Well, I realized today that I haven't really processed my experience with my family converting to Islam. I was in class today and teaching the students about the relationship between the Quran and the Arabic language, and it made the other students uncomfortable because I was talking about how God gave prophet Muhammad this series of revelations. Well I'm not sure I even made all of the points I was supposed to about the recitations being like a song or poetry, and that people who speak Arabic speak very poetically. Language and the way it is used expresses the spirit of the speaker and the culture of the speaker, and the Quran is the firm foundation of classical arabic. Keeping the Quran in it's original text preserves Arabic and is a huge contributing factor to it being the 4th most popular language in the world.
Well, going back to what I was saying, I think it's a very scary thing when someone in your family converts their religion and gets completely sucked into it in a radical way, because that's what happened to me. I visited my cousins because I wanted to understand why they did what they did from an insider point of view, and I found myself praying with them and wearing the hijab (head scarf). Watch this episode of 30 days on hulu, and you'll get a sense for what my week was like:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/5276/30-days-muslims-and-america
I am not a muslim and I have no plans of converting, but I can't help but feel a special connection with muslim people. At the same time, I have trouble talking about Islam with non muslims without sounding crazy. It fascinates me and I've done a ridiculous amount of research on the philosophy of Islam. The people in my class are very understanding because we all come from unique backgrounds, and this class is teaching us to appreciate diversity, but I realized today that I need an outlet for this experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment