[1]<\/a>, a journey of almost 40 years, it seems that there were many signs, many turning points, many incidents, some significant, some trivial, that were all preparing me for and pointing the way to Islam.<\/p>\nI grew up in Boston.\u00a0 It was very much a Catholic city, mostly Irish and Italian, with small but significant communities of blacks, Jews, Chinese, Greeks, Armenians and Christians Arabs, and in those days especially, each group had its own neighborhood.\u00a0 There were lots of Greek and Syrian restaurants, and I grew up loving Greek salad, shish kebob<\/em>, lahm mishwi<\/em>, kibbi<\/em>, grape leaves, humus, anything with lamb, etc.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My family were mostly working-class, conservative Jews.\u00a0 My grandparents had fled the anti-Semitism and pogroms of czarist Russia around 1903.\u00a0 They and their families had found work in the sweatshops of the garment district, a few were in craft skills, and they were quite active in their labor unions.\u00a0 I was to become the first in my family to get a university degree.\u00a0 Our home was not strictly kosher, but we would never dream of eating pork.\u00a0 All the holidays and fasts were observed, and for years I went to the synagogue every Saturday and holiday with my father and uncle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The synagogue we belonged to was conservative, close to orthodox but modernist: it was very traditional, but women were not totally segregated.\u00a0 I began \u201cMadrasah<\/em>\u201d (Hebrew school) at age six.\u00a0 It was 1948, which saw the birth of the state of Israel, and Zionist propaganda filled the atmosphere, as did conversations and sermons about the Nazis and concentration camps, and there were many recent immigrant refugee survivors.<\/p>\nAt that time there was still a lot of anti-Semitism in the U.S., especially in the South and the Midwest, but also in Boston.\u00a0 The Greeks, Syrians and Italians were fine, but the Boston Irish were a big problem, dating back to my parents\u2019 generation in WWI and the 1920s.\u00a0 During my childhood I was often chased, spat on, insulted and beaten.\u00a0 They even held me down and pulled my pants down – in addition to the humiliation they wanted to see what a circumcision looked like.<\/p>\n
My Hebrew teachers were two Israeli brothers, who were orthodox, and veterans of the 1948 war.\u00a0 From them I learned modern Hebrew and absorbed a lot of Zionist ideology along with the religious teachings.\u00a0 I became more religious and an avid Zionist.\u00a0 I believed that Jews needed their own country in case of another Hitler – those Irish kids were doing nothing to allay my fears and I did not feel \u201cat home\u201d in America.\u00a0 I decided I would go and spend my life on a kibbutz (communal farm).<\/p>\n
My father was a musician and a cantor (prayer leader).\u00a0 He had a beautiful tenor voice, preferred the more traditional, rather oriental, melodies, and chanted the prayers with lots of huzn<\/em> (sorrow) (when I learned that word recently I began to wonder if it might be related to Hebrew hazan<\/em> = \u2018cantor\u2019).\u00a0 In our synagogue, the Torah reader used a very oriental sounding tajwid which I loved listening to.\u00a0 Believe it or not, I recently heard a friend reciting from the Quran and it sounded almost identical.<\/p>\nOne thing that stands out clearly in my memory, even now during salah, is that in the Jewish prayers there are regular references to prostration (sujud<\/em>).\u00a0 In fact, it is a custom in the more orthodox synagogues that during Yom Kippur , the holiest fast day and the equivalent of \u2018Ashurah<\/em>\u2019 , the cantor, on behalf of the congregation, actually makes sujud<\/em>, while still chanting.\u00a0 This is no mean feat, and my father, with his powerful voice, did it extremely well.\u00a0 I remember thinking then that it would be really nice if we all actually did prostrate, instead of just bowing as a symbolic sujud<\/em>.<\/p>\nAround the age of eight or nine, I chanced to discover a radio station that broadcast programs of the local ethnic communities.\u00a0 I began to listen to the Yiddish, Greek and Armenian ones, and especially to the Arabic Hour.\u00a0 I fell in love with the music and the sound of the language.\u00a0 Using the Hebrew I knew, I tried to understand the news and figure out the sound correspondences; I noticed the differences between hamzah<\/em> and \u2018ayn<\/em>, kh<\/em> and h<\/em>, k<\/em> and q<\/em>, distinctions which modern Hebrew has lost.\u00a0 This greatly improved my Hebrew spelling and I won prizes in Hebrew class.\u00a0 I also remember helping my friends cheat during spelling tests by repeating the words under my breath in an \u201cArabic\u201d accent.<\/p>\nBy High School, I had discovered the Boston Public Library and its record section: besides classical, I discovered ethnic folk music from all over the world, but I especially gravitated to the Middle Eastern: Arabic, Turkish, Persian, then Indian-Pakistani.\u00a0 I learned to identify various regional styles, instruments and rhythms.\u00a0 I most loved the \u2018oud<\/em>, and I taught myself to play the dumbeg and accompany the recordings.\u00a0 Once, a group of Yemeni Jews came to Boston from Israel to perform folk songs and dances.\u00a0 I was fascinated by their appearance, costumes and music.\u00a0 They even pronounced Hebrew like me during a spelling test.<\/p>\nI mention all these little things because there is an undeniable cultural component to Islam: the language, the melodies of adhan<\/em> and Quran, social interactions and other features, which are really quite exotic and strange to the average Westerner, including westernized Jews, but which, by the time I encountered them years later in a different context, were already very familiar and pleasant to me, even to the point of nostalgia, and which helped make Islam easier for me to accept and follow.\u00a0 More on that later.<\/p>\nMy best friend in high school was also a strong influence on me.\u00a0 He read a lot of philosophy, poetry and religious literature.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t care much for the first two, but I did read some of the religious writings, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist \u2013 and the Quran.\u00a0 I noticed that its stories were quite similar to the Bible stories, but I felt it was anti-Jewish.\u00a0 I was quite impressed, though, by its depiction of Jesus as a prophet, not just a rabbi.\u00a0 I accepted that, and that became my answer to my Catholic classmates when they would ask me what I believed about Jesus.\u00a0 They seemed not too displeased by that.<\/p>\n
I also attended an advanced \u201cMadrasah<\/em>\u201d, studying Jewish history, Hebrew, Torah, and added Aramaic and Talmud (Jewish fiqh); though the languages were still my chief interest.\u00a0 Also around that time, age fifteen, I lost my faith, my belief in God.\u00a0 Earlier, I\u2019d concluded that if God commands us to do certain things, how can I not do them; so I tried to be more orthodox.\u00a0 Then, one day I found myself saying, if God says to do all this I must; but what if there is no God? Do I believe in God? I really don\u2019t know, maybe not, I guess not.\u00a0 And if God doesn\u2019t exist, I don\u2019t need to be doing all this stuff.\u00a0 And I stopped.\u00a0 You can well imagine how upset my father was.<\/p>\nMany people, particularly Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants who grow up in a harsh religious environment, full of the threat of Hellfire and damnation, beaten by the nuns at school and made to feel guilty about things that are merely a part of fitrah<\/em> (nature) \u2013 like their bodies – are happy to get out of religion and in fact become very anti-religious, and feel freed as if from a prison!\u00a0 My feeling was not like that; I felt sad, more like I\u2019d suffered a loss, but there was nothing I could do; I knew it would be comforting to believe, but I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Throughout the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s I occasionally got these gnawing feelings and yearnings.<\/p>\nAs Jeffrey Lang said in his book about his conversion to Islam, there is an emptiness and a loneliness that an atheist feels, which people of faith cannot understand.\u00a0 The world is absurd, an accident.\u00a0 Science has, or will have, all the answers, but life has no real meaning or significance.\u00a0 Death is final.\u00a0 You can have influence and an impact on the world through your children; you can do well, be remembered in the history books for hundreds, even thousands of years; when the sun dies mankind may colonize other star systems, maybe even other galaxies.\u00a0 But ultimately, even if it takes 15 Billion years, the universe itself will die, or collapse into a black hole or whatever, and the end is absolute nothingness, the only thing that is infinite is a void.\u00a0 Life, then, is meaningless and death frightening.\u00a0 Truth and morality can become relative, which may lead to moral confusion, hedonism, and worse.\u00a0 But instead of the contempt for religious people that many atheists claim to feel, I respected them, and often envied them for the security, the certainty, the comfort they experienced.<\/p>\n
I went overnight from almost orthodox to an atheist, though I still loved Jewish languages, culture, music, food and history.\u00a0 I was an \u201cethnic \u201c Jew, and still a Zionist.\u00a0 Zionism was still largely a political philosophy, not so much a religious one.\u00a0 In fact, at that time there was still significant opposition to Zionism among many of the orthodox.\u00a0 The current religious, messianic type Zionism really didn\u2019t develop until 1967 \u2013 1973 when Israel seized Jerusalem.\u00a0 I also decided I wanted to be a historical linguist specializing in Semitic languages; but then the universities I chose didn\u2019t accept me, and the one that did didn\u2019t offer Arabic, or even linguistics.<\/p>\n
At my university in the early 60\u2019s, I came into contact with a wider variety of people.\u00a0 For the first time I knew a large numbers of Protestants, Afro-Americans, and foreign students who were Muslims.\u00a0 I was no longer encountering anti-Semitism, and I was beginning to enjoy and appreciate the diversity of America and my exposure to the international students.\u00a0 By the end of my sophomore year I was eating bacon and pork chops; at the same time I helped organize and was the president of the campus chapter of the Student Zionist Organization.\u00a0 I was the New England vice president in my senior year.<\/p>\n
Many of us were politically left-wing, coming from working class families whose spectrum ranged from liberal democrat to communist.\u00a0 We were pro-labor and the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-McCarty, Nixon, the House Un-American Activities Committee.\u00a0 We revered Franklin D.\u00a0 Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson.\u00a0 We were into labor Zionism and the kibbutzim.\u00a0 One thing I want to emphasize, because of the profound effect it had on me years later: at that time most Jews were still socialists or liberal democrats, many were still working class, not as successful as they are now.\u00a0 I clearly remember right-wing Herut party, their expansionist ideology and the terrorist activities in the 40\u2019s.\u00a0 We considered them fanatics and lunatics.<\/p>\n
I took a seminar on the Middle East.\u00a0 At nineteen I thought I knew everything.\u00a0 My professor was Syrian, and I think he was a Muslim.\u00a0 I was going to teach him a few things.\u00a0 He was remarkably patient and tolerant with me, considering his obvious anti-Zionist, anti-Israel position.\u00a0 His criticisms of my papers were objective and mild, mainly that they were too one sided.\u00a0 I began to pay more attention to the other side, and I realized how much propaganda I\u2019d absorbed and how much information I had ignored.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get a very good grade, but I learned a great deal. It was Professor Haddad who made it seem sensible to me that one could be secular and religious at the same time.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I was becoming more and more involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.\u00a0 I joined the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the NAACP, and participated in sit-ins at lunch counters.\u00a0 I helped found our campus chapter of the then mildly radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).\u00a0 I majored in government, taking several courses in constitutional law and international relations.\u00a0 I went to Washington, D.C. in August, 1963 to take part in the \u201cMarch on Washington\u201d and was standing about 60 feet from Dr. King when he made that wonderful speech.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d lost my faith at 15 and by 22 I\u2019d lost Zionism.\u00a0 I still had my ethnic heritage, though I\u2019d begun to feel uncomfortable with the clannishness of many Jews.\u00a0 I felt like a normal American fighting for American causes.\u00a0 I prepared to be a social studies teacher, but the job market was not good.\u00a0 After two years of substituting, and a temporary position at my old high school, I joined the Peace Corps, for the adventure and idealism improved my job prospects later \u2013 and to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam.\u00a0 I was selected to go to Uganda, East Africa.<\/p>\n
I was extremely happy in that beautiful country, living where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria, teaching students who wanted to learn in a society where teachers were respected.\u00a0 I was learning new languages and cultures.\u00a0 I developed a taste for African and Indian-Pakistani cuisine.\u00a0 Since there wasn\u2019t much else to do in a small, up-country town, I began going to Indian movies.\u00a0 I particularly liked Mohammed Rafi, the famous playback singers, especially his qawalis; he reminded me of my father\u2019s cantorial music.\u00a0 I also enjoyed the Islamic, Omani Arab ambience I found on the coast: Mombasa, Dar es-Salam, Zanzibar.\u00a0 It was the first time not in a Hollywood (or Bombay) movie that I heard the Adhan<\/em> (the call to prayer in Islam).\u00a0 Even in the movies its plaintive melodies always sent a thrill through my body.\u00a0 I was learning two African languages, Swahili and Luganda.\u00a0 Swahili was a very easy one for me; over half its vocabulary is from Arabic and practically the same as Hebrew.\u00a0 But Swahili is a Bantu language, and I was fascinated by the similarities and differences between Swahili and Luganda.\u00a0 I made up my mind: here was my last chance to do what I\u2019d always wanted \u2013 linguistics \u2013 but now with Bantu instead of Semitic languages.\u00a0 I applied to graduate school.<\/p>\nI returned home through the Middle East and Europe but I made a point of stopping in Israel. It was 1969.\u00a0 I was no longer a Zionist, but even so, I was surprised at how disappointed I was.\u00a0 I know that part of it was the culture shock of leaving a small, up-country African town, people and a job that I loved; still, I was surprised by the brusqueness and arrogance of the Israelis I met \u2013 much like the American stereotype of the French.\u00a0 From an archaeological and historical perspective it was a good experience, but I couldn\u2019t get over how alienated I felt from the culture and from the people who were supposed to be my people.<\/p>\n
I refused on principle to visit the West Bank \u2013 that was before they started building settlements \u2013 except for East Jerusalem; I couldn\u2019t resist that.\u00a0 Standing at the wall of Solomon\u2019s temple, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa gave me an intense feeling I could not describe at the time.\u00a0 I can describe it now: I was sensing a feeling of holiness; it\u2019s no wonder the Islamic name is Al-Quds.\u00a0 But it upset me a great deal to see first-hand the discrimination and second-class status of the Palestinians, even the citizens.\u00a0 I had grown up in an American subculture where Jews had always been in the forefront of civil rights, labor and civil liberties struggles.\u00a0 To me, what I found in Israel wasn\u2019t Jewish.<\/p>\n
The next ten years, \u201869 \u2013 \u201879, I spent in Los Angeles.\u00a0 I had missed 1968, one of the most important and turbulent years in modern American history.\u00a0 Though not surprised, I was very disheartened upon my return to the U.S.\u00a0 Blacks were separating from Whites by choice; SDS had become a bunch of raving Maoists, free speech was degenerating into filthy speech.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t be political again, except for an occasional anti-war or anti-Nixon demonstration.\u00a0 I was both attracted to and repelled by the hedonism of 70s California.\u00a0 I was tempted to indulge and half-heartedly did so, but – thank God for my fitrah<\/em> and my good Jewish upbringing \u2013 I didn\u2019t go very far; I mostly grew my hair and beard long.\u00a0 I was too absorbed in my studies, getting my doctorate, teaching, getting married then divorced, and looking for a decent academic position.<\/p>\nTwo things during that decade are relevant to this story.\u00a0 Briefly, the Likud government in Israel, the building of settlements and the brutal treatment of the Palestinians, not to mention its alliance with South Africa, revolted and infuriated me, and turned me from a non-Zionist to a vocal anti-Zionist.\u00a0 Even worse to me was the knee-jerk support of the American Jewish community, which I\u2019d thought would oppose Likud, at least quietly.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t we all agree just a few years before that Begin and his ilk were lunatics?!<\/p>\n
Many of the settlers interviewed on the TV news were obviously American Jews.\u00a0 How could they have grown up in this country with these American – and Jewish – values, live through the civil rights revolution, and go do what they were doing there?\u00a0 There was more Jewish opposition in Israel than there was in the U.S.\u00a0 I felt betrayed, ashamed, disgusted.\u00a0 There were, of course – and are – other Jews who felt as I did, mainly those on the left, but only a few spoke out.\u00a0 Notable were I.F. Stone, a radical journalist and one of my heroes, and Noam Chomski, whose political writings on the Vietnam war and Palestine were as revolutionary as his theory of linguistics.<\/p>\n
In 1979, recently divorced, unable to land a tenure-track position, and missing Africa, I returned as an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Nairobi.\u00a0 My father had passed away just a couple of months before I was to leave.\u00a0 I became friends with several faculty members, particularly my department chairman and a history professor, both Muslims from Mombasa, and the Arabic professor, my Sudanese next-door neighbor.\u00a0 I often ate lunch in the faculty dining room with them, and out of respect for them (and embarrassment, because I knew they knew I was a Jew) I never ate pork when I was with them.\u00a0 Before long I stopped eating pork completely.\u00a0 We often discussed the Middle East, Islam and Judaism, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they could be anti-Israel without being anti-Jewish; they were surprised that I could be a Jew and anti-Israel.<\/p>\n
Having more time on my hand than I\u2019d enjoyed in a long time, I decided to catch up on my ever-growing reading list.\u00a0 I re-read the Bible: the Old Testament to clarify some confusion about chronology in ancient history, I also read the New Testament because I never had. I also \u00a0re-read the Quran.\u00a0 I knew nothing then of the early Islamic history.\u00a0 Sirah<\/em> or Hadith<\/em>, but I appreciated it more this time.\u00a0 I got that reaction again, though; why does it have to be so critical of the Jews; but, my memory recently refreshed, I recalled that the Torah itself and the rest of the Old Testament were equally critical, if not more so, than the Quran.\u00a0 But didn\u2019t the Jews finally learn their lesson and truly become the People of the Book when they were expelled from Israel and Jerusalem the second time, and when the rabbis, synagogues and prayers replaced the priests, temple and sacrifices?\u00a0 What was it, then, about the Jews of Madinah; they were clearly reprehensible but they sounded so different from us European Jews, even from the Sephardi Jews of the time of the Caliphs; had they, like the Ethiopian and Chinese Jews, lacked the Talmud?\u00a0 I\u2019m still curious about that.\u00a0 Anyway, that insight was later to prove to be a barrier removed.<\/p>\nSomeone wise once said that if your faith is weak, just pretend to have faith, and that will strengthen it.\u00a0 Africans, whether Christian, Muslim or Pagan, are spiritual people.\u00a0 To be an atheist is incomprehensible and ridiculous to them.\u00a0 Knowing this, I never said I was an atheist when questioned – as I constantly was- about my religion.\u00a0 I would reply that of course I believed in God, one God, but not in any particular religion.\u00a0 I was almost true, or at least what I wanted to believe if I could.\u00a0 I cannot say that I had a sudden flash of inspiration, like Paul on the road to Damascus, or a near-death experience (I did have two, but without religious effect).\u00a0 It seems to me that, just by saying it and pretending it, it gradually came back to me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d become a deist, like another hero of mine, Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0 Maybe I would join the Unitarian Church, a popular group, especially in New England, which accepts Jesus as a prophet, and which includes many socially conscious, formerly Jewish and Trinitarian Christian, liberal intellectuals.<\/p>\n
Another contributing factor was my joining at that time the Nairobi symphony orchestra\/chorus.\u00a0 It was an amateur group but they were excellent.\u00a0 I\u2019d gone with some friends to their Easter concert to hear them perform the Mozart Requiem \u2013 music for a funeral mass.\u00a0 That music, intensely religious, was gorgeous, sublime awe-inspiring and inspirational.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t only the beauty of the music, though it was a major part, but the message \u2013 glorifying God, speaking of death, resurrection, the final Judgment and eternal life \u2013 moved me to tears.\u00a0 The next day I went and signed up to sing in the chorus.<\/p>\n
For the next three years I sang other masterpieces: masses, requiems, oratorios \u2013 Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Verdi.\u00a0 It is all Christian, and some of it of course makes reference to Jesus as divine, but those words had no effect on m e; I was just helping make beautiful music.\u00a0 But the parts that spoke of God did touch me deeply and helped me gradually regain my faith and belief in Him.\u00a0 Of course today I would not sing such things as \u201cI know that my redeemer liveth,\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I fell in love!\u00a0 She was Somali, intelligent, witty, charming, and a young widow with two handsome young sons.\u00a0 Her English was very limited and my Somali was non-existent, but we could communicate quite easily in Swahili.\u00a0 We discussed marriage, but there were a few practical problems.<\/p>\n
I knew I could not stay much longer at the University of Nairobi; they were trying to Africanize it as quickly as possible, and to them I was just another white foreigner. Before I got much older I needed a new job, probably a new career, maybe with the State Department or a non-profit agency.\u00a0 From her point of view the obstacle was simply that I was a not a Muslim.\u00a0 I had mistakenly thought that any Muslim could marry one of the People of the Book; she set me straight on that very quickly; men yes, women, no!<\/p>\n
She was telling me about Islam, and I\u2019d learned some things from my colleagues and others.\u00a0 I already believed in the One God who was the Creator of the universe and all that is in it. I already believed in the Islamic concepts of tawhid<\/em> and shirk<\/em> and I knew the fallacy of believing in anything like astrology or palmistry. I\u2019d long believed that Jesus was one of the prophets and I believed that Muhammad, may God praise him, was a prophet and a messenger, and it had long ceased to be relevant to me that Muhammad was not a Jewish prophet.<\/p>\nI\u2019d stopped eating pork; I didn\u2019t gamble, I rarely drank anything besides a glass of wine with an occasional gourmet dinner.\u00a0 I was, since my Peace Corps days, already more comfortable with African and Islamic notions of modesty, child rearing, etc.,\u00a0 than with the \u201csexual revolution\u201d, and the me-ism and the phenomena of disintegrating families that were on the rise in the \u201870s and \u201880s in America. \u00a0There didn\u2019t seem to be much to prevent me from becoming a Muslim.\u00a0 I was so close, so what in 1983, was the problem?<\/p>\n
In fact there were two.\u00a0 First, there was the matter of my identity and my heritage.\u00a0 I imagine that it is not so traumatic for a Christian to change from one religion to another.\u00a0 If a German Catholic became a Lutheran, or even a Jew or Muslim, he remains a German.\u00a0 I certainly felt like an American first and a Jew second \u2013 I could never consider myself Russian.\u00a0 But in America, nation of immigrants, even the most acculturated attach some importance to their families\u2019 national or ethnic origins.\u00a0 Even though I had no desire to deal with Jews as Jews or as a community, I was reluctant to lose that identity.<\/p>\n
The second obstacle was my family.\u00a0 Though not orthodox, most were strongly traditional, all pro-Israel, some were avid Zionists; many considered Arabs as enemies, and I expected they would also consider Muslims as enemies. I feared they would disown me as crazy or even traitorous. Worst of all, because I still loved them, they would be hurt.<\/p>\n
First things first: I left that problem up in the air, and when my contract expired I did not renew it but returned to the States hoping to find another job, preferably back in East Africa. It was terribly hard.\u00a0 I had no home, no income, not even an interview suit.\u00a0 I invested in a wool suit, three ties and a winter coat \u2013 it was my first winter in twenty years \u2013 got books on how to write a resume and a SF171, and stayed with a friend in Washington, trying all the government agencies, consulting firms and PVOs that had anything to do with Africa, until my money ran out.\u00a0 I had to return to Boston and stay with my sister, where I had food and shelter, but it was far from where the jobs might be.\u00a0 In addition, I was going through a severe case of culture shock.\u00a0 So there I was: broke, in the winter, in culture shock on top of a mid-life crisis, in love \u2013 and on anti-depressants.<\/p>\n
I can joke now, but the pain and fear were unbearable then.\u00a0 For the first time in my adult life I began to pray.\u00a0 I prayed often and hard.\u00a0 I vowed that, if I could get back to Africa and marry my beloved, I would declare my submission to Allah and become a Muslim.<\/p>\n
I got a really awful temporary job in a warehouse that at least paid for food, bus fares and dry cleaning, then a better, but embarrassing one as a receptionist in the counseling office at a local college. I could see that the four yuppie psychologists figured me for some 42-year-old loser, and I pretty much agreed with them. Out of embarrassment I didn\u2019t tell anything about myself, but when the phone wasn\u2019t ringing off the hook with students panicking over mid-terms, I was reading job notices and typing applications letters.\u00a0 I found that a government agency was hiring ESL teachers for Egypt – close enough – and I applied immediately.\u00a0 A week later another agency I\u2019d applied to six months earlier invited me to D.C.\u00a0 for interviews.<\/p>\n
As soon as I got to Washington I called about the ESL jobs to see if I could get an interview but the jobs were already filled! Nonetheless, I asked to meet with them anyways, just in case something came up later. I got the interview and it was there that I was told, \u201cBy the way, there is one position opening soon, but it\u2019s in Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomalia!\u201d \u00a0I nearly shouted, \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it?\u201d she asked incredulously.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, I\u2019d love to go there.\u00a0 I\u2019m already familiar with the culture and the religion,\u201d I said aloud, but thinking to myself how it\u2019s only an hour from Mogadishu to Nairobi, and how maybe I\u2019d get to meet my future family in-laws.\u00a0 I told her my references, all of whom she knew personally.\u00a0 She would call them, and as far as she was concerned if I wanted the job I could probably have it.<\/p>\n
I finished up my interviews at the other agency.\u00a0 They even showed me the cubicle in the windowless office where I would probably be working, and I returned to Boston, elated.\u00a0 I might even have a choice, praise God.\u00a0 But what a choice it was: a one year renewable contract in a hot, dusty \u2013 but African \u2013post near the Indian Ocean, or a career civil service job with a pension plan in a windowless office in northern Virginia.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, she called to offer me the job of English program director in Mogadishu saying that I would have 48 hours to think it over.\u00a0 Everyone said it was a no-brainer; I should take the career job with pension in Washington, otherwise I\u2019d be back at square one in a year or two.\u00a0 I argued that I was an Africanist, the experience would help me and I\u2019d make good contacts.\u00a0 I accepted the job and started to get my shots.\u00a0 A couple of weeks later the other agency sent me a brief note, with no explanation, informing me I did not get the windowless job.<\/p>\n
Alhamdulillah, I could so easily have ended up with neither, but Allah had guided me to the right decision.\u00a0 I was employed and probably about to get married.\u00a0 I gave my notice at the college, and on the last day I typed a letter to the psychologists informing them that I was leaving to take up a position as a project director at the United States Embassy in Somalia, signed M. Mould, Ph.D.<\/p>\n
Of course I had to stop off in Nairobi for a few days on my way to Mogadishu where I \u00a0\u00a0had a tearful reunion with the Somali sister. I tried to make some future plans but the problem was that\u00a0 I\u2019d been hired as a bachelor, which meant no family benefits or housing. Besides this, I had no idea what Somalia or my job would be like or how long I would be there. I thought I could visit often, and there was always the phone. As well, she could come to visit her family, whom she hadn\u2019t seen since childhood.<\/p>\n
The job was interesting, a little teaching, but mostly administration and management, and dealing with embassy officials.\u00a0 Most of my own students were senior government officials and a few of them became good friends.\u00a0 Outside of work was a whole different story.\u00a0 The culture and atmosphere in urban Somalia was more Middle Eastern than African.\u00a0 During my seven years in Uganda and Kenya I knew the languages and the people were open and friendly and I never had trouble adjusting or getting around; I\u2019d always felt completely at home.\u00a0 Mogadishu gave me a culture shock.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know the language, no one knew Swahili and educated Somalis knew Italian, not English.\u00a0 All the signs were in Somali. The worst thing was the communications.\u00a0 Home phones were overcrowded; the post office was sweltering hot. The only service that was efficient was the telegraph service.\u00a0 The mail was totally unreliable except for the diplomatic pouch.\u00a0 It was at times next to impossible to contact Nairobi.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I was quite happy there, enjoying the sights and smells, the Italian and Somali food, my views of the ocean, which was within walking distance of my house and my office, discovering a new culture.\u00a0 I was living downtown, in one of the older sections, behind the Italian embassy, and I was awakened early morning by a beautiful adhan from the loudspeaker of a nearby mosque.\u00a0 We worked a Muslim schedule: Sunday \u2013 Thursday, 7 \u2013 3.\u00a0 On Fridays I would walk around and often found myself outside a little mosque behind the American Embassy, and while myrrh and frankincense drifted from the doorways in the alleys and I would stop and listen to the sounds of Jumu\u2019ah<\/em>.<\/p>\nThe first thing I noticed was the murmuring of many voices as men read from the Quran while waiting for the Imam (leader of the congregation) to give the khutbah<\/em>.\u00a0 I was instantly transported back in my mind to my old synagogue and the identical susurrus of old men reading from the Psalms (Zabur<\/em>) at the start of morning prayers.\u00a0 It gave me a comforting feeling of nostalgia.\u00a0 A little while later, walking back the other way, I would hear the Imam reciting a surah.\u00a0 It sounded much like the Torah readings I\u2019d enjoyed on Saturday mornings, again comforting and nostalgic.\u00a0 Not that it made me want to return to any synagogue; rather, it made Islam feel more comfortable and familiar to me.<\/p>\nI\u2019m a linguist, and had been a specialist in field research.\u00a0 I found a book on learning the Somali language and I hired myself a tutor, who was a better friend than a teacher.\u00a0 I quickly learned the greetings, common nouns, and verbs, kinship terms, numbers and telling time.\u00a0 Some of the vocabulary, borrowed from Arabic, was just like Swahili and Hebrew.\u00a0 Somali is also very distantly related to Semitic languages.\u00a0 The grammar was something else, though, really hard to figure out, and as I got busier and more tired at work, our lessons turned more to conversations about culture, politics and religion.\u00a0 He was knowledgeable enough to distinguish between genuine Islam and some prevalent aspects of indigenous, pre-Islamic culture and superstition that had bothered me.<\/p>\n
Before long, he offered to bring a sheikh to my home so that I could profess the shahada<\/em>.\u00a0 Despite everything, I still felt hesitant, thinking of my family.\u00a0 But they were ten thousand miles away and. I was living comfortably in a Muslim society.\u00a0 I had good friends and colleagues, and it was clear to me that much of their goodness was due to Islam.\u00a0 I asked him to bring the sheikh and he did.\u00a0 He questioned me about my beliefs, and I told him I\u2019d been a Jew, not a Christian (no problems with the trinity) \u00a0and that I\u2019d long ago given up pork, alcohol, gambling and zina<\/em>, and after he was convinced that I understood what I was about to say and knew the five pillars, I declared the shahadah<\/em>.\u00a0 My fianc\u00e9e had suggested the name Mustafa, which I liked very much.<\/p>\nAfter all the hesitation and procrastination I felt enormous relief, and a restored sense of belonging that I\u2019d missed more than I\u2019d realized.\u00a0 All my Somali friends were of course delighted and very supportive.\u00a0 They began calling me seedi<\/em> (\u2018brother-in-law\u2019).\u00a0 As soon as I could get away I bought some gold jewelry and flew to Nairobi.\u00a0 To get married I had to go to the office of the chief qadi<\/em> and declare the shahadah<\/em> again before some witnesses, in order to get an official certificate of conversion, there being no such thing in Somalia.<\/p>\nWe went to the qadi<\/em> and made our nikah<\/em>.\u00a0 A couple of days later I had to fly back to Mogadishu to resume my work.\u00a0 Less than a year later, at 43, I was overjoyed and blessed by God to become the father of a wonderful Muslim baby boy.\u00a0 I flew to Nairobi, and after a brief discussion we agreed on my wife\u2019s suggestion for a name.\u00a0 Now I even had a kunya<\/em> (nick name); I was Abu Khalid, and he was named after the great Companion, Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, may Allah be pleased with him.<\/p>\nYou are probably wondering if I told my family about my converting to Islam, and the answer is, not for quite some time.\u00a0 Of course I told my family about my marriage and they were neither surprised nor upset.<\/p>\n
I was a middle-aged man who ought to know what he was doing, and they were mainly happy for the sake of my happiness.\u00a0 When Khalid was born they were positively delighted and were most eager to meet him and his mother. When Khalid was a little over a year old, I went to Boston on my vacation and brought my wife and son with me.\u00a0 The two boys, Ali and Yusuf, were away at a Muslim boarding school in north-eastern Kenya.<\/p>\n
The reception was as warm and loving as anyone could wish for and we had a great visit.\u00a0 There\u2019s no question that a baby, especially a grandson, has a most salutary and beneficial effect on people.\u00a0 My wife had brought little gifts for my mother, sister and aunts, and they all had little gifts for her.\u00a0 I suppose they all assumed, as I had once done, that Muslim can marry a Jew or Christian.\u00a0 They knew my wife and our sons were Muslims that Khalid was being raised as a Muslim, and they had no problem with that.\u00a0 They knew I hadn\u2019t been a practicing Jew for nearly thirty years, and I\u2019d married a non-Jew before.\u00a0 I\u2019d decided that if they asked I wouldn\u2019t lie, and if they didn\u2019t I\u2019d just wait for a more opportune time \u2013 some other time.\u00a0 A few years ago they finally asked me and I told them.\u00a0 I cannot say they were pleased, but neither were they surprised, angry or cold to me, and we still have warm, loving relationships.<\/p>\n
Another year, another contract went by and then I lost my job.\u00a0 Like the new Pharaoh \u201cwho knew not Joseph\u201d, a new director came, who saw no value in the English programs and decided to end them. I kind of saw it coming and had applied for a similar job in Yemen, so I didn\u2019t fight it very hard, but in the end the job in San\u2019a<\/em> fell through, and, as my family had predicted, I was back to square one \u2013 well, not quite.<\/p>\nIn 1988, leaving my family in Nairobi, I returned to the States alone and jobless.\u00a0 It was again very tough (winter, too) but this time I had some savings, new skills and a stronger resume, I knew better how to job-hunt; I knew my way around Washington and had a few contacts.\u00a0 I still had the suit.\u00a0 Best of all, I had my faith instead of anti-depressants.\u00a0 I quickly got a couple of part-time teaching jobs and a job in a men\u2019s store.\u00a0 The teaching jobs dried up, so I sold suits full-time for over three years, always looking for a better job, but finally \u2013 it took two years \u2013 I managed to bring my family over and we did our best, trusting in God.<\/p>\n
Then, four years ago, a Muslim neighbor told us about a new Islamic institute that had recently opened, where they were looking for an English teacher.\u00a0 I immediately called, made an appointment and met the director.\u00a0 By the grace of God I was hired to teach some of the staff and to do some editorial work.\u00a0 Ironically, I am now in a cubicle in a windowless office in northern Virginia, but what a difference! I am in an Islamic environment, surrounded and inspired by good Muslim brothers, many of them excellent scholars and all of whom I love and respect very much, and whom I learn from daily.\u00a0 And what is my job? To read books on Islam, to edit manuscripts on Islam, to write about what I read.\u00a0 In essence, I am being paid to study Quran, Hadith<\/em>, aqidah<\/em>, Fiqh<\/em>, Sirah<\/em>, Islamic history and Arabic.\u00a0 I thank and praise God every day for leading me to Islam and for showering me with all these blessings.\u00a0 Alhamdulillah Rabbil-alamin<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
Footnotes:<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Shahadah<\/em>, the Islamic testimonial of faith, i.e.\u00a0 \u201cI testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0By Dr. Moustafa Mould An odyssey is a long, wandering journey.\u00a0 The word comes from Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) a hero of the Homeric epic poem, The Odyssey.\u00a0 His journey home took ten years...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36,275],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-muslim","tag-convertd","tag-new-muslim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","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=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}