Why I Came to Islam

Why I Came to Islam

Introduction and Background

Thank you for being here, we've been planning to get together with you for some time and now is the opportunity for us. Let us talk a little bit about your own, how should I say, transitions that have brought you into Islam, maybe that would be interesting and we'll go into other things.

Well I'm originally from California, my father was a university professor in Northern California and on my mother's side, actually they've been in California for over a hundred years, so it's an old Californian family and I was raised, you know, Christian background, my father's Catholic, my mother's Greek Orthodox, but I was actually, if anything, more towards the Greek Orthodox side.

The Conversion at Age Seventeen

And then in 1977 I became Muslim, which was very early on for me, just at my age, I was 17 and I think from then just began a journey that took me several different places, you know, I studied in the Middle East and I ended up in West Africa, Northern Africa.

But before you get into your odyssey, you said that you became a Muslim at the age of 17, what brought about this change, I mean, was there something extraordinary that was happening in your life, were there influences that, or was it just your own?

No, I think it's interesting because statistics have shown that conversion of people to inter-religiously but also intra-religiously usually occurs between the ages of 12 and 21, which people don't realize that, but it's actually more common for people of a younger age to have religious inclinations than at an older age, and I think maybe some people tend to find religion, or at least a spiritual tradition, because I was much more interested in spirituality than religion at that age.

That is unusual though, spirituality is a heavy topic.

Confrontation with Death and Mortality

I think for me it was a confrontation with death at an early age, I was in a serious car accident and that began a journey of reflection, just about death and the nature of life, and also coming to terms with the fact, because I think as individuals, all of us at a certain point in our lives suddenly become aware of our mortality, and for some people, I mean you're a physician, so I think you know that for some people it happens quite late in life.

It perhaps never happens. Or never happens at all until those last moments. Like even in the Quran points to that story of Pharaoh, I mean, in the end, yes. So people, I think, just the idea of mortality is something that hit me very early on in life, and looking death very close, you know, up front, I think will give somebody an

introspective perspective, and that's what happened to me, and then it began a search, because I was in Catholic schools, and so I'd been exposed to religion quite a bit, and I really, although I think there's a lot of positive things to religion, I think there's a lot of very negative things as well, and...

I think that can be said about any religion, though. No, any religion, and I'm using religion in a very broad sense of how we live our lives, right, but particularly, absolutely, I feel how religion manifests in human cultures is problematic.

The Conversion of Omar ibn al-Khattab as Example

Well, that's interesting. We'll come back to looking at the religion and faith and spirituality a little bit later, so that after having gone through an experience, I sort of tend to think that a lot of people who convert have some defining moment of this kind, don't you agree?

Well, this is another fascinating topic. If you look at one of the great conversions in the Islamic traditions is Omar ibn al-Khattab, and we know that he was literally on his way to kill the Prophet, peace be upon him, and by the time he gets to the door, I mean, there's a whole side scenario that takes place of going to his sisters, but in the same day, by the time he gets to the door, he's converting to the way of Islam, so conversions, it's a really unusual thing.

Multi-Dimensional Nature of Conversion

You're saying that there's also this higher dimension. I think there's so many variables involved with conversion itself that it's very hard. People have asked me, how did you become Muslim? And I find that a really hard question to answer simply because you're dealing with such a multi-dimensional situation, and there's so many variables.

From one perspective, we could say that our journey to whatever unfolds in our life begins literally with inception, and there's an argument, and it certainly is the Islamic one, that it begins prior to inception, so we can look at it materialistically and say, well, this happened, and this happened, and I was having an identity crisis, which according to Erickson's psychosocial theory, I mean, this is what happens during that period of time. We're trying to resolve our identity and things like that, so we can look at it from a materialistic perspective, but I don't think it simply can be limited to that, although there's certainly that element exists, and I wouldn't deny that.

Yeah, but I think by the same token, the kind of experience that sometimes people can look back to when they were either looking at imminent death, or, I mean, I have this conversation with my patients also sometimes, who are going through that, and then they say very clearly that something intrinsically or internally happens to them, and their whole view of life changes.

The Concept of Fitrah

Well, this is called fitrah, right? I mean, this is what the Quran calls fitrah, which is the inherent nature, and I think what happens, which is fascinating, because my own time of working in critical care, which was for about four years, and dealing with patients, and I was in a cardiac unit, so I was dealing with people that were dealing with heart attacks, and it's fascinating to see a vista open up to people that are confronted with their mortality, and it can be closed very quickly, and oftentimes it's the physician who is complicit in the closing of that vista, because they'll remind them that this is, you know, things are okay, all you need to do, I think, you know, you've had a slight infarct, there's not a lot of damage to the tissue, you can have a good long life if you just, you know, cut down on the fat, lower your cholesterol, and things like this, and suddenly you see, within a period of a day or so, a patient who has had this impact, in which they're saying, wow, I need to look at my priorities, and what's important in life, and where am I going, and suddenly they're back on the phone, calling, and I think my doctor says I can get back to work by, you know, two weeks or a week, and so it's fascinating, so I think vistas do open up for human beings, and I, at the age of 17, chose to, you know, to enter into that vista, and really to explore it to its fullest, and it ended up in my conversion to Islam, and I think that somebody would have a very similar experience as I did, and they might look at and get interested at that vista, but turn and get on with life, and I didn't, and it's been a defining moment for me in my life, and a turning point.

Why Islam and the Afterlife

But you said that you used that moment when the pathway opened to get into Islam, why Islam, though, at that time, if you...

Well, I think what happened to me is that I became interested in after death, in what happens after death, and I began to study various traditions, what they said, and I think I was already disappointed with the Christian tradition in many ways, and partly because of just history, of just studying, I find, you know, European history is really embarrassing for European Americans. But I got interested in looking at after death scenarios, and I think of all the traditions, because my background is also comparative religion, and university background, which I went into later, obviously, because I did the nursing, and then I went into comparative religion, but if you look at comparative religion tradition, I think what you find is that really Islam has added more to the after death scenario than any other tradition prior to it.

Christianity has. Yeah, but they don't have a great detailed account of literally what takes place, and what I find fascinating is work like of Raymond Moody's Life After Life, and different books, and I actually at 17 went to see him lecture.

That's interesting.

Yeah, and I got interested in near death experiences, because that's really kind of what I had, and I find it fascinating that many of the experiences that people have are very similar to what has been defined by the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as what happens after death. And one of the signs of the latter days of

the human experience, according to the Islamic tradition, is that people will be brought back from death. This is in the Hadith literature, or the traditions of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

Studying Various Religious Traditions

Actually, we will get towards what Islam says in terms of the hereafter, but I'm just keeping track of your story presently, so that after this moment, this defining moment, if I may put it, you looked at Islam because you were studying...

I was just looking at various religions, I was looking at different traditions, and particularly with this after death, and Islam, it's changing now, but this is 1977, probably 76, 77, prior to the Iranian revolution and what was happening then, and Islam is just, it's the last place people look in the United States, traditionally.

Were you up in San Francisco? You'd look at Hinduism, Buddhism, probably Shintoism or Daoism before somebody would think about looking at Islam, because there's just such a negative, stereotypical image of Islam and the Muslims, and also there's this incredibly anti-intellectual backlash, that Islam is what one of my father's friends, who was a lawyer, an educated person in this country, they were just in conversation and mentioned that Islam was an idiot's religion, and my father said, well, my son's a Muslim actually, and I don't think he's an idiot.

Historical Tensions Between Christianity and Islam

Well, that's interesting, but you see, you brought up another topic which needs some reflection here, and that is that you said the impression of Islam compared to other religions is so terribly negative, of course, there is a reason for it, and I don't know...

It's historical, and yeah, there's a lot of reasons for it, and certainly the historical tension that existed between Christianity and Islam for centuries, I mean Gibbon, who penned The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, said that the debate, he termed the war between Christianity and Islam as the Great Debate, so that Europe has always felt the pressure of Islam at its borders, and has had several wars with the Muslims over the centuries, but I think that what's happened in the West is that religion in general has a negative perception, and part of it is the Enlightenment period of recognizing that religion by and large is fairy tales, and this is something, and this is what a lot of modern research has clearly shown that we're dealing with mythological conditions in which books were written, and pre-scientific, pre-rational, magical world views were presented...

Yeah, but that's only one aspect of it, I mean, one can look at that argument and say, well, yes...

It's a strong argument, though.

Islam as Post-Modern and the Nature of Belief

It is, it is partly there, but I don't think that one can dismiss the entire substance of any faith by saying that this

is what science... A lot of scientists do, a lot of modern people do, I mean, I think that's one of the refreshing things about Islam, is that Islam, it's really kind of freed religion from a lot of pre-Enlightenment thinking, I mean, Islam to me is, in many ways, it's radically post-modern in its approach, because...

Well, again, if you use the expression post-modern, you're falling into a debate again of semantics and whether that term which has been coined is valid in terms of applying to Islam, however, if you look, if you examine the polls that are generated, one of the recent polls that I saw was from Pew Foundation, or what have you, and in that poll they said that 95% of the people in America believed in God, and a substantial number of them believed in religion.

Well, this is fitrah, I mean, belief in God is an inherent part of the human creature, I mean, we're stuck with this, whether people like it or not, this is something fundamental to our being, is that from the time a child is little, it's looking for the cause of things, it's asking why did that happen, what made that sound, what did this, I mean, this is something you see, search for cause, and ultimately the great question is, how did we get here, what is all this stuff, I mean, where did this flesh and blood come from, where did this incredible synergistic biological species come from, you know, where did this eye, who designed the eye, because we obviously see the form and function of the eye very clearly, and it would indicate that there is some type of intelligence behind the thing, so I think people reject this statistical, you know, billions of years of random cosmic...

No, I think that whole theory that science has advanced, that given the right set of circumstances the world can create itself, is by and large rejected on the basis of what you've just said, either fitrah or intuitively people rejecting this whole notion, so I think that is becoming more and more clear.

Islam's Challenge to Cultural Conditioning

But religion, the belief in religion ultimately to use the masses as some kind of justification for religion, I think is not really, most people don't know anything about their tradition, I would grant it that most Muslims don't know about their own tradition, and this is what I meant about Islam being radically post-modern, is in the sense that one of the things that Islam confronts you with, is why are you the way you are, I mean, you're just a product of the culture that you were born in, and this is something that I became aware of, you know, at an early age, is the only reason I'm a Christian is because my parents are Christian, the only reason that...

Right, it's a congenital condition.

It's a congenital condition, and I really haven't given it a whole lot of thought, I mean, I was taught that there's a Santa Claus, I was taught that there's an Easter Bunny, had I grown up in Sri Lanka, or in, it would have been something in West Africa, they call it Girfath, they scare people, instead of the boogeyman, they say Girfath, it's this, you know, bear-like creature that comes out and snatches little kids that don't do what their parents say. So, I mean, you're going to be defined by this cultural environment you're in, and this historical productivity, you know, that we see, that produces people and their worldviews and their...

The Quran's Call to Deep Self-Reflection

No, I think that aspect of the spirit of rational inquiry that the Quran emphasizes to the 10th degree, it's something that's obvious.

But what I'm pointing out here, I think, is that it's looking at something, not just rational inquiry, it's looking at something really, really deep here, which is, who are you? How did your being get formulated to the point where you have all these ideas and opinions? I mean, have you really given these things a lot of thought? I mean, this is a radical, this is late 19th century, this is Nietzschean, this is late 19th century, early 20th century Heideggerian questioning about one's, you know, Heidegger called it, your thrown-ness, right?

But I mean, it's fascinating, the Quran, Ibrahim, the prophet Abraham in the Quran, when he points out the stupidity of worshipping idols, and at one point they say to him, you know, well, who broke the idols, and he said, the big one did it, and they said, the big one can't do anything. He said, well, then why are you worshipping them? They can't do anything, and then it says in the Quran, a beautiful expression, it says they return to themselves, in other words, hey, he's got a point here, and suddenly this is the vista opening up, and they chose to not follow it, they said, this is what we found our fathers doing, and this is, that is a radical, the other thing, it's a paradigm shift, and you can either go with it, or become the inquisition that wants to put out anybody that's forcing you to have to think about the radical implications of the new paradigm that's emerging.

Leaving for England at Age Seventeen

Now, we were pursuing this journey of yours, now you have just had a defining moment or experience, and then you already are pursuing the study of Islam, and then you, later on you, you go to college, or?

Actually I was, I was in my first semester of college, and I actually, when I became Muslim, I left that, in fact, and then I went to England, and...

At the age of 17? Yeah.

And your parents, just sort of... I had, I actually became Muslim like a month or so before my 18th birthday, and so, yeah, I left, I spent a short time there, I think about six months, and then after that, I left, and I think initially, you know, when you become, when you do something that radical, like changing your, you know, your entire way of life, your entire way of thinking, and Islam is not, you know, Islam is quite monolithic in its approach.

Was it an agreeable parting with your parents, or at that time, or did it strain your relationship?

Family Background and Social Awareness

No, I think initially it was just difficult for my parents to understand, and both my parents are university-educated, very broad-minded people, you know, my father was a humanities professor, and very philosophical inclinations in his worldview, and my mother went to Berkeley, and that says enough.

Yeah, that's right, yeah.

So, you know, she was very active in the civil rights movement. I mean, I grew up, you know, she took me when I was 12 to the Soledad Brothers.

Oh, yes.

So, in the 60s. Yeah, to George Jackson's prison trial, just to see, you know, what was happening, that there were political struggles going on in this country. She was very opposed to the Vietnam War, so I did grow up...

With a lot of awareness.

With a lot of awareness, social awareness, very much so, and certainly about the inequities in our culture, you know, because we grew up in an area that is, you know, probably a more wealthier area. I mean, my family, my close family, there's wealth in my family, my particular family was not wealthy at all, so I did not grow up wealthy by any means, in fact, quite probably more the other end.

But idealized.

But definitely the area we were in was quite wealthy, and so I think my mother was, you know, we understood that this country has a lot of inequities. So, you know, my sister was in Selma, Alabama, marching with, you know, I mean, that's the background that we were raised in, and the 60s was a fascinating time in this country. You know, Berkeley was right across the street from where I grew up, quite literally, and it wasn't far at all, and we were aware that there were big things happening, you know, in the States.

So I think initially, you know, my parents, they were just perplexed more than anything, and my mother's always been very accepting of whatever any of her children have done.

Studying in England with a Spiritual Community

So you went to England, and then you... I went to England, and I was with a community there, and was studying, and they were probably more spiritually inclined, and although there was a political...

Were these the Naxalites, or... No, no, no. Not, no, but probably there was a lot of political emphasis, too, that Islam is a spiritual, political movement.

It's not politics without spirituality, and it's not spirituality without politics. So there was, I think, a balance.

So you still agree with that, or you... Oh, very much so, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, that's... We have a personal and a social transaction here.

Yes, right. So I spent a few years in that community, and then what I...

You were not doing anything particularly, you were just... I was studying.

The Journey to Learn Arabic and Study Islam's Sources

I think I was studying very seriously, but then at a certain point, I realized that I wanted to learn Arabic, because I wanted to get into the sources, you know, to really experience Islam from the source, and I think being at that age, because I'm still only at this point about 22, for me, it was still probably one of these things that could go either way, you know. There were a lot of people dabbling in religions in the 60s and 70s, and, you know, you become a Buddhist for a few years.

Right, the transitions are, you know... Yeah, so people did their religion thing in the 60s and 70s.

60s was very much into, too. Yeah, and early 70s also.

Yeah.

You know, it started changing with, you know, I mean, certainly 69 was a big turning point because of the Manson thing that happened in this country, but, you know, and then Jonestown was a major disaster to the idea of communities and religious communities.

So, I think those things were going on, but I definitely wanted to study the tradition from the sources, and I got the opportunity from a Sheikh who was from Sharjah, Sheikh Abdullah Ali Mahmoud, who was kind of a minister without portfolio.

He was in England at that time.

He was in England, and I met him, and I was just starting to learn Arabic, and he gave me an opportunity to go to the Emirates, and so I went to the United Arab Emirates, and I entered into an Islamic institute there in Al Ain, and I studied there, and I spent four years there, and then I actually became an imam in a small mosque.

In Sharjah? In Al Ain.

In Al Ain.

Serving as Muadhin and Imam in the UAE

Yeah, and I lived there, and Alhamdulillah, it was a very good experience for me, and then during that time, I had met West African scholars and became very interested in traditional Islam that was still being taught in West Africa, and I started studying with them personally, and I had one of them actually ended up living with me in

Islamic Brotherhood as a Unifying Force

So, I think that you think that Islam is the sort of leveling factor here, which reduces these barriers amongst Muslims.

That's, yeah, that's a good question. I think definitely that when you become a Muslim, or being a Muslim is a very powerful force that is not the same as being a Christian, or not the same as being a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or some other religion.

I think that the brotherhood that exists in Islam is much more powerful than I've seen in other traditions, and that is not to deny that there are communities of Christians that don't have deep, deep brotherhood, but I'm talking about this universal, more global outlook. I think the Amish, for instance, probably have much better community than you'll find almost anywhere in the Muslim world. Much better support group, and much more of a network.

Absolutely. I mean, you might find in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, or the Hunzas, or in the Caucasus Mountains, or somewhere, but, you know, community is a disappearing phenomenon. I mean, some people consider it irrelevant in the informational period that it was necessary in agricultural societies, where you need people to stick together and help each other, but when you have these massive, megalithic cities in which you've got this state apparatus, but the state apparatus is falling apart.

Yes, of course. And now there's this whole modern, you know, communitarianism, they call it, which is an attempt at re-establishing communities, even within inner cities. There's a new book, Bowling Alone, have you read that?

I haven't seen it.

That's by a guy from the East Coast Department, who's postulating this whole thing that America is now becoming very different from what it used to be, where there were bowling clubs, and you'd go bowling, and there would be opportunity for bonding and all of that.

The Leveling Experience of Hajj

So anyway, going back again, you know, the reason I asked about Islam as a leveling... You know what hit me, and probably what silenced me, is the word leveling. Because this, you know, Kierkegaard's, one of his ideas about the nihilistic age that we're in, is that it levels everything, and he used it as a very negative term.

Right, no, not quite. So when you use that word, it just, it kind of silenced me. I don't know if that was the appropriate word.

It may not be. I think equalizing would be a better word, I think, because I think...

No, the reason I asked also was Malcolm had the same experience when, I mean...

When he went on Hajj.

Right, what really sort of...

Hajj is a definitely leveling experience.

Yeah, but still, as much as there was that spiritual bonding which occurs in Hajj and all of that, but to see the humanity interacting with yourself at that level of equality was, I thought, what...

Well, this is one of the fascinating... Again, you know, one of the conditions that we're finding ourselves in is that provincialism is increasingly becoming detrimental to the human condition, because massive groups of peoples of different backgrounds and cultures are thrust together in megacities like Los Angeles and Burbank and these places, and suddenly it's, you know, you've got a Korean for a neighbor, or you've got a Vietnamese for a neighbor, and your son might have been in Vietnam, and suddenly it's having to deal with human beings that are very different from yourself.

And I think that's one of the things that Islam does to us, is that it forces us to deal with otherness in a way that is not alienating, but is in fact bonding, and what, you know, the otherness of color, of language, is broken down by the sameness of belief that transcends whatever differences that people do have at these exterior levels, that ultimately our basic impulses are pretty fundamental. I mean, we're dealing with people that want the best for their family.

This is a universal human situation. We're dealing with people that want to live harmoniously, that don't want to be violated or violate others. I mean, I think the vast majority of human beings share some pretty fundamental basic virtues.

Islam's Radical Agenda for Humanization

And all religions have those, the same core values, more or less, and to that extent. It's just how do we achieve them?

Absolutely. This is the crisis.

I mean, we can all agree, yeah, let's all be human. Yes, but how do we do that? How do we become human? This is where the whole issue becomes problematic, and I think this is where Islam's agenda for humanizing people is so radical.

I don't know whether you would call it agenda.

It's a process, I think.

Well, I'm using agenda. See, we're looking at negative terms.

Agenda can be, yeah.

I mean, Islam does have an agenda, and its agenda is to transform people into kind of crude semblances of Bani Adam or the Adamic species to a true Adamic being, a true human being. I mean, I definitely think that's...

With a conscience.

The Transformative Power of Prayer and Ramadan

And the most radical way of doing that is having people pray together five times a day.

Yes, of course. You're praying in a line, in a rank, with people, a black man is on your right side, a white man's on your left side, a Chinese, you know, and this is something pretty extraordinary, and the whole idea of having being forced to touch them, you know, which shouldn't be forced.

It should be a longing or a desire for that closeness and that intimacy that takes place in prayer. So that, the social aspect, Ramadan...

Yeah, no, I think there's no question that in all those practices...

And universalizing Ramadan, the idea that we're all one-fifth of the world's population is fasting one month out of the year together. I mean, you talk about harmonic convergence.

Return to America and Further Education

So, you spent about ten years in... Oh, I see, yeah, and then I came back here.

You came back to Northern California again?

Actually, Southern California.

I see.

And I studied... I was studying homeopathy, and then I was studying... I went into a nursing program and completed a nursing school program. Then I went to... I was working in nursing and then went back to the university to do a program in comparative religion.

How long did that take for you? Um, well, altogether it's been about seven years.

So you finished that? Yeah, I'm actually now going to probably, hopefully next year be doing some graduate work.

Wonderful. So, where are you finding all this time?

Well, it's making time for... I mean, I'm very time conscious.

I'm conscious of the hourglass ticking away. So I just try to utilize...

Well, lastly... In that...

Absolutely. Man is in loss, with time as passage, except for those who don't waste their time.

That's right. So I just try not to waste time. Time is very valuable to me.

Reconciliation with Family

What have you... What sort of relationship now have you got with your parents? Is that all?

Oh, wonderful. Really?

Absolutely. Both my parents have a great... My sister became Muslim.

Um, all of my family now has a very good idea of what Islam is. And I've done it, I think, hopefully in a way that, you know, I'm not condemning them or just, you know, just... I think they all have an idea of what my life's about. And I think all of them, they're very impressed with, you know, I've won... I mean, it's quite difficult to have successful marriage in this modern 20th century, late part of it in California.

And, you know, Alhamdulillah, my children are...

Thanks to God. They're all with their grandparents and all. So I think, you know, generally they're very pleased.

Yeah. Well, that's nice.

Muslim Responsibility in Presenting Islam

Now, coming back to Islam and, of course, its impact on your own life, which is obvious since you're quite actively engaged in learning and teaching.

And now, what difficulties do Muslims have in presenting Islam to the West in a proper way? Because we talked earlier on about how Islam is perceived. We didn't talk about our own role, our own responsibility of how we have either failed or succeeded.

Good points.

I think part of it is the fact that I think Islam is misperceived by the Muslims as well. I mean, it's not just a misperception that the Western people have. It's also a misperception that the Muslims have.

And part of that is the fact that Islam has been reinvented or, you know, what they term in philosophy or religious studies, redacted by late 19th century and 20th century modernist revisioners of Islam. People have been called the reformers. Some people call them the deformers.

Colonial Defeat and Muslim Arrogance

Who do you mean? I don't really like to get into specific individuals because I think you're dealing with, on the

one hand, infiltration into the Islamic academic cadre, which is quite pernicious. But on the other hand, you're dealing with just, unfortunately, people that were caught up in the flow of what was happening. I mean, when the Muslims were defeated by the colonialists, this was a great shock to the Muslim ummah.

And I think what happened is suddenly they were having to deal with the fact we've been defeated by the Europeans who, for centuries, the Muslims had looked down on them as being unworthy of even their consideration. And you can see some of the letters that were written by Muslim rulers, unfortunately, to the Europeans, really with disdain and loathing. And so, you know, I think that one of the things that God does is he cures people with the thing that, you know, with the medicine that they need to be cured and the medicine of arrogance and pride.

You know, the medicine is very bitter medicine. It's called humility and submission. And I think what's happened to a Muslim world that became very arrogant and very prideful, we have really been humiliated.

And if we don't learn this lesson...

But Hamza, that's what my question is. I'm asking is that you say that the noses have been rubbed into the ground. And I don't think we've learned the lesson.

You know, that's what I'm saying. But the wonderful thing about life is it keeps teaching the same lesson over and over again. Unlike school here, where you can keep graduating on without having learned anything in the previous year, they'll put you to the next year.

It doesn't happen in life. Life will just keep giving you the same lesson over and over again. And you get your diploma when you get the point, right?

And we haven't gotten the point.

The True Meaning of La Ilaha Illallah

Because Muslims still think somehow that la ilaha illallah gives you some exalted position by the mere fact that you state that. Well, if that was true, then the hypocrites would certainly not be in the lowest portion of hell because they say that too. So la ilaha illallah really on the saying that has no meaning unless it's emanating from the heart.

And if it emanates from the heart, it manifests on the limbs. And if it manifests on the limbs, you have a human being that's called a Muslim. And if it's not, you have somebody that the Quran clearly defines as a hypocrite, a munafiq.

Somebody that, in fact, the way the Quran articulates is (يُخَادِعُونَ اللَّهَ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَمَا يَخْدَعُونَ إِلَّا أَنفُسَهُمْ - Quran 2:9) They attempt, and it's mukhaada'a in the Arabic language is attempt to fool Allah and those who believe. And they only succeed in fooling themselves.

The Need for Spiritual and Intellectual Leadership

Why isn't that there is a change? I mean, what is happening though? What do you think? Let's examine that. Why isn't there a change?

Well, they say the best definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Yeah.

So I think in one sense, we've been afflicted with a type of madness. And unfortunately, post-traumatic stress syndrome is, you know, it has deep repercussions. And I think the Muslim ummah as a body is suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Yeah, but then what are the remedies? Do we, where is the CPR? I mean, we're now talking about it. Where is the CPR?

Well, you need doctors and nurses for that. This is a good point, because I think part of our struggle is the fact that we do not have any more institutions that are producing human beings of a brilliant intellectual caliber and a spiritual depth that can not only diagnose, but also treat the patient.

And traditionally, this has been the realm of the, you know, the ulama al-amidun, who are called the awliya, the people that are close to God in their knowledge and in their action. And those people traditionally have guided the Muslims through their devastating periods of time.

Well, you can see quite literally that, and I don't like to get into colonial bashing, because I think it's a real dead end for the Muslims.

Victimization is a dead end road. But nonetheless, there are some important features that need to be looked at.

And one of them is the fact that our libraries, our scholars, our, you know, khanqahs and madrasas and tekkes and all these places where there was spiritual preparation, intellectual preparation of the Muslims, they were literally shut down.

The Fifth Column and Ongoing Colonialism

And not only that, but the governments that were created, and Social Reform in Syria is a good book to look at, talks about this. The governments that were created were created by the colonialists. And this is the fifth column, which ultimately I've never seen historically, and historians would obviously verify this or negate it.

But I personally have not seen historically where there was a conquering of a people without that fifth column element. And this is why the Quran says that the hypocrites, they are the true enemy. And may Allah destroy them.

Because these are the people that have been complicit with the colonial enterprise, and the neo-colonial. And we can almost say, why say neo-colonial? Because as far as I'm concerned, colonialism has never ended. It's just changed form.

Because, you know, the chameleon-like nature of the West is one of its most extraordinary features, that it's able to change its form. And this is what media and television is all about.

Yeah, well that is now cultural imperialism.

We will come to that. But then, what you're again pointing out is that we are indeed in a double jeopardy, if I might put it that way. One is that we feel that there is a conspiracy that the West has on one hand.

On the other hand, we do not seem to acknowledge that we are no more the power, and we are nothing in terms of amounting to anything in the scheme of things.

Well, neither was the Prophet in Medina in the 7th century, so we shouldn't forget that. And the Quran very clearly says

How many times have a small faction defeated a great faction by the permission of Allah.

And so we have, you know, the Muslims, if they are obeying their teachings and practicing, then they have a permission, they have an authority, which is very powerful, and we shouldn't underestimate it.

Jahiliyyah: The Root Problem of Ignorance

But I think it's a good point that if you look, you know, why isn't anything happening? And I think part of it is the fact that if you look at the disease, which I feel the greatest articulation of it from the Islamic perspective is the word itself, which is used to designate everything that is against Islam, and that is jahili. And jahili is a word that in its root meaning means ignorance. And this is the whole argument of Islam, that you reject the truth out of ignorance, that you only do things that are bad out of ignorance, and this is Socratic teaching as well.

I mean, even the Europeans had this idea that, you know, that people don't do bad things if they really knew what they were doing. And this is part of what Islam does, or what God does through Islam, is literally to open the eyes of people, to let them see.

One of my favorite things that's happened in recent popular culture is this Kathie Lee Gifford incident.

And there was a wonderful picture of her in Newsweek that obviously got out of some television broadcasting, which is where she's got this horrified look, like, you know, a shocked look when she finds out that she's been supporting child labor. This whole country is supporting child labor. The clothes we're wearing are supporting child labor.

The tennis shoes that we jog in are supporting child labor. The soccer balls, the baseball bats that we hit our baseballs with. I mean, the whole thing is supporting child labor.

Don't blame Kathie Gifford. Blame the whole country, you see. And this is what people don't want to deal with, is that, no, we have to look deeply at what's going on.

Economic Justice and the Muslim Ummah's Crisis

What you're saying that, I mean, the example that you've used is of, how should I say, of abusing people or of abusing people to create the, to support the consumerism or what have you. But getting away from the, because that brings us to the issue of justice and economic justice in the Quran. We'll get into that.

But let us talk a little bit now of why is it that looking at all of the Muslim countries, 50 and odd, 55, 56, I don't know, whatever the numbers, there still isn't either an awareness one or acknowledgement or formulation of some kind of vision or strategy. What is our worldview now?

Well, this is part of the crisis again. I mean, we're an ummah in search of a worldview.

One of the things that David Chittick, in his Vision of Islam, wonderful book, this is one of the things that he puts forward, is that the Muslims have lost sight of a Quranic worldview, you know, the Weltanschauung, of what, you know, it's not this, what Guy Eaton in the Islam and Destiny of Man calls a boy scout religion. This is what we've been reduced to thinking that Islam is. It's going around doing good deeds.

No, it has a way of viewing the world, a vision. And if you don't have the vision of Islam, no matter how sincere your efforts are, you're not going to be anything other than a glorified Mormon or a glorified, you know, Jehovah's Witness or somebody who's out because they're doing good deeds. I mean, that doesn't, the moral element of Islam is not what makes us unique as a community because every community has a moral element.

No, it's the vision, it's what the tradition was called the Aqeedah, it was the understanding that Islam imparted to human beings which enabled not only the morality to function, but also for there to be an absolute clarification of what exactly morality is, because there's a great deal of confusion in our modern world, for instance.

But there is confusion within the Muslims too.

Absolutely, because we don't have this thing anymore.

The Separation of Deen and Millah

No, not only that, but the thing that is interesting now is that there are Muslims and there are pious Muslims. Wonderfully pious, absolutely. But then if you look at that, if you look at the whole world of Islam presently, these Muslims who are pious, some of them, very few of them are also actively engaged in a social emancipation of the rest of the world.

Well, this is the separation of Deen from Millah, because Islam has these two concepts. It has the personal, which is Deen, this is our relationship with God, but it also has the Millah, which is the collective group of what our goal is as a collective body. And the goal of the collective body is the establishment of social justice, which is called Sharia, the sacred law.

Now one of the things that you say... No, but I want you to answer also. This is important because we get back to this colonial idea. The Quran very clearly says

The Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition, which is not religious, it's their social phenomenon, which I now think is Europe and America, this is the Judeo-Christian phenomenon.

They will not be content until you follow their Millah. Now in the Quran, it does not say Deen, which is their personal piety or their personal transactions with God. No, it says their Millah, how they function as a collective body.

The Consumer Society as the Modern Idol

Now the dominant Millah of our modernist condition is the consumer society. This is the idol of the age, consumption, that we were born to consume. Now first of all, two interesting things to note.

One is the consumer in Old English means the devil. And the Quran says

The those who are gratuitously extravagant are the companions or the brothers, the brethren of the Shayateen, the Shayateen, who are this perverse element in human society and in the human heart, which is calling people to lower functions.

And so the idea of consumption now is being presented to the world as salvation, that you will be happy through buying, that you will be happy if you will have all those goods that are going to make you happy.

This is the constant message of the television, the constant message of media, the message of governments, more, if we can just make more schools, if we can just put more computers in the schools, if we can just have more prisons, there will be less crime. So everything is more.

That, unfortunately, is a part of capitalism.

Well, yeah, at its last stages.

Islam's Teaching: Having Less to Gain More

But what Islam is saying is, no, by having less, you have more. By diminishing your exterior wants and increasing your interior wants, because we have interior and exterior wants, our interior wants are not the same.

Because if I'm cold, if my body that's shivering is not my soul, and I can deal with that, I just put a blanket on and I can resolve that crisis. But if my soul is shivering, then what do I use to cover up that?

Well, you can attempt to put a blanket, which is what consumerism is. You say, no, no, no, buy.

And the blanket doesn't work. Well, here, here's a new and improved, right? This is what they love to use in their commercials. The new and improved blanket.

This will really make you warm. Oh, this new car. Wait till you get this new stereo, this new television.

It just keeps going and going and going. And in the end, this human being is left consumed, because the consumer is ultimately consumed, because life consumes us.