Ask Me Anything: Muslim Edition

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shazirah

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As-salamu alaykum! I have a feeling this is going to be like drinking from a firehose, but Inshallah we’ll all learn something from the experience. 🙂 I like to build bridges whenever I can and I think talking to a real live member of a group that seems scary to some people is a good way to do that. I’m not a theologian and I’m not here to convert anyone, be converted, or argue theology, just to try to answer questions as an average everyday Muslim person as best I can. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll do what I can to find the information for you. Islam is a huge religion with many different cultural variations in practice. Maybe there are some other brothers and sisters around who can chime in as well.

To give you an idea of the background I’m coming from, I am what some people of my generation call a “SuShi” Muslim, meaning that I have a Sunni parent and a Shia parent. Personally, I think of myself as just Muslim, though I observe mostly the Sunni prayer style and traditions since I’ve grown up closest with my Sunni grandparents. I’m inclined towards modernist thought, but I don’t really see myself as being Westernized. I’ve spent considerable amounts of time in both majority Muslim countries and in Western countries. I wear a headcovering in public, eat halal, and follow most traditional Muslim practices.

So, what’s on your mind? 😃
 
What makes you remain Muslim?
to phrase differently, what would you say to someone who said “i’m thinking of becoming muslim”?
 
I have no question. I just want to say that this topic is a great idea, and one that is sorely needed. Thank you for you time, and bravery. I appreciate the effort.
 
What makes me remain Muslim personally is love for God and the observation that Islamic ethics and practice are a good way to live in the world. Islam is very concerned with finding the best ways of living a good life in service to God and living harmoniously in the community of God’s children. Not to say that other religions aren’t, just that I feel that following Islam has made me a better person and I love the spirit of brotherhood in the Islamic communities I’ve been a part of.

As to what I would tell someone who was interested in converting, I would tell them first to pray. Allah is entirely capable of letting us know Him in His own way. Then I would tell them to try to live by the basic ethics of Islam without worrying about the specific teachings of any particular school and judge how their life improves as a result.
 
Thanks for taking questions.

How do you feel about forming friendships with Christians or Jews? Would you ever date a non-Muslim?

What do you the think the most common misperception non-Muslims have about Islam is?
 
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how do you define jihad personally? struggle, holy war, something else?
 
I have many friends who are non-Muslims of various kinds, so I’m warmly in favor of it. 🙂 As for dating a non-Muslim, I probably would not. Traditionally, Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men for the reason that men are to be leaders in their families and it would be difficult for a Muslim woman to both follow Islam and follow a non-Muslim husband. Basically, we have the same stricture as in the Christian Bible that a woman is to submit to her husband and a husband is to love and cherish his wife, so it’s best to avoid conflicts of interest. Since dating should always be a precursor to marriage instead of a casual relationship under Islamic practice, dating someone who can’t be an appropriate marriage partner would not be beneficial to anyone.

The most common misperception about Islam that I’ve personally encountered is the idea that Muslim women are subjugated. I can see how it might seem that way from a Western perspective and there are countries with Islamist governments that I do think have gone way beyond a reasonable interpretation of Shariah law in regards to women, but in most cases Islamic women have a great deal of freedom and importance in Islamic societies. We simply have different values regarding the value of individualism and what it means to be a moral person than many Western cultures.
 
Tell us about Islam’s view of or relationship with Mary the mother of Jesus, may peace be upon him.
 
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Is Mohammed greater than Jesus? I.e. more important?
 
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The greater Jihad is the internal struggle that all people have towards God and away from sin. You can spend your whole life fighting against a perceived enemy of Islam in the world and still fail in your Jihad if you aren’t working to purge sin from your own life. Personal sin is the greatest enemy of Islam that has ever existed.

The lesser Jihad involving actual fighting in the world is more open to interpretation. Some people use it to mean a war that is fought against an aggressor that endangers Muslim people. Some people use Jihad as an excuse to forcibly expand Islam in the world, which according to most scholars is entirely the wrong idea. Jihad doesn’t have to be a war, though. It can be as simple as standing up against injustice in the world. I have a cousin who is a lawyer, who feels that he conducts his Jihad by representing Muslims who have been discriminated against according to their religion. I share that interpretation. The lesser Jihad is protecting the community of believers from danger.
 
Maryam, which is how Mary is referred to in scripture, is said to be the greatest of all women, purified and favored by Allah above all others. We believe in the virgin birth and most scholars who had written on the subject do believe that she remained a virgin perpetually. The Koran actually talks more about Mary’s life than the Bible, I recently found out! One of my favorite writings about her was that after Jesus’ birth, she took him to the temple for the necessary ceremonies and was taunted by all the men there for being an unwed mother, but the infant Jesus himself spoke up and defended her.

We don’t have all the traditions about her assumption, etc, but Mary has a very special place in Islam and is considered to be equal or greater than Khadijah and Fatima.
 
In my case, because my mother is Sunni and my father is Shia, so I was raised with both traditions and I could engage in the practices of either fairly comfortably. I don’t consider myself to be purely either Sunni or Shia, I’m just Muslim. That’s a pretty common viewpoint, actually.
 
What hadith do you accept? The sunna is different from sunni to shia so it is a very strange concept
 
We’re actually not supposed to compare prophets or view one as better than the other. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:136 has this to say:
Say, [O believers], “We have believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him.”
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So while Mohammad (peace be upon him) is given primacy because he is the final prophet, we do not consider him greater than Jesus.
 
I’m referring more to the practical traditions that differ between Sunni and Shia. I follow the Sunni method of prayer and hold mostly to Sunni traditions, but if I were visiting with my Shia family members, I would be able to follow their methods of prayer and traditions as well. It’s a matter of culture and knowing how both sides conduct daily affairs. However, even though I lean toward the Sunni Big Six, there are parts of the Shia hadith that I would accept as valid based on historical support, too, even if I think there are also some that are poorly sourced.

My personal preference is to focus on what we have in common as Muslims.
 
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In general, most Muslims don’t believe in apparitions of that nature. Some believe that instances of non-Angelic apparitions are jinn trying to distract people away from the worship of God towards the worship of creations. Other believe that it’s possible, but unlikely. Personally, I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. I would be skeptical if someone I knew said they had seen one.
 
Are you familiar with the Apparitions of Zeitun (Zeitoun) , Egypt? They are quite interesting and seen by many Muslims.
 
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