Umm..ah?

Umm…ah?

Ummah. I have no idea what an ummah feels like. I know how family feels, friends, classmates and even acquaintances. But when an imam speaks of our ummah in peril and helping your brother out, I can’t distinguish who is included in my ummah. Is it all muslims? The muslims I interact with on a daily basis as my friends and family? Or is it the larger picture, the ummah the Prophet (swt) led and the prophets generations before him? At times I think it may hurt my practice of Islam by not defining an ummah. Maybe an ummah need not be defined, but is rather created by your actions as a muslim to fellow muslims. What it has come down to is the simple golden rule: do unto others as you would like done unto you.

Knight and My Hypocrisy

Simple rule, hard to implement. I went to my local library to get some books on the practices and rituals of the Prophet and perusing through the bookcase I saw a familiar title: Journey to the End of Islam by Michael Muhammad Knight. I had read The Taqwacores, and it rubbed me sometimes the right way and sometimes the wrong way, the wrong way in the way that made me feel like I was going to hell just for reading it. Even so, I found myself telling people about the book, discussing it, and even giving my copy to a friend to read. Recently, I felt wrong for promoting the book in that capacity because there were so many parts of it that I thought offended the entire notion of Islam. So did I pick up Journey to the End of Islam, a possible second Taqwacores that I would read during Ramadan and certify my entrance to hellfire? Yes. Why? I’m human, God forgive me.

So I read it. And it made me nervous. It made me nervous to read lines that manipulated the shahada. It made me nervous when Knight went days without praying and thought about how he didn’t need to pray to practice his Islam. (spoiler alert: he ends up praying.) I found myself judging him throughout the book. “So, you are going to blackmarker  parts of the Quran but then say that u have to accept the Quran in its entirety or not at all?” “So, you are going to repent for writing parts of Taqwacores, but then make it into a movie and use the proceeds to go on hajj?” Label me Hater Aunty, because this went down a lot.

As I’m reading this book during the day, and my Quran at night before bed, it finally hits me that I can’t finish Journey to the End of Islam unless I stop reading it as a critique on Knight, but a critique on myself. How many times have I read Surah Humazah, about not talking bad in front or behind a person, thereby hurting their feelings or tarnishing their reputation and yet still I’d sit and say nothing as someone pointed out a “hoejabi” walking down the street. How can I judge him for conflicting thoughts and actions when I did the same? A few months ago I heard a lecture by Nouman Ali Khan called Islam and Ego. Khan started by painting a picture of a person who becomes more religious, and at the same time, starts to build an ego based on this new religioisity. All of a sudden, his family and friends aren’t religious enough and he finds himself looking down at them. As I was listening to this, I thought of a couple people who totally fit this bill. At that moment, Khan deviated from his lecture to warn us not to think about others we could send this lecture to, because he knows we are thinking of people who act this way. But rather, to watch this lecture for ourselves and for our own betterment. I caught myself embarrassed, started the lecture over, and listened to it while figuring out my own faults. Today, whenever I read any life lesson articles or listen to lectures, I keep myself in mind knowing that I’m the only one who can change me. I thought I was doing well at implementing this until I realized more than half way through Knight’s novel, I was doing a very poor job of reading this novel with myself in mind.  Yes there were parts that bothered me, but on the flip side there were parts that I read over and over. For example, when Knight is on a flight back, silently crying about the struggles the Prophet went through for us, I found hope that one day I would have that feeling come over me. The feeling I pray for everyday, because its hard to know someone’s love for you unless they are in front of you. A feeling I need to build up that will only come with more knowledge and stories of other’s moments of understanding.

One Religion-One Ummah

So what’s this have to do with ummah? As much as I had my ups and downs with Knight’s novel, there’s one part that stuck out to me the most. When Knight is making his last rounds around the Kaaba and a brother tells him he has done a wrong hand gesture that was not sunnah, Knight responds with “Lakum deenikum wa liya deen” – “To you your religion, to me my religion”, an ayat from a surah directed towards the idol worshippers at the time of the Prophet. Goodbye ummah.

For a long time, I tried the idea that “religion is an individual experience” and the whole “to each his own”. False. Islam is a religion for people to practice invidually and as a group. Man does not exist in a vacuum, and his actions to others is a major part of Islam. After reading Knight’s response, I thought of Surat al Asr:

By (the Token of) Time (through the ages),

Verily Man is in loss,

Except such as have Faith, and do righteous deeds,

and (join together) in the mutual teaching of Truth, 
and of Patience and Constancy.

Who is saved from loss? Not just men who have faith, because you can have faith without the support of any other man. But the man who joins with the other muslim to follow truth and patience. Islam is not meant to be practiced alone, it is a brotherhood where you have to help eachother. When the Prophet learned prayer, Khadija joined him as they prayed together for the first time. There was no individuality, it was them together doing what Allah commanded. In his tafsir of this surah, Khan talks about man being unconcious and drowning. and as he’s trying to swim up he is weighed down by a brother, a cousin, an aunt. For his own survival, he has to wake that sleeping person attached to him, by showing him the truth, using his patience as this keeps happening over and over. So what does this mean? Does this mean we sit around and tell eachother that our prayers are not going to be accepted because we pray with our hands down? Or that the brother who ate a morsel with his lefthand is surely going to hell?

No, there’s a larger picture here. We are all of one religion: Islam. There is no separate religions. When a brother is telling you you are practicing something wrong, he is not from a different religion. He is trying to help you in the way he thinks you will be saved. This is the problem. Even though his intentions are correct, we easily get offended. For this purpose, we need to realize that the truth isnt in the little dogmatic actions, but rather in the entire message of Islam.

I am sad that Knight felt the need to use that ayat on the man, but Knight is my brother just like any other brother in the ummah. Parts of his book have taught me Truth and Patience, and I hope that him and others can perpetuate what Allah wants us to do for eachother. Once we get past our egos and humble ourselves to the lessons of our brothers, only then can we really be an ummah.

We need help with the Truth and Patience. Remind me when I have strayed, please have patience with me, and I will do the same for you. Inshallah.