After the Clear Signs: This Is Not a Book About Islam

By Deborah Jamil

After the Clear Signs is the author’s account of her immersion into a way of life that produces extremism. In her letter to a friend, she tells how governance by an intolerant and divisive dogma compelled her to study the origins of religion. This book is a source for open discussion of issues considered forbidden and blasphemous by religious authorities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9780998145815

Book preview

SOURCES

PROLOGUE

The subject of Islam and the lifestyle, culture, and beliefs of Muslims became a popular topic after the events of 9/11. Even as this book is being published, politicians and newscasters across the globe report on the activities of Islamic State, which further fuels the controversy around people of the Muslim faith. As an American with a Christian background who married a man from Pakistan, I became deeply involved in the Muslim community. My first years of marriage were a mix of participation in a Sufi group and mainstream orthodoxy. Then, later my husband and I administered an Islamic school for young children in the San Francisco Bay Area. All the while, one struggle remained insurmountable: religion. Sources for help yielded new layers of confusion and hard-and-fast boundaries to protect the ultimate authority of the orthodoxy. Had it not been for our children, I would have given up the effort to understand Islam early on, but neither of us wanted to split the family apart.

Following the Muslim tradition, my wedding ceremony taught me that a woman was equivalent to half a man. I had asked a female friend to be my witness on the marriage document. To my surprise, she was dismissed as an unqualified witness because a woman’s signature is worth half a man’s. By the end, a complete stranger, a man, was asked to sign the marriage document, since he counts as a full witness.

This book is about my search for meaning and understanding in a religion that seemed more confusing and self-contradictory the longer I lived in it. I studied classical Arabic and the history of the era of the religion’s origins, which was key to writing about or discussing the material in the Quran. Written as a letter to a friend, the style is informative yet curious. I would write to Rosalind to organize my thoughts and get past the anger that these memories evoked. In the text I delve into some of the thorniest issues we face as social beings.

After many years of study, discussions, and interacting with people in the Muslim community who believe in the generally taught Islam, I discovered what had been getting in the way of my understanding. It was the fact that religions, like everything else, evolve, or change, over time. The religion we see today is not at all the same as the one taught by the Prophet or the one existing a thousand, five hundred, or even fifty years ago. There are constants, things that remain the same, but there are also many variables and environments that change with time.

To understand what has happened, we need to learn something of the history of mankind, especially its language. Does a key noun such as God mean the same thing to everyone? Or do we more commonly have different ideas of God that require various descriptors from individual perspectives? Often, we ignore the fact that there is no globally agreed upon concept of God and then try to talk rationally about the subject of religion, which relies heavily on the word God to portray a higher power governing all of humanity. If we choose to ignore the different ideas of God, how can we expect the subject of religion, any religion, to make sense until and unless we choose to accept the fact that we may be talking about very different concepts?

After 30 tumultuous years of living with a very different religion from the one I grew up with, I think that the terrorism we are living with today is a direct outcome of not reconciling our different ideas of God. After the clear signs is one of the more often repeated phrases found in the Quran, but nothing was clear in the greater context of the existing religion. Everything the Muslim community taught about their religion and prophet was confusing and contradictory. When there are questions about different concepts of God, the very act of having these questions could be considered blasphemy, which is punishable by death. If it were clear, we would not be at war with each other and the earth.

So, why label it not a book about Islam? This work is purely my perspective, and in no way represents the currently propagated beliefs of Islam. Through the writing of my personal letter to Rosalind, I detail the division between the currently accepted version of Islam and what I discovered was actually conveyed by Prophet Muhammed to his audience in his lifetime. The book is a reflection of our connection with our own nature and the divisive dogma present in any religion, specifically that of Islam, that is teaching intolerance of other faiths. When our freedom of thought is threatened or repressed, we lose our chance at peace.

DEAR ROSALIND

Quick note from the author: While studying and participating in the religion of Islam inside our Muslim community, I encountered resistance, anger, and outright hostility to my questions and concerns about the religion and its tenets. I experienced the pain of isolation and neglect of the religion’s inconsistencies within a whole community of followers. Per my surroundings and family dynamic, I had no power to discuss or raise awareness of its contradictions. Memories of my turmoil tend to interfere with my ability to clearly discuss or write about the issues I faced. In an effort to reduce the distraction of unpleasant memories, I wrote the book as long letter to a friend, Rosalind, keeping her open-minded non-judgmental personality before me throughout.

Dear Rosalind,

I want to thank you for the cards and letters you have sent since we reunited at Satsang after many years of not seeing one another. Our family rarely socialized when I was young, so I was surprised that you remembered me as well as you did. Having moved homes almost every year of my childhood, I struggled to maintain any friendships. Satsang was usually the only gathering my family attended together. Otherwise, my time was spent at school, my father was at work, and my mother stayed home, except for grocery shopping and the Satsangs. Our life more or less stabilized during my middle and high school years as my parents stayed in one home. That was about the time I met you and your family. I saw you walk to the Satsang surrounded by all your tall sons and, finally, a daughter. Every time I saw you, I wondered how you had managed to have such a large family, as you were always so petite.

Another thing I remember, with gratitude, is your cheerful disposition. My memory of your positive attitude is what makes it easy to write to you about a subject so painful to me that I generally avoid thinking about it: a religion so self-contradictory that it either tears families apart or glues them painfully to their secrets. The more I studied and involved myself in the culture, the more confusing and contradictory the topic of Islam seemed to become.

In a letter from 2004, you asked me, "Can you recommend a booklet that explains some of the more forceful statements in the Quran?" Also enclosed, were a couple of full-page ads from the San Jose Mercury News saying, No to Terrorism. We have talked briefly before about how the Islam out there now does not reflect what Prophet Muhammed taught. This is not the first time you’ve asked by letter or phone to obtain more resources to demystify the strong voice of the Quran.

If you want to know more about the generally taught Islam, I suggest looking at your local masjids (mosques), and organizations like the one that put out the San Jose Mercury News ad. I have no interest in propagating their teachings or interpretations. I do not believe the interpretations–never have, never will. However, if instead of, or in addition to their version of Islam, you wish to hear my understanding of the Quran and the Prophet’s teachings, I am happy to oblige. I can offer the information in the same way the introductory books on Islam do; beginning with the testimony of faith, then the four remaining pillars: ritual prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.

Prophet Muhammed’s actual message is very interesting and attractive to me. Not many people in the Muslim community, where I happen to be now, want to hear it. The prophets and saints are very gentle people. They teach, specifically, how and why to be gentle and to support gentleness. Why mankind is determined to take this message and turn it into something harsh and forbidding is quite beyond me, but, out of that tendency, is born the brutality and terrorism we are faced with today.

By the time of my birth my parents had become disillusioned with the Christian faith. The only acceptable source of religious knowledge was what got passed through and approved by the church. My parents were no longer interested in the most widely accepted version of Christianity. They needed spiritual guidance that was not so heavily censored. My father found books about Master Kirpal Singh in the San Francisco public library and was impressed with the inclusive, welcoming, and gentle tone of his teachings--very different from the message most religious leaders propagate; past and present.

Although Kirpal Singh was born and raised in India in the Sikh religion, he never spoke of conversion. He advised followers to remain in the faith they were familiar with and try to understand the teachings of their spiritual guides more deeply. The suggested way to achieve this greater understanding was by increasing receptivity through daily meditation, self-introspection with the use of a diary, and study of the lives and teachings of people with wisdom (those who made the best use of knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.). Weekly Satsangs were an opportunity for Kirpal Singh’s followers to meet for meditation and study from his teachings. The whole point of the Satsangs was to come to know ourselves so that we could know God. All this was difficult as a child but, as an adult in a jungle of confusing ideas, it was a great help.

Kirpal Singh set the groundwork for interfaith study. He began by learning the original languages the scriptures were written in and read them in their original form. He often quoted from Rumi, a famous Muslim author and saint. It was mainly because both Mazhar and I were familiar with Rumi’s work that we felt we had something in common when it came to religion. I grew up hearing many different stories about the various religions and saints, especially Guru Nanak. He taught the vital importance of finding a living spiritual guide that inspired the lives of Sikh gurus who came after him. In college, I took religious studies and literature courses and learned even more about their lives and advice. However, none of this prepared me for the story of Guru Nanak and the Sikh religion I heard after my marriage to Mazhar.

The Muslims have it that Guru Nanak was a Hindu who became interested in Islam, studied it, and then went on Hajj (pilgrimage). There, he found Islam as the true way, Allah the One True God, and he became Muslim. The Sikhs are members of his tribe (Punjabis) who did not want to completely leave Hinduism and embrace Islam so are in a kind of limbo. Theoretically, they will not recover from their confusion until they realize the truth and convert to Islam as Guru Nanak did. (This was all relayed to me in a very matter-of-fact way and there was simply no disputing it.)

Getting back to your letter, you had enclosed a San Jose Mercury News article titled, "Not