Book of Signs Foundation » Journey to Islam

Woman finds peace at a southern mosque

obaloch — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:24:07 +0000

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien looks at how some are fighting debt from the pulpit in “Almighty Debt: A Black in America Special,” premiering October 21 at 8 p.m. ET.

Moncks Corner, South Carolina (CNN) – Every day, before sunrise, Zubaidah Gibbs wakes to pray, then spends hours more singing praises to God under a tree outside her home. She reflects on the setting and thanks God for the beautiful environment around her in this small Southern town.

But this Muslim woman wasn’t always at peace with herself, or her religion.

Her 55 years have been a journey from wanting to be white to being proud to be black; from the urban North to the rural South; from studying religions to finding a community in Islam.

As a young girl in the 1960s, “I would have done anything in the world to be white with blue eyes and blonde hair with small lips,” Gibbs said. “I didn’t hang out with girls who were dark like me, because I felt like they were ugly like me.”

She became more comfortable with her race as a teenager, when she heard a different message: James Brown singing “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud!”

“I was, like, ‘Wow, this is interesting,’” she said. “I started getting rid of [my relaxed hairstyle] and accepting my hair natural, and I was a little bit more comfortable with myself.”

But her pride in her roots didn’t fill the void she felt in her heart. She was still searching for connections that transcended ethnicity. Her mother, a Christian, encouraged Gibbs to visit various churches around her home in New York, some led by Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Catholics.

She was 17 when a blind date with a Muslim man ended at a mosque.

“I heard the adhan [call to prayer] playing, and I saw the people with their long garbs on, and the sisters — and I just didn’t want to leave,” she said.

Zubaidah Gibbs’ mother was Christian, but encouraged her to study other religions. Gibbs now practices Islam.

That same year, she embraced Islam, attracted to the message of peace and its disregard for color.

“Islam helped me to identify with the beauty within as well as outside. …It balanced me out because now I understand who I am as a human,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs’ spiritual journey had only begun. At age 42, she moved from New York to South Carolina to escape the crowds of the city with her four children. She didn’t know of a mosque in the little town where she’d settled, Moncks Corner, but was reluctant to go 30 miles south to Charleston. So, she prayed about it.

One day, Gibbs said, she saw men in kufis, traditional African skullcaps, building what looked like a little house on what had once been known as the “whites-only” side of Moncks Corner. She discovered it was to be a mosque, just as she’d prayed for.

Today, the mosque, Masjid Muhajarun Wal Ansars, is a small white brick building whose members are mostly African-American. They practice mainstream Islam, like 2.45 million other American Muslims, not Nation of Islam, a separate religious tradition associated with black Muslims. Here, they marry Islamic ritual, racial understanding and traditional southern culture.

At the mosque, Gibbs met a spiritual mentor, Sheikh Harun Faye. Faye was born in Thies, Senegal, and came to South Carolina in 1994 after marrying an American.

“I belong to a very large family, and generation after generation all we have done is to lead people to the way of God,” Faye said. “So, when I got here, the first thing I wanted was a mosque where I can call the people to God and teach them Islam. And that is what I do.”

We don’t care who you are, where you come from.
–Imam Rasheed Nurudin

He opened the mosque in 1996, with five people. The congregation now consists of more than 150 members.

Gibbs was among its first members. She was initially attracted to the mosque’s welcoming nature, open-door policy and community outreach. Over the last 14 years, the mosque has assisted thousands of people in need, many of them homeless and ex-convicts.

“Anybody, Muslim, non-Muslim, you know, African-American, non-African-American, anybody who comes and knocks on that door and said ‘I’m hungry,’ or ‘I can’t pay my light bill,’ or ‘I need to lay down here and sleep,’ we don’t care who you are, where you come from. You could be the worst crook in the world, we really wouldn’t know,” said Imam Rasheed Nurudin, the prayer leader of the mosque who fills in when Faye is absent.

The mosque’s fusion of black American and Islamic culture has allowed members like Gibbs to harmonize her identity and connect with a message of unity.

“When I came and listened to the sheikh and he spoke about God and the Prophet Mohammed, it wasn’t about ‘black power this,’ and ‘black man that,’” Gibbs said. “It was about humanity. It was about God.

“It’s like you have a veil when you come into the mosque and all of a sudden the veil is lifted and you can see like you’ve never seen before. Everything looks different.”

The center is a unique cultural crossroads in the deep South, said Anisah Bagasra, an instructor at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, who has studied the mosque and how its members incorporate Islamic rituals into their daily lives.

“When you go for their Eid [holiday] dinners in particular, this is where you really see both Southern hospitality emerge and … southern home cooking, but everything’s halal, so it shows that religious mandating as well,” said Bagasra. “[It] represents a growing trend in contemporary Muslim communities in the United States in terms of that fusion of traditional cultures with the American culture, while maintaining a pride in their Islamic identity.”

Gibbs enjoys the duality and expresses her culture through her clothing, head scarf and singing West African-influenced Islamic prayers, a practice uncommon in other mosques.

“It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel a serenity that words cannot describe, because I’m closer to God with the community,” she said. “Everyone is singing and praising God together.”

For Gibbs, finding a mosque in the rural South was key to her inner peace. It fulfilled the spiritual companionship she’d been seeking for years, she said.

“This community means a family that I never had and a strength that I never knew,” she said. “[It] meant opening up doors that were shut in terms of my self esteem, in terms of my direction, my aim … my destiny.”

She paused to rearrange her scarf, and her eyes began to water.

“I’m happy.”

Sister Delana Embraces Islam After Reading The Quran From Furqaan Foundation

obaloch — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:51:21 +0000

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How to Convert to Islam and Become a Muslim

obaloch — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:01:23 +0000

The word “Muslim” means one who submits to the will of God, regardless of their race, nationality or ethnic background. Becoming a Muslim is a simple and easy process that requires no pre-requisites. One may convert alone in privacy, or he/she may do so in the presence of others.

If anyone has a real desire to be a Muslim and has full conviction and strong belief that Islam is the true religion of God, then, all one needs to do is pronounce the “Shahada”, the testimony of faith, without further delay. The “Shahada” is the first and most important of the five pillars of Islam.

With the pronunciation of this testimony, or “Shahada”, with sincere belief and conviction, one enters the fold of Islam.

Upon entering the fold of Islam purely for the Pleasure of God, all of one’s previous sins are forgiven, and one starts a new life of piety and righteousness. The Prophet said to a person who had placed the condition upon the Prophet in accepting Islam that God would forgive his sins:

“Do you not know that accepting Islam destroys all sins which come before it?” (Saheeh Muslim)

When one accepts Islam, they in essence repent from the ways and beliefs of their previous life. One need not be overburdened by sins committed before their acceptance. The person’s record is clean, and it is as if he was just born from his mother’s womb. One should try as much as possible to keep his records clean and strive to do as many good deeds as possible.

The Holy Quran and Hadeeth (prophetic sayings) both stress the importance of following Islam. God states:

“…The only religion in the sight of God is Islam…” (Quran 3:19)

In another verse of the Holy Quran, God states:

“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam, never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter, he will be in the ranks of those who have lost (their selves in the Hellfire).” (Quran 3:85)

In another saying, Muhammad, the Prophet of God, said:

“Whoever testifies that there in none worthy of being worshipped but God, Who has no partner, and that Muhammad is His slave and Prophet, and that Jesus is the Slave of God, His Prophet, and His word[1] which He bestowed in Mary and a spirit created from Him; and that Paradise (Heaven) is true, and that the Hellfire is true, God will eventually admit him into Paradise, according to his deeds.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari)

The Prophet of God, may the blessing and mercy of God be upon him, also reported:

“Indeed God has forbidden to reside eternally in Hell the person who says: “I testify that none has the right to worship except Allah (God),’ seeking thereby the Face of God.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari)

The Declaration of the Testimony (Shahada)

To convert to Islam and become a Muslim a person needs to pronounce the below testimony with conviction and understanding its meaning:

I testify “La ilah illa Allah, Muhammad rasoolu Allah.”

The translation of which is:

“I testify that there is no true god (deity) but God (Allah), and that Muhammad is a Messenger (Prophet) of God.”

When someone pronounces the testimony with conviction, then he/she has become a Muslim. It can be done alone, but it is much better to be done with an adviser through the “Live Help” at top, so we may help you in pronouncing it right and to provide you with important resources for new Muslims.

The first part of the testimony consists of the most important truth that God revealed to mankind: that there is nothing divine or worthy of being worshipped except for Almighty God. God states in the Holy Quran:

“We did not send the Messenger before you without revealing to him: ‘none has the right to be worshipped except I, therefore worship Me.’” (Quran 21:25)

This conveys that all forms of worship, whether it be praying, fasting, invoking, seeking refuge in, and offering an animal as sacrifice, must be directed to God and to God alone. Directing any form of worship to other than God (whether it be an angel, a messenger, Jesus, Muhammad, a saint, an idol, the sun, the moon, a tree) is seen as a contradiction to the fundamental message of Islam, and it is an unforgivable sin unless it is repented from before one dies. All forms of worship must be directed to God only.

Worship means the performance of deeds and sayings that please God, things which He commanded or encouraged to be performed, either by direct textual proof or by analogy. Thus, worship is not restricted to the implementation of the five pillars of Islam, but also includes every aspect of life. Providing food for one’s family, and saying something pleasant to cheer a person up are also considered acts of worship, if such is done with the intention of pleasing God. This means that, to be accepted, all acts of worship must be carried out sincerely for the Sake of God alone.

The second part of the testimony means that Prophet Muhammad is the servant and chosen messenger of God. This implies that one obeys and follows the commands of the Prophet. One must believe in what he has said, practice his teachings and avoid what he has forbidden. One must therefore worship God only according to his teaching alone, for all the teachings of the Prophet were in fact revelations and inspirations conveyed to him by God.

One must try to mold their lives and character and emulate the Prophet, as he was a living example for humans to follow. God says:

“And indeed you are upon a high standard of moral character.” (Quran 68:4)

God also said:

“And in deed you have a good and upright example in the Messenger of God, for those who hope in the meeting of God and the Hereafter, and mentions God much.” (Quran 33:21)

He was sent in order to practically implement the Quran, in his saying, deeds, legislation as well as all other facets of life. Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, when asked about the character of the Prophet, replied:

“His character was that of the Quran.” (As-Suyooti)

To truly adhere to the second part of the Shahada is to follow his example in all walks of life. God says:

“Say (O Muhammad to mankind): ‘If you (really) love God, then follow me.’” (Quran 3:31)

It also means that Muhammad is the Final Prophet and Messenger of God, and that no (true) Prophet can come after him.

“Muhammad is not the father of any man among you but he is the Messenger of God and the last (end) of the Prophets and God is Ever All-Aware of everything.” (Quran 33:40)

All who claim to be prophets or receive revelation after Muhammad are imposters, and to acknowledge them would be tantamount to disbelief.

We welcome you to Islam, congratulate you for your decision, and will try to help you in any way we can.

Footnotes:
[1] God created him through His statement, “Be!”

By IslamReligion.com

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obaloch — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:51:36 +0000

The following is an interesting and simple clip of how intellectuals respond to the Quran. In this clip after every few sentences an Arab Muslim translates the words of the scientist. However, it is really worth as you will see…

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obaloch — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:49:13 +0000

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