The Magdalene Mystique - The Path Inward

Several years ago I met Aman Mehrzai, an American Muslim, living in Houston. A parishioner introduced me to him, and our conversations led to his giving several talks to our youth groups about being a Muslim in American. Our Magdalene Community is starting a series of talks about various world religions this Sunday. So it seems like a good time for us to have some conversations online with Aman about Islam. Aman now lives in California, and I asked him to write a first letter to begin our conversation. I hope you will join in the conversation - he, too, as you can see from the last paragraph, thinks dialogue and conversation is a significant part of our healing and reconciliation today.

Here is his first letter:
Betty,

For years the great religions of Christianity and Islam have heard of each other mainly through myth and fables of defamation – often in the form of negative false literature in the old days, and more-so through media propaganda in the present. It’s Al-Jazeera (explaining why the West is wicked) versus Fox News (over why Muslims are evil); both sides often approaching the “story” about each other in an antagonistic and suspicious manner.

Well I am an oxymoron living in the midst of judgment and misunderstandings. I am Muslim, but American – with my great grandfather of 13 generations ago being a Jewish Rabbi who converted to Islam.

My parents loved God, but did not emphasize Him in the household. When they died, I was only 14 years old, and my love of God too died with them. I fell into a darkness of atheism, wondering and questioning why God would do this to me. Through alcohol and drugs I did not find the answer. I only finally realized that I wasn’t really an atheist – I was just mad at God.

My girlfriend’s father at the time, worked hard at making Jesus my personal savior. In the beginning I went to Church with him because I felt it would be good politics to keep things smooth between me and my girlfriend. But as I heard the pastor speaking of the compassionate stories of Jesus – I realized that this was no ordinary man he was talking about. I was moved by the charisma, love and relentless revolutionary ideas of the Messiah.

Under pressure from my girlfriend’s father, the pastor attempted to explain the trinity to me after sermon one day, but a big question mark arouse on my face in the shape of my eyebrow. His attempts to explain the trinity through multi-faceted examples with all earnest left me scratching my head. “The trinity is like a hard boiled egg,” said the pastor. “The shell, white and yolk are three, but one.” Without realizing that my response may be disrespectful I asked him, “What if I eat the yolk? What then?” The pastor gazed my face for signs of ridicule, but after realizing my sincerity, well, he simply grabbed my hand as a father would to a son and replied, “This is where you just believe my son. Logic could only take you so far.”

He was right; logic can only take me so far. I was now convinced that there was a God, but the trinity was a complicated story and deserved much more research. My journey started with the Church, Synagogue, Buddhist Temple, then to the Mosque, not necessarily for spiritual enlightenment, but for intellectual fulfillment. My love was in understanding why people believed what they did – I was interested in the roots. This internal journey led me to a physical journey to the Himalayas, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal in Africa, but the hardest journey of all was going deep through the mountains and dark crevasses of my heart – to understand why I am the way I am, and why I believe and love God.

You see Betty, questioning is deep! My physical journeys have stopped for now – but my internal journal will never stop, as I believe it will continue into the afterlife.

Living in a predominantly Christian country, I see, feel and understand the pains and fears of my countrymen and women towards Muslims. I am American. What I am not interested in, is proving through brute and bronze the strength of our Gods to each other. For this reason, I constantly visit different churches, in hopes of increasing nothing less than sheer understanding. We must come to know each other, and I am convinced that only through love and understanding will God grant us success in this life and the next. I am also convinced that this is what God wants us to do in this country as He is the one who controls the hearts – and only He can change them.

I finish my lengthy introduction with this thought; we can constantly claim in vain “united we stand.”

But I often ponder what this unity really means, if we make no effort other than listening to what the T.V. tube has to say as our primary source of understanding each other?

I pray that God gives us strength to open dialogue between you and me, and other Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, to act as stitches in the healing process of our beloved homeland, America.

Thank you for your time and patience,

Aman Mehrzai

Servant of God

Response from Betty:

Aman,

I think your first paragraph hits the mark - we sometimes approach each other with suspicion (thinking, what is the real agenda here? what does he/she want from me? will I get an evangelisitic pitch? ) And this is not just the case with persons of different religions but with persons of different races, class, and gender, to name a few of the occasions when red flags go up in alert. It probably has to do with our “sedimented layers” (to use a word from Heidegger) of ancient hostilities, either personal or collective, and/or with our fears of the unknown. We can’t exactly predict how our conversation will go with someone we don’t know or understand. Fear calls for an alert, and while that might be good in some cases, it greatly hampers new friendships. So the first step in any conversation is to settle down and recognize those layers and name them if we can. Then perhaps we can begin to build up trust. All this takes a great deal of time and effort. No wonder it happens so little.

Alas, news media thrive on conflict because it sells. Those reported conflicts deepen our suspicions on a daily basis. The question that glares here is: why does conflict sell? Why are we eager to read about commotion and crisis Does it fulfill an expectation of a sort? Is this learned behavior or something more?

Thank you for telling us your story of seeking God and the pastor’s portrait of a compassionate Jesus. Those of us in the Christian tradition are pleased with that portrait. I would agree that the egg metaphor takes us only so far. Ultimately, we have to throw in the towel in explanation and stand before Great Mystery.

I would be interested in learning more about your daily prayers and your spirituality whenever you think the time is right to go into that. Let’s see how our readers respond?

Betty

Conversations in the Magdalene Community about World Religions will take place on Sundays at the Rothko Chapel at 10:00 am according to the following calendar.
Judaism: July 15 and 22
Buddhism: July 29 and August 5
Islam: August 12 and 19
Native American: August 26 and September 2
Christianity: September 16

We are indebted to Janie Stevens of the Diocese of Texas for providing the symbols and materials for this series of Sundays from her “Peace Village” collection.