Love, InshAllah

by Nura Maznavi

  While I was in Brazil, I lived with Christian, mainly Catholic, missionaries from all over the world, in a school to learn Portuguese. They did not seem to be fools or weak, as I was raised to believe. They were dedicating, sometimes risking, their lives to help others. They did not openly proselytize. I respected them and admired the work they did. I wanted to be more like them. When I moved back to the United States to marry my second husband, we started attending a liberal, inner-city Catholic church. I never believed, however, that Jesus, peace be upon him, was the son of God or part of a trinity.

  This deep incongruity between my beliefs and the teachings of Christianity encouraged me to explore other religions. I read many books. To my surprise, I already held theological and eschatological beliefs that were similar to those of Islam. The more I read, the more Islam appealed to me. I used to say that if I ever converted to another religion, it would be Islam. However, I did not feel the need to join another organized religion.

  While pursuing my public-health degree, I sat next to a man from Bangladesh in my Biostats class. We often spoke about our spiritual beliefs. When I told him what I believed and what I thought of Islam, he responded, “You are Muslim.” Eventually, he gave me a translation of the Qur’an to read.

  It sat on my desk for months before I decided to look at it. After reading the opening chapter, Surah al-Fatiha, I knew that I was Muslim. I had read verses of the Qur’an in other books, while exploring different religions, but I had never read this particular chapter. The reason it had such a powerful impact on me was that it contained the prayer for guidance that I was always trying to write but could never quite express properly. In just seven short verses, this surah addressed all of my spiritual aspirations. I told Mike that when I finished reading the translation, I was going to convert. He replied, “I always thought you would someday.”

  But there was a problem: Mike and I were about to become engaged, and I vaguely remembered reading that a Muslim woman could not marry a non-Muslim man. Mike had no intention of converting. He was a lapsed Catholic to whom Catholic school had not been kind. We held similar spiritual beliefs, but whereas I felt organized religion was unnecessary, it scared him. I did not want to face the possibility of having to choose between love and religion. I had found my Prince Charming and was far happier than I had ever imagined I could be. And I had finally found the spiritual home that had eluded me my entire life. That these elements of my life could be at odds was devastating.

  Before I finished the translation, I decided to speak to an imam about my concerns. I searched through the telephone book and made an appointment with an imam at the largest masjid in the city. The meeting was scheduled for Thursday, January 11, 2001. I will never forget that date.

  I walked slowly up the steps to the townhouse next to the masjid where the imam lived. My hand shook as I knocked on the door; I was dreading the potential answers to my questions. What will I do if he tells me I cannot marry Mike? I asked myself. Is this going to be God’s first test of my sincerity? Will I fail?

  The imam answered the door wearing a long white robe. He had a beard, and his head was covered with a small white hat. He looked like some of the Muslim men I had seen on the news—not a particularly comforting sight for me at the time. I extended my hand to shake his, but he quickly informed me that Muslims do not shake hands with members of the opposite sex. I thought that was odd, as the gesture seemed harmless to me.

  He asked me to come in and led me to his office. He motioned for me to sit down in the empty chair across from his desk. Another man occupied a chair next to mine, which made me uncomfortable. It was difficult enough to speak to the imam about my concerns, but at least I equated him with a priest, so I felt somewhat at ease divulging personal information. But I did not know this other man and did not want him there. Later, I learned that a Muslim man and woman who could potentially marry should not be alone together.

  After the initial pleasantries, I told the imam that I wanted to convert and shared the reasons that had led me to that decision. But first, I had two questions. He told me to go ahead. I hesitated, embarrassed by the first question. Although I had been raised to believe that my current living situation was perfectly acceptable and actually preferable before committing to marriage, I knew that the major religions held otherwise.

  I was blunt: “My fiancé and I are living in sin. I tried to find a loophole in the Qur’an, but there is none. Should I wait until we get married to convert?”

  “You are living in sin no matter what religion you are in,” the imam told me. “If you should die before you are married, it is better that you die a Muslim. So your living arrangement should not prevent you from converting.”

  I continued, far more worried about his next response. “My second question is that if my fiancé is not Muslim, can I still marry him?” My heart pounded as I braced myself for the answer.

  “Does your fiancé believe in one god?” the imam asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Does he believe that the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him, is the last Messenger of God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, even though he has not taken the shahada, we consider him a Muslim and you can marry him.”

  A huge wave of relief rushed over me, as it sunk in that I did not have to choose between my fiancé and my religion. Suddenly it occurred to me that nothing was holding me back from converting.

  “Can I convert now?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the imam replied.

  After some more discussion about Islam, we started to speak about the major beliefs of Islam, my experience with Christianity, and what to expect from my conversion. He told me that converting was a simple process, and that I needed only to make two professions of faith. I then repeated after him in Arabic and then in English, “I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

  After years of searching for guidance and praying on what to do, I found taking the shahada to be both momentous and anticlimactic. It was enormously transforming, but over too quickly. I experienced a similar feeling of elation and disappointment later, when I first entered a masjid to pray. I was accustomed to large, colorful, stained-glass windows, life-size statues of Jesus on the cross, peace be upon him, and ornately carved, dark-wood pews. The plain walls and the large, empty prayer room in the masjid were amazingly peaceful, but seemed to be lacking something as well.

  It did not take me long to appreciate, however, that stillness and simplicity offered me the best atmosphere for prayer. I also came to realize that a few words spoken from the heart and for the heart are far more meaningful than any public display and celebration could ever be.

  After I took the shahada, the imam told me to take a shower when I got home, to purify myself as a new Muslim, and that all of my previous sins had been forgiven. He gave me several pamphlets about Islam, and I bought a long, thick, black hijab to wear during prayers.

  Driving home, I realized how grateful I was to be a Muslim. I felt that I had wasted my life until that moment. I could not wait to tell Mike what had happened. I thought about how best to tell him. After all, neither he nor I had thought I was going to convert that day—I was on a fact-finding mission, nothing else. I decided not to call him but to surprise him when he returned home. I would be waiting to greet him, wearing my long black hijab.

  After several hours of waiting impatiently, I heard him unlock the door. I stood in the hallway, smiling. As soon as he walked inside, I blurted out, “What do you think of your Muslim fiancée?” He answered with silence, not the reaction I had been expecting.

  In fact, his blank expression made my smile disappear. I began to explain clumsily how I had ended up converting. Still, he did not appear pleased. I asked him directly if he was upset. After an uncomfortably long pause, he responded, “No . . . no. I just wasn’t expecting this today. The scarf sort of startled me, too.”

  In retrospect, I sh
ould have never sprung such news on him as he walked through the door after a long day at work, while wearing that exceedingly unattractive hijab. The news of my conversion would have been enough of a wallop.

  After his initial shock, we discussed my conversion and laughed about his first reaction. But then he said something that made me cry: He told me that we should not be intimate until we were married. He said that he knew that I took my conversion seriously and he did not want me to begin my new life in sin. I had not even considered that as a possibility.

  A few months later, we married. He supported me in every decision related to my faith, even agreeing to raise our children Muslim. He always told me, “I don’t want to stand between you and the Big Guy.” When I decided to wear a head scarf in public and not just for prayers, he supported that decision as well. I was scared that he would find me unattractive, but he told me that I was beautiful. I also was afraid that he would not want to be seen with a wife who was so visibly Muslim—there’s nothing inconspicuous about wearing a head scarf in the post-9/11 United States. While I was willing to accept the inevitable flack, it seemed a lot to ask of my non-Muslim husband, but he told me that we had nothing to hide.

  We lived in blissful peace for about six years. Then one day, while I was at a Muslim toddler playgroup with our daughters, it somehow came up in conversation with a sister that my husband was not Muslim. I was not prepared for the discussion that followed.

  “Really?” the sister asked. “So, you converted after you were married?”

  “No, I converted a few months before.”

  The sister hesitated, clearly not sure if she should continue.

  “Do you know that your marriage isn’t valid? Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslim men. You are committing zina! ”

  Zina?! How could that be? I asked myself. “But I specifically received permission from an imam that I could marry my husband,” I told her. Surely, he would not have said it was okay if it were not true.

  “I don’t know what that imam told you, but you need to talk to your husband about converting. Your marriage isn’t lawful.”

  I left the toddler group in an awful condition. Zina is a major sin. I could not ignore what I had just heard. The imam with whom I had converted had moved away long before, so I could not speak with him. I asked my new imam if what the sister had told me was true. He had known that my husband was not Muslim, but erroneously believed that I had converted after we were married and apparently was giving my husband time to convert before speaking with me about my situation. In fact, most of the other Muslims whom I knew thought that was the case. When the imam learned that I had converted before we got married, he confirmed what the sister had said: I should not have married a non-Muslim. My marriage was invalid.

  The news was tremendously upsetting. My husband was more supportive of my faith than many Muslim men. He gladly watched our children while I attended lectures on Islam; we celebrated Islamic holidays (he even fasted) and gave up the Christian holidays; he helped to raise our daughters as good Muslims. We had such a wonderful relationship that it was difficult for me to accept that it could be wrong. I wondered what was expected of me now. Some scholars say that a Muslim woman must divorce her non-Muslim husband immediately. It was devastating to even think that was a possibility.

  I knew I had to tell my husband what I had learned right away. I did not know how he would react. He had been reading about Islam and attending lectures, but as far as I knew, he was not ready to convert. In fact, I had purposely stopped asking him about it because I thought I was pushing too hard. But when I told him what I had learned about our marriage, his quick response was completely unexpected: “It’s time for me to convert.”

  I had expected him to convert someday, but I had thought it would take longer. Shortly after we were married, I had a dream that my husband was hanging on to the edge of a very high, steep cliff. I fell off the clifftop, and as I passed him, I yanked him off. As we were falling to the ground, he yelled at me, “I was safe where I was. Why did you pull me off? We are both going to die.” I told him that if we just prayed to God, we would land safely. He continued yelling as we fell closer and closer to the ground. At the last moment, he prayed to God with me and we both landed safely together. My interpretation of the dream was that he was going to convert eventually, but that it might take a while.

  If I had paid more attention to his spiritual progress, though, I might not have been so surprised that he was ready. Although he had been reading about Islam and attending lectures, the big shift had come when he started reading books and listening to CDs by an American Muslim scholar who was born in the United States and raised Christian. My husband could identify with this scholar, who spoke in familiar terms and references. He became able to separate the religion from its associated cultural and political baggage. He could see organized religion’s utility in modern life. In an articulate, logical fashion, this scholar answered many of the questions that had prevented Mike from converting. He believed in One God and that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a Messenger of God and the Seal of the Prophets. Mike’s reasons not to convert had slowly dropped away.

  A year or so after he converted, we were attending a weekend-long Islamic seminar in another state. As my husband shaved and I pinned my hijab, I smiled. We had met as non-Muslims in a bar. At the time, we would never have guessed that in the not-so-distant future we would be gladly spending our precious weekends together, learning our deen. I am so grateful to Allah, Glorious and Exalted is He, for bringing Islam to me and allowing me to share the journey with someone I love.

  Alhamdulillah.

  From Shalom to Salaam

  S. E. Jihad Levine

  “So be patient. Verily, the Promise of Allah is true, and ask forgiveness for your fault, and glorify the praises of your Lord . . . ”

  —QUR’AN, 40:55

  After nearly six years of marriage, my husband, Habeeb, divorced me, by Al-Talaq and in the U.S. courts. Nothing that I said or did at the time could convince him to try to make it work. I even requested a meeting with our imam for mediation, but Habeeb told him firmly that he didn’t want to be married to me anymore. He said he could no longer cope with the arguments and stress. I was devastated. I had finally become Muslim the year before and was still wobbling on new-shahada legs, an infant looking at the world with fresh eyes.

  When we married, I was a practicing Jew. Born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, my brother and I were raised as Reform Jews until my parents divorced when I was twelve years old. After the divorce, my mom converted us to Catholicism. I remember the whirlwind confusion of receiving baptism, confession, Holy Communion, and confirmation all within a two-year time frame. When I was old enough to choose for myself, I returned to Judaism, but Christianity left its mark by giving me a love and recognition for Jesus, peace on him.

  My family didn’t react well to my marriage. Even though I remained Jewish initially, my father refused to recognize my husband as his son-in-law. It was hard for me to decipher his real objection: my husband’s religion, or—though my dad never came out and said it—my husband’s race. My father, of blessed memory, in addition to being a Zionist, was bigoted.

  “But, Sharon, those people hate us!” he cried. My efforts to explain the difference between the peaceful religion of Islam and the political struggle between the Palestinians and Israelis fell on deaf ears. Never mind that my father himself was the first in the family to marry outside of Judaism, and that my mother remained Christian throughout their marriage.

  Later, when I embraced Islam, my father nearly disowned me. He still accepted an occasional phone call, but his replies were cold, distant, and brief. Because he loved me so much, I don’t think he could have brought himself to cut me off completely, but he made it very clear how angry and disappointed he was with me. Our relationship never recovered from what he perceived as parental disobedience and family dishonor. He died in August 2001, and, at my stepmother’s request, I w
as not told of his passing until after the funeral. Did they fear that I would show up at the synagogue dressed in a burqa and accompanied by my black husband?

  In the beginning, our marriage was good. Habeeb and I met while we were both working in a treatment center for substance abuse. We had a professional relationship, but we also hit it off personally from the start. In addition to a physical attraction, we shared an interest in books, languages, and travel. We had close friends in common, and he had a great sense of humor. Everyone liked and respected Habeeb. We often found little excuses to talk with each other at work, and soon our relationship transcended the workplace. A few months later, after I returned from a vacation to Puerto Rico, he proposed to me. It didn’t matter to me that we had different religions.

  After we married and I read Habeeb’s books about Islam, everything fell into place for me. I no longer had to be conflicted about Judaism versus Christianity, or Moses and Jesus, because Islam united the most important tenets of both faiths. I was attracted to the Islamic idea of One God and the recognition of all His prophets. I also learned about the Prophet Muhammad.

  With this truth in my heart, I said the shahada and became a Muslim. I asked friends to stop calling me by my Jewish name, Sharon. I asked to be called instead by my chosen name, Safiyyah, after one of the Jewish wives of the Prophet Muhammad.

  I didn’t convert to Islam for my husband, nor did I do it in an attempt to save my marriage. I did it for Allah, and for me. My husband never insisted I convert, but, rather, served as a role model. I watched him pray five times a day. I shared his joy in breaking his fast during Ramadan by cooking him nice evening meals. I listened as he recited Qur’an. I was intrigued and drawn to the spiritual peace he had, and wanted that for myself.