No Longer A Convert

David Coolidge

Posted Dec 30, 2011      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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No Longer A Convert

by David Coolidge


I assume all converts have felt it, even if they can’t consciously identify what it is – the compulsion to prove that you are really a Muslim. For some, it is very obvious: Latinos/Whiteamericans/Blackamericans/etc. dressed like they are from Saudi Arabia. For others, it is a little more subtle: an obsessive desire to study Arabic and fiqh. In truth, there is nothing inherently wrong with this sort of behavior; conversion is a tricky journey, and we can’t all be “grounded” and “balanced.” But I have come to understand that it is a phase, at least for me.

I am no longer a convert. I am a Muslim. I am a member of the global ummah of Muhammad, may God send him blessings and peace. I am an eternal servant of God, struggling to uncover the reality of his eternal servitude, called svarupa in Sanskrit. And I am no longer interested in trying to prove that I am authentic, to myself, to other Muslims, and to skeptical white people. There is part of me that wants to share with you a list of all the reasons that I am legit, but that would just reinforce the idea that I need to prove myself. It is a spiritual sickness.

I want to move on to new things. I have always loved studying Hinduism, and I want to really get back into that. I have been doing it since Hajj, and it has been really wonderful. It almost feels like I have permission to study something of non-Islamic provenance because I went on Hajj twice. What a weird idea! Obviously, this means I have less time to study fiqh, hadith, Arabic, etc., but to be perfectly honest, I am kinda’ burned out on that. Much of it feels repetitive, stilted, or irrelevant. I’d rather study Hindi, Bengali or Sanskrit right now than work on my Arabic.

Most Muslims that I know haven’t studied a quarter of what I have studied, and yet, there is still this part of me that thinks I need to be studying Islamic Studies day and night in order to be a good servant of God. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, and may God preserve those who do so, and benefit us through them. But I think there is a point to be made here that is larger than just my own idiosyncratic mental states.

Classical Islamic civilization produced scholars like al-Biruni, who studied Sanskrit and wrote competently about the philosophy of Vedanta. They were rooted in their own “Islamic” perspective, but they were not afraid of the complexity of the world. They could encounter new ideas and ways of life without fear that they would lose their faith and practice in the process. The Muslims of 1433 A.H., en masse, have lost that. We are a reactionary and fearful religious community, and that creates a spiritual discourse which smacks of hypocrisy. We are obsessed with quotations in Arabic, and jump on people if they put eternal truths in their own idiom. There are even some Muslims who are so afraid of the Islamic legacy in the Arabic language that they feel the need to re-edit classical books, and be on the constant lookout for that which is suspicious or of foreign origin. May God guide those people, really. It is pathetic, when you really think about it: the reactionary literalism of a dying civilization. If we really have the Universal Truth at our fingertips, then what is there to fear about stock markets, Jay Z, Hindu theology, and whatever else exists in Earth?! We should be able to embrace everything, sift the true from the false, clarify the right from the wrong, and live as confident, spiritual leaders amongst humanity. Otherwise, we are just the chewed up remnants of modernity, divorced from ourselves and excluded from agency.

I need to walk in this direction, because as Amir Sulaiman stated more eloquently than I can, it is sad to pretend you are sick with the diseases of others. Perhaps when I converted, I caught a little bit of this global contagion, but with the medicine of the saints, I’ve returned to myself and need to move on. I’ve got my own issues to work through, and I trust my spiritual advisors to help me improve, if God wills. But I know now that I can no longer live and study and write and preach as if Islam is in jeopardy in any way. If Islam is the path of submission to the All-Powerful (al-Qadir), then to worry about the health of the path is to assume that you have a power to protect it that God does not have, which is a textbook example of shirk.

Islam is about uncovering who we are: servants of God. It is not a tribe, nor a system, nor an ideology, nor a unified political entity. It is a way of looking at the universe, it is a way of living and dying, it is about seriously listening to the One who is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. It is something we have always known, deep in our hearts, and it is about all of our dreams and hopes for the future. Conversion is about outward forms – I am interested in the realities that make those forms even worth caring about.


Visit David Coolidge’s excellent blog at http://amercycase.wordpress.com/

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