Former Christian Priests and Missionaries who have Embraced Islam
mohammad
believe (to be) those who say:Â Lo! We are Christians. That is because
there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud.
When they listen to that which hath been revealed unto the
messengers, thou seest their eyes overflow with tears because of
their recognition of the Truth."
"They say: Our Lord, we believe. Inscribe us as among the witnesses."
[Qur'an 5:82-83]
Why are Christian priests and missionaries embracing Islam ? Join our
discussion board and share your views ! You can find many converts from
Christianity to Islam there, as well as Christians who are learning
more about Islam. If you are a former Christian priest or missionary
who has embraced Islam, please email your testimony to us at:
mi...@missionislam.com.
Dr. Jerald F. Dirks - Former minister (deacon) of the United Methodist
Church. He holds a Master's degree in Divinity from Harvard University
and a Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Denver. Author of
The Cross and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity
and Islam (ISBN 1-59008-002-5 - Amana Publications, 2001). He has
published over 60 articles in the field of clinical psychology, and
over 150 articles on Arabian horses
Abdullah al-Faruq - Formerly Kenneth L. Jenkins, minister and elder of
the Pentecostal Church
Viacheslav Polosin - Former Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church
Anselm Tormeeda - 14th century CE scholar and priest
Khadijah 'Sue' Watson - Former pastor, missionary, professor. Master's
degree in Divinity
Ibrahim Khalil - Former Egyptian Coptic priest
Anonymous Female Missionary - Former Catholic missionary
Martin John Mwaipopo - Former Lutheran Archbishop
Raphael - Former Jehovah's Witness minister
George Anthony - Former Catholic priest
Dr. Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad Omar) - Former missionary
Dr. Jerald F. Dirks - Former minister (deacon) of the United Methodist
Church. He holds a Master's degree in Divinity from Harvard University
and a Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Denver. Author of
The Cross and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity
and Islam (ISBN 1-59008-002-5 - Amana Publications, 2001). He has
published over 60 articles in the field of clinical psychology, and
over 150 articles on Arabian horses.
A CHRISTIAN MINISTER’S CONVERSION TO ISLAM
© 2002 (Abu Yahya) Jerald F. Dirks, M.Div., Psy.D.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of hearing the church bell
toll for Sunday morning worship in the small, rural town in which I was
raised. The Methodist Church was an old, wooden structure with a
bell tower, two children’s Sunday School classrooms cubbyholed
behind folding, wooden doors to separate it from the sanctuary, and a
choir loft that housed the Sunday school classrooms for the older
children. It stood less than two blocks from my home. As the bell
rang, we would come together as a family, and make our weekly
pilgrimage to the church.Â
In that rural setting from the 1950s, the three churches in the town of
about 500 were the center of community life. The local Methodist
Church, to which my family belonged, sponsored ice cream socials with
hand-cranked, homemade ice cream, chicken potpie dinners, and corn
roasts. My family and I were always involved in all three, but each
came only once a year. In addition, there was a two-week community
Bible school every June, and I was a regular attendee through my eighth
grade year in school. However, Sunday morning worship and Sunday
school were weekly events, and I strove to keep extending my collection
of perfect attendance pins and of awards for memorizing Bible verses.
By my junior high school days, the local Methodist Church had closed,
and we were attending the Methodist Church in the neighbouring town,
which was only slightly larger than the town in which I lived.Â
There, my thoughts first began to focus on the ministry as a personal
calling. I became active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and
eventually served as both a district and a conference officer. I
also became the regular “preacher†during the annual Youth
Sunday service. My preaching began to draw community-wide attention,
and before long I was occasionally filling pulpits at other churches,
at a nursing home, and at various church-affiliated youth and ladies
groups, where I typically set attendance records.
By age 17, when I began my freshman year at Harvard College, my
decision to enter the ministry had solidified. During my freshman
year, I enrolled in a two-semester course in comparative religion,
which was taught by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, whose specific area of
expertise was Islam. During that course, I gave far less attention
to Islam, than I did to other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism,
as the latter two seemed so much more esoteric and strange to me. In
contrast, Islam appeared to be somewhat similar to my own
Christianity. As such, I didn’t concentrate on it as much as
I probably should have, although I can remember writing a term paper
for the course on the concept of revelation in the Qur’an.Â
Nonetheless, as the course was one of rigorous academic standards and
demands, I did acquire a small library of about a half dozen books on
Islam, all of which were written by non-Muslims, and all of which were
to serve me in good stead 25 years later. I also acquired two
different English translations of the meaning of the Qur’an,
which I read at the time.That spring, Harvard named me a Hollis
Scholar, signifying that I was one of the top pre-theology students in
the college. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years at
Harvard, I worked as a youth minister at a fairly large United
Methodist Church. The following summer, I obtained my License to
Preach from the United Methodist Church. Upon graduating from
Harvard College in 1971, I enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School, and
there obtained my Master of Divinity degree in 1974, having been
previously ordained into the Deaconate of the United Methodist Church
in 1972, and having previously received a Stewart Scholarship from the
United Methodist Church as a supplement to my Harvard Divinity School
scholarships. During my seminary education, I also completed a
two-year externship program as a hospital chaplain at Peter Bent
Brigham Hospital in Boston. Following graduation from Harvard
Divinity School, I spent the summer as the minister of two United
Methodist churches in rural Kansas, where attendance soared to heights
not seen in those churches for several years.
Seen from the outside, I was a very promising young minister, who had
received an excellent education, drew large crowds to the Sunday
morning worship service, and had been successful at every stop along
the ministerial path. However, seen from the inside, I was fighting
a constant war to maintain my personal integrity in the face of my
ministerial responsibilities. This war was far removed from the ones
presumably fought by some later televangelists in unsuccessfully trying
to maintain personal sexual morality. Likewise, it was a far
different war than those fought by the headline-grabbing paedophilic
priests of the current moment.  However, my struggle to maintain
personal integrity may be the most common one encountered by the
better-educated members of the ministry.
There is some irony in the fact that the supposedly best, brightest,
and most idealistic of ministers-to-be are selected for the very best
of seminary education, e.g. that offered at that time at the Harvard
Divinity School. The irony is that, given such an education, the
seminarian is exposed to as much of the actual historical truth as is
known about: 1) the formation of the early, “mainstreamâ€
church, and how it was shaped by geopolitical considerations; 2) the
“original†reading of various Biblical texts, many of which
are in sharp contrast to what most Christians read when they pick up
their Bible, although gradually some of this information is being
incorporated into newer and better translations; 3) the evolution of
such concepts as a triune godhead and the “sonship†of
Jesus, peace be upon him; 4) the non-religious considerations that
underlie many Christian creeds and doctrines; 5) the existence of those
early churches and Christian movements which never accepted the concept
of a triune godhead, and which never accepted the concept of the
divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him; and 6) etc. (Some of these
fruits of my seminary education are recounted in more detail in my
recent book, The Cross and the Crescent:Â An Interfaith Dialogue
between Christianity and Islam, Amana Publications, 2001.)
As such, it is no real wonder that almost a majority of such seminary
graduates leave seminary, not to “fill pulpits†, where they
would be asked to preach that which they know is not true, but to enter
the various counselling professions. Such was also the case for me,
as I went on to earn a master’s and doctorate in clinical
psychology. I continued to call myself a Christian, because that was
a needed bit of self-identity, and because I was, after all, an
ordained minister, even though my full time job was as a mental health
professional. However, my seminary education had taken care of any
belief I might have had regarding a triune godhead or the divinity of
Jesus, peace be upon him. (Polls regularly reveal that ministers are
less likely to believe these and other dogmas of the church than are
the laity they serve, with ministers more likely to understand such
terms as “son of God†metaphorically, while their
parishioners understand it literally.)Â I thus became a
“Christmas and Easter Christian†, attending church very
sporadically, and then gritting my teeth and biting my tongue as I
listened to sermons espousing that which I knew was not the case.
None of the above should be taken to imply that I was any less
religious or spiritually oriented than I had once been. I prayed
regularly, my belief in a supreme deity remained solid and secure, and
I conducted my personal life in line with the ethics I had once been
taught in church and Sunday school. I simply knew better than to buy
into the man-made dogmas and articles of faith of the organized church,
which were so heavily laden with the pagan influences, polytheistic
notions, and geo-political considerations of a bygone era.
As the years passed by, I became increasingly concerned about the loss
of religiousness in American society at large. Religiousness is a
living, breathing spirituality and morality within individuals, and
should not be confused with religiosity, which is concerned with the
rites, rituals, and formalized creeds of some organized entity, e.g.
the church. American culture increasingly appeared to have lost its
moral and religious compass. Two out of every three marriages ended
in divorce; violence was becoming an increasingly inherent part of our
schools and our roads; self-responsibility was on the wane;
self-discipline was being submerged by a “if it feels good, do
it†morality; various Christian leaders and institutions were
being swamped by sexual and financial scandals; and emotions justified
behaviour, however odious it might be. American culture was becoming
a morally bankrupt institution, and I was feeling quite alone in my
personal religious vigil.
It was at this juncture that I began to come into contact with the
local Muslim community. For some years before, my wife and I had
been actively involved in doing research on the history of the Arabian
horse. Eventually, in order to secure translations of various Arabic
documents, this research brought us into contact with Arab Americans
who happened to be Muslims. Our first such contact was with Jamal in
the summer of 1991.
After an initial telephone conversation, Jamal visited our home, and
offered to do some translations for us, and to help guide us through
the history of the Arabian horse in the Middle East. Before Jamal
left that afternoon, he asked if he might:Â use our bathroom to wash
before saying his scheduled prayers; and borrow a piece of newspaper to
use as a prayer rug, so he could say his scheduled prayers before
leaving our house. We, of course, obliged, but wondered if there was
something more appropriate that we could give him to use than a
newspaper. Without our ever realizing it at the time, Jamal was
practicing a very beautiful form of Dawa (preaching or exhortation).Â
He made no comment about the fact that we were not Muslims, and he
didn’t preach anything to us about his religious beliefs. He
“merely†presented us with his example, an example that
spoke volumes, if one were willing to be receptive to the lesson.
Over the next 16 months, contact with Jamal slowly increased in
frequency, until it was occurring on a biweekly to weekly basis.Â
During these visits, Jamal never preached to me about Islam, never
questioned me about my own religious beliefs or convictions, and never
verbally suggested that I become a Muslim. However, I was beginning
to learn a lot. First, there was the constant behavioural example of
Jamal observing his scheduled prayers. Second, there was the
behavioural example of how Jamal conducted his daily life in a highly
moral and ethical manner, both in his business world and in his social
world. Third, there was the behavioural example of how Jamal
interacted with his two children. For my wife, Jamal’s wife
provided a similar example. Fourth, always within the framework of
helping me to understand Arabian horse history in the Middle East,
Jamal began to share with me:Â 1) stories from Arab and Islamic
history; 2) sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him; and 3)
Qur’anic verses and their contextual meaning. In point of
fact, our every visit now included at least a 30 minute conversation
cantered on some aspect of Islam, but always presented in terms of
helping me intellectually understand the Islamic context of Arabian
horse history. I was never told “this is the way things
are†, I was merely told “this is what Muslims typically
believe†. Since I wasn’t being “preached
to†, and since Jamal never inquired as to my own beliefs, I
didn’t need to bother attempting to justify my own position.Â
It was all handled as an intellectual exercise, not as
proselytising.Gradually, Jamal began to introduce us to other Arab
families in the local Muslim community. There was Wa’el and
his family, Khalid and his family, and a few others. Consistently, I
observed individuals and families who were living their lives on a much
higher ethical plane than the American society in which we were all
embedded. Maybe there was something to the practice of Islam that I
had missed during my collegiate and seminary days.
By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself some serious questions
about where I was and what I was doing. These questions were
prompted by the following considerations. 1) Over the course of the
prior 16 months, our social life had become increasingly centered on
the Arab component of the local Muslim community. By December,
probably 75% of our social life was being spent with Arab Muslims.Â
2) By virtue of my seminary training and education, I knew how badly
the Bible had been corrupted (and often knew exactly when, where, and
why), I had no belief in any triune godhead, and I had no belief in
anything more than a metaphorical “sonship†of Jesus, peace
be upon him. In short, while I certainly believed in God, I was as
strict a monotheist as my Muslim friends. 3) My personal values and
sense of morality were much more in keeping with my Muslim friends than
with the “Christian†society around me. After all, I had
the non-confrontational examples of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa’el as
illustrations. In short, my nostalgic yearning for the type of
community in which I had been raised was finding gratification in the
Muslim community. American society might be morally bankrupt, but
that did not appear to be the case for that part of the Muslim
community with which I had had contact. Marriages were stable,
spouses were committed to each other, and honesty, integrity,
self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized. My wife and
I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for several years
I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a moral vacuum.Â
The Muslim community appeared to be different.
The different threads were being woven together into a single strand.Â
Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian
ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral
society, and my contact with the Muslim community were becoming
intricately intertwined. My self-questioning came to a head when I
finally got around to asking myself exactly what separated me from the
beliefs of my Muslim friends. I suppose that I could have raised
that question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn’t ready to
take that step. I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with
them, and I didn’t think that I wanted to introduce that topic
of conversation into our friendship. As such, I began to pull off
the bookshelf all the books on Islam that I had acquired in my
collegiate and seminary days. However far my own beliefs were from
the traditional position of the church, and however seldom I actually
attended church, I still identified myself as being a Christian, and so
I turned to the works of Western scholars. That month of December, I
read half a dozen or so books on Islam by Western scholars, including
one biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Further, I
began to read two different English translations of the meaning of the
Qur’an. I never spoke to my Muslim friends about this
personal quest of self-discovery. I never mentioned what types of
books I was reading, nor ever spoke about why I was reading these
books. However, occasionally I would run a very circumscribed
question past one of them. Â
While I never spoke to my Muslim friends about those books, my wife and
I had numerous conversations about what I was reading. By the last
week of December of 1992, I was forced to admit to myself, that I could
find no area of substantial disagreement between my own religious
beliefs and the general tenets of Islam. While I was ready to
acknowledge that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a prophet of (one who
spoke for or under the inspiration of) God, and while I had absolutely
no difficulty affirming that there was no god besides God/Allah,
glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any
decision. I could readily admit to myself that I had far more in
common with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with
the traditional Christianity of the organized church. I knew only
too well that I could easily confirm from my seminary training and
education most of what the Qur’an had to say about Christianity,
the Bible, and Jesus, peace be upon him. Nonetheless, I hesitated.Â
Further, I rationalized my hesitation by maintaining to myself that I
really didn’t know the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that
my areas of agreement were confined to general concepts. As such, I
continued to read, and then to re-read.
One’s sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful
affirmation of one’s own position in the cosmos. In my
professional practice, I had occasionally been called upon to treat
certain addictive disorders, ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to
drug abuse. As a clinician, I knew that the basic physical addiction
had to be overcome to create the initial abstinence. That was the
easy part of treatment. As Mark Twain once said: “Quitting
smoking is easy; I’ve done it hundreds of times†.Â
However, I also knew that the key to maintaining that abstinence over
an extended time period was overcoming the client’s
psychological addiction, which was heavily grounded in the
client’s basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to
himself that he was “a smoker†, or that he was “a
drinker†, etc. The addictive behaviour had become part and
parcel of the client’s basic sense of identity, of the
client’s basic sense of self. Changing this sense of identity
was crucial to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic
“cure†. This was the difficult part of treatment.Â
Changing one’s basic sense of identity is a most difficult
task. One’s psyche tends to cling to the old and familiar,
which seem more psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and
unfamiliar.Â
On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and used it on a
daily basis. However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to
apply it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding
my religious identity. For 43 years, my religious identity had been
neatly labeled as “Christian†, however many qualifications
I might have added to that term over the years. Giving up that label
of personal identity was no easy task. It was part and parcel of how
I defined my very being. Given the benefit of hindsight, it is clear
that my hesitation served the purpose of insuring that I could keep my
familiar religious identity of being a Christian, although a Christian
who believed like a Muslim believed.
It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out
our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle
Eastern journey could become a reality. One of the questions had to
do with religious affiliation. I didn’t even think about it,
and automatically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in
“Christian†. It was easy, it was familiar, and it was
comfortable.
However, that comfort was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me
how I had answered the question on religious identity on the
application form. I immediately replied, “Christian†,
and chuckled audibly. Now, one of Freud’s contributions to
the understanding of the human psyche was his realization that laughter
is often a release of psychological tension. However wrong Freud may
have been in many aspects of his theory of psychosexual development,
his insights into laughter were quite on target. I had laughed!Â
What was this psychological tension that I had need to release through
the medium of laughter?
I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I
was a Christian, not a Muslim. In response to which, she politely
informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written
“Christian†, or “Protestant†, or
“Methodist†. On a professional basis, I knew that a
person does not defend himself against an accusation that hasn’t
been made. (If, in the course of a session of psychotherapy, my
client blurted out, “I’m not angry about that†, and
I hadn’t even broached the topic of anger, it was clear that my
client was feeling the need to defend himself against a charge that his
own unconscious was making. In short, he really was angry, but he
wasn’t ready to admit it or to deal with it.) If my wife
hadn’t made the accusation, i.e. “you are a Muslim†,
then the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was
the only other person present. I was aware of this, but still I
hesitated. The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of
identity for 43 years was not going to come off easily.    Â
  Â
About a month had gone by since my wife’s question to me. It
was now late in January of 1993. I had set aside all the books on
Islam by the Western scholars, as I had read them all thoroughly.Â
The two English translations of the meaning of the Qur’an were
back on the bookshelf, and I was busy reading yet a third English
translation of the meaning of the Qur’an. Maybe in this
translation I would find some sudden justification for…
I was taking my lunch hour from my private practice at a local Arab
restaurant that I had started to frequent. I entered as usual,
seated myself at a small table, and opened my third English translation
of the meaning of the Qur’an to where I had left off in my
reading. I figured I might as well get some reading done over my
lunch hour. Moments later, I became aware that Mahmoud was at my
shoulder, and waiting to take my order. He glanced at what I was
reading, but said nothing about it. My order taken, I returned to
the solitude of my reading.
A few minutes later, Mahmoud’s wife, Iman, an American Muslim,
who wore the Hijab (scarf) and modest dress that I had come to
associate with female Muslims, brought me my order. She commented
that I was reading the Qur’an, and politely asked if I were a
Muslim. The word was out of my mouth before it could be modified by
any social etiquette or politeness: “No!† That single
word was said forcefully, and with more than a hint of irritability.Â
With that, Iman politely retired from my table.
What was happening to me? I had behaved rudely and somewhat
aggressively. What had this woman done to deserve such behaviour
from me? This wasn’t like me. Given my childhood
upbringing, I still used “sir†and
“ma’am†when addressing clerks and cashiers who were
waiting on me in stores. I could pretend to ignore my own laughter
as a release of tension, but I couldn’t begin to ignore this
sort of unconscionable behaviour from myself. My reading was set
aside, and I mentally stewed over this turn of events throughout my
meal. The more I stewed, the guiltier I felt about my behaviour.Â
I knew that when Iman brought me my check at the end of the meal, I was
going to need to make some amends. If for no other reason, simple
politeness demanded it. Furthermore, I was really quite disturbed
about how resistant I had been to her innocuous question. What was
going on in me that I responded with that much force to such a simple
and straightforward question? Why did that one, simple question lead
to such atypical behaviour on my part?
Later, when Iman came with my check, I attempted a round-about apology
by saying: “I’m afraid I was a little abrupt in
answering your question before. If you were asking me whether I
believe that there is only one God, then my answer is yes. If you
were asking me whether I believe that Muhammad was one of the prophets
of that one God, then my answer is yes.† She very nicely and
very supportively said: “That’s okay; it takes some
people a little longer than others.â€
Perhaps, the readers of this will be kind enough to note the
psychological games I was playing with myself without chuckling too
hard at my mental gymnastics and behaviour. I well knew that in my
own way, using my own words, I had just said the Shahadah, the Islamic
testimonial of faith, i.e. “I testify that there is no god but
Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah†.Â
However, having said that, and having recognized what I said, I could
still cling to my old and familiar label of religious identity.Â
After all, I hadn’t said I was a Muslim. I was simply a
Christian, albeit an atypical Christian, who was willing to say that
there was one God, not a triune godhead, and who was willing to say
that Muhammad was one of the prophets inspired by that one God. If a
Muslim wanted to accept me as being a Muslim that was his or her
business, and his or her label of religious identity. However, it
was not mine. I thought I had found my way out of my crisis of
religious identity. I was a Christian, who would carefully explain
that I agreed with, and was willing to testify to, the Islamic
testimonial of faith. Having made my tortured explanation, and
having parsed the English language to within an inch of its life,
others could hang whatever label on me they wished. It was their
label, and not mine.               Â
It was now March of 1993, and my wife and I were enjoying a five-week
vacation in the Middle East. It was also the Islamic month of
Ramadan, when Muslims fast from day break until sunset. Because we
were so often staying with or being escorted around by family members
of our Muslim friends back in the States, my wife and I had decided
that we also would fast, if for no other reason than common courtesy.Â
During this time, I had also started to perform the five daily prayers
of Islam with my newfound, Middle Eastern, Muslim friends. After
all, there was nothing in those prayers with which I could disagree.Â
I was a Christian, or so I said. After all, I had been born into a
Christian family, had been given a Christian upbringing, had attended
church and Sunday school every Sunday as a child, had graduated from a
prestigious seminary, and was an ordained minister in a large
Protestant denomination. However, I was also a Christian: who
didn’t believe in a triune godhead or in the divinity of Jesus,
peace be upon him; who knew quite well how the Bible had been
corrupted; who had said the Islamic testimony of faith in my own
carefully parsed words; who had fasted during Ramadan; who was saying
Islamic prayers five times a day; and who was deeply impressed by the
behavioural examples I had witnessed in the Muslim community, both in
America and in the Middle East. (Time and space do not permit me the
luxury of documenting in detail all of the examples of personal
morality and ethics I encountered in the Middle East.)Â If asked if I
were a Muslim, I could and did do a five-minute monologue detailing the
above, and basically leaving the question unanswered. I was playing
intellectual word games, and succeeding at them quite nicely.
It was now late in our Middle Eastern trip. An elderly friend who
spoke no English and I were walking down a winding, little road,
somewhere in one of the economically disadvantaged areas of greater
‘Amman, Jordan. As we walked, an elderly man approached us
from the opposite direction, said, “Salam ‘Alaykum†,
i.e., “peace be upon you†, and offered to shake hands.Â
We were the only three people there. I didn’t speak Arabic,
and neither my friend nor the stranger spoke English. Looking at me,
the stranger asked, “Muslim?â€
At that precise moment in time, I was fully and completely trapped.Â
There were no intellectual word games to be played, because I could
only communicate in English, and they could only communicate in
Arabic. There was no translator present to bail me out of this
situation, and to allow me to hide behind my carefully prepared English
monologue. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand the
question, because it was all too obvious that I had. My choices were
suddenly, unpredictably, and inexplicably reduced to just two:Â I
could say “N’am†, i.e., “yes†; or I
could say “La†, i.e., “no†. The choice was
mine, and I had no other. I had to choose, and I had to choose now;
it was just that simple. Praise be to Allah, I answered.
With saying that one word, all the intellectual word games were now
behind me. With the intellectual word games behind me, the
psychological games regarding my religious identity were also behind
me. I wasn’t some strange, atypical Christian.I was a Muslim.
Praise be to Allah, my wife of 33 years also became a Muslim about that
same time.
Not too many months after our return to America from the Middle East, a
neighbour invited us over to his house, saying that he wanted to talk
with us about our conversion to Islam. He was a retired Methodist
minister, with whom I had had several conversations in the past.Â
Although we had occasionally talked superficially about such issues as
the artificial construction of the Bible from various, earlier,
independent sources, we had never had any in-depth conversation about
religion. I knew.
mohammad
there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud.
When they listen to that which hath been revealed unto the messengers,
of the Truth.
They say: Our Lord, we believe. Inscribe us as among the witnesses
[Qur'an 5:82-83]
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A CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S CONVERSION TO ISLAM
© 2002 (Abu Yahya) Jerald F. Dirks, M.Div., Psy.D.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of hearing the church bell
toll for Sunday morning worship in the small, rural town in which I was
raised. The Methodist Church was an old, wooden structure with a bell
tower, two children's Sunday School classrooms cubbyholed behind
folding, wooden doors to separate it from the sanctuary, and a choir
loft that housed the Sunday school classrooms for the older children.
It stood less than two blocks from my home. As the bell rang, we would
come together as a family, and make our weekly pilgrimage to the
church.
In that rural setting from the 1950s, the three churches in the town of
about 500 were the center of community life. The local Methodist
Church, to which my family belonged, sponsored ice cream socials with
hand-cranked, homemade ice cream, chicken potpie dinners, and corn
roasts. My family and I were always involved in all three, but each
came only once a year. In addition, there was a two-week community
Bible school every June, and I was a regular attendee through my eighth
grade year in school. However, Sunday morning worship and Sunday
school were weekly events, and I strove to keep extending my collection
of perfect attendance pins and of awards for memorizing Bible verses.
By my junior high school days, the local Methodist Church had closed,
and we were attending the Methodist Church in the neighbouring town,
which was only slightly larger than the town in which I lived. There,
my thoughts first began to focus on the ministry as a personal calling.
I became active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and eventually
served as both a district and a conference officer. I also became the
regular "preacher" during the annual Youth Sunday service. My
preaching began to draw community-wide attention, and before long I was
occasionally filling pulpits at other churches, at a nursing home, and
at various church-affiliated youth and ladies groups, where I typically
set attendance records.
By age 17, when I began my freshman year at Harvard College, my
decision to enter the ministry had solidified. During my freshman
year, I enrolled in a two-semester course in comparative religion,
which was taught by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, whose specific area of
expertise was Islam. During that course, I gave far less attention to
Islam, than I did to other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as
the latter two seemed so much more esoteric and strange to me. In
contrast, Islam appeared to be somewhat similar to my own Christianity.
As such, I didn't concentrate on it as much as I probably should
have, although I can remember writing a term paper for the course on
the concept of revelation in the Qur'an. Nonetheless, as the course
was one of rigorous academic standards and demands, I did acquire a
small library of about a half dozen books on Islam, all of which were
written by non-Muslims, and all of which were to serve me in good stead
25 years later. I also acquired two different English translations of
the meaning of the Qur'an, which I read at the time.That spring,
Harvard named me a Hollis Scholar, signifying that I was one of the top
pre-theology students in the college. The summer between my freshman
and sophomore years at Harvard, I worked as a youth minister at a
fairly large United Methodist Church. The following summer, I obtained
my License to Preach from the United Methodist Church. Upon graduating
from Harvard College in 1971, I enrolled at the Harvard Divinity
School, and there obtained my Master of Divinity degree in 1974, having
been previously ordained into the Deaconate of the United Methodist
Church in 1972, and having previously received a Stewart Scholarship
from the United Methodist Church as a supplement to my Harvard Divinity
School scholarships. During my seminary education, I also completed a
two-year externship program as a hospital chaplain at Peter Bent
Brigham Hospital in Boston. Following graduation from Harvard Divinity
School, I spent the summer as the minister of two United Methodist
churches in rural Kansas, where attendance soared to heights not seen
in those churches for several years.
Seen from the outside, I was a very promising young minister, who had
received an excellent education, drew large crowds to the Sunday
morning worship service, and had been successful at every stop along
the ministerial path. However, seen from the inside, I was fighting a
constant war to maintain my personal integrity in the face of my
ministerial responsibilities. This war was far removed from the ones
presumably fought by some later televangelists in unsuccessfully trying
to maintain personal sexual morality. Likewise, it was a far different
war than those fought by the headline-grabbing paedophilic priests of
the current moment. However, my struggle to maintain personal
integrity may be the most common one encountered by the better-educated
members of the ministry.
There is some irony in the fact that the supposedly best, brightest,
and most idealistic of ministers-to-be are selected for the very best
of seminary education, e.g. that offered at that time at the Harvard
Divinity School. The irony is that, given such an education, the
seminarian is exposed to as much of the actual historical truth as is
known about: 1) the formation of the early, "mainstream" church,
and how it was shaped by geopolitical considerations; 2) the
"original" reading of various Biblical texts, many of which are in
sharp contrast to what most Christians read when they pick up their
Bible, although gradually some of this information is being
incorporated into newer and better translations; 3) the evolution of
such concepts as a triune godhead and the "sonship" of Jesus, peace
be upon him; 4) the non-religious considerations that underlie many
Christian creeds and doctrines; 5) the existence of those early
churches and Christian movements which never accepted the concept of a
triune godhead, and which never accepted the concept of the divinity of
Jesus, peace be upon him; and 6) etc. (Some of these fruits of my
seminary education are recounted in more detail in my recent book, The
Cross and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity
and Islam, Amana Publications, 2001.)
As such, it is no real wonder that almost a majority of such seminary
graduates leave seminary, not to "fill pulpits", where they would
be asked to preach that which they know is not true, but to enter the
various counselling professions. Such was also the case for me, as I
went on to earn a master's and doctorate in clinical psychology. I
continued to call myself a Christian, because that was a needed bit of
self-identity, and because I was, after all, an ordained minister, even
though my full time job was as a mental health professional. However,
my seminary education had taken care of any belief I might have had
regarding a triune godhead or the divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him.
(Polls regularly reveal that ministers are less likely to believe
these and other dogmas of the church than are the laity they serve,
with ministers more likely to understand such terms as "son of God"
metaphorically, while their parishioners understand it literally.) I
thus became a "Christmas and Easter Christian", attending church
very sporadically, and then gritting my teeth and biting my tongue as I
listened to sermons espousing that which I knew was not the case.
None of the above should be taken to imply that I was any less
religious or spiritually oriented than I had once been. I prayed
regularly, my belief in a supreme deity remained solid and secure, and
I conducted my personal life in line with the ethics I had once been
taught in church and Sunday school. I simply knew better than to buy
into the man-made dogmas and articles of faith of the organized church,
which were so heavily laden with the pagan influences, polytheistic
notions, and geo-political considerations of a bygone era.
As the years passed by, I became increasingly concerned about the loss
of religiousness in American society at large. Religiousness is a
living, breathing spirituality and morality within individuals, and
should not be confused with religiosity, which is concerned with the
rites, rituals, and formalized creeds of some organized entity, e.g.
the church. American culture increasingly appeared to have lost its
moral and religious compass. Two out of every three marriages ended in
divorce; violence was becoming an increasingly inherent part of our
schools and our roads; self-responsibility was on the wane;
self-discipline was being submerged by a "if it feels good, do it"
morality; various Christian leaders and institutions were being swamped
by sexual and financial scandals; and emotions justified behaviour,
however odious it might be. American culture was becoming a morally
bankrupt institution, and I was feeling quite alone in my personal
religious vigil.
It was at this juncture that I began to come into contact with the
local Muslim community. For some years before, my wife and I had been
actively involved in doing research on the history of the Arabian
horse. Eventually, in order to secure translations of various Arabic
documents, this research brought us into contact with Arab Americans
who happened to be Muslims. Our first such contact was with Jamal in
the summer of 1991.
After an initial telephone conversation, Jamal visited our home, and
offered to do some translations for us, and to help guide us through
the history of the Arabian horse in the Middle East. Before Jamal left
that afternoon, he asked if he might: use our bathroom to wash before
saying his scheduled prayers; and borrow a piece of newspaper to use as
a prayer rug, so he could say his scheduled prayers before leaving our
house. We, of course, obliged, but wondered if there was something
more appropriate that we could give him to use than a newspaper.
Without our ever realizing it at the time, Jamal was practicing a very
beautiful form of Dawa (preaching or exhortation). He made no comment
about the fact that we were not Muslims, and he didn't preach
anything to us about his religious beliefs. He "merely" presented
us with his example, an example that spoke volumes, if one were willing
to be receptive to the lesson.
Over the next 16 months, contact with Jamal slowly increased in
frequency, until it was occurring on a biweekly to weekly basis.
During these visits, Jamal never preached to me about Islam, never
questioned me about my own religious beliefs or convictions, and never
verbally suggested that I become a Muslim. However, I was beginning to
learn a lot. First, there was the constant behavioural example of
Jamal observing his scheduled prayers. Second, there was the
behavioural example of how Jamal conducted his daily life in a highly
moral and ethical manner, both in his business world and in his social
world. Third, there was the behavioural example of how Jamal
interacted with his two children. For my wife, Jamal's wife provided
a similar example. Fourth, always within the framework of helping me
to understand Arabian horse history in the Middle East, Jamal began to
share with me: 1) stories from Arab and Islamic history; 2) sayings of
the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him; and 3) Qur'anic verses and
their contextual meaning. In point of fact, our every visit now
included at least a 30 minute conversation cantered on some aspect of
Islam, but always presented in terms of helping me intellectually
understand the Islamic context of Arabian horse history. I was never
told "this is the way things are", I was merely told "this is
what Muslims typically believe". Since I wasn't being "preached
to", and since Jamal never inquired as to my own beliefs, I didn't
need to bother attempting to justify my own position. It was all
handled as an intellectual exercise, not as proselytising.Gradually,
Jamal began to introduce us to other Arab families in the local Muslim
community. There was Wa'el and his family, Khalid and his family,
and a few others. Consistently, I observed individuals and families
who were living their lives on a much higher ethical plane than the
American society in which we were all embedded. Maybe there was
something to the practice of Islam that I had missed during my
collegiate and seminary days.
By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself some serious questions
about where I was and what I was doing. These questions were prompted
by the following considerations. 1) Over the course of the prior 16
months, our social life had become increasingly centered on the Arab
component of the local Muslim community. By December, probably 75% of
our social life was being spent with Arab Muslims. 2) By virtue of my
seminary training and education, I knew how badly the Bible had been
corrupted (and often knew exactly when, where, and why), I had no
belief in any triune godhead, and I had no belief in anything more than
a metaphorical "sonship" of Jesus, peace be upon him. In short,
while I certainly believed in God, I was as strict a monotheist as my
Muslim friends. 3) My personal values and sense of morality were much
more in keeping with my Muslim friends than with the "Christian"
society around me. After all, I had the non-confrontational examples
of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa'el as illustrations. In short, my nostalgic
yearning for the type of community in which I had been raised was
finding gratification in the Muslim community. American society might
be morally bankrupt, but that did not appear to be the case for that
part of the Muslim community with which I had had contact. Marriages
were stable, spouses were committed to each other, and honesty,
integrity, self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized. My
wife and I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for
several years I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a
moral vacuum. The Muslim community appeared to be different.
The different threads were being woven together into a single strand.
Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian
ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral
society, and my contact with the Muslim community were becoming
intricately intertwined. My self-questioning came to a head when I
finally got around to asking myself exactly what separated me from the
beliefs of my Muslim friends. I suppose that I could have raised that
question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn't ready to take that
step. I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with them, and I
didn't think that I wanted to introduce that topic of conversation
into our friendship. As such, I began to pull off the bookshelf all
the books on Islam that I had acquired in my collegiate and seminary
days. However far my own beliefs were from the traditional position of
the church, and however seldom I actually attended church, I still
identified myself as being a Christian, and so I turned to the works of
Western scholars. That month of December, I read half a dozen or so
books on Islam by Western scholars, including one biography of the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Further, I began to read two
different English translations of the meaning of the Qur'an. I never
spoke to my Muslim friends about this personal quest of self-discovery.
I never mentioned what types of books I was reading, nor ever spoke
about why I was reading these books. However, occasionally I would run
a very circumscribed question past one of them.
While I never spoke to my Muslim friends about those books, my wife and
I had numerous conversations about what I was reading. By the last
week of December of 1992, I was forced to admit to myself, that I could
find no area of substantial disagreement between my own religious
beliefs and the general tenets of Islam. While I was ready to
acknowledge that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a prophet of (one who
spoke for or under the inspiration of) God, and while I had absolutely
no difficulty affirming that there was no god besides God/Allah,
glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any
decision. I could readily admit to myself that I had far more in
common with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with
the traditional Christianity of the organized church. I knew only too
well that I could easily confirm from my seminary training and
education most of what the Qur'an had to say about Christianity, the
Bible, and Jesus, peace be upon him. Nonetheless, I hesitated.
Further, I rationalized my hesitation by maintaining to myself that I
really didn't know the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that my
areas of agreement were confined to general concepts. As such, I
continued to read, and then to re-read.
One's sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful affirmation of
one's own position in the cosmos. In my professional practice, I had
occasionally been called upon to treat certain addictive disorders,
ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to drug abuse. As a clinician, I
knew that the basic physical addiction had to be overcome to create the
initial abstinence. That was the easy part of treatment. As Mark
Twain once said: "Quitting smoking is easy; I've done it hundreds
of times". However, I also knew that the key to maintaining that
abstinence over an extended time period was overcoming the client's
psychological addiction, which was heavily grounded in the client's
basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to himself that he
was "a smoker", or that he was "a drinker", etc. The addictive
behaviour had become part and parcel of the client's basic sense of
identity, of the client's basic sense of self. Changing this sense
of identity was crucial to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic
"cure". This was the difficult part of treatment. Changing
one's basic sense of identity is a most difficult task. One's
psyche tends to cling to the old and familiar, which seem more
psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and unfamiliar.
On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and used it on a
daily basis. However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to apply
it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding my
religious identity. For 43 years, my religious identity had been
neatly labeled as "Christian", however many qualifications I might
have added to that term over the years. Giving up that label of
personal identity was no easy task. It was part and parcel of how I
defined my very being. Given the benefit of hindsight, it is clear
that my hesitation served the purpose of insuring that I could keep my
familiar religious identity of being a Christian, although a Christian
who believed like a Muslim believed.
It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out
our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle
Eastern journey could become a reality. One of the questions had to do
with religious affiliation. I didn't even think about it, and
automatically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in
"Christian". It was easy, it was familiar, and it was comfortable.
However, that comfort was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me
how I had answered the question on religious identity on the
application form. I immediately replied, "Christian", and chuckled
audibly. Now, one of Freud's contributions to the understanding of
the human psyche was his realization that laughter is often a release
of psychological tension. However wrong Freud may have been in many
aspects of his theory of psychosexual development, his insights into
laughter were quite on target. I had laughed! What was this
psychological tension that I had need to release through the medium of
laughter?
I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I
was a Christian, not a Muslim. In response to which, she politely
informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written
"Christian", or "Protestant", or "Methodist". On a
professional basis, I knew that a person does not defend himself
against an accusation that hasn't been made. (If, in the course of a
session of psychotherapy, my client blurted out, "I'm not angry
about that", and I hadn't even broached the topic of anger, it was
clear that my client was feeling the need to defend himself against a
charge that his own unconscious was making. In short, he really was
angry, but he wasn't ready to admit it or to deal with it.) If my
wife hadn't made the accusation, i.e. "you are a Muslim", then
the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was the
only other person present. I was aware of this, but still I hesitated.
The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of identity for 43
years was not going to come off easily.
About a month had gone by since my wife's question to me. It was now
late in January of 1993. I had set aside all the books on Islam by the
Western scholars, as I had read them all thoroughly. The two English
translations of the meaning of the Qur'an were back on the bookshelf,
and I was busy reading yet a third English translation of the meaning
of the Qur'an. Maybe in this translation I would find some sudden
justification for...
I was taking my lunch hour from my private practice at a local Arab
restaurant that I had started to frequent. I entered as usual, seated
myself at a small table, and opened my third English translation of the
meaning of the Qur'an to where I had left off in my reading. I
figured I might as well get some reading done over my lunch hour.
Moments later, I became aware that Mahmoud was at my shoulder, and
waiting to take my order. He glanced at what I was reading, but said
nothing about it. My order taken, I returned to the solitude of my
reading.
A few minutes later, Mahmoud's wife, Iman, an American Muslim, who
wore the Hijab (scarf) and modest dress that I had come to associate
with female Muslims, brought me my order. She commented that I was
reading the Qur'an, and politely asked if I were a Muslim. The word
was out of my mouth before it could be modified by any social etiquette
or politeness: "No!" That single word was said forcefully, and
with more than a hint of irritability. With that, Iman politely
retired from my table.
What was happening to me? I had behaved rudely and somewhat
aggressively. What had this woman done to deserve such behaviour from
me? This wasn't like me. Given my childhood upbringing, I still
used "sir" and "ma'am" when addressing clerks and cashiers
who were waiting on me in stores. I could pretend to ignore my own
laughter as a release of tension, but I couldn't begin to ignore this
sort of unconscionable behaviour from myself. My reading was set
aside, and I mentally stewed over this turn of events throughout my
meal. The more I stewed, the guiltier I felt about my behaviour. I
knew that when Iman brought me my check at the end of the meal, I was
going to need to make some amends. If for no other reason, simple
politeness demanded it. Furthermore, I was really quite disturbed
about how resistant I had been to her innocuous question. What was
going on in me that I responded with that much force to such a simple
and straightforward question? Why did that one, simple question lead
to such atypical behaviour on my part?
Later, when Iman came with my check, I attempted a round-about apology
by saying: "I'm afraid I was a little abrupt in answering your
question before. If you were asking me whether I believe that there is
only one God, then my answer is yes. If you were asking me whether I
believe that Muhammad was one of the prophets of that one God, then my
answer is yes." She very nicely and very supportively said:
"That's okay; it takes some people a little longer than others."
Perhaps, the readers of this will be kind enough to note the
psychological games I was playing with myself without chuckling too
hard at my mental gymnastics and behaviour. I well knew that in my own
way, using my own words, I had just said the Shahadah, the Islamic
testimonial of faith, i.e. "I testify that there is no god but Allah,
and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah". However,
having said that, and having recognized what I said, I could still
cling to my old and familiar label of religious identity. After all, I
hadn't said I was a Muslim. I was simply a Christian, albeit an
atypical Christian, who was willing to say that there was one God, not
a triune godhead, and who was willing to say that Muhammad was one of
the prophets inspired by that one God. If a Muslim wanted to accept me
as being a Muslim that was his or her business, and his or her label of
religious identity. However, it was not mine. I thought I had found
my way out of my crisis of religious identity. I was a Christian, who
would carefully explain that I agreed with, and was willing to testify
to, the Islamic testimonial of faith. Having made my tortured
explanation, and having parsed the English language to within an inch
of its life, others could hang whatever label on me they wished. It
was their label, and not mine.
It was now March of 1993, and my wife and I were enjoying a five-week
vacation in the Middle East. It was also the Islamic month of Ramadan,
when Muslims fast from day break until sunset. Because we were so
often staying with or being escorted around by family members of our
Muslim friends back in the States, my wife and I had decided that we
also would fast, if for no other reason than common courtesy. During
this time, I had also started to perform the five daily prayers of
Islam with my newfound, Middle Eastern, Muslim friends. After all,
there was nothing in those prayers with which I could disagree.
I was a Christian, or so I said. After all, I had been born into a
Christian family, had been given a Christian upbringing, had attended
church and Sunday school every Sunday as a child, had graduated from a
prestigious seminary, and was an ordained minister in a large
Protestant denomination. However, I was also a Christian: who
didn't believe in a triune godhead or in the divinity of Jesus, peace
be upon him; who knew quite well how the Bible had been corrupted; who
had said the Islamic testimony of faith in my own carefully parsed
words; who had fasted during Ramadan; who was saying Islamic prayers
five times a day; and who was deeply impressed by the behavioural
examples I had witnessed in the Muslim community, both in America and
in the Middle East. (Time and space do not permit me the luxury of
documenting in detail all of the examples of personal morality and
ethics I encountered in the Middle East.) If asked if I were a Muslim,
I could and did do a five-minute monologue detailing the above, and
basically leaving the question unanswered. I was playing intellectual
word games, and succeeding at them quite nicely.
It was now late in our Middle Eastern trip. An elderly friend who
spoke no English and I were walking down a winding, little road,
somewhere in one of the economically disadvantaged areas of greater
'Amman, Jordan. As we walked, an elderly man approached us from the
opposite direction, said, "Salam 'Alaykum", i.e., "peace be
upon you", and offered to shake hands. We were the only three people
there. I didn't speak Arabic, and neither my friend nor the stranger
spoke English. Looking at me, the stranger asked, "Muslim?"
At that precise moment in time, I was fully and completely trapped.
There were no intellectual word games to be played, because I could
only communicate in English, and they could only communicate in Arabic.
There was no translator present to bail me out of this situation, and
to allow me to hide behind my carefully prepared English monologue. I
couldn't pretend I didn't understand the question, because it was
all too obvious that I had. My choices were suddenly, unpredictably,
and inexplicably reduced to just two: I could say "N'am", i.e.,
"yes"; or I could say "La", i.e., "no". The choice was
mine, and I had no other. I had to choose, and I had to choose now; it
was just that simple. Praise be to Allah, I answered, "N'am".
With saying that one word, all the intellectual word games were now
behind me. With the intellectual word games behind me, the
psychological games regarding my religious identity were also behind
me. I wasn't some strange, atypical Christian. I was a Muslim.
Praise be to Allah, my wife of 33 years also became a Muslim about that
same time.
Not too many months after our return to America from the Middle East, a
neighbour invited us over to his house, saying that he wanted to talk
with us about our conversion to Islam. He was a retired Methodist
minister, with whom I had had several conversations in the past.
Although we had occasionally talked superficially about such issues as
the artificial construction of the Bible from various, earlier,
Useful Websites worth visiting:
http://www.dartabligh.org/books/ebooks/basicbeliefs/index.asp
http://www.al-islam.org/info; http://al-islam.org/philosophyofislam;
http://www.muslimunity.co.uk;
http://al-islam.org/nutshell/#Personalities
http://al-islam.org/faq;
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Spa/7220/index1.html