The beauty of Islam
For anyone trying to follow the journey begun by Abraham* conversion to Islam should recommend itself with compulsive force. It’s the most plausible of the three religions that look back to him. Near the root of Judaism is the conviction that a single people are chosen by God. At the core of Christianity is the belief that a man was God and rose from the dead. Both claims seem to spit in the face of reason. Nonetheless* the suggestion that Islam might be preferable to either is objectionable to modern Western minds. It provokes visions of frenzy: failing states* suicide bombers* fanatical mullahs* shrouded women* burning books* oppressed minorities. But it should also conjure images of tranquillity: serene mosques* the circles of dhikr* a certain detachment from the claims of politics* distaste for the extremism within its own ranks of which the Prophet Mohammed warned* and — until fairly recently — better treatment of religious minorities than Europe’s.
For most of its history Islam has been the most relaxed of the three faiths. It neither aches for the coming of a Messiah nor announces that outside the church there is no salvation. It offers monotheism for all. The path to paradise isn’t closed by original sin. Rather* it remains open* but man strays from it in heedlessness and forgetfulness. I converted from Judaism to Catholicism in my mid-20s. Changing one’s religion once is enough to be going on with. Perhaps this thought has inhibited me to date from doing so a second time* and accepting Jesus of Nazareth as a great prophet rather than as the saviour of the world. If I’m remembered for taking up any cause in the Commons* it may be for fencing at Islamism and its fellow-travellers in Britain. But Islamism is a polluted tributary of the great river of Islam* and my allergy to a politicised version of the religion hasn’t deterred me from sitting at the feet* from time to time* of its traditional* classical form.
Islam has three advantages over modern Christianity. First* it has better preserved its liturgy. A Muslim prays five times a day in much the same way as his ancestors did at the time of Mohammed* perhaps because there’s no single source of authority in Islam to drive through liturgical change. There are no guitars* inexact translations of Arabic into English and imams that face the people rather than Mecca. Pope Benedict* who understands the centrality of liturgy to religion* might see a connection between Islam’s soaring numbers and its immutable worship.
Second* it has better preserved its spiritual inheritance* and kept polished the chains of spiritual transmission. The silsilah is a chain — the pupil receiving authority from a master who received it from his own master* and so on all the way back to Mohammed. Christianity has its apostolic succession. But this is the preserve of the bishops* not the laity* and in Islam everyone is a layman. This may help to prove that flat structures protect tradition more effectively than hierarchical ones. For better and worse* Islam has experienced no Reformation or Enlightenment — no questioning of the transmission of the Quran to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel himself. There is a gimmicklessness about the practice of its spirituality.
Third* it has Sufism — the sum of that spiritual inheritance. I’m not dewy-eyed about Sufis* but the tradition they follow is one of the world’s great religious movements* balancing the Quran’s proclamation of the transcendence of God — “Who begetteth not* nor is begotten* and none is like Him” — with its persistent whisperings of immanence* of a God who “is nearer to him than his jugular vein”. I’ve ploughed my way through 61 of the 62 discourses in Jilani of Baghdad’s Al-Fath Al-Rabbani — literally “the Revelations of the Lord”.
Each discourse is supported by verses from the Quran. The first chapter quotes the following: “Surely* God is with those who are patient”. It’s a theme of Jilani’s* and seems to be one of Islam’s as a whole. The religion appears to lack that Western word* angst. Perhaps the ox-like endurance of suffering is a feature of less developed societies. But for whatever reason* a sense of Jacob wrestling with the angel is never long absent from either Christianity or Judaism. Why suffering happens is one of the greatest human mysteries. In Christianity* God plunges into the depths of suffering and transforms it through the Resurrection. The good old story may not make suffering bearable* but it may at least make it comprehensible. Once it’s accepted* the Trinity becomes a partner rather than a stranger to reason.
The vision of Islam — of actualising the divine names as Mohammed did* thereby restoring man’s original nature — has* as all great religions do* its own romance. But some calls must be questioned* however imperiously they’re couched. There’s cause for the eye of faith to pass on from the black stone of the Kaaba* and rest upon the white cloths that lay folded* on that first Easter morning* inside an empty tomb