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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 1 of 7)
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Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 1.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 06 Sep 2010 - Last modified on 26 Oct 2010
Viewed: 4510 (daily average: 7) - Rating: 5 out of 5 - Rated by: 5
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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My disbelief before Islam
When I married my Portuguese
wife, Anabela, I had a philosophy which, though I believed in God as the Creator
and Power that drove the universe, did not acknowledge that I was obliged to
worship Him (I conceived the Power as It – that is, sexless).
I had been born a Roman
Catholic, and brought up believing in Jesus as my God and Mary as my God’s
mother – but this did not sit well with me. Rather, I saw Jesus and Mary as a means
through which to reach God, who was the God of the Old Testament.
As I grew older, I began to
despair at understanding vast tracts of the Old Testament. The material was
dense, and so called ‘prophetic’ passages appeared to be in the present tense –
addressed to those people thousands of years ago, as happening to them or in
their lifetimes. More confusion arose because personal addresses or actions
sometimes seemed to be assigned or directed not to people, but to cities and
nations. God, for example, seemed to regard Jerusalem as his wife, and the
actions of her people congruent with her actions. God called her a whore, and
appealed frequently for her to repent and turn back, and become His queen
again. The same was true of people, such as Jacob, who assumed the name of a
nation, so passages addressed to Israel sometimes meant Jacob. Jacob often
symbolized his descendents, which were split into two camps: the camp of
Ephraim and the camp of Judah. Again, the names of these descendents of Jacob
reflected the split in the children of Israel, between the city state of Zion
and Samaria.
Other passages seemed to refer
to supernatural events, and supernatural encounters. The raising up of Elijah
and the appearance of God before Israel seemed to describe events that could be
explained as meetings between races of advanced technologies and simple, non
technological, men. Given that many other religions described the same kind of
encounters with their ‘gods’, I began to suspect these stories of the Bible
were but legends, gathered together, and made to seem coherent for the sake of
a constructed hierarchy, the Church.
On top of this suspicious view
I had begun to hold, I also learned of the historical persecutions that took
place during and since mediaeval times, particularly the events of the crusades
and the inquisition, which followed them. In fact, the ethos of the inquisition
was exported to the New World by Spanish and Portuguese ‘Conquistadores’,
and the Roman Popes manoeuvred to establish riches and power in Europe by a
reign of Machiavellian terror. The Family of Borgia
were particularly exemplary figures in this respect.
Finally, I learned of the
attempt of the Church to stifle and deny scientific advancement well into the
reformation, and that change only manage to establish itself through the
renaissance at a later date.
All these factors led me to
believe that the God of the Bible and the descriptions of Heaven and Hell
taught by the Church were forgeries, designed to subjugate and pacify the vast
majority of the population under the rule of a minority elite.
Tortuous Confusion
There is a primal urge in men
to worship that which created them, and turn to Him when in need and nothing
but Him can be appealed to sort out ones peril or confusion. I have heard
people exclaim in extremus, “For the Love of God,” “Oh, God!”, “For
God’s sake,” and the like, appealing for succour. Yet when aid comes, and they
feel secure again, they thank the living agents who helped them in this world,
or their favourite deities in the world of the unseen. In my own sense
trackless waste, my lack of orientation, I took refuge in the concept of the Force,
or Power I described earlier – the single and non-material
Creator, whom men (individually) interacted with at a personal
level, with neither mediation from unseen agencies, nor
help from other human beings.
The route took in coming to
this conclusion was long and tortuous, concepts building on one another from my
reading of science fiction and primitive conspiracy theories. I read, for
example, Erich Von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods?”
and “The Philadelphia Experiment”
by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, the first of which gave credence to
religion being ‘made up’, and the second of which opened my eyes to what can be
covered up by the elite society and their governments in the world. However,
not every nation and government can be in on the grand conspiracy, if such a
thing exists, so the natural place to look for confirmation or contradiction
was other religions. To me, the ‘other religions’ were Hinduism and its
offshoots, in particular Buddhism, so I sought to find out more about them from
the inside.
The most visible of the branches of Hinduism in
London, where I lived, was the orange coloured monks from the temple of
Krishna, so I duly
found myself recruited into their sect. Although the ritual meditation felt
good, its wide use definitely provided a calming effect on the devotees –
confirming that it preached a kind of placation of the people. Its creation
story was also rather repulsive; who wants to acknowledge the origin of the
world being a vast, but dead, cosmic cow, or that we evolved from her
excretions? I soon left the sect as abruptly as I entered it, and read up on
Buddhism. I knew the latter was an offshoot of the mother of the other, so I
wasn’t tempted to try and practice Buddhism. Instead I tried to discover its key
concept of life and life after death. I soon discovered that, like Hinduism,
the hereafter was conceived to be a series of reincarnations, and that we were
bound to our lives on the wheel of fate. However, instead of seeking unity with
the cosmic mind of God, the perfection of Nirvana, the Buddhist seeks to attain
enlightenment and freedom from the cycle of birth and death. This enlightenment
negates the ego because it must surrender its jurisdiction over time to achieve
it and let the infinite and unknowable take over. Strictly speaking, Buddhism
is a religious philosophy, taking the human ego as the only god that dominates
life, whose way is to a Godlessness goal in the afterlife.
Again, in seeking to eliminate ego orientation,
Buddhism can be seen as the Marxist concept of “opium for the people”.
It makes them tractable and controllable by the elite in society; but what
about ways of ‘bucking the system’? What about, pre-historical religions, or
religions that had died out? One of the earliest forms of religion I learnt
about is totemism. Totemism
postulates the existence of a spirit equivalent to a sign in the real world,
usually an animal. A whole tribe can have a collective spirit totem, such as
the cave bear, whilst individuals may possess an individual totem, such as the
grey wolf. Furthermore, if one is seeking help in a particular endeavor, such
as hunting, the totem of the hunted animal can be consulted for signs of where
the quarry might be.
There is a clear connection to
magical oracles in the use of totemistic rituals, pointing to the existence of
unseen forces existing in the world. There are also other avenues to these
forces, such as astrology and nature worship. One of the latter means of
worship envisages the earth as Gaia, the mother of everything in nature,
and the patterns of interaction between creatures of the ecological system. I
rather liked this idea that earth was a viable individual who must be
respected, and was capable of guiding us and protecting the guided, while
punishing those who work against her and will not take guidance. Not long ago,
a man named James Lovelock was able to express how I felt then in a book
called “The Revenge of Gaia”, which he
published in 2006.
However, the earth is too narrow a canvass for a
universal creator, so the second avenue was even more attractive to me. It
pertains to the heavens, and the heavens are much wider. Astrology
assigns meanings and influences to celestial bodies and their position in
the skies at the time of birth to determine the fate of an individual being.
They also rely upon the position of the celestial sphere at any given point of
time and space on the earth’s surface to venture predictions of what might
occur on the path of fate, and therefore give advice on decisions of the people
within the sphere of influence from those predicted events. For a while, I
became an amateur astrologer, because I felt I was in touch with a universal,
rather than local, force.
Then I met a man who turned me
back towards my religion of birth in order to seek universal answers. I can’t
remember his name, unfortunately, but his origin was Ireland, and his religion
Roman Catholic, as I had been. His outlook, however, was not as hidebound as
some staunch Roman Catholics I would meet later. He happened to meet me while I
was reading a book called Omega by Stewart Farrar, which gave me an insight into witchcraft and the religion of
Wicca. We had a huge discussion that lasted nearly a day, while sitting on a
beach in the Algarve, Portugal. He was trying to describe the concept of God,
and readily agreed with me that Jesus was not God. God was something immaterial
and invisible power and Lordship over everything. With the input I had from
Stewart Farrar, I described what I felt was the essence of Divinity and my
relation, or the worlds relation, to it. I felt that “God” was the Devine
initiator, whose “way” was the Laws of the natural world. I said I believed
that every world was different and behaved after its own proper laws, but that
there was a general guiding Law of the Universe, which was God and His
Guidance: working ‘with the flow” signified “good” while working across the
flow signified evil. Examples of working “with the flow” is using nature’s
medicines for healing, whilst “across the flow” is manufacturing chemical
agents that mimic the effect of nature’s medicine; working with the flow would
be environmentally friendly whilst across the flow would cause pollution; etc.
This was my state when I
married my Portuguese wife. She was Roman Catholic, but largely
non-practicing. Before long, she was pregnant, and my first child came
into the world.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 2 of 7)
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Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 2.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 13 Sep 2010 - Last modified on 26 Oct 2010
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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Returning to God
_001.jpg) During my early years of marriage, I was
friends with a man who loved hiking in the mountains and going nude in seclusion.
He was both naturalist and naturist in outlook, and he took me and my wife in that direction.
Naturally, when Andrei Micael was born, I advocated a more natural baptism than
one with ‘holy water’ from a cold stone basin being poured onto his head by a
Roman Catholic priest. Instead, I wanted to trek into the mountains and dip
him in a stream, just as John the Baptist
baptized the repentant Jews in the River Jordan. Of course I
did not realize that baptism was something one should do when an adult, rather
than a child, for how can children repent? They have done nothing to repent
from. My true baptism I would make on myself, when I bathed away my past state
in ritual purification on becoming Muslim.
My wife’s mother started to
visit us in the summer, the first time just to see Andrei, I think. Like my
wife, she was a Roman Catholic. Unlike her, however, she was an avid believer
in the mediation of Mary, the mother of ‘God’, the saints in their
graves, and the boy Jesus. To this end, she wore a crucifix around her neck
and assiduously visited the shrines of Mary (including the Sanctuary
of Fatima and Our Lady of Lourdes) at least once a year, and made pilgrimage to the Sanctuary de
Saint Benedict every time she came to Braga, where my wife and I lived. She had a
small statue of Mary with child that she used to set up on its own special
table (like an altar) in the corner of her bedroom, and she kept a battered old
photograph of a fresco of Mary (the mother of Jesus), holding a cup with a
bleeding heart, in her wallet. The former she used to kneel to before going to
bed every night, and the latter she would keep while travelling, taking it out
to kiss when she wanted to pray.
To me, all these actions were
abhorrent, totally against both my primitive concept of the Universal Force or
Power, a Unique Creator and Sustainer that permeated the Universe, and also to
God as He is described in the Bible. I became determined to persuade my
mother-in-law to stop her idolizing worship of (dead) human beings as mediators
to the One Who Hears. But how?
Back to the Bible
I first tried by using logic. How
can dead men hear? How do we know their piety? Was it not men who made them
‘saints’? And by whose authority were they made saints? Were they not men, like
us? But all to no avail. So finally I decided I would use the weapon of her
own scripture because I knew that the First Commandment
in the Bible was,
“I am the Lord your God, Who
took you out of Egypt and from bondage. And you shall not take any gods
besides Me. You will not make graven images or likenesses of any creature that
lives in the heavens above or the earth below, or in the water under the earth,
nor will you bow down to them, or serve them.” (Exodus 20:2-5)
If that were the case, then
there would be more evidence that God is only One, and immaterial, and only He
could hear us.
Over the years that I sustained
my regular (summer) persuasion with her, I began to appreciate that the Bible actually
contradicted what the Church taught about the ‘god-ship’ of Jesus, and
affirmed clearly that God was One. It completely denied the license we have taken to worship idols
or use them as a focus of our prayer. So my belief in the
God of Abraham slowly increased until my only fear was that I might be wrong.
What if, despite my strong belief that it was not true, it was Jesus who sat on
the Throne of Judgment on the Last Day? Then I would be in a pickle. The
evidence in the Bible was ambiguous on this point, since ‘The Revelation of
St John’ seemed to indicate that it would be him.
Debts
This was my state when I found
the need to look for a job that would help me escape my heavy debts at home. During
this period, I decided to give up my job at the British Council in Portugal and
venture a language school of my own in Braga. I wanted to be near at hand for
the raising of my son. At the same time, I decided to buy a home, which would
be like renting a flat, except that I would own the place at the end of the
process. My school, however, did not work out, and I ended up not only owing a
lot of money to the bank for my house, but also for the starting capital I had
borrowed. When I closed my school two years after I opened it, I foolishly did
not declare bankruptcy, instead using my ‘business card’ to become a freelance
English teacher. Although this helped me keep my feel I might just be able to
survive, the capital I owed did not diminish appreciably. I needed some get
out plan. My wife then suggested that I look for a well paid job abroad to
deal with the problem, pointing out that many acquaintances had husbands
abroad, and had amassed enough money to build homes for their families in the
home country.
The day I decided I needed to
find such a lucrative job abroad was a black day indeed. I was in deep gloom
because things were coming to a head. I was unable to keep up with the
interest repayments on loans from domestic appliances, the mortgage, our cars
and the debts I had accumulated running a language school for three years at a
loss, I saw blackness ahead of me – and no local means to climb out of the debt
hole I was in. I felt almost suicidal, thinking death would allow me to escape
from debt. I didn’t know, at the time, that debt was one of the things a
person could be barred from paradise for, and that death did not mean you
escaped your obligations.
One night I knelt by my
bedside, facing the east, and poured out my trouble to God. I told him I was
in despair, at my tether’s end, and could not see myself able to support my
wife and children, let alone myself. I begged him to give me a way out, a way
to a good life for us all. Somehow, I knew he was listening, and my heart
eased as I prayed. Eventually, I felt comfortable enough to lay my head down
again, and fall back to sleep.
The next few events
proved He had answered my prayer. The very next day, I was looking through the
EFL Gazette and found several advertisements for British Council placements
abroad. When I pointed them out to her, my wife advised me to look for work in
the Middle East or Far East where salaries were relatively high. There and
then, I applied to institutions in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Taiwan, Japan
and Korea. The British Council gave me an interview, but I was not chosen for
any of their places. An employer in Taiwan chose me and offered me a job, but
when I accepted, the process was never followed up by them. Just as I was
beginning to feel all the doors were closing in my face, one of my last
choices, a university in Saudi Arabia, offered me a position as a lecturer of
English, and I took it. Praise be to God! I thought He had answered me
financially, but his real gift was to come from an unexpected direction.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 3 of 7)
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Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 3.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 20 Sep 2010 - Last modified on 07 Nov 2010
Viewed: 3215 (daily average: 5) - Rating: none yet - Rated by: 0
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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A New Beginning
_001.jpg) When my friends learnt that I
would be going to the Gulf, I was deluged with advice. I was told that I would
find nothing to do in Saudi Arabia, and would feel hedged in.
I was warned that I would be cheated and treated like a slave. The culture
would not be conducive, and I would be bored to tears. However, I knew this
was my way out, so, like I always do when I go to a new place, a culture
different from my own, I tried to offload my cultural prejudices and intended
to test the society I would be part of on its merits.
I was pleasantly surprised on arrival
to note the general friendliness I met with from Saudis. Instead of the proud
aloofness, shady ethics and touchy honour I expected, I was greeted with
warmth, curiosity and open doors. My hosts went out of their way to please me,
a stranger in their land. Not that I didn’t meet with a fair share of hypocrisy.
The foreigners from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Far Eastern countries were
seriously exploited, and unfairly treated, in my eyes, by the Arab majority. But
I saw none of that condescension when they applied their society to me. However,
it was not their culture or society that attracted me to Islam. In fact, if I
were to judge Islam by the culture, I would have stepped in the opposite
direction, I think. It was another thing.
The Motivation
The impetus or catalyst that changed me
from vaguely religious to fully submissive to God started with a seemingly
innocuous event. Stepping out onto Saudi Arabian soil early in the morning for
just the second time (in 24 hours) at Ha’il Airport, a small, hick aerodrome
rather than fully fledged passenger terminus, I was confronted by a big green
sign with the words “The Ha’il Islamic Propagation and Guidance Office”,
followed by the office phone number, in English. I remember being surprised
the sign was in English, but I didn’t take much more conscious notice of it
than that.
The University pick-up arrived and took
me to the College, where I had to check in my passport and fill in an arrival
form. Then I was sent to the head of the English Department. When I entered
his office, I was confronted with a man in Saudi dress. But he did not look
like an Arab, to my untrained eye. He must have felt a bit uncomfortable
having me stare at him, trying to figure out his origins, but he handled it
well. Later, I was to find out he was Welsh and had converted in Brunei before
he came to Saudi Arabia. He told me that I had the rest of the week to settle
in, which meant I had five days before I officially started teaching. I was
sent back to the man in charge of personnel reception and housing, who took me
in the pick-up to choose my digs. I soon settled in, and found I had nothing
to do and four days to do it in. Then, with the memory of the strange looking
‘non-Arab Saudi’ still in my mind’s eye, I remembered the sign in English and
began to think of the religion of the country.
Now, I knew of the Bible and that the Torah was part of it. I had read some of the Book of the Hindus, the Bhagwad Gita, and also read not scriptures, but practical books for other
religions and non-religious theories about religion. However, I had never read
the Talmud, nor had I read any of the Book of the Muslims, which I knew was
called the Quran. Somehow I had always had the impression that these two books were
‘off limits’ to non-Jews
and non-Muslims. And I had thought they were exclusively in the Semitic
languages, which I didn’t know. However, the sign in English pushed the
thought into my mind that perhaps I could find an English translation of the
Arabic Quran at the institute it advertised. Perhaps this would be the
opportunity to read it and judge the source of the religion for myself.
I immediately set off for the centre of
town to look for the place. The centre of Ha’il had a six storey office block
which they called Al-Bourj, which means “the tower”, the only ‘high rise’ building in town. The
road I walked down went straight past it, leaving it on the left, ending in the
down town shopping souk. On the right side of the road opposite the bourj, was the vegetable market, which
I later learned doubled as an execution ground. Where my road and the
high-street crossed at the bourj, I found the same sign I had seen at the airport. It was
conveniently written in a direction sign with the pointed end pointing
diagonally across the street, but as hard as I looked at the shop fronts, all
in Arabic lettering which I was unable to read, I was unable to locate my goal.
The shops were all shut, it being the afternoon, so I couldn’t even make
enquiries. I had no idea when the shops would open again, so I decided to go
to my new home, buy some supplies in, rest up and try again the in the morning.
The next day was Tuesday, and I went
into town again as soon as I had breakfast. On the way, I passed several
bookstores, and mindful how difficult it had been to find the propagation
office, I stopped in every one. None of them had any books in English, let
alone the Quran, and, as far as I could make out, they directed me onward
towards the bourj. This time I took station
directly under the sign and waited until a policeman came by on a motorbike. As
he passed by, on the other side of the road, I waved at him madly. He swept
into the crossroads and made a left, stopping his bike at the start of the
vegetable market. I called him over, and by dint of gesticulation and pointing
at the sign, managed to convey I wanted to know where it was. He pointed
across the road and, when I still couldn’t spot it, to the roof of a house
where a copy of the sign I had seen at the airport was placed. How stupid I
felt. I had strained my eyes at the signs above the shop fronts, and the place
had been staring me in the face! At last I had my target, and I went over to
the shops below it, finding a bookshop full of people from all over south-east
Asia and Oceania. I took it to be the bookshop belonging to the centre.
The Encounter
As I said before, the bookshop was full
of people, and books in many different languages, but I was too shy to ask
anything lest I be misunderstood; I couldn’t speak any of their languages. Glancing
through the shelves, I could see no thick tomes, and all the titles in English
seemed to be about Jesus or explanations of particular religious areas. I
noticed that there were some stairs at the back next to the shop counter,
leading up to the next floor. The Policeman had indicated the offices of the
Guidance Centre were upstairs, so, on the vague hope I may come across a
reading room, or something, I climbed the stairs at the back of the bookshop,
smiling hard at the people behind the counter in lieu of speaking because of
being so self-consciously tongue-tied.
At the top of the stairs was a huge
empty room that looked like a meeting hall. Adjoining it, I found a room that
had a huge table in its centre and shelves all around, but only a very, very
few, battered books – perhaps that reading room I had hoped for. Unfortunately,
the books were all in a foreign language, or languages – foreign lettering I
could not make head or tail of. I began to despair of locating what I wanted
on my own, or getting what I wanted in a land that could speak my language. Luckily,
one of the office staff found me and asked me what I wanted, or what I was
doing there, or something of that nature (he was speaking in his language,
which I could not understand). I replied in English, telling him I was looking
for a copy of the Quran to read. He indicated that I should to wait, because
he was going to fetch someone. So I waited; perhaps a solution was about to
come my way.
A tall, handsome bearded man came into
the room I was waiting in. I was to know him later on as Brother Abu
Abdurrahman, my teacher and mentor, but at the time, he was just another ‘Saudi’ who might be able to help me get
what I wanted. He asked me in English what I wanted, and I told him I wanted
to read the Quran.
“Why do you want to do that?” he asked
me.
“I want to compare it to the Bible.” I
replied.
“What for?”
“You know, to see if it is like it.”
“Do you want to know about Islam?”
“Well, yes, I suppose.”
“Why don’t you read this pamphlet?” He
said, showing me a pamphlet that said ‘Who is God?’ I didn’t really want to
know the Muslim view of theology or religion. That wasn’t what I was after. I
wanted to look at their scripture, to see if it compared to what was in the
Bible.
“No. I don’t really want to read about
Islam. I want their book,” I said.
“Really? It is better if you learn more
about the religion before,” he wheedled.
“I’m not interested in the religion,
per say,” I said, trying not to offend, “I just want to read their book.”
“The book isn’t a game,” he said.
“I’m not playing,” I said. “I am
seriously interested in what it says.”
“OK. I will see what I can do,” he
said, giving way. I thanked him and he walked out of the room.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 4 of 7)
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Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 4.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 27 Sep 2010 - Last modified on 07 Nov 2010
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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The Book
_001.jpg) When he came back, he was carrying a
thick book in a shiny jacket. He held it gently, cradled in his hand. He told
me this was not a translation, but an explanation of the meaning of
the Noble Quran
in English. That confused me, and I re-iterated that I
wanted a translation. He said that it was a translation, but no translation
was the same as the original, which is why it was called ‘an
explanation of the meaning’.
Not really following his train of
thought, I accepted. It crossed my mind that it was better than nothing. He
seemed to know what was going on in my head. So, being the good psychologist
he was, he started to hand it to me, and then withdrew it as I reached out to
take it.
“There are three – no, four –
conditions I want you to agree to before I give it to you,” he said.
“What conditions?” I asked, nervously.
“First, please don’t put it down on the
floor or even on a chair. You might accidentally step or sit on it, which is
disrespectful to the holy book.” Well I could understand that condition.
“Secondly, I know it is the habit of
some people to read while they are doing their business sitting on the toilet.”
He was right. I sometimes did it myself.
“Why?” I asked.
“Don’t do it with the Quran. The place
where you eject your waste is not the place to read it. You shouldn’t even
take it into the toilet with you.” Well, I could see what he was getting at,
though I thought it a bit picky. But I was willing to follow that condition
too; anything to get hold of it, I thought.
“Thirdly, whenever you stop reading it,
place it in a shelf, rather than leave it out. It demonstrates more care.” No
problem, I thought. It shows that the Muslims cared for and respected the
Quran a great deal.
“Fourthly, try not to put the Quran
open and face down in order to keep your place.” That was very picky, I
thought.
“Why?” I asked. The question was
getting to be repetitive.
“The word of Allah should not be facing
down; it should be facing up. If you need to keep your place, there is a place
keeping ribbon attached you can use.” Well, of course! I thought. That must be
the reason the Bible has one, too!
“I accept those conditions,” I said,
aloud.
He asked me to come and tell him how I
got on, which I took lightly at the time, and I hurried off with my prize. I
couldn’t wait to get home and really get my head stuck into it that very day,
especially since the next day was going to be Wednesday, my last free working
day before the Saudi weekend, which was Thursday and Friday.
The Catalyst
During the next week, I went through
the Quran. I started at the beginning, and read steadily through the second
chapter. Somehow, I had expected the book to be an account of the Muslim
prophet’s life, something like the Gospels or the books of Moses in the Bible.
But that is not what I was reading.
Right from the start, it captivated me
by apparently speaking directly to me. There was no, ‘God said “such
and such”,’ or ‘The prophet said “such and such”,’ as
if it were reported by others concerning what a
prophet had said about God or what a prophet had
reported of God’s very words. Indeed, I rather felt like I was receiving
revelation direct from God Himself. He was talking to me direct, and His words
impinged directly upon my heart.
Soon I found myself crying, as I
recognized myself, and members of my family, in the descriptions of the people
of the book and their (mistaken) beliefs and obdurate stances. Even some of
the attitudes and beliefs of the disbelievers, hypocrites and polytheists
echoed some of my attitudes and the attitudes of people I knew in the West. My
heart ached with concern over the possible destiny of my relatives, and quaked
with fear over my, by now undoubted, destiny if I remained on the way I had
been treading.
After reading the first big chapters, Al-Baqarah,
Ali-'Imran,
An-Nisa,
Al-Ma'idah and Al-An'am, I skipped through the book, looking for shorter chapters. But
even the shorter chapters of around 60 verses echoed the big five. However,
when I arrived at the final part, the 30th Ju’z, the chapters were suddenly no more than two or three pages, some
only a page and a half. And the topics were now more restricted.
Then the chapters fitted one page, or
less than a page, until there were more than one chapter on each page. At that
point, one of those tiny chapters suddenly illuminated.
‘Say He is Allah, the One,
Allah the Self-Sufficient.
He begets not, nor was He begotten.
And there is none comparable unto
Him.’
This was the heart of the Quran; what I
understood as its True message. It sounded so right to me. It was just the way I felt about God
in my own, made up, religion despite what the churches of my religion taught
about the divinity of Jesus and the concept of Trinity.
The Last Straw
Could it be that Muslims really believe
in a single Creator, Unique, the Foundation and Mover of the Universe? Is it
really true that this God repudiates any possibility of procreation, either
from Hisself or being procreated from another? Does this religion truly
confirm what I think is true anyway? And, if it does, doesn’t that mean I have
a duty I have neglected all this time?
These thoughts and questions stumbled
through my mind. I had to check against the only Muslims I had more than a
passing acquaintance with; two colleagues at the University College.
I stopped them on the stairs leading up
to the main gate of the main building. They had been aware I was reading the
Quran, and they readily stopped, happy to be able to answer a question I might
have. I apologised for taking their time and got right down to this amazing
discovery I had made.
“I’ve been reading your Book,” I
said, “and I’ve come across a verse which seems to sum it all up.”
“Which verse is that?” It was
Isma’il Rostron, the white convert who asked.
“Here. Right at the end. It
says,
‘Say He is Allah, the One,
Allah the Self-Sufficient.
He begets not, nor was He
begotten.
And there is none comparable unto
Him.’
It’s what the whole book is
driving at!”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Isma’il.
“Funny you should say that,” said
Jamal. He was British from Pakistani origins, and a born Muslim.
“There is a story about one
of the Prophet’s companions, handed down to us through the traditions of the Prophet, may Allah
praise him.”
“What story?” I encouraged.
“There was a man, a commander of Jihad, who used to
lead his companions in prayer with a recitation. Upon finishing the portion of
the Quran after reciting The Opening, he would complete it with the recitation
of ‘Say, He is Allah the One’. So, when they returned, they mentioned this to
the Prophet, may Allah praise him, and he said, ‘Ask him why he does it!’ he
told me. “So the people went and asked him, and the commander said, ‘Because
it is the description of Allah, and I love to recite it.’ So, when the people
came and reported that to him, the Prophet, may Allah praise him, said, ‘Inform
him that Allah the Most High, loves him’.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling a little
dazed by this confirmation.
“Yes,” said Jamal. “And there is another
which tells you exactly how much of the message this chapter of the Quran is.”
I was on tenterhooks.
“A man heard another man reciting ‘Say, He is Allah the
One’ over and over again through the early morning hours of the night. So,
when morning came, the man went to the Prophet, may Allah praise him, and
mentioned it to him, and it was as though he was belittling it. The Prophet,
may Allah praise him, said, ‘By He Whose Hand is my very soul, verily the
chapter and its message is equivalent to a third of the Quran’.”
“So, you see, you are right. It is what most of the
Quran is driving at,” he continued.
I was convinced. The Muslims really believed in this
principle, no ifs or buts, and no shading into trinity or mediators allowed. This was The God I
could really relate to.
“What about the other thirds?” I
asked.
“One third consists of the stories
of the Prophets and the lessons we learn by their example.”
“What do you mean?”
“What the prophets did and said,
how they proclaimed the message to their people and how they interacted with
their families and communities.”
“I see; and the last part?”
“That’s the ordainments of Allah
concerning how we live individually and as a community,” he said. “Things like
the legal statutes concerning marriage, divorce, parenting and child rearing;
purification, prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage; the lawful and the prohibited in
alimentation and social interaction; law and punishment.”
I decided I had to go away and
think about the implications.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 5 of 7)
|
Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 5.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 04 Oct 2010 - Last modified on 07 Nov 2010
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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Three Conditions
I ended up thinking about the heartache
I felt for my family, so I decided to wait until three things were clear before
I would embrace Islam.
1. My wife accepted the
religion as I had done.
2. She agreed to leave her job
and come and live with me in Saudi Arabia.
3. A (personal) problem she and
I had between us was overcome.
In other words, I vowed I would wait
until all conditions were optimum and would not become officially Muslim until
they were.
I began talking to my wife about what I
had found out. Although I was trying not to sound overboard, my amazement at
what I had found and my endorsement of it must have been overwhelming. I wrote
e-mail after e-mail, and chatted lengthily on msn. I read constantly and
widely anything about Islam I found on the net, especially arguments Muslims
made through Biblical support for the religion. My enthusiasm for the discovery
that Islam was just an extension of our religion purified, you might say, from
its errors, must have impinged sharply on her to the extent that she became
dismayed, and she was finally driven to comment, “it sounds like you have
converted.”
This made me pause because I realised
that I had already made the step in my heart, if not by my mouth, and my
response reflected that.
“Actually, I have.”
From that moment on, my wife kept on
criticising me for not consulting her before I made such a big decision. My
constant defence was that I hadn’t officially converted yet, though I had in my
heart. This argument derailed my efforts to convert her, and led to very tense
and painful cohabitation during the next few holidays I took that Christmas and
the following three summers. But that is another story.
The Mosque and the Orphans
In the meanwhile, I had my first
experience of praying with Muslims. One weekend, I was walking back from the
centre of town in the evening after an afternoon of shopping. I had bought
some ‘native’ clothing, and wanted to try them out. In fact, I was wearing one
of the dress-like ‘thobes’ I had just bought,
and carrying the other with my ‘western’ clothes in a carrier bag. The sun was
westering as I started for home, and set when I was about half-way there. The
call for prayer blared from a small mosque I was approaching, and was echoed by
the hundreds of mosques near and far through the city. Shutters were rattling
down, and goods in the street were being covered with plastic and sail cloth. Men
started streaming from the shops and houses to the mosques. It was impressive!
A call from the minaret responded to in an instant. I decided I wanted to see
what Muslim prayer was all about.
I tentatively followed the stragglers
in as the prayer began and watched them line up behind the two lines already
formed. They raised their hands as they joined the line and then folded them
over their chests. It looked easy enough, and I tagged on to the end of the
line. Several children joined the line after me, forming a kind of restless
addendum. As the men alongside me bowed and prostrated, I copied their
movements as best as I could, looking sideways out of the corner of my eye. They
were oblivious to me, each one concentrating on some point directly before
them, eyes lowered. Their communion with God was palpable, and I tried to
share in the channel they had tapped, despite not having the same words to do
so.
“Oh God! Help me to fulfil my vow, and
persuade my wife. Guide me to You, and guide my family. I believe in You, the
only God, and not in human beings as gods.”
I repeated the prayer, over and over,
like a mantra. I don’t think I reached the same level of communion as my
companions, but my heart felt better when the prayer was over. As I pulled on
my shoes and socks, two of the children who had lined up beside me came over.
“Anta Muslim?
Limada tusalli? ‘adam wa’dha al yedduka al yameen ala shimal.”
The kids had spotted that I was a total
greenhorn, and had serious doubts whether I actually belonged. They showed me
how I should have positioned my hands, how I should have prostrated and bowed,
how I should have placed my feet and so on. Of course, I didn’t have a word of
Arabic, so I was just aware that they thought I needed a lot of coaching if I
was to pass off being a bone fide member of the congregation. They signalled
that I should follow them so they could take me to their home and hand me over
to their elder brother.
I was a bit wary of going into the
door, in case they meant for me to wait outside, but one of the children came
back when I didn’t follow them in. He made the ‘come on’ motion again, and
then signalled that I should go right as I entered, and through a hanging bead
screen. Inside was a sitting room with typical Arab floor cushions. A young
teenager, maybe 15 or 16, stood up from his comfortable lounging position to
greet me.
The older brother was very hospitable,
but couldn’t help me understand the children and what they were getting at. He
served me Arabic coffee in tiny cups and invited me to share some dates. I was
curious why children were entertaining me, the older boy being just a teenager.
Where were their parents?
“Where’s your mama and papa?” I asked.
But he either didn’t understand or
could not explain in sign language. He gestured that I should wait, so I
guessed they would be home, soon. However, instead of a grown man, it was
another youngster, barely out of his teens, who rolled in just before the
evening prayer. He looked surprised at seeing me in the sitting room with his
brother, and a few words were exchanged.
“Ameriki?”
I shook my head. “No, British.”
“Welcome. Welcome. Coffee?”
Again I shook my head; I had had
enough.
He stood up and indicated I should
follow. “Tawadha,” he said,
meaning “let’s make ablution!” He rubbed his hands together. “Wash; go masjid.”
He wanted me to get ready to go to the
mosque for the evening prayer.
“Put hand,” he said, lifting my right
hand, “on this!” he said, placing it over my left hand and then lifted them
both so they rested on my chest. We were walking across the road, and we
stopped right in the middle of it for the lesson as if cars did not exist. He
indicated the prayer by lifting his two hands to his ears. “Do like me!”
I lined up beside him, and this time
made a better job of the movements.
When we got back home, dinner was
served on a kind of tablecloth on the floor. I asked him, “Your mama?”
‘Mama’ seems to be an international or
universal means of indicating a mother. He shook his head, and made a sleeping
gesture and then a downward movement of the open palm towards the ground. “Baba
wa mama fiy mout,yarhamhummullah. Sister make.”
So they were orphans, and this young
man and his sister had shouldered the responsibility of the family. His
English was not the best, so the conversation was desultory. He asked, “You
like Islam?”
I said I did.
“Why you not Muslim?”
I needed time.
He offered me a lift home. “You need
help, any time visit,” he said as he dropped me off.
I thanked him.
Then the words I was to hear a thousand
times over emerged from his mouth. “Any Service?”
The kindness of that orphan family has
never left me. I was really touched at the care they had shown, and
appreciated their sincere attempts at guiding me. But the person who had the
greatest effect in my initiation was a man yet to arrive on the scene. He was
a green card Iranian looking for American nationality, and he was about to blow
into my life.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 6 of 7)
|
Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 6.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 11 Oct 2010 - Last modified on 07 Nov 2010
Viewed: 3986 (daily average: 7) - Rating: none yet - Rated by: 0
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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Ali Jamily
_001.jpg) Ali Jamily was the fourth ‘western’
Muslim colleague, just out from the United States. He had driven up from
Jeddah because his first action on arriving in Saudi Arabia was to pay a visit
to God’s house and walk around it (the lesser pilgrimage called ‘Umrah’). This was one of the characteristics of Ali that I would get to
know well: his obsession with visiting the House of God as often as he could. He
was wearing shades, and looked ‘cool’. A second thing I would learn for him
was his admiration of American social and legal norms, which he compared
favourably to his experience of these norms in Saudi Arabia. Yet under that
‘western’ exterior was the heart of one who loved God passionately. Soon after
he met me, he asked me if I knew about Islam, and I told him I had been reading
his Holy Book. Of course his next step was to ask me if I was going to embrace
Islam, and I told him about my three conditions.
“Are you mad?” he said. “You can’t
make conditions with God.” He used the name for God I had begun to become
familiar with in the Quran. “Prostrate right now and beg His forgiveness! If
you know this is the Truth, make your declaration of faith now.”
“Why shouldn’t I make conditions?” I
asked. “I want my family to be Muslim, too. Is that too much to ask?”
“Guidance is for whomsoever God wills.
Are you refusing his guidance because of family concerns? Even the Prophet, may
God praise him, could not guide all his family, and his uncle died a
disbeliever despite him being at his death-bead begging him to bear witness
that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad was His messenger,” he informed
me.
“But I want to talk it over with my
family first!” I argued, knowing that they should know my frame of mind before
I took such a gigantic step as to formally embrace another religion seriously.
“What if you die before you get the
chance to submit?” he asked me. “If you die having known the religion and
refused it, your destination will definitely be the Fire! Have you any idea
how lucky you are? Not everyone is touched like you have been. You cannot
refuse the chance He is giving you,” he argued persuasively.
At the time, I was taken aback by his
attitude. On reflection, however, I knew he was right. I would be a fool if I
let the chance slip.
My Avowal of
Islam
My next step was to go back to the
Islamic Propagation Office and ask them how to formally embrace Islam. When I
stepped in the office for the second time, there was a look of surprised
bafflement. I don’t suppose they had many white Europeans invading their
office, so they were trying to make out why I had come.
An Indian man, Shaykh Farooq, spoke first.
“What do you want?”
His English was good, I could tell. However,
I was just as surprised they didn’t understand why I had come to their office
as they were that I had. When I told him the reason, he told me that I had to
receive full disclosure of what the religion of Islam was and the conditions of
avowal.
It sounded a bit ominous. I had
expected to be welcomed, and sworn in straight away, but they insisted I needed
some coaching.
There were two other people interested
in being Muslims in the office before me, both from the Philippines. David was
a born again Christian who had become convinced of Islam during his Arabic
language classes which the centre ran. Coincidentally, he was the electrician
who serviced the apartment/hotel that I was staying at. John, however, had
been persuaded to become a Muslim because his wife was Muslim. He had been
dragged to the office by David, who was his friend.
Arrangements were made for all three of
us to make the double declaration together in the presence of two Muslim
witnesses. After that, we would be officially Muslim. They arranged for a
religious propagator to explain that very weekend coming up, after the noon
prayer on Thursday.
Since David and I lived in the same
apartment/hotel, John came by us, and we went to the centre together. They
showed us into the main rest area, which now had low floor cushions set around
the walls with armrests to lean on for the occasion. Shaykh Ehab, or Abu
Abdurrahman, as I now knew him, a man who I had given me
the Quran in the first place, and Shaykh
Farooq, who I had met when I came to the office to ask how
to become a Muslim, were both there, waiting for us. Then Shaykh
Ibrahim, the manager of Ha’il Propagation Centre, brought
in two men I did not know. Apparently, they were volunteers. Shaykh
Sa’ud worked for the Saudi Electric Company, and Shaykh
AbdulAziz for the Saudi Telecom Company. It was Shaykh Sa’ud who
did the disclosure.
He explained carefully that Islam was a
monotheist religion, and taking the step of formally embracing Islam was a big
step. Once I had done so, there was no turning back, and if I did turn back, I
would be subject to the death penalty for apostasy.
I said I knew the seriousness of
the step.
Then he told me the six points
concerning the creed. “First, you must know and believe in your heart and in
your prayer that Allah is your God, and there is no God but Him.”
“This is the basic reason I am here,” I
thought.
He held up his hand. “This means that
you should not look to any object or image as a focus for your worship of God,
for they are idols. Also your worship should be direct to Him, not through any
human being or spirit: prophet, priest, angel or elemental. Do you understand
what I mean?”
We each agreed that we did.
Then he went on. “You must believe
also in His angels, who are the messengers and errand doers of God. They carry
His word to the Prophets and do whatever He commands them on the earth and in
the heaven.”
I nodded along with David and john. It
was the angels that destroyed Sodom and Gomorra on God’s command, and the
angels who communicated with Mary about Jesus.
“And you must believe in God’s message,
which you can find in the Quran, and in that which was sent to different
Prophets in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel, before it. We believe all of
these Books were revealed to the Prophets by God.”
‘Very fair,’ I thought.
“Do you believe that these are all
revealed by God through His angels to His Prophets?”
We affirmed it.
“Muslims have to believe in all the
Prophets, naturally, and they are the ones who have given us the Message of God
from the time of Adam. Muhammad is the last of the Prophets because the Quran
is the final message to mankind, and it tells us he is the end of the Prophets.
And you must believe that Jesus, Peace be upon him, is not God or the son of God.
He is a man, like us, created by the command of God in the womb of Mary, and a
Messenger of God, just like Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him. What do you say.”
“Jesus was a Prophet, like Muhammad,”
said David. I nodded. ‘Of course,’ I was thinking.
“You must also believe that we will be
resurrected and judged on the Final Day, and that in the Hereafter there is one
of two destinies awaiting us: the Garden or the Fire. This is the basis of our
free will. We choose where we go by our deeds in this mundane world.”
This is an integral part of Christian
belief, too, so there was no trouble to assimilate it. We agreed we
understood.
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 7 of 7)
|
Description: Islam evolving in the heart. Part 7.
By Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter
Published on 18 Oct 2010 - Last modified on 07 Nov 2010
Viewed: 3782 (daily average: 7) - Rating: 5 out of 5 - Rated by: 4
Printed: 489 - Emailed: 3 - Commented on: 0
Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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|
_001.jpg) “Finally, you must believe in
predestination, which means ‘fate’. That is, all
that befalls you in the mundane world is by Allah’s Will. If you like it, then say ‘Praise be to Allah’. And if you dislike it,
it is a test or punishment from Him. Again you should say ‘Praise be to Allah’, and repent and correct
what you are doing wrong. Above all, you should have patience, and hope for what
is better, just round the corner.”
This last was a bit beyond my
understanding, and is quite difficult to grasp. Even the companions asked the
Prophet, “Why should we bother to work, if we cannot avoid our fate? Should we
stop doing works and trust in Allah?”
His response was that we should not
give up working. He said that the man or woman destined for hell, even if his
works were good up to a certain point in his life, would start doing the deeds
that would land him in the fire as he approached his death. And the man or
woman destined for Paradise, even if he had no good deeds to his name until a
certain point in his life, would start doing the deeds that would land him in
Paradise as he approached his death. What that meant to the individual is that
he should do the good deeds now, for no one knows when he will die. We do not
know what we are destined for, so we exercise our own will in what we do. And
if we want to be among the ones favoured, we should endeavour to be doing good
deeds in the present, in case death comes upon us unforeseen.
Even though I was not clear on the last
point, I was on the first five points of the creed, and both David and John
also did not demur. Each one of us I told him “I am ready.”
He took each of our avowals separately.
When it came to my turn, he said, “repeat after me.”
“Ash-shaddu
an laa ilaha illa Allah, wa ash-shaddu ana Muhammadan nabiyyan wa rasulu Llah.”
The Purifying Bath and a New Life
He explained that anyone who avowed the
testimonies not only became a Muslim, but Allah promised them Paradise, even if
their deeds were few. Then he said, “Now you should bathe yourself and make
your first Formal Prayer, which will be the noon prayer followed by the
mid-afternoon prayer. Yusuf will show you how.”
Even before we learnt how to make
ablution, the brothers came up and hugged us, grins and congratulations being
poured on each one of us. Then I heard a question I would hear often, so often
I thought it was a necessary part of embracing Islam. “What name are you going
to take, now you are Muslim?”
“Why should we take another name?”
“You are starting life anew, like a new
born baby. You are only one minute old!”
Well, I hadn’t decided, because I
hadn’t thought about it. However, when it came to the certificate, I did choose
– and action that I regretted later. David and John kept their names, simply
translated them into Arabic for their Muslim nicknames, Dawoud and Yahyah. I just delayed my decision.
It was still daylight, but nearly half
past three in the afternoon. Yusuf was a Chinese propagator, one of the
acolytes of the centre. He showed us how to make ablution in the public
ablution trench explaining each part. It was both clearer and more regulation
bound than how the orphans had shown me.
He made sure I was doing it right, and
then told me to go to the toilet. “When you pray, you should be free of
distractions such as hunger or thirst, or the need to go to the toilet. You
should also be wary of flatulence, since it breaks purity and forces you to
make ablution again.”
After I finished relieving myself, I
should take a bath. The bath would be my purification, which would purify me
and signal my entry into Islam, and prepare me for my combined afternoon
prayers. I suppose that it is much like the baptism that John the Baptist
insisted his followers should take if they were to follow him and the religion
he preached. No formal brushing of the head with ‘holy water’ as a sign of
being born into Christianity, this, but full immersion in flowing water
submitted to voluntarily by adult people who had chosen their religion. I, too,
would have to wet all my body, but not by immersion in a stream or river; there
aren’t any in Saudi Arabia. What I was required to do consisted of four basic
stages. I would have to wash my private parts thoroughly and then make
ablution again, wash my body with a basin of water starting on the right, and
finally pour a jug full of water over my head, making sure every crevice of my
body received a douche of water. I did what he told me to do and came out for
my first experience of being a practicing Muslim.
Yusuf called us over and told us he
would show us what we should do. Then he said he would lead us in the Prayer as
it was our first time.
The direction of prayer for the Formal
Prayer is facing Mecca, where the Kaaba is, and consists of standing with hands
folded on the chest, bowing (once within one unit of prayer), prostrating
(which is done twice) and sitting on one’s feet (done between pairs of prayer
units and between prostrations and at the end of the Prayer). The outline of
the Formal Prayer I learned and the recitals, invocations and supplications
needed in the Prayer are reproduced in a separate article on Purification and
Prayer.
The story of my adopting Islam as my
religion finished with this first formal prayer. However, many trials and
tribulations followed, but these are another story. If you
also feel you must embrace Islam, remember – Islam is the spiritual refuge, the
surety of Allah’s support. It is also the beginning of many tests, for Allah
makes life a constant test for believers. Your problems in this world will not
go away automatically, but they will melt away one by one with Allah’s help. So
submit, and be patient, and Allah will make you one who He rewards twice. My favourite
verses in the Quran are from The Stories (Al Qasas), in the 28th Chapter, verses 51-55.
“Indeed
now We have conveyed the Word to them, so they may remember. Those who to whom
we gave the Scripture before it, believe in it, and when it is recited to them
say, “We believe in it. Verily, it is the Truth from our Lord. Indeed, even
before it we were Muslims.” These will be given their reward twice over because
they are patient and repel evil with good; and they spend (in charity) out of what we provided them. And when they hear
vain foul language, they withdraw from it and say, “To us our deeds, and to you
your deeds; Peace be unto you! We seek not (the way or company of) the ignorant.”
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 1 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 2 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 3 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 4 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 5 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 6 of 7)
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Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter, Ex-Christian, UK (part 7 of 7)
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