Convert’s Story
Lisa Ann Bauer (Fatimah)
As a little girl I would frequently stare into the mirror, into the depths of my eyes, and ask myself these questions. It was amazing to me that I should exist at all, considering how many events had to happen, in the right order, for me to be standing there looking into the mirror, the daughter of these parents, in this country, at this time in history. What would it be like to not exist? I wondered, and would shudder at the answers that came to me.
I was not sure that I could make myself believe. One concept in Judaism is that you should act as if you believe, regardless of the beliefs you may hold in your heart, but I couldn’t make myself do that. I fell back into my old atheist beliefs. No matter what, I simply could not make myself believe. I just knew that there would be nothing at the end, after death. Mass murderer or saint, they all ended up extinguished, as if they had never been. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” says the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and that was how I felt.
But, as before, I was very unhappy with this. How could it be that people like the Nazis, some of whom had escaped and lived out their lives in peace, and the millions of victims they tortured and put to death, could end up with the same reward Or rather, lack of reward. No, I simply could not accept that.
How could the people who had murdered thousands or millions of people merely for not having the “right” beliefs have the same reward as those they burned or tortured to death?
How could cruel dictators who massacred thousands or millions of their own people have no punishment, and the innocent people they murdered no reward?
And most importantly, why should it be that I live in rich comfort and, while millions of people, much better than myself, suffered in poverty and oppression I felt awful when I heard frequent reports on the television of people dying in the desert trying to make it to America from Mexico, while all I could do was whine about its imperfections like a spoiled brat. People never appreciate what they have, I reflected sadly.
No, the world was unjust. The Hindu idea of karma, that you receive goodness in accordance with the goodness of your deeds, was obviously false. It could not possibly be true.
What will I do? I thought. This way of thinking could not continue, or else I would go crazy.
At the same time as I was taking these classes on Judaism at school, I also took one on Islam and the Middle East. I had been fascinated by the subject since I was a little girl. There was something that drew me to it, something in its austerity, its hallowing of the Book, its community.
I remembered being jealous when I first heard that Muslims had to make a pilgrimage as part of their religion. I love to travel, and the idea that one had to make such a trip was appealing to me.
I read a book about the fall of Al-Andalus (Andalucia) and Granada to the Spanish in 1492, and I wept at the destruction of a culture, the driving of the Moors to North Africa and across the Mediterranean. When Boabdil, the last ruler of Granada, had made his way to the top of the mountains on his way into exile, he turned around for a last glimpse of Granada and the Al Hamra, and this was what was called “the Moor’s last sigh.” “You weep like a woman for the kingdom you would not defend like a man,” scolded his mother. I was deeply moved.
And so it had come full circle. From a Spanish saint to the Spanish Muslim kingdoms. I wish I could say that I had met with other Muslims and they had impressed me so much that I decided to convert right away. It was not so. I knew no Muslims. The only ones I saw were young women at the university, obviously foreign students, walking along in their baggy clothes and hijabs. I wondered how they could stand it in the heat. Those and the ones I saw on TV, the ones calling for the destruction of the West, or alternately, blowing each other to bits. Exotic, but they had nothing in common with me, or so I thought.
Instead I read. “Read!” says the Qur’an, and I obeyed. I thought that if I wanted to consider myself educated, I had better read the book that so many people held so dearly. I was deeply touched by what I read. I was and still am amazed that so many people memorize the entire text of this book. Such a concept was so completely foreign to me. I could hardly memorize the Christian prayers in English; what was it like to memorize an entire book in Arabic!
In some ways, Islam seemed closer to Judaism than Christianity. Both emphasized the oneness of God, both had codes of law—halakha for the Jews, shari’ah for the Muslims. Both had the concept of impurity and ritual cleanliness. Both emphasized being part of a community of believers. Both had a sacred language of the Semitic family, Hebrew and Arabic.
It was the culture that attracted me the most, at least at first. I admired the culture that the Muslims had created. I was impressed by the Dome of the Rock, the Damascus mosque, the Masjid-i-Shah in Isfahan and the Taj Mahal.
I thought I might like to convert, but I wasn’t sure. It seemed so exotic and so strange. It was definitely not Western. The only aspects of Islam, or Islamic culture, that seemed to be popular in America were either: a) Sufi mysticism, b) Persian poets such as Rumi, Khayyam or Nizami (Layla and Majnun), or c) fanatical Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Certainly there was little interest in orthodox Islam, or in the Qur’an. There were far more books about Hinduism or Zen Buddhism than about Islam!
I was an English major at the university, and I decided to read some of the novels of Salman Rushdie for a project. Yes, I read the infamous Satanic Verses, as well as Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh. I came away fascinated by Islam in India as portrayed in these books. It was very appealing to me, even if the way Islam was portrayed was sometimes not very positive, to say the least!
Finally, I reread the Qur’an and remembered what attracted me to it so much the first time. I wanted to convert. I wish I could tell you that I knew right away that Islam had all the answers, but I think you know me too well from this story to completely believe that. It was a gradual process, with doubts all along the way. How could it be that Allah had dictated a book The idea seemed preposterous. What about those ridiculous rules, like the one about a woman not being permitted to touch the Qur’an during her period What about the fact that one had to pray in Arabic—a language I despaired of ever understanding Did I really want to buy into all of
that?
If there is a God, I told myself, then anything is possible. It may be that what they claim really did happen. I had believed in the Trinity, that God was three persons in one, and that he had taken form as a human being. I had believed that God had taken the Jews to himself as his chosen people and given them as their inheritance the Land of Israel for all time. I had been willing to subscribe to all 613 laws laid down in the Torah, including regulations much stranger than the ones I had read about in Islam. For example, one must do no work on the Sabbath, and for many Jews that includes driving—one must thus live within walking distance of the shul
(synagogue). In Israel, there are even elevators that stop on every floor on the Sabbath, so one does not have to push a button for one’s floor and hence do “work.” So why would it be so hard to believe that God should have sent down a book to a seventh-century Arab?
And there was more. I wanted to make the Hajj. I wanted to visit the Dome of the Rock and join in with the prayers that had been going on there for over 1300 years. I saw the people praying at the Masjid Al-Haram and wanted to be a part of them. I wanted to be able to read the Qur’an in Arabic. I was most touched by the Qur’anic recitations I discovered, and I would spend long hours listening to them, even if I couldn’t understand anything of what I heard and had to follow along with the text.
So I plucked up the courage and visited the local Islamic Center a little while ago. I had no idea what to expect, but they were very kind to me. I took Shahadah (“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”) and began to do salat, somewhat embarrassed at how badly I mangled the Arabic words. I took the name of Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet (peace be upon them both), whom I had admired greatly ever since I had first heard of her.
Insh’allah, I will continue to grow in faith and will do all the things I wanted to do. I pray that my knowledge of Islam will increase.If I have offended by any part of my tale, I ask the forgiveness of Allah and can only say that as my knowledge increases, I will better know what is good and what is not good to say.
*Lisa Ann Bauer is a student of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
I had been baptized Catholic as a baby, but as a child I had no religion of any kind. I distinctly remember reading something about God when I could have been no more than seven or eight, and thinking that this whole idea of God was ridiculous and only for the weak. Why should anybody need such a concept? I thought.
When I was eleven, my parents finally began to take me to church, in an effort to “get some spirituality into my life,” as they put it. I took to it immediately. I was confirmed. I chose for my patron saint Teresa of Avila, who was a great 16th century nun. She lived in Avila, Spain from 1515 to 1582. She single-handedly reformed the Carmelite order of nuns, which had become degenerate. Kings, bishops, and even popes wrote to her for her advice. She also was a great mystic, and a writer and poet. These words of hers I found inspiring:
Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. God alone is enough.
I loved reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament prophets. I would pick out my favorite passages and read them again and again. I do not know what caused my change from disbelief to belief; I can only say that I was looking for something to believe in.
But the years went by, and I reverted to my state of unbelief. I was frequently depressed. I did not believe in anything. There was no God, I was sure of that. All this religion was a fraud and a hoax perpetrated on foolish people. What was the point?
Inside, though, I was never really satisfied with this belief, and I continued searching. Then I became interested in Judaism. I had always loved the Old Testament in the Bible, and the more I learned about the history of the Jews, the closer I felt to them. I had some Jewish blood in me, not too much, but I felt a part of them. I began to read books and take classes about Judaism at the university, and I decided that I wanted to convert.
I was most attracted to the centuries-long history of Jews in nearly every part of the world, and the famed Jewish quest for learning, derived from study of the Torah and Talmud, and soon applied to all subjects. I loved reading about the Maccabees, who saved the Jews from their Syrian oppressors in 164 BC, and about people like the Rambam, Moses ben Maimon, (Maimonides), a twelfth-century Egyptian physician and the greatest Torah scholar of all time, and his Guide for the Perplexed. He saw both Christianity and Islam as “Judaism for Gentiles.” In his eyes, although Judaism was the true faith, the other two helped the Gentiles, the
non-Jews, to worship the one God, and were for that reason part of God’s plan.
For thousands of years the cry in Hebrew of “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohainu Adonai Echad” (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!) had been recited by all believing Jews, from the day of their birth to the moment of their deaths. They had been oppressed and had survived it all. I liked that very much—being part of a story, a story that had lasted for thousands of years and would, God willing, last many thousands more.
But there are many problems with the current status of Judaism. It is fractured into three branches in America: the Orthodox, the Conservative and the Reform. More importantly, the vast majority of Jews are totally secular. It has gotten to the point where it frequently seems as though the only difference between Jew and Gentile is that the one does not go to church, and the other does not go to synagogue. Many Jews celebrate Christmas, to take one example, and every few years some leader in the American Jewish community
wrings their hands at the prospect of the total assimilation and disappearance of the Jews into American culture. Huge numbers of Jews want nothing to do with Judaism. Some traditions remain, such as the concept of tikkun olam, or healing the world. Jews give generously to charities, both Jewish and generally. But most of
the uniqueness is gone.
