My discovery of the Holy Qur'an was tortuous, and it led me trough strange byways; but since the end of the road was supremely worthwhile, I have never regretted my experiences.
As a small child, I possessed a keen ear for music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music was my favorite subject in school and that in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer chance, when I was about eleven years old, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio. It so pleased me that I was determined to hear more. As soon as I heard Arabic music, Western music at once lost all of its appeal to me. I would not leave my parents in peace until my father finally took me to the Syrian section in New York City, where I bought a stack of Arabic recordings for my phonograph. The one I liked best was a rendition of Surah Maryam of the Holy Qur'an chanted by Umm Kulthum. Back then, in 1946, I could not have foreseen heat an evil woman she would become in her later years, for I admired her for her beautiful voice which rendered those passages of the Holy Qur'an with such intense feeling and devotion. It was through listening to these recordings by the hour that I came to love the sound of Arabic, even though I could not understand it. Without this basic appreciation of the Arabic musical idiom, which sounds so utterly strange to the Westerner, I could not possibly have grown to love the recitation of the Holy Qur'an. My parents, relatives and neighbors thought Arabic and its music dreadfully weird and so distressing to their ears that whenever I put on my recordings, they demanded that I close all of the doors and windows of my room so that they would not be disturbed! After I embraced Islam in 1961, I would sit enthralled by the celebrated Egyptian qari', 'Abdul Basit. But at one Friday prayer the Imam did not play the tapes. That particular time we had a special guest - a short, very thin and poorly dressed black youth, who introduced himself to us as a student from Zinzibar. When he opened his mouth to recite Surah ar-Rahman, I realized that I had never heard such glorious recitation, even from 'Abdul Basit. This obscure African adolescent possessed such a voice of gold that I felt that surely Bilal must have sounded much like him!
From the age of ten I developed a passion for reading all of the books about Arabs that I could lay my hands on - at school or at the public libraries in my community - especially those dealing with the historical relationship between the Jews and Arabs; but it was not until more than nine years later that it ever occurred to me to satisfy my curiosity about the Holy Qur'an. Gradually, as I neared the end of my adolescence, I became convinced that it was not the Arabs who had made Islam great but rather Islam which had raised the Arabs from wild desert tribes to masters of the world. It was not until I wanted to find out just how and why this had happened that I ever thought to read the Holy Qur'an for myself.
In the summer of 1953 I strained myself too hard in college by taking an accelerated curriculum of too many subjects. That August I fell ill and had to discontinue all work for the remainder of the season. One evening when my mother was about to go to the public library, she asked me if there was any book I wanted, and I asked her for a copy of the Holy Qur'an. An hour later she returned with one - translation by the eighteenth-century Christian missionary and scholar, George Sale. Because of the extremely archaic language and the copious footnotes quoting al-Baydawi and Zamakhsahri out of context in order to refute them from the Christian viewpoint, I understood very little. At that time, my immature mind regarded the Qur'an as nothing more than distorted and garbled versions of the familiar stories from the Bible! Although my first impression of the Holy Qur'an was unfavorable, I could not tear myself away from it. I read it almost continuously for three days and nights, and when I had finished, all of my strength had been drained away! Although I was only nineteen, I felt as weak as a woman of eighty. Indeed, I never recovered my full strength or energy afterwards.
I continued to nurse this poor opinion of the Holy Qur'an until one day I found in a bookshop an inexpensive paperback edition of Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall's translation. As soon as I opened that book, it proved to be a revelation! Its powerful eloquence literally swept me off my feet. In the first paragraph of his preface Pickthall wrote:
" The aim of this work is to present to English readers what Muslims the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Qur'an and the nature of that Book in not unworthy language and concisely with a view to the requirement of English-speaking Muslims. It may reasonably be claimed that no Holy Scripture can be fairly presented by one who disbelieves its inspiration and its message: and this is the first English translation by an Englishman who is a Muslim. Some o the translations include commentaries offensive to Muslims, and almost all employ a style of language which Muslims, at once, recognize as unworthy. The Qur'an cannot be translated. That is the conviction of the old-fashioned shaykhs and the view of the present writer. The Book here is rendered almost literally, and every effort is made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Qur'an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy; it is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Qur'an - and peradventure, something of the charm - in English. IT can never take the place of the Qur'an in Arabic nor is it meant to do so "[1].
I then realized why George Sale's translation was most unfair. From then on, I refused to read his or any other renderings of the Holy Qur'an by non-Muslims. After reading Pickthall's rendition, I discovered other English translations by Yusuf 'Ali, Muhammad 'Ali Lahori and Maulana 'Abdul Majeed Daryabadi. I found the commentaries by Yusuf 'Ali and Muhammad 'Ali Lahorie offensive because of their apologetic tone and farfetched, unconvincing attempts to explain away those passages which conflict with modern philosophies or scientific concepts. Their translations of the text were also weak. Although Maulana Daryabadi's attempt to pattern his translation of the Holy Qur'an on the archaic style of the King James's version of the Bible most annoyed me, I found his commentary excellent - particularly the parts dealing with comparative religion - and learned much from it. However, Pickthall's rendition remained my favorite, and to this day, I have never found any other English translation that can equal it. The sweep of eloquence, the virility and the dignity of the language is unsurpassed in any others. Most other translations commit the mistake of using the word "God," but Pickthall retains "Allah" throughout. This makes the message of Islam strike the Western reader as more authentic and effective. Throughout the darkest days during my years of hospitalization, I kept a paperback edition of Pickthall's translation with me as my constant companion, which I read over so may times that I must have worn to pieces a half dozen copies. May Allah abundantly reward Pickthall with the choicest blessings for making the knowledge about the Qur'an so easily and cheaply available to England and America! Were it not for him, I would not have been able to come to know and appreciate it.
After my discharge in 1959 I spent much of my leisure time reading books about Islam in the Oriental Division of the New York Public Library. It was there that I discovered four bulky volumes of an English translation of Mishkat ul-Masabeeh by al-Hajj Maulana Fadhlur Rahman of Calcutta. It was then that I learned that a proper and detailed understanding of the holy Qur'an is not possible without some knowledge of the relevant ahadeeth, for how can the Holy Qur'an be interpreted correctly except by the Prophet (may Allah be pleased with him), to whom it was revealed? Those who disbelieve the ahadeeth also disbelieve the Qur'an, for its revelation explicitly tells us that one cannot follow what Allah wants us to do without an unquestioning acceptance of the authority of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah be pleased with him).
Once I had studied the Mishkat, I began to accept the Holy Qur'an as divine revelation. What persuaded me that the Qur'an must be from Allah and not composed by Muhammad (may Allah be pleased with him) was its satisfying and convincing answers to all of the most important questions of life - answers which I could not find elsewhere.
As a child, I was so mortally afraid of death - particularly the thought of my own death - that after nightmares about it, sometimes I would awaken my parents, crying in the middle of the night. When I asked them why I had to die and what would happen to me after death, all they could say was that I had to accept the inevitable, that was a long way off and because medical science was constantly advancing, perhaps I would live to be a hundred years old! My parents, the remainder of my family and all of our friends contemptuously rejected as superstition any thought of the Hereafter, regarding the Day of Judgment, rewards in paradise, and punishment in Hell as outmoded concepts of bygone ages.
In vain I searched all of the verbose chapters of the Old Testament for any clear and ambiguous concept of the Hereafter, but all I found was that the prophets, patriarchs and sages of the Bible all received their rewards or punishments in this world. The story of Job (Ayyub) is typical of this concept. God destroyed all of his loved ones and possessions, and He afflicted him with a loathsome disease in order to test his faith. Job plaintively lamented his situation and asked God why He would make a righteous man suffer. At the end of the story, God restored all of his earthly losses, but nothing was ever mentioned about any possible consequences in the Hereafter. Although I did find the Hereafter mentioned in the New Testament, when I compared it with that of the Holy Qur'an, I found that it was vague and ambiguous. Additionally, I found no answer to the question of death in Orthodox Judaism, for the Talmud preaches that even the worst life is better than the best death.
Through bitter experience I discovered that self-indulgence leads only to misery and that nothing great or even worthwhile is ever accomplished without struggle through adversity and self-sacrifice. From earliest childhood I have always wanted to accomplish important and significant things. Above all else, before my death I wanted the assurance that I had not wasted my life in sinful deeds or worthless pursuits.
All of my life I have been intensely serious-minded. I have always detested the frivolity which is the dominant characteristic of contemporary culture. My father once disturbed me with his unsettling conviction that there is no hinge of permanent value and that because everything in this modern age continually changes all of the time, the best we can do is accept the present trends as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them. I, however, was thirsty to attain something that would endure forever. It was from the Holy Qur'an that I learned that this aspiration was possible. No good deed done for the sake of seeking the pleasure of Allah is ever wasted or lost. Even if the person concerned never achieves any worldly recognition, his reward is certain in the Hereafter. Conversely, the Qur'an tells us that those who are guided by no moral considerations other than expediency or social conformity and who crave the freedom to do as they please - no matter how much worldly success and prosperity they attain or how keenly they are able to relish the short span of their earthly life - will be doomed as the losers on Judgment Day. Islam teaches us that in order to devote our exclusive attention to fulfilling our duties to Allah and to our fellow beings, we must abandon all vain and useless activities which distract us from this end. These teachings of the Holy Qur'an, made even more explicit by ahadeeth, were thoroughly compatible with my temperament. When I embraced Islam, my parents, relatives and their friends regarded me almost as a fanatic because I could think and talk of nothing else. To them, religion is a purely private concern which, at the most, perhaps could be cultivated like an amateur hobby among other hobbies. But as soon as I read the Holy Qur'an, I knew that Islam was no hobby. It was life itself!
From the onset of my adolescence until my migration to Pakistan at the age of twenty-eight, I was a hopeless misfit. A young girl as serious-minded as I was - who was always with a pile of books at the library, who abhorred the cinema, dancing and pop music, who did not enjoy dating and mixed parties and who took no interest in romance, glamour, cosmetics, jewelry or fashionable clothes - had to pay the full penalty of social ostracism for being "different".
From a bleak future in America which had no place for a person like me, I escaped and migrated to Pakistan. Although Pakistan, like every other Muslim country, is being increasingly contaminated by the most noxious "dirt" from Europe and America, a sufficient number of Pakistanis still remain good Muslims so as to provide an environment which makes it possible for the individual to lead a life in conformity with what Islam teaches. At times, I must admit, fail to apply to my own life what Islam demands that we practice, but I never indulge in far-fetched interpretations of the Qur'an or the sunnah to justify my weaknesses and shortcomings. Whenever do wrong, I readily admit it and try my best to rectify my mistake. The happiness I have found in my new life is entirely due to the fact that those very qualities of character and temperament which Western society ridicules and scorns are most keenly appreciated and esteemed in Islam.
[1] Slight changes have been made to the quoted material for the purpose of improving the English.
