Day 15 - A Crash Course in Depth

Like any religion, Islam has several levels, but unlike most religions, the levels are clearly defined, build upon one another, and are bascially:

Ritual --> Realization --> Relationship

The first level of Islam is the actions of being Muslim. It means incorporating the Five Pillars of Worship into life, which are the ritualistic elements:
1. Making a public statement of faith that there is no God but God alone, and Muhammad was his messenger.
2. Praying five times daily
3. Contibuting at least 2.5% of your income and assets to charity
4. Fasting from dawn to dusk each day for the 30 days of Ramadan
5. Making a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.


The second level, deeper and going beyond the ritual, is intellectually embracing the beliefs of Islam and changing your thought patterns. It is believing the foundational beliefs of Islam - and belief requires agreement with your mind. I think about people who believe things without knowing what it is they believe exactly.

Believe (verb)
to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.

Believing requires abandoning passivity and embracing and active engagement of your thoughts, to allign with that which you're believing in. It involves the intellect, and the action of aligning your thoughts with a set of tenets that are not inherent in human existence.

The third (and deepest) level is the heart. It is the emotional investment in belief. It is the hardest to do, but it is the most important level, if you truly want to know God. For Muslims, the third level is Sufism - the heart of Islam. It is the conceptual framework of the religion and builds the bridge between the intellect and actions to the intangible creation of a relationship between yourself and God.

Note: When I say "sufism," I am simply referring to the original meaning of the word, not the group of people who identify themselves as Sufis necessarily. A "sufi" in the purest sense of the word is simply a Muslim who seeks direct experience of Allah. There are Sufi orders, and a group of people who identify themselves as Sufi, but I was just referring to the raw meaning of the word.

Only when you reach the third level can you truly understand the deep compassion and love within Islam, and, while you can live your life disregarding this level, only when you reach it have you begun relationship with God.

Day 14 - An Islamic Approach to Miscarriage

When someone asks me how many children I have, I say three. Three beautiful, smart, funny children. But I really have four. The truth is, I had a pregnancy at 19, unplanned and unwanted. I was unmarried, and I was scared out of my mind. I didn't want to be pregnant, I didn't want the fallout that would occur when I told my friends and family. I told my best friend as a "test subject" and she said "Oh my god, I am so disappointed in you. How could you do this [horrible sin]?" I told my boyfriend (the baby's father) and he said, "You have ruined my life." (Like he had no part in it?!)

When I miscarried at 12 weeks, after weeks of throwing up everything I ate and exercising like a madwoman (at the time I was in the Air Force), I felt relief. Complete relief that I would not be having an unwanted baby, complete relief that I would not have to raise a child on my own or tell my parents or my pastor about my mistake. I also felt guilt. It was because of what I had done, running 5 miles a day, doing 3 floors of stairs five times after breakfast and five more after dinner. It was because I hadn't eaten right and because, most of all, I hadn't wanted this child. In short, I felt responsible for this.

The last thing I felt was sadness... because even if this wasn't the right time or place, it was part of me, and after knowing for 6 weeks that I was pregnant, I had begun to become attached to this being inside of me. The relief eventually faded, and the guilt and sadness grew into loss, and for years I mourned that child. When I later got married and didn't get pregnant, I felt that it was because of my sin, because in some way, God was punishing me for my feelings and my thoughts.

Motherhood is often intrinsically connected to our identity as a woman. I still think about that first baby I lost - how old she would be today, what she would look like, what her personality would have been like. I wonder if she would have been funny like me, if she would have been smart like her dad. Her name was Hope, and she has been for the past 12 years, a hole in my heart that I have filled with all the love I have as a mother.

As a mother, I don't know if there is a more painful experience than losing a child. You feel inadequate, you feel responsible, you feel guilty. I think across the board, all mothers feel this way to some extent. You feel like there had to be something different you could have done, something more to prevent this. Even when you read the science that miscarriage is nature's way of dealing with genetic abnormalities, that life couldn't have survived outside the womb, you still feel the loss of the soul that drifted beyond your grasp into the unknown.

In Islam, miscarriage is specifically addressed. The prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said "The miscarried fetus that I send before me is dearer to me than a rider whom I leave behind." He ackowledged the pain of miscarriage, and he acknowledged the real loss that a mother feels. He also says later "By him in whose Hand is my life, the miscarried fetus will drag his mother towards the paradise, with his navel string if she had shown the patience for the sake of reward from Allah."

Not only does Muhammad (pbuh) acknowledge the pain and loss of a miscarriage, he addresses the future. The child will be waiting in paradise  - his tie always intact with her, and his inate goodness pulling her toward her Creator.The beauty of this description of the child waiting and holding the bond with his/her mother beyond the grave offers comfort to the grieving mother, and is one of the beautiful facets of Islam that I have come to admire.

Day 11 - Differences that Divide

I have come to the conclusion that organized religion as a whole has made a huge mistake. The mistake was not in encouraging people to reach God, or in giving them a path to walk. The mistake was in making their own path the exclusive road to God. Instead of unifying humanity in an effort to love God, organized religion (in an effort to control the path to God and thus control the travellers on that path) has pitted humanity against each other in an eternal battle of who is "right" and who is going to hell. And EVERYONE thinks they are RIGHT.

It is not just religions who battle it out between one another - the Christians verses the Hindus verses the Jews - within religions, sects or denominations also seek the exclusive rights to being the only ones who have God's ear.

That being said, Islam is no different with the sects, and I hope I can explain the denominations here in an understandable way.

The vast majority (84 to 90 percent) of all Muslims are Sunni. This is about the same as the percent of religious people in the US who are Christians, to put it in perspective! :-)
Sunni means "tradition" and they emphasize following the traditions and teaching of Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the early Muslims who formed the Muslim "church" similar to the early Christian church, who formed the basic principles and practices of Christianity.

Shi'ite muslims make up about 10-16%. They believe that Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law was his successor and that the Muslim community at large should be headed by designated descendents of Muhammad.

Sufis are to Islam what Kaballah is to Judaism or what Charimatic Christianity is to mainstream Christians. They are a little "out there." Generally, most Muslims still view Sufis to be Muslim, but some uber traditional ones don't. Sufis have alot of admiration in my book, however, because they emphasize, more than any other branch, the importance of a personal relationship with God, a personal EXPERIENCE of God, and personal as well as spiritual growth. A number of Sufi orders (much like monastic orders) exist. Historically, Sufism has played an enormous role in Islam - both in literature and in producing scholars and poets. Sufis were more responsible for the spread of the Islamic religion outside of the Arabic world than any other group, and converted people in primarily sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) and central Asia.

Its interesting to note that although the sects call themselves by different names (and there are a few lesser-known and lesser-associated with Islam sects), they all are unified by the spirit of Islam - to know God, to love God, to submit to God.
Sunnis and Shi'ites alike pray five times a day. The both hold to the Essential Beliefs and the Pillars of Worship... the division is the path to God...and one wonders, if you're headed to the same destination, does it matter so much how you get there?

Day 10 - Sweet Blasphemy - Loving God Part II

I have a foundational belief, that being: God is love.

The God who is love is the reason I began this project. I read a book called The Fourty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak and it altered my perspective on loving God. I grew up believing that there was only one way to love God and that my perspective on God (the Christian perspective) was the ONLY [right] perspective. I believed that other religions were worshipping someone other than "my" God, the REAL God.

A parable was told by the Shams of Tabriz, a Muslim scholar who taught and learned from Rumi, a well-known Muslim scholar, teacher, and poet. The parable Shams told was of loving God "correctly" and it was part of the beginning of my eyes being opened to the idea that perhaps there is more than one correct way to love God.

I don't know if I'm violating some copyright rules, but here is the story told by Shams:

One day Moses was walking in the mountains on his own when he saw a shepherd in the distance. The man was on his knees with his hands spread out to the sky, praying. Moses was delighted. But when he got closer, he was stunned to hear the man's prayer:

"Oh my beloved God, I love Thee more than Thou can know. I will do anything for Thee, just say the word. Even if Thou asked me to slaughter my fattest sheep in Thy name, I would do so without hesitation. Thou would roast it and put its tail fat in Thy rice to make it more tasty."

Moses inched toward the shepherd, listening attentively.

"Afterward, I would wash Thy feet and clean Thine ears and pick Thy lice for Thee. That is how much I love Thee."

Moses had heard enough. He interrupted the shepherd yelling "Stop, you ignorant man! What do you think you are doing? Do you think God eats rice? Do you think God has feet for you to wash? This is not prayer! It is sheer blasphemy."

Dazed and ashamed, the shepherd apologized repeatedly and promised to pray as decent people did. Moses taught him several prayers that afternoon. Then he went on his way, utterly pleased with himself.

But that night, Moses heard a voice. It was God's.

"Oh, Moses, what have you done? You scolded that poor shepherd and failed to realize how dear he was to me. He might not be saying the right things in the right way, but he was sincere. His heart was pure and his intentions good. I was pleased with him. His words might have been blasphemy to your ears, but to Me, they were sweet blasphemy.:

Moses immediately understood his mistake. The next day, early in the morning he went back to the mountains to see the shepherd. He was praying again, but this time he was praying in the way he had been instructed. In his determination to get the prayer right, he was stammering, bereft of the excitement and passion of his earlier prayer. Regretting what he had done to him, Moses patted the shepherd's back and said: "My friend, I was wrong. Please forgive me. Keep praying in your own way. That is more precious in God's eyes." (Elif Shafak, The Fourty Rules of Love, pg 51)

I was judging the way that other people connected to God and the path that they took to reach him. In reality, I was prescribing a path to God based entirely upon my cultural context of God. If other's connection to God is real, and if their prayers are sincere, regardless of my personal or cultural belief system I believe that a God of love cannot possibly ignore that. A God who is love cannot turn his back on himself and reject the love given to him.

The book I read began to change my perspective and made me wonder what the other perspectives looked like... hence my journey.

Day 10 - Loving God

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

- Rumi

The strongest motivator in any relationship is love. No less in Islam: the most important thing is that a Muslim love God, and from that love results submission, obedience, and peace. But the LOVE OF GOD is the keystone of Islam. "Love is what integrates the human soul, and the ultimate object of love is God." (Ahmad al-Ghazali)

If a life lived without love is not living at all, and if love is what creates life, what continues life, what extends life, and what enhances life, then the object of our love determines the dimensions of our world, in a manner of speaking. Loving other humans increases our dimensions of experience in life. Loving ideas or ideals increases our dimensions in an intellectual way. Loving GOD, who is described as everything - All knowing, All powerful, All controlling, Eternal, All seeing, All hearing - Loving God would then increase our dimensions of living to vast, perhaps infinite, proportions.

Love is an important concept in all religions, not just Islam. It is notably important to love God in Christianity certainly, but actually acting on the love is a different matter altogether. If loving God is important, what exactly does that mean to the Muslim who, by definition, is following a religion of peace, submission and obediance? How does love play into the whole scheme of things?

Putting aside the abstract idea of how one goes about emotionally loving God and producing the feeling of love, one must physically show love to the one being loved. Physical demonstrations of love are clearly set forth in the Five Pillars of Worship, in which all Muslims take part:

1. Shahada: A person becomes a Muslim by making the basic statement of testimony: "I testify that there is no God but God, and Muhammad was [one of] his messenger[s]"
2. Salat: Salat is a formal, ritualized prayer performed at five specified times each day, consisting of a sequence of recitations and bodily positions, including prostration with one's forehead touching the ground. (Interestingly, 47% of Muslims in America perform Salat five times daily. 66% perform Salat at least once daily. I wonder how many Christians would be able to say that they pray five times daily at specific times, were it required? Or Jews?)
3. Zakat: Charity and giving is important in the Muslim religion, and Zakat is due yearly and can be given to any charity, but primarily one that promotes Islam is encouraged. Zakat is 2.5% of income and assets.
4. Saum: Fasting during the month of Ramadan from sunrise to sunset is an important way that Muslims act out their love for God and recieve spiritual renewal.
5. Hajj: At least once in his or her life, Muslims are expected to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and perform a series of tasks related to remembering Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and remembering the life of Muhammad.

Performing the rituals and rites don't create love, however much they come out of love. Its important to remember that loving God begats the desire to please him by service and obediance and submission. Love came first, and everything else grew from that love.

Ritual becoming real involves the infusion of love. And the relationship that God desires requires a catalyst of love.

Last Sunday afternoon, sitting with three beautiful Muslim sisters, Lubi spoke of getting past the ritual of Islam and making a personal choice to love God:

"[In many cases], you are born into [Islam] and you don't really think about it as much because you're just told you have to do it like this or like that, and this is how you think and this is what you should believe, and you just learn to believe that.

Some people question themselves, question their parents, question the religion, some people are told it's forbidden to question - that you shouldn't you should just accept it, so I started questioning - not the [existence] of Allah, but some of the practices that we do: Why do we do it like this? Why are we Sunni and they are Shi'ite?

I went for my Hajj with my parents when I realized the importance of it all. Seeing the Ka'ba (altar) in front of me and reading the Qur'an and the biography of the prophet changed me. When I went back [home], I studied the Qur'an. I love the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the Christians, and I love Jesus. But in my heart of hearts, I know that every word in [the Qur'an] is from God. He is speaking to me."

Lubi's task was not to seek for love because it was there in front of her. God was there in front of her, and a relationship with Him possible at any time. Her task was to remove the barriers that she built in herself against it.
Her task was to MAKE IT PERSONAL.

I believe that...

Love must be personal to be real.

Loving with abandon is ecstasy. 

We were made to hope and to love, it is our nature as humans.

Seeking God, pursuing love, learning trust - these are natural yearnings of the human heart.

Wait, until you take a look inside yourself -
Recognize, what is growing there.
Oh seeker,
A leaf in this garden,
Means more than all leaves
You will find in paradise!

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come

-Rumi

Day 9 - Submission...is [not] a dirty word

Most names of religions are derived from the name of the founder of that religion, or something related: Christianity is obviously derived from Christ. Judaism from the tribe of Judah and the region of Judea. Buddhism from the teacher, Buddha. Hinduism from the region in which it was founded, Hind. Confucianism was named after Confucius, Zoroastrianism after Zoroaster, and the list goes on.

Islam is one of the only world religions not named for someone or somewhere. The word Islam, in fact, is an Arabic word that means simply “submission” [to God]. It comes from the root Salema, which means “peace, submission and obedience."

The main foundational action in Islam is submission to God: being in a state of purposeful surrender to God’s laws and directives. And one of the things Islam emphasizes is the choice; embracing Islam means to embrace submission. It means to make a choice to submit to God.

Take the prayer, for instance, which is performed five times daily. They not only say the words of prayer, but they prostrate themselves in a physical posture of submission before their God.

Submission has not always been a pleasant word for me. I was told growing up that submission was required of me, that lack of submission constituted rebellion, and that God would turn his back on me if I was in rebellion. In my marriage, my then husband told me that I wasn't being submissive when I simply disagreed with him or questioned him. My “lack of submission” would cause God to withdraw his blessing from our family and our children and was sufficient reason for him to send me away back to my parents’ house. Submission did not feel like a choice to me, it felt like an obligation.

One of my favorite quotes is by Anais Nin and addresses the question of submission within marriage: "I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work the touchstone, the command, my pivot... I am going to be pursued, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."

Yesterday, as I was reading this quote again, I thought about submission within Islam and in my own life. Submission itself was not what I despised. I don’t mind following: allowing domination and leadership in my relationship with Mark. In fact, I love choosing submission. What I don’t like is being forced to choose it.

I choose submission to Mark because I love him, I respect him, I trust him, and he has EARNED that love, respect and trust. I don't submit to him because he tells me I must or because religion tells me I must. That is the difference: it is a chosen submission.

Perhaps in the same way as marriage, our submission to God should be a chosen submission. We are submitting to him, we are serving him and worshiping him out of respect, honor, reverence, trust and love. I do things for Mark because he has earned my love and my trust, my respect and my honor. I submit to him, not out of compulsion or fear, but out of devotion and love: because I CHOOSE to.

How appropriate that the word Islam reminds Muslims of their purpose, and the reason they chose this path to begin with. My friend Adrianne said of submission: “Submission is laying your desire down for the desires of another. Doing it willingly makes submission a place of strength not weakness.” Willingness to submit to God and purposefully surrendering to Him, is not just required of Muslims, it defines them. And the fact that it is done willingly is testament to the strength of their conviction.

We submit to gravity because we don't have a choice. But I believe when religion becomes obligatory, we lose the relationship; and without the relationship, we lose the humanity.

God never wanted us to lose our choice, because our choice is what makes us human and makes the relationship authentic. It is the choice that makes it real. It is the choice that makes it love.

Day 8 - Religious Belief Picklist (or) Build Your Own Religion

It is interesting to me how politically charged the religious choice is.

For instance, Catholics are very much against abortion, and also against family planning and contraception.
This is somewhat related to religious beliefs, I guess. If you believe that life begins at conception,  it is obviously against the law of "do not murder" (do not take a life) to have an abortion. I'm not sure where the Bible discusses condoms, but perhaps I've just missed it.

Muslims are against eating pork. They are joined in this belief by Jews, Hinduists, vegetarians, and members of PETA. This is based on Old Testament directives from God that pork is unclean and to avoid eating it.

While I may or may not believe that saying a prayer over food before its killed, before its cooked, before its sold, or any variation therein, changes the food composition or changes the spiritual attachment of "good" or "evil" to that food, I do see the advantages of abstaining from some of the following list...

Unclean (and thereby inedible) animals in the Old Testament for Jewish people are in The Bible, Leviticus, Chapter 11:

Camels, Coneys, Rabbits (who knew?!), Pig (poor pig, gets a bad rap in every religion), Anything that lives in the water that does not have fins and scales (ie, turtles), Eagles, Vultures, Kites, Ravens, Owls, Hawks, Osprey, Heron, Bat, All insects EXCEPT grasshoppers, locusts, katydids, and crickets; Anything that has paws, Lizards, Weasels, Rats, Geckos, Monitors, Wall Lizard, Skink, Chameleon...

The Muslim list is similar and found in the Qur'an Sura 5, and references throughout. One key difference is that Islam does not allow for consumption of alcohol, saying it is "abominations of Satan's handiwork." It does make reference to alcohol a couple times prior to this that could be construed in favor of drinking: saying don't pray while you're drunk (implication: its ok to be drunk as long as you're not praying), then that alcohol has good and evil but more evil than good (but still, there are some GOOD parts, right?). However, the final ruling appears to be the abomination ruling, and that alcohol is meant to distract you from praying. Makes sense, better safe than sorry, I guess.

While the fact that they don't eat pepperoni on their pizza doesn't earn them an "Un-American Card", similarly benign things seem to polarize the American public about their religion. Take the hijab for instance: It is their choice, just as it is my choice whether I want to wear pink hair or shave my head bald, or wear a baseball cap. Why is wearing a head scarf a more polarizing choice than hamburger as a pizza topping rather than sausage? It doesn't affect the non-hijab wearer any more than your personal pizza topping choice. Yeah, I might be judged if I pulled a Brittney Spears and shaved my hair, but I wouldn't be labeled "Un-American" (unless I also sported a swastika tattoo or something).

How about prayer five times a day? Is the call to prayer, said in a language other than English, the chosen language for America, the part that is Un-American? Or is it the fact that they are praying five times a day? Or perhaps the fact that they call God - the same God as the Christians have, by the way - by the name of "Allah" rather than "God"  (not that it is a different name, only a different language)?

And back to the abortion issue, you don't see Muslims blowing up abortion clinics to save the unborn children, murdering abortion doctors, or making their children hold graphic signs of aborted fetuses on the side of the road to invade the visual freedom of the American public driving by... instead they just encourage their members to make the choice that would please God and they leave the domestic terrorism to the Christians in that department.

It is, in my mind, illogical to associate the Muslim practices with not being American. Religion and Patriotism are not mutually exclusive, or choices dependent upon one another. The first Americans, those that formed this country, while they held strongly to a set of religious beliefs, they were not what we would label "mainstream Christians" today... they were so FAR outside the norm of mainstream Christianity due to their practices and beliefs that they had to move around the globe in order to be accepted! I can pretty much guarantee that  we would look at those first Americans with the same raised eyebrows that we observe the groups who dance with venomous snakes in their services.

By the same token, when did it become acceptable to build your religion like you build a salad at Sweet Tomatoes? "I'm taking the lettuce, but no tomatoes, please."

What? No tomatoes? But Tomatoes are the crux of the salad! In fact, you cannot have a salad without tomatoes! A salad without tomatoes is NOT a salad. It is just a pretend salad. There are no salads without tomatoes because if you have no tomatoes it negates everything else that you have on there. You may have lettuce, cheese, croutons, salad dressing, and bacon bits (none for our Muslim friends), it may be exactly like my salad except you didn't take tomatoes, but in my mind, you do not have a salad. You just have a jumble of veggies on a plate covered with salad dressing.

How silly, in my mind, that we make these distinctions, and yet, as Christians we abandon our own laws and beliefs in favor of more 'culturally relevant' behavior. The New Testament clearly says that women should cover their heads and dress modestly, yet I go to church and I'm not seeing head coverings OR modesty a lot of times. When did our religious context become a salad bar where we ranked the ingredients and said "although some of these are optional (bacon bits, croutons), your salad is not real unless you have tomatoes."

One of the things I admire about Muslims is their adherence to the laws of their religion. They believe God is pleased by x.They desire to please God, therefore they will do x. It makes sense.
But if A = B and B = C, how is it that the conclusion drawn by the modern American Christian church (and probably American religion in general) is:

If A=B and B=C, then
A = Tomato

B and C are irrelevant

I think Paulo Coelho had it right when he said "We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."