Living in a mainly catholic country, raised as a one(catholic)
too, many people were shocked to find out that i have converted to Islam. Like
elsewhere in the West, people think its violent religion abusive to women,
arguing that it strips them of their rights, saying many other none senses that
I consider an uninformed hate speech. If you want to see my comments on main
anti Islamic stereotypes, but are lazy to read my story- feel free to scroll
down to that part.
I will never forget the day when my brother told me we’re
all going to die eventually. I was
around 5 years old playing in my room and I don’t know how those words exactly
slipped out of his mouth, but after that I instantly started to cry. Shock,
disbelief, I couldn’t handle the painful truth, despite the fact I was just a
child and didn’t understand much about life. Going with usual child innocence,
it seemed normal to me to live with your loved ones forever…
I guess that fear of death became my main motive in the
pursuit of the answer to the question that most of us asked least once in our lives- is there a
life after death?
Ceiling inside Al Hussein's mosque in Cairo
I was raised as a catholic and had even accepted 3
sacraments. Everyone does it here,
despite the fact most of people are agnostic anyway. First we do it because our
parents decide for us, and after that most of us just care for money and gifts
that follow after ceremony celebrations, lol.
So even though i was christian on paper, I couldn’t accept to
believe in something just because i'm born in Croatia. I always thought- what if I was born in
China, India, or any other country. I would probably be a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim
or who knows what. Because of that, since a very young age I read about all
popular religions, not sticking to monotheism only, but discretely peeking into
a world of polytheism too. Despite polytheism never made sense to me, same way
Christianity didn’t (and the concept of the holy trinity ), I felt it’s my duty
to read from all available religious resources. After all, I’m just an
individual and my knowledge is very restricted, so who am I to make conclusions
about things I do not know of…
Strangely
enough I never read of Islam, even it’s the 2nd largest religion,
today maybe even number 1 due to rapid raise in number, honestly I don’t
know. I guess it was due to all the
western propaganda that we face with on daily bases, especially after the
September 11th of 2001. The magic oriental world of Aladdin was
replaced with brutal Arabo-Islamic culture that creates terrorists and
encourages violence, strips women from their rights, forcing them to cover
themselves and allowing men to have up to 4 wives. And I guess as much as I was
raised to respect everyone and not have prejudices about things I know nothing
of, it kind of stick deep inside my mind.
This propaganda that we have to deal with on daily bases is
completely wrong and very disrespectful, and I want to clear some things up.
So how did I finally got in contact with it u may ask…
Well it all started in 2nd grade of high school. I always enjoyed challenging debates, so one day during the history class, somehow some random discussion we were having changed its direction to Islam. Suddenly my classmates started to talk bad about this religion, we all heard of, but knew very little. As I always do, I started to oppose their opinions and found myself defending this ‘cruel’ religion. I thought – there r millions who follow it, there must be good in it. So our very weird and unusual professor told me to make a class project about it, and so I did. I googled a lot, read on forums, and became very positively surprised of what I found out. I even started reading the translation of Kur'an we had at home ( that my dad bought to my mum long time ago, as she is born in a muslim family- more about that other post). I read about it’s beginnings, prophet Mohamed s.a.w.s. (peace be upon him), first people that accepted it and so on…
So how did I finally got in contact with it u may ask…
Well it all started in 2nd grade of high school. I always enjoyed challenging debates, so one day during the history class, somehow some random discussion we were having changed its direction to Islam. Suddenly my classmates started to talk bad about this religion, we all heard of, but knew very little. As I always do, I started to oppose their opinions and found myself defending this ‘cruel’ religion. I thought – there r millions who follow it, there must be good in it. So our very weird and unusual professor told me to make a class project about it, and so I did. I googled a lot, read on forums, and became very positively surprised of what I found out. I even started reading the translation of Kur'an we had at home ( that my dad bought to my mum long time ago, as she is born in a muslim family- more about that other post). I read about it’s beginnings, prophet Mohamed s.a.w.s. (peace be upon him), first people that accepted it and so on…
So here is basically what
I told to my classmates, among some other things, the main things everyone
should know about Islam.
MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT ISLAM
Does Islam teaches us to hate?
Islam is not a religion of hatred or violence. Actually the
word ‘Islam’ comes from Arabic word ‘salema’ and means peace. Islam encourages us to be in good relations
with everyone who does us no harm, and to respect everyone no matter to their
skin color, race, shape, religion and so on.
Is Islam oppressing women?
No. Islam doesn’t strip women of their rights, but actually gave them their
rights. Qur’an states that men and women have equal rights, but we need to be
aware that men and women are different, and some have more rights in one matter,
and some in others. For example, a mother has 3 times more right to make
decisions related to her children than their father.
In pre Islamic Arab
world, female newborns were often killed buried in the ground, as they were
often considered of no value, to some nothing but sex objects that give birth
to children, and often were treated even worse than animals. Islam forbid that
pagan tradition, stating every life is from God and very valuable. Islam
encourages al people, not only men, to study and educate, to use their talents
and to be productive members of the society.
Does Islam allow men to marry 4 wives?
Yes it does, but before you make any conclusion, please hear
me out. When Kur’an verses were first revealed to Mohamed s.a.w.s., he lived in Saudy Arabia, and back then
people used to believe in more gods, worshiping statues and living immoral
lives. As his duty, Mohamed spread the word about Islam, but many people didn’t like that at
the time. He became a treat to the local
tribes and the city rulers that earned good money from tourists that visited
Kaaba, the centre of Mecca’s religious life. Back then it was full of various
merchants who earned good money from those tourists. Proving their belives
wrong was a direct treat to their businesses. So it ended up with bunch of
tribes announcing the war against Mohammed and His followers. In these
battles, many men died and many women remained alone.
All of this took place in 7th century, and
back then there was no way for women to take care of themselves. Just like
everywhere else in the world, men were the one to take care of home, and it
wasn’t easy to be alone independent woman like now. So Kur’an allowed marrying
men up to 4 wives (some stats say back then there was 4 time less men) if there
is need for it and if they can take care of them. Prophet Mohammed was the only
one with privilege to marry more, as a person of great iman(strong connection
to God) and because it was very necessary in a goal of spreading Islam (making
good connections with tribe leaders and so on.) Also please note that man can
not marry more wives if his wife doesn’t approve of that !
Quran states
"If you fear that you
will not be just/equitable to the orphans, then marry
as permissible for you, women, two, three or four. But
if you fear you will not be just/equitable, then one or
to whom you are committed to by oath. That is better so that you do not deviate
from the right course". 4:3
Personally, I feel that Islam is not encouraging anyone to
marry more wives, but allowing it if there is need. Very few man could pull this off, their level
of iman should be very high so they could treat all wives equally, and even
Qur’an states :
"You will never be able to
do perfect justice between wives even if it is your ardent desire,.. 4:129
There is a great article by Blue Abaya, and if you wanna
know more about this matter, please check it out here http://blueabaya.blogspot.com/2011/11/sharing-husbands-is-caring.html
:) .Her blog posts talks about polygamy in KSA where there is
much more men than women, and no need for such marriages, yet old men marry
young virgins, instead of needy widows eh… In my personal opinion it’s sad that
people today abuse this right, and I personally belive it’s a bad and greedy act.Please note- Islam has no flows, but people do.
For those westerns that are shocked about polygamy remember that many men and women practice it every day- just outside of marriage, cheating on their wives/husbands and doing many other bad things.
For those westerns that are shocked about polygamy remember that many men and women practice it every day- just outside of marriage, cheating on their wives/husbands and doing many other bad things.
So if women have rights, why are they forced to cover up?
Women are not forced to cover up, but Kur’an asks all people
for modesty in clothing. It’s mentioned in surah Noor (light) asking women to
hide their beauty and show it only to their husbands, and for men to lower the
gaze – not to make women feel uncomfortable.
All Islamic schools agree thatIslam believes there is no force in faith, therefore no one
can force women to cover if she doesn’t want to do so.
If you think covering up is so back in time, then remember
that the first people used to walk around almost or completely naked, now how about
that lol.
I find it very hard to understand that Christians make so
many criticisms of this very matter, yet Christian nouns walk around completely
covered as well, and they should be a role models to Christian women as a women
of great faith , or not ?
On this picture u can see some orthodox nuns on the left, and khaliji muslim women on the right :)
And am
Jihad- “holy war” ?
Uneducated people often think of Jihad is like a muslim duty to have wars against non muslims :( As I said up there, Islam encourages us to, despite our differences, we should have mutual respect, help each other etc.Jihad should be used to defend Islam and Muslims only in cases when someone else attacks you first.Islam never tolerates unprovoked
aggression from its own side!Also Jihad doesn't only refer to war...
Qur’an says :
“ Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not trangressors”
Mohammed, s.a.w.s. (peace be upon him) said :
"The best Jihad is the word of Justice in front of the oppressive Sultan [ruler]."
Yea but what about suicide terroristic attacks? countless number of virgins as reward and all that ?
Well my dear reader… Before all I want to say- that it’s strictly forbidden to hurt innocent people and that whole virgin story is blown over proportions, and u can easily google it. Honestly, I can sum it up in one sentence. There is few thousand people that died from terroristic attacks in past 10 years, while there is over 1 million of civil victims in Iraq and the number is growing cos of the weapon that US army uses which contains depleted uranium. What would you do if your country was attacked or occupied with absolutely no valid reason- having no options to fight back due to the fact u’re much weaker with much less resources. Terrorism is an act of desperate people. Imagine those children in Palestine that grow up watching shotguns pointing them every day, seeing their mother being killed for no reason and so on. It’s a very complex matter indeed.
Many people told me they liked my presentation and didn’t know many of these things. I felt so happy to that i was able to teach someone about something lol... Few months later I converted to Islam. It happened after I started visiting mosque and having long discussions with my friend I temporarily had crush for and met over internet. I guess I was meant to be attracted to him to be more found of new informations he was giving me. The day I accepted Islam it suddenly gone, and I felt nothing to that person anymore, well nothing in romantic sense. And few months later I started long distance relationship with my long time Egyptian friend, I never felt attracted to before, but I became more found of him after i accepted Islam.
To add- I’m not trying to make anyone look bad, or make myself look good… During my journey I met some amazing Muslims, but in some of them I got very disappointed. You all know that often people are not the way they seem to be… There are good people in every shape, form, color, religion :) and in our life we all seek for same- meaning of life, love, compassion and so on… I found myself in Islam… someone will find himself in worshipping mother nature, someone can feel more through Christianity and so on. In the end, I feel it doesn’t matter, as long as we do what we feel is right and not hurting others on purpose :)God bless you all :)
Thank you so much for reading… This was pretty much everything in one post, and I’m gonna blog more about individual subjects more in future...