\u2019t believe in a triune godhead or in the divinity of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him; who knew quite well how the Bible had been corrupted; who had said the Islamic testimony of faith in my own carefully parsed words; who had fasted during Ramadan; who was saying Islamic prayers five times a day; and who was deeply impressed by the behavioral examples I had witnessed in the Muslim community, both in America and in the Middle East.\u00a0 (Time and space do not permit me the luxury of documenting in detail all of the examples of personal morality and ethics I encountered in the Middle East.)\u00a0 If asked if I were a Muslim, I could and did do a five-minute monologue detailing the above, and basically leaving the question unanswered.\u00a0 I was playing intellectual word games, and succeeding at them quite nicely.<\/p>\n
It was now late in our Middle Eastern trip.\u00a0 An elderly friend who spoke no English and I were walking down a winding, little road, somewhere in one of the economically disadvantaged areas of greater \u2018Amman, Jordan.\u00a0 As we walked, an elderly man approached us from the opposite direction, said, \u201cSalam \u2018Alaykum\u201d, i.e., \u201cmay the mercy and blessings of God be upon him\u201d, and offered to shake hands.\u00a0 We were the only three people there.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t speak Arabic, and neither my friend nor the stranger spoke English.\u00a0 Looking at me, the stranger asked, \u201cMuslim?\u201d<\/p>\n
At that precise moment in time, I was fully and completely trapped.\u00a0 There were no intellectual word games to be played, because I could only communicate in English, and they could only communicate in Arabic.\u00a0 There was no translator present to bail me out of this situation, and to allow me to hide behind my carefully prepared English monologue.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t pretend I didn\u2019t understand the question, because it was all too obvious that I had.\u00a0 My choices were suddenly, unpredictably, and inexplicably reduced to just two:\u00a0 I could say \u201cN\u2019am\u201d, i.e., \u201cyes\u201d; or I could say \u201cLa\u201d, i.e., \u201cno.\u201d\u00a0 The choice was mine, and I had no other.\u00a0 I had to choose, and I had to choose now; it was just that simple.\u00a0 Praise be to God, I answered, \u201cN\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n
With saying that one word, all the intellectual word games were now behind me.\u00a0 With the intellectual word games behind me, the psychological games regarding my religious identity were also behind me.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t some strange, atypical Christian.\u00a0 I was a Muslim.\u00a0 Praise be to God, my wife of 33 years also became a Muslim about that same time.<\/p>\n
Not too many months after our return to America from the Middle East, a neighbor invited us over to his house, saying that he wanted to talk with us about our conversion to Islam.\u00a0 He was a retired Methodist minister, with whom I had had several conversations in the past.\u00a0 Although we had occasionally talked superficially about such issues as the artificial construction of the Bible from various, earlier, independent sources, we had never had any in-depth conversation about religion.\u00a0 I knew only that he appeared to have acquired a solid seminary education, and that he sang in the local church choir every Sunday.<\/p>\n
My initial reaction was, \u201cOh, oh, here it comes.\u201d\u00a0 Nonetheless, it is a Muslim\u2019s duty to be a good neighbor, and it is a Muslim\u2019s duty to be willing to discuss Islam with others.\u00a0 As such, I accepted the invitation for the following evening, and spent most of the waking part of the next 24 hours contemplating how best to approach this gentleman in his requested topic of conversation.\u00a0 The appointed time came, and we drove over to our neighbor\u2019s.\u00a0 After a few moments of small talk, he finally asked why I had decided to become a Muslim.\u00a0 I had waited for this question, and had my answer carefully prepared.\u00a0 \u201cAs you know with your seminary education, there were a lot of non-religious considerations which led up to and shaped the decisions of the Council of Nicaea.\u201d\u00a0 He immediately cut me off with a simple statement:\u00a0 \u201cYou finally couldn\u2019t stomach the polytheism anymore, could you?\u201d\u00a0 He knew exactly why I was a Muslim, and he didn\u2019t disagree with my decision!\u00a0 For himself, at his age and at his place in life, he was electing to be \u201can atypical Christian.\u201d\u00a0 God willing, he has by now completed his journey from cross to crescent.<\/p>\n
There are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim in America.\u00a0 For that matter, there are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim anywhere.\u00a0 However, those sacrifices may be more acutely felt in America, especially among American converts.\u00a0 Some of those sacrifices are very predictable, and include altered dress and abstinence from alcohol, pork, and the taking of interest on one\u2019s money.\u00a0 Some of those sacrifices are less predictable.\u00a0 For example, one Christian family, with whom we were close friends, informed us that they could no longer associate with us, as they could not associate with anyone \u201cwho does not take Jesus Christ as his personal savior.\u201d\u00a0 In addition, quite a few of my professional colleagues altered their manner of relating to me.\u00a0 Whether it was coincidence or not, my professional referral base dwindled, and there was almost a 30% drop in income as a result.\u00a0 Some of these less predictable sacrifices were hard to accept, although the sacrifices were a small price to pay for what was received in return.<\/p>\n
For those contemplating the acceptance of Islam and the surrendering of oneself to God\u2014glorified and exalted is He, there may well be sacrifices along the way.\u00a0 Many of these sacrifices are easily predicted, while others may be rather surprising and unexpected.\u00a0 There is no denying the existence of these sacrifices, and I don\u2019t intend to sugar coat that pill for you.\u00a0 Nonetheless, don\u2019t be overly troubled by these sacrifices.\u00a0 In the final analysis, these sacrifices are less important than you presently think.\u00a0 God willing, you will find these sacrifices a very cheap coin to pay for the \u201cgoods\u201d you are purchasing.<\/p>\n
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Please note: The ordination certificate above was too large to scan in completely – the top line of text is missing, which says \u201cLet It Be Known To All Men That\u201d<\/p>\n
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