(Sir Brunton, who comes from an eminent family andwho possesses the
title of Baronet, graduated from the Oxford University and made fame with his
publications.)
I am
grateful to you for giving me the chance to explain why I became a Muslim. I
grew up under the influence of Christian parents. Theology was one of the
subjects that I was interested in when I was young. I met some missionaries and
closely concerned myself with the activities they had been carrying on in
foreign countries. My heart felt like helping them. Without being officially appointed,
I joined them in their journeys. To say the truth, although I had taken
religious lessons, the Christian theory that “People come to this world in a
sinful state and they therefore must be sure to expiate,” sounded bizarre to
me. For this reason, I was gradually developing hatred against Christianity. I
could not tolerate the idea that Allâhu ta’âlâ,
with all His infinite power to create anything He wished, would have to create
only sinful creatures, which would run counter to His almightiness and compassion,
and I therefore harboured doubts as to the genuineness of a religion that
described Allâhu ta’âlâ as such. These doubts
developed into curiosity about the instructions that the other religions gave
in this respect, and consequently I decided to examine the other religions as
well. My heart was innerly craving for a just, merciful and compassionate god,
and I was looking for such a creator, i.e. Allah. I was wondering whether that
was the real Nazarenereligion that Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ had brought. Or had the
pure religion preached by him been polluted in the process of time? The more I
thought about these, the stronger did the doubts in my heart grow, so much so
that more often than not I would pick up today’s current Holy Bible, delve into
the book, and at each time find more deficiencies and unintelligible
discourses. Eventually, I reached the conclusion that that book was not
thegenuine Holy Book revealed to Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’. People had made a myriad
of wrong accessions into the Bible, thus turning the pure heavenly book into an
irreparable mixture of facts and fictions.
Having reached an absolute
conviction as to this fact, I substituted Bible-reading with other sorts of
preaching to the
people that I met during the journeys I was making with the
missionaries. Instead of mentioning their fictitious theory of ‘God, the Son of
God, and the Holy Ghost’, for instance, I would inculcate the facts such as
that when man died his soul would not die, that human beings were created by a
great creator, that this great creator would punish men both in this world and
in the next on account of their sins, and that this great creator, being
extremely compassionate, would forgive men their sins in case they repented for
their wrongdoings.
As days went by, my belief in
the unity of Allah developed into an absolute conviction. In order to penetrate
into the inner nature of truth, I tried to dive deeper and deeper into the
subject. It was sometime during these efforts that I began to study the Islamic
religion. This religion magnatized me so strongly that I dedicated my entire
day to studying it. I happened to domicile myself in a forlorn Indian village,
called Ichra, which was rather far from the urban areas and whose name almost
no one knew. The inhabitants of this village belonged to a very poor and
destitute caste. Only for the sake of Allâhu ta’âlâ, I was trying to teach them the existence of a single and
compassionate creator and the right way they ought to follow in this worldly
life. I was also striving to inculcate into them such notions as religious
brotherhood and cleanliness. So strange to say, all these notions I was doing
my best to teach them existed in Islam, not in Christianity, and I was
preaching them not as a Christian missionary, but like a Muslim religious man.
I am not going to enlarge on the details of
the great efforts I made, the degree of self-sacrifice I achieved, or the
severe difficulties I faced in that lonely and desolate village, among those
unenlightened people. My only concern was to guide them to spiritual and
physical cleanliness and to teach them the existence of a great creator.
Whenever I was on my own, I
would study the life of Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’. Very few books had been
written in English to reflect the facts about his life, yet no effort had been
spared on the part of Christians to criticise and vilify that great Prophet and to incriminate him with
lying. However, I was now able to study Islam fairly, without being influenced
by those books that had been written under inimical motives. During the course
of my studies, I came to the full realization that it was a definite fact that
Islam was a true religion in which the concept of
Allah and reality became manifest in its clearest identity.
Once you had been informed on
the services which the great Prophet Muhammad ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’alaihi wa sallam’ had rendered for
the good of humanity, it would be impossible for you to deny his prophethood.
Definitely, he was the Messenger of Allâhu ta’âlâ. As a blessing of Allâhu ta’âlâ, he, alone, and in a very short time, transformed the Arabs from
a mass of heathens who had been living in utter savagery and nescience,
worshipping many idols, believing in superstitions, leading a bestial,
semi-naked, and overwhelmingly polygamous life, into a civilized, morally
upright and clean nation whose members were now believing in Allâhu ta’âlâ, observing women’s rights, and
always trying to be good-natured and genial. A person never could have managed
such a job without the blessing or help of Allâhu ta’âlâ. As I thought about the strenuous efforts I put forth in that
tiny village whose population was only one or two hundred, and how I still
could not bring those wretched people to the right course, my admiration for
the work accomplished by Muhammad ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’alaihi wa sallam’ grew
all the greater. No. Something as great as that could be accomplished only by
the Messenger of Allâhu ta’âlâ. One ought to believe in his prophethood with all one’s heart.
I do not want to make mention of
all the other so many even much more beautiful facts about the Islamic
religion. For, by acknowledging the existence of Allâhu
ta’âlâ and the prophethood of Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, a
person has already become a Muslim. One of those days an Indian Muslim visited
me. That polite person’s name was Mian Amiruddîn. We had a long conversation on
the Islamic religion. That conversation was the decisive encouragement, and I
accepted Islam.
I believe in the fact that Islam
is the true religion of Allah, in its simplicity, forgivingness,
compassionateness and sincerity, in that it establishes brotherhood among
people, and in that one day it will unite the entire world.
I have reached the last stage of
my life, and from now on I have dedicated myself to the service of Islam.
(Prof. Baron Leon comes from a prominent Britishfamily and
possesses the title of Baron. He owns a Ph D.and other scientific titles. He
became a Muslim in 1882. He had memberships in numerous scientific societies in
Europe and America. Prof. Leon, who was a great authorityespecially in the
linguistic and literary sciences, spranginto the universal limelight with his
publication that was called ‘Ethimology of the Human Lexion’. Upon thispublication,
the Potomac University of America gave himthe degree of M.S. Prof. Leon is at
the same time an expertgeologist. He was invited by many famous institutions
and gave conferences of these areas. He was elected as the Secretary General
for the Société Internationale de Philologie=International Society of
Philology, Science andFine Arts, which had been founded in 1875. He began
topublish a magazine titled (The Philomeths). He was awarded with various
medals by the Ottoman Sultan Abd-ul-hamîd II, by the Shah of Iran, and by the
Emperor of Austria.)
One of the most perfect
essentials of the Islamic religion is that it never demands of Muslims to act
against reason. Islam is a religion whose teachings are quite reasonable and
perfectly logical. The other religions, on the other hand, force people to
accept the tenets of creed that they can never understand, believe or find
logical. In Christianity the church is the only authority in this respect.
Contrariwise, Muslims are commanded to believe in anything only after mentally
examining it (and finding it logical). Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’ states, “Allâhu ta’âlâ has not created
anything irrational or illogical.” He states
in another hadîth-i-sherîf, “I tell you with
certainty that even if a person performs (his daily
prayers of) namâz (regularly), fasts, pays (the prescribed alms called) zakât, goes on hajj (Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mekka), and carries out all the other
commandments of Islam, he shall be rewarded in proportion to the degree of his
using the mind and logicAllâhu ta’âlâ has endowed on him.”
The pure religion preached by Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ also contained similar rules. For instance, ‘First try everything! Accept only the good one.” Yet, these rules were forgotten in the course of time. The fifth âyat-i-kerîma of Sűra-t-ul-Jum’a of Qur’ân al-
kerîm purports, “Those people who have been enjoined to learn
the Torah and to adapt themselves to it, and yet who do not obey it, are
reminiscent of an ass with a load of books on its back.”
Alî ‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’ states,
“The world is dark. Knowledge is a nűr (light)! However, knowledge which is not
correct is obscurity.”
Muslims hold the belief that
“Islam is the very truth itself,” and they state that Islam’s light shines only
with the energy it gets from knowledge and logic, that this knowledge ensues
only from truth, and that truth, in its turn, is discovered by men owing to the
common sense, which is a blessing Allâhu ta’âlâ has conferred upon them.
The last Prophet of Allâhu ta’âlâ, Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, who
is the greatest blessing Allâhu ta’âlâ has sent to humanity, showed them the path that they were to
follow. It was during his final days (in this world), when the following
incident took place:
It was a couple of days before Muhammad’s
‘alaihis-salâm’ passing away, and he was resting, half conscious, his head on
the knees of Âisha ‘radiy-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’anhâ’,
his beloved wife. All the people of Medina were desperately sad about
Rasűlullah’s illness, which enervated him day by day and against which they
were helpless. Men, women, children were crying loudly. Among those who were
crying were gray-haired, sallow-complexioned, aged warriors. Muhammad Mustafâ
al-emîn ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’alaihi wasallam’
was their commander, guide, leader, companion, shepherd, an intimate friend
with whom they exchanged confidences, and, the most important of all, their
great Prophet who had rescued them from darkness
and guided them to the light of truth owing to the Islamic religion which he
preached. This great Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’alaihi wa sallam’, who had
brought them peace and security by means of Islam, was now bidding ‘Farewell’
to them. The lamentable thought that their Prophet
was dying was gripping their hearts like an iron clamp, bringing tears into
their eyes, and causing them to despair deeply.
At last, they risked losing
everything, and entered into his presence in that mood of hopelessness. In
tears they asked, “O the Messenger of Allah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’!
You are gravely ill. Perhaps Allâhu ta’âlâ will invite you to His presence and you will no longer be with
us. Then, what can we do without you?”
Our Prophet Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’
stated, “You
have the Qur’ân al-kerîm to consult.” Then
they asked, “O the Messenger of Allah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’! It is
certain that the Qur’ân al-kerîm will be our guide in many respects. Yet if we cannot find what we
are seeking by looking up in it, and if you have already left us, who will be
our guide?” Upon this, our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ stated, “Act in accordance with
what I have told you.” This time they asked,
“O the Messenger of Allah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’! Since you will no
longer be among us, what should we do if we encounter altogether new matters
and cannot find anything about those matters in your hadîths?”
Our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’
raised his blessed head slowly from the pillow, and said, “Allâhu ta’âlâ has given a personal
guide to each and every one of His born slaves. This guide is the common sense,
and his heart, which embodies a conscience. If you use this guide well and
properly, you will never deviate from the right path, and in the end you will
attain to Allâhu ta’âlâ.” “Istafti qalbek, Fe-innahâ teskunu bi-l-halâl.” Here is the Islamic religion which I boast of having chosen. This
religion is the true religion of Allah, which is entirely based on reason and
logic.
Beware boasting of wealth, nor say, “Who’s there like me!”
Harvest-like, a
cruel wind winnows all that belongs to thee.
It is stated in a hadîth-i-sherîf: “Every newly-born baby
issuitable for and agreeable with Islam. Afterwards they aremade Jews,
Christians or magians by their parents.”Likewise, I
had been born as a Muslim. Yet it was only many years later that I realized
this fact. Since my childhood I had been deeply interested in the past. When I
graduated from the university, I began to work as a writer. I was not a
well-known writer yet. Nor could one tell what I was going to be. As a
Christian, I had been given some teaching on the concept of Allah and on how to
worship Allah. Yet my adoration was not confined to their teachings; I felt the
same worship-like attachment towards all paragons of chivalry and valour that I
had read about in history.
Eventually, I was given an office in Uganda, which was under the
British sway in those days. When I went to Africa, I saw that life was entirely
different there. Lifestyles of people living there, the sentiments that they
displayed concerning various worldly events, their behaviours towards one
another amazingly defied the expectations and imaginations that I had harboured
about them when I had been in London. People living in this place faced the
very primitive and onerous life-styles and all sorts of difficulty they
encountered in a sense of absolute trust, did not lose their jollity at times
when one would normally feel quite despondent, and no degree of poverty could
inhibit them from helping one another. A sacred glue composed of love and
compassion had attached them to one another, which was well beyond the narrow
mental grasp of people of our sort. In fact, I had taken an interest in the
orient during my school days. In Cambridge, for instance, I had tasted the
pleasure of reading the stories of Arabian Nights. And now, being in Africa,
and so close to the Orient; I resumed reading the book. The difficult and
unaccommodating life I was now leading in Uganda was making me feel closer and
closer to the oriental people. As I was reading the stories of Arabian Nights
now, I was comparing them with the people of Uganda and, as it were, I was
living with them.
I was completely accustomed to life here,
when the First World War broke out. When I applied for military service, they
would not admit me into the military on account of my poor health. When I felt
better I applied again. This time they admitted me, and sent me to the German
front in France. In 1917 I joined the terrible Somme battles. I was wounded in
these battles, and I was captured by the Germans. They took me to Germany,
where I was put in a hospital. I saw extremely horrendous events in the
hospital. Because of those battles, mankind suffered such horrible afflictions.
Many Russian prisoners of war were brought to the hospital. They were suffering
from dysentery, which had already exhausted them. Food provisions were
extremely poor in Germany. They did not give enough food to the prisoners of
war or to the other patients. I was writhing with hunger. The wound on my right
arm never seemed to be recovering, nor did the one on my right leg. I was
already crippled and paralyzed. I applied to the Germans and requested them to
repatriate me to my country through the Prisoners of War Exchange Commission in
Switzerland. My request was approved by the Germans. I was sent to Switzerland,
where they hospitalized me again. My arm
and
leg were entirely out of service. What would become of me now? How would I earn
my living? These thoughts drove me to infinite despair. As I was in this mood
of utter hopelessness, I somehow remembered the consolatory Koranic statements
that I had read in a book which I had bought in Uganda. In those days I had
read them again and again with deep interest and adoration; I had even memorized
them. I began to pass these statements through my heart and to repeat them a
number of times daily. It gave my heart a sense of relief and opened the gates
of hope. And my hopes came true, too. The Swiss doctors operated on my leg once
again, and my leg began to feel better. I owed this to the Qur’ân al-kerîm. As soon as I began to walk, the first
thing I did was to go to a bookstore and buy a translation of Qur’ân al-kerîm by Savary. [This book is still my most
cherished companion.] This time I began to read the entire Qur’ân al-kerîm. The more I read, the more relief did
my heart feel, the higher did my soul ascend, the deeper into my essence did a
tremendous mass of light penetrate. My leg was completely well now. Yet my
right arm was still motionless. Upon this, I obeyed the command of the Qur’ân al-kerîm, surrendered myself to the Will of Allâhu ta’âlâ, and drilled myself in writing with my
left hand. The first thing I did after learning to write with my left hand was
to embark on writing a copy of Qur’ân al-kerîm
with my left hand. At one time, I had been deeply impressed by an episode in an
Islamic book that I had been reading. The episode was about a young man who was
reading the Qur’ân al-kerîm quite oblivious of
his surroundings and without even knowing that he was in a graveyard where he
had come accidentally. I put myself in his place, delievered my essence to the
Grace of Allâhu ta’âlâ, and carried on my
reading the Qur’ân al-kerîm. In other words, I
was a Muslim now.
In 1918 I went back to London.
In 1921 I began to attend Arabic lessons in the University of London. One day
my Arabic teacher, Mr. Belshah of Iraq, told us about the Qur’ân al-kerîm. He said, “You are free
to believe or not. Yet you will find that it is a very interesting book and
that it is worth studying.” When I said, “I know the Qur’ân al-kerîm. I have read it, and
many times, too. I believe in it,” he was bewildered. A couple of days later he
took me to the London mosque at Notting Hill Gate. I joined the daily prayers
in that mosque for about a year. In 1922 I became a Muslim officially.
We are in 1950 now. So far, I
have held fast to all the commandments of Qur’ân
al-kerîm with both hands, and this has
given me a great pleasure. Allâhu ta’âlâ’s power, compassion and grace are boundless. The only personal
treasure that we can carry on this trek of life and which we can take to the
world to come is to offer hamd-u-thenâ [gratitude and glorification] to Allâhu ta’âlâ, to surrender ourselves with
love to that Almighty Being, and to worship Him.
There is not a single other
religion to equal Islam in its simple comprehensibility or in its reassuring
smoothness. Islam is the one and only one religion which infuses a sense of
peace and tranquillity into the human soul, blesses man with a life of
contentment, and guides him to eternal happiness and salvation after
death.
Man is one of the various creatures of Allâhu ta’âlâ. Naturally, there is some connection
between him and the other creatures. Allâhu ta’âlâ
created man in the most perfect form. What gives him this singular virtue is
the soul that he possesses. Man’s soul continuously endeavours to take him up
to higher and higher levels. And the only source to feed the soul is religion.
What kind of a connection is
there between man and the Almighty Being who creates him? No doubt, religion
explains this. I studied the statements made about religion by various
scholars. The following are a few examples:
(Paraphrased) from Carlyle’s work ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the
Heroic in History’:
“A person’s religion is his
heart’s belief, and it is, therefore, his most prominent characteristic.
Religion is such that it goes directly into one’s heart. It adjusts one’s
activities in the world. It shows the way one should follow and determines
one’s destination.”
(Paraphrased) from Chesterton’s book ‘If One ShouldThink’:
“Religion expresses the most
sublime fact which a person obtains concerning his and others’ existence.”
(Paraphrased) from Ambroce Bierce’s work ‘The Satan’s Dictionary’:
“Religion is a source that
teaches people what they do not know and which infuses both fear and hope into
them.”
(Paraphrased) from Edmunde Burke’s book ‘The FrenchRevolution’:
“The common commandment of all
true religions is to obey the commandments of Allâhu
ta’âlâ, to be respectful of his canon, and thereby to be
closer to His love.”
(Paraphrased) from Swedenborg’s work ‘Doctrine of Life’:
“Religion means doing good. The
essence of religion is goodness.”
(Paraphrased) from James Harrington’s book ‘The Ocean’:
“Everybody has more or less some
connection with religion, whether as a source of fear or as a means of
consolation.”
Everybody in the world
encounters various situations which they do not know, cannot understand, and
cannot explain. It is only religion that explains to them and which infuses
into them a sense of definite belief and trust.
Why do I believe that Islam is the most
perfect of the world’s religions and that it is the true religion? Let me
explain:
First of all, the Islamic
religion states that there is no god besides the one Allah, who is great, that
He is not begotten and does not beget, either, and that there is not another
creator like Him. There is not another religion to explain the existence, the
unity, and the grandeur of Allâhu ta’âlâ in the magnificence worthy of Him. The fourth âyat of Hűd sűra
purports, “[O my born slaves], your return shall be to
Me, alone. Allah is Almighty.” The
fifty-fifth âyat of Isrâ Sűra purports, “Allâhu ta’âlâ has the best knowledge
of the celestial and theterrestrial creatures.” Moreover, many chapters of Qur’ân al-kerîm state that “He is the only creator,” that “He is everlasting,”
that “He is eternal,” that “He is omniscient,” that “He is the absolute judge
who makes the truest decision,” that “He is the greatest helper,” that “He is
the Creator, who is the most compassionate,” and that “He is the most
magnanimous forgiver.” I could not explain how strongly a person is attracted
towards Allâhu ta’âlâ, how he
melts before Him, and how he surrenders himself to His Grace, as he reads these
lines. Allâhu ta’âlâ declares,
as is purported in the seventeenth âyat of Hadîd Sűra, “Know ye (all) that Allâhu ta’âlâ giveth life to the
earth[with rains] after its death [with drought].
[Likewise, He gives life to dead hearts with dhikr and tilâwat]. Already We haveshown
the signs plainly to you, that ye may learn wisdom.”The Nâs Sűra purports, “[O Muhammad
‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’!] Say: I seek refuge with my Owner, the Cherisher
ofmankind, the King (or Ruler) of mankind, the Judge of mankind, (who sends them what they need and protects them against horrors), from the mischief of
the whisperer (of evil), who withdraws after his whisper, —(the same)
whowhispers into the hearts of mankind,— among Jinns andamong Men.”
When a person reads these
exalted statements, how could it ever be possible for him not to believe in
that great Creator and not to seek refuge in Him? Aren’t all these enough for a
person to bask in the consciousness of a merciful creator who will protect him
as long as he lives, and thus to abide by the right way?
Islam plainly states that it is the most
genuine religion and that it has accumulated in itself all the correct aspects
of those religions previous to it. It says that all the rules written in the Qur’ân al-kerîm, Islam’s Holy Book, are plain, clear,
logical principles intelligible to everyone. These are extremely true facts.
Indeed, if we really wish to establish a consistent relationship between Allâhu ta’âlâ and the born slave, to unite the
corporeal and spiritual components in harmony with each other, and to maintain
peace both in this world and in the Hereafter, it is indispensably incumbent on
us to accept the Islamic religion. Our spiritual and physical progress depends
only and only on Islam’s support.
Christianity busies itself only with
spirituality and conscience and overloads every individual Christian with
spiritual and conscientious burdens far beyond the human capacity. Christianity
prejudges man as a sinful creature and demands from him preposterous expiations
he could never understand. The Islamic religion, on the other hand, is based on
mere love. A very deep research into Christianity carried on by a group of
highly competent scientists might finally find a tiny particle of love of Allah
among the plethora of heavy burdens only after an arduous ransack in the
people’s various moods. And then the group would sit and lament over the fact
that that tiny particle of love has been lost for good in today’s Christianity,
which is awash in superstitions. Coleridge states in one of his books, “It is a
reality that a person who loves Christianity very much becomes gradually
alienated from Christianity and begins to love the
church
more, and at the end he loves himself the best.” On the other hand, Islam
commands us to respect and love Allâhu ta’âlâ,
to obey His commandments only, and at the same time to use our own reason and
logic. Christianity still contains some truth. In Islam, on the other hand,
everything rests on truth. In the Qur’ân al-kerîm,
Allâhu ta’âlâ addresses to all His born slaves,
regardless of their races and colours, as is purported in the hundred and
eighth âyat of Yűnus Sűra, “Say, O mankind! Truth hath come to you from your Rabb
(Allah). He who hath taken the right path hath done so only for his own good,
and he who hath lapsed into aberration hath inflicted a loss only on himself. I
am not your guardian.”After reading all these facts and
fully comprehending the tenor of the Qur’ân al-kerîm,
I saw that Islam contained the truest answers to my queries, and I willingly
became a Muslim. Islam showed me the right way and heartened me. The only way
of attaining peace and comfort in the world and salvation in the Hereafter is
to embrace Islam.
I was born as a Christian in
Britain. I was babtized, and I was raised with an education based on learning
what is written in today’s copies of the Bible. As I was a child, whenever I
went to the church I was deeply impressed by the various lights, the candles
burning on the pulpit, the music, the smells of incense, and the monks in
magnificent attirements. The prayers that I listened to without understanding
their meanings would make me shiver. I think I was a devoted Christian. In the
course of time, however, as I reached higher levels of education, some
questions began to rise in my mind. I began to find some faults in
Christianity, in which I had held a full belief until that time. As days went
by, I noticed an increase in my doubts. I developed a gradual apathy towards
Christianity. Eventually I ended up in a state of denial of all religions. That
splendid sight of the church, which had been at one time the center of my
infantile admiration, was now gone, like a phantom. By the time I graduated
from the school, I was an atheist in the full sense of the term. It did not
take me long, however, to realize that believing nothing would hollow the human
soul, leaving a perpetual mood of despair and weakness. The human being
definitely needed some power that
would provide him refuge. Consequently, I began to study other
religions.
I began with Buddhism. I
minutely examined the essentials which they called ‘Eight Paths’. These eight
essentials contained deep philosophy and beautiful pieces of advice. Yet there
was not a certain right way that they showed, nor did they provide the
information that would help you choose the right way.
This time I began to examine
Magianism. While running away from trinity, I encountered a religion of many
deities. Furthermore, that religion was too full with myths and superstitions
to be accepted as a religion.
Then I began to study Judaism. It was not an
entirely new religion for me, for the former section of the Bible, the Old
Testament, was at the same time a part of the Judaic book Torah. Judaism could
not satisfy me, either. Yes, Jews believed in one God, which I approved
entirely. But it was all that; they denied all the other religious facts, and
the Judaic religion, let alone being a guide, had been turned into a cult of
various complicated forms of worship and rites.
One of my friends recommended
that I practise spiritualism. “Taking messages from the spirits of the dead
will stand for a religion,” he said. That would not satisfy me at all. For it
took me only a short while to realize that spiritualism consisted in a manner
of self-hypnotism and could therefore by no means be nutritive to the human
soul.
The Second World War had ended,
and I was working in an office. Yet my soul was still yearning for a religion.
One day I saw an ad in a newspaper. It announced a “Conference on the divinity
of Jesus (Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’),” and added that people from other religions
would be admitted. The conference revived my deeply-rooted interest. For in
that conference they weregoing to discuss Îsâ’s ‘alaihis-salâm’ being the son
of God. I attended the conference, and met a Muslim there. The answers that
that Muslim gave to my questions were so beautiful and so logical that I
decided to study Islam, which had never occurred to me before. I began to read
the Qur’ân al-kerîm, the Holy
Book of Muslims. To my astonishment, the rules stated in this book were by far
superior to the statements made by most of the well-known statesmen of the
twentieth century, which aroused strong feelings of admiration and adulation in
me. These statements were quite
above the human linguistic capacity. So I would no longer believe
the lies that “the Islamic religion is a concoction. The Qur’ân al-kerîm is a fable,” with which
they had been dosing us for years. The Qur’ân
al-kerîm could not be a concocted book. Statements in that
acme of perfection could be made only by a being above the human race.
I was still hesitant, though. I spoke with
some British women who had embraced Islam. I asked them to help me. They
recommended some books to me. Among those books were ‘Mohammad and Christ’,
which compared Muhammad ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ
’alaihi wa sallam’ with Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’, and ‘The Religion of Islam’, which
described the Islamic religion. Another book, namely ‘The Sources of
Christianity, explained in an extremely clear manner that most of the Christian
acts of worship were the continuation of the rites that had been performed by
primitive people, and that today’s Christianity is in actual fact an idolatrous
religion.
I should avow that I felt bored
when I read the Qur’ân al-kerîm for the first time. For it contained so many reiterations. It
should be known that the Qur’ân al-kerîm is a book that impresses and penetrates the human soul slowly. To
understand the Qur’ân al-kerîm well and to attach yourself to it, you have to read it a number
of times. So, the more I read this holy book, the more strongly did I become
attached to it, so much so that I could not go to sleep without reading it
every night. What impressed me most was the fact that the Qur’ân al-kerîm was a perfect guide for
mankind. The Qur’ân al-kerîm did not contain anything that a person could not understand.
Muslims looked on their Prophet as a human being like themselves. According to Muslims, the only
aspect that made prophets different from other people was that their
intellectual and moral levels were very high, they were sinless and faultless.
They had by no means any proximity to divinity. The Islamic religion declared
that no prophet would come after
Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’. I objected to that. “Why should there be no other prophet,” I asked. My Muslim friend’s
explanation was as follows: “The Qur’ân
al-kerîm, the Holy Book of Muslims, teaches people all the
elements of beautiful moral quality that a person should need, all the
religious essentials, the path that will guide one to the approval of Allâhu ta’âlâ, and all the necessaries
required for attaining peace and salvation in this world and the next.”
The veracity of these statements gets
demonstrative evidence from the fact that the essentials in the Qur’ân al-kerîm, which are still the same as they were
fourteen centuries ago, are perfectly consistent with today’s life-styles and
today’s scientific levels. Yet I was still demurring. For we were now in 1954;
fourteen centuries later, that is. I wondered if there was not an iota of
obsolescence in Islam that would make at least one of the principles communicated
by Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, who was born in 571, inconsistent with today’s
conditions? I embarked on an assiduous quest for mistakes in Islam. My efforts
to find fault in Islam despite the fact that my soul had already attained a
complete belief in Islam, -so much so that the verity of the Islamic religion
was like a live picture in front of my eyes-, should no doubt have been rooted
in the vilifications of Islam iterated by priests for the purpose of imposing
into our infant minds the idea that Islam was a very defective, inferior and
heretical religion.
The first file to rake around in
was polygamy. Here, I had found an important loophole. How come a man could
marry four women (at the same time)? When I asked about that, my Muslim friend,
whom I have mentioned earlier, explained the matter as follows: “The Islamic
religion appeared in a society where a man could cohabit with as many women as
he liked without any official responsibility towards them. With a view to
restoring the woman into her proper place in society, the Islamic religion
pared down the number of women that a man could marry, and stipulated that he
should support the women, mete out justice among them, and pay them (the
canonically prescribed) alimony in the event of a divorce. Furthermore, if a
woman had no one to support her, she could join a family as a member, not as a
slave, of the family. Moreover, marrying four women was not a religious
commandment enjoined on men. It was a permission with provisos. Marrying more
than one women was forbidden for men who would not be able to fulfill the
stipulations. It was for this reason that many a man had only one wife.
Marrying up to four women was a kind of tolerance.” On the other hand, the
Mormons in America compelled every male member to marry several women. My
Muslim friend asked, “I wonder if the British men cohabit with only one woman?”
I confessed in embarrassment, “Today all European men enter into relations with
various women both before marriage and even after they get married.” Then the
words of my Muslim friend reminded me of the story of a young woman who had
lost her husband in the war
and had been looking for a man to entrust herself to. The Second
World War had ended, and a programme called ‘Dear Sir’ on a British radio
announced the following request of a poor young woman: “I am a young woman. I
lost my husband in the war. I have no one to care for me now. I need
protection. I am ready to be the second wife of a good natured man and to carry
his first wife on my head. All I want is to put an end to this loneliness.”
This shows that the Islamic polygamy is
intended to satisfy a need. It is only a permission, not a commandment. And
today, when unemployment and poverty are making the rounds over the entire
world, there is next to no place left where it is practised. These thoughts
completely eradicated the possibility that I would any longer look on polygamy
as a fault in Islam.
Then, with the presumption of
having found another defect, I asked my Muslim friend, “How can the five daily
prayers be adjusted to our life-styles today? Wouldn’t so many prayers be too
much?” He smiled, and asked me, “Sometimes I hear you playing the piano. Are
you interested in music?” “Very much,” was my answer. “All right. Do you
practise daily?” “Of course. As soon as I am back home from work, I play the
piano at least two hours every day.” Upon this, my Muslim friend said, “Why do
you find it too much to pray five times daily, which would take you only half
an hour or forty-five minutes in all? As you might lose your proficiency in
playing the piano if you did not have practice, likewise the less one thinks of
Allâhu or thanks Him for His blessings by prostrating oneself, the farther away
will the way leading to Him become. On the other hand, praying daily means
making progress step by step in the right way of Allâhu
ta’âlâ.” He was so right!
There was no obstacle to my
accepting Islam now. I embraced the Islamic religion with all my soul and
conscience. As you see I did not choose it at first sight and without thinking
at all; on the contrary, I became a Muslim after examining Islam minutely,
looking for the possible faults in it and finding their answers, and reaching
the conclusion that it is an immaculate religion. Now I boast about being a
Muslim.