What Islam Means To Me

November 24, 2010

- See all 20 of my articles

[Editor’s note: on occasion, we delve into topics that touch on Islam.  In the past, some of our writers have made an attempt to explain how Muslims may feel about issues.  However, when writers of a Judeo-Christian background do this, we don’t really have the proper background for it – we’re outsiders.  If we truly want a Muslim point of view, then it makes sense to actually ask a Muslim.

Recently, I asked my friend Z if she knew someone who would be interested in writing an article.  Z is a typical modern American woman in many ways – she loves to shop, is devoted to her husband and young son, and is a member of the Facebook generation.  I am hoping that this article, written by Z’s husband ZZ, will allow people to place a human face on Islam.]

What does Islam mean to me?

Here is some background and reality check before I get into, “what does Islam mean to me? We have been hearing that Islam is the religion of “peace”, but current global situation doesn’t help us to believe that. This is absolutely true for the individual who solely relies on media. However individuals who have a little bit of awareness of Islam wouldn’t agree with that. The biggest take away from Islam is, Islam never allows hurting anyone, never allows any sort of suppression, it always encourages helping others out regardless of caste/religion/race. This is huge; let me repeat this regardless of ANY CASTE/RACE/RELIGION. Think about that, in today’s modern western society we are still struggling on those three elements pretty much every day in and day out under “discrimination” and yet Islam mentioned and cleared those centuries ago.

Moving along, the actual definition of Islam is “to Submit” meaning submit yourself to one God or in Arabic “Allah”. Having said that, individuals (Muslims & non-Muslims) define or explain Islam based on their own knowledge, experience, interaction or perception which sometime is misleading and away from the “true” definition of Islam. Unfortunately, today’s media is not helping to identify the “true” Islam as well.

Regardless, Islam is still the same as it came hundreds of years ago. It’s the followers who make things too complicated. I always say don’t blame religion, blame “followers”. Let me try to explain this further, the fundamental difference between the “true-right” followers and what I called “mislead” followers is that, those mislead individuals don’t know and most of the time don’t want to understand the fundamentals of the “true-Islam”. It’s due to the fact that there are predefined misconception against the “true-Islam”.

Subsequently, the fundamentals of the true Islam is in this sequence; Quran, Prophet Mohammad’s actions & sayings along with the actions of his immediate families. If any Muslim misses any of the above sequence will ALWAYS be misleading and couldn’t be a true follower of Islam. So in order to understand Islam one has to do some research instead of watching 9 o’clock news— funny isn’t?

Furthermore, Quran verses are always connected to Prophet Mohammad’s sayings & his actions (which sometimes are elaborations of Quran verses) and actions of prophet Mohammad’s immediate family resulting in the True Islam, OR in other words the simple and basic formula of following the true Islam is:

Quran + Prophet Mohammad’s actions & sayings + Actions of Prophet Mohammad’s Immediate families = TRUE ISLAM!!!

So technically, person who take ONLY Quran is not justifying and following the “true” Islam because following only the Quran is not sufficient and in fact it causes confusions and misleads the followers.

I’ll explain why those three are in the sequence and why one can’t ONLY follow the Quran some other time.

Having said that, one doesn’t have to be a Muslim to understand how Islam continues after death of Prophet Mohammad and how prophet Mohammad immediate families showed the world, how to live forever with dignity and kept the Islam alive.  Even non-Muslims researchers recognize this connection. There are thousands of examples on that, but few of those are as follows….

Mahatma Gandhi
– “My faith is that the progress of Islam does not depend on the use of sword by its believers, but the result of the supreme sacrifice of Hussain (A.S.), the great saint.”

-I’ve learned from “Husain” (A.S) how to be oppressed yet victorious.

Dr. Radha Krishnan
“Though Imam Hussain gave his life years ago, but his indestructible soul rules the hearts of people even today.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
“Imam Hussain’s (A.S.) sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of righteousness.”

  • Husain (A.S) was the grandson of Prophet Mohammad.

Like any other religion, Islam teaches about peace, non-violence, patience, meditation, helping others and encourage to do good deeds in one’s life. There is one famous saying of Prophet Mohammad’s regardless of race/religion/caste, if your neighbor is not happy with you, God will not be with you. This means Islam dictates that one should keep peace all the time.

Look around you – you’ll find your neighbors, co-workers, employees, relatives, and family friends are the followers of Islam and most of them are good law obedient citizens and have been a part of U.S melting pot for years. And this is what true Islam means to me…  

Now, let’s compare that to “Taliban” or “Al-Qaida” (handful of people) and see if their actions are close to what I mentioned above, or not? In fact do their ANY ACTION come close to what I mentioned above? And the answer is “NO”. Now the question is WHY??? … and the answer is very simple. It’s because they don’t follow the “sequence”.

Taliban is nothing but a culture. Let me give you a simple example, it’s like a cult group. Same as what David Koresh had, they have their own believes and fundamentals. Taliban have their own believes, culture and fundamentals. By the way they followed the ancient culture.

The recent fight between “mislead” Muslims (“Taliban” or “Al-Qaida”) are rest of the world is the fight of two civilizations…and of course there is a political motivation and some “hidden” agenda and forces who escalates them and financing those “misleading” forces … which is not hard to find, as they say, follow the money trail you’ll find the answer.

At the end, I’ll leave this up to you all— what you all think, which Islam Prophet Mohammad and Prophet Jesus would have left for their followers …

3 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. kosmo
    Nov 24, 2010 @ 11:52:47

    Thanks for the article, ZZ. You’re confirming what I suspected – that the average Muslim has no more in common with “Islamic” terrorists that the typical Christian does with “Christian” terrorists. We must be careful not to judge an entire group based on the actions of the vocal minority.

    Reply

  2. Onij
    Nov 24, 2010 @ 14:26:39

    @Kosmo – “We must be careful not to judge an entire group based on the actions of the vocal minority.”

    Too late.

    Reply

  3. James Pandit
    Nov 02, 2014 @ 11:06:13

    Thanks for the article, ZZ. You’re confirming what I suspected – that the average Muslim has no more in common with “Islamic” terrorists that the typical Christian does with “Christian” terrorists. We must be careful not to judge an entire group based on the actions of the vocal minority.

    Reply

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