I once had a conversation with someone who didn’t write a book because he wasn’t sure that his intentions were pure.
Wow, I thought. Not me. Fear of renown has not scared me off anything – but perhaps it ought to.
Sincerity is something, perhaps oddly, perhaps normally, that I find elusive. I don’t know how to put my finger on it. And the lack of knowing plagues me. I’m trudging ahead, doing what I do, feeling as I feel, without much self-editing. I wonder if it’s time to take a step back and check myself.
Usually, when faced with the dilemma of my own sincerity, I simply pray for it. I’m not sure how much more I can manage. I even cringe away from uttering things like “Oh Lord, you know that I did such and such for Your sake alone” even when I am alone in prayer. I am afraid of myself, and afraid of the One Who created me and knows me better than I know myself. What if I have told myself a pretty and convenient lie? What if I told myself that, for instance, I started this blog for the sake of God alone, and what if, underlying that, even stronger than that, a love of praise and desire for recognition drove me to it? How would I know? Not knowing, I am inclined to think that baser things drive my actions – hoping, all the while, that I am wrong, and if not, that God will forgive me and improve me. And who am I to say what I meant by this or that? The more important something is to me, the more various my attractions to it. I feel that to to identify one driving force for something so important, so personal, and so inevitable as my writing would be to deny the complexity of my humanity. Right now, anyway. I am not so good, I am not so pure, and I am afraid of such self-assured declarations.
Do we totally understand our own selves?
Something may remain painfully unclear to a person for months or years that is plain as day to his peers and family. Alcoholics deny their alcoholism. Cumpulsive gamblers tell themselves, “I can stop whenever I want.” Am I any different – are any of us any different? If I understood the most inner, deepest motivations I have for all of my actions, and could identify them immediately, wouldn’t it be easier to rid my heart of its imperfections? Isn’t part of the insidiousness of sin that we sometimes don’t know it’s there?
The Qur’an calls those who deny belief, even while they hold it somewhere deep in their beings, “blind”. With honesty, and admission of that belief, there comes sight. “The likeness of the two parties is as the blind and the deaf and the seeing and the hearing: are they equal in condition? Will you not then mind?” [11:24] But I am more inclined to think that this phenomenon happens in gradations. Among the believers, the seers and hearers, some are undeniably better people and more committed to their faith. So I shy away from stark dichotomies. Is it right to think that because I see with the eyes of a believer, my spiritual sight is 20/20? I feel as though I am still waking up to the world, and things are revealed to me slowly, as I grow. With time, I am learning to polish the glasses of belief, and things that were vague in the distance a year ago become clear, and yet more things remain farther, beyond my reach, but between me and the horizon. I see myself for what I am through experience as it unfolds; it was not all done with a thunderclap the moment I became honest with myself and sighed, Yes, I am a Muslim.
So am I sincere? Am I sincere in all the ways I should be, in writing, in waking up in the morning, in the friendly exchanges I have with my fellow Muslims and my fellow Americans? I don’t think so. But I’m not sure if that is reason enough to stop.
I was raised in the theater – as a dancer, then as a singer, then as an actor. Then as a writer and director. I haven’t been involved in theatrical projects per se since graduating, but I believe that it would be foolish – just plain stupid – for me to say that the exhibitionism that drove my involvement in those things from the age of three does not now play a part in what I do, or attempt to do, publicly. The sound of applause was familiar to me from an early age – the smiling faces, the admiration, the feeling that I am real because these people see me. Or: I have done something, because they have witnessed it. I did not imagine my life. Did those feelings of comfort die two and a half years ago, because I began along a spiritual path? No. Surely not. And this is not my theory; I know it. If I write something and receive a compliment, when I blush and smile at it, it is twofold: I’m enjoying the praise, and censuring myself for basking in it.
Part of the reason, I believe, that I became a Muslim, was a recognition that all of the applause was transitory, illusory, and ultimately meaningless. The older performers I knew behaved, with some very notable exceptions, like overgrown, grayed toddlers. Unable to stop themselves, they threw embarrassing, diva-esque tantrums, and then recovered themselves as if nothing had happened. The rest of us, who were younger, less acknowledged, and only partially infected by the same need for attention, were left to feel ashamed for them. I dreaded becoming that – so I sought a forum for my heart that was richer than the stage.
Still, fleeing from something does not equal being freed from it.
Jane Austen asserts something very simple and very remarkable that I believe we learned to ignore by the time I showed up in the 1980’s (and perhaps long before that, too). In Mansfield Park, when Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, and she refuses him, she explains herself by saying, “I do not trust him. Like many charming people, his enjoyment lies chiefly in the admiration of others. His sole interest is in being loved; not in loving.”
The problem with rushing to praise is that she is a fickle lover. Sometimes the truth will gain you some of people’s love; sometimes it will gain you hatred, insult, and pain. Perhaps living in a democracy, we’ve been trained out of the idea that truth is not arrived at by consensus. Truth is sometimes unpopular. Lest we forget it, the struggles of our dear and beloved Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) remind us – so too the persecution of Galileo – or more recently, those valiant champions of the Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. and our blessed brother Malcolm X, may God have mercy on him.
The danger of love of praise is that we will pander. That with time, and addiction to admiration, we will begin to edit out those things we may have been previously committed to, but may not be popular with the masses. We water down whatever it is we wanted to convey, and excuse the adulteration in the name of wider dissemination, or slow introduction, or any other number of things. It is a very dangerous temptation, it is a very slippery slope, and it faces everyone with something to say and some sort of public face. The tide of popularity carries our souls away with it – poor Britney is the saddest testament to this. What she began trying to do, and what she has actually done – it would take a true cynic, I believe, to deny that the aim and the reality have parted ways for that poor woman.
And yet, despite all the danger that lies in making any part of one’s self public, we seemed to be called to act. It does not take a rocket scientist to look at the world and see that the forces of good, righteousness and truth aren’t exactly running the show. And who will speak out for justice? Who will stand for something other than profit, or sex, or the profit of sex?
As afraid as I am of myself, I get lost in feeling a crushing love for all the world, and a responsibility…to try…to do something. Something. Something not toting the line of meaninglessness, of greed, of celebrity-obsessed ingratiation. Something that supports the idea that there is more to the world than accumulating as much of it as possible, more even than doing no harm, more even than helping one’s fellow.
Someone asked me recently why I write. Glory be to God, I thought, why do I write, indeed? I was overwhelmed with my own self-ignorance, my lack of certainty in my intentions, and also with my love of my family and friends, my feeling for their hearts, and my desire to bestow upon them whatever I may have that is good. I write because I must. I write because I am obsessed with the memory of myself three years ago, and what scared me, and what inspired me, and I write to that girl: I write to console her. I write because
‘This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me –’
Because I need something, because I myself, feeling misunderstood, want to at least be able to say that I made an effort to be understood – whether or not it works is up to God. I write because I did not understand Muslims, and now I do. I write in the belief that I’m part of a group of people at least attempting to bridge the gap between Muslims and Americans – or attempting to expose the assumption that there is some contradiction between those identities is false. Because when I’m talking to someone, trying to say, “I’m American, I’m a patriot,” and they’re very busy telling me, “You’re Muslim, you’re different, you’re making life difficult for yourself, you crazy! You gave up your White Card,” I drive home feeling despondent, and only working against that tide will soothe me.
I write because I love reading, and want to read something I can relate to. I write because I meet wonderful people, and love them, and feel I’ve been blessed with this most beautiful faith, and on the off chance that it is something that will touch someone else’s heart in the way it has touched mine, I want to say to those people: It’s scary as all hell, but it does turn out okay. I write to remind myself of things I’ve forgotten. I write for the friends who encourage me. I write because my heart is bursting with love for God, and I can’t keep it in anymore.
I don’t know if I would be better off if I was more guarded, or more private. But I’ve never been secretive about much – either before or after becoming Muslim. I suppose it’s my personality – which doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing – so I can’t, won’t, and don’t defend my own sincerity. That’s not what this is about. I pray for it – I ask you to pray for it, especially if you’ve found something here that you feel has benefited you. God alone knows my heart, and putting it – and this, and all I do – in His hands is the most I can manage right now. It may be that I change my mind later, and that would be alright.
In the end, I’m hoping that there is something in here worth saying. I’m hoping there’s a point. I’m hoping that the best of what I have to offer comes out, and that this isn’t, deep down in the cockles of my heart, an attempt for popularity. How sad I would be, if that were the case. How disappointed I would be in myself.
We take refuge in God from sharing with Him anything in our worship knowing of it, and we ask His forgiveness for what we share with Him without being aware of it.
May God protect my heart, and yours, and grant us freedom from wanting that which can bring no gain. May we all have the best of intentions in all of our actions, and may He reward us according to that which is most noble in our hearts. May He correct, in His mercy, what is wrong with us, and help us to guide each other in love. Amen.
