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 As
a little girl I would frequently stare into the mirror, into the
depths of my eyes, and ask myself these questions. It was
amazing to me that I should exist at all, considering how many
events had to happen, in the right order, for me to be standing
there looking into the mirror, the daughter of these parents, in
this country, at this time in history. What would it be like
to not exist? I wondered, and would shudder at the answers that
came to me.
I
had been baptized Catholic as a baby, but as a child I had no
religion of any kind. I distinctly remember reading
something about God when I could have been no more than seven or
eight, and thinking that this whole idea of God was ridiculous and
only for the weak. Why should anybody need such a concept? I
thought.
When
I was eleven, my parents finally began to take me to church, in an
effort to “get some spirituality into my life,” as they put
it. I took to it immediately. I was confirmed. I
chose for my patron saint Teresa of Avila, who was a great 16th
century nun. She lived in Avila, Spain from 1515 to
1582. She single-handedly reformed the Carmelite order of
nuns, which had become degenerate. Kings, bishops, and even
popes wrote to her for her advice. She also was a great
mystic, and a writer and poet. These words of hers I found
inspiring:
Let
nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid. All things pass
away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. God alone is
enough.
I
loved reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament
prophets. I would pick out my favorite passages and read
them again and again. I do not know what caused my change
from disbelief to belief; I can only say that I was looking for
something to believe in.
But
the years went by, and I reverted to my state of unbelief. I
was frequently depressed. I did not believe in
anything. There was no God, I was sure of that. All
this religion was a fraud and a hoax perpetrated on foolish
people. What was the point?
Inside,
though, I was never really satisfied with this belief, and I
continued searching.
Then
I became interested in Judaism. I had always loved the Old
Testament in the Bible, and the more I learned about the history
of the Jews, the closer I felt to them. I had some Jewish
blood in me, not too much, but I felt a part of them. I
began to read books and take classes about Judaism at the
university, and I decided that I wanted to convert.
I
was most attracted to the centuries-long history of Jews in nearly
every part of the world, and the famed Jewish quest for learning,
derived from study of the Torah and Talmud, and soon applied to
all subjects. I loved reading about the Maccabees, who saved
the Jews from their Syrian oppressors in 164 BC, and about people
like the Rambam, Moses ben Maimon, (Maimonides), a twelfth-century
Egyptian physician and the greatest Torah scholar of all time, and
his Guide for the Perplexed. He saw both Christianity and
Islam as “Judaism for Gentiles.” In his eyes, although
Judaism was the true faith, the other two helped the Gentiles, the
non-Jews, to worship the one God, and were for that reason part of
God’s plan.
For
thousands of years the cry in Hebrew of “Shema Yisrael, Adonai
Elohainu Adonai Echad” (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is One!) had been recited by all believing Jews, from the day
of their birth to the moment of their deaths. They had been
oppressed and had survived it all. I liked that very
much—being part of a story, a story that had lasted for
thousands of years and would, God willing, last many thousands
more.
But
there are many problems with the current status of Judaism.
It is fractured into three branches in America: the Orthodox, the
Conservative and the Reform. More importantly, the vast
majority of Jews are totally secular. It has gotten to the
point where it frequently seems as though the only difference
between Jew and Gentile is that the one does not go to church, and
the other does not go to synagogue. Many Jews celebrate
Christmas, to take one example, and every few years some leader in
the American Jewish community wrings their hands at the prospect
of the total assimilation and disappearance of the Jews into
American culture. Huge numbers of Jews want nothing to do
with Judaism. Some traditions remain, such as the concept of
tikkun olam, or healing the world. Jews give generously to
charities, both Jewish and generally. But most of the
uniqueness is gone.
I
was not sure that I could make myself believe. One concept
in Judaism is that you should act as if you believe, regardless of
the beliefs you may hold in your heart, but I couldn’t make
myself do that.
I
fell back into my old atheist beliefs. No matter what, I
simply could not make myself believe. I just knew that there
would be nothing at the end, after death. Mass murderer or
saint, they all ended up extinguished, as if they had never
been. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” says the book
of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and that was how I felt.
But,
as before, I was very unhappy with this. How could it be
that people like the Nazis, some of whom had escaped and lived out
their lives in peace, and the millions of victims they tortured
and put to death, could end up with the same reward? Or
rather, lack of reward. No, I simply could not accept that.
How
could the people who had murdered thousands or millions of people
merely for not having the “right” beliefs have the same reward
as those they burned or tortured to death?
How
could cruel dictators who massacred thousands or millions of their
own people have no punishment, and the innocent people they
murdered no reward?
And
most importantly, why should it be that I live in rich comfort
and, while millions of people, much better than myself, suffered
in poverty and oppression? I felt awful when I heard
frequent reports on the television of people dying in the desert
trying to make it to America from Mexico, while all I could do was
whine about its imperfections like a spoiled brat. People
never appreciate what they have, I reflected sadly.
No,
the world was unjust. The Hindu idea of karma, that you
receive goodness in accordance with the goodness of your deeds,
was obviously false. It could not possibly be true.
What
will I do? I thought. This way of thinking could not
continue, or else I would go crazy.
At
the same time as I was taking these classes on Judaism at school,
I also took one on Islam and the Middle East. I had been
fascinated by the subject since I was a little girl. There
was something that drew me to it, something in its austerity, its
hallowing of the Book, its community.
I
remembered being jealous when I first heard that Muslims had to
make a pilgrimage as part of their religion. I love to
travel, and the idea that one had to make such a trip was
appealing to me.
I
read a book about the fall of Al-Andalus (Andalucia) and Granada
to the Spanish in 1492, and I wept at the destruction of a
culture, the driving of the Moors to North Africa and across the
Mediterranean. When Boabdil, the last ruler of Granada, had
made his way to the top of the mountains on his way into exile, he
turned around for a last glimpse of Granada and the Al Hamra, and
this was what was called “the Moor’s last sigh.”
“You weep like a woman for the kingdom you would not defend like
a man,” scolded his mother. I was deeply moved.
And
so it had come full circle. From a Spanish saint to the
Spanish Muslim kingdoms.
I
wish I could say that I had met with other Muslims and they had
impressed me so much that I decided to convert right away.
It was not so. I knew no Muslims. The only ones I saw
were young women at the university, obviously foreign students,
walking along in their baggy clothes and hijabs. I wondered
how they could stand it in the heat. Those and the ones I
saw on TV, the ones calling for the destruction of the West, or
alternately, blowing each other to bits. Exotic, but they
had nothing in common with me, or so I thought.
Instead
I read. “Read!” says the Qur’an, and I obeyed. I
thought that if I wanted to consider myself educated, I had better
read the book that so many people held so dearly. I was
deeply touched by what I read. I was and still am amazed
that so many people memorize the entire text of this book.
Such a concept was so completely foreign to me. I could
hardly memorize the Christian prayers in English; what was it like
to memorize an entire book in Arabic!
In
some ways, Islam seemed closer to Judaism than Christianity.
Both emphasized the oneness of God, both had codes of
law—halakha for the Jews, shari’ah for the Muslims. Both
had the concept of impurity and ritual cleanliness. Both
emphasized being part of a community of believers. Both had
a sacred language of the Semitic family, Hebrew and Arabic.
It
was the culture that attracted me the most, at least at
first. I admired the culture that the Muslims had
created. I was impressed by the Dome of the Rock, the
Damascus mosque, the Masjid-i-Shah in Isfahan and the Taj Mahal.
I
thought I might like to convert, but I wasn’t sure. It
seemed so exotic and so strange. It was definitely not
Western. The only aspects of Islam, or Islamic culture, that
seemed to be popular in America were either: a) Sufi mysticism, b)
Persian poets such as Rumi, Khayyam or Nizami (Layla and Majnun),
or c) fanatical Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.
Certainly there was little interest in orthodox Islam, or in the
Qur’an. There were far more books about Hinduism or Zen
Buddhism than about Islam!
I
was an English major at the university, and I decided to read some
of the novels of Salman Rushdie for a project. Yes, I read
the infamous Satanic Verses, as well as Midnight’s Children and
The Moor’s Last Sigh. I came away fascinated by Islam in
India as portrayed in these books. It was very appealing to
me, even if the way Islam was portrayed was sometimes not very
positive, to say the least!
Finally,
I reread the Qur’an and remembered what attracted me to it so
much the first time. I wanted to convert.
I
wish I could tell you that I knew right away that Islam had all
the answers, but I think you know me too well from this story to
completely believe that. It was a gradual process, with
doubts all along the way. How could it be that Allah had
dictated a book? The idea seemed preposterous. What
about those ridiculous rules, like the one about a woman not being
permitted to touch the Qur’an during her period? What
about the fact that one had to pray in Arabic—a language I
despaired of ever understanding? Did I really want to buy
into all of that?
If
there is a God, I told myself, then anything is possible. It
may be that what they claim really did happen. I had
believed in the Trinity, that God was three persons in one, and
that he had taken form as a human being. I had believed that
God had taken the Jews to himself as his chosen people and given
them as their inheritance the Land of Israel for all time. I
had been willing to subscribe to all 613 laws laid down in the
Torah, including regulations much stranger than the ones I had
read about in Islam. For example, one must do no work on the
Sabbath, and for many Jews that includes driving—one must thus
live within walking distance of the shul (synagogue). In
Israel, there are even elevators that stop on every floor on the
Sabbath, so one does not have to push a button for one’s floor
and hence do “work.” So why would it be so hard to
believe that God should have sent down a book to a seventh-century
Arab?
And
there was more. I wanted to make the Hajj. I wanted to
visit the Dome of the Rock and join in with the prayers that had
been going on there for over 1300 years. I saw the people
praying at the Masjid Al-Haram and wanted to be a part of
them. I wanted to be able to read the Qur’an in
Arabic. I was most touched by the Qur’anic recitations I
discovered, and I would spend long hours listening to them, even
if I couldn’t understand anything of what I heard and had to
follow along with the text.
So
I plucked up the courage and visited the local Islamic Center a
little while ago. I had no idea what to expect, but they
were very kind to me. I took Shahadah (“I bear witness
that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger
of Allah”) and began to do salat, somewhat embarrassed at how
badly I mangled the Arabic words. I took the name of
Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet (peace be upon them both), whom I
had admired greatly ever since I had first heard of her.
Insh’allah,
I will continue to grow in faith and will do all the things I
wanted to do. I pray that my knowledge of Islam will
increase.
If
I have offended by any part of my tale, I ask the forgiveness of
Allah and can only say that as my knowledge increases, I will
better know what is good and what is not good to say.
*Lisa
Ann Bauer is a student of English and Comparative Literature at
the University of Arizona, Tucson.
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