Confessions of a
Convert: Lost and Found
By M. Dawud Alcox
A few years before Allah blessed me with
Islam, I found myself in a church. It was
very late at night and I had already been
there for hours. The place was packed,
and the air was filled with ambiance. The
sounds were melodious, and the lighting
was divine. My feet refused to complain,
despite standing for many hours. As the
night grew longer, time came to a halt as
our repetitive litanies diverted our attention
from the clock’s ticking. In the main
prayer hall, with many of my friends,
we went down into sajdah in front of the
pulpit to pay our homage to the DJ as he
transitioned perfectly into the next song.
Wait… what?
Allah Most High has a unique system of
guidance. He hasn’t set an unreasonable
price for it, nor has He made it impossible
to find the Holy Grail. All you have
to do is ask and you shall receive. I know
it sounds like some new age secret “just ask
the universe” type of hogwash, but Allah has
truly made it that simple. If guidance is so readily
available, why do so many people fail to attain it? When it is
staring them in the face, what causes them to look past it as
if they are blind? Let us see if we can understand guidance
and what may become a barrier to it.
First of all, what is guidance? Is it following that voice in your
head or is it going against that voice? Is it adhering to trends,
rituals and conventions without questioning their validity?
How do you know if you are truly guided or just deluded?
Alhamdulillah, we have an All-Knowing, All-Wise, Guiding
Creator. He gave us certain epistemic tools with which we
can, by His grace, recognize and accept the guidance that He
is offering. It would be unfair if Allah assigned us a task without
providing adequate means to accomplish it. Allah Himself
tells us at the end of Surah al-Baqarah: “Allah does not
make someone responsible except to their capacity” (2:286).
In Islam, we have the concept of what Allah and His Prophet
a have called the fitra. It could be summed up as a natural
disposition which enables us to accept the basics of iman.
Allah says: “So, turn wholeheartedly to the Faith uprightly,
this faith being the nature designed by Allah on which He
has created mankind” (30:30). In this verse, Allah is instructing
the Prophet a to follow the Islamic Faith while also indicating
that He has hardwired that faith into mankind.
One thing I find quite unique is that we ask Allah for guidance
multiple times a day. In fact, Allah has made it compulsory
upon us to seek this guidance verbally everyday until
we die. In Surat al-Fatiha, we read: “Guide us to the Straight
Path!” (1:7). It is not a one and done request. Guidance is
something that we must continuously strive to maintain and
improve.
We learn from the commentary of Surat al-Fatiha that guidance
has levels to it. Allah has given every single creation
guidance of some sort. This includes our normal understanding
of guidance, believing and following the truth, but
also includes the instinctual form. Musa e informs us: “Our
Lord is the One Who gave everything its due shape, then
guided it” (20:50). Allah has created a code for the functionality
of everything, from plants to animals. Science is
broadly hinged on the fact that this code exists. It serves to
point out observations which seem to be consistently found
in the material world. If everything acted randomly, the scientific
method would have no purpose and scientists would
have to hang up their lab coats. However, Allah has allowed
for the nature of things to become affected due to environmental
circumstances. If we study the honeybee, we will be
able recognize the system it follows instinctually. It didn’t go
to flight school nor dance class. In somewhat recent years,
due to human intervention with the over-use of pesticides,
the honeybee’s system has been affected. In a National Geographic
article written in 2013, it reads: “A single honeybee
visits hundreds, sometimes thousands, of flowers a day
in search of nectar and pollen. Then it must find its way back
to the hive, navigating distances up to five miles (eight kilometers),
and perform a “waggle dance” to tell the other bees
where the flowers are. A new study shows that long-term ex-
18 March – April 2021 | AL-MADINAH