Rizum: A Message from Mary, Mother of Jesus, an Invitation to Islam

By Dr. Hoda

Rizum is a book that will take you to a place where all people want to be. We all want to know where we are going in life and have a clear path to our destination. But what would we think if our future were revealed to us? What if our path was made clear to us, only waiting for us to follow our destiny? Rizum is the story of one woman who was faced with such a choice. It is a harrowing story of what happens when the best path to follow is the path we have been avoiding our entire lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524562472

Dr. Hoda

Dr. Hoda works in medical field as a healer. Being a medical healer, she has worked in different institutions where she was able to practice her expertise. She is also a certified hypnotherapist. Aside from being a medical healer, she also has several other degrees and a master’s degree. She has been an advocate for disadvantage and minority for most of her life. Rizum: A Message from Mary, Mother of Jesus, an Invitation to Islam is going to be her first book.

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Copyright © 2016 by Dr. Hoda.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016919438

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-6249-6

                Softcover        978-1-5245-6248-9

                eBook             978-1-5245-6247-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 11/18/2016

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Origin

Chapter 2 Searching for purpose in my life

Chapter 3 Spiritual Initiation

Chapter 4 History of My Dream

Chapter 5 Islam a peaceful religion

References

References

INTRODUCTION

I N THE WORLD in which we live in people derive meaning from their personal narrative. We are a species who are constantly looking for meaning in our environment and a way to find meaning for ourselves in relation to our environment. This comes from our personal history and how we reflect on our lives, and the major events of our lives. It took me over twenty years to get the courage to publish this book. I also believe that God wants me to publish this book now more than ever as a result of what has been happening in the world, particularly in the Middle East. I never claimed that I am knowledgeable in religion or mystic experiences; I just want to relate the message of God to people. God sent guidance to His servants through different means; therefore, we must be open-minded and sensitive to be able to receive these messages. The story you are about to read demonstrates how we subtly perceive the messages, and what happens when we refuse to listen to God through the agency of our conscience.

My story is part of the message. The personal story has become amedium of communicating values. I tried to make sense of what was happening to me by asking people, reading books, and doing whatever else that could help me understand my mystic experiences. It took me one year to write this book before I put it away, afraid it would not be good enough. In the late 1990’s I was receiving messages that there would be a group people coming from the East who are just like Genghis Khan who came from Mongolia. I was also told that God is with everyone, but particularly with Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Konia, and Yugoslavia. At the time, I did not understand this message, but now it makes sense.

I may never find out about the reason for God’s mercy and blessing upon me and why I was so fortunate to have His Grace. However, I thank Allah SA, for not giving up on me and for His love and support throughout my live. I also want to thank my children, who taught me to love, be selfless, and be able to overcome many obstacles in my life as much as humanly possible. I also want to thank all the evil people in my life, because by going through painful experiences created by them, I was able to see, feel, and experience evil. Once, one said, Evil must exist in order to separate good from bad. I hope I have fulfilled my mission in life by writing this book. Allah Akbar.

CHAPTER 1

Origin

I FIND IT both ironic and poetic that the dreams that we have as young children remain with us throughout our lives. Though we mature and assume worldly roles and responsibilities, our dreams and visions from childhood remain with us. They may lie dormant until such a time as external circumstances force them into consciousness, but nevertheless they are there. All of my life I have believed in the possibility of self-transformation and personal transcendence from a subjective ego state. When we have a goal in mind, particularly something as profound as spiritual liberation, we will eventually fulfill them. I have never allowed external factors to single-handedly dictate the course of my life. Environmental factors can serve as barriers to the fulfillment of some objectives, but we can simply weave our way through them (if we recognize that they are there) or deliberately avoid them. It is important for people to have either certainty or hope for the future and for their condition. In traditional societies, where identity and social roles are predefined by the previous generations, people have a good measure of certainty. In other social conditions, where the traditional culture and the family unit are weak, people must rely on personal effort and self-confidence to secure their position in the world. If people do not have material and psychological security, they risk developing maladaptive thinking and behavioral patterns or long-term neurotic character traits. Modern psychology has attempted, with various degrees of success, to locate the formation of the individual personality squarely within a specific personal life context. The major assumption of psychology is that patients with mental disturbances can overcome the effects of a troubled past through cognitive reflection and understanding of their childhood. I personally subscribe to this thesis because I have seen it work numerous times. Moreover, I have participated with clients in the process of self-discovery through reflection and cognitive understanding. Most of our formative, and lasting, influences come from childhood. We could live through the psychic effects of childhood experiences without appreciating their origins and nature. The chain of cause and effect does not merely apply to an individual’s personal history; we can extend the chain of causation to include the experiences of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors both in sociological and genetic terms.

Though we are capable of managing our present circumstances (to some degree) and charting the course of our future life, we will always be a product of our earliest experiences. Our genetic makeup and environmental conditions also factor in to who we are and what we become. No matter how far we travel, we will carry with us the images and emotions of our first home. No matter how much we arrange our public persona and personal image, we are working with the genes inherited from our family and the lessons socialized into us by society. I have spent most of my life living far from my first home, but I am a product of a continual line of decisions made by the generations before me, the generations that raised me, my own generation, and the generations I have brought into the world and raised.

My mother’s family originally comes from Isfahan, a city located south of the Iranian capital Tehran. Isfahan was the central capital for the Safavid dynasty. The Safavids were one of the most important Persian ruling regimes in the history of Iran. Their principal accomplishment was the conversion of the Iranian population from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam. My family history can be traced back to this time. Moreover, the seeds of my personality were set by the activities of men and women whom I had never met before. Many members of my family were involved in Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. They were known as dervishes, and they constituted a recognizable class of holy men or spiritual practitioners. Dervishes are particularly respected in Iran because they fulfill multiple social and spiritual roles, acting as teachers and examples for broader society. It is the Islamic mystic, Sufi, who reminded Muslims throughout Islamic history of the spiritual message of Islam. They helped navigate Muslim cultures past external displays of religiosity and stiff legalism. They showed Muslims the real potentiality of the Islamic faith and practice to contribute to transcendence of the individual ego. Their goal was to shed the ego in this world in order to have a vision of the divine majesty of God.

The dervish attempts to internalize the ethical code and spiritual message of Islam by moving beyond the external understanding of the religion to find the deepest source of meaning within Islam. The dervishes generally followed the specific letter of Islamic law and expected behavior, but they did not restrict Islam to the external rules and regulations. They thought that there was a deeper reality within Islam that they could discover through experience. They prayed and fasted in order to purify the nafs (self) from taint or attachment. They lived in the world, but their material lives were humble. They were in the world but not of the world. My great-grandfather was a notable Sufi in his time. He was known for his clean appearance and the light that radiated from his face. This was the light of faith and God-consciousness that illuminates the true believers.

My father and his people were from Shiraz. They came from a famous tribe, which, during the Safavid period, was well-known for their martial bravery and technical skills. Different parts of my family migrated from Isfahan and Shiraz respectively to another town sometime after the collapse of the Safavid dynasty. During the Qajar regime, Tehran was the new capital of Iran, but only a small percentage of the population was native to Tehran. Although urbanization is the process of rural villagers moving to urban areas for employment opportunities, most of the migrants to Tehran came from other urban areas. As the capital city grew in numbers, the city expanded to include smaller surrounding villages. This process is often driven by population pressures and has the effect of creating a stratified social and economic landscape. Former farmers from the agricultural sector now became the underclass of the city. When my family moved to Tehran, they faced immediate material hardships. In those times poor families would rent small sections or rooms of larger estates and live there until they could save up enough money to secure larger living arrangements. There was no concept of debt financing, and people generally lived within their means. Both of my parents were born and raised under such conditions. Poverty and survival shaped the environment in which they matured. They, in turn, conditioned the world of my earliest years.

My mother was only a teenager when she was married to my father. He was a teenager as well. My mother was raised in confined living quarters with her parents and sisters. She was the seventh child of eight children, all girls. There were three other children, but they died in infancy. Growing up, my mother’s household experience was one of hard work and marginalization. She was born and raised in a time and place where people were part of a group, familial and community. Everyone had to contribute to the group, and no one was entitled to special attention. My mother did not experience her parents’ affections, and she remembers feeling like they were always taking their anxieties out on her. This state of affairs scarred her sense of self-worth. In particular, she was shunned in favor of the youngest of the eight daughters, to whom her father showed special attention. In her formative years of life, she was overcome with sibling rivalry and visceral jealousy toward her younger sister. Another cause for her low self-esteem was social in nature. Both of her parents (my grandparents) were previously married with children from those marriages. This fact created a certain measure of social stigma against her, and it was compounded by the fact that they were poor. In those times in Iran, as well as in history generally, marriages that end in divorce, the widowed, and single parents were outside of the norm socially. Marriage was an important social institution that was respected and upheld by men and women alike. A person could not just divorce their partner on the basis that they were no longer emotionally satisfied. This would indicate to society that the person was unreliable and untrustworthy. This applies most to children. They did not act up or rebel against their parents. They accepted their lives and lived within the parameters set by tradition and custom. This pattern has been continuous through history until modern times. My life represented the breaking point from tradition to modern independence.

Unlike her siblings, my mother married my father when he was only a teenager. He was not established or financially secure. Their marriage was arranged through the efforts of my father’s mother, who was not involved in my father’s life. My grandmother, Fatima Khanoom, was married at the age of eight. Her husband was much older than her, and he lived with his two widowed sisters. Fatima Khanoom was unable to bear children until the age of twenty. Because of the long wait for the birth of my father, Reza, Fatima Khanoom and the family celebrated for seven days straight. Either because of pressure from her sisters-in-law, or as an agreement to let her begin her life anew, Fatima Khanoon left the house when my father Reza was just eight months old. She wanted to live a life that early marriage precluded her from achieving. She left him under the care of her two sisters. My great-aunts raised my father well. They gave him attention and fostered his early interest in business. When my father was twelve, his father died, leaving him solely in the care of his two aunts. They helped my father to open a small grocery store, which he was responsible for maintaining. Because of these responsibilities, my father never graduated from high school. His primary education came from trial and error in business relationships. On his free time, he would read about religion and ethics, hoping to raise his spiritual level and infuse his business practices with a religious and ethical spirit. He worked hard to broaden his mind, and this was evident from his expansive vocabulary.

Within four years of losing his father, each one of my father’s aunts died in succession. His family managed to locate Fatima Khanoom and reunite her with my father. By this time, she had already remarried and had children with another man. It seems as though she could not find independence and a meaningful life outside of marriage. This is still true for most people. What they substitute for marriage lacks equivalent meaning and adds up to mere distraction, entertainment, and sensation seeking fixation and behavior. My father found that he had a half- brother who was eight years old. Fatima Khanoom ironically felt responsible for arranging his marriage. At this time, the male population of Tehran was greater than the female population, so it was harder for a man to find a wife. It was necessary for a man to have a good work ethic and economic prospects in order to appeal to women. This is not just true for traditional agricultural societies but also applies to male-female interpersonal relations. One day my grandmother saw my mother and pursued her as a possible marriage partner for my father. Because of her economic condition, my mother’s family agreed to marry her off to my father, who was only sixteen at this time, so he was not as financially secure as would be expected by young women. This early marriage was primarily transactional, and it must have deepened my mother’s feelings of neglect, as if she were not wanted in the group. However, to her credit, my mother entered the marriage in good faith; fulfilled her roles, duties, and obligations to my father; and slowly asserted her dominance in the house.

After the wedding Fatima Khanoom left my father’s life. Ironically, my father never held anything against her. He was satisfied that she had helped him find a wife. He never allowed the circumstances of his childhood dampen his mood. He was always very positive and upbeat. The most salient memory that I have of him is of his constant, almost compulsive happiness. He was grateful to have his family. He did not judge his life on the basis of high expectations. His early deprivations did not cause him to be bitter at the world, and he did not compare himself to others. This is one quality that made him a truly good man. My father was pious toward God; he prayed and fasted regularly. He demonstrated an open spirit of kindness and generosity toward others, particularly his children. He was always organized, neat, and hygienic. In public, my father had a professional self-presentation. Everyone who associated with him respected him. His primary business was as a merchant in the bazaar; his other business was in real estate. In the bazaar, my father was close to the religious teachers and scholars (collectively they are known as the ulema; I will use this term in favor of the derogatory appellation akhund). The bazaar merchant class has a close relationship with the ulema because they provide funding for the ulema as an institution. This connection between the bazaar merchants and the religious classes affected my father’s religious disposition and otherwise suited his character.

While my father was motivated by his experiences to cherish family, my mother had a different take away from her hard upbringing. She was extremely street-smart and shrewd in social relationships. She would socialize with family and friends, but she was careful not to let down her guard. Because she was married at the young age of twelve, my mother’s only career option was to manage our house. She was a good homemaker, but she dreamed about working as a secretary. Naturally, she projected these ideals onto her daughters. Even though her children have surpassed these expectations, her intention was for us to have a greater range of opportunities than she had. She may have felt that her early marriage and domestic responsibilities inhibited her from fulfilling her potential. She had a natural aptitude for mathematics. This aptitude served her well in the management of the domestic economics. Growing up poor, my mother was not someone who squandered money. In fact, while she rented a room with my father, my mother helped pay the rent by knitting and cooking. Her landlady taught her dressmaking so she could use her time to make clothing for her to sell. On her own time my mother made children’s clothing. She would take these clothes to the market and sell them for profit. From these earnings she loaned money to close associates and invested in their projects. She would save this money in case of emergency. Her instincts were solidly based on the need to secure shelter and comfort. Though my mother was provided for, she did not remain in a state of total dependency. For most women dependency is as harsh as destitution, since in an instant their provider can be lost to them via early death or abandonment.

Early Home Life

The start of my parents’ marriage was full of tragedy. My mother had her first child when she was thirteen years old. The child, a girl, died after two months. My older sister was born afterward; she survived infancy, though her health was precarious in her first year. My mother gave birth to another girl. This child died in infancy as well. At this point my parents had suffered the loss of two children. Moreover, each child was a girl. At this time, a male child was more desirable. Men were breadwinners; they could go out on the street and make money for the family. My mother was also from a home where every sibling was female. She did not want to recreate her childhood experience for her children. She was naturally worried that her female children would experience feelings of neglect and alienation that she herself experienced. So when she became pregnant for the fourth time, she hoped that it would be a boy. When the child came, my parents were full of joy: it was a boy. They named him Mahdi to signify the special meaning they attached to his birth—the Mahdi is the name of the descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who is said to come back to earth to presage the return of Jesus Christ to this world. Mahdi’s birth gave my parents fulfillment and peaceful harmony. But when he became sick at just over two years old, they feared that he would not survive.

A few months later he was dead. Losing two children before did not prepare my parents for the third tragedy. They suffered all the same, probably more. My mother had invested religious significance in the birth of a boy. For my father, Mahdi’s death was another test from God. There is a saying that the more God loves one of His servants the more He makes His servant suffer as a means of testing the servant’s faith. My parents were continually tested with poverty and death, but they did not allow these trials to overburden them. They suffered with dignity, and they continued to live their life with hope of good things but without expectations on how their future would work out. Their positive outlook and forbearance are marks of courage and faith. They were not self-centered and entitled the way many modern men and women have become. They did not sink into moods of self-pity and despair. They managed their lives with sober realism and upbeat practicality. Such an approach to life is one of the primary benefits of a traditional religious cultural climate.

At the age of nineteen, my mother was once again pregnant. This time she cried and was unhappy. If God gave her a boy she would always worry about its health. If the child were a girl, she would have to wait for a boy to be born to her. While pregnant she had a dream of a dervish dressed in humble clothing and illuminated by light. He told her that the child would be a boy and that he would make her proud. My mother was reassured by this dream, but when I was born her expectations were ruined. Surprisingly, my mother dealt with the incongruity of dream and reality by interpreting the dream metaphorically. I was called a boy, not by virtue of my sex, but by the role that I would play in the future, as the head of my house. Moreover, a boy signified masculinity, which is symbolic of strength and power. A masculine person is creative and masterful. Though Western culture has become so antagonistic toward masculinity and men in general, the meaning of masculinity remains what it has always been—dignified and superior. She named me Roya, a name that has material and spiritual significance. I became my mother’s favorite, and I would remain favored by her throughout my childhood.

The births of my three younger siblings were evenly spaced out by two and a half to three years from me. My brother was born when I was two and a half years old. He was the first male child to survive infancy. After him, my second brother was born. I was five at the time of his birth. Now, two boys were born to my parents in succession. They each had different temperaments. My older brother was hyperactive and aggressive. My younger brother was quiet and mild tempered. Both of my brothers were powerful as children, and they would grow to be stout men. They each manifested their own form of bravery in later life as they confronted the world in all its trials and tribulations.

When I was five years old, my father’s business began to prosper. He was active in the bazaar and in real estate. By this time the fortunes of our family quickly rose, and we were able to move into a large house, hire domestic helpers, and buy new cars. The domestic arrangement of our house in the beginning of the 1960s was normal. We all stayed at home with our mother while my father went to work. When my mother went out of the house, my older sister would be there to watch us. It was a cooperative effort. We just stayed together and behaved ourselves. At this time two aspects of the family dynamic began to emerge. I took an active part in the affairs of my siblings. I was recognized by everyone as the de facto leader of our group.

As I grew up I assumed a primary role within the family. I took upon myself great responsibility and was entrusted by my mother and siblings to guide them to the best of my capabilities. I was always ambitious, but not for material possessions or glory. What I have always wanted is to push my potential to the highest limits, to take what God-given potential I have and develop it fully. This is close to the theory of Maslow on self-actualization. Once we have fulfilled our need for security, physical survival, social belonging, and psychological well-being, we still