"The Prophet said, 'A Muslim is the one who avoids harming Muslims with his tongue and hands.'"
Muhammad, Hadith
I think I already pointed out that I met a fascinating woman in Lisbon when I was there for a conference in December. She was from Turkey and we spent the better part of a day bumming around Lisbon after the conference. Among a number of different topics we, I guess quite naturally, discussed the question of faith. At a certain point she proposed that since I didn't follow some of the basic concepts of Islam that I wasn't truly a Muslim (she didn't mean this in a critical way, and admitted that she didn't think she truly was either). It did get me thinking about how one even truly defines the concept. Is it truly just saying the Shadada in the presence of two Muslims (or having recorded on a phone and uploaded onto the Mosque's Facebook page)? Obviously, I would say no, but I don't think I think that it is following every one of the rules either. Naturally, this gets me back to my struggle between the external and internal elements of the faith. I think we can get so focused on the rules of the religion (forgetting that they're supposed to be sign posts to head you in a direction, and I would argue, again, that the direction is internal) and forget the more profound elements of the faith. And this brings me to the Hadith (saying) of the Prophet quoted above. I think to me faith is not a question of how long your beard is or whether you have your hair covered or whether or not you occasionally have a beer, but rather how you treat each other. It's like the Marvin Gaye song where he reminds us that all God wants is for us to love each other.
Muhammad, Hadith
I think I already pointed out that I met a fascinating woman in Lisbon when I was there for a conference in December. She was from Turkey and we spent the better part of a day bumming around Lisbon after the conference. Among a number of different topics we, I guess quite naturally, discussed the question of faith. At a certain point she proposed that since I didn't follow some of the basic concepts of Islam that I wasn't truly a Muslim (she didn't mean this in a critical way, and admitted that she didn't think she truly was either). It did get me thinking about how one even truly defines the concept. Is it truly just saying the Shadada in the presence of two Muslims (or having recorded on a phone and uploaded onto the Mosque's Facebook page)? Obviously, I would say no, but I don't think I think that it is following every one of the rules either. Naturally, this gets me back to my struggle between the external and internal elements of the faith. I think we can get so focused on the rules of the religion (forgetting that they're supposed to be sign posts to head you in a direction, and I would argue, again, that the direction is internal) and forget the more profound elements of the faith. And this brings me to the Hadith (saying) of the Prophet quoted above. I think to me faith is not a question of how long your beard is or whether you have your hair covered or whether or not you occasionally have a beer, but rather how you treat each other. It's like the Marvin Gaye song where he reminds us that all God wants is for us to love each other.
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