Salaam everybody,
A brother at another forum asked me to tell him my story concerning my journey to GOD Alone. After I posting my story there, I realized that I have been a member here for a while now and I have never posted my story here.
Well for any who may be interested, I am posting it now for the first time.
When I was still a sunni, I was
always bothered as to
why the so-called muslim world was at the bottom of the barrel. How is it that we possess the Quran, and yet we are extremely backwards, decadent, downtrodden and stepped on...not to mention so hated by others in the world? Why the division and lack of unity?
I was always an avdent reader of Islam and Middle Eastern politics. I have many books in my library. Two of my favorite writers as a sunni were the Algerian Mohammed Arkoun and the Iranian Ali Shari'ati. I was always into reading books by muslim thinkers and intellectuals. In fact, I was quite a staunch sunni until I read
Rethinking Islam for the first time by Mohammed Arkoun. I read it a second time and it changed my views and thought patterns concerning Islam, muslims and muslim political affairs. It was due to this new thought wave that I was no longer a fundamentalist type muslim.
However, through all my reading, pondering and discussions with others, I
still could not find an answer to the muslim dilemma. I was once a part of a community who now go by the name of A.S.M. (American Society of Muslims) This community is headed by a thinker name Warith Deen Mohammed, son of Elijah Mohammed who was the founder of the
Lost-Found Nation of Islam. While listening to a lecture by one of W.D. Mohammeds Imams (Faheem Shuaibe) one day, he said something that was pretty profound for me. He gave a parable about roofing and floors. He said that when one has a problem with the tiles on their floor which needs repaired, the people don't merely
go over it. They
strip the floor entirely and lay down a
brand new foundation. He said in order for us to fix the muslim dilemma, we have to
strip the floor so to speak. We have to
unlearn many things we hold true and dear and be willing to sift through it all and lay down a
new foundation on which to build the new muslim ummah.
Unfortunately, this was mere lip service as he still sought to etsablish this muslim strength based on Quran
and sunnah.
Anyway, I had a reached a point in my life where I
truly dreaded going to the mosque to listen to the same old dry kutbahs about following the prophet's sunnah and how if we do follow it, all of our problems would just go away. I hated going to the mosques, I hated wasting my friday afternoons going to their jumahs and I hated listening to those same old
sheep-and-cattle kutbahs. I got tired of hadith and sunnah, I got tired of
the prophet said this and
the prophet forbade that, etc. Too many problems, loose ends and unanswered questions.
I finally made a decision. I was going to make an attempt to
strip the floor. I decided that I would try to learn what GOD expects of me and what it is that I and the muslim world is doing wrong. When you have a structure, such as a building, that is weak and unstable, you cannot fix it if the weakness and instability stems from the
foundation. You have to knock it down and establish a
new and
much stronger foundation. This is what I sought to do.
I made the decision that I would go back to the
foundation of Islam, which is the quran. I decided that I would study
nothing but the quran and try to figure out what the heck is going on. I told myself that I would only follow hadith that I felt agreed with the quran. Because of this new endevour, I wanted to make advancement in my Arabic studies because I did not want to pursue this endevour while relying on translations. But I also new the dangers of depending on Arabic language studies as taught by "
muslim world". I wanted to do this independent of them and their influences.
Although I was already studying Arabic at that time, I was learning by attending Arabic classes every wednesday and sunday at the mosques. I used to attend Arabic Language and Taleem classes at the mosque. So I Decided to go online to find as many useful resources as I possibly can to continue studying on my own,
without the interpretation and influences of the "
muslims".
Now we come to the milestone of my journey to this path I am now on. While searching for Arabic language resoures on the internet, I came across http:www.inet.ba/~hardy which is brother Zlatan's website. To this day, I have always looked up to Zlatan as a big brother and I am always grateful and appreciative of the time I met him and started corresponding with him. At the time he had an Arabic language page at his website. However, this wasn't
all that he offered on his website. He also had plenty of articles and links to
http://www.free-minds.org The Arabic resources weren't the
only thing that attracted me to his site. It was the
THEME of his website which is the study of monotheism and the quran alone. I took very careful note of that.
Along with studying the Arabic language, I also read the articles on his site and read the links that he has on his site.
It was through Zlatan and his website that I was introduced to Free-Minds.Org. I was reading
article after article on the many fallacies of
hadith and
sunnah.
I found a new world...one which I Never thought I'd explore. It did not take me long before I started to realize the
foundational problem of the muslim dilemma. I went on an intense and very focused study and journey into hadith and sunnah and this new way of thinking (God Alone and Quran Alone).
I eventually learned of Rashad Khalifa and started going to
http://www.submission.org and reading the articles that they have. I remember reading
Quran, Hadith and Islam for the first time by Rashad Khalifa. As someone used to following the sunni way of thinking, this book was very easy for me to agree with and it has answered alot of questions for me as well as address the whole philosphy behind hadith and sunnah. You want to know what made my convictions even easier to stand by? I approached just about every muslim aquaintence that I knew with this new information and you can all guess their reactions to this. That made it all the more convincing.
I eventually introduced my wife to this concept but she wasn't quite open to it at first. In fact, she made fun of me and told me that I was going through another one of my many
phases or
changes. (Indeed, in my search for answers to certain questions I have walked many roads before reaching this one).
I gave her an article on hijab to read from free-minds.org and then I gave her another one from submission.org. She then started visiting these websites and doing her own research. At the time, she was a teacher at the Islamic sunday school. She removed her hijab and she was given an ultimatum. Either re-donn the hijab or she can no longer teach there. She and I both challenged this ultimatum as well as the hadith and sunnah position which they could not handle. They told us we were no longer welcomed in their community. (This is the A.S.M. by the way,
supposedly the most liberal and free-thinking of the sunni world).
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I just continued to study and read the quran alone. The more I studied, the more the truth of this particular situation became very clear to me. And here I am today. I have fully rid myself of anything that has to do with hadith and sunnah. I have changed many views since being on this path....many of which would definately cost me to get lynched and killed in the
muslim world. I am quite comfortable with the position and views that I have now. I change views and understandings due to my constant search for truth. I may be right, I may be wrong. But I have full confidence that as long as I remain humble and sincere, GOD will teach me whatever it is He wills for me to know.
That's pretty much it...my GOD Alone journey in a nutshell.
Peace,
Damon.
