On Believing

Setting Islam aside for a moment, I want to simply address the issue of believing.

For a while, I thought that we could make ourselves believe. That we could in fact choose the Truth, that we could will ourselves into believing.

In hindsight, my initial feeling was to see the above as arrogant in nature until someone who I respect and admire greatly - an individual who I turn to for guidance in terms of my own faith - said to me “You have a clarity of vision about God that I do not have”. I didn’t understand what that meant initially and so I wrote it down in an effort to try and reflect and hopefully understand it later.

Two days earlier, I had heard Tariq Ramadan say: “People believe they choose the Truth, but what they don’t understand is that the Truth chooses them.”

No one can force themselves to believe and no one can will or choose to do it. I once argued that I could choose not to believe, but I now understand that would be impossible for me. Impossible.

It is the same for the non-believer. They can’t force themselves to believe in God. “…God alone has the power to guide hearts…When it comes to conversion, the heart’s dispositions, faith, and love, there is no logic, and all that remains is the extraordinary power of the divine.” (In The Footsteps of the Prophet, Tariq Ramadan, p.65)

Even for those who believe, they may tell you that there is nothing of rationality in their belief (my belief is different, but anyway…). For many, faith and belief have nothing to do with the rational and I finally understand that’s what converts mean when they say: “It just happened” or “A light went on” or “Something clicked”.

There is nothing logical about this – most especially not when the individual speaking came across something haphazardly and for which they weren’t actively searching.

Naturally, as an individual who possesses the capacity to think, I can investigate and accept the basis and the moral teachings of a religion and appreciate all it has to offer, but it does not necessarily follow that I will then become a believer, because whereas belief is clear for some of us, it is completely irrational for others. For me, belief is two-fold and comes when we see with both our hearts and our eyes.

I could give you a list of things that I would argue stand between an individual and belief, but I realize that wouldn’t serve any purpose because I can’t “list” or “outline” the divine.

Perhaps the road to belief and conversion is to simply sit alone (alone, alone, alone) quietly, humbly and with complete humility: ask for help. Tautological, yes; to a believer, completely rational.

From what I’ve been able to understand so far, I think I was leaning toward the correct in one thing: we have to want to find Him sincerely, without deception or pretence. This doesn’t reference what we say to others about our search, but rather it references where we are in terms of that search within our hearts, when we take off our masks and are honest with ourselves.

We can choose to look at any given situation and put holes in it or we can choose to look at the same situation and choose to see the unity and completeness within. This vision has to be ours alone when we sit with ourselves in silence and solitude. When we ask questions, the questions have to be posed with a sincere effort to find Him. Depending on the glasses we choose to wear, we will ask different questions and we will receive different answers.

Conscience of it or not, our heart has to be looking for Him. For some, this can be a challenge in self awareness (e.g. how we situate ourselves relative to our psychology, current environment and history) and self discipline and this is, perhaps, where when we are actively searching, humility comes in its simplest and yet most complex form: asking for help. Ultimately, the one thing I believe is that God guides the hearts of those who seek Him out; He helps us when we need Him and seek Him sincerely. This is a standard we keep in our daily relations with others, it is one that should too be kept as the highest standard when we are trying to develop and understand our relationship with Him. Think about that.

Now. If we don’t know how to ask for help, we need to learn…but I think that if we listen carefully to our heart, it would know exactly how to ask for help. I couldn't have worded it better than Ramadan when he wrote: “initiation into humility [is] understood as a necessary stage in the experience of faith”.(Ibid., 7.)

Lessons to learn: Stronger and deeper faith & patience.

Interesting stuff…

Am I supposed to write: Wa Allah-u ya'lam?

Right. I promise to write something really funny soon – I have received every single one of your emails and your well wishes and I laughed at the “I will drown in my computer if you don’t write something funny soon, I swear to God!"

(Note to me: 07.05.23, O)