When Faith Challenges Us
When I first embraced Islam, I did so out of a genuine desire to grow closer to God through a life of prayer. It was my journey that I took, in many respects, to free myself of the baggage of organized religion. Shortly before giving my testimony of faith, I remember reading Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad's contention, "All Islam offers is God," and feeling something deeply penetrate my heart. This was exactly what I was after. My first year as a Muslim, despite being filled with a lot of outward turmoil, was pervaded by a sense of peace and gratitude at having found a path to the Divine.
I also remember when this honeymoon phase came to an abrupt end. I had the distinct feeling of the wind leaving my sails when I first learned the shariah rulings around the mahram, or non-marriageable male, who is to act as a woman's guardian in some social settings. Women can't travel alone? They need a man's permission to get married? God demands this of us? So much of my life as I had known it would have been impossible with these rules in place. For instance, my mother sometimes used to drive five hours alone to visit me at college. Was this wrong? Was there more to Islam that I wouldn't be able to live up to? In a single moment, it began to feel as if my newfound religion would become the cause of God's displeasure with me rather than a means of drawing nearer to Him.
This type of 'gut punch' is something that I've seen many seekers and new Muslims experience. We embrace Islam to start walking towards God, but eventually trip on a teaching that contradicts the very way in which we're used to living. Very often, these issues arise around controversial subjects like homosexuality and slavery, though they can feel just as poignant around mundane topics like inheritance. Faith can challenge us--and because it is faith challenging us, we often struggle with it in silence rather than openly seeking answers. Yet this is a normal process of spiritual growth. Indeed, it is something on which some of the closest Companions of the Prophet ﷺ offer guidance.
The advice of Aisha, may God be pleased with her, the wife of the Prophet, is to prioritize drawing nearer to God while being patient with ourselves as we adopt particular teachings of Islam into our lives. She once said that "If the first verse to be revealed was ‘do not drink wine,’ the people would have said, ‘we will never stop drinking wine.’ And if the first verse to be revealed was ‘do not commit adultery,’ they would have said, ‘we will never stop committing adultery.'" Rather, she tells us, "the first verses to be revealed were from the shorter chapters at the end of the Quran. In them is mentioned Paradise and Hellfire, until people were firmly established upon Islam." It is an understandable mistake to come across a teaching or ruling and interpret it as an immediate demand for conformity. However, God Himself introduced Islam to the early community of Muslims simply by calling them to Himself. The shorter chapters that our mother Aisha mentions, known as the Meccan chapters, were revealed over a thirteen year period. The early Muslims had thirteen years to attach their hearts to God before He revealed most of the legal rulings! We need not wait this long to see the wisdom here: our attachment to God must form the foundation of any willingness to follow His commands. A servant who serves out of love and devotion will in fact do so with greater care than one who does so blindly. Encountering difficult teachings therefore need not disturb us; rather it is an opportunity to seek greater understanding and guidance out of that sincere devotion that we already possess.
One of the greatest tools that I have found for seeking greater understanding--personally and for many of the people I have worked with over the years--is a willingness to question our assumptions. When faith challenges us, it is often confronting not so much a deeply held belief or value that we have, but an assumption that we simply have never interrogated. This was the case with the difficulty I encountered over the mahram rulings. Nearly two years after first learning of these rulings, I gained a new perspective on their intent while I was reading a book on the Mongol Empire. One of the Mongols' proudest achievements was the unheard-of level security they provided within their domain. They boasted that "a virgin carrying a sack of gold could ride unharmed from one border of the... empire to the other." If this was a way of bragging, what had been normal prior to their empire? It hit me that perhaps Islam was not restricting the freedom of women, or subjugating them to men, but attempting to deal with a difficult reality: namely, that women historically have been vulnerable to the whims of strange men in a way that other men have not. Perhaps my initial assumption about this ruling came from living in yet another rare period of security. Mercifully, I later learned that this is indeed the wisdom behind the ruling and, moreover, that the *shariah* is flexible enough to permit women traveling alone in secure and stable environments. What had first appeared to me as unnecessary or even oppressive transformed into yet another of God's mercies.
Finally, we must remember that our testimony of faith is the boundary of this religion. Our declaration that God is One, and that Muhammad ﷺ is His messenger, is what makes us Muslims--not our agreement and perfect comfort with every last teaching of the religion. When faith challenges us, we get to struggle, and even disagree, as Muslims. Firmly establishing Islam in our lives, as our mother Aisha tells us, is a process of drawing near to God. The details of the religion will become easy with this foundation in place, God willing.