What did you think other religions were about before?
Reply #3 - January 28, 2013, 10:59 PM
Sometimes I hate the inner writer trapped inside of me. I read this question, got intrigued, and then started writing this tirade of autobiographical accounts spanning from my parent’s introduction to Islam all the way up to how I became a salafi. Looking over what I just read, I’m not sure it has any relevance to the question you asked. But I can’t be bothered to edit it! I hope you find some answers to your question somewhere below:
This is a great post, MB. Thank you very much for sharing. I’ll take some time to add my own reflections as well.
My upbringing was very unique, I believe. Long before I was born, my parents were swept up by the Black Nationalist fervor that was so prevalent in the 60’s. My mother’s family are deeply religious Southern Baptists, originally hailing from the deep southern state of Georgia and settling just outside of New York City in the 50s. My mother used to tell me about segregation and the overt racism that they faced in Georgia, with detail that is still difficult for me to fully comprehend. Her father was a Christian preacher and the family was threatened by white supremacists and the KKK.
Looking back on it, it is not hard for me to see how blacks could have become radicalized back then. Given the importance of the church and scripture in their day to day lives, it is also not hard for me to see how when Elijah Muhammad started claiming prophethood—and placing himself in the same vein of messengers as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus—people believed him. My mother told me that when she read the Qur’an and saw that all of the prophets that she grew up believing in were also revered in Muslim scriptures, it was not a very difficult transition. Furthermore, rejecting the Christian religion of the “white man” and his divine “white Jesus” must have been extremely liberating. Having charismatic black American preachers like Malcolm X eloquently making the case for the new faith must have helped as well. To her, the religion did not seem foreign at all. It was a very grassroots movement, and she was a part of it. Growing up in the shadow of Genesis and Exodus, why would the God of the Old Testament not send a messenger to the downtrodden blacks, to liberate them and lead them to the light, just as he had done with the downtrodden Israelites before? That is very much how they viewed themselves, and I get the sense they loved being a part of such a “sacred” movement.
The love affair was short lived, however. After the sex scandal with Elijah Muhammad and the assassination of Malcolm X, many of Elijah’s followers abandoned him for a more “orthodox” Sunni Islam. My mother also made the transition. This new religion was certainly not native, but it had a legacy and history to it that lent it credibility. Draped in the familiar backdrop of Israelite prophecy, Islam still had a mystery to it that must have been captivating. The ancient rituals, the strange language, the foreign clothes—the whole thing must have been enticing in the way that most things not fully comprehensible tend to be, at least to curious minds. It was not the faith of the “white oppressors” and it was not the faith of the “heathen pagans.” This was the faith of God--the real God, the eternal God, the God of all races that they already believed in.
Enter me. I was born shortly after my parents made their first Pilgrimage to Makkah. Islam had not yet grown in the US to what it is today. There were very small African American convert communities, as well as small congregations of foreign students and refugees. Islam was, to me, almost like a Christianity with a twist. Everyone had their religion; ours was just a little different—and ours happened to be the correct one. Everyone else had just gotten it wrong. I remember being a kid and watching the children in my neighborhood go to church, all dressed up and dapper, while we prayed at a small store-front mosque in Arabic.
I remember my Aunts and Uncles, who were Christian, talk about the bible and the stories of the Israelite prophets and I remember going to the Mosque and hearing those same stories. Of course, there were minor differences. But on the whole, I grew up to believe that Islam was really just a correction of the “corrupted” creed of Christianity.
Once I got into college, I deliberately took classes in comparative religion. At the same time, I was becoming more and more influenced by the writings of Bilal Phillips and the Islamic concept of Tawheed. (I’ll explain what that is in just a moment.) I think I needed to know what made my religion so special. Should I even bother continuing to claim it? I had heard Muslims talk about values, but all religions talked about values. I had heard Muslims talk about scientific achievements, but surely, if scientific achievement was any sign of divine favor, then the US in the 20th century must have been the holiest nation on the planet. Every religion tells you to be a good person, to love your neighbor, to give money to the poor, yada yada yada. Why did I need Islam?
That is why tawheed was so attractive. The concept of tawheed essentially means that because God singlehandedly does those things that only he can do: creating, causing life, causing death, administrating the laws of the universe, etc, then only God deserves to be worshiped.
Tawheed could be violated by either believing that any force other than God could do those things that only God can do, or by dedicating acts of worship to anything other than God.
Worship is defined as any words or actions that please God and are in accordance with his legislation as reveled to his prophets.
In this light, it became easier for me to see why Islam was unique. Christians ascribed divinity to Jesus, thereby violating tawheed. Hindus worshiped idols, which was of course a violation of tawheed. Jews worshiped one God, but their rejection of messengers like Jesus and Muhammad meant that they were not worshipping according to God’s legislation—which was, of course, a violation of Tawheed.
Even many Muslim sects were guilty of violating tawheed. Those who believed that saints could answer their prayers, those who venerated relics, those who prayed at graves while believing they had power to help or harm, in the Muslim world, there was a variety of examples of how people had violated Tawheed.
This whole thing made a lot of sense to me at the time. The wahabis of Saudi Arabia seemed to have this concept of Tawheed down to a tee, and I got swept up in their puritanical propaganda.
Topic: What did you think other religions were about before?