Islam and Life PressTV : Uk Muslim Converts a Minority Within a Minority

Salaam alaikoum oua Rahamatou Allah Barakatou

Many, many years ago-well over 30- I embraced Islam after having sat by myself reading the entire Islam in a language Allah knew that I could understand. I did so not as any intention to adopt my then husband’s religion, but so as to help me understand him better. By the time I got to the last ayat, I had surrendered my soul to the ideals of the beautiful message contained within the pages.

My then husband had returned to his family for Ramadan, leaving me to spend the month by myself – and a ticket to visit friends if I so chose. When he returned, I explained my choice. Rather than being happy, he flew into a rage -I suspect because he had not intended to pursue the real reason for marriage, but used it to obtain documentation -this I cannot prove, but it is a suspicion. (The marriage was secret-to this day no one I his family knows of the marriage, one which ended years ago because of its toxicity.)

Having no one to advise me, I made an appointment with an imam at a mosque in the city I then lived… A seriously bad mistake for so many reasons. His idea of women was certainly not Mohammeds’ idea of it, nor of others far better educated than was he; and the few times I attended salat al-Joumah that too was a disaster in which I was treated like a fourth class citizen. One women I recall only too well interrupted me during a prayer to shout (yes! shouting like a fish monger’s wife!) that my foot was turned incorrectly… She kept poking me and shouting that I picked up my prayer rug, told her that she needed to re-visit the Quran, and left. I tried a few mote times to attend Friday prayers, but the atmosphere was cloying and stultifying, so I desisted., later finding an imam trained and educated at the grand moque in Cairo who could listen to my concerns and answer my questions with great kindness and inclusiveness.

From time to time I have gone to mosques, but encounter not the message and behaviour I believe to be of Islam but of disrespect and challenge … Those who have little to no adhab (as I understand the meaning of this word). The Islam I know and love never pushes anyone away , but instead draws one in. when I encounter those who push one away, I know immediately that they and the places in which they congregate are not for me.

I see in what is purported to be ‘Islam’s behaviour’ what I saw in the ‘Christianity’ of my youth-the religion I fled when I was not yet 12 years of age- hypocrisy. At 12 I did not realize that what I saw around me was not the message of Issa/Jesus, but only the misguided activities of mislead humans. It is what I see in too many that profess Islam-but I am old enough to know that what is the behaviour of the mislead is NOT the message of Islam.. that the two are oceans apart.

As for minority or race or so many other ways to categorize, for me they are only ways to describe those who are supposedly different. We humans are not different-we share 98% of our genes with one another and are all here at the permission and mercy of Allah/God. Skin tones come from our genes, and our melanin levels change as the rays of the sun change with our location to it. I north America I am a light olive skin tone, but if I spend a month in north Africa, my skin becomes as brown as the outside of an acorn.

This is just a soupçon of my story -one only Allah can truly understand and assess. It is he who knows whether or not I am ‘muslim’, as he knows whether or not others are.

BarakAllahFik to those like Tarik Ramadan help to clarify and to change wrongful conceptions.