to an anonymous muslim with questions that made him doubt

[hamid_al-murid]

salaam `alaykum wa rahmatu'llahi wa barakatuh


to the anonymous muslim who sought good advice a few years ago and did not seem to receive it:




i read your posts. i skimmed the replies. none of them would have fed my heart if i were in your position, if i had your questions. you are to me a wayfarer who was in need yet who was not helped. I feel it as a weight in my heart, so that i must respond. so i leave this piece of bread somewhere where you might find it. i share with you the food that fed me.


i believe that Islam is a complete religion. I also do not believe it is monolithic. Allah says it was sent as a mercy to all people. there are many different types of people. we all learn in different ways. we have different sensibilities, different needs. some people navigate through life by thinking, some by feeling. people also change over time, and their needs change. therefore the deen is manifold. it is varied. it has many different kinds of things for many different kinds of people at many different stages of life. it is a many-faceted jewel that is spinning: any time you look you see a different part. you come to it seeking and you get what you need, insha'llah...and if you don't get what you need, you need to learn patience.


many people are born and raised in this deen, and learn it by imitation. they grow up in it, and learn from their parents, teachers, peers. they receive sometimes parts of it without adult reflection, and decide to believe what they were told to believe simply because they were told. and this can be a very good thing.


converts however come to the deen as adults, with adult minds and adult sensibilities. they come with personalities already formed. they come with a worldview already established. they have burning questions, and they have already developed ways of discovering the truth of any matter that may be very different from the way a muslim raised in the deen would use. someone in this position has questions...legitimate, important questions that children don't have.


i loved your questions. i respect your sincerity. i hope you have found answers, later, elsewhere, that calmed your heart.


in response to you, I wanted to tell you about the hadith I read that has helped me:


The Prophet (salla Allahu `alayhi wa salaam) said:
“Leave that which makes you doubt
for that which does not make you doubt.
Verily, truth is tranquility and falsehood is doubt.”
[Sunan al-Tirmidhi and Sunan al-Nasaai – Hadith Sahih]


this is a hadith that makes religion possible for me. it teaches me to move toward the parts of the deen that strengthen my iman, and away from what does not. if i follow what it tells me, i keep my attention only on what makes my iman grow. i don't read random ahadith, i don't pour through bukhari and muslim thinking it is my responsibility to understand and believe anything. i treat my faith like the tiny sprout of a tree that might one day be very big but now is very small. i trust the roots of the sprouting tree to reach down deep into the earth and find what they need there: water, minerals, nutrients to make it grow. i treat my iman like a tiny baby. when it cries i try to learn what it longs for. i guess what it needs and give my guesses to it and see what calms it. i wait for it to grow. i wait for a time when i will be able to teach it to ask me for what it needs with words it learned.


in the beginning, i feed it milk. i don't make it choke on meat.


Allah knows best the affair of His slave
ma`as-salaam wa rahmatu'llah
~hamid

[sherz_umr]

this..for me..makes sense..thank you..

[hamid_al-murid]

quite welcome. alas, i don't seem to know how to format my words. it looked fine when i submitted it. new here.

i felt compelled to write something...because, i suppose, expressing myself occasionally is part of "that which does not make [me] doubt"

i am an american convert, and i so much want this deen for this benighted country. but i have a sense that it's a lot less likely to happen through folks born and raised in islam because they don't understand us and therefore don't know how to talk to us. i think for it to really happen we would have to start to "get" that islam can have an american flavor and still be islam. america is a place full of high ideals. we just don't understand how all the hidden (and not so hidden) shirk costs us on a cultural level (let alone spiritually). we are narcissistic, blind, and arrogant, and don't yet see that we are standing on the backs of the people of the world.

i really look forward to the day when we as muslims don't favor ourselves over other groups of people, but actually reach out and help anyone in need. i think it would do more for da`wah than many a good speech. masajid devoting themselves to making sure indians get fed on all the reservations, for instance. highest suicide rate in america: young men on native american reservations. many of the first muslim converts were people like that...downtrodden, oppressed, with very little to lose. real love, real mercy, real peace that doesn't stop and has no limits because its source is illimitable....

islam is not for us. i don't even think it's particularly for the people who come to us. do most muslims in america have any idea what it takes to actually come to a mosque?

the people who need it most are those we least understand. to share the real message of peace, "we" will have to go to "them".

i hope and pray i can find ways to gain courage to do more of it myself. i long for more of a sense of brotherhood. i have high ideals and big ideas, but i am afraid. to be a real muslim is hard, maybe especially for americans. it feels like there is so much to lose.

[greenhill]

Say, [O Muhammad], "If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your relatives, wealth which you have obtained, commerce wherein you fear decline, and dwellings with which you are pleased are more beloved to you than Allah and His Messenger and jihad in His cause, then wait until Allah executes His command. And Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people." (9:24)

This is the real test, Allah or the world? It is hard to have total faith. Complete surrender. We could lose 'everything'.

But seek, through that which Allah has given you, the home of the Hereafter; and [yet], do not forget your share of the world. And do good as Allah has done good to you. And desire not corruption in the land. Indeed, Allah does not like corrupters." (28:77)

A very fine balance required, not to be too engrossed with the world. In other words, we have to live in moderation. But we also cannot neglect the world.

in addition,

Every soul will taste death. And We test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned. (21:35)

The test is not limited to just the bad and requiring our patience. The good things and blessings are also tests perhaps to our charity.

It will be hard to change a country and its doctrine, but the individuals that make up the country, it's a different story. The question is how?

Peace

[hamid_al-murid]

It will be hard to change a country and its doctrine, but the individuals that make up the country, it's a different story. The question is how?

salaam `alaykum akhee.

the title of a book comes to mind:
"The Impossible Will Take a Little While"

ma`as-salaam