Perspective: My Story - My journey with faith

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Ahmadiyyat has taught me, to believe in a living God. A God that does not break the very rules he makes for this world whenever he wants to.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Various / K.Ahmad
By Kalim Ahmad | January 22, 2013

A 'student’s only' interfaith event “My Story” was held at Mount Royal University, Calgary, yesterday where students representing Sikhism, Atheism, Christianity and Islam were invited to present stories of their journey in faith.

The Reflector, an online magazine wrote that according to Kristal Hoff, a Christian Chaplain for MRU’s Multifaith, 'some of the stigmas around faith and that a number of people aren't comfortable with the subject, but the space of My Story is great because “no one is afraid to ask those questions and no one is afraid to have those questions asked of them”.'

The university approached the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women’s Auxiliary to nominate a member to participate in the event.

A young member from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women Association of Canada, Asma Hanif, who is studying Social Work at MRU, presented her story.

After the event the organizers said they were very impressed by the Islamic presentation by Miss Hanif.

The essay is worth sharing with the Ahmadiyya Times readers and it is reproduced below in its entirety.

Good evening Ladies and Gentleman, 

My name is Asma Hanif, and I am a student of social work at Mount Royal University. I was born in Pakistan, which is where my parents are originally from, and moved to Calgary when I was only 6 years old.  

I don’t consider myself to be a very scholarly person who has read hundreds of books or is an authority on religion in anyway. But I would like to share with you the story of my faith and my battle between a conscious reality and a common inherited belief.   

The transformation of my beliefs was not something that took place within a day, or through a single event, but through a few years of soul searching and a multitude of events.  I find, that faith is not something that can just be acquired or gained, but developed through one’s experiences, through the passion to seek and question, and most of all through prayers.

Let me start from the beginning. As a child my way of doing or seeing things was quite like any other child. “You follow your parents”. And you follow them, because they are right,   --      even when they are not, or I guess because they are right most of the time anyway . I knew my parents loved me more than anybody else in the world, so there was no reason why they would want to misguide me in a matter as important as faith. So they introduced me to the basics and practices in Islam just as their parents had introduced it to them. And I figured that was how the chain of guidance or religion typically got passed on as inheritance, from parents to your children, no matter what religion you belong to really.

So until we are kids we never really question our parent’s judgment. But as we grow up, we either continuing believing everything they told us or start to have questions about things that were never addressed. 

As I grew older, came a stage where my environment, the media and my friends began to influence me more and more and came a stage where I had to decide if I wanted to keep an open mind about things  or just accept things as they had been initially presented to me. What most of us do in such a situation, is that we begin to cherry-pick where and how parts of our inherited faith could benefit us, and we adapt to them according to our own liking.

Generally speaking, many of the good virtues that religions demand of us are like loving your neighbor and offering charity for the sick and poor. But then there are other things and more complicated questions that religions should be able to answer. For example, should one be allowed to kill other animals and eat them, or become a vegetarian And If  so then there are various levels of adapting to vegetarianism. And if not and if one choose to eat animals which ones out of the many should he eat and why? Similarly as a Muslim, fasting during the month of Ramadan would be quite a pointless exercise without truly understanding the reasoning behind it. 

Now, talking about food, most of us eat what our parents allowed for us or cultures for that matter. But If I was born in a family or culture that permitted the eating of snakes or bats, I would have been eating them too. So I wondered how the same God worshiped by many religions could possibly allow or forbid different things to different people, depending on who their parents were.    

As a teenager, I remember coming across many people who opposed religion they believed that went against science and logic. Many said religion was nothing but superstitious tales of illogical events that used to occur in the past and will apparently happen in the future, but do not happen in the present time. And because of this reason, religion completely lost the credibility for them. I mean, if we are dealing with the same GOD, that created the Universe millions of years ago, then His powers and characteristics should not be very different today than they were in the past.

Coming across such an array of opinions and questions, I finally asked myself if I really did believe in religion after all? Did I really believe in a God, that created the heavens and the earth, or was religion just a way for me to be accepted by my family?  Did I really believe in a being that could change the course of events in the world, or was religion just a way for me to take part in rituals and attend the religious and cultural gatherings that gave me a chance to “Dress up”, “share gifts” and be like others around? Is that really what my parent's version of God wanted of me?  

Did I need to be religious just to be charitable and sympathetic and kind to others? I didn't think so.  Religion had to be more than just that I wished. 

Now, rejecting God was simple, but accepting Him required investigation. So, I started with the hypothesis that he did exist. Now if that were true, like any other creator that God should know us humans, more than anybody else in the world. And if religion is supposed to be God’s way to talk to us, and guide us, it should be able to answer all the important questions in our lives. 

The God of the scriptures should know about the world we live in, the environment we pollute and the millions of galaxies out there. He should be able to guide us through controversial topics like abortion, euphemism, social justice, family matters, society, war and hunger, etc. With so many important issues at stake, I could not just simply say “No” to religion, without a thorough investigation. 

I had so many questions but very few answers. So I had to start my journey from home. I had to find out if my inherited faith had the capacity to answer the most basic question, any person should ask himself.

I was born in a community called Ahmadiyya Muslim community also referred to as the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam.  The community was founded in 1889 by a person named   Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (a.s).  Ahmad (a.s) claimed that  he was that very Messiah and Mahdi (divine guide), that was foretold by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to come at a time of extreme moral degradation among the Muslims and faiths outside of Islam. And one of the major reasons for his coming was to clarify misconceptions within various religions, and to take people back from its distorted version back to its original sources. His followers, the Ahmadis are considered heretics in many parts of the world specially the Muslim majority countries. Through some study into the Ahmadiyya literature and community involvement I found myself slowly transforming from an inherited believer into an educated one. 

Through my study of Ahmadiyya Literature, I learnt that God had sent Prophets and saints to different parts of the world, in different times for the guidance of mankind.  These divine teachers include   Zoroaster(as), Abraham(as), Moses(as), Jesus(as), Krishna(as), Buddha(as), Confucius(as), Guru Nanak and many others,(peace be upon all of them). I also learned that every single one of these teachers represented the same divine God, and very similar teachings. Many of the differences in their teachings that seem to appear are often the result of human error, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and in some cases, deliberate interpolations. I found, at times, the teachings appeared to be different simply due to the difference in the time and circumstances where a prophet was sent and thus the teaching had to be slightly different from the other.

Through Ahmadiyyat I learnt how important it was to question what you believed and not to take anyone's word for it. I was taught that as a believer it should be my ultimate goal to seek and follow the truth wherever it may take me. A very good example of that are the hundreds of Interfaith programs arranged by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community across the world, inviting people of all faith to come together and share common values and understandings.

I learnt that religious scriptures and divine prophecies are filled with idioms and parables, which are taken literally, far too often. The lives of prophets and the obstacles they go through, living like average human beings, is far too real to be mixed with fairy tales. I found many explanations to the events that seemed supernatural until properly investigated, interpreted, and looked at within the context of things within that time. 

Ahmadiyyat has taught me, to believe in a living God. A God that does not break the very rules he makes for this world whenever he wants to. A GOD that still listens to our prayers and wishes to guide us, just like He did 1400 years ago, or 3000 years ago. A God that does not judge us based on the faith we are born in, but by looking at our circumstances, our willingness to understand and know him, and our compassion towards our fellow beings. A God that does not condemn us to hell for our lack of understanding, but one who sends us to Paradise, for our willingness to create paradise in this world. 

Over time with my increased interest in the community, I started to participate in community events and noticed what it stood for. The motto of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community is " Love for all, Hatred for none". And I found that it truly practices what it preaches.  In 2010, almost 90 people of the community were martyred in a mosque in Pakistan due to religious discrimination.  The community responded to the events with prayers, patience and support for the families of the victim and did not adhere to any form of violence effecting the general public.

Every year, thousands of Ahmadi Muslims just in USA, adapt the Islamic principle of Jihad (which means struggle), by donating blood on the day of 9'11, in honor of those who lost their lives in the tragic event. 

Now having said this, it is not primarily the charitable causes of the community, like building schools and hospitals and water wells in Africa, or the disaster recovery services, or the street cleaning exercises all over the world, or the free delivery of meals to the unfortunate that satisfies my heart. If it was only for these good deeds, I would simply volunteer for one of the many non-profit organizations, that are also doing similar things. 

It is how the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, connects me to a living God inspires me. A God that created the very laws of Nature, whereby I do not have to consider Science and religion as two opposite things. He taught me that it was not only important to learn the virtues of selflessness, humility, love and compassion, but to seek knowledge about this world, in order to better understand the very God who created it.  

I find that through a gradual process of study and participation in many of the community events, I now have a better understanding of religion in general. And I find myself not forced to believe in a God that may not even exist, or make sense and is not practical to follow.

It shall be impossible for me to ponder into even a few of the many topics and theological issues that Ahmadiyyat helped me resolve. But I invite you all to explore the revolution Ahmadiyyat brings to the world of Religion. These two particular websites really helped me answer many of my questions, alislam.org and  askislam.org , or you can even email me your questions at asmahanif6@hotmail.com, and I shall do my best to answer them to the best of my ability.

Thank you very much for your time and patience in listening to my views. God bless you all.

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 --  Perspective: My Story - My journey with faith


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