Becoming Muslim

 - by Nuh Ha Mim Keller
"I studied philosophy at the university and it taught me to ask two
things of whoever claimed to have the truth: What do you mean, and
how do you know? When I asked these questions of my own religious
tradition, I found no answers, and realized that Christianity had
slipped from my hands."

The story of American former Catholic, Nuh Ha Mim Keller, who in the
25 years since his conversion has gone on to become one of the
leading contemporary scholars of Islam.

Born in 1954 in the farm country of the northwestern United States,
I was raised in a religious family as a Roman Catholic. The Church
provided a spiritual world that was unquestionable in my childhood,
if anything more real than the physical world around me, but as I
grew older, and especially after I entered a Catholic university and
read more, my relation to the religion became increasingly called
into question, in belief and practice.

I studied philosophy at the university and it taught me to ask two
things of whoever claimed to have the truth: What do you mean, and
how do you know? When I asked these questions of my own religious
tradition, I found no answers, and realized that Christianity had
slipped from my hands. I then embarked on a search that is perhaps
not unfamiliar to many young people in the West, a quest for meaning
in a meaningless world.

On a vacation home from school, I was walking upon a dirt road
between some fields of wheat, and it happened that the sun went
down. By some inspiration, I realized that it was a time of worship,
a time to bow and pray to the one God. But it was not something one
could rely on oneself to provide the details of, but rather a
passing fancy, or perhaps the beginning of an awareness that atheism
was an inauthentic way of being.

I read some books on Islam, and came across some passages translated
by W. Montgomery Watt from "That Which Delivers from Error" by the
theologian and mystic Ghazali, who, after a mid-life crisis of
questioning and doubt, realized that beyond the light of prophetic
revelation there is no other light on the face of the earth from
which illumination may be received, the very point to which my
philosophical inquiries had led. Here was, in Hegel's terms, the
Wise Man, in the person of a divinely inspired messenger who alone
had the authority to answer questions of good and evil.

I also read A.J. Arberrys translation "The Qur'an Interpreted", and
I recalled my early wish for a sacred book. Even in translation, the
superiority of the Muslim scripture over the Bible was evident in
every line, as if the reality of divine revelation, dimly heard of
all my life, had now been placed before my eyes. In its exalted
style, its power, its inexorable finality, its uncanny way of
anticipating the arguments of the atheistic heart in advance and
answering them; it was a clear exposition of God as God and man as
man, the revelation of the awe-inspiring Divine Unity being the
identical revelation of social and economic justice among men.

I began to learn Arabic at Chicago, and after studying the grammar
for a year with a fair degree of success, decided to take a leave of
absence to try to advance in the language in a year of private study
in Cairo.

In Egypt, I found something I believe brings many to Islam, namely,
the mark of pure monotheism upon its followers, which struck me as
more profound than anything I had previously encountered. I met many
Muslims in Egypt, good and bad, but all influenced by the teachings
of their Book to a greater extent than I had ever seen elsewhere. It
has been some fifteen years since then, and I cannot remember them
all, or even most of them, but perhaps the ones I can recall will
serve to illustrate the impressions made.

One was a man on the side of the Nile near the Miqyas Gardens, where
I used to walk. I came upon him praying on a piece of cardboard,
facing across the water. I started to pass in front of him, but
suddenly checked myself and walked around behind, not wanting to
disturb him. As I watched a moment before going my way, I beheld a
man absorbed in his relation to God, oblivious to my presence, much
less my opinions about him or his religion. To my mind, there was
something magnificently detached about this, altogether strange for
someone coming from the West, where praying in public was virtually
the only thing that remained obscene.

Another was a young boy from secondary school who greeted me near
Khan al-Khalili, and because I spoke some Arabic and he spoke some
English and wanted to tell me about Islam, he walked with me several
miles across town to Giza, explaining as much as he could. When we
parted, I think he said a prayer that I might become Muslim.

Another was a Yemeni friend living in Cairo who brought me a copy of
the Qur'an at my request to help me learn Arabic. I did not have a
table beside the chair where I used to sit and read in my hotel
room, and it was my custom to stack the books on the floor. When I
set the Qur'an by the others there, he silently stooped and picked
it up, out of respect for it. This impressed me because I knew he
was not religious, but here was the effect of Islam upon him.

Another was a woman I met while walking beside a bicycle on an
unpaved road on the opposite side of the Nile from Luxor. I was
dusty, and somewhat shabbily clothed, and she was an old woman
dressed in black from head to toe who walked up, and without a word
or glance at me, pressed a coin into my hand so suddenly that in my
surprise I dropped it. By the time I picked it up, she had hurried
away. Because she thought I was poor, even if obviously non-Muslim,
she gave me some money without any expectation for it except what
was between her and Allah. This act made me think a lot about Islam,
because nothing seemed to have motivated her but that.

Many other things passed through my mind during the months I stayed
in Egypt to learn Arabic. I found myself thinking that a man must
have some sort of religion, and I was more impressed by the effect
of Islam on the lives of Muslims, a certain nobility of purpose and
largesse of soul, than I had ever been by any other religions or
even atheisms effect on its followers. The Muslims seemed to have
more than Christians did.

Christianity had its good points to be sure, but they seemed mixed
with confusions, and I found myself more and more inclined to look
to Islam for their fullest and most perfect _expression. The first
question we had memorized from our early catechism had been Why were
you created? to which the correct answer was "to know, love, and
serve God". When I reflected on those around me, I realized that
Islam seemed to furnish the most comprehensive and understandable
way to practice this on a daily basis.

As for the inglorious political fortunes of the Muslims today, I did
not feel these to be a reproach against Islam, or to relegate it to
an inferior position in a natural order of world ideologies, but
rather saw them as a low phase in a larger cycle of history. Foreign
hegemony over Muslim lands had been witnessed before in the thorough
going destruction of Islamic civilization in the thirteenth century
by the Mongol horde, who razed cities and built pyramids of human
heads from the steppes of Central Asia to the Muslim heartlands,
after which the fullness of destiny brought forth the Ottoman Empire
to raise the Word of Allah and make it a vibrant political reality
that endured for centuries. It was now, I reflected, merely the turn
of contemporary Muslims to strive for a new historic crystallization
of Islam, something one might well aspire to share in.

When a friend in Cairo one day asked me, Why don't you become a
Muslim?, I found that God had created within me a desire to belong
to this religion, which so enriches its followers, from the simplest
hearts to the most magisterial intellects. It is not through an act
of the mind or will that anyone becomes a Muslim, but rather through
the mercy of God, and this, in the final analysis, was what brought
me to Islam in Cairo in 1977.

"Is it not time that the hearts of those who believe should be
humbled to the Remembrance of Allah and the Truth which He has sent
down, and that they should not be as those to whom the Book was
given aforetime, and the term seemed over long to them, so that
their hearts have become hard, and many of them are wicked? Know
that God revives the earth after it was dead. Surely We have made
clear for you the signs, that you may understand." Qur'an (57:16-17)