Quran Blogger

I told you there would be plenty of non-sequiturs (see here).  :-) 

“[I] in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.  Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”

- The late David Foster Wallace, 2005

I was introduced to the writings of David Foster Wallace in the fall of 2008, shortly after he hanged himself after a decades-long bout with depression.  He quickly became one of my favorite writers of all time and probably my favorite writer of modern times.  No human author whose work I have read rivals Wallace’s ability to capture the essence of what it is like to be alive in these post-post-modern, neurotic, disjointed, digitally enhanced, a-million-things-going-on-at-once times.  The man was a genius, and he was recognized as such by literary critics and by his peers (see, for example, these terrific profiles of him that appeared in Rolling Stone and the New Yorker after his death).  His perspective is always thoughtful, usually ingeniously hilarious and invariably deeply insightful.

In 2005, three years before his death, Wallace gave the commencement address during the graduation ceremony at Kenyon College.  The speech was transcribed by someone in the audience that day and posted on the Internet.  Recently, the New York Times ran an essay by Tom Bissell commenting on that speech and the ironies of that speech arising from the details of Wallace’s subsequent demise.  Last month, Little, Brown and Company published the speech for the first time in book form (see here to purchase it from Amazon).

Maybe you’re already familiar with Wallace.  Maybe you’ve already read the speech.  Even if you have read the speech, though, I invite you now to read it again.  When you do read it (whether for the first time or not), keep in mind the following hadith: “I [the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)] have not been sent [to the people] except to perfect good manners.” 

Read the full Wallace speech by clicking here, then read the rest of this blog post.  Neither the title of this post nor the remainder of its text will make much sense to you if you have not read the speech. 

It is easy to forget, when dealing in the abstract or philosophizing about esoteric concepts buried under layers of meaning in the text of the Quran, that the entire purpose of our exercise, that our whole reason for delving into the Quran and trying to understand it more deeply, ultimately relates to how we can translate whatever knowledge, awareness or understanding we may gain from that exercise into becoming better people.  The Quran is the ultimate manual for life, and educating ourselves on the Quran is worth very little if we limit the education to textual analysis.  The goal of studying the Quran is not, ultimately, learning a lot of religious facts or how to explain complex questions about our existence or about Islamic creed.  It is really about learning something that will help us, or, better yet, feeling something that will inspire us, to relate better to the world around us and to enrich the lives of others.

Most of us will never write about the Quran or Islam to a large audience.  Most of us will never have an opportunity publicly to debate, as Ahmed Deedat did, the merits of the teachings of Islam versus other religious teachings or whether the Quran is truly God’s word.  For most of us, our chance at influence lies in the opportunities that arise from the monotonous minutiae of everyday life.

Worship is about our everyday lives.  It’s not about annual religious conventions, or university student associations, or weekly Quran study groups, or other religious gatherings, or any other of the myriad cocoons in which Muslims in the West wrap themselves.  It’s about staying conscious of our surroundings and our goals and our interactions with people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.  It’s about our actions-- not just our physical prostrations and prayers and contemplations, but also (and mostly) through the worship that comes from a heightened level of consciousness, from knowing and being aware that the way in which we interact with the people we encounter in life is worship.

We should study the Quran.  We should learn hadith.  We should read the books.  That’s all great and desirable and fantastic.  But we should not become slaves to the pursuit of intellectual status.  That should not, as I see it, be our goal.  The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was not sent to us, and by extension this book, the Quran, was not revealed to him, except for the purpose of perfecting our manners and our character, our interactions with other people, our perspectives on our lives. 

It is easy in the humming din of routine to let slip from our consciousness our commitments forged in the hours of our staunchest faith to be better people, to have more compassion for other members of society, to worship more devoutly; all of which we silently swear so fervently when a particular ayah of the Quran touches our hearts, when we get a whiff of the noble light of truth (or should I say, "capital T- truth") that only comes from quiet contemplation upon God's words.  

We can protest loudly our claims that we worship God alone and forsake all others, that we are committed to loving for our neighbor what we love for ourselves, that we want to be forgiving and compassionate and empathetic to others, but it is what we do on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute basis that truly testifies to the object of our worship and the true content of our character. It is easy to let our unconscious minds guide us during most of the days, hours and minutes of our lives, causing our actions to testify to our worship not of the omnipotent One God of our oral testimonials (our "shahada," for the initiated Muslims out there) but rather to the worship of money, power, influence, respect or self; to the possession of character not at all forgiving, loving or empathetic but vindictive, bitter and selfish.  

It is easy to let our hard-wired, subconscious, “default,” self-obsessed, solipsistic, ambitious outlook on things color our actions.  To combat that, however, to struggle mightily against that hazy stupor of subconscious thought and action, to remind ourselves constantly that “this is water,” that this is the life and these are the situations to which we want to apply our ideals—THAT is worship.  That is religion. 

As with all things, God knows best. 

Click here to read the full text of the Wallace speech.