Good afternoon brothers and sisters. I am a recent convert to Islam. If I say something that may be taken as disrespectful, please forgive my choice of words or my ignorance, non of such is meant. I was born a white male in America and raised as a Mormon. When I was 18 I witnessed something that severed my ties with the Mormon religion and set me to wander and ask many questions through decades. I researched and read as much as I could about other faiths. Perhaps it was my immaturity or my distractions through my life or a lack of conviction but it wasn't until almost 40 years later that I became a convert to Islam with the hand of a beautiful Muslim woman. I do not mean that her physical beauty was her single attraction for me, yes she is physically beautiful. But she had the most beautiful heart of any woman I had ever known.
I did not understand the phrases that I said or exactly what I had agreed to when we were married as the whole wedding was in a foreign language to me and was a Muslim wedding. We were married for many years, very happy, but as we grew older together she drew closer to Islam and I did not follow her with the same conviction. I had planned to, but it was not a priority for me at the time.... or so it seemed. My attempts to grasp the religion so that it made sense to me prior to recently left me frustrated with too many internal conflicts with my other beliefs.
But at the dawn of this new year, my motivation was pushed by an unstoppable force and I am committed and practicing now. Now, I have a different thing that is unsettling me. Here I am again, in a religion where I am persecuted. That seems the plight of the believers, as it is the plight of the non-believers to do the persecuting. However, my earlier misconceptions of Muslims and Islam are no doubt shared still with many others throughout the world. We Muslims face a challenge not only to try to spread the message of Islam, but in many cases just to survive the persecution.
So, upon much prayer, and thought, I have some questions for my more knowledgeable brothers and sisters.
1. I found that my conversion to Islam became easier when the passages in the Quran made sense to me, in their English translations. That only began to occur after I studied some of the life and the history of our prophet Mohammad SAW (pbuh) - FIRST. Without the context of that actual history of events surrounding him and the times, the Quran (in its English translations) reads mostly like a rule book of duties, rewards and punishments. Again, without that context of history and events, indeed many of these duties, rewards and punishments seem extreme, nonsensical or purely transactional. This I imagine, is the way Islam is judged by those who have only had a superficial look at the Quran.
2. But to me, the hardest part is that I've always known that Allah sees the hearts and minds of his servants. And yet, the enforcement to recite the prayers and passages of the Quran, for those of us who still have much Arabic to learn, is an exercise in learning to make new utterances without their intentions echoed in our hearts when we pray. I realize that this is a process, and will come slowly but it will come, and I will endure it until so. However, now I will present some of my knowledge, humbly so, please do not be offended, I am only a student and may have misunderstandings still and incorrect knowledge. I am offering my outsiders view while it is still applicable and in my head.
In the time of the Prophet (pbuh), and as the Quran was being written, there were no printing presses, scribes were far and few, even the material to make copies of it onto was scarce. Today it is a common practice and something we take for granted that we can have our own hard copies of the Quran. We can have images of it on our phones, we can have them read to us by machines, etc. etc. But in the days of our Prophet (pbuh) and for centuries after, most people did not have access to a printed copy for reference. So, the rigors of our prayers and rewards to learn and perform were the best way to distribute the Quran... into people's minds that they could ultimately have a copy in their heads. The Quran has many passages that speak of the continued failure of man to remember our God and his words and his commandments in the past. The practices of Islam make this failure difficult to repeat. However, by as soon as the language of the recipients of Islam change, a large obstacle before us that is not in the path of others who are trying to spread the words of their religions.
To a native Arabic speaker, they can hear the words, their minds can grasp the meanings which then lets their hearts be warmed by the intentions. But to a non-Arabic speaker, an Islamic prayer is gibberish. They have to start with a translation for their mind to find meaning in. If I walk into a place of worship for religion 'X', and the prayers their people speak are in my language, it is like music to my mind - I may like it, I may not, but there is no veil of cognizance to defer my opinion. In other words, a weakness of Islam to attract more brethren is because the message is... "in other words". And, those of us who are not native to Arabic, have a hard time praying with our hearts while our mouths are making noises that our hearts have to try to speak over. And, the irony is that the message we want to echo in our hearts is still a translation.
Were a person to perform the Islam prayer with the intentions of the Quran's messages from their lips and hearts in their native language, it would not be Islam. I understand this. I signed up for this. To me, given the choices of religions, Islam is the Master Class of conviction. And I need to prove to Allah and myself that I have conviction to Allah.
To my more learned brothers and sisters, I welcome your enlightenment on my thoughts. Assalaam 'alaykum.
I did not understand the phrases that I said or exactly what I had agreed to when we were married as the whole wedding was in a foreign language to me and was a Muslim wedding. We were married for many years, very happy, but as we grew older together she drew closer to Islam and I did not follow her with the same conviction. I had planned to, but it was not a priority for me at the time.... or so it seemed. My attempts to grasp the religion so that it made sense to me prior to recently left me frustrated with too many internal conflicts with my other beliefs.
But at the dawn of this new year, my motivation was pushed by an unstoppable force and I am committed and practicing now. Now, I have a different thing that is unsettling me. Here I am again, in a religion where I am persecuted. That seems the plight of the believers, as it is the plight of the non-believers to do the persecuting. However, my earlier misconceptions of Muslims and Islam are no doubt shared still with many others throughout the world. We Muslims face a challenge not only to try to spread the message of Islam, but in many cases just to survive the persecution.
So, upon much prayer, and thought, I have some questions for my more knowledgeable brothers and sisters.
1. I found that my conversion to Islam became easier when the passages in the Quran made sense to me, in their English translations. That only began to occur after I studied some of the life and the history of our prophet Mohammad SAW (pbuh) - FIRST. Without the context of that actual history of events surrounding him and the times, the Quran (in its English translations) reads mostly like a rule book of duties, rewards and punishments. Again, without that context of history and events, indeed many of these duties, rewards and punishments seem extreme, nonsensical or purely transactional. This I imagine, is the way Islam is judged by those who have only had a superficial look at the Quran.
2. But to me, the hardest part is that I've always known that Allah sees the hearts and minds of his servants. And yet, the enforcement to recite the prayers and passages of the Quran, for those of us who still have much Arabic to learn, is an exercise in learning to make new utterances without their intentions echoed in our hearts when we pray. I realize that this is a process, and will come slowly but it will come, and I will endure it until so. However, now I will present some of my knowledge, humbly so, please do not be offended, I am only a student and may have misunderstandings still and incorrect knowledge. I am offering my outsiders view while it is still applicable and in my head.
In the time of the Prophet (pbuh), and as the Quran was being written, there were no printing presses, scribes were far and few, even the material to make copies of it onto was scarce. Today it is a common practice and something we take for granted that we can have our own hard copies of the Quran. We can have images of it on our phones, we can have them read to us by machines, etc. etc. But in the days of our Prophet (pbuh) and for centuries after, most people did not have access to a printed copy for reference. So, the rigors of our prayers and rewards to learn and perform were the best way to distribute the Quran... into people's minds that they could ultimately have a copy in their heads. The Quran has many passages that speak of the continued failure of man to remember our God and his words and his commandments in the past. The practices of Islam make this failure difficult to repeat. However, by as soon as the language of the recipients of Islam change, a large obstacle before us that is not in the path of others who are trying to spread the words of their religions.
To a native Arabic speaker, they can hear the words, their minds can grasp the meanings which then lets their hearts be warmed by the intentions. But to a non-Arabic speaker, an Islamic prayer is gibberish. They have to start with a translation for their mind to find meaning in. If I walk into a place of worship for religion 'X', and the prayers their people speak are in my language, it is like music to my mind - I may like it, I may not, but there is no veil of cognizance to defer my opinion. In other words, a weakness of Islam to attract more brethren is because the message is... "in other words". And, those of us who are not native to Arabic, have a hard time praying with our hearts while our mouths are making noises that our hearts have to try to speak over. And, the irony is that the message we want to echo in our hearts is still a translation.
Were a person to perform the Islam prayer with the intentions of the Quran's messages from their lips and hearts in their native language, it would not be Islam. I understand this. I signed up for this. To me, given the choices of religions, Islam is the Master Class of conviction. And I need to prove to Allah and myself that I have conviction to Allah.
To my more learned brothers and sisters, I welcome your enlightenment on my thoughts. Assalaam 'alaykum.
