Chapter

ISLAMIC JOURNEY

By Rose Marie Hunold

“When my servants ask thee concerning Me,

I am indeed close:

I listen to the prayer of every suppliant

when he calleth on Me:

Let them also, with a will, listen to My call and believe in Me:

that they may walk in the right way.”

HOLY QUR’AN 2:186

THE WINTER SNOW WAS STILL CLINGING

to the grass and streets when I entered the Islamic Center at 72nd Street, where it commanded a view of Riverside Park and the Hudson River. The time was the early spring of 1977, and this was my second visit to the mosque. On my first trip I told the religious director I wanted to make Shahada, because I knew there was no God but one single God and Muhammad was His messenger. The religious director made arrangements for me to take my Shahada from a Muslim elder named Sunni. He was a warm person, with a white-trimmed beard and bright, kind eyes. He did not speak English. And I knew no Arabic. But living in New York City, we both were fluent in Spanish, as Spanish could be more useful than English in many situations. And in Spanish Sunni was able to instruct me on how I had to hold my right hand up and follow his recitation. He then led me through several practice recitations of the two phrases that would mark my entry into Dar Al-ISLAM.

Before witnesses in a corner of the Islamic Center I repeated after Sunni the sentence:

Ash hadu al-la ilaha illALLAH,

wa Ashadu anna Muhammadar-Rasulu llah.

I bear witness that there is no God but ALLAH,

I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of ALLAH.

Sunni had recited it slowly and clearly, making it easy for me to follow. Once I had completed the Shahada, I received congratulations from the Muslims who were in the room. But to get to that moment of spiritual boundary crossing took the confluence of many seams and threads, some of them as long as twenty years past.

I was living with my grandmother in 1958. She felt the best opportunity I would have to get a good academic foundation would be enrollment in the parochial school near her home. Catholic schools were known for having a higher standard of discipline and academic achievement than the public school system of Los Angeles, even in the 1950’s. When I came home from school in the afternoons I played in the protective security of Grandma Lula’s fenced backyard. It was a tranquil setting. The high wooden fence was traversed by vines of blue and purple morning glory blossoms nearby. Shade spread across the yard from the loci of wide branching fig and walnut trees. Both trees dropped many soft, sweet and hard-shelled fruits.

Yet as I played there by myself, I did not feel alone. There in that backyard I intuited the existence of an “Other”. Not the divided deity that was described in the daily religious class but Someone who was The Single Person in Power over everything. It was not that there was no beauty in the stories of self-sacrifice of the saints. But to me, as a child, there was a deep sadness in the ceramic figurine of the expired Jesus, laying dead across his grieving mother Mary’s lap, unable to do any more than any ordinary being about his fate. This figure was presented as a deity in his own right. Yet in the open beauty of my grandmother’s backyard I played with the feeling there was Someone beyond the presentation displayed. And when ALLAH says:

“. . . O Jesus, the son of Mary!

Didst thou say unto men,

‘Worship me and my mother as gods

in derogation of ALLAH’?”

He will say: “Glory to Thee!

Never could I say what I had no right.

Had I said such a thing,

Thou wouldst indeed have known it.

Thou knowest what is in my heart,

though I know not what is in Thine.

For thou knowest in full all that is hidden.”

HOLY QUR’AN 5:116

There would be one more encounter with the feeling of the “Other” before I arrived in New York City. During my sophomore year of studies at a small Southern California college, I was invited to visit a nearby mosque. The invitation was extended by a student from Bangladesh. He said it would be a good thing for me to see how Muslims worship. Of course I was surprised by the arrangement of different rooms for women and men. In spite of this difference I felt a tranquility, a quiet beauty in the arrangement and things as they were. The room where the sisters worshipped was softly painted and brightly burnished by natural light. There were no pictures or fixtures, only sisters making their prostrations in single formation and in pairs toward the direction of Mecca.

By 1974 I moved east to realize the great historical experience in living in New York City’s Harlem. Touted as the ‘Capital of the Negro World’ from the period spanning WW1 into the 1960’s, Harlem was a roster of Ebony renown: the scholar W.E.B. Dubois, Bessie Delany, trailblazers in education and civil rights for blacks, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. He was the leader of the most powerful social institution in Harlem, Abyssinia Baptist Church, which he used as a platform for a political career that helped end legally sanctioned segregation in the United States. During Powell’s rise to his political zenith there were practicing Muslims in Harlem.

One evening when I was watching some of the cast members of Rich Artee’s Poetry Theater prepare for a upcoming performance, an older gentleman came in. He was carrying large pots, and requested to speak to Rich, the director. When I explained I didn’t know where Rich was, he took the trust to speak to me. “Dear Lady,” he began in a courteous manner, “I am lending these cooking pots to your theater because Mr. Bartee has been a very good neighbor to us in this building. So as long as they are returned to us in the condition given, this is fine. But we are Muslims. As Muslims, we are prohibited from ingesting pork. So I must ask of you, to please not cook any pork or lard or any food that comes from pork in these pots.” He was diplomatic but firm. I gave my word that I would convey his condition. The director of the theater later explained to me that the association on the 3rd floor was comprised of African Muslims who had migrated to the United States in the 1940’s. As they established themselves in Harlem, they continued to maintain their faith. But they did make a compromise by dressing in the typical attire of the world around them. By appearing like their church attending neighbors, they were able to deflect hostility. And since most church-going women covered their heads with hats anyway, all was not lost.

During my Harlem tenancy, I developed an important friendship with one of my neighbors, a Muslim sister named Sawdah. A very industrious lady, she divided her time between a course of vocational training in Lower Manhattan during the day and study of the QUR’AN in the evening after supper. Accepting her hospitality to dine, I would ask her questions about her faith.

Her first lesson to me was to explain the importance of washing the hands before touching the HOLY QUR’AN, because “this book is so sacred and so good”. Washing my hands and trying to prepare my mind for something I had not previously known, did not prepare me for my initial contact with Quranic Scripture. It was surprising to be confronted with messages from God in print that were specific in defining the reward for correct conduct and the punishment for incorrect conduct. And the Day of Judgment is a given.

“It is We who created man,

and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him:

for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein.

Behold, two (guardian angels)

appointed to learn (his doings) learn (and note them),

one sitting on the right and one on the left.

Not a word does he utter but there is a sentinel by him.

Ready (to note it).

And the stupor of death will bring truth (before His eyes):

‘This was the thing which thou wast trying to escape!’

And the trumpet shall be blown:

That will be the Day whereof warning (had been given).

And there will come forth every soul:

with each will be an (angel) to drive,

and an (angel) to bear witness.”

HOLY QUR’AN 50:16-21.

When Sister Sawdah invited me to attend the Eid-ul-Fitr, I was pleasantly surprised. I did not know a non-Muslim could attend what to me sounded to be a very sacred occasion. But together we went, entering the huge auditorium of the New Yorker Hotel to see at least a thousand people, an international sampling of the world, in celebration of the completion of Ramadan. “Muhammad wa sallam tasleemman katheera” they recited in unison, “Oh ALLAH, do send abundant peace on the prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.).”

I felt as if I were being pulled in by a current stronger than myself. When I was not in Khalaqa sessions with Sister Sawdah, I was talking with the Sunni Muslims in The Herbal Tea Room in Central Harlem, who, when requested, were more than glad to define such topics as Tawheed and the distinctions between Fard and Sunna prayers. To take the step of commitment that Shahada entailed seemed the natural thing. It was what I really wanted to do.

But once Shahada was taken, a larger question arose. Now that I had established I was a Muslim, what could I do to fulfill that reality?

Soon after taking Shahada I moved from Harlem across the East River to Brooklyn. For a subway rider that distance was a world apart from the walking distance lifestyle that Harlem affords. So my initial action, once settled in on the northernmost boundary of south Brooklyn, was to search for contact by thumbing through a Brooklyn Yellow Pages in search of businesses with Muslim sounding names.

The one I settled on, Islamic Marketplace, was a good find. It was a large store stacked with shelves of books. QUR’AN, hadiths, books on Fiqh, biographies of the Prophet (s.a.w.), his wives, his companions, histories of the Moorish occupation of Iberia, Muslims in India, the conquest of Persia, Nigerian Muslims and shelves of contemporary Islamic scholarly works lined the walls. They also sold perfume essences, frankincense and incenses in exotic fragrances. There were also hijabs, chador, full length dresses and large plain cotton scarves. Rings and bracelets inscribed with the word ALLAH and stars and crescents were displayed in glass showcase. The woman who wanted to dress according to the Islamic stands of downtown Brooklyn could easily do so out of that store.

Two Muslim brothers stood behind the counter as I assayed the items in the store. I asked the gentleman nearest to me, Brother Ibrahim, which translation of the HOLY QUR’AN he thought would be best for a beginning Muslim like me. I had to ask somebody. Not only did he highly endorse the Pickthall translation, he also recommended some additional items to help me “get a foothold in the faith.” He brought out a tape recording of the Five Daily Prayers with Athan and Iqamah, explanatory commentary, and a transliteration text to be used as study guide. The tape and booklet were reasonably priced. And I knew that to purchase this set of prayers and learn them would be the best effort I could make.

After Brother Ibrahim rang up my purchase, he returned to a lively conversation with the other brother, Abdul Khalid. The two were in the midst of deciding which flavor of soda they would buy for the upcoming family night program at their mosque. This conversation was refreshingly different from conversations one could hear in passing on the streets outside. In the bars and at the corners of downtown Brooklyn, alcohol was the drink of choice, and for the majority it was the normal prism through which to view reality. Muslims debating the merits of one flavor of non-alcoholic beverage against another was the window to a better view.

After months of repeating the prayers recited by the Imam on my prayer tapes, I was able to say my prayers correctly enough to be understood by fellow Muslims. I discovered this one day on a Brooklyn-bound F train. Reading from the transliteration text, I was making my heartfelt attempts to approximate the glottal stops and guttural sounds that I knew if used the right way would sound Arabic. A stranger sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and politely asked: “You are reciting the QUR’AN, yes?” I nodded affirmatively. And he offered me a challenge. “You can recite from your practice book, the sounds, but I must ask, do you know the meaning of what it is you are reading?” Fortunately, I had just memorized both the transliteration and English meaning of, Surah Ikhlas which I was practicing at that moment. So I was able to close the book and recite both the Arabic and the English translation:

In the Name of ALLAH, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

“Say: He is ALLAH, The One and Only;

ALLAH, the Eternal, Absolute;

He begetteth not, Nor is He Begotten;

And there is none Like unto Him.”

HOLY QUR’AN 112:1-4

In Transliteration:

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

“Qul Huwal-la-hu Ahad

ALLAHo Samad

Lam yalid wa lam yoo lad

wa lam ya-kullahoo kufuwan Ahad”

The stranger gave a fatherly approval, concluding with a cautionary statement. “You are studying QUR’AN. This is a wonderful effort that you make. But you must always remember that you must have an understanding of what you are reciting. You must know what it means. You have done good”, he concluded and returned to reading his newspaper. Use of the subway train as a study came to an end. One day as I was going through my recitation practice a man sitting near me snarled: “Be quiet, I have a headache.” I was angry, and since I was not speaking loudly, I did not feel obligated to obey the man’s request. I continued practicing my Surah. Then the man looked me in the eyes and brushed back the jacket of his coat to reveal a gun. Instantly I felt regret that I had not complied with his wishes and shut up. But for some reason, I lost my fear. I felt as if my fear just rolled away. So I looked right back at him, and without blinking calmly replied, “Kill me, and I will enter Paradise. See what happens to you.” The man’s eyes widened and he suddenly got up and left the train, which had pulled into the station. I sat amazed. Fellow passengers congratulated me, as only New York subway riders can, on being fortunate in a confrontation like that. I had talked as if I had known something when I did not. Only ALLAH knows whom He will permit to enter Paradise.

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