Teaching and Sharing Islam with Mercy

Teaching and Sharing Islam with Mercy Some things for fellow Muslims to think about

BY NOOR SAADEH

“It is by God’s grace that you were gentle with them — for if you had been harsh and hard-hearted, they would surely have deserted you — so bear with them and pray for forgiveness for them” (3:159). If you had been harsh…

Think back to how you learned your religion. If you were born into a Muslim family, did you hear tales of hellfire and punishment or of forgiveness and Paradise? Haram or halal? Do this, but mostly don’t do that? Was your experience positive or negative, inspiring or perhaps frightening? Did you learn to believe through love or at the end of a stick? Was taqwa always explained as fear of God? Were you introduced to your Creator and His Prophet (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) through rules and regulations or through God’s beneficence and the exemplary character of Muhammad?

Many a starry-eyed convert, heart full of the light of God’s guidance, eager to learn, to hear and obey, is initially brought into the faith with ease and tenderness. Suddenly, after the pronouncement of the shahada, the gentle explanations give way to restrictions and rules. You must pray, fast, cover - and what punishments await you if you don’t do it all perfectly!

If you had been harsh…

Prophet Muhammad offered God’s love and mercy, justice and equality to those who had never known it. He taught his community to look at the miraculous natural world around them and marvel at its perfection — a reflection of its magnanimous and wise Creator. Why, then, is our fascination today limited only to perfection of the rules and rituals?

Within our mosques we are very unforgiving of highly insignificant infractions. Well-meaning men and women become boisterous judges and juries about all manner of indiscretions. What drives us to be so judgmental and so unforgiving?

Thirty some years ago when I first was curious to read the Quran, I found the best book of human psychology I’d ever read. Who but our Creator could know us so well? What struck me most, after the innumerable verses that uniquely describe and define God as no other scriptures do, was the focus on the behavior of us crazy humans. Don’t forget that even the angels disputed and questioned God’s purpose for creating us. We are a contentious species, often preferring the stick over the carrot when it comes to dealing with others.

Perhaps limiting a limitless way of life to rules and rituals keeps many a dictator and despot in place. Let the populace have their prayers and fasting. Just don’t encourage reading and understanding. Forbid questions or selfstudy. Keep them busy, keep them poor with little time for self-reflection. Do you ever wonder why so many khutbahs and lectures focus only on the same few topics? It is paramount in order to maintain the status quo in many a Muslim nation.

Yet this is America. We are still marginally a democracy. There is no other country where Muslims are able to worship as freely as in the U.S. Why then do we continue to maintain the same means of teaching Islam as if we were under the thumb of a repressive state? Old habits die hard perhaps.

To hear the words of many a cleric, it seems that God is very eager to punish His believers, although the Quran states just the opposite: “Why should God punish you if you give thanks and believe in Him? God is All-rewarding and All-forgiving” (4:11).

Think back to when our children were small. Like all parents, we oohed and aahed over their first smiles, words and steps. What was more adorable than to see them mimic the prayer or hear their first hesitant recitation of the Quran? How we smiled, praised and showered them with our love and affection.

Fast forward a few years and see how things have changed. Instead of encouraging and praising our children for their efforts, we yell and threaten them with God’s displeasure. Our children drag themselves off to weekend Islamic school only to receive more dark looks and condemnation from their teachers.

We are losing Muslims. Converts revert to their previous faith or leave religion altogether. Born Muslims find more love, forgiveness, mercy and acceptance within Christian circles. “Faith gives comfort, solace, and reflection to many. But the Islam practiced by many Muslims (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) … is not one of reflection, but of ritual without understanding. It is about punishment, pain, and barriers, rather

than enlightenment, openness, and the nurturing of in Western Europe, where movements in and out of Islam appear roughly to balance creative thought” (https://www.newstatesman.com/ out (https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-muslims-leave-the-faith-11596755143 politics/religion/2018/05/what-i-learned-when-i- and https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/26/the-share-of-americansspoke-people-who-chose-leave-islam). who-leave-islam-is-offset-by-those-who-become-muslim/).

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, Learning and knowledge, self-reflection and thought, the very word of revabout 100,000 of this country’s 3.5 million Muslims elation (iqra’) and the emphasis on thinking and reflection, even questioning, abandon Islam each year, while roughly the same have been replaced with dependence on rigid hadith, celebrity clerics and schools number convert to it. Altogether, nearly a quarter of of thought as opposed to our own self-study of Quran. The Quraysh were not those raised in the faith have left. Similar trends prevail rocket scientists, and STEM was not the acronym of the day. The Prophet’s contemporaries were traders, merchants, and shepherds. Journeymen, not PhDs. FAITH GIVES COMFORT, SOLACE, AND REFLECTION TO MANY. BUT THE ISLAM How did the Quran’s lofty and unparalleled eloquence so transfix and transform Muhammad’s contemporaries? Today most of us think that we are far

PRACTICED BY MANY MUSLIMS (SALLA more learned, well-read and worldly-wise, and yet we ALLAHU ‘ALAYHI WA SALLAM) … IS NOT ONE implement our teachings with such rigidity. Within 100 years of Islam’s advent, Haroun

OF REFLECTION, BUT OF RITUAL WITHOUT Al-Rasheed (ruled 786–809 CE), the reigning caliph UNDERSTANDING. IT IS ABOUT PUNISHMENT, in Baghdad established the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) to translate all of the documents Muslim PAIN, AND BARRIERS, RATHER THAN explorers and soldiers came across while encountering

ENLIGHTENMENT, OPENNESS, AND THE new and non-Islamic civilizations. During the next 100 years, Muslims established themselves in Andalusia.

NURTURING OF CREATIVE THOUGHT” This event, when combined with their scholars’ spectacular developments in many fields of science, mathematics, medicine and humanities, sparked the advent of Europe’s Renaissance centuries later. The type of negativity and belief without question that we find today in Islamic teachings could never have produced or inspired such a Golden Age. Tragically we find ourselves having exchanged places with our European counterparts. Muslim nations, poor and illiterate, are experiencing their own Dark Ages, During a recent virtual presentation of Islam for a Unitarian community, one observer was impressed by the importance of intention in Islam. He had viewed a wonderfully positive video, “What I Love About Islam” (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=2qk82WFmh9A), made by a Unitarian/Sufi minister who shared the meaning of the Five Pillars in a powerful and manner that many of us would be hard-pressed to emulate. What then is our intention, our ultimate goal, when we share or teach Islam? What kind of Muslims do we hope to lead the world? God’s prophets were sent to the truly erring peoples in the hopes of changing their behavior. None came brandishing swords, threatening their communities without first approaching them with logic and mercy. Even poor Nuh (‘alayhi as salam) set a world record beseeching his people for 950 years before he finally asked God to unleash His vengeance upon the unbelievers. So what of Muhammad, sent as God’s mercy to humanity? Where is the mercy of God and His prophet when we introduce our child or a new Muslim to Islam? We’ve become harsh, and so many whom we had all good intentions to guide, have instead deserted us. The advent of groups such as ISIS, the Taliban and Al Qaida should be a huge wake-up call that something is drastically wrong with our intentions and how we have been teaching our deen. How many of us cringe now that “Muslim” and “Islam,” the meanings of which stem from the root words of “submission” and “peace,” respectively, have become synonymous with terrorism and violence. We have forsaken the absolute furqan (criterion), namely, the Qur’an. It’s time to begin again, to rethink our intentions. Just as God begins with reiterations of rahma (mercy), so must we when we impart the very meaning of being Muslim with our children and others. ih