I started to fast in Ramadan even though I wasn't a Muslim and I found it very pleasing in many ways, quite challenging in others, but very pleasing.
When I first come to Bahrain, I was hoping to discover the customs of the Middle East.
This turned out to be a very difficult thing as people who come to the gulf discover very early on.
You find yourself surrounded by many foreigners of many different nationalities and faiths. They are all here to work, to achieve things for themselves and this is not what we expect to come for, this is not the culture that we are expecting to find.
So, for sometime Islam is obscured or masked from people that come to the Gulf. So, for a long time I didn't discover anything about Islam. I heard the Adhan and I thought this is very beautiful, I asked what these words mean and people told me, but even so, this was just information. This is almost like tourism.
Ramadan in Turkey
It was in fact 10 years later after I traveled from Bahrain to Sharjah to Dubai and then to Turkey where I discovered something different. That's not to say that Islam is better or greater in Turkey, not at all. In fact, sadly, Islam is suppressed in Turkey in many ways.
I discovered after my arrival in Turkey that there were so many wonderful things to find out about that country. Of course it has a great Islamic history and this is what struck me visually straight away. I immediately discovered beautiful Islamic architecture from the Ottoman period. It was only after sometime in Turkey that I started to get to know the people in Turkey very well.
Then it was Ramadan, something that I witnessed many times before in the Gulf, but something I just let it pass me by just as most westerners do. Just an annoyance, an inability to get a cup of tea during the day. In Turkey, I felt something different. I felt some sense of something else. I soon noticed that the people who were fasting in Ramadan were the people who already I decided that I like. There was an obvious correlation between the best of the people and the people who fast it. These proved to be the best of the Muslims and I was attracted to them so I joined them.
I did what it seemed to be a strange thing. I started to fast in Ramadan even though I wasn't a Muslim and I found it very pleasing in many ways, quite challenging in others, but very pleasing. I enjoyed the fast, I enjoyed especially the few moments before the Adhan of Al-Maghrib (sunset prayer) and waiting quietly with people who were fasting all day, working quite through the day because in Turkey there were no allowances made for Ramadan in the work.
So people are fasting completely from the beginning of the day until dusk and they are working all the time. I did this also and this is difficult but alhamdulillah I succeeded. I was impressed with this. It gave me a sense of achievement and it inspired me to do more studying.
Reading The Quran
I was amazed when I read it because there was nothing strange in this book
Around this time somebody gave me my first Quran, it was a Yusuf Ali translation and I was able to read it in the English and to understand something. I was amazed when I read it because there was nothing strange in this book. I expected it to be full of... I don't know... eastern mysticism or whatever nonsense you like to think as a westerner can imagine. There was nothing odd in it. In fact what I discovered was it wasn't like the Bible.
I've never been able to understand the Bible. The Bible seemed to me to be full of contradictions, peculiar stories that didn't seem to adapt and things which didn't seem to be conveying the message of Christ. The message of Jesus didn't seem to come through in the Bible except in some parts. Later I came to study this closely and now I understand why, but this is not the subject now. The point was that the Quran made a complete sense.
