Pluralism is not the problem

An article in the Church Times some time ago had David Banting saying, in relation to the General Synod discussion on Christian witness in a plural society, that Muslims expect Christians to have convictions as clear as their own. While diversity of opinion is of course to be welcomed, the meandering, self-conscious spirit amongst many does not promote confidence in the process of dialogue. Representatives of the two faiths need to define clearly what it is that they believe, not wavering because they fear causing offence. Honesty must crown any efforts at dialogue and this means addressing issues even if they cause discomfort.

While Muslims believe in God as the Creator of all things and therefore as the God worshipped by Jews and Christians, I understand the argument that there is no continuity, for by believing in the divinity of Jesus you cannot then accept those who say that he is absent from the so called Godhead. Since Islam rejects the idea that anything in creation can also be the Creator, the demarcation is clear. Islam also denies the concept of fallen man, original sin and the irreparable – except through Christ – depravity of human beings.

There need be no conflict, however, between the idea a faith’s uniqueness and pluralism. We do not need to be totalitarian about our faith (whatever that may be) because we believe in its uniqueness; it is perfectly possible to live peaceably with people of other faith traditions whilst maintaining our own convictions. Muslim tradition teaches that Islam is the religion of the Prophets, going back to Adam. In that sense it is inclusive, yet at the same time it stresses that there is one path to God: that affirmed by all the Prophets, that none should be worshipped except the one true God, the Creator of all things. Islamic history attests to the fact that pluralism can coexist with a one way faith, however much today’s Muslim puritans may wish to prove otherwise.

The vast landmass touched by Islam, for example, is characterised by provincial culture. The famous mosque of Timbuktu reflects the beauty of its own particular culture, like the mosques of Istanbul or India. Abdal-Hakim Murad writes that ‘classical Islam has always been able and willing to see at least fragments of an authentic divine message in the faiths and cultures of non-Muslim peoples. If God has assured us that every nation has received divine guidance, then we can look with some favour on the Other’ (Lecture British and Muslim? 17 September, 1997). He goes on:

Those who believe that Muslim communities can only flourish if they ghettoise themselves and refuse to interact with majority communities would do well to look at Chinese history. Many of the leading mandarins of Ming China were in fact Muslims. … In China, mosques look very like traditional Chinese garden-temples, except that there is a prayer hall without idols, and the calligraphy is Koranic. (ibid.)

William Cantwell Smith’s accusation that to believe that Christianity alone is true is a form of idolatry suggests that Christians worship Christianity. Surely for the majority of followers the religion is merely the transport towards an end; they do not worship it, but use it to worship. It is true that a religion itself can become an object of worship, but that is not what believers are doing by insisting on its truth. It is a mistake for Christians to renounce their faith – to deny previously established beliefs – simply because they are now encountering people of other faiths. Indeed, people of other faiths expect Christians to hold their ground; the real source of discomfort is not religious pluralism but effective secularism. It is the latter which demands that there is no absolute truth (except this one), not adherents to other religions. In truth we are really talking about secularist theology, with the notion of pluralism a mere fig leaf.

Fundamentalism (again)

Where to begin? For me a return to the fundamentals of a religion and, therefore, to its earliest history should be the starting point of any dialogue between faiths. This definition of fundamentalism implies a study of history, which is something positive. To become ahistorical implies a denial of the most important aspects of one’s belief, i.e. its origins and primal teachings.

One Christmas an Anglican Bishop stated during a radio programme that the historical figure of Jesus was not really important; what mattered was what Jesus meant to Christians today. This view is in fact illogical for if, as Muslims contend, Jesus was actually a Prophet calling his people to the worship of one God, to then worship him as God would be to go against his teaching. Similarly, if as Christians hold he may be taken as an object of worship, then to deny his alleged divinity would also be of consequence. In other words, the historical person of Jesus is of great importance.

At one extreme, the peripheral writings of John Hick in The Metaphor of God Incarnate seem to me to make a mockery of the notion that there is a religious Truth. If faith becomes merely what we make it, how does that help us? If Jesus himself did not teach that he was God incarnate dying for the sins of the world, as Hick argues, isn’t the idea that divine incarnation should be understood merely as a metaphor simply another way of saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what he taught; I wish to believe this.’ While many theologians reject Hick’s thesis, their writings often follow a similar pattern.

It could be argued that the reason fundamentalism is often frowned upon in some Christian circles is exactly because constructing a picture of the historical reality is so difficult as a result of the paucity of source material. This material is limited almost wholly to the four gospels contained within the New Testament. Two references in the writings of Josephus to the life of Jesus are now considered later Christian interpolations, but the apocryphal writings of the Church, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hamadi Library are now considered an additional source. On 11 September 2001, The Guardian reported:

Vatican scholars are preparing to rewrite the Bible by incorporating revelations contained in ancient scrolls discovered beside the Dead Sea in Palestine, it emerged yesterday. … Martyn Percy, a canon doctor at Sheffield University, welcomed the initiative but suggested the results may be less than dramatic. “There has never been a settled, definitive version of the Bible; it has been an evolving book which has gone through many translations. Only fundamentalists think it came in a fax from heaven.” (R. Carroll, Vatican scholars prepare to rewrite Bible)

Despite this, the main focus of study makes it is easier to appreciate the position taken by modern theologians on the figure of Jesus. John Stott’s view that each gospel was written to present a different face of Christ highlights the problem we have. If these primary sources themselves were written with the intention of converting non-Christians and strengthening the faith of believers, the biographer of Jesus’ life is faced with an absence of material which the original authors thought unimportant in their attempt to convey a particular story. The result being that if we were to collect all the words actually spoken by Jesus in the four Gospels, removing those passages duplicated across the different books, we would find that they fit on no more than two sides of a sheet of A4 paper.

The scarcity of information means that we are not sure of the most basic questions about Jesus’ life. The gospels do not tell us what language he spoke with the result that Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac and a Galilaean dialect of Chaldic have all been suggested by scholars as possibilities. The gospels fail to teach us any of the doctrines later adopted by the Church, such as the early Eastern Creeds Epistola Apostolorum, The Old Creed of Alexandria, The Shorter Creed of the Egyptian Church Order, The Marcosian Creed, The Early Creed of Africa, The Profession of the ‘Presbyters’ at Smyrna (F.J. Badcock, The History of the Creeds, p.24) and, of course, the later Nicene Creed which was forty-one lines longer than the earliest version. Nor do the gospels help us to understand that Palestine at the time was under Roman occupation.

More importantly, the gospels do not tell us anything about the authors of the books; we are merely provided with first names and are then left to guess their relationship to Jesus, whether they were eye-witnesses to the events of his life, whether they were known for their honesty and what their role in the early Church was. The seasoned argument that the four gospels prove to be reliable witnesses by virtue of the fact that they agree on the main points but differ on a few of the details, pointing to the fact that the authors did not collude in their accounts is unsurprisingly not supported by many biblical scholars. Evidence of copying from Mark is brought out by some, whilst others argue for the existence of an earlier primal document which they label Q.

Burton Mack argues in The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins, that Jesus’ earliest followers had collected his teachings, ideas, manners and calls for social reform in a book which predated the development of the gospels. In his view this text developed in layers. First there were the sayings of Jesus failing to convey the notion that he had brought a new religion (p.73-80). Later, a more sectarian attitude becomes apparent (p.131). Finally, with the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, Jesus is described as the Son of God (p.173-4). At the close of the first century, he argues, the authors of the synoptic gospels used Q in the process of writing their accounts of the life of Jesus.

When it comes to a comparison with the recording of the Qur’an and the collected sayings of Prophet Muhammad there is a noticeable difference. The Qur’an itself is considered a Book sent down with the Prophet, rather than a description of his life as in the case of the gospels, and is thus not compared with the New Testament. In terms of substance, the collected sayings of the Prophet could more easily be equated with the gospels, although the method by which they were collected does not compare. If we consider that the earliest gospels are thought to have been written during the latter part of the first century, it is notable that the Muslim community during the lifetime of Muhammad himself was concerned with documenting and committing to memory every verse of the Qur’an. In their midst, the Prophet dictated, explained and arranged every verse of the Qur’an and, following his death, his community took it upon itself to continue to preserve it from corruption.

The reason that the Muslim community felt it so important to preserve it was that the Qur’an itself stated that the previous scriptures had been corrupted from within. Fearing that people would treat this revelation in the same manner they devised means by which to protect it. So successful were they that today you will hear other Muslims who have learnt the Qur’an correcting the leader of the prayer – in which it is always recited – if he happens to make a mistake during his recital. The millions of Muslims who have memorised the whole of the Qur’an are its guardians. Meanwhile, in order to preserve both the Qur’an and the stories of the Prophet’s life, his community established an intricate structure based on the law of witness.

During the lifetime of the Prophet, his companions would relate his words and actions to one another by saying, ‘The Prophet said/did such and such.’ When such a report was mentioned to a further person the source would be related along with what was said or done: ‘Aisha said the Prophet said such and such.’ As time passed by, the scholars of Islam insisted on carefully examining the source of all information which they received so that, by the end of the first century of the Muslim calendar, the practice had become a science in its own right. For a report to be accepted, scholars demanded that four conditions be met: that it was accurate, that all narrators in the chain of narration were trustworthy, that the chain of transmission was unbroken and that there was positive support for the statement from all other available evidence.

During the second half of the first century of the Muslim calendar, the sayings of the Prophet began to be categorised by subject in booklets. Again the Muslim scholars considered it necessary to establish a means of protecting the content of these books from possible adulteration. They therefore required any scholar involved in passing on sayings of the Prophet to be in direct contact with the person to whom they were being passed. So insistent were they on the role of witness, that they considered the use of a book without hearing it from the author equal to giving false evidence.

It would be impossible to imagine revisions such as those currently being undertaken by Vatican scholars in respect to the gospels or the ninth century addition of the story of adulteress woman in John’s gospel. A personal commentary added to a book had to be signed; otherwise it would be considered to invalidate the text. Painstaking restrictions were put in place even when it came to using books of the sayings of the Prophet, where reading certificates became mandatory. When transmitting such books, a detailed record of the attendance at the gathering was taken and added to the reading certificate, which then became an exclusive authorization for those listed in it to read, teach, copy or quote from that book. Other checks were also employed to ensure that sacred knowledge was preserved in a suitably respectful manner.

The point of all this is to show why I believe fundamentalism - or a return to the earliest period - need not be a troublesome issue. The insistence of scholars on preserving knowledge in the case of Islam, however, makes such a return much more realistic than it would be given the Christian’s situation. Surely if we claim to follow Jesus and Muhammad, we need to know what they themselves taught. By default this would mean going back to the source. If our inter-faith dialogue is genuinely concerned with faith, rather than contemporary politics, then a study of history, of belief, doctrine and theology is of crucial importance. We cannot throw around slogans about fundamentalism and tolerance and then expect that this will contribute to our mutual understanding.

While it may be true that Muslims need to develop an appreciation of why Christian theology has developed in the way it has, there always remains the urge to pursue the historical reality. It is because Islam speaks specifically about the role of Jesus that this situation arises. Historical reality may not be an issue for a Hindu whose sacred texts have nothing to say about Jesus, but for Muslims Jesus is explicitly referred to as a Prophet sent to the tribe of Israel to bring them back to the essence of the Law of Moses. The Qur’an categorically denies that he is the son of God and states that all an individual need do for the eradication of sin is pray to God for forgiveness. Because Islam makes this claim, Muslims naturally ask for evidence that Jesus taught the idea of divine sonship, and hence the emphasis on the earliest period.

Fundamentalism

Repeatedly recently, newspapers have labelled as extremists people whom many Muslims consider to be voices of moderation. So who are the moderates? Week after week, just before the radio phone-in host denounces the alleged actions of another extremist amongst us, we hear the tired refrain, ‘The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people…’

But who are the vast majority of Muslims and what do they believe? How are they defined and who defined them? In many senses I find my belief in Islam a continuation of my upbringing, not a rejection of it, and I have hardly suffered an identity crisis because of my beliefs. Yet with the use of undefined phrases such as ‘the vast majority’ and ‘moderate Muslims’, and the claims that are made on our behalf – if indeed we are the people intended – our place in society does seem to be in question. The history teacher may well have seen this before when he lamented, ‘Now I know how the Jews felt in the 1930s’.

Not even a century ago, Jews were forced by the frenzy of state and media to debate their place in society; would it be integration or isolation, tradition or reform? Were they moderates, or fanatics obsessed with a law which should have no place in a modern secular society? Today, for all the lessons that were supposed to be learned from history, little has changed. Like the good moderate Jews before us, we too must become secular. If not, then once more the talk will be of parasites on society, of an ungrateful community burdened by their religious law and plotting the nation’s downfall from ghettoes in its midst.

Too often discussion about Islam starts – and sometimes finishes – with the topic of fundamentalism, writing off any dimension of spirituality amongst the community’s faithful in the process. Generous authors often concede that fundamentalism is common to all faiths, but it must be acknowledged that what is meant in each case is actually very different. In the Christian context it is generally used to signify conservative Protestantism characterised by a literal interpretation of the Bible as God’s unadulterated word. In the case of Islam, by contrast, all Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the word of God, but the term fundamentalist is not generally used in this sense. Instead, fundamentalism when speaking of Muslims is more often aligned with ideas of extreme militancy, although this wholly depends upon who is using the label.

What is meant by a term needs to be specified from the outset. If Muslim fundamentalism is viewed in the same light as conservative Protestantism it becomes not a radical reaction against other forces, but merely a manifestation of accepted dogma. However this is clearly not what is meant; the idea of Muslim fundamentalism has entirely different connotations. We are not witnessing different expressions of the same concept, but rather different concepts given one name. Only once the term is wrested back from journalists and employed by members of a faith themselves does it take on a more authentic meaning which crosses community lines. Hugh Goddard has one of the definitions of fundamentalism as ‘the conviction that the authentic version of their faith is to be found in the earliest period therefore an emphasis on a return to “fundamentals”’ (Hugh Goddard, Fundamentalism, p. 148). This best describes the common ground for the term when used for both Christianity and Islam.

Do I want some wine?

‘What have you gained from being Muslim?’ asks another mocking voice. ‘Why make your life so difficult?’ It is true that living life as a Muslim has not always been easy. Indeed, on the first day that I acknowledged my belief in Islam I lost most of the people whom I had considered friends. My journey towards faith had been a private affair, but outside, my private affair had already become public knowledge. So many nominal friendships were now dead, and I hadn’t even moved from my place of prayer. I had, it seemed, really blown it this time.

According to an evangelist I encountered some time ago, I should be full of regret that I can no longer drink wine and should have felt at a loss because I did not join the dating game. ‘Do you want some wine?’ she asked me, scanning me with her eyes, ‘Do you want some wine?’ I simply said no and walked away. ‘So,’ she started later, when I returned to the kitchen to do my washing up, ‘what is the criteria you are looking for in a wife?’ I spoke about the past, about what reality is like. I asked her what was wrong with seeking commitment right from the start, when invariably so many people, this woman included, experience the pain of falling in love with one who has no reciprocal desire where marriage is concerned. ‘But hasn’t that situation changed for you now?’ she asked me. ‘So what if it has?’ I thought. I had heard her speaking with my host earlier about how depressing it was in her mid thirties that she couldn’t find a partner who was committed to a relationship, let alone interested in marriage. She wished that I would feel a fool because I sought a life governed by my faith. But I didn’t feel a fool, or at a loss, or full of regret, because Islam liberated me from falling into line with those ways which had never served me and had only caused me pain.

I went to university after a year out of study. I had worked a while, written for some time and gone to stay with missionary relatives in east Africa for about a month. There had been a year to escape from the mistakes I had made at Sixth Form College. There had been time for me to mature and move on, but there had also been time for me to forget what student life was like. I moved into university accommodation on a Sunday, a week before term began. Meeting others who had arrived already, it was off to the pub almost straight away. I didn’t drink alcohol at the time, though not for any particular reason. Fortunately, I had some company. A neighbour of mine was a Rastafarian who considered drinking alcohol a heresy, although smoking marijuana was a vital component of his belief. So I had coke, he had orange juice, and the rest – the normal characters – helped themselves to beer or spirits.

Those first few hours were crucial steps towards a happy life in the months that followed. Naïvely, I failed to grasp that the purpose of that undeclared session was one of self-promotion. While my companions talked about their hugely interesting lives, about their expertise in blending coffee, about the research they had been carrying out over the summer, about their youth growing up in one African state or another, or in a village in Nepal, all I could say was that I was from Hull. When, by accident, I complimented one of them I was suddenly judged insecure – and therefore unworthy of their company.

Over the next few evenings at the watering hole, my eyes cast back on myself. Here was I, stuck on the periphery of all that surrounded me. There was no salvation for this bore amongst them, for while the micro-racists could patronisingly promote even the dreariest African to kingly heights, their vision could not extend beyond their cliché-bound world. Yet I rejected them too, in my own way. Despite my almost devout agnosticism, I continued to adhere basically to the Christian morals which my upbringing had firmly imparted. Amongst the post-moderns around me, thriving on the morality of immediacy, I drew an unconscious distinction between my way and theirs. Theirs was a dream of later on tonight, a taste of delight with someone no longer a stranger. In truth, I walked away from them, not the other way round. One evening, abandoning my quest for friendship with my ever witty cohorts, I encountered a man I had met on the day of my interview sitting a few tables away with his flatmate and his flatmate’s girlfriend. He, a Welsh man ten years older than me, welcomed me and from that moment on we were friends.

Some weeks passed without as much as a sip from a glass of alcohol. Was it my Methodist genes, passed on from my Grandfather which caused my abstention? I could not justify my refusal to drink to my friends for I had not rationalised anything in my mind. My family drinks alcohol; this could not be another of my pre-atheist urges, yet I was pious in my rejection of the bottle, even as my new friends constantly petitioned me to drink what they were drinking. In due course, however, I conceded and was introduced to a luminous liquid which tasted like Lemsip as a bridge to a new habit – and an unpleasant period in my life began.

A decade older than me and a seasoned drinker, my colleague could drink thirteen pints of beer and it would not appear to make the slightest difference to his behaviour. By contrast, I was a novice and a couple of bottles were enough to make me intoxicated; yet in his company a couple of bottles would never be sufficient. So sure enough, the inevitable happened and a night of heavy drinking took its toll on me.

I had not eaten all day when my Japanese flatmate suggested we went to the pub across the road. To avoid mockery I bought another alcopop while he tried some whisky. After a while my flatmate suddenly remembered that it was his birthday and so we decided to celebrate by having a glass of whisky from a bottle in his room. Maybe an hour later, I met my usual companion and we set off for the pub with an old friend of his. I drank several more bottles of the green liquid, by which time I was intoxicated well enough to ignore the taste of what was to come. Quite late, my friend decided we should go to the Bluenote, a popular nightclub of the time. So we went down the road to get a bus, until, bored of waiting, we changed our minds and decided to settle for two bottles of red wine. We drank those on the way back up the road and then went back to the pub where I had begun that fateful night.

There was a lock-in, because it was after legal opening hours, and at last they had got me drinking beer. Though I did not like the taste, I was so intoxicated that there was no taste; indeed by then I was barely aware of what I was doing. We went on to a party in someone’s flat, time shifting strangely now. How long was I there? What did I do? Who was I with? A mystery. What happened to prompt another friend to decide that it was time for me to leave, and help me down the stairs to my room? I have no memory of moving from the pub to the party, nor of the party, nor of what happened next – just moments of consciousness amidst a walking comatose. Back in my room I fell unconscious, awakening for moments and then slipping away again. Finally an ambulance was called and I spent the remainder of night in Casualty.

A rite of passage, say the cynical, blinded by their love of drink. True, I was not on the verge of death, simply very sick and unwell like many an Englishman in towns and cities around the country that night. Thus does our culture mock those who look beyond this veil, justifying actions which ordinarily would be condemned. Many an upstanding citizen would condemn my Rastafarian friend for his religious inhalation of an illegal herb, but would never dream of reproaching the frequent drinkers in the pub; and yet medical researchers have put alcohol in the same category as opiates in terms of the harm it can cause. For my part, regaining consciousness in an uncomfortable hospital waiting room in Euston, I felt guilty. I was angry with my usual companion, angry with myself and deeply embarrassed. With the breaking dawn I swore that I would not drink again; a promise I failed to keep.

Drinking alcohol was never about appreciating unusual and varied flavours, but simply about getting drunk. Indeed conversation while drinking alcohol was invariably about alcohol. A person set on drinking thirteen pints of water, orange juice or lemonade during a single evening would be considered something of the village idiot, but in the warped culture which envelopes us, to do anything less with alcohol is somehow considered a sign of individual weakness. Not weakness as I would comprehend it. I had no interest in this way of life, but I was weak in that I gave into the pressure of friends. Before I realised it, I had found myself forced by circumstance to engage in a life I despised. It did not take long to make me dependent on a vodka and coke as a means of escaping unhappiness.

There was conflict at that time between me and another student, which was entirely my fault due to my ignorance of her culture; she was Muslim and I knew nothing about Islam. I only knew that Muslims do not drink alcohol, do not eat pork and only eat halal meat. I was not conscious of Islamic terrorism, fundamentalism or fanaticism and I was not aware of the common preconception that Islam oppresses women – all basics of pop-thought. So I certainly did not know that having a close friendship with a Muslim girl was unacceptable. Having made friends with her over a cup of coffee after a tutorial, time created a bad impression as I became excessively possessive of friends, seeking to be a part of other people’s lives instead of continuously being on the periphery. As a result numerous difficult situations arose.

We never became close friends. I think out of politeness she was always kind to me afterwards. But during a time of tension when we would avoid each other at all costs, I engaged in a life which was a lie. Sometimes I would sit at the bar in the pub, drinking spirits I couldn’t stand, pretending that I was happy now. Then, during the year, my Welsh companion began to have problems of his own, and I found myself helping him as others had helped me during my night of excess. Still he would drink his thirteen pints of beer and he would not appear to get drunk in the slightest; but when he reached the bottom of that thirteenth glass he would suddenly snap. His intoxication exhibited itself in violence.

I never saw him being violent towards other people, but if you were a door, a wall, a table or a chair, you would have to look out for you would not emerge unscathed. On numerous occasions it fell to me to control him, for because we were friends, people thought that that was my duty. He would spend days doing nothing but getting drunk, wasting away his money, and then I would cook a meal for him in the evening. One day he stormed into the common room, picked up the pool table from one end and then slammed it to the ground, before snapping a pool-cue in half, not at its natural joint. Everyone was shocked – perhaps scared – and looked at me, telling me to deal with my aggressive friend. I took him to his flat, sat down with him, listened to his problem and then I went to see the person who had caused his rage. There was nothing I could do. I became a mediator for two people whose morals I abhorred and a support for a character whose behaviour made me sick. Circumstance had forced me to engage in a life I hated.

Stronger people might have escaped earlier and realised that all was not well. But I was a weak person who felt that he needed these friends. They offered pathetic advice, such as how I should not feel sorry about what had happened between me and the Muslim girl before. But I acted upon it anyway and wrote her a letter, after we had sorted everything out, telling her how I wasn’t sorry, how it was all her fault and how I didn’t care at all. And then I smashed up my own face because I wanted everyone to feel pity for me. And then I would go to the bar alone and drink vodka because who needs friends when you can just get drunk?

In May of the same year following one more night of excess, when my entire body ached as never before, I gave up drinking alcohol for good. This, as it happened, was exactly one a year before I came to believe in Islam, but it is still an answer to the evangelist’s question: ‘Do you want some wine?’

No I don’t want any wine. I gave up the drink long before I embraced this faith, but that’s not the point. Some people wish to convince me that Islam is a burden on my life. In fact, the burden was lifted from my life when I said, ‘None has the right to be worshipped except God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.’ So while my life may seem unbearably restricted to the evangelist passing through, who wished that I would feel a fool because I sought a life governed by my faith, I actually do not feel a fool, or at a loss, or full of regret, because Islam did indeed liberate me from a time when I was a fool, and I was at a loss, and I was full of regret.

Us old fools

People often ask me why I became Muslim, or how, or what brought me this way, and there are many answers I give. Through reading, through listening, through watching. And yet, when I really think about it, it was something more. The final impetus was something deeper. There was a realisation that inside all was not well: the lies I would tell to get myself out of an awkward situation, my thoughts, the nature of my intention. Inside, hidden from view, my life was a mess and I was lost.

A few months before I became Muslim, there was a Saturday morning when I had gone to the library to do some work on the computer, only to find that the network was down. So instead I started out on an aimless walk through the streets of London. After a while, I reached Regent’s Park and I was walking through there when something troubled me. I was disturbed by something inside. Enough was enough, I told myself. So walking through that park in the bright sunlight, I began to speak to God. I made myself a covenant with God, saying that I would stop this and if I should start again, He could desert me. For a while, I was good, I did reform myself and I felt better, but then I slipped again. I broke my promise, but He did not desert me.

There were other things which kicked me; my insincere intention – looking to impress people by any means possible – and my self-pity. Over a few months, there was a realisation that within me there were problems. The final change came quite suddenly, however, over a long weekend when I did a lot of reading, little sleeping and I became convinced that Islam was the true religion of God.

A new beginning is always possible, though I did not really understand this at first. I became distressed after a few months: ‘How can it be that God guided me,’ I asked repeatedly, ‘when I was such a foolish person, while my family are good people, devoted to their religion?’ It took time to recognise that Islam refreshes, brings life anew and grants us a new beginning. Muhammad, like Jesus before him, came for the sake of ‘sinners’, not the righteous, for the religion is one of reform. It is us old fools who need a religion of reform, not the already pious.

Duties

Since coming to believe in Islam, I must have performed a certain ritual over eleven thousand times and may have prostrated before my Lord around eighty thousand times. These irrelevant numbers only indicate that there are duties which Muslims are obliged to perform as part of their day to day lives. Once I believed that no one has the right to be worshipped except God and that Muhammad is his Messenger, it was necessary to establish the routine of formal prayer in my daily life. This prayer is performed five times each day at dawn, midday, mid-afternoon, sunset and night. Its purpose is to remind us of the reality of our life in this world, to give us more opportunities to please our Lord and to wash away the sins which we accumulate during the day. It is our means of maintaining a continuous link with God.

Other duties follow in due course, such as Zakat, Fasting and Pilgrimage (Hajj). Zakat, which means purification, is the process of giving a proportion of one’s wealth to the poor and needy each year. Fasting is a voluntary act throughout the rest of the year, but it is obligatory during the month of Ramadan for all Muslims who are able. Those who are sick, on a journey, pregnant or nursing are permitted to break the fast, although they are required to make up an equal number of days later in the year. A person who is physically unable to fast is required to feed a needy person for each day he or she missed instead. Fasting is regarded principally as a means of purification. By abstaining from normal pleasures and comforts, the fasting person achieves growth in their spiritual life, learning discipline, self-restraint, patience and flexibility. The pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a Muslim’s life is also obligatory for all who are able. Each year nearly two million Muslims from all over the world come together in Mecca and stand toe to toe in prayer.

But why?

Who in their right mind, in this day of age would become a Muslim? This appears to be the often mocking sentiment of those who question the convert to Islam. Look at all the civil strife in the world, the acts of wanton terrorism, the way they treat their women. Show us a Muslim democracy; show us a peaceful Islamic State. What could possibly attract a person to that aggressive, uncivilised faith? The question presupposes that the believer is a consumer, acting exactly as they would when buying a car. Yet in reality the decision is made on the basis of what one considers to be true.

Several years ago, whilst I was still at school, my heart began to turn away from Christianity, the faith with which I had been brought up. There became a shyness of my beliefs. When a friend from church approached me one lunch time at school to congratulate me on my Confirmation to the Anglican Communion, I felt too embarrassed to respond. While alone on holiday on the shores of Lake Windermere one year, I remember my discomfort with the display of Christian fellowship there.

I have often identified my second trip to the Hebrides island of Iona – a traditional place of Gaelic Christian pilgrimage – as the source of my disbelief, but in fact my doubts and shyness in faith were with me for at least two years prior to that. It was, however, on Iona that I formalised my atheism. Many who go there find themselves in a state of high emotion at some point, absorbing the beautiful music and the acute sense of isolation. Other people would speak of their confusion, their alienation and their disbelief when I returned a year later. For me there was a night towards the end of my stay on the island when I decided that I didn’t believe in God any more. I stood half way up the mount of Dun-Í in the darkness, making myself cry, telling God that he wasn’t real.

On my return from holiday I announced that I did not believe in God any more. Over the next few months I began wondering about things which my mind was too small to comprehend. Was the nothingness outside the universe of the same substance as that which made up the nothingness in-between all the matter within it? I would invent ideas about the universe and ponder on them. It was as if God had been a roof to the cosmos and now there was just infinite space. Belief in God had made the universe homely; disbelief made it vast and incomprehensible.

I do not recall when I was first uncomfortable about going to church, whether it was before or after that visit to Iona. Nor do I remember when my belief in God returned, but it did because for a long time I used only to utter a portion of the Nicene Creed. ‘I believe in one God, creator of Heaven and Earth.’ For the majority of the time from the point of my rejection of belief, I did actually believe in God, but I did not believe that Jesus was God. Innately I was uncomfortable with any worship of him. I did not have any deep philosophical reason for this, as those who argue against the Trinity do, only a strong feeling inside that God was completely separate.

It was after my first year at university that I began to feel the need to find the ‘Truth’. Though I was agnostic, I had retained my Christian morals which I felt clashed with the outlook of those around me. I had become friends with somebody who had something of a dependence on alcohol, while I had confrontations with other students, so that by the end of the year I was far from happy. Towards the end of the summer term I would withdraw from almost everyone and in May I promised myself that I would never drink another drop of alcohol because I did not like what friends became in their drunkenness, nor what I became.

Over the summer I attended a service at the evangelical Anglican church, All Souls, Langham Place, and listened to a sermon by John Stott. I was quite impressed by what I heard and it inspired me to reform myself. With the start of the new term I became perpetually obsessed with searching for the Truth. I began attending All Souls church every Sunday just to listen to the sermon. At university I disassociated myself from those I had known the previous term and kept myself to myself. I felt that I had been influenced by friends towards foolish ways and so I was cutting myself off. I didn’t even go to sit in the pub any more.

I do not remember the details of this journey any more or the order in which events took place, nor when I first started thinking about Islam along side Christianity. However, this was a time when the search became all that I would think and talk about - boring and distressing friends. When I finally came to believe in Islam it was as the truth. It was not an issue of choosing a religion which suited me.

So how did I come to believe in Islam? It came out of my agnosticism, my discomfort with myself and my feeling that I had to reform. It came out of my failure to believe that Jesus is God. It came from my stubborn pursuit of the truth, when I realised that I could not rely on my friends, but I could rely on God. I came to accept Islam as my path for no other reason than believing it to be the true religion of God.