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_001.jpg) I was born in Switzerland of British parents, a child of
war. At the time of my birth, the final peace treaty ending the first world
war, the treaty with Turkey, was being signed close by in Lausanne. The
greatest tempest which had changed the face of the world had temporarily
exhausted itself, but its effects were everywhere apparent. Old certainties
and the morality based upon them had been dealt a mortal blow. But my family
background was stained with the blood of conflict. My father already 67 when I
was born, had been born during the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte. Both had
been soldiers....
Even so, I might at least have had a homeland. I
had none. Although born in Switzerland, I was not Swiss. My mother had grown
up in France and loved the French above all others, but I was not French. Was
I English? I never felt so. My mother never tired of reminding me that the
English were cold, stupid, and sexless without intellect and without culture. I
did not want to be like them. So where-if anywhere-did I belong? It seems to
me in retrospect, that this strange childhood was a good preparation for
adherence to Islam. Wherever he may have been born and whatever his race, the
Muslim’s homeland is the Dar-ul-Islam, the House of Islam. His passport, here
and in the Hereafter, is the simple confession of Faith, La ilaha ill-Allah. He
does not expect - or should not expect - security or stability in this world
and must always keep in mind the fact that death may take him tomorrow. He has
no firm roots here in this fragile earth. His roots are above in that which
alone endures.
But what of Christianity? If my father had any
religious convictions he never expressed them, although - on his death bed,
approaching 90 - he asked: ‘Is there a happy place?’ My upbringing was left
entirely to my mother. By temperament, she was not, I think, irreligious, but
she had grown up within a religious framework, and she was hostile to what is
commonly called organized religion. Of one thing she was certain; her son must
be left free to think for himself and never be forced to accept second-hand
opinions. She was determined to protect me from having religion ‘crammed down
my throat’. She warned a succession of nursemaids who came and went in the
house and accompanied us to France during the holidays that, if they ever
mentioned religion to me, they would at once be dismissed. When I was five or
six, however, her orders flouted by a young woman whose ambition it was to
become a missionary in Arabia, saving the souls of those benighted people who
were - she told me - lost in a pagan creed called ‘moslemism’. This was the
first I had heard of Arabia, and she drew me a map of that mysterious land.
One day she took me for a walk past Wandsworth
Prison (we were living in Wandsworth Common at the time). I must have misbehaved
some way, for she gripped me roughly by the arm, pointed to the prison gates
and said: ‘There’s a red haired man in the sky who will shut you in there if
you’re naughty!’ This was the first I had heard of ‘God’, and I did not like
what I heard. For some reason I was afraid of men with red hair (as she must
have known), and this particular one living above the clouds and dedicated to
punishing naughty boys sounded very frightening. I asked my mother about him
as soon as we got home. I do not remember what she said to comfort me, but the
girl was promptly dismissed.
Eventually, much later than most children, I was
sent to school or rather to a series of schools in England and in Switzerland before arriving, aged 14, at Charterhouse. Surely, with services in the school
chapel and classes in ‘Scripture’, Christianity should have made some impact
upon me? It made no impact at all, either upon me or upon my school friends. This
does not seem to me surprising. Religion cannot survive, whole and effective
when it is confined to one single compartment of life and education. Religion
is either all or it is nothing; either it dwarfs all profane studies or it is
dwarfed by them. Once or twice a week we were taught about the Bible just as
we were instructed in other subjects in other classes. Religion, it was
assumed had nothing to do with the more important studies which formed the
backbone of our education. God did not interfere in historical events, He did
not determine the phenomena we studied in science classes, He played no part in
current events, and the world, governed entirely by chance, and by material
forces, was to be understood without reference to anything that might -or might
not -exist beyond its horizons. God was surplus to requirements....
And yet I needed to know the meaning of my own
existence. Only those who, at some time in their lives, have been possessed by
such a need can guess at its intensity, comparable to that of physical hunger
or sexual desire. I did not see how I could put one foot in front of the other
unless I understood where I was going and why. I could do nothing unless I
understood what part my action played in the scheme of things. All I knew I
knew was that I knew nothing - nothing, that is to say, of the slightest
importance - and I was paralyzed by my ignorance as though immobilized in a
dense fog.
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