Thirst for Truth: From Mohammad to Jesus by Nikki Kingsley

This is a remarkably engaging book of a conversion story from Islam to Catholicism.  Nikki—her birth name being Naylah—was a believing Muslim who did not hate her religion but who found it lacking and as she learned about Christianity began to have mystical experiences.  She tried to push the mystical experiences away, but in their persistence she looked into what Christianity was about and began to understand the fullness of truth, that God was not just a master and she a servant but a loving Father.  This is not an anti-Islam book but one of discovery and joy.

Nikki takes you through her idyllic upbringing with a loving family, an arranged marriage that turned out to be horrid, if not hellish, through her deepened Islamic faith to find solace from the marriage, her escape to the United States to get away from that marriage, a new marriage to a non-religious Christian, which allowed her to keep her Islamic faith, but in that contact a discovery which led her to Jesus Christ.  It was while visiting St. Patrick’s Cathedral as tourists that began her mystical experience with Blessed Virgin Mary—Maryam as she is called in the Quran—which led her to Jesus.

Some quotes.

The rituals made me feel that coming before Allah was no small matter, and He expected a reverence and fear from me when I prayed.  He was the master to be feared for He was quick to punish.  Allah had ninety-nine names that described his attributes, but there was never any hint of a possibility to have a relationship with Him.  Rather it seemed that having the audacity to even desire a relationship with Allah showed arrogance and pride.  (p. 39)

 

I had difficulty living on the surface as a Muslim, but never looking beneath the crust that seemed to be full of cracks.  I continued to have questions and thoughts about Allah, and an ache in my heart to know Him more fully.  I couldn’t understand why I was not satisfied like them—there must be something I was missing.  I knew that Islam was the only path to Allah, so why wasn’t he answering me?  I was not satisfied with my prayers alone, as it seemed one-sided.  I wanted a response from Him, and I believed there was much more on the other side of the door.  I knew the Truth was there, and I yearned for it, so I did what I was trained to do and kept prostrating myself before Him, begging Allah to reveal Himself.  (p. 77)

 

I tried to find peace in accepting this teaching of Islam and to forget the dream that had started this discussion about Jesus.  But my heart was unsettled, and I could not stop thinking about this Jesus and who He was.  I knew this was not just a dream.  I was trying hard to accept the Quran’s version of Jesus, but my heart kept rebelling.  (91)

 

I am not sure when I came to think of Jesus as God, but the Truth had quietly rooted itself in my heart.  I knew He was God, because only God could love like He loved me, even after my rejection.  Only God could touch my spirit and infuse the Truth in such a gentle way, and fill me with such peace.  Only God could have the magnanimous love to suffer for even those who didn’t love Him, and open the door to Heaven for all mankind!  And finally, only God could have turned me around from my faith in Islam to accept the very things that were once blasphemous to me!  (p. 116)

 

The immense richness of the Catholic faith, and the treasures of its teachings overwhelmed me.  I was like a starving person before an unending buffet of rich food and drink.  My soul was soaking up and taking its fill of riches of the faith that brought me to a closer union with God.  All of the Sacraments offered within the Church continued to work within my soul and my openness to receive instruction and grow in my relationship set the scene for the next amazing event to take place.  (p. 138)

 

I have shared my journey with the personal and mystical events to explain how I came into a relationship with the Father.  If some of you struggle to understand or believe it, I hope you will at least consider the possibility.  My purpose is not to convince you to believe it, but I hope to awaken a desire in your heart to search deeper for the truth without giving God boundaries to respond within.  (p.176)

I read this book on impulse and in only two days, which is incredibly fast for me.  It’s that engaging.  I came across Nikki Kingsley as a guest on The Journey Home, a TV program where guests are invited to tell their conversion stories to the Catholic Church.  You can watch that episode here.

 

Now you can’t buy this book on Amazon, at least not yet as I’m currently writing, but you can order it from Ms. Kingsely’s website.  This book was a joy to read.  It contains a lot more information than that TV testimonial can provide.  As Nikki says in her prologue, “Walk with me through the darkness and into the Light.”

Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics, 100 Questions and Answers

In a quest to learn more about Islam since it’s constantly in the news, I picked up this book.  I especially liked that it’s written for Catholics.  Indeed it relates Islamic concepts against Catholic concepts, so that a Catholic can understand the similarities and contrasts.  But I think almost any non-Catholic Christian would get much if not all the same out of this book.  As I read it, there is way more contrast than similarities.  The full title is Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholic, 100 Questions and Answers and it’s written by Daniel Ali, a convert from Islam to Catholicism, and Robert Spencer, a Melkite Greek Catholic and is a well-known though controversial expert on Islam.  You can read Daniel Ali’s conversion story at The Coming Home Network, here.    

The book is organized in the form of questions that a Catholic might have and then follows an extended answer.  That makes for casual reading where you can put it down and pick it up at your leisure without missing the general flow.  I read the book over the course of several months but you could read the entire book in a day or two. 

Not surprising the very first question is, “What is Islam?”  Then follows a series of questions that gets into the heart of Islam.  “What is the difference between the terms “Muslim” and “Islam?”  “What are the basic tenets of Islam?”  Here is how the authors answer that question:

In sharp contrast to the complexities of Christian theology, Islam is a religion of simplicity.  It’s primary beliefs are summed up in the Shahada, or Confession of Faith: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is His prophet.”

When trying to win converts among Christians, Muslims frequently make use of this simplicity as a key selling point.  They compare the length of the Nicene Creed to the brevity of the Shahada and point to the Trinity as a sign that Christianity is not only hopelessly complicated, but illogical—and a sharp contrast to Islam’s noble simplicity…

Of course there is no compelling reason why the truth should be simpler than error.  In fact, it is often the other way around, as men unwisely try to tame divine truths by simplifying them.  We need to remember that God is radically transcendent and omniscient—that is, He exists eternally distinct from His creation and knows everything as eternally present.  He remains, then, an inexhaustible mystery to man, His finite creature.  Indeed, He is the Mystery.  Thus, it should not be surprising if His revelations to us is full of profound mysteries….

As you can see the authors contrast Islamic theology with that of Christian.  If I may add to that explanation above, most understanding of nature turns out to be more complicated than the surface.  At one time physics was fairly simple, but then we learned of thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum theory, relativity, and now string theory.  To requote the authors, “there is no compelling reason why the truth should be simpler than error.”

From the theological questions, the book moves to questions of foundation, especially that of its prophet, Muhammed.  “According to Muslim belief, how did Muhammed receive Allah’s revelations?”  “Is it true that Muhammed was an army leader or general?”  “Did Muhammed write the Koran?”  “How is the Koran different from the Bible?”  That is worth quoting the answer.

In content, the closest books to the Koran in the Bible are the five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  The Muslim holy book has the same mix of laws and narratives about God’s dealings with His people.  But the Loran is unlike any book of the Bible in that there is only one speaker throughout: Allah (although there are a few exceptions to this that bedevil Muslims to this day).

While the Pentateuch presents a more or less continuous narrative from the creation of the world to the Israelites imminent entry into the Promised Land, the Koran makes no attempt at linear history.  Though the Koran is shorter than the New Testament, a surprisingly large amount of what it says is repeated.  Nevertheless, the reader often cannot figure out what exactly is being said, or why, without reference to the Hadith.  We will examine this later.

The Hadith is explained in a subsequent question, “Is the Koran the sole rule of faith for the Muslim?”

Not precisely.  Muhammed’s Tradition, the Hadith, is the second source of Islamic faith.  In Muslim theory and practice, the Hadith is virtually equal in importance to the Koran.  Indeed, since Allah refers to many matters with which Muhammed is familiar but we are not, the Koran is often unintelligible.  Muslims, however, are not free to interpret their sacred book in any way they please, for “whenever Allah and His apostles have decided a matter, it is not for the faithful man or woman to follow a course of their own choice” (Sura 33:36).

Muslims can find Muhammed’s own authoritative explanations of passages of the Koran in a number of voluminous collections of Ahadith (Ahadith is the Arabic plural of Hadith).  The Koran also commands every Muslim to follow Muhammed’s example, obeying all that he did, said, commanded, or prohibited (see Sura 33:21).

Other questions pertain to Jihad, Islam’s cultural norms, and Islam’s views of other cultures.  So without more quoting, Muhammed is “the perfect” man in Islam, where by all Muslims are supposed to emulate.  Now that presents itself many problems.  Muhammed was, among other things, a military leader and by the force of his sword mustered the polytheistic Arabic tribes into religious unity.  He killed people.  He had people killed.  He accumulated wealth and women.  He had 800 Jews beheaded. There is no parallel between Christ and Muhammed.  A shorthand comparison between Christianity and Islam (this is not in this book, I picked it up elsewhere) can be summarized in this way: Christ died to start Christianity; Muhammed killed to start Islam.  The difference is critical.  Christians are supposed to emulate Christ; Muslims are supposed to emulate Muhammed.  So when you see Islamists beheading in Jihad, they are emulating Muhammed.

The book is incredibly fair.  It really is not a rag on Islam but presents the religion fairly but in contrast to Christianity.  For my conclusion here, I wanted to present two stories the authors of Inside Islam use to contrast the two faiths.

Consider the difference in the following two stories, first from the Gospel of John and the second from Hadith.  In the Gospel narrative, we read about the woman committing adultery.  Not Jesus’ response:

Then each went to his own house, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.  But early in the morning He arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to Him, and He sat down and taught them.  Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.  They said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.  Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.  So what do you say?”  They said this to test Him, so that they could have some charge to bring against Him.  Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.  But when they continued asking Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Again He bent down and wrote on the ground.  And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders.  So He was left alone with the woman before Him.  Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She replied, “No one, sir.”  Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more” (Jn 7:53-8:11).

The following episode is from the Hadith.  Note how Mohammed’s actions are in sharp contrast with those of Jesus:

There came to him [the Holy Prophet] a woman from Ghamid and said: Allah’s Messenger, I have committed adultery, so purify me.  He [the Holy Prophet] turned her away.  On the following she said: Allah’s Messenger, Why do you turn me away?...By Allah, I have become pregnant.  He said: Well, if you insist upon it, then go away until you give birth to [the child].  When she was delivered she came with the child [wrapped] in a rag and said: Here is the child whom I have given birth to.  He said: Go away and suckle him until you wean him.  When she had weaned him, she came to him [the Holy Prophet] with the child who was holding a piece of bread in his hand.  She said: Allah’s Apostle, here is he as I have weaned him and he eats food.  He [the Holy Prophet] entrusted the child to one of the Muslims and then pronounced punishment.  And she was put in a ditch up to her chest and he commanded people and they stoned her.  Khalid b Wahlid came forward with a stone which he flung at her head and there spurted blood on the face of Khalid and so he abused her.  Allah’s Prophet heard his [Khalid’s] curse that he had hurled upon her.  Thereupon he [the Holy Prophet] said: Khalid, be gentle.  By Him in Whose Hand is my life, she has made such a repentance that even if a wrongful tax-collector were to repent, he would have been forgiven.  Then giving command regarding her, he prayed over her and she was buried.  (Muslim, Vol 3, Book 17, No. 4206)

At least the “holy prophet” prayed for her.  Next time you hear about of the “most merciful” Muhammed, think about one who brings true mercy, Jesus Christ.

From Islam to Christ by Derya Little, Part 2

Part 1 of my posts on Derya Little’s From Islam to Christ: One Woman’s Path through the Riddles of God, can be found here.  I had gone through her conversion from Islam to atheism, but her spiritual development continued..

The conversion from atheist to Christianity happened several years later when in University.  It started by getting a job tutoring Turkish to an American woman who had moved to Turkey with her family.  As it happened, Therese and her family lived only a few streets down the block from her apartment.  She recalls walking in for the first time:

As far as I could see from the front door, the only thing one would not find in a typical Turkish household was the framed cross-stitched work, right across from the entrance.  It appeared to be a verse from the New Testament:

And there is no salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.  Acts 4:12  

As a now “militant atheist” for quite a number of years, the quote caught her attention and now could place Therese into a context, though she didn’t really know what the quote meant, but she could tell it had a religious context.  As a twenty-something who had “figured out the secrets of the universe…by reading about the cosmos and the theory of evolution” she decided that through their interactions she would bring Therese over to the atheist side.  But Therese was more than an intellectual match for her.

Since I was an atheist, and I had no qualms about spreading my own "faith", I was the one who brought up the subject of religion with Therese.  The Lord knew I needed a woman who was as intellectual and stubborn as I was.  We didn't have the tentative and gentle relationship of two women.  If someone had observed one of our heated discussions, he would have thought of two grouchy rams fighting with their horns, neither of them willing to yield.  In many ways these discussions were refreshing.  Over the years, I had surrounded myself with people who thought and believed what I thought and believed.  We enjoyed making fun of Islam and Muslims and reading about evolution and quantum physics.  There's nothing like being smarter than everyone else.  Thankfully God knows me better than I know myself, and He sent me someone who would not hesitate to put me in my place.  

Therese was not your run-of-the mill Christian who just listens in church.  She knew her faith and was a strong evangelist.  So the college student atheist who thought she knew it all came in direct debate with someone who was as sharp and contentious as she was. 

The major difference of opinion between Therese and me boiled down to what we believed in regard to human nature.  I believed that people are inherently good and that there is no such thing as sin.  People act the way they do because of the way they were raised or because of society's unjust treatment and expectations of them.  If people were freed from unnecessary rules and laws, we would all live in peace and harmony, I thought.  All the expectations of living together as social beings and the supposed wisdom of generations put undue pressure on otherwise good people and made them go astray.  Add income inequality and poverty, and there was the recipe for crime and war.  The only solution was to remove all this baggage.  It would take some time and effort to eliminate all traces of organized religion, government, and capitalism, but I was hopeful.  

But of course that view couldn’t explain real human nature.  Why were there murderers?  Why was there divorce? Why are people greedy? 

Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the fact that people are flawed and weak—sinful, in other words.  If they were not, there would be no need for Christ's sacrifice...According to Therese's Christian faith, we sinners need a savior.  

Their debates became heated, became intense.  Slowly Derya began to get some new insight.

Over the years, I had come to worship modern, atheistic science, which claims that there is no proof for an all-powerful, benevolent God, and that the universe is only matter.  Everything in it could be explained with the scientific method, I thought.  There was no room for God in the tightly woven tapestry of material causes and effects.  Not until I met Therese, and began searching for answers to her questions, did I begin to discover the weaknesses in my view of the world.

I came to see that my basic problem was a matter of perception.  Science has demonstrated that everything in the universe is finely tuned, particularly for life to be sustained on earth.  Rather than being the grounds for atheism, could not the discoveries of science point toward a Creator, who values life and therefore designed the conditions for its existence?

Finally there was breakthrough

Day in and day out, Therese and I talked about God and Christ and the necessity for His sacrifice.  I was not ready to hear about Christ at first, but it became harder and harder at first to insist there was no God.  Slowly, the realization dawned that evolution, and God, science and religion, were not mutually exclusive.

There’s more of course.  Derya works through arguments of beauty, from the sanctity of life, from reading Dostoyevsky, and from witnessing the home dynamics and childrearing of Therese’s Christian home, and the home of another Christian family.  I don’t have the space to go through it all, you’ll have to get the book.  Once her heart felt full conversion, she was baptized and volunteered for whatever few Christian events and outings were available in Turkey.  She describes her new being so well, it should be quoted.

With this new resolution in my heart, it was a brand-new day for me even as I went about doing what I ordinarily did.  I experienced a lightness of being, and the things that would normally have caused me anxiety failed to pull me down.  Classes were less stressful, friends less overwhelming, rain less annoying.  The irksome things in daily life shrank as the truly wonderful things expanded.  The world appeared more colorful, just as Knight Rider did the first time I watched it in color instead of in black and white.  Everything around me seemed to have more depth, as if I were watching Knight Rider in 3-D.  Behold, God was making everything new (see Rev 21:5)!

But she had one more conversion to make, and that involved the nature of Christianity.  It started when one of her friends, Anthony, sheepishly told her he had become Roman Catholic.

By this time, Anthony and I had known each other for about four years.  We stayed in regular communication because we had shared responsibilities for the teen camps.  As we talked about skits, improve sessions, and other activities, we became kindred spirits.  This friendship was probably why he was a little hesitant about sharing his life-changing news at the little family restaurant where we had lunch.  After the small talk, Anthony said, “I have something to tell you, but don’t be upset.”

I graciously replied, “As long as you’re not pregnant, I’ll be alright.”

Thankfully he was not pregnant.  He smiled and continued with a mixture of reluctance and hesitation.

“I’ve become Catholic,” he said.

I wished he were pregnant.

I could not believe my ears.  How could he do this?  How dare he side with those who believed in such weird and corrupted things as saints and purgatory?  How could he accept the infallibility of the pope, a mere man?  Also, what was all that idolatrous stuff about Mary?  How could I forget all the awful things the Catholic Church did, such as the Crusades and the Inquisition?  What was happening?

Needless to say I was hysterical.

I have to laugh at how some Protestants regard Catholics.  They really don’t see us as Christian, and yet, between all the commonality between Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Coptics, and other Apostolic Christian denominations, it’s clear that Protestants are the ones out of step with the general tenet of Christianity.  Obviously Derya’s reaction of hysteria was formulated from Protestant disparagement that she must have picked up in the “airwaves” around her.  So what does an intelligent girl do when she thinks her friend has made an intellectual error?  She goes on a mission to prove him wrong.  And, of course, that’s the hook, line, and sinker which brings Derya herself into the Catholic Church.  Derya goes on to find Roman Catholicism is not wrong, but as G. K. Chesterton, another famous convert, famously said, “The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” 

The issue that persuaded Anthony was the lack of a central authority in Protestantism while the central authority within the Catholic Church held faith and morals stable.  He gave Derya a little book from another convert to Catholicism, Mark Shea, By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition.  Derya dissected the book.

In his book, Shea points out the flaws in the Protestant idea of sola scriptura, that is, that the Bible is the sole authority for the Christian faith.  He demonstrates that many cherished beliefs of Evangelicals and Catholics alike cannot be found in the Bible.  The three major examples he gives are the sanctity of life as opposed to abortion, the exclusivity of marriage as opposed to polygamy, and the Trinitarian God as opposed to Arianism (an early heresy).  He argues that without Scripture and Tradition, that is, the teachings Jesus gave His apostles, Christians would have insufficient grounds for adopting these doctrines.  Shea explains that Christ Himself established the authority of His apostles over His Church, which He promised to protect to the end of time.

I learned from Shea that the Catholic Church’s teachings on faith and morals have been passed down to us through apostolic succession…To be honest, after reading Shea’s book, I was not suddenly convinced of the Catholic Church’s authority over all Christians, but I found a giant hole in my arguments against all things Catholic.

Giant holes in arguments have a way of opening larger gaps in one’s thinking, especially if you’re intelligent and honest with yourself.  Shea’s book presented answers to “nagging” questions Derya had since her conversion to Christianity. 

For a time, the rug I had swept my questions under was heavy enough to hold them down.  But as my faith matured and as more books on theology were added to my library, it became clear that Protestant teaching was not consistent on practical matters such as divorce and abortion or even on doctrinal matters such as the Trinity.  Also, I had been unable to find a satisfactory and convincing argument in favor of sola scriptura or against the Church’s Magisterium, the teaching authority composed of the pope and other bishops.  It was clear that the answers to my questions were to be found somewhere other than the Protestant churches, if they could be found at all.  I realized that three of the four matters that troubled me most were founding pillars of the Protestant movement; and I feared that if one crumbled, the whole thing would come tumbling down, and there would be nowhere else to go. 

And then Derya started looking inside herself and regarding the nature of her abilities.  Despite being incredibly intelligent, she realized that in no way could she on her own could fathom the fullness of the truth. 

Reading the Bible and relying on my own interpretation as the Holy Spirit led me did not inspire confidence.  Even though I believed I was saved, it was pretty obvious that I was still a sinner.  Especially in important matters of faith, how was it possible that every Christian could make up his own mind, when his intellect was not reliable?  In fact, the various Protestant churches were divided on these matters.  If the indwelling of the Holy Spirit were enough to guide every believer to the truth about Christ, wouldn’t every believer come to the same conclusions about Him?  Either there was something deficient in the Holy Spirit, or there was something deficient in our human nature, and it seemed more likely that the fault was ours and not God’s.  If so, that conclusion necessarily raises a question:  If human nature tends to get in the way of the truth, wouldn’t Christ have known that and provided His Church with something to counteract that tendency?

Besides sola scriptura, Derya explored other issues that she found lacking in the Protestant understanding of Christianity, such as “once saved, always saved,” the lack of necessity to do works when Christ Himself in parable after parable insists on it, the lack of a teaching Magisterium, and the sometimes incompatibility between science and faith while they seemed to complement each other so well in Catholicism.  Interestingly, it was not a long process.  She summarizes: “To be honest, the theological arguments for Catholicism were so strong that it did not take me very long to become convinced that my path was gently but surely leading to Rome.”  Finally, just as her father had been a letdown to her ideals, just as Mohammed, the father figure of Islam, had been a letdown for Islam, the father figure of Protestantism also let her down.

The last straw for me was reading about Martin Luther.  Just as Islam started to lose its appeal as I read the biography of Mohammad with an open mind, the warm glow of Protestantism began to grow dim as I read a biography of Martin Luther published by Penguin Press.  Being afraid of Catholic bias, I chose a title from a secular publisher that was not affiliated with any church.  The biography did not chronicle the life of a man who heroically stood up against the establishment but the life of a man who was used by those with political aspirations.  Luther had problems with some of the clergy and their practices that abused the faithful, but he had an unstable mind and chose the wrong way to deal with the grievances and problems.  Just like Muhammad, he was not a man I wanted to follow.  I was disappointed beyond measure with his life, and I was upset that no Christian had encouraged me to investigate this hero of Protestantism and the champion of sola scriptura.

There is so much more to the book.  I’ve left out most of the personal life.  You get some insight in what it’s like to live in Turkey, to live in a relative moderate form of Islam, and into her family.  Deya describes her life around the Christians who are on the margins of Turkish life, her trip to England for her doctoral studies, meeting what the person who would be her husband, breaking the news to her parents of her conversion, and of her new life with her husband and three children in the United States.  This is a gem of a book.

From Islam to Christ by Derya Little, Part 1

Conversion stories usually are interesting if the converter converts to your faith.  Derya Little’s conversion story, documented in her wonderful book, From Islam to Christ: One Woman’s Path through the Riddles of God, is perhaps a more extraordinary than most, and so perhaps might interest more than just Catholics.  First off she was born and raised to Muslim parents in a country that claims to be 99.8% Islamic, the Republic of Turkey.  Perhaps that claim might be exaggerated, but nonetheless the Muslim religion is probably near universal in the country.  That she went from Muslim to atheist to Protestant Christian to Roman Catholic is also rather extraordinary, especially when you consider how few Christians are even in Turkey.  Also interesting is the passionate adherence to each of her shifts.  So when she became an atheist, she was of the virulent variety; when a Protestant Christian, a staunch one; and when a Roman Catholic, a convicted one.  That Derya Little is incredibly intelligent (if I read correctly she has a Ph.D in international politics) means that her transitions took place with intellectual examination, and in this, her confessional memoir, she walks us through the intellectual transitions, filtered through her life experiences, in much the way of St. Augustine in his Confessions.  This is an extraordinary book.

The only way to do this book justice is try to capture the key transitional moments.  She grew up in what I take to be a relatively typical Turkish household.  Turkey is not the strict Islamic country as its Islamic neighbors, so the faith was not adhered to with a fundamentalist discipline, but still she went through Islamic education and learned the rudiments as any child in a western country goes through catechesis.  It was a nuclear family in that there was a mother, father, son, and daughter, with the only somewhat atypical element being that the mother worked, somewhat unusual, but more common in the large city Derya grew up.  The problem began in her pre-teen years when her father decided he was happier with other women, and ultimately wanted an open relationship with a mistress.  This was not acceptable to the mother, and so they divorced, which left the mother and the children in some financial difficulty. 

The divorce was shattering to the pre-teen child, and the disillusionment spread out into other parts of her life.  If the father she had put so much faith in could dissolve her family just like that, what other things she had put faith in were questionable.  She had not lost her faith, but her faith became nominal, if not perfunctory.  She turned to reading, a rather intellectual sort of reading for a teenager.  Through a friend, who had similar reading interests, though she was raised atheist, she was introduced to Turan Dursun, a Muslim scholar who had spent years understanding religion, only to come to the conclusion that it was false.  Ultimately Darsun was murdered by the fundamentalists, but he had written a number of books which Derya devoured.  Here’s an excerpt:

In the first book…God and the Quran, Dursun laid out the shortcomings and contradictions of Allah and Muhammed.  By that time, I had not read the Quran in Turkish, nor did I have the desire to read the numerous hadith, or traditions left behind by Muhammed.  In contrast, Dursun had devoted his formative years and a significant part of his adult life to the study of Islam…

[The book] begins by explaining Muhammed’s sexual deviancy and how new verses supposedly sent by Allah happened to accommodate his sexual whims.  For instance, at first Muhammed was supposed to sleep with as many wives in an orderly fashion so as to not skip anyone.  But then he received a revelation from Allah that he could sleep with whichever wife he wanted.  Allah so accommodated Muhammed’s carnal desires that if the prophet wanted a woman, her husband was required to divorce his wife so that she could be Muhammed’s.  This

One of the many other examples of Muhammed's sexual life that Dursun dwelled on, which had disturbed me even before I came to know Dursun's writings, was the prophet's betrothal to a six-year old child, Aisha.  Even though Muhammad did not have intercourse with her until she was nine years old and he was fifty-two, in the Sunnah Aisha recounts the day she was taken to his bed chamber, a day she had to leave her friends behind while they played on the swing and the teeter-totter.  I felt sick as I read the account of Aisha.  I thought of my sweet little neighbor who was almost nine and pictured her being married to a middle-aged man.  Instead of finding Muhammed's behavior disturbing, Islamist theologians have reasoned that since a girl of nine could cause lust in man, nine years old must be a marriageable age.  Hence the child brides in Muslim countries.  To this day this abhorrent practice steals the childhood of many girls, and it was started and sanctioned by Muhammed.

Muhammed's sexual conduct had many more elements that are repulsive.  Muhammed's legitimization of polygamy, child brides, domestic rape, and rape of women captured during battle were enough for me to take another step away from a religion founded by this kind of man.

So the first disillusionment with Islam had to do with the realization that Muhammed was far from the "perfect man" as claimed when it came to his private life.  Derya doesn't say but one wonders if the disillusionment with her father's behavior had made her more sensitive to seeing these ugly warts.  The second disillusionment had to do with what Islam itself stood for, and perhaps this was much more damaging. 

Alongside Ottoman history, the history of Islam is taught in Turkish elementary, middle, and high schools.  Textbooks chronicle the conquests of Muhammed and those of Islamic countries.  They claim that the holy prophet was trying to save stubborn and sinful people by bringing them under the rule of Islam, the only true religion.  Islam's expansion was good not only for the new territories that "willingly" came under its rule but also for Muhammed and for the glory of Allah.  I do not remember ever questioning whether the people of these strange lands wanted to become Muslims, or in what manner they agreed to come under Islamic rule.  Since there was no mention of bloody conquests or forced conversions, we assumed in our childhood innocence that all went smoothly as people joined the Islamic ranks with chants of bliss.

To me that sounds like the communist indoctrination of their people as they distort the facts and gloss over the details to make the immoral sound moral.  Derya went on to learn in excruciating detail of cutthroat strategies, the mercilessness of the warriors, and the viciousness with those that surrendered.

In book after book I read about Muhammed's life.  Since the naiveté and the submission of my previous years had left me long ago, I understood that not all who converted to Islam had the option to refuse.  For many, it was a choice between life and death.  If people were convicted enough to hold on to their own beliefs, such as the Jews of Mecca, available options under Islam were exile, alienation, and many times the bloody edge of the sword.  Muhammed could never claim that the killing he did and the wars he waged were for self-defense.  He became a warrior through and through, craving power over men and women alike.

It was hard to believe that I had been so blinded to the truth that Muhammed was yet another power-hungry man who was willing to do whatever it took to expand his empire…The veil was lifted.  After having read these accounts with fresh eyes, I was appalled at how so many people, including myself, could blindly follow this man.  He was not much worse than many kings, emperors, and sultans as far as his military affairs were concerned, but his claim to having been entrusted with bringing the one and only religion to the people was reprehensible.  How could I follow a man who had no conscience?  Muhammed not only wielded the sword, but also approved and encouraged the use of force to expand the kingdom of Allah.  The verses the Angel Gabriel supposedly brought him varied according to his political agenda.  As the Islamic state grew, Muhammed's power, wealth, and influence reached new heights.  He claimed what he wanted for himself.

Now does that sound like a "perfect man?”  Sex and power and wealth are not attributes that come with spiritual people, or with those that desire spirituality.  Derya's characterization as "the veil was lifted" is a perfect metaphor.  Derya goes on to summarize her complete loss of faith.

In Muhammed's life, I saw blood, destruction, and selfishness, not the acts of a sinless man, as the Muslims claim him to be.  I realized that the exalted founder of Islam was only a sinful man who used his influence to further himself.  I could not even respect him for his accomplishments.  Thus I completely turned my back on Islam.  I could not possibly follow a man so violent and selfish.  If there were someone I would be willing to lay my life down for, he would have to be willing to sacrifice himself for me and to promote selflessness and peace instead of chasing after the pleasures of this world.  As far as I knew, there was no such man.

After Muhammed's time, the reign of bloodshed did not diminish.  Muslim leaders continued to wage wars and to subjugate other peoples in the name of Allah.  By reading the history of Islam from the seventh century until the present day, one can see that Islam is not a religion of peace but of submission.  Thus, I came to the conclusion that religion was nothing more than an effective way for power-hungry men to manipulate people.  There was no authenticity or genuineness to be found in any religion, I decided.  I wholeheartedly believed that all religions started in the same way that Islam did and likewise evolved into a means to control the masses.  I therefore wanted nothing to do with any of them.

It would probably be an understatement to say Derya was a preconscious teenager.  While going from faith to atheism is actually an easy transition—young adults seem to do it all the time—Derya’s transition required the absorption of quite a lot of theology and history and a real look in at the core of her culture to find her faith on its face value didn’t pass an inner, moral test.  That is quite a leap for a teen, but especially so for a teen coming from a religion where social pressures are especially controlling.  She rebelled, and with the rebellion came a certain freedom, and alongside the dissolution of her family led to troublesome early teen and young adulthood years.

There I was, barely a teenager, with little parental supervision and even less moral guidance.  Needless to say, things went downhill for a while.  Since I had surrounded myself with similarly minded and misguided friends, as I drifted away from Islam, I started to embrace forbidden practices.  First in line was alcohol.

It didn’t stop with alcohol.  She went on to pills and smoking, but through it all she kept reading.  She read Freud and Marx and Nietzsche, which hardened her heart in atheism.  But she built up an impressive basis of knowledge, learned French and English, and scored in the top one percent in the academic tests of whole country and was accepted in the University of Istanbul.  Now free completely of her household she lived with boyfriends and got pregnant and twice had an abortion.

This already got long, so stay tuned for Part 2.

The Imam’s Daughter: My Desperate Flight to Freedom by Hannah Shah, Part 2

It’s been a few months since I wrote Part 1 on The Imam's Daughter, a coming of age memoir by Hannah Shah.  She was raised in an Islamic family who were Pakistani immigrants to England; she was abused by her father, who was the local Imam, and she  broke free when she found her family was arranging a marriage to someone she did not know or want.  I mentioned it was an intense story, a story I consumed in a handful of days.  I want to finish my thoughts on this non-fiction work because I found it disturbing and because I connected with poor Hannah on a visceral level.

I had just brought the reader up to where the father repeatedly raped his daughter, ostensibly because he wanted to punish her for what to him was sinful rebellion toward him and the family structure, and, though one can’t attribute raping one’s daughter to Islam, the father’s logic justified his actions through his religion.  Hannah compares the rapes to the lies her father used to get social benefits.

My dad’s decision to lie to the English government wasn’t dishonorable in our community, although being caught would have been. Honor wasn’t about what you did as much as what you were seen doing. If Dad had been caught, even then he might well have argued that taking what he could from the immoral land of goray was justified. And who in the community would have gone against him? Dad was unassailably honorable.

Indeed, in my father’s mind, there may have been nothing wrong with locking his young daughter in the cellar and beating and raping her. As long as no one outside the family knew about it, it would not dishonor the family, the community, or the mosque.

Slowly the child, struggling with the abuse, began to formulate a conception of God, and where else could she turn but to an image of her father.

When I read the Qur’an, I prayed for my life to get better, but it never did. So I began praying for my father to die. I knew it was sinful, but that didn’t stop me. Everything painful in my life flowed from him. If he was dead, life was bound to get better.

So I prayed to Allah to take Dad’s life. I didn’t really think it would happen, but it helped me deal with my anger. In any case, my prayers were never answered. I began to think that God—my father’s God—wasn’t listening. I began to think that my father’s God, Allah, was cruel and avenging, his heart devoid of love or happiness. Increasingly, I saw Allah in the image of my father. Allah threw people into the fires of hell and hung them up by their hair—at least according to my father. I lived in fear of Allah and his earthly agents: my mother and my father. I was aware, from the stories I had been told by the vicar in junior school, that Christians believed in a God who was loving and caring, and I thought the Christian God must be different from Allah. I was confused about the character of God, which was the beginning of my search for understanding and my questions about Islam.

This led Hannah on a lifelong search for an understanding of God.

I began searching for answers to my questions about Islam—questions that I wouldn’t have answered until years after. In the school library I saw an English translation of the Qur’an but knew Dad wouldn’t allow me to read it. Dad insisted the Qur’an, as rendered in Arabic, was the exact recording of Allah’s words. Translation was corruption, and the Qur’an lacked spiritual truth in other languages. The fact that none of us—Dad included—understood Arabic didn’t seem to concern him. Dad had learned all of what he assumed to be in the Qur’an at the madrassa in Pakistan when he was growing up. He had learned this without questioning his imam and from the way people in his village had practiced Islam.

The result was that I—like everyone on my street—had little idea what the scriptures actually said. All we knew were the teachings of Dad and a handful of other religious leaders. None of us questioned this teaching at the time.

And that is an interesting point she makes.  Most Muslims—actually most people irrespective of religion—don’t know firsthand account of their religion’s scriptures.  Most people gather their religious orientation from oral transmission, not from careful learning.  Not only did Hannah try to learn about Islam, but she tried to learn about a broad range of religions.

I found myself interested in what these other religions had to say about the relationship believers had with God. In my upbringing, Islam was about submission—blind, painful submission—yet many of these other faiths seemed to be truly enlightening. Adherents sought a personal, uplifting relationship with God, one based upon understanding God’s holy message. I was full of confusion. Why did we Muslims pray five times a day in Arabic when we didn’t understand a word of those prayers? My entire spiritual life felt like a memorized prayer: mumbled and incomprehensible.

Did this lead to confusion?  I would imagine so, even if she weren’t a child.  There is this notion that all religions are essentially alike, only mythos overlaid onto that supposed essence.  That is fundamentally wrong.  All religions are not alike.  I think it was G. K. Chesterton who pointed out that religions are superficially similar but inherently different.  The understanding of the nature of Allah is very different than the nature of the Christian God, and man’s relationship to Allah is very different than man’s relationship to the Judeo-Christian God.  This understanding is what formulates Hannah intellectual development.  Once Hannah escaped her family because of the forced marriage, one of her teachers, Felicity Jones, took her in and exposed her to their Christian faith.

Here was this person letting me stay in her house, in spite of the potential risks. I wanted to know more about her and her family—including their belief system. The idea of my parents inviting a fugitive stranger of another race and faith into their home was a total impossibility. Was Mrs. Jones’s religion one difference that helped explain such incredible generosity of spirit?

It had been drilled into me that I was a useless, godless child destined for hell, and I believed it. I knew I would never be good enough for my parents’ God. When Felicity had told me her God loved me, all those months ago at college, I had scoffed. How could there be a loving God? I was intrigued by Felicity’s idea of God, even while I didn’t believe it could be true.

The church was built of aged, gray stones.  It was Methodist, Felicity said, a term that meant nothing to me. Entering by the front steps, I saw row after row of wooden pews already packed tightly with churchgoers.

And the pastor at the church was as different from an Imam as possible.

The pastor was simply referred to as Bob. He was in his mid-fifties, and I was immediately struck by how human and intimate his sermon seemed. He started off by telling a story about something quite ridiculous that had happened to him over the weekend. I glanced around furtively, amazed as everyone laughed at Bob’s mishaps. No one would dare to laugh at a Muslim holy man like my father—and he would never deign to tell such a self-deprecating, human story.

And then she started comparing her experiences between the two religions.

I left feeling happy and intrigued. I was fascinated to know how the pastor could be so relaxed, even to the extent of mocking himself in a public house of God. Bob seemed excited by his faith, and by the life of Jesus in particular. I had been told by my father never to mention Jesus’ name in our house—what about him was so compelling to Bob and others?

The following Saturday I asked Felicity if I could go again. That Sunday there was a whole new sermon from Bob, “Amazing Grace” to finish again, and more funny stories in between. There was more excited talk about Jesus, too. For the first time in my life, I found myself enjoying being at a place of worship.

Since the sermons and readings were in English, I could understand everything. The prayers, especially, made sense to me. People prayed for those who were ill, and even for people from other countries and religions who were poor or unfortunate. They prayed for whatever misfortune had happened that week—an earthquake in South America or flooding in Bangladesh. There seemed to be a concern for the wider world, regardless of whether the people in question were Christian or otherwise. Our prayers at the mosque were always set verses from the Qur’an that never seemed to vary.

And then at a Christmas Eve service, she had a moment of intense spirituality.

On Christmas Eve we went to church for midnight service. As people arrived, there was a sense of expectancy in the air, of love being shared, and of Bob telling the Christmas story. I had seen the nativity plays at primary school, but this was the first time I really understood. Bob repeated the phrase “God became man”—which echoed inside my heart. I was amazed that God could become something as humble as a normal man, simply so he could be in relationship with human beings. I had expected God to rant and rave about how bad we humans were, not emphasize the love Bob kept talking about. God’s love made him come to earth as a man to communicate with us and care for us. Bob stressed the word over and over: Love. Love. God’s love. I felt my heart racing as Bob spoke, and I wanted to know Jesus. I wanted to be a Christian.

That night she had a full conversion.

I returned to the Jones house and went to bed, hoping to dream about the piles of presents under the tree. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Bob’s words and what Julie said to me. So I prayed and, for the first time in my life, I prayed to a Christian God: “God, if you are real, if you exist and you are a loving God, then I want to know you, and I want you to come into my heart.” I never knew it was possible to have a relationship with God before the moment I prayed this prayer, and it really felt like a two-way communication. I sensed God say, “Yes, I am here. I do exist, and I love you.”

In that quiet moment I converted from Islam to Christianity!

The impossible had been made possible. I didn’t really think about it like that at the time. I didn’t think about the past—the last sixteen years of being a Muslim. I didn’t think about the faith of my birth. I was just lost in the emotion of the moment. I didn’t even consider what my changing faith might mean. I was ecstatic that there was a God who loved me and wanted a relationship with me. Me! I wanted to shout it to everyone, but I decided to keep it to myself for now and secretly enjoy the start of my new reason for living: my relationship with God.

I think that is the intellectual climax of her story, and I’ll stop there.  The events do continue.  Her family finds her and they attempt to kill her but she escapes, and she falls in love with a Christian, who asks her to marry and, in contrast to the arranged marriage her family was forcing her into, she accepts out of her free will.  It makes for great reading.  

Hannah's story is a window into a different world. Certainly not all Islamic families are this way, but there is no question that Islam played a part in the situation and how the events unfolded. Certainly not all Islamic fathers are abusive, controlling, and rapists, but Islam was certainly used to justify his behavior and, more importantly, allow the family and community to excuse it. Certainly not all Islamic families will attempt to kill their daughters over rebellion to a forced marriage, over family "honor," and apostasy, but one hears way too many that do, and many are not as lucky as Hannah. While the events of Hannah's story are at the extreme, the author lets us see the underlying logic and foundations of her community.

I grew to love Hannah. No child should ever be subject to such abuse, starting at the age of six. No woman should be subject to such control and what amounts to enslavement. It's a tribute to Hannah's shrewdness, desire for freedom, and survival instincts that she broke free of her repression. It's a credit to her that she now works to help other women in such circumstances. It's a credit to her that she has forgiven all, including her father, and come to a better understanding of Islam, which she finds in the ideal to be not as constraining as how her community practices it, though I wasn't exactly convinced. It was such a relief to find that in the end she found love, happiness, and a religion that believes in a loving God.