Once Were Radicals

by Irfan Yusuf

  My rebuttal worked well, especially since the speakers on the negative team were all from the Christian Fellowship. One of them came up to me afterwards and planted a further seed of doubt about my ancestral faith: ‘Irfan, your argument about Jesus was very interesting. You should explore that argument further. I think you might find that the Holy Spirit moved you to speak this truth.’

  The Holy Spirit was the spirit that had descended upon Jesus like a dove almost immediately after he was baptised by John the Baptist. It also caused some of Christ’s disciples to speak in all kinds of strange languages. But where did the Holy Spirit fit into the grand scheme of things?

  I asked this question in a Divinity class. Rev Alex was explaining to us the doctrine of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit was part of God. This made me wonder—were there three different Gods? Or was God divided into three parts? Rev Alex insisted that there was only one God, and that God was three persons in one God. He gave various examples, including that of a triangle—three sides, three angles but one triangle. But this didn’t make much sense. Yes, there were three sides and three angles. There were also two dimensions and 180 degrees.

  We changed Divinity teachers halfway through Year 9. We had a gentleman named Mr Martin, who was a huge fan of Bob Dylan and Joe Cocker. He also had a convert’s zeal, having become ‘born again’ some years back. Mr Martin had an eye for potential converts and regarded me as someone having Christian potential.

  To his credit, Mr Martin was an honest man who wanted to answer all my questions about doctrine. He tried his best to clarify the idea of a Trinitarian God, and I was almost convinced. However, there was another issue I couldn’t quite fathom: if Jesus was God, how come he was able to eat and drink and be killed in such a humiliating fashion?

  This doubt was triggered by a verse in the Koran that spoke about Jesus and his mother eating food. It was probably the most powerful yet simple argument against the divinity of Christ. How could he be God when he was so human? How could he be divine when he was killed? Who could have the power to kill God?

  Mr Martin’s answer was quite straightforward. Jesus was part of God who chose to become man and then chose to die as a man. Throughout this time, he was still God but he was also human. He then was able to resurrect the human part of him, and eventually (according to some versions of the Bible) able to resurrect. So when the Gospels talk about Jesus eating and drinking and being born and dying, this was all about Jesus being a man.

  But if Jesus was a man, does that mean he also inherited the original sin that we have inherited? Mr Martin patiently explained.

  ‘That is why Jesus was born to a virgin. He had no father. Joseph was Jesus’s stepfather. Jesus’s real father was God.’

  ‘So God was Jesus’s dad in the same manner as my dad is my dad?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘So Mary had sex with God?’

  ‘No, not in that sense.’

  ‘So is Jesus equal to God?’

  ‘Yes, He is. If you deny that, you become like Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

  ‘But when Jesus became a man, didn’t he compromise his divinity?’

  ‘Our human logic leads us to believe this. But we cannot comprehend these things. Just face facts, Yusuf. We don’t know everything about God.’

  It was a compelling argument. But where was its scriptural proof? And if there were arguments in support of this in the Old Testament, did Jews also believe this stuff?

  ‘Yusuf, you will find the proof everywhere in the Bible. Look in the Old Testament, in the Book of Genesis. God talks about Himself in plural, as “We”. What does that show you? Was God talking about one person?’

  ‘But Mr Martin, God calls Himself “We” in the Koran also.’

  ‘Yusuf, the Koran isn’t the book of God. It talks about Allah, not God. The Christian God is a Trinitarian God.’

  ‘Do Jews believe in a Trinity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So do Jews believe in the same God as Christians?’

  ‘Jews believe in the Old Testament God.’

  ‘Did God change when the New Testament was written?’

  Mr Martin’s arguments were patiently presented. However, to my mind, they began to sound ridiculous. It seemed strange that I had to wait until Year 9 to learn such fundamental doctrines, and that I had to stretch my brain cells to understand them. But Islamic beliefs about God were so simple, and were among the first things I was taught as a young child. It was easy to explain the Islamic concept of God (la ilaha illallah—‘There is no god except God’) to a four-year-old. But try explaining the intricacies of the Trinity and other doctrines to a four-year-old.

  Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough to understand the beliefs of my school. Later, I saw a book that proved enormously influential. It was called Jesus: The Evidence by Ian Wilson and was based on a BBC TV documentary. The book undermined any faith I might have had in the veracity of the New Testament. I learned that there were numerous different gospels floating around in the years after Jesus. I also learned about the confused state of Judaism during the Roman occupation of Palestine.

  The death knell to my Christianity was the discovery of a South African Muslim missionary named Ahmed Deedat, an aggressive debater whose public spats with various prominent Christian missionaries were not just entertaining but also enlightening. Ahmed Deedat had no university training, yet seemed to have almost memorised the Bible (or at least the key verses that proved his points) and had also read and memorised key verses in both Hebrew (the original language of the Old Testament) and ancient Greek (the original language of the New Testament).

  At this point of the book, some Christian readers might feel somewhat slighted. The previous and following paragraphs aren’t designed to malign or belittle Christianity or the faith of Christians. I recognise that for many Christians, these ideas of Jesus’s divinity, the resurrection and so on are a source of enormous solace and strength. I myself am a beneficiary of the fruits of Christianity. St Andrews was a school that took its Christianity seriously, and it is a credit to Christians everywhere that such fine schools exist where young non-Christian men like myself could explore these issues without being beaten with a stick. Although Christian teachings seemed far more civilised to me, this in itself did not make the fundamental teachings of Christianity true. I imagined the truth lay in some combination of Islamic doctrine and Christian civilisation.

  At the end of Year 9, Mum decided to take me to Pakistan to visit my cousins and relatives. This was my third trip (we’d had a brief trip when I had finished Year 7, but this was largely uneventful). By that time, I still had some interest in religion but had also become obsessed with rock’n’roll. I developed my own taste in music different to that of my elder sisters who were still swinging somewhere between tragic Bollywood songs and the Electric Light Orchestra. I became addicted to British and Irish rock music, especially U2 and Simple Minds. My record collection began to grow, and soon included Tim Finn and The Police.

  On the way to Pakistan, we stopped off at Manilla airport. There I managed to pick up over thirty tapes of some of my favourite artists. It wasn’t until I got back to Australia that I realised the tapes weren’t exactly originals.

  In Karachi, we stayed at the rather large home of Mum’s aunt from the Jamaat-i-Islami, whom we called Naani Amma. Karachi was just as dirty and dusty as it was eight years before. However, for me it was a novelty to be holidaying in a different environment. I was also appreciative of the comments my relatives were making about me. One of my mum’s cousins, Aunt Lubna, spoke fluent English. She observed once: ‘My God, Irfan. I can’t believe you are so well-behaved. And you have grown so tall and handsome.’

  Her husband, Uncle Junaid, soon reminded me that everything is relative. ‘That’s right. You are so much better than you were the last time you were here. You were a complete rascal back then. We were scared of inviting you in case you broke another window!’

  My Urdu had been substant
ially weakened, and I tried on this trip to speak Urdu as much as I could. I felt very much at home in Pakistan, where I didn’t stand out from the crowd (until I spoke Urdu of course!) and I couldn’t help but notice all kinds of shops and businesses having my name. There was even a large Irfan Shopping Arcade in a busy street where another of my aunts had a homeopathic medical clinic.

  Naani Amma was now my only maternal grandmother, as Mum’s actual mum had passed away. Naani Amma noticed that I liked going to the mosque when the azaan was sounded. She could tell that I had some interest in the ceremonial aspects of my faith, and she wanted me to learn more. So she gave me access to her extensive library, which included many books in English.

  Naani Amma had books on all different subjects. Most were by the same few authors, most prominent of whom was a man named Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami. Mum had also studied some of Maududi’s work, and she praised him for his superb Urdu prose. Even his most fervent opponents agreed that Maududi was a brilliant writer.

  I found much of Maududi’s work a little hard to understand at first. I forced myself to read some of his more esoteric works on legal philosophy, politics and ethics. However, Naani Amma noticed that I was soon getting bored. She told me to read more basic stuff, and pointed me in the direction of an American writer named Maryam Jameelah.

  I read one book by Maryam Jameelah called Islam vs Ahl-i-Kitab: Past & Present, which compared Islam to Judaism and Christianity. I skipped the section on Judaism, as I always assumed Jews and Muslims had little to disagree about. Most of Jameelah’s chapter was about how European orthodox Jewish children studied in a traditional environment which was very similar to a madrassa. For Jameelah, the main differences between Jews and Muslims seemed to be political, and these would not interest me until some years later.

  Jameelah’s chapter on Christianity was unusual. What she described as Christianity was not what I had been exposed to at St Andrews. She seemed to confuse Christianity with Western society. Perhaps I wasn’t reading her book closely enough, but I soon did away with it.

  The book that really caught my attention was one called The Myth of the Cross. It was written by a Nigerian barrister named Alhaj A.D. Ajijola, who like me had attended a Christian school and was initially attracted to Christianity. He was from a nominally and culturally Muslim family, though his indigenous Nigerian upbringing was different to mine.

  Ajijola set out quite clearly certain Christian doctrines and their basis from Christian scriptures. He tried to prove using the words of Jesus as reported in the New Testament that Christian doctrines such as the Trinity were largely invented by Paul of Tarsus, a Jew who was also a Roman citizen and who persecuted Jesus’s followers until he saw a vision on the road to Damascus and became a Christian.

  Ajijola’s book proved decisive to me, though I did notice that he had certain errors in his biblical citation. The book convinced me that Christian doctrines were not true and that Islamic beliefs were true, but it failed to convince me that the rest of Islam was true.

  7

  Discovering Islam and jihad

  Mum and Naani Amma arranged for a veritable library of books to be shipped from Pakistan. These books arrived around four months later when I was halfway through Year 10.

  I started reading Maududi’s books, and soon found I could understand much of what he was saying. I forced myself to read the first chapter of his book Risalat-i-Diniyat which had been translated into English as Toward Understanding Islam.

  It was an immensely powerful chapter, and it taught me about the importance of understanding the proper meanings of various religious words I had become accustomed to. Maududi taught that the word ‘Islam’ had two basic meanings: ‘surrender to God’ and ‘peace’. These two meanings combined to form the basic message of our faith—that the only way to achieve real and lasting peace, both individually and socially, was through surrendering to the will of God. Human beings who surrendered and achieved peace willingly were given the title of ‘Muslim’.

  Maududi explained that the entire universe surrendered to God and was thus Muslim. Words like physics, chemistry and astronomy were all just names that human beings invented to describe what was in fact the law of God. These laws were collectively known by the name sharia. Unlike other creatures, human beings had a free will. However, we still had a part of us that surrendered to God. That part was our biology, our metabolism. God controlled how blood flowed through our veins and arteries and capillaries. Part of us surrendered and was therefore, by definition, Muslim. What made us truly Muslim was when we surrendered our free will to God.

  Maududi also taught the meaning of the words kufr and kaafir. Up until now, I thought the word kaafir referred to someone who worshipped idols. Maududi said that the word kufr (which was related to kaafir) referred to the act of covering up the truth. A kaafir didn’t just willingly deny the truth but went further and covered up the truth so that others couldn’t see it. A kaafir wasn’t satisfied with his own ignorance, but wanted to make sure that others were ignorant. In this sense, a kaafir was the worst form of oppressor.

  Then there was another book I started reading. It was by a man named Muhammad Qutb and was called Islam: The Misunderstood Religion. I was intrigued by the title, as well as by the author’s claims that many Muslims had also misunderstood Islam. The book had been sitting in our library at home for many years and was in such poor condition that it was missing a front cover.

  Qutb taught that Islam was not just a religion. Rather, it was a divinely ordained system of living. Islam was a system that governed all areas of individual and collective life including economics, politics, family relations and law. Qutb admitted that his book was about defending Islam from its critics, and for me it provided confident and mostly logical answers to questions about such things as polygamy and capital punishment. It also answered questions about gender segregation and a range of other issues, though I was put off by some of the sweeping generalisations (e.g. that women were more emotional and less rational beings) and the embarrassing spelling and grammatical errors.

  I felt empowered by this knowledge and spoke to Mum about all these wonderful things I had learned. Far from being impressed, Mum impressed upon me the need to read more about the Koran and Islamic worship, and she handed me a book of hadith.

  Although a short book, I found it difficult to understand. One hadith concerned the Angel Gabriel dressing up as a traveller and approaching the Prophet in the presence of his companions to ask questions. These were basic questions like ‘What is Islam’ and ‘What is Iman’ (Iman = faith). Then there was another hadith that spoke about the Day of Judgment. It mentioned three people who had done really good things. One had died defending Muslims, another had been wealthy and given lots away in charity while the third was learned and had memorised the Koran. All three were sentenced to hell.

  I was really troubled by this hadith and asked Mum to explain it to me. Mum said that only God knows who gets to heaven and who doesn’t, and so we shouldn’t feel proud about the good things we do because we could still end up in hell. I found this notion—that even good people could go to hell—really troubling. Mum could see this, and so she gave me another book by Maududi. It was one of sermons called Khutbaat (literally ‘sermons’) which were delivered in the early 1940s to villagers in a region of Punjab called Pathankot. She gave me an English translation of Khutbaat which was titled Fundamentals of Islam. I found this book quite easy to read, and soon learned about the significance of various acts of worship such as nemaaz and fasting (which we called roza). However, the book also had a chapter on another word I had seen used on the news—jihad.

  I knew of jihad as a war the Afghans were fighting to rid their country of nasty Russian communists. I assumed it must have been a special word used in the Afghan language to describe war against communism. However, Maududi taught that jihad was in fact any struggle, whether using arms or one’s pen or even one’s will. Hence, fighting
one’s desire to commit a sin is a form of jihad. Still, the most important jihad was to struggle against one’s enemies. These enemies could even be other Muslims.

  Maududi taught that the ultimate task of a Muslim was to establish God’s order on the earth. This meant establishing Islam in every area of one’s personal and social life. Both Maududi and Qutb spoke about the Islamic ‘state’ and the Islamic ‘system’. Islam was no longer just about beliefs and scriptures, or about going to the mosque. Rather, Islam was about power, who held it and whom God wants to hold it on this earth among human beings.

  Jihad was the struggle to establish this system. However, Maududi insisted it was not to be a military war unless the war was imposed by outsiders and Muslims needed to defend themselves.

  God demanded obedience, and not just in the mosque or on the nemaaz rug. Maududi’s books spoke of Islam as an ‘ideology’. The struggle to establish Islam is largely an ideological struggle against other competing systems such as socialism, capitalism, liberalism and democracy. The Islamic ideology had much in common with these ideologies, but Islam wasn’t made up by men but was revealed to men by God. Hence, Islam was more balanced and consistent with human nature.

  So how did jihad work in practice? Maududi spoke about the jihad fought during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. I recalled some of these battles from a movie I once saw called The Message. Maududi taught that all battles fought by the Prophet were defensive. Muslims fought because they were unjustly invaded. They had no choice but to defend themselves, their families, their lives and their properties. If they fought and died, they would reach paradise without any judgment or reckoning. A few minutes’ or hours’ pain on the battlefield in exchange for eternity in paradise with God. It sounded like a terrific deal. And it was available in Afghanistan, with full backing from the United States and the West.