MY PERSONAL JOURNEY TO QUR’AN-CENTRIC ISLAM

23rd January 2020

In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Beneficent.

Though I was a very boisterous and a roguish child, I did have my little moments where I contemplated questions about human life and its surroundings – what it all meant. At appropriate opportunities I would ask any grown-up I felt bonded to about meanings of life and God. However, I never really got a satisfactory clarification. As a small child I deduced from this that perhaps nobody really knows the answer. Back then my father whom I tried to emulate was not a very religious person and thus did not practice Islam himself nor did he advise me or my siblings about Islam. As a matter of fact neither of my parents knew much about Islam. Hence God and religion was not a big player in my early life.

At around adolescence years of my life a teacher at school who was a staunch atheist would expose her class to strong arguments against religion and the concept of God. This was probably against the policies of the school and it clearly wasn’t the subject she was tutoring. Nevertheless, she was jeopardising her career for what she saw as truth (just so that you know, she never got caught). I took intense interest in what she had to say. Again after much thought in my small mind, I came to the assumption that atheism was the truth. My simple twofold calculation was; my illiterate parents equals God and this educated teacher equals no God – who is more likely to be accurate? From the age of 12 until around 16 years of age I was what I call an ‘internal atheist’, because externally off-course I was a Muslim (never told any relatives about this, and involved myself and enjoyed wholeheartedly all religious rituals and festivals). As I grew older and my acumen matured I found atheism ambiguous and shallow. I just felt that truth is elsewhere, I just couldn’t tell. To quench this tremendous thirst to know the truth I sought the refuge of my local library (Internet and Google didn’t exist back then I’m afraid). I began reading. It became my passion. I preferred purchasing books over clothes, video games, sports accessories and all that boys of my age would be interested in.

I read every single book on religious philosophy in my local library. I read about Zen, Taoism, Sufism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam etc and also about diverse philosophies taught by teachers like, Bertrand Russell, George Gurdjieff, Freud and many others. I also took time studying human psychology and developmental psychology. I had read articles by atheists and their ideas also. It was an addiction. Just really wanted to know who had the truth. On the whole this gave me a taste of all these things, the knowledge of which later helped me to carry out my individual researches. All this reading indelibly ingrained one thing in me, never to accept any authority without questioning, never to blindly follow anything. Thus I never accept any human authority. The only authority that can reign over me is that of reason. If what some author states convinced me, then no matter who the author was, I would agree. If it didn’t, nothing could make me agree. The founder of Buddhism is alleged to have said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” – Siddhartha Gautama

To me truth is enshrined by three decisive factors; to be in accord with nature, conviction of the mind and satisfaction of the heart. Only Islam fulfilled these criterions. Hence I embraced Islam almost 17 years after I was born into the very ‘faith’. However, surpassing one year into Islam I found many opinions and interpretations on what Islam’s teachings are. Without an intensive and thorough higher education on Islam, I felt I was unable to decode its teachings. So I came to a decision to attend Darul-Uloom – Islamic University. It took some weeks to convince my father to allow me to attend Darul-Uloom. In the end he yielded. I left college and sacrificed my career to understand my faith. For many years I studied under many Scholars of Islam after which to some extent became a clergy-like figure in my local community. Something I never felt quite comfortable with (maybe because I didn’t venture on this path with this in mind initially). Nevertheless, life progressed. In 1998 I established a ‘Weekend Madraasah’, in which I regulated and taught myself. I designed and re-wrote the whole curriculum in a modern context and taught ‘differently’ from the older generation of Madraasah. The Muslim community gave a huge positive response to this initiative. Under this initiative I have taught many students over a period of 10 years. Also during this time I founded a Da’wah organisation called ‘Al-Muttaqeen’, whilst still a student at Darul Uloom, Bolton. I continued this Da’wah enterprise in the South of England whilst studying at Jameah Islameah, Crowborough. I gathered senior and key students and during our free times we would venture to the streets of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, giving leaflets which we designed ourselves and generally talk to passing non-Muslims about Islam. We had many enlightening dialogues with many interesting people, from laymen to Priests (Al-Hamdulillah, we converted a few people).

Meanwhile, as my knowledge grew in Islam I adopted many different schools of thought and organisation within Islam, including the infamous political movement – Hizbut Tahrir. My fling with the movement was brief. I also affiliated with characters such as Umar Bakri and Abu Hamza, and at one point I considered myself a Jihadist (was very close in venturing out to a jihad training camp in Afghanistan). All in all, I have spent most of my life’s time and energy studying and experiencing the different denominations and sub-cultures within the Ummah. There are many different behaviour and psyche of the Ummah: the Western Muslim, the Mystic, the Purist, the politically driven etc. I couldn’t settle long with one particular school, because whenever I applied my ‘lie-detector’ (analysed) I found many fabrications and blatant mistakes. No one school was free from it. As a consequence I became conscious of this observable fact quite early on – that all the different schools of thoughts within Islam had correct teachings as well as the incorrect. Hence the dilemma for me was that if I wholeheartedly belong to any one group then its implication is that I also accept the falsehood it embodies. This was unacceptable to me. As a way out I formulated the idea to simply recognise all school of thoughts where they are correct and reject where they are wrong. I used the mind as the arbitrator and the Islamic sources as references to do this. However, there was one school which I couldn’t quite figure out their exact premise. They argued in defence of a notion that I considered to be dis-belief in Islam. This was the notion that Quran stood on its own and didn’t require extraneous sources of explanation. This was the ‘Qur’an alone’ principle. I considered these folks misguided and outside of Islam. Their criticism of the Ahadith perturbed me and I vehemently opposed their premise whenever and wherever I encountered them, due to my high reverence of the Ahadiths.

However many years on, just when I thought my opinions were solidified, I encountered a 4 volume book in the Urdu language entitled, ‘Mazhabi Dastanain Aur Unki Haqiqat’ (Religious Tales and its Authenticity) written by Allama Habibur Rahman Kandhalvi (yes, he is the cousin of Maulana Zakariyah Kandhalvi). In it the respected Sheikh critiques many falsehood within mainstream academicians. Sheikh Kandhalvi’s reasoning and probing questions shook my standpoint. During this time, I researched into traditional Islam as much as I could and found the Sheikh’s probing questions are unanswered and remain unanswered to my satisfaction till today. My mind, however, would still not follow without rigorous investigation. After many years of daily debate and studying with the whole spectrum of persona I gradually came to the realisation, subconsciously at first, that what I had thought was Islam, was in fact the biggest theological blunder our scholars have made and has been masquerading as the Divine faith of Islam for a whole millenia. At first I didn’t voice them because I hadn’t reached the level of certainty needed. I needed time to develop my thoughts. My doubts only grew and grew. The more I talked, trying to ignore the doubts, the more they grew. At this stage I was in psychological denial – after 15 years how could I have been so wrong. The more my status grew in society as a respected clergy-like teacher, teaching the children of my community, the more I felt hypocritical for no longer believing in what I am teaching. Eventually, the doubts became too big, and I unilaterally withdrew from all activities. I remained quiet for a while, and I secluded myself to gather my thoughts. It was a heart wrenching struggle. It put me on the peripheries of depression.

After years of having been involved with Muslim advocacy groups, da’wah initiatives, theological academics etc, I have I finally decided to evolve my perspective of the Qur’anic hermeneutics and renounce my faith in the mainstream position. This was a thought out decision that took months of prayer, consideration, evaluation, knowledge-seeking and self-reflection. To give myself more time, for months I only slept every other night in search for meaning and truth. It has been a grieving process for me to realise that what I have been attached to all of these years is in fact not the Islam that Allah revealed in the Qur’an. Nevertheless it is simultaneously liberating and enlightening and continues to bring about serenity and peace of mind for me – Alhamdulillah. On the 1st of January 2008 I made the decision to convert from Hadith-centric Islam to the original Qur’an-centric Islam. It took me 8 whole years to come to accept the Qur’an alone principle due to the fact that I was very much entrenched in traditional Islam.

Naturally, there would be many factors that played in changing my thoughts that isn’t possible to mention here for brevity reasons. However in a nutshell, for me the mainstream theological basis collapsed over time to remain convincing intellectually. For a very long time I believed as the mainstream theology mandates that the Ahadiths are inspired and an integral part of the Islamic Dogma. However, as I engaged in study at a higher level discovering the basis of the Islamic Creeds and Practises, I discovered there are inconsistencies and illogical statements. This cut away at my assumption that Sahih Hadiths are inerrant. Moreover, I found countless Fiqhi teachings that are absolutely amoral and wrong on a human level, which contradicted my internal moral compass. Hence, I detected a pseudo intellectual framework of thinking which was seeking to remove the inherent nature of humans and their sense of morality for some hearsay amalgamated centuries later.

I cannot thank Allah enough for giving me the knowledge and courage enough to accept His revelation in it’s purest sense and shun all adulterations. And May Allah give us all the ability to see truth and abide by it.

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