October 2007: Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Submitters Perspective

Page 2

Comments from a Submitter

My Path to Submission

Here I’m going to tell you something about my life story—about how I used to believe when I was a Sunni and as to how I came to realize the Truth and that I was wrong.

I was born in Hamelin, Germany. Hamelin is known as the famous city of the Pied Piper whose story many of you may have heard. The nearest big city to it is Hannover, also known as a city of international fairs...

My mother is a German doctor... My father on the other hand was born in Pakistan. When I was seven years old, my parents came to live in Pakistan. So I studied there and made friends. I was always particularly interested in ‘Islam,’ not knowing that what I was being taught was actually man-made “Islam.” I had one Christian classmate there too. I often used to tell him that Jesus is not the son of God and that to say this is blasphemy. Often enough a fight broke out between us. 

Here (in Pakistan) the traditional "Muslim" majority say that if one reaches the age of 10 and does not observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) then he's to be beaten and if at the age of 12 he still doesn't then he's to be thrown out of the house.  However my parents did not accept this man-made rule and never beat me as far as the Salat issue is concerned. Such nonsense can only be found in the "Hadith" books of Bukhari and so on...

I was eleven years old when once our “Islamic studies” teacher was lecturing us. The Christian class mate was also listening that day. A story about the punishments of the grave was being told. It was said that those who do not pray after the age of 10 will be bitten by poisonous snakes and scorpions in the grave. My Christian class mate asked me in front of the class whether I prayed or not and when I answered that I did not he smiled and yelled out that I would be bitten by snakes! From that day on I became so frightened that when I went home I immediately started to learn ‘Salat,’ unfortunately including the names of others besides God, and I continued to pray ever after that.

When I first learned the prayer I enjoyed it so much that I used to offer many extra units which now I know is incorrect. ‘Salat’ or Contact Prayer must be offered at specific times although one can always pray to God in other ways or mention His name at any other time.

As I grew older I became more and more interested in God’s Laws. I heard about Hadith and Sunnah besides Quran which I was taught were the “true” words of the prophet and they were used to explain the Quran. Most of the opinions and the Shariah (“Islamic” law) are based on these men-made fabrications and I was such a fool that instead of taking Quran Alone, I took almost everything from hadith other than Quran.

In school people used to get sick and tired of my fanatic and corrupt teaching but I continued to think that this was what God wanted. I also kept a long beard, though my father was against it. I had gained so much respect with my beard over the years that I have kept one till now, NOT because God wants it, but because I'm afraid of losing my respect in the society.

I shaved my beard the last time when I went to Germany in my summer vacations. I go to visit Germany every year with my family during summer vacations. However now my father says that I should not "fool God" by keeping a beard here and shaving it off there. He also says that I should keep a beard for God. It seems that even he believes the beard to be at least Sunna and thus a holy practice or something. Therefore he told me recently to either shave it off completely now or to keep it and not shave it even in Germany.

I started to pray in the Masjid five times a day. I used to get up early in the morning and go together with another sunni old man. In that Masjid I was told about the “Mufti” (religious scholar) there who was supposedly very educated in “Islam.” I believed it at that time and listened to almost all that he had to say blindly.

He was a master of hadith and sunna. Every morning after Fajr (dawn) Contact Prayer he used to give a lecture on hadith from one of the “Sahih” or so-called “authentic” books. I was very excited and whenever I faced a problem I referred it to “Mufti” and he used to answer me. I remember once I was asked by a relative of mine which color did the Prophet Muhammad like most. I said ‘green.’ She said ‘no, that’s just a rumor, it’s in fact yellow.’ Note that I talked to her but only from a distance and because that was an “Islamic” issue. I quickly rushed to the Masjid, asked “Mufti” and he said ‘It’s neither yellow nor green. It’s white.’ I happily ran all the way back i.e., 400 meters and breathing heavily I answered ‘It’s white!’ Oh man, see what a silly fool I used to be. For these kinds of unimportant issues I used to

waste my time. It just couldn’t get any further.

Now I’m warned by the following Quranic verse:

[9:31]  They have set up their religious leaders and scholars as lords, instead of God. Others deified the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded to worship only one God. There is no God except He. Be He glorified, high above having any partners. 

One day I was searching for some “Islamic” article on the net and by mere chance I came across the site submission.org, at the age of 19, which was also in the Holy month of Ramadan. I opened it and found there the answer to the supposed contradictions in the Quran. This was in fact what I was looking for to refute the Christian missionaries. What I didn’t notice at first is that this site was a Quran ONLY one. That day this fact remained unnoticed by me. But now the website was saved in my explorer.

So some days after when I typed in ‘www.s’ the site appeared to me again. I said to myself  ‘why not take another visit’ and so I did. I read then that the site claimed to be the best source of Islam on the net. This made me think two things. One is that this site must be very good and the other that they might be something fishy about it. I then found out that the site had a ‘mathematical miracle of the Quran’ article on it. That interested me greatly. I opened it and went through it for some time. I was very impressed. Then somehow I came to know that the site was refuting all hadith besides Quran which I used to uphold so vehemently. That gave me a great shock. After that I thought that this must be a “satanic” site.

Well after noticing this hadith issue, I got mad and I tried my best to refute each and everything on that site. I asked so many questions as to how can we perform Salat without hadith? How can we know the rate of Zakat? How can we perform the rites of Hajj and other things like that? I also talked about this website with my friend who supported me in that whatever they said was nothing but nonsense, especially the accusation that we “Muslims” cannot stand mentioning of the name of God alone, without getting upset.

Cont’d on page 4