How Did I Become Muslim? | My Story as a British 18 Year Old

 

 

Siddis: In It For The Long Run | Unique Stories from India

A British boy fasting Ramadan in Saudi!

I Embrace Being Muslim, Mexican & Pakistani; I’m Better for It

I grew up waking up at 7:00 A.M. on Saturdays to the sounds of Spanish music as my mom opened my bedroom door to find my sister and I hiding under the covers in our twin beds. She would yell, “Vamos a limpiar la casa, vamos!” And boy, did we clean.

My mom was born and raised in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico; one of the most beautiful places in the world. With the sounds of Vicente Fernandez, Alejandro Sanz, and Alejandro Fernandez in our house, it reminded me of the early days (when I was like, 5) in Mexico. It made the cleaning a little more tolerable.

Every afternoon we would get ready and head to my tio’s house where at least 60 family members would gather for pool parties. Tacos and ceviche were obvious to the eye, but so were Coronas and Pacificios in the ice chests near the bar.

We also had a Qur’an teacher come twice a week to teach us how to read, pray, etc. I began reading the Qur’an at the age of 3 or 4 and finished it by the age of 5. I still remember the look on my father’s face when I recited Surah Yasin to the entire mosque. He smiled so bright that day.

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I grew up with a lot of people who were also mixed; however, a lot of people were judgmental toward my family because my mother was not “raised Muslim.”

My parents always placed a huge emphasis on religion and I always wondered why. I wondered why people looked at me different because I was not fluent in Urdu (and yes, I’m talking about the “aunties” whose daughters were fluent in Urdu.)

I could tell Rasmalay from Barfi and understand my dad when he spoke. I was even fluent in Urdu and Punjabi when I was a kid and would run outside when the airplanes would fly over our house and yell “Ja’has” to my parents in awe. Later in life, I dropped the Urdu and picked up the Spanish.

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We would not get invited to many parties and as I got older and I understood why. It was because my parents were one of the first mixed-ethnic couples in our area where the wife actually converted.

Though my mother converted to Islam, she never compromised her culture. She still cooked Mexican food, listened to Spanish music, and we would go to church sometimes with our Mexican side of the family. My mom wanted us to understand that although we were Muslim, we had to respect all faiths.

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Schisms and heterodoxy among Muslims

One of Islam's major objectives is to achieve unity of mankind through unity of God. The first and essential step toward unity of mankind is the unity of the Muslim community (Umma.) Quran's exhortations to Muslims to remain united are stated in clear and unambiguous terms. "And hold fast, all together, unto the bond with Allah, and do not draw apart from one another. And remember the blessings, which Allah has bestowed upon you: how you were enemies, He brought hearts together, so that through His blessings you become brethren". (Al-Imran. 6:159 and Al-Anbiya. 21:92-93.) Islam's annoyance at those who tear apart the unity of the community "wide asunder piece by piece, --" (Al-Muminun. 23:52-52) is unmistakable. The condemnation of previous communities who have broken apart in sects also appears forcefully on multiple occasions. (Al-Anam. 6:159 and Al-Anbiya. 21:92-93.)

It is therefore surprising and perplexing to see how divided and torn apart the Muslim community is. Heterodoxy or departure from the original religious point of view of the Quran and Sunnah (The way) of Prophet Muhammad appears to be the rule rather than the exception. In fact sometimes it is difficult to identify a group that is universally accepted as truly representing the tenets of Quran. There are a multitude of Islamic and quasi-Islamic sects. In one instance an entirely new religion has evolved. This old and continuing phenomenon of discord and heterodoxy deserves close scrutiny and analysis. 

- See more at: http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IC0404-2265#sthash.EoyrU8Ic.dpuf

Muslims of America

"I converted to Islam sixteen years ago. I am married and have two boys. My wife is originally from Yemen. I was born in Germany and raised in the USA since I was 5. Islam is a religion for all times, for all peoples and all places. Unfortunately, this is not reality in most Muslim communities where they are divided up along race, nationality, ethnicity and sects instead. In the US when a person says their shahada in the masjid there are loud shouts of “takbir” but in most cases that is the most attention that a convert will get. What most born Muslims do not understand is that people who convert often lose their families, friends and other important things in life. It is a conscious choice they make to embrace Islam.

 The Muslim community should rally around these new converts and make them feel part of a new, wider family circle. Instead, the community remains stuck in their cultural ways and if you do not fit neatly into one of these social constructs you are left out in the cold. The next time you are at your Jummah prayer notice how after Salat is over everyone seems to coalesce according to which ever particular group they are a part of. Palestinians here, Egyptians there, or if the masjid is progressive you might see Arabs hanging out together. You’ll see the Pakistanis hanging out with other Pakistanis, Bengalis with Bengalis. If you don’t belong to any group you don’t really know where to go and most often people are more than happy to let you stand alone. 

This is one reason why many converts will try to adopt a certain culture in regards to dress, speech or otherwise in an attempt to fit in. During the holidays, many converts have lost their families, so spend them alone. During Ramadan, it is rare for a convert to be included in an iftar since these tend to be family events, or amongst circles of friends, again broken down according to ethnicity. When it comes time to marriage, the “takbirs” from your Shahada are long gone. Most of these yelling “Allahu Akbar” because you became a Muslim would not consider you for your daughter. The issue is especially bad for African American converts because there is a serious race issue in the Muslim community. A large portion of people who convert either leave the religion altogether or make a choice to not participate in the Muslim community because of these issues.

 As I stated before, Islam is a religion for all people, places and times. The Prophet himself (saw) took wives from various countries and backgrounds. One of the biggest draw for many to Islam is the raceless nature of the religion, but the community has failed in this respect. We should all strive to follow our religion and not our culture, not our race, ethnicity or anything else. Let’s strive to remember what the Prophet said on this issue in his last Khutba, and what Allah (swt) said in The Quran: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.” 49:13. 
- Marc Springer ‪#‎NorthernVirginia‬

Taken from FB page 'Muslims of America'. 

When Islam was at its strongest, it was also at its most open-minded.

                      

Ours is the oldest religion in the world,” said the Mandaean high priest to me in 2006, when we met during my diplomatic posting to Baghdad. He did indeed turn out to be the religious leader of an ancient people whose traditions go back to third-century Babylonia; he was also, for me, the man who opened a door to an Aladdin’s Cave of forgotten faiths.

Since then, I have witnessed on a mountaintop in the West Bank a sacrifice of lambs, done by Samaritan priests in precise observance of the Book of Exodus. I discussed Greek philosophy with Druze elders, who regard themselves as a branch of Islam but believe in reincarnation. I searched for the Zoroastrians of Iran, whose founder Zarathustra was among the first to teach (perhaps three millennia ago) that our fate after death might result from the good or evil that we do in our lifetimes. I encountered the Church of the East, which sent the first Christian missionaries to China in the seventh century and once, from its base in Iraq, covered a larger span of the earth than the Pope in Rome or the Patriarch in Constantinople.

These religions have survived fourteen centuries of Islamic rule, and their survival shows not only their own tenacity but also the potential for tolerance within Islam. Now, though, they are vanishing faster than ever before.

The brutal terrorist group called the “Islamic State,” which the U.S. and its allies are now fighting in Iraq, burst onto the front pages in August with a massacre of a little-known people called the Yazidis. The Yazidis are an extraordinary people, who have preserved traditions dating back to the time of ancient Assyria and mixed them with ideas that emerged from the most radical and imaginative of Muslim thinkers. They have faced, by their own tradition, 72 persecutions. That number does not include the Islamic State’s campaign of rape and murder or, in 2007, the world’s second worst terrorist attack, which killed nearly eight hundred Yazidis at Qahtaniyah near Mosul.

When I went back to see the Yazidis in northern Iraq in August, it was like an immersion in a sea of misery. Stranded in tents and dependent on charity, Yazidi refugees saw no future for themselves in Iraq and asked only for asylum in the West. They want to join the 70% of Iraq’s Christians who have already left. As for the Mandaeans, almost all have now sought refuge in Europe, Canada and Australia.

Nor is it only war-ravaged Iraq from which the minorities are fleeing. I could hardly find Zoroastrians in the great cities of Iran, such as Shiraz and Esfahan; instead, I found their fire-temple in north London. I discovered that tens of thousands of Coptic Christians, who keep the language of ancient Egypt alive in their liturgies, now live in the suburbs of Detroit along with more than 100,000 Iraqi Christians.

What amazed me, though, about these religions was that they had survived into the modern era at all. Imagine discovering some island off the coast of Ireland where the Druids still held sway: meeting the Mandaean high priest in Baghdad was similarly a throwback to the distant past. How can a religion conceived in the era of paganism still exist today, after 1400 years of Islam? The answers teach lessons about Islam — and about ourselves.

First, they show the importance of religion. A warped form of religion is what motivated the Islamic State to slaughter the Yazidis. It is also however what helped the Yazidis to survive over the centuries and keep their traditions and their identity. Religion can be a great source of division, but that is intimately linked to its power to gather people and unify them.

Second, when minorities leave, countries are diminished. Islam was the religion of a great world empire, so prestigious that “Islamic State” wants to steal its name: the Caliphate. Islamic State’s brutal and narrow-minded imitation is quite different from the original. The first Caliphs had Christians among their closest counselors; later Caliphs used Jewish astronomers and pagan mathematicians to turn Baghdad into a center of world learning.

When Islam was at its strongest, it was also at its most open-minded. The West’s diversity and its prosperity have similarly gone hand in hand. It is a poor outlook for the Middle East if loses its ancient minorities.

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Eid Al-Fitr 2014: How Muslims Celebrate The End Of Ramadan Around The World

 


Eid Al-Fitr is one of the most celebrated occasions in the Islamic calendar, and after a month of fasting, Muslims around the world have a good reason to celebrate.

While dates can vary, this year most Muslims will begin celebrating Eid on July 28, to mark the end of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast each day from sunrise to sunset.
Eid, meaning festival in Arabic, has different names around the world. In South Asia, it’s often called Choti Eid, meaning small Eid, in comparison to the larger Eid Al-Adha. In Turkey, it’s referred to as Ramazan Bayrami, meaning Ramadan holiday.

While the names may vary, Eid holds the same value for Muslims everywhere. It’s a day of celebration, meeting loved ones, and after a month of fasting, eating lots and lots of food.
In Muslim countries, Eid is a three-day celebration and generally a national holiday. In most Western countries, Muslims tend to take a day or two off from their busy schedules for the special occasion.
Whether they are in a predominantly Muslim country or living around the world, Muslims look back to the religious and cultural customs of their ancestors when celebrating Eid. Some of the basics, such as giving charity and attending Eid prayers, are common among all nationalities, while many practices are unique.

Full article.

The reality of the 'All-American Muslim' reality TV show

For those constantly fretting about the inability of Muslims to integrate or assimilate into western culture, fret no more!

American Muslims finally have their own reality TV show – the Learning Channel's "All-American Muslim" – focusing on the lives of five American Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, who are predominantly Lebanese and Shiite. The show's premiere gave TLC huge ratings and made the show No 2 in its time period. Mainstream critics have embraced the show citing it as "intimate and informative" and a "deeply intriguing, uncharacteristically thoughtful reality series".

Reality TV is the current zeitgeist of popular culture. Unlike the euro, it is the predominant cultural currency, whose value is skyrocketing. America is on a first-name basis with their cultural ambassadors: Snookie, Kate Plus 8, Paris, Ozzie and Kim. Could Shadia, the show's tattooed, country music-loving Lebanese American Muslim, with an Irish Catholic boyfriend, belong in the pantheon?

"[All American Muslim] is just a natural fit for us …We're always all about telling compelling stories about real families," says TLC's Alan Orstein, VP of production and development. But some have already taken deep offense to this "reality" show, which claims to portray the "real" lives of Muslims.

Within days of the show's premiere, the fear-mongering Islamphobia network complained the show is actually propaganda that promotes a "submission to Islam through the hijab" and "tries to make a religion which believes in world domination and the inferiority of women, seem normal". The author of this article, posted on David Horowitz's inflammatory Front Page Magazine, also goes on to compare Muslims to Nazis: "Muslims are like us [Americans]; that's the problem. The Nazis were like us too. So were the Communists."

Apparently, TLC is a stealth-jihadist outfit with grand schemes to brainwash American women into burning their swimsuits and tank tops and replacing them with modest, traditional Islamic clothing as a gradual means towards converting them to Islam. I'll be waiting for their next reality TV show: "UV Radiation Fighters."

Pamela Geller, founder of the shrill Atlas Shrugs blog and co-founder with blogger Robert Spencer of Stop Islamization of America, is convinced the show "is an attempt to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad". Who would have thought a reality TV show could have so much brainwashing potential? Instead of mounting violent campaigns, all our enemies needed to secure victory was to produce "The Real Housewives of al-Qaida."

If Geller, Spencer and Horowitz were producing their version of American Muslim reality, the episodes would focus on the families' radical stealth jihadist plots. Through eight episodes, they would attempt to turn McDonald's golden arches into minarets, transform California to Caliph-ornia, place a burqa over the Statute of Liberty, creep sharia into the Denny's breakfast menu, and spike the elementary school eggnog with sumac and lentils.

A "real Muslim" according to many is this anti-American, extremist, violent stereotype – an image often plastered over news headlines. This myth is unsurprising, perhaps, considering 60% of Americans say they don't know a Muslim. Furthermore, the No 1 source of information about Muslims for American is the media, and often, the images are negative. Yet, according to all the studies and evidence, the reality of American Muslims is that they are moderate, loyal to America, optimistic about America's future, in tune with American values, well-educated, and are the nation's most diverse religious community.

That being said, nearly half of American Muslims say they have faced discrimination. The FBI just announced anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen 50%. And a Republican presidential candidate with an alleged proclivity towards sexual harassment and unintentionally hilarious campaign videos has claimed a majority of Muslim Americans are extremists.

The portrayal of Muslims living their daily lives is not only a welcome relief from the usual tawdry caricatures of Muslims as terrorists, extremists and taxi cab drivers, but it also helps defuse the deep-seated fears and bias that unfairly lumps 1.5 billion members of a faith in with the perverse criminal actions of a few.

However, even American Muslims have voiced their criticisms with the show. The Twitterverse exploded (figuratively) with comments reflecting the diversity of the American Muslim opinions. Some said the show misleads with the title "All-American Muslim", since it solely focuses on one niche religious, ethnic community (Lebanese Shiite in Dearborn, Michigan) and leaves out the majority of American Muslim communities, such as African Americans, South Asians, Sunnis and those from the low-income middle class. Others, apparently, want their TV Muslims to be avatars of religious and moral perfection and complained about some of the characters' portrayal of Islam. (Shadia is a tattooed, partying rebel dating a white, Irish Catholic man who converts to Islam in order to marry her. Nina is a busty, dyed-blonde, opinionated business woman, with a penchant for tight dresses and ambitions to open her own club.)

Which only goes to show that representing Muslims and Islam in the mainstream is an utterly thankless job. The term "Muslim" is itself so politically and culturally loaded that it is impossible to escape controversy, no matter how trivial or manufactured. Since Muslims are a marginalised community with very few positive mainstream representations, audiences unfairly project onto these five families all their own insecurities, assumptions, fears, political ideologies, religious opinions, personal stories and other gratuitous baggage. So, if the characters do not 100% reflect the reality of certain audience members, then they cease to be authentic or valid.

The five families on "All-American Muslim" should not be asked to represent all Muslims, Arabs or Americans. Does Jersey Shore represent all Italians? If so, you can hear Frank Sinatra crooning in his grave. Similarly, Kim Kardashian does not represent all narcissistic, wannabe socialites with a fetish for athletes. (That may be an insult to fetishes.)

The best way to view "All-American Muslim" is simply a show about five families doing their best to be themselves. They're just people, who happen to identify as Muslim, Arab and American. Their story isn't the wild-eyed, paranoid fantasy that is colored by the hate-filled minds of the Islamophobia network. It isn't the terrorist stereotype familiar to most American audiences thanks to mainstream Hollywood depictions and sensationalised news headlines. And it won't be the story of this nation's 3-4 million American Muslims (population estimates vary from 1.3 to 7 million), who will hopefully find more avenues to tell their unique narratives through mainstream outlets.

In the meantime, we should exhale and simply let this reality TV show succeed or fail on the merits of its ability to entertain, instead of obsessing about how "realistic" its depiction of Islam and Muslims is. If the ratings decline, TLC can always create a new talent show featuring the cast members of "The Real Housewives" and "All-American Muslim", judged by Kim Kardashian and Ozzy Osbourne, whose winner gets an opportunity to join all the previous winners from "Dancing with the Stars" in a new "Survivor" series about who lives beyond the 15th minute of fame.

That's a reality show whose authenticity cannot be denied.

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