Even Angels Ask:

 A Journey to Islam in America
 

By

Jeffrey Lang

I read the Arabic version:

Translated by Munzer Al-Absi

Published by Dar AL-Fikr, Damascus
 

The book's title is a book by itself, it is a whole story: (Even Angels Ask...)

The other story is what inside the book...

The start was with the author and his journey with Qur'an. His skeptical mind started a ride with this book, slowly slowly... until he reached the story about creation:

Now, the scene is in Paradise, and Allah is talking with His Angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth..."

However, the angels, these celestial nice creatures, were astonished. They couldn't prevent themselves from asking: "Will You place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood..."

There is nobody ever existed but he/she asks this question. If animals had intellect they would have asked it too. A tiny look at the black history of human is enough to make the heart ache out of bitterness and confusion, also, probably, out of rebellion against this creation's plan... Even the meek angels, who are programmed to obey and submit, asked for everyone will come later on: why...

(Our first encounter with Qur'an was not pleasant at all. After reading thirty seven verses, we became provoked and disturbed to our utmost... We started inquiring: Lord, why You have imposed upon human race a mundane pain? Why hadn't You put us in Paradise at first place? Why have You written upon us the survival's struggling? Why did you make us weak and devastating enemies to ourselves? Why have You written upon us to live with broken hearts, destroyed dreams, lost love, fading youth, problems, and countless trials? Why have You written upon us to suffer the childbirth's pain and agony? Why? We beg you with shame and frustration "why"? We supplicate to you while ourselves overflowing with grief and foolishness "why"? We besiege with anguish "why"? We scream until our voices touch the sky "just why"? So, if You are there, Lord, and You  hear us, just tell us why did You create the human?) p.47

In this style, that makes the reader forget his being outside the book, Jeffery began his questions. He made us hear the buzzing of his thoughts agitating in his brain, the brain of the atheist mathematical professor that he was, when he encountered with Qur'an with the first time... Through his suffering and confusion he made the confused readers perceive their own suffering and confusion in  searching for answers, which could put out the fire of these eternal questions...

Then, Step by step, he lent a helping hand to our skeptical minds. He showed us the way-out within the same story of creation that the Creator was telling...

Many times I have read these verses of creation trying to understand why Allah created us. However, never the Qur'an has given a ready simple answer. The Qur'an provokes the mind by its style to search for an answer, to reflect, to contemplate, and to meditate upon its verses...

In the verses we see that Allah answered His angels through teaching Adam the names of all things, then He placed them before angels and ordered them to tell Him the names of these things. Angels couldn't answer, so Adam told them the names. Thus angels were convinced...

But what does all that mean? How angels were convinced?? What is the connection between the question and the answer??? Questions... and questions I was not able to find answers for...

However, Jeffery was able to find the answer, and to make me see in the verses what I couldn't see by myself:

The potential ability in human to receive knowledge and acquire it... his potential ability to  rise in morality, unlike angels who are programmed to obey,... his ability of choosing... his ability to sense the Creator in a mere personal way...

That means; angels didn't look at this human's ability when they asked. They only looked at one side of the picture...

In this way, through the first chapter, the author kept asking then answering... suggesting doubts then dispelling them... He was answering as if he had been able to hear my questions...

Then he moved to another chapter, which is totally different. He continued narrating his journey to Islam: with the Muslims' community in America... with his unsuccessful attempt to live in Saudi Arabia, the country of his beloved wife... with his journey to Hajj... with his personal suffering from inflexibility, from Muslims' fighting, and condemning each others... with his personal suffering from himself and his own arrogance as a result of the warm hospitality that Muslims used to receive him in...

I read this book few years during the exam's days. I wanted to kill the boredom of studying by reading few pages. Suddenly, I forgot myself and lost in it until sleepiness got me after I had almost finished the whole (335) pages but 25. I spent the night dreaming of this 25 pages until I woke up. Immediately, I took it again and read them, even before I opened my eyes completely...

Reading this book was a turning point in my life. I was not any longer the same person that I was before it. I was not any longer wishing I hadn't been, or wishing the wicked human race hadn't been. For the first time in my life, I felt how I was so lucky when I was chosen from nonexistence to be me, to be precisely as Salma...

Moreover, I have started to behold the Qur'an in a different way; I  reflect on it by myself trying to understand its verses and project them onto my personal life, as Salma, far away from traditionality, far away from repeating the same words that we grow up with, which kill the meaning of reflecting and thinking on the Qur'an...

Until to the last drop of life I will be much obliged to this wonderful man because of his book...

As  people differ, there reactions and understanding to books do... The first time I heard about the book was from a teacher. He said it was about new Muslims. My friend Wafa, who I always borrow her books and whose bookcase has formed half of my knowledge, wasn't so enthusiastic towards the book, she didn't like it. I decided to buy it instead of borrowing from her as I used to, since our friendship was not so strong yet. When I read, I found another book. It was not just a biography of someone who embraced Islam, as it is classified, but it was a huge gate was opened in front of me...

I found in this book what we lack, i.e. the Arab Muslims; it is to re-reflect in a way that coming from inside not in a dictated one... It is not an easy process for the Arab to do so. What new Muslims and the non-Arab, who learn Arabic, can't see is how lucky they are. They are able to receive and taste the Arabic words freely as they are, without being burdened by heavy loads of interpretation and explanation, without the painful burdens of sore conceptions and experiences which adhered with words until they killed them in the minds of those who raised on...

Indeed, an Arab needs huge efforts and struggling to re-feel and re-understand each word was once crushed ruthlessly by society... How really he needs to be patient and enduring to understand the word in its origin without the sticked interoperations...

Thanks for Jeffery, who has brought some words back to me...

Salma Al-Helali

30/5/2006