In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
These stories talk about poeple who have volunteered their personal stories of how they entered Islam. If you, the reader, are open to the possibility that Allah, the Creator, has given you clear evidence to accept Him and His message of Islam, then read these stories. From different backgrounds, and different experiences, you just might find someone here who had the same questions and doubts that you may have. Many of these people have endured against tremendous obstacles, including parental opposition, despair with other religions, being blind, and being lied to about the true nature of Islam.
AUSTRALIA
Mrs. Cecilia Mahmuda Cannolly (Australia)
First and foremost I would say it was because fundamentally I had always been a Muslim without being aware of it.
Very early in my life I had lost faith in Christianity for many reasons, the major one being that whenever I questioned any Christian, whether it was a person belonging to the so called Holy Orders or a layman, regarding any point that puzzled me in regard to the Church teachings, I invariably received the monotonous answer : `You must not question the teachings of the Church; you must have faith.' I did not have the courage in those days to say : `I cannot have faith in something that I do not understand', and, from my experience, neither do most of the people who call themselves Christians. What I did do was to leave the Church (Roman Catholic) and its teaching and to place my faith in the one true god in whom it was much easier to believe, than in the three gods of the Church. By contrast with the mysteries and miracles of the Christian teaching, life took on a new and wider meaning, no longer cramped with dogma and ritual. Everywhere I looked I could see God's work. And although, in common with greater minds than my own, I could not understand the miracles that happened before my eyes, I could stand and marvel at the wonder of it all --- the trees, flowers, birds and animals. Even a new born babe became a beautiful miracle, not the same thing that the Church had taught me to believe at all. I remembered how, when a child, I gazed at newborn babies and thought, 'It's all covered in black sin', I no longer believed in ugliness; everything became beautiful.
Then one day my daughter brought home a book about Islam. We became so interested in it that we followed it up with many other books on Islam. We soon realized that this was really what we believed. During the time I had believed in Christianity I had been led to believe that Islam was only something to joke about. Thus all that I then read was a revelation to me. After a while I looked up some Muslims and questioned them on some of the points that were not quite clear to me. Here again there was yet another revelation. My questions were all answered promptly and concisely, so different from the frustration I had experienced when questioning Christianity. After much reading and studying of the religion of Islam both my daughter and myself decided to become Muslims, taking the names of Rashida and Mahmuda respectively.
If I were asked what impressed me most in the religion of Islam, I would probably say the prayers, because prayers in Christianity are used wholly in begging God (through Jesus Christ) to grant worldly favours, whereas in Islam they ar used to give praise and thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings since He knows what is necessary for our welfare and grants us what we need without our asking it.
From "Islam, Our Choice"
Maryam Butson's Testimony, Australia
Assalaamualaykum,
I was born into a Baha'i family to parents from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds who had converted to the Baha'i Faith in the sixties, and spent my childhood being taught about the different religions of the world through Baha'i-coloured glasses. I owe a debt of gratitude in that my parents brought me up firmly beliving that prejudice was wrong, that one should live a moral and chaste life, to abstain from backbiting, drinking alcohol, as well as other sinful acts - and from an early age I became facinated with religion. Apart from a brief period of rebellion in my early teens, I became extremely religious (although not fanatical), and made it my goal in life to become the best Baha'i I could be. At a comparitively young age for the office, I was appointed to be an Assistant for Propogation in my local community and was elected onto the Local Spiritual Assembly. As far as my career was concerned, I decided I wanted to serve the Baha'i Faith in some way, and thought of becoming a translator of Baha'i Scripture.
But a funny thing happened on the road to Damascus as they say. One night when I was travelling up in far north Queensland, doing what is called a Baha'i Youth Year of Service (a time when youth voluntarily give up a year to serve the Baha'i Faith in some capacity), I began to say my nightly prayers. The evening was very hot and I remember the hum of the fan and the tiny buzz of mosquitoes and flies attracted to my bedside lamp.
Something came over me, and I prayed the most unselfish prayer I had ever prayed. I gave my life to God and said that all I wanted in my life was His will. I was overcome with such a sense of love that I will never be able to explain it in words. He touched my life with a piece of heaven, something I will always remember to my last dying day. The next couple of days, I can't remember precicely when, but it was within merely a few days, I got a burning urge to learn Arabic. Now granted I had thought of becoming a Baha'i translator but I had always made noises to learn Persian which was what I thought Baha'i Scripture was primarily revealed in. This urge to learn Arabic came from without and yet in hindsight I can see the working of Allah in my life. So when I had a chance, I took up Arabic as a subject at my university. I just fell in love. I knew that this was my calling, to work with Arabic somehow, it just clicked. So changing my degree and having some spare subjects, I decided to take up Islamic Studies which my university also offered.
Alhamdulillah, the way Allah guides a person to Himself is breathtaking. Before my classes I decided to get a sneak preview and had found an Islamic clothing shop opposite one of my bus stops with a sign in the window advertising Sisters' classes. With more than a little trepidation I rang them up and asked if I could attend, stressing I was a Baha'i and had no desire to convert, merely to learn about Islam. So I began to attend a weekly usrah learning about Qur'an, hadith, fiqh, seerah, with some exotic veiled creatures with "normal" Australian accents coming out from underneth their hijabs.
The pull I felt towards Islam was immense and terrifying. I wanted to join these women and belong with them to this religion I was starting to learn about, and yet every fibre of my being was resisting, reminding me I was a Baha'i - I couldn't POSSIBLY convert to Islam. So after a couple of months, I left and didn't return.
Convinced that this was a test from God, trying to strengthen me, trying to make me a better Baha'i. For two years I struggled with this desire to convert, reading anything I could get my hands on about Islam, then trying to understand it all through my Baha'i glasses. More and more though, I began to question. I found a lot of what I had thought or had been taught was unique to the Baha'i Faith, had it's genesis in Islam: things like equality between men and women, although differentiation of social duty (admittedly this is more marked in Islam); abolition of racial prejudice; the exhortation to education and knowledge; the concept of progressive revelation; a divine administrative order which permeates society. These things I found already contained within Islam, so I began to search out what was different between the two faiths.
Something striking for me, was on whom the attention and focus was placed. For Baha'is, although professing belief in the oneness of God, I immediately noticed a great difference between attention placed on Baha'u'llah - a "Manifestation"; and attention placed on Allah in Islam. I had always struggled as a Baha'i with the concept that it was "better" for my prayer to be prayed through Baha'u'llah, to seek his guidance and blessings etc.
Shoghi Effendi wrote: "You have asked whether our prayers go beyond Baha'u'llah; It all depends whether we pray to Him directly or through Him to God. We may do both, and also can pray directly to God, but our prayers would certainly be more effective and illuminating if they are addressed to Him through His Manifestation Baha'u'llah." _Directives from the Guardian_. p57-8
I found this very difficult to do, and mostly only prayed to God alone. So when I found in Islam how the focus was taken away from the Messenger and onto Allah, it just seemed so natural, to fit so well. The concept of "Manifestation" itself seemed to me like the Christian "incarnation". And yet all of a sudden, here was a religion saying that the Prophets were humans like other people (albeit pretty nifty chaps) and that it was Allah alone who did the neat tricks. This was expressed in little things, like the constant repetition of Alhamdulillah or Subhannallah throughout life, to the really fundamental tenant that God alone was to be worshipped. Tawhiidian monotheism I feel really *is* the most pure form of worship, and I believe the Baha'i Faith compromises this by having God as the Unknowable Essence that is approached through the human temple of the various Manifestations. Hate to say it, but this rings of shirk to me. Especially in retrospect. I must say as a Baha'i I did not find this to be an issue, usually as I really *did* only pray to God and saw the Manifestations as very very very special people.
However, I began to find Baha'i theology to be not quite honest at times in that I think in an effort to claim all the great religions of the world as part of the Baha'i paradigm , Baha'is either relegate to non-essential what people of other faiths consider primary issues, or they interpret it "symbolically" so as to fit Baha'i interpretations (a really good example of this is the Day of Judgement); or they make the contradictory statement that so little is known of what the original founder of the religion meant that they could dismiss what modern day followers believe - eg. with Buddhism and it's atheistic core, whilst at the same time claiming in the Kitab-i-Iqan that it is unjust to assert the text of Scripture is perverted leaving humanity without access to the teachings and knowledge of the Prophet that brought that book.
What tends to happen is that any major or valid concerns between contrasting theologies are simply dismissed by saying "well we can interpret that symbolically". Whilst there is certainly a place for allegorical parables, I think the over emphasis on this is exactly what Allah warned about in Surah 3:7
"He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except God. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:" and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding."
Finally I decided I needed to make a decision. I was already trying to practice the Baha'i Faith Islamically, but it never quite gelled.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me was to sit in the presence of hypocricy: a simple women's group *discouraged* from visiting the elderly in a local nursing home because it was not an arena in which the women could "teach". That is, the nursing home had a policy against religions proslytising on its property. Because of this, other arena were sought out for the women's group's attention. I came to the realisation that what the Baha'i Faith had to offer was a golden dream, but it neglected the nitty gritty gutter work, the very stuff I had come to realise religion is *supposed* to address.
Shoghi Effendi wrote: "...In the first place every believer is free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as regards the manner in which to spend his own money. Secondly, we must always bear in mind that there are so few Bah=E1'=EDs in = the world, relative to the world's population, and so many people in need, that even if all of us gave all we had, it would not alleviate more than an infinitesimal amount of suffering. This does not mean we must not help the needy, we should; but our contributions to the Faith are the surest way of lifting once and for all time the burden of hunger and misery from mankind, for it is only through the System of Bah=E1'u'll=E1h--Divine in origin--tha= t the world can be gotten on its feet, and want, fear, hunger, war, etc., be eliminated.
Non-Baha'is cannot contribute to our work or do it for us; so really our first obligation is to support our own teaching work, as this will lead to the healing of the nations." _Directives from the Guardian_. p14-15 I contrasted this with Islam which said: "It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces Towards east or West; but it is righteousness- to believe in God and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Messengers; to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer, and practice regular charity; to fulfil the contracts which ye have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing." 2:177 Volume 2, Book 24, Number 524:
Narrated Abu Burda: from his father from his grandfather that the Prophet said, "Every Muslim has to give in charity." The people asked, "O Allah's Prophet! If someone has nothing to give, what will he do?" He said, "He should work with his hands and benefit himself and also give in charity (from what he earns)." The people further asked, "If he cannot find even that?" He replied, "He should help the needy who appeal for help." Then the people asked, "If he cannot do that?" He replied, "Then he should perform good deeds and keep away from evil deeds and this will be regarded as charitable deeds." Volume 2, Book 24, Number 497: Narrated Abu Masud Al-Ansar:
Whenever Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) ordered us to give in charity, we used to go to the market and work as porters and get a Mudd (a special measure of grain) and then give it in charity. (Those were the days of poverty) and to-day some of us have one hundred thousand.
Volume 2, Book 24, Number 492: Narrated Haritha bin Wahab : 'I heard the Prophet saying, "O people! Give in charity as a time will come upon you when a person will wander about with his object of charity and will not find anybody to accept it, and one (who will be requested to take it) will say, "If you had brought it yesterday, would have taken it, but to-day I am not in need of it."'
And so, on the 9th November 1997 I made shahaada in front of those same Islamic women who had given me the first taste of Islam those two years before, and alhamdulillah became a Muslim. Allahu Akbar!
Jenny's Testimony
Melbourne, Australia
In the Name of Allah, The Benificent, The Merciful
Often when people ask me ‘How did you come to Islam?’, I take a deep breath and try and tell them the ‘short version’. I don’t think that Islam is something that I came to suddenly, even though it felt like it at the time, but it was something that I was gradually guided towards through different experiences. Through writing this piece I hope that somebody may read it, identify with some things and may be prompted to learn more about the real Islam.
I was born in 1978 in Australia, was christened and raised ‘Christian’. As a child I used to look forward to attending church and going to Sunday School. Even though I can still remember looking forward to it, I can’t remember much about it. Maybe it was getting all dressed up in my best clothes, maybe seeing the other children, maybe the stories, or maybe it was just that I could look forward to my grandmothers’ famous Sunday lunch when I got home. My family wasn’t strict about religion at all – the bible was never read outside church from what I knew, grace was never said before eating. To put it simply I guess religion just wasn’t a major issue in our lives. I can remember attending church with my family sometimes, and as I got older I can remember getting annoyed when the other members of my family chose not to come. So for the last couple of years I attended church alone.
At the time that I attended primary school ‘Religious Education’ was a lesson that was given weekly. We learned of ‘true Christian values’ and received copies of the bible. While I wouldn’t admit it at the time, I also looked forward to those classes. It was something interesting to learn about, something that I believed had some sort of importance, just that I didn’t know what.
In my high school years I attended an all girls high school. We didn’t have any sort of religious classes there, and I guess to some degree I missed that because I starting reading the bible in my own time. At the time I was reading it for ‘interest sake’. I believed that God existed, but not in the form that was often described in church. As for the trinity, I hoped that maybe that was something I would come to understand as I grew older. There were many things that confused me, hence there seemed to be ‘religious’ times in my life where I would read the bible and do my best to follow it, then I would get confused and think that it was all too much for me to understand. I remember talking to a Christian girl in my math classes. I guess that gave me one reason to look forward to math. I would ask her about things that I didn’t understand, and whilst some explanations I could understand, others didn’t seem to be logical enough for me to trust in Christianity 100%.
I can’t say that I have ever been comfortable living with a lot of aspects of the Australian culture. I didn't understand for example drinking alcohol or having multiple boyfriends. I always felt that there was a lot of pressure and sometimes cried at the thought of ‘growing up’ because of what ‘growing up’ meant in this culture. My family traveled overseas fairly often and I always thought that through travelling I might be able to find a country where I could lead a comfortable life and not feel pressured like I did. After spending 3 weeks in Japan on a student exchange I decided that I wanted to go again for a long-term exchange. In my final year of high school I was accepted to attend a high school in Japan for the following year.
Before I left Australia to spend the year overseas I was going through one of my ‘religious stages’. I often tried to hide these stages from my parents. For some reason I thought that they would laugh at me reading the bible. The night before I flew to Japan my suitcase was packed however I stayed up until my parents had gone to sleep so I could get the bible and pack it too. I didn’t want my parents to know I was taking it.
My year in Japan didn’t end up the most enjoyable experience in my life by any means. I encountered problem after problem. At the time it was difficult. I was 17 years old when I went there and I think that I learned a lot of valuable lessons in that year. One of which was ‘things aren’t always what they seem’. At one stage I felt as though I had lost everything - my Japanese school friends (friends had always been very important to me, even in Australia), my Japanese families, then I received a phone call saying that I was to be sent home to Australia a couple of months early. I had ‘lost everything’ - including the dream that I had held so close for so many years. The night that I received that phone call I got out my bible. I thought that maybe I could find some comfort in it, and I knew that no matter what, God knew the truth about everything that everybody does and that no amount of gossip and lies could change that. I had always believed that hard times were never given to us to ‘stop us’, but to help us grow. With that in mind, I was determined to stay in Japan for the whole year and somehow try and stop the ridiculous rumours. Alhamdulillah I was able to do that.
From that year I came to understand that not only is every culture different, but they both have good points and bad points. I came to understand that it wasn’t a culture that I was searching for.. but something else.
I attended an all girls Buddhist school in Japan. We had a gathering each week where we prayed, sang songs and listened to the principal give us lengthy talks. At first I wasn’t comfortable attending these gatherings. I was given a copy of the song book along with the beads that you put over your hands when you pray. I tried to get out of going to them at the start, but then decided that I didn’t have to place the same meaning to things as others did. When I prayed, I prayed to the same God that I had always prayed to – the One and Only God. I can’t say that I really understand Buddhism. Whenever I tried to find out more I met with dead ends. I even asked a Japanese man who taught English. He had often been to America and he said that in Japan he was Buddhist, and in American he was Christian. There were some things about Buddhism that I found interesting, but it wasn’t something that I could consider a religion.
In a lot of ways I picked what I liked out of religions and spiritual philosophies and formed what I considered to be my ‘Jenny Religion’. I collected philosophical quote after quote in high school, read into things such as the Celestine Prophecy and Angels when I returned to Australia, and still held onto the Christian beliefs that made sense to me. I felt like I was continually searching for the truth.
When I returned to Australia from Japan I had grown closer to a girl that I went to high school with. She was always somebody who I considered to be a good friend, but wasn’t in ‘my group of friends’ whom I sat with in class or for lunch. Some of the people in that group I haven’t heard from and haven’t seen since I returned. I realised that this other girl and I had a lot more in common than I had first thought. Maybe this was because I had changed a lot in Japan, or maybe it was because I had learned that being ‘socially acceptable’ and popular wasn’t important because the people that are making those judgements are not always morally correct. I didn’t really care who was my friend and who wasn’t anymore, but I did care that I was true to myself and refused to change to suit other people. I felt like I had found who I really was by losing everything that I had previously considered important.
The girl that I had grown closer to was Muslim, not that I thought of it at the time. One night we sat in
McDonalds, taking advantage of their ‘free refill coffee’ offer and talked about religion, mainly in what way we believed in God. She was the one asking the questions mostly, about how I thought God to ‘be’. I enjoyed the discussion and felt somehow that I might be making some sense to her with my ‘Jenny Religion’. When we got home she got out the 40 Hadith Qudsi and read them for herself. She read some of them to me which ofcourse got me interested. I asked to borrow the books from her so I could sit and read them all too, which I did. Reading the books in some ways was frightening. To me, examples of Islam could be found in TV news reports and in books such as ‘Princess’ and ‘Not without my daughter’. Surely, I thought, the Hadith were just a good part of it, but the bad part was there too.
From there I moved back to my university for the start of semester and couldn’t really get the books from my friend anymore so I started looking on the Internet. I had already ‘met’ some Muslims on the IRC but I considered them my friends too and that they wouldn’t tell me the ‘truth’ about Islam. I thought that they would only tell me the good parts. I did ask them some questions though and Masha’Allah they were a great help. I still remember asking a Muslim guy whether he believed in angels. Angels were a part of my ‘Jenny Religion’ and I certainly didn’t believe that a Muslim guy would admit to believing in the existence of Angels!! My limited and ignorant understanding of a Muslim male was one who beat his wife, killed female babies and was a terrorist in his spare time. This sort of person couldn’t possibly believe in angels I thought.. ofcourse I was shocked when he said ‘Ofcourse I believe in angels’. From then I was interested to know what else Muslims believed in.
I often think that I initially continued reading about Islam through the Internet to prove it wrong. I was always looking for that ‘bad part’. Everybody couldn’t have such a bad view of Islam if there was no reason for them to. I had always found a bad or an illogical part to every religion that I had read into.. so why would Islam be different? I remember finding an Islamic chat site for the first time and expected to see suppressed females just reading what the males were saying. I expected them not to have an opinion, I expected the ‘typical Muslim girl’ that I had always felt sorry for. To my shock I saw girls happily chatting, with opinions that they were allowed to express. Muslim girls that were somehow more liberated than I felt.
My learning about Islam through the Internet continued through chatting to lots of people and printing out homepage after homepage. The more I learned the more scared I was. I didn’t tell any of my friends that I was reading about Islam, not even my best-friend. At first it was because I didn’t want them telling me only the ‘good parts’, and then even when I came to realise that I wasn’t going to find any of the bad parts, I didn’t want them to get their hopes up about me reverting to Islam. I wanted this ‘decision’ to be one that I made on my own - without pressure.
This ‘decision’ that I refer to wasn’t really a decision at all. I am often asked ‘What made you decide to become Muslim?’, but when something as clear and logical as Islam is put in front of you, there is no choice. This is not to say that it made the decision to say Shahadah any easier. There were many things that stopped me at first. Firstly I didn’t think that I knew enough about Islam… but then it didn’t matter because I knew that I would never find anything that was illogical or ‘bad’. I came to realise that saying Shahadah is not the final step, but the first. Insha-Allah throughout my life I will continue to learn. The other thing that made me hesitant, was turning the meaning of the word ‘Islam’ from all the bad things that I had linked with it. I always thought that I couldn’t possibly be Muslim!! To then learn that my ‘Jenny Religion’ and beliefs for example of God being One, was actually Islam was hard at first. Islam brought everything together, everything made sense. To me, finding Islam was like one big bus ride – I had stopped and had a look at all of the stops along the way, taken a bit from all of them, and continued on with the journey. When I found Islam I knew it was the ‘last stop’ of my long ride.
In October of 1997, my best friend came with me for me to say my Shahadah at an Islamic Centre in Melbourne (Jeffcott st). I was still scared at the time, but after one of the sisters going through the articles of faith, and me putting a mental tick next to each of them, I knew that there was nothing left to do but to say it with my mouth. I still cry when I think of the moment that I said ‘Yes.. I’ll do it’. I finally dropped the mental wall that had been stopping me. I was to repeat in Arabic after the sister. With her first word I cried. It is a feeling that I can’t explain. My friend was sitting beside but a little behind me, I didn’t realise it then but she was already crying. I felt so much power around me and in the words, but I myself felt so weak.
Sometimes I think my family wonder if this is a phase I am going through.. just like my other phases. I was even vegetarian until mum told me what was for dinner that night - a roast. There is still so much for me to learn, but one thing that I would like people to understand is that I know Alhamdulillah that Islam is a blessing for mankind. The more you learn, Insha-Allah, the more beauty you will see in Islam.
Your sister in Islam,
Jenny
AUSTRIA
Muhammad Asad (Austria)
Statesman, Journalist, and Author
About the author:
Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurtur Zeitung, and after his conversion to Islam travelled and worked throughout the Muslim world, from North Africa to as far East as Afghanistan. After years of devoted study he became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. After the establishment of Pakistan, he was appointed the Director of the Department of Islamic Reconstruction, West Punjab and later on became Pakistan's Alternate Representative at the United Nations. Muhammad Asad's two important books are: Islam at the Crossroads and Road to Mecca. He also produced a monthly journal Arafat. At present he is working upon an English translation of the Holy Qur'an. [Asad completed his translation and has passed away. -MSA-USC]
In 1922 I left my native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as a Special Correspondent to some of the leading Continental newspapers, and spent from that year onward nearly the whole of my time in the Islamic East. My interest in the nations with which I came into contact was in the beginning that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social order and an outlook on life fundamentally different from the European; and from the very first there grew in me a sympathy for the more tranquil -- I should rather say: more mechanised mode of living in Europe. This sympathy gradually led me to an investigation of the reasons for such a difference, and I became interested in the religious teachings of the Muslims. At the time in question, that interest was not strong enough to draw me into the fold of Islam, but it opened to me a new vista of a progressive human society, of real brotherly feeling. The reality, however, of presentday Muslim life appeared to be very far from the ideal possibilities given in the religious teachings of Islam. Whatever, in Islam, had been progress and movement, had turned, among the Muslims, into indolence and stagnation; whatever there had been of generosity and readiness for self-sacrifice, had become, among the present-day Muslims, perverted into narrow-mindedness and love of an easy life.
Prompted by this discovery and puzzled by the obvious incongruency between Once and Now, I tried to approach the problem before me from a more intimate point of view: that is, I tried to imagine myself as being within the circle of Islam. It was a purely intellectual experiment; and it revealed to me, within a very short time, the right solution. I realised that the one and only reason for the social and cultural decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that they had gradually ceased to follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam was still there; but it was a body without soul. The very element which once had stood for the strength of the Muslim world was now responsible for its weakness: Islamic society had been built, from the very outset, on religious foundations alone, and the weakening of the foundations has necessarily weakened the cultural structure -- and possibly might cause its ultimate disappearance.
The more I understood how concrete and how immensely practical the teachings of Islam are, the more eager became my questioning as to why the Muslims had abandoned their full application to real life. I discussed this problem with many thinking Mulsims in almost all the countries between the Libyan Desert and the Pamirs, between the Bosphorus and the Arabian Sea. It almost became an obsession which ultimately overshadowed all my other intellectual interests in the world of Islam. The questioning steadily grew in emphasis -- until I, a non-Muslim, talked to Muslims as if I were to defend Islam from their negligence and indolence. The progress was imperceptible to me, until one day -- it was in autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan -- a young provincial Governor said to me: "But you are a Muslim, only you don't know it yourself." I was struck by these words and remained silent. But when I came back to Europe once again, in 1926, I saw that the only logical consequence of my attitude was to embrace Islam.
So much about the circumstances of my becoming a Muslim. Since then I was asked, time and again: "Why did you embrace Islam ? What was it that attracted you particularly ?" -- and I must confess: I don't know of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular teaching that attracted me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent structure of moral teaching and practical life programme. I could not say, even now, which aspect of it appeals to me more than any other. Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other: nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is "in its proper place," has created the strongest impression on me. There might have been, along with it, other impressions also which today it is difficult for me to analyse. After all, it was a matter of love; and love is composed of many things; of our desires and our loneliness, of our high aims and our shortcomings, of our strength and our weakness. So it was in my case. Islam came over me like a robber who enters a house by night; but, unlike a robber, it entered to remain for good.
Ever since then I endeavoured to learn as much as I could about Islam. I studied the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); I studied the language of Islam and its history, and a good deal of what has been written about it and against it. I spent over five years in the Hijaz and Najd, mostly in al-Madinah, so that I might experience something of the original surroundings in which this religion was preached by the Arabian Prophet. As the Hijaz is the meeting centre of Muslims from many countries, I was able to compare most of the different religious and social views prevalent in the Islamic world in our days. Those studies and comparisons created in me the firm conviction that Islam, as a spiritual and social phenomenon, is still in spite of all the drawbacks caused by the deficiencies of the Muslims, by far the greatest driving force mankind has ever experienced; and all my interest became, since then, centred around the problem of its regeneration.
From "Islam, Our Choice"
Dr. Umar Rolf Baron Ehrenfels (Austria)
Professor of Anthropology
About the Author:
Born as the only son of the late Baron Christian Ehrenfels, the founder of the modern structural (Gestalt) Psychology in Austria, Rolf Freiherr von Ehrenfels felt already as a child a deep attraction towards the East in general and towards the world of Islam in particular. His sister, the Austrian poetess Imma von Bodmershof, described this phase in her contribution to Islamic Literature, Lahore 1953. As a young man Ehrenfels travelled in the Balkan countries and Turkey, where he used to join prayers in mosques, (though a Christian) and was hospitably accepted by Turkish Albanian, Greek and Yogoslav Muslims. His interest in Islam increased by and by and Ehrenfels accepted Islam in 1927 and took on Umar as his Muslim name. He visitied Indo-Pakistan sub-continent in 1932 and took particular interest in the cultural-historical problems connected with the status and position of women. After his return to Austria, Baron Umar specialised in the study of anthropological problems of Matrilineal Civilizations in India. The Oxford University Press published his first anthropological book (Osmania University Series, Hyderabad, Deccan, 1941) on this subject.
When Austria was overrun by the Nazis in 1938 Baron Umar again went to India, worked in Hyderabad at the invitation of the late Sir Akbar Hydari and carried on anthropological field-work in South India and with the support of Wenner-Gern Foundation, New York, in Assam. Since 1949 he has been Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Madras and was awarded the S.C.Roy Golden Medal for original contributions to social and cultural Anthropology by the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1949. His numerous scientific and Islamic publications also include an illustrated two-volume work on Indian and General Anthropology, "Ilm-ul-Aqwam" (Anjuman Taragqqi-i-Urdu, Delhi, 1941) and a tribal monograph on the "Kadar of Cochin" (Madras 1952).
The essential features of Islam which impressed me most and attracted me to this great religion are as follows :-
- The Islamic teaching of successive revelation implies in my opinion the following: The source from which all the great world religions sprang is one. The founders of these great paths, prepared for peace-seeking mankind, gave witness to one and the same basic divine teaching. Acceptance of one of these paths means search for Truth in Love;
- Islam, in essence, means peace in submission to the Eternal Law.
- Islam is, historically speaking, the last founded among the great world religions on this planet.
- Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of Islam and is thus the last in the sequence of great religious world-prophets.
- The acceptance of Islam and the path of the Muslims by a member of an older religion thus means as little rejection of his former religion, as for instance the acceptance of Buddha's teachings meant the rejection of Hinduism to the Indian co-nationals of Buddha. It was only later that schools of thought within Hinduism rejected the Buddhist way as heretical. The differences of religions are man-made. The unity is divine. The teachings of the Holy Qur'an stress this basic unity. To witness it, means acceptance of a spiritual fact which is common to all men and women.
- The spirit of human brotherhood under the all-encompassing divine fatherhood is much stressed in Islam and not hampered by concepts of racialism or sectarianism, be it of linguistic, historic-traditionalistic, or even dogmatic nature.
- This concept of divine fatherly love, however, includes also the motherly aspect of Divine love, as the two principal epithets of God indicate" Al-Rahman - Al-Rahim, both being derived from the Arabic root rhm. The symbolic meaning of this root equals Goethe's Das Ewing-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan, whilst its primary meaning is womb.
In this spirit the Church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople has been made the principal source from which the great Muslim architects in the Near East took their inspiration when building mosques like that of Sultan Ahmad or Muhammad Fatih at Istanbul.
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, who is a direct descendant of Abraham through his first born son, Ishmael. His prophethood is prophecied in the Bible in several places, including Deut 18:18 and John 14:16. Mohammad 