He was surprised how different his religion was from what he had learned of it.

And, it made me remember several years ago when I began researching more and more… when I felt like I needed religion in my life, but the religion my grandparents had passed down to me wasn’t congruent with what I felt in my heart.

It was so painful.

And frustrating.

And it created this terrible sense of longing in me that nothing could quell until I found Islam.

But, it didn’t stop me from trying to make Christianity my religion before Islam. When I delved deeper into the Bible, I found inconsistencies. Yes, there are things in it that don’t make sense.

For example:

I did a skit in my freshman year of college when for a course we were asked to read the Bible.

The skit was about the difference between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We each had our own disciple to tell the story of Jesus about and we made it like a Maury talkshow:

“OH NO YOU DIDN’T SAY THAT JESUS WAS SON OF MAN!”

Mark (Me!): Jesus was the son of man. 

Matthew and Luke: Jesus was the Son of God.

John: Jesus was God himself.

Guess what, in a Paternity Test of Jesus, God is NOT the Father.

Verse Three: “He begets not nor is He begotten”

But, that didn’t bother me as much.

What KILLED me was the fact that what was in the Bible wasn’t being practiced.

For example, the Bible says to wear hijab… I haven’t seen a Christian hijabi yet.

The Bible says not to gamble… but 98% of the casinos are filled with Christians.

Now, please, keep in mind Muslims believe in parts of the Bible, and parts of the Torah.  One of the pillars of the religion is we believe in the Books – not just Quran.

I think the problem is that no one ever reads the Bible… and when they do, not literally.

My grandmother is a pretty devout Christian and she even admits that she doesn’t think that The Bible is the word of God.  She reads the Bible every day.

People say it’s an “interpretation.”

Yes, not every Muslim person follows what the Quran says.  Of course not! We are all messed up, too! But at least I feel in Islam we all believe in Quran.  We all know that it is the Truth.  And that it is what we SHOULD be doing.  There is a shame about going against the Quran.  I can only think of one Muslim guy I know that shares on Facebook each time he gets drunk.

What I love about Islam is that we REALLY believe that the Quran is LITERALLY THE WORD OF GOD.

Straight up. From Him to us. 

AND, there are millions (sources say approximately ten million, but don’t quote me) of men and women around the world that have the ENTIRE Quran memorized.

When I first learned about these people – called “Hafiz of Quran” – I thought about how many people have the Bible memorized, and soon realized what language would they memorize it in?

See, there are thousands of different versions of the Bible.

There’s ONE version of the Quran.

Yes. That’s what’s so special. There’s just ONE.

One.

O.

N.

E.

When I first learned that about Quran I was shocked! What the hell do you mean there’s only ONE?

There is one version of the Arabic Quran. Every little letter and accent is the same. Every single one.

No matter which one you pick up.

Can you imagine if that was true of the Bible? The Bible has inconsistencies within ITSELF.

Let alone the entire book!

Yes, there are different translations of Quran.  I read a side-by-side Arabic – English translation, for example.

my Quran

The Arabic is exactly the same as all other Qurans. The English, not so much.

Obviously there is no exact English translation for all Arabic words, same thing with German or Portuguese or Urdu, any other language.

That, in itself is a miracle to me. This doesn’t allow for “interpretations.” This means it is literal.

There aren’t inconsistencies (except in places where rules changed during the revelation of the book- i.e. at first alcohol wasn’t prohibited, but instead people were commanded not to come to prayer drunk and eventually, before the end of the Prophet Muhammad (saws)’s life, alcohol was then forbiden).

But, guess what, the Quran says “don’t drink” so I “don’t drink.”

Imagine that!

My History Lesson: And, I friggin hate history, but from what I learned, the Quran was memorized by the Arab people during the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) as he would receive a revelation he would repeat it.  At the time the Arabs were amazing memorizers and they would then memorize word-for-word what he said.  Many people all memorized the same words, so it was not as if it could be changed by some random camel rider. It was eventually written on the shoulder blade bones of camels and when the people decided to make the written copy – the one we use today – they gathered a bunch of different hafiz (memorizers) and wrote down what they had recited.  They were all consistent. Feel free to correct anything wrong I said in here, because this is straight from memory from 3 classes I took 2 years ago.

I guess the point of the entire post is for two reasons:

1. If you are going to claim a religion, at least read the book. If you are Jewish – BE JEWISH. If you are Sikh – BE SIKH!  I don’t care! Just know what “Being Jewish” means. Know what the Book says. Know the fundamentals of your religion. Go to temple. Go to church. Go buy a dreidel.  Do what you want.

And, don’t tell me you don’t agree with aspects of my religion that are also a part of yours.

2. If you’re Muslim, please, we need to be so proud of our Quran.  Alhamdulilah wa subhanAllah what a miracle!!! 

I said before: “I would stay up as late as possible reading Qur’an and crying knowing that I was reading the truth. I reflect on how beautiful it is that Allah (swt) gave all of the other Prophets the power to perform miracles for the people of their time to see, but he gave Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu alayhi wa salaam) a miracle that I get to hold in my hands every day, the Qur’an.”

Really, it is such an immense blessing and we can’t take it for granted.  I’m totally guilty of it, too.

You buy a fancy $200 golden Quran, but you never take it off the shelf.

It’s not a decoration.  This isn’t Pottery Barn.  This is a miracle.

May Allah (swt) help us all to come closer to Him through whichever path He has decreed for us.  Even if you’re not Muslim, He chose a path for you. May He make us all passionate about our knowledge of Him through His Book, and inshaAllah someday I – and millions of others – will become Hafiza of Quran.

So, the EDL’s supposed set of ideas that constitute them only rallying against “Islamic extremism” and “Islamism” has again been undone. Tammy-lee Harvey, a self-confessed “EDL footsoldier”, announced a few days ago that she has converted to Islam, which was met by a tirade of abuse and threats against her and her family by existing EDL members.

Inevitably, for an organisation that claims itself to be “multicultural” and “multi-religious”, the thread evolved into a race debate, with one member — Jennifer Page — particularly, having trouble accepting that we, human beings, evolved from Africa.

Culprits:

Lacette Brooks

Darren Maidment

(Click images to enlarge)

“Pennsylvania Man Indicted for Soliciting Jihadists to Kill Americans,” from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, July 14 (thanks to Mackie):

WASHINGTON—Emerson Winfield Begolly, 22, of New Bethlehem, Pa., was indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., today for allegedly soliciting Islamic extremists to engage in acts of terrorism within the United States and posting bomb-making instruction materials online.

The indictment was announced by Neil H. MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office; and David J. Hickton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

“Emerson Begolly is accused of repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans,” said U.S. Attorney MacBride. “These allegations demonstrate how young people in the United States can become influenced by – and eventually participate in – jihadist propaganda that is a serious threat to the safety of us all.”…

Posted on 15 Jul 11 by Robert Spencer on Jihad Watch

Photo courtesy of WTAE.com

A 21-year-old construction worker who recently converted to Islam and told an FBI informant he thought about nothing but jihad was arrested Wednesday after attempting to detonate a car bomb outside an armed forces recruiting center in Maryland.  The bomb was a fake, supplied to him by FBI undercover agents.

Twenty-one-year-old Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussein, was arrested by federal agents Wednesday.

More at CBSNews.com

Mark Steyn

Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he’d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn’t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.

And the Ayatollah said hey, that’s terrific news, glad to hear it. But we’re still gonna kill you.

Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances.

Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer.

Barack Obama has spent the past year doing big-time Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials, to his bow before the Saudi king and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you.

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don’t worry, “the system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don’t worry, he was an “isolated extremist,” said the president. Don’t worry, we’re banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don’t worry, “U.S. border security officials” told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane, and we “had decided to question him when he landed.“ Don’t worry, Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights, and he’s lawyered up but he’ll soon see that “there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements.”

Oh, that’s grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war, and it’s the starting point for a plea deal. In his Cairo speech, the president bragged that the United States would “punish” those in America who would “deny” the “right of women and girls to wear the hijab.” If he’s so keen on it, maybe he should consider putting the entire federal government into full-body burkas and zipping up the eye slit so that, henceforth, every public utterance by John Brennan will be entirely inaudible. Americans should be ashamed by this all-fools’ fortnight.

On Thursday, having renounced over the preceding days “the system worked,” the “isolated extremist,” the more obviously risible TSA responses, the Gitmo-Yemen express checkout and various other follies, the president finally spoke the words: “We are at war.” As National Review’s Rich Lowry noted, they were more or less dragged from the presidential gullet by Dick Cheney, who’d accused the commander in chief of failing to grasp this basic point. Again, to be fair, it isn’t just Obama. Last November, the electorate voted, in effect, to repudiate the previous eight years and seemed genuinely under the delusion that wars end when one side decides it’s all a bit of a bore, and they’d rather the government spend the next eight years doing to health care and the economy what they were previously doing to jihadist camps in Waziristan.

On the other hand, if we are now at war, as Obama belatedly concedes, against whom are we warring? “We are at war against target=”_blank”>al-Qaida,” says the president.

Really? But what does that mean? Was the previous month’s “isolated extremist,” the Fort Hood killer, part of al-Qaida? When it came to spiritual advice, he turned to the same Yemeni-based American-born imam as the Pantybomber, but he didn’t have a fully paid-up membership card.

Nor did young Umar Farouk, come to that. Granted the general overcredentialization of American life, the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local 437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive.

What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.

Doesn’t this sound like a bigger problem than “al-Qaida,” whatever that is? The president has now put citizens of Nigeria on the secondary-screening list. Which is tough on Nigerian Christians, who have no desire to blow up your flight to Detroit. Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist’s home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is, likewise, a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious – that this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.

But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is overinvested in a fantasy – that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as Obama did to the Saudi king, we wouldn’t have all these problems. So now Obama says, “We are at war.” But he cannot articulate any war aims or strategy because they would conflict with his illusions. And so we will stagger on, playing defense, pulling more and more items out of our luggage – tweezers, shoes, shampoo, snow globes, suppositories – and reacting to every new provocation with greater impositions upon the citizenry.

You can’t win by putting octogenarian nuns through full-body scanners.

All you can do is lose slowly. After all, if you can’t even address what you’re up against with any honesty, you can’t blame the other side for drawing entirely reasonable conclusions about your faintheartedness in taking them on.

After that cringe-making radio interview, Salman Rushdie subsequently told The Times of London that trying to appease his would-be killers and calling for his own book to be withdrawn was the biggest mistake of his life. If only the president of the United States was such a quick study

.

©MARK STEYN