true Islam
I had a phone conversation a few months ago with a Palestinian friend of mine who lives in the UK. from the few Muslim people I know, he is certainly one of the more devout - married young, doesn’t drink, prays, the works. I don’t usually find myself connecting with people of certain lifestyles, but this guy had such a fierce and thirsty intellect when I first met him, and combined with his profound all-round kindness his friendship was just irresistible. it’s a privilege to know him.
so we talked about this and that, and eventually the conversation steered to sexuality, as it does and has done before, which I’ve always felt was a kind of last frontier in our relationship - after all, if my drinking and swearing didn’t make me a dirty heathen, surely my man-on-man tendencies would, right? it was never so much a no-go zone in our chats, but more like a drop-by-but-don’t-stay-for-tea kind of zone. so that’s ok, you know, we all have our assumptions about each other. and then he says:
“you know, Shahaf, I’ve been thinking about this lately and I figured - I mean, Allah gives life to everything. nothing excluded. so if he gives life to those people [non-straights] it must mean that that’s the way it should be. so I’m fine with that.”
an internal “wow” put a very big smile on my face. this was music to my ears. what is, is. what do we get for arguing with it? what do we get for thinking we know why something is? the terror of facing an undesirable future. the hurtful manipulations we put our children through. the energy wasted on efforts to fight, to silence - against things that may only benefit, in the long run, from our attempts. but what my friend discovered was the other option. and as an afterthought to that initial “wow”, I thought, true Islam. this is true Islam, it is true surrender. surrendering to the will of God. true humility. and that’s not to say that he would not hurt if his son or daughter ever came out as gay, nor is it to say that he condones the idea of homosexuality. but evidently, this is a man who is awake to reality, and who is able to notice two things: that acceptance and support are not the same, and that accepting things makes a lot more sense than arguing with them.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Hi Shahaf, thank you for sharing, it was interesting yet not really surprising, I mean, clever people are clever no matter what G-d they pray (or prey). (I am Dimi’s uncle, I believe we met several years ago when I was in London)
June 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
How convenient it is to cherry-pick a confused anthology of plagiarized and/or badly written and/or badly edited scribblings. Since every Abrahamic holy book contradicts itself, I guess that it’s okay to cherry-pick the Quran just as it is okay to cherry-pick the other two pieces of garbage Yahweh worshipers pretend to use as a moral compass.
I don’t know about the Quran, but homosexuality is a capital crime in the bible, and supposedly, Allah is not a different deity other than Yahweh (just as Jesus is Yahweh’s son).
Homosexuality is punishable by death by stoning. That’s what the bible says. That’s what “True Islam” would profess. That that some people choose not to adhere to that particular moral code (let alone act upon it) bespeaks of the fact that people, however devout they claim to be, do not derive their morals from their holy books.
They cherry-pick what they like, and they disregard, despite their cherished idol’s decree, what they don’t like.
I’m sure that this fellow is a very nice man, and I will speak no ill of his character, which is probably extraordinary and worthy of praise - but that man is not a true Muslim if Islam is defined by adherence to what the Quran or the Hadith have to say.
Frankly, it’s extremely easy to not be a True Muslim since the Quran itself is full of either nonsense or contradictions (or, if it speaks in any way of the older Testaments, they are) -
so no, I don’t think he’s “A True Muslim”,
and thank god for that
June 17th, 2009 at 1:06 am
well, it does depend on how we define a faith system.
I don’t feel that being a true Muslim means adhering to what the Quran or the Hadith have to say, even if many Muslims see it that way. that would be a very narrow choice, and as you rightly point out, nearly impossible to follow.
but the fact is that many people’s sense of culture and community derive directly from biographical experiences that they relate to their religion. this has nothing to do with religious texts, and I don’t have a problem with that. everyone, religious or not, “cherry-picks” moral codes and lifestyle choices, even the most devout of all. only some of us choose to do that under the wing of a particular religion.
to me, there is no “true Islam”, not really - there are as many “Islam”s as there are Muslims, and that goes for every other faith system. if someone’s Muslim background leads him to become a humanist, well I’m all for that type of Islam. it’s about reinvention, and the freedom of self-determination. so when I talk about “true Islam” in this context, it is very much through my own tunnel of perception: after all the word “Islam” means surrender, and I know no higher form of that than accepting the configuration of the world around us as perfect and divine.