K. Sherman grew up in US. She hailed from a very practicing Jew family and came from an upper middle class family of second generation Americans, tracing roots back to Russia and Poland. Here in this second part of her four-part story, she describes how she at times cried to seek Truth and how she embraced Islam.
AT THIS point, I was such a nervous wreck that I couldn't even enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning without terribly haunting thoughts and feelings of desperation. I had absolutely no peace of mind, no rest from the devilish whisperings in my head. Suicide was not a possibility. I wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. I knew there was something that was terribly wrong with me, but I also knew that I had to get better. Where was the peace of mind I had once enjoyed as a carefree undisturbed child?
I had a number of relationships during that period of intense self-scrutiny. I was always attracted to strong, independent men who seemed to have it together. Because I was so weak and impressionable and naïve and down on myself, I tended toward emotionally stable, self-confident, strong uplifting men, who were mostly foreigners. While desperately searching for guidance and a cure to my inner pain, I sought temporary comfort in the company of these strangers. They always seemed to make me feel a little better about myself. I felt loved, needed, wanted, and important, if only for a little while. But was it real? Is it a pre-requisite to true love is that love yourself first? Only then can you truly give love, and accept it? I remember that Whitney Houston song from 1985, The Greatest Love of All, which is about loving yourself first. How true it is! But how was I to love myself when I was my own worst enemy? I hated myself. I hated who I had become. I hated my decisions. I hated my life. I resented my parents for pushing me this far over the edge. But I knew I couldn't go on blaming them forever. That wouldn't get me anywhere. In fact (now I speak with the benefit of hindsight), my shaky upbringing in an extremely materialistic society such ours was truly a blessing in disguise because if things had been better, I may never have experienced the great series of events that were about to befall me.
It was the end of my freshman year at Miami. I was having major adjustment problems. I suddenly felt the urge to be back home, closer to my doctors, closer to my friends. I was still on heavy medications, waiting for my meds to kick in and lift the dark cloud from above me. They never did. I was considering a major in Spanish; I have always loved foreign languages. I heard about a great opportunity through Ohio State University. So I transferred, and enrolled in summer semester classes there. At that time I was required to take a foreign culture course. I could have chosen any geographical location; I chose the Middle East because I didn't know a lot about it. One day an American Muslim woman came in and did a lecture on Islam, the faith of most people in the Middle East. She highlighted some very interesting aspects of the religion and corrected many of our misconceptions. Her presentation was called 'The place of women in Islam.' She explained how Islam had safeguarded women's rights and privileges well before the Women's Rights movements of the previous century (in US). She explained the special position and role of women in Islam. Over 1400 years ago, Islam granted women novel powers and privileges, like the rights to buy and sell property, to work and make a living, to keep their names, save money, refuse a marriage proposal, inherit from deceased relatives, do business, get an education, express themselves, stand witness in trial, and even to make their own prenuptials! Islam put an end to the oppressions like wife-beating, female infanticide, and the custom of automatically inheriting a dead man's widow, which could have numbered in the hundreds. Islam limited the number of wives to four and even then with strict obligations. The vast majority of Muslim men marry only one anyway. She said Muslims also venerated Mary the mother of Jesus, calling her the most pious of women. What was this strange faith that had so many intriguing features, contrary to what I had previously thought about it? I had to know more. So I went over to a local mosque, just beyond the university grounds, and knocked the door. A foreign man greeted me — he was Egyptian. I told him I wanted to learn more about Islam. He gave me a book called 'Towards Understanding Islam' by a Pakistani author named Mawdudi. Needless to say I devoured it in two hours flat. Amazing. Next day, as if on cue, at my foreign culture class they had a film about, of all places, Egypt. It was a documentary about different facets of life in contemporary Egypt. They discussed efforts to educate the locals about birth control (Egyptian population is booming, currently at one quarter of the US population, and it's smaller than California in size). They talked about the comeback of the head scarf among young Egyptian women. One woman in particular caught my attention. She was dressed from head to toe in black, wearing the traditional 'niqab' which covers everything except the eyes. The man interviewing her asked whether or not she was hot underneath all those types of clothing. She replied coolly: "Sure, it's hot, but the (fire of) hell is much, much hotter than this." Something hit me, like knives going through my heart, all at once. I felt the note of sincerity in her voice. She was obviously very uncomfortable in the summer heat, but was willing to sacrifice her well-being for a higher good, for her fear of God. She was living and breathing her faith — it was part and parcel of who she was. She just 'oozed' faith and genuineness, as Halle Berry might say. I had never met anyone with true conviction before. (I was about to meet many more.)
(To be continued)
• Courtesy of islamicbulletin.org
What a strange religion Islam is!
