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Muslim World News Updates |
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26 June 2009 US Commander
Converts To Islam
Just weeks before Michael Jackson converted to Islam,
the US commander of International Security Assistance
Force in the Andar district of Ghazni Province in
Afghanistan had embraced Islam.
The commander of the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) embraced Islam in the presence
of 2,000 people on Thursday.
Cap. Cormier Michel – 45 – commands 300 ISAF troops in
the Taliban-infested district. The Ghazni governor,
district chief, provincial council members, local
officials, elders, ISAF soldiers and students attended
a ceremony marking the commander’s conversion to
Islam.
The ceremony, which lasted well over three hours,
concluded with chants of ‘Allah-o-Akbar.”
Cap. Michel, who changed his name to Abdul Wahed,
started his brief speech with Bismillah (In the name
of Allah, the most Beneficent and the most Merciful).
During the last five years, Abdul Wahed pointed out,
he had been studying Islamic books and he concluded
that Islam is the first religion.
“Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood, but
terrorists and extremists are bringing a bad name to
it,” he noted.
Keith Ellison, First Muslim elected
to Congress
Voters elected a black Democrat as the first Muslim in
Congress on Tuesday after a race in which he advocated
quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and made little
mention of his faith.
Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old defense attorney and
state representative, was projected to defeat two
rivals to succeed retiring Democrat Martin Sabo in a
seat that has been held by Democrats since 1963.
Ellison, who converted to Islam as a 19-year-old
college student in his native Detroit, won with the
help of Muslims among a coalition of liberal, anti-war
voters. "We were able to bring in Muslims, Christians,
Jews, Buddhists," he said. "We brought in everybody."
Ellison said his race and religion weren't as
important as issues such as Iraq and health insurance
for all. "We still have 43 million American uninsured.
This is a problem for everyone in the United States,"
he said.
He advocates an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq
along with strongly liberal views. While Ellison did
not often speak of his faith during the campaign,
awareness of his candidacy drew interest from Muslims
well beyond the district centered in Minneapolis.
Surprise choice of faithful A significant
community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis cast
their first votes for him in the crowded September
primary. Ellison also was the surprise choice of party
regulars.
While Muslim Americans make up less than 3 percent of
the U.S. population and have largely been a non-factor
in terms of political power, get-out-the-vote efforts
in several Muslim communities could indicate they may
become an emerging force.
Roughly 2 million Muslims are registered U.S. voters,
and their ranks increased by tens of thousands in the
weeks prior to Tuesday’s mid-term elections, Muslim
groups have said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic
militants, Muslim Americans have become sensitized to
what many feel is an erosion of their civil rights.
U.S. foreign policy that targets Muslim countries also
has generated a sense of urgency, experts said.
“(Americans) treat us differently after Sept. 11. My
own father was attacked,” said Ellison supporter
Khadra Darsame, a 1995 immigrant from Somalia.
“Ellison said everybody matters equally and he told us
what he would do ... he will do the right thing.”
Born into a Roman Catholic family in Detroit, Ellison
said his values were shaped by both faiths, along with
his grandfather’s civil rights work in the Deep South.
Opponents focused on Ellison’s sloppy handling of his
taxes and a slew of unpaid parking tickets, along with
his one-time affiliation with the Nation of Islam,
whose leader, Louis Farrakhan, has been criticized for
making anti-Semitic remarks. Ellison subsequently said
he worked with the group largely to promote the 1995
Million Man March.
Ellison also denounced Farrakhan, and he won the
endorsement of a Minneapolis Jewish newspaper.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
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Acknowledged by many players as the greatest
basketball player of all time, voted six times the
National Basketball Association's most valuable
player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is also one of the most
visible Muslims in the American public arena. The 7'
2" native upper Harlem, born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor,
starred for UCLA before entering the National
Basketball Association with the Milwaukee Bucks in
1969. Alcindor later went to the Los Angeles Lakers.
He was so dominant in college basketball that
"dunking," at which he excelled, was formally banned
from the intercollegiate sport. As a result, Lew
Alcindor developed the shot for which he is personally
the most famous-the "skyhook"-which has been called
the shot that changed basketball, and with the help of
which he was to score more than thirty eight thousand
points in regular -season NBA play. When Milwaukee won
the NBA title in 1970-71, Alcindor, who was by then
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was the ~ acclaimed king of
basketball.
Lew Alcindor first learned his Islam from Hammas Abdul
Khaalis, a former jazz drummer and founder of the
Hanafi Madhhab in Washington, D.C. According to his
own testimony, he had been raised to take authority
seriously, whether that of nuns, teachers, or coaches,
and in that spirit he followed the teachings of Abdul
Khaalis closely. It was by him that Alcindor was given
the name Abdul Kareem, then changed to Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, literally "the noble one, servant of the
Almighty." Soon, however, he determined to augment
Abdul Khaalis's teachings with his own study of the
Quran, for which he undertook to learn basic Arabic.
In 1973 he travelled to Libya and Saudi Arabia to get
a better grasp of the language and to learn about
Islam in some of its "home" contexts. Abdul-Jabbar was
not interested in making the kind of public statement
about his Islam that he felt Muhammad Ali had in his
opposition to the Vietnam War, wishing simply to
identify himself quietly as an African American who
was also a Muslim. He stated clearly that his name
Alcindor was a slave name, literally that of the
slave-dealer who had taken his family away from West
Africa to Dominica to Trinidad, from where they were
brought to America.
As a follower of the Hanafi Madhab, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar affirms his identity as a Sunni Muslim.
He professes a strong belief in what he calls the
Supreme Being and is clear in his understanding that
Muhammad is his prophet and the Quran is the final
revelation. Objecting to having been pushed into the
Catholic faith by his father, he insists that his
children will be free to make their own choices.
....For his part, Kareem accepts his responsibility to
live as good an Islamic life as possible, recognising
that Islam is able to meet the requirements of being a
professional athlete in America.
Michael Wolfe
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After twenty-five years as a writer in America, I
wanted something to soften my cynicism. I was
searching for new terms by which to see. The way one
is raised establishes certain needs in this
department. From a pluralist background, I naturally
placed great stress on the matters of racism and
freedom. Then, in my early twenties, I had gone to
live in Africa for three years. During this time,
which was formative for me, I did rubbed shoulders
with blacks of many different tribes, with Arabs,
Berbers, and even Europeans, who were Muslims. By and
large these people did not share the Western obsession
with race as a social category. In our encounters
being oddly coloured rarely mattered. I was welcomed
first and judged on merit later. By contrast,
Europeans and Americans, including many who are free
of racist notions, automatically class people
racially. Muslims classified people by their faith and
their actions. I found this transcendent and
refreshing. Malcolm X saw his nation’s salvation in
it. “America needs to understand Islam,” he wrote,
“because this is the one religion that erases from its
society the race problem”.
I was looking for an escape route, too, from the
isolating terms of a materialistic culture. I wanted
access to a spiritual dimension, but the conventional
paths I had known as a boy were closed. My father had
been a Jew; my mother Christian. Because of my mongrel
background, I had a foot in two religious camps. Both
faiths were undoubtedly profound. Yet the one that
emphasizes a chosen people I found insupportable;
while the other, based in a mystery, repelled me. A
century before, my maternal great-great-grandmother’s
name had been set in stained glass at the high street
Church of Christ in Hamilton, Ohio. By the time I was
twenty, this meant nothing to me.
These were the terms my early life provided. The more
I thought about it now, the more I returned to my
experiences in Muslim Africa. After two return trips
to Morocco, in 1981 and 1985, I came to feel that
Africa, the continent, had little to do with the
balanced life I found there. It was not, that is, a
continent I was after, nor an institution, either. I
was looking for a framework I could live with, a
vocabulary of spiritual concepts applicable to the
life I was living now. I did not want to “trade in” my
culture. I wanted access to new meanings.
After a mid-Atlantic dinner I went to wash up in the
bathroom. During my absence a quorum of Hasidim lined
up to pray outside the door. By the time I had
finished, they were too immersed to notice me.
Emerging from the bathroom, I could barely work the
handle. Stepping into the aisle was out of the
question.
I could only stand with my head thrust into the
hallway, staring at the congregation’s backs. Holding
palm-size prayer books, they cut an impressive figure,
tapping the texts on their breastbones as they
divined. Little by little the movements grew erratic,
like a mild, bobbing form of rock and roll. I watched
from the bathroom door until they were finished, then
slipped back down the aisle to my seat.
We landed together later that night in Brussels.
Reboarding, I found a discarded Yiddish newspaper on a
food tray. When the plane took off for Morocco, they
were gone.
I do not mean to imply here that my life during this
period conformed to any grand design. In the
beginning, around 1981, I was driven by curiosity and
an appetite for travel. My favourite place to go, when
I had the money, was Morocco. When I could not travel,
there were books. This fascination brought me into
contact with a handful of writers driven to the
exotic, authors capable of sentences like this, by
Freya Stark:
The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveller
finds his level there simply as a human being; the
people’s directness, deadly to the sentimental or the
pedantic, like the less complicated virtues; and the
pleasantness of being liked for oneself might, I
think, be added to the five reasons for travel given
me by Sayyid Abdulla, the watchmaker; “to leave one’s
troubles behind one; to earn a living; to acquire
learning; to practise good manners; and to meet
honourable men”.
I could not have drawn up a list of demands, but I had
a fair idea of what I was after. The religion I wanted
should be to metaphysics as metaphysics is to science.
It would not be confined by a narrow rationalism or
traffic in mystery to please its priests. There would
be no priests, no separation between nature and things
sacred. There would be no war with the flesh, if I
could help it. Sex would be natural, not the seat of a
curse upon the species. Finally, I did want a ritual
component, daily routine to sharpen the senses and
discipline my mind. Above all, I wanted clarity and
freedom. I did not want to trade away reason simply to
be saddled with a dogma.
The more I learned about Islam, the more it appeared
to conform to what I was after.
Most of the educated Westerners I knew around this
time regarded any strong religious climate with
suspicion. They classified religion as political
manipulation, or they dismissed it as a medieval
concept, projecting upon it notions from their
European past.
It was not hard to find a source for their opinions. A
thousand years of Western history had left us plenty
of fine reasons to regret a path that led through so
much ignorance and slaughter. From the Children’s
Crusade and the Inquisition to the transmogrified
faiths of nazism and communism during our century,
whole countries have been exhausted by belief.
Nietzsche’s fear, that the modern nation-state would
become a substitute religion, have proved tragically
accurate. Our century, it seemed to me, was ending in
an age beyond belief, which believers inhabited as
much as agnostics.
Regardless of church affiliation, secular humanism is
the air westerners breathe, the lens we gaze through.
Like any world view, this outlook is pervasive and
transparent. It forms the basis of our broad
identification with democracy and with the pursuit of
freedom in all its countless and beguiling forms.
Immersed in our shared preoccupations, one may easily
forget that other ways of life exist on the same
planet.
At the time of my trip, for instance, 650 million
Muslims with a majority representation in forty-four
countries adhered to the formal teachings of Islam. In
addition, about 400 million more were living as
minorities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Assisted
by postcolonial economics, Islam has become in a
matter of thirty years a major faith in Western
Europe. Of the world’s great religions, Islam alone
was adding to its fold.
My politicized friends were dismayed by my new
interest. They all but universally confused Islam with
the machinations of half a dozen middle eastern
tyrants. The books they read, the new broadcasts they
viewed depicted the faith as a set of political
functions. Almost nothing was said of its spiritual
practice. I liked to quote Mae West to them: “Anytime
you take religion for a joke, the laugh’s on you”.
Historically a Muslim sees Islam as the final, matured
expression of an original religion reaching back to
Adam. It is as resolutely monotheistic as Judaism,
whose major Prophets Islam reveres as links in a
progressive chain, culminating in Jesus and Muhammad.
Essentially a message of renewal, Islam has done its
part on the world stage to return the forgotten taste
of life’s lost sweetness to millions of people. Its
book, the Qur’an, caused Goethe to remark, “You see,
this teaching never fails; with all our systems, we
cannot go, and generally speaking no man can go,
further”.
Traditional Islam is expressed through the practice of
five pillars. Declaring one’s faith, prayer, charity,
and fasting are activities pursued repeatedly
throughout one’s life. Conditions permitting, each
Muslim is additionally charged with undertaking a
pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime. The Arabic
term for this fifth rite is Hadj. Scholars relate the
word to the concept of kasd, “aspiration,” and to the
notion of men and women as travellers on earth. In
Western religions pilgrimage is a vestigial tradition,
a quaint, folkloric concept commonly reduced to
metaphor. Among Muslims, on the other hand, the hadj
embodies a vital experience for millions of new
pilgrims every year. In spite of the modern content of
their lives, it remains an act of obedience, a
profession of belief, and the visible expression of a
spiritual community. For a majority of Muslims the
hadj is an ultimate goal, the trip of a lifetime.
As a convert I felt obliged to go to Makkah. As an
addict to travel I could not imagine a more compelling
goal.
The annual, month-long fast of Ramadan precedes the
hadj by about one hundred days. These two rites form a
period of intensified awareness in Muslim society. I
wanted to put this period to use. I had read about
Islam; I had joined a Mosque near my home in
California; I had started a practice. Now I hoped to
deepen what I was learning by submerging myself in a
religion where Islam infuses every aspect of
existence.
I planned to begin in Morocco, because I knew that
country well and because it followed traditional Islam
and was fairly stable. The last place I wanted to
start was in a backwater full of uproarious
sectarians. I wanted to paddle the mainstream, the
broad, calm water.
Muhammad Ali
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Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., was born in Louisville,
Kentucky on January 18, 1942. At the young age of 12,
Clay received his first boxing lessons. By the age of
16 he would go on to win the Louisville Golden Gloves
tournament as a light heavyweight, sending him to the
quarter finals of the regional championship in
Chicago. In 1960, Clay won the Olympic Gold Medal as a
Light Heavyweight at the age of 18, launching him on
his way toward a professional career in boxing. In
1964, at the age of 22, Clay became an undefeated
heavyweight champion. These events were the beginning
of a 20+ year career in boxing that would ultimately
earn him a title as the three-time Heavy Weight
Champion of the World.
In 1963, Clay joined the Nation of Islam. Soon after,
he would change his name to Muhammad Ali. Ali would
eventually find disagreement with some of the beliefs
of the Nation of Islam, and instead join the religion
of Islam. In a 1991 Sport’s Illustrated interview by
Bill Nack, Ali told him ``I was Cassius Clay then. I
was a Negro. I ate pork. I had no confidence. I
thought white people were superior. I was a Christian
Baptist named Cassius Clay.’’
Ali had a record of 56 wins and five losses and was
both well loved and hated for his charismatic and
confident manner in describing his looks, his fighting
and his beliefs. Ali was famous for his poetic phrases
like "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," and
proclaiming "I am the greatest." He was also a man
that stood firmly to his principles and faith. In
1967, Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army
claiming conscientious objector status as a "minister
of the religion of Islam." His refusal got him
arrested, his boxing license suspended, and he was
stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali was banned from
boxing for 3 ½ years only to regain the heavyweight
title against George Foreman in 1974 (pictured below).
The 1974 fight was documented in the 1996 film "When
We Were Kings" by Leon Gast. In 1981, Ali retired from
boxing. Muhammad Ali was elected to the boxing Hall of
Fame on September 14, 1987.
During his retirement Ali was diagnosed with
Parkinson’s Disease, which affected his motor skills,
particularly his speech. It is believed that the
disease was caused by too many blows to the head.
Parkinson's Disease, however, has done little to stop
the determination of Ali, who likes to practice his
Islamic duty of performing "good deeds." Ali’s charity
work has included donating millions of dollars to
those in need and organizations of all religious
denominations. Much of his work has been done
anonymously. In 1990, before the Gulf War erupted, Ali
met with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and negotiated the
release of 15 hostages. In 1997 Ali called on the U.S.
government to aid the refugees of Rwanda and for
Americans to donate to charities involved in helping
the people of Rwanda. These are just some of the many
contributions Muhammad Ali has made.
Ali is also well known for taking it upon himself to
hand out information about Islam to educate people
about the Islamic faith. Ali and Thomas Hauser, a Jew,
put together a booklet called "Healing" which they
distribute freely. The booklet contains quotes on
tolerance from various thinkers such as Voltaire, not
to mention Ali himself, that the former boxer found
moving. Ali also has a daily hobby of working on what
he calls "contradictions." He finds a list of passages
in the Bible that are conflicting with other passages
and shares these contradictions in an effort to
promote and teach Islam. Ali is a devout Muslim, who
regularly performs prayers and attends his local
mosque near his South Bend estate in Indiana.
At the 1996 Olympic Opening Games Ceremony in Atlanta,
Ali was honored to carry the torch before a crowd of
800,000 cheering fans to light the Olympic Flame that
would begin the Olympic Games. The moment was a very
touching climax in the life of the great boxer
Muhammad Ali. Ali is a man who aside from his notable
explosive punches in the ring, overcame many personal
obstacles in his own life, while standing firm in his
religious beliefs, to become a man that fans and
history books will never forget. The boxer may have
slowed with age, but he still floats like a
butterfly….
Hamza Yusuf (Mark Hanson)
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Hamza Yusuf started life as Mark Hanson in Walla
Walla, Washington, USA. The son of two US academics of
a Catholic and Greek Orthodox background, he seemed
destined not for Islamic scholarship, but for Greek
Orthodox priesthood until a near-death experience in a
car accident, and reading the Quran, diverted his
attentions towards Islam.
It was this sudden confrontation with his own
mortality that Yusuf has described as being the
defining moment that gave " someone who was
introspective, perspective." Although, numerous
factors interplay in any individual's conversion, it
was this vista in particular, that opened up a path of
enquiry and reflection that ultimately led to his
conversion to Islam in 1977, a few months before his
18th birthday. His brush with death had sparked an
intrigue into the afterlife, causing him to study
various traditions' views on death. Islam, he found,
offered the most detailed account of all.
Furthermore, he found that many of his own values only
served to harmonise with Islamic belief. His father, a
Humanities Professor and his mother a Berkeley
graduate, were fairly active in the civil rights
movements enabling a strong awareness of social
struggle and justice in the young Mark. "As a
westerner, the child of civil rights and anti-war
activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my
core values, drawn almost entirely from the
progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them."
Simultaneously, the arguments put forward in the Quran
drew parallels with many of his own musings. From a
young age, he was very much aware of being a product
of his environment. The Quran prompted reflection on
his perception of life, reality, and religion. Just as
his parents were Christian, he had been raised as one,
yet the Quran offers many parables of those following
the religion of their forefathers without question.
The Quran prompted him to look beyond what many take
for granted.
After his conversion he left for England where he
embarked on private study which was to instill a
desire to learn the tradition from its source. It was
during this time, in which he was beginning to learn
Arabic, that he met Sheikh Abdullah Ali Mahmood of
Sharjah who was in England at the time. This meeting
was to prove pivotal in Yusuf's life providing him the
opportunity to further his studies in the United Arab
Emirates.
Yusuf spent some four years in the UAE, where he
became a Muadhin (caller to Prayer) and Imam at a
local mosque. It was also during this time that he met
various West African scholars who kindled an interest
in studying traditional Islam as is still being taught
in West Africa today. These scholars did much in the
way of his personal tuition before his aspirations of
studying in West Africa were finally realised.
His journey of reflection, prompted by a fateful car
accident, took him to many parts of the Middle East
over a ten-year period where he received numerous
teaching licenses, or ijazas, from the some of the
greatest remaining scholars of traditional Islam.
Having travelled to the UAE, Madinah, Algeria,
Morocco, and West Africa he eventually returned to the
US where he took degrees in nursing and religious
studies from Imperial Valley College and San Jose
State University, respectively.
He has since travelled to numerous countries around
the world giving talks on various topics on Islam,
with his video and audio recordings selling by the
thousands. His ability to move many to tears, both of
laughter and humility, have ensured his popularity
with many, but only someone who speaks from the heart
will have any lasting impact upon it-and it is in this
aspect that he has left his greatest impression. His
talks have inspired confidence in many young Muslims
disillusioned with the West and further disillusioned
by other Muslims insisting on a suffocating
interpretation of Islam. He advocates a refreshing
tolerance that counteracts the cancerous intolerance
crippling the Muslim community, and promotes a
sincerity and purification of the heart that will
necessarily permeate and purify societies. For those
who have attended the short courses, organised by
traditional learning institutes in the West, in which
he is one of many teachers, it is to bear witness to
this possibility. In meeting the teachers of sacred
knowledge who have come from all walks of life to
teach students living in the West, is to witness the
greatness of Islam itself in its inherent ability to
dignify and elevate all who embody its teachings
regardless of race, rank or background. For Islam
truly is an invitation to all mankind.
Dr. Jeffrey Lang
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Dr. Jeffrey Lang is an Associate Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Kansas, one of the
biggest universities in the United States. He started
his religious journey on Jan 30, 1954, when he was
born in a Roman Catholic family in Bridgeport,
Connecticut. The first 18 years of his life were spent
in Catholic schools, which left him with many
unanswered questions about God and the Christian
religion, Lang said, as he narrated his story of
Islam. “Like most kids back in the late 60s and early
70s, I started questioning all the values that we had
at those times, political, social and religious,” Lang
said. “I rebelled against all the institutions that
society held sacred including the Catholic Church,” he
said.
By the time he reached the age of 18, Lang had become
a full-fledged atheist. “If there is a God, and he is
all merciful and all loving, then why is there
suffering on this earth? Why does not He just take us
to heaven? Why create all these people to suffer?"
Such were the questions that came up in his mind in
those days.
As a young lecturer in mathematics at San Francisco
University, Lang found his religion where God is
finally a reality. That was shown to him by a few of
the Muslim friends he had met at the university. “We
talked about religion. I asked them my questions, and
I was really surprised by how carefully they had
thought out their answers,” Lang said.
Dr. Lang met Mahmoud Qandeel, a regal looking Saudi
student who attracted the attention of the entire
class the moment he walked in. When Lang asked a
question about medical research, Qandeel answered the
question in perfect English and with great self
assurance. Everyone knew Qandeel-the mayor, the police
chief and the common people. Together the professor
and the student went to all the glittering places
where “there was no joy or happiness, only laughter.”
Yet at the end Qandeel surprisingly gave him a copy of
the Qur’an and some books on Islam. Lang read the
Qur’an on his own, found his way to the student-run
prayer hall at the university, and basically
surrendered without much struggle. He was conquered by
the Qur’an. The first two chapters are an account of
that encounter and it is a fascinating one.
“Painters can make the eyes of a portrait appear to be
following you from one place to another, but which
author can write a scripture that anticipates your
daily vicissitudes?... Each night I would formulate
questions and objections and somehow discover the
answer the next day. It seemed that the author was
reading my ideas and writing in the appropriate lines
in time for my next reading. I have met myself in its
pages...”
Lang performs the daily five-time prayers regularly
and finds much spiritual satisfaction. He finds the
Fajr (pre-dawn) prayer as one of the most beautiful
and moving rituals in Islam. “It is as if you
temporarily leave this world and communicate with the
angels in singing God’s praises before dawn.”
To the question how he finds it so captivating when
the recitation of the Qur’an is in Arabic, which is
totally foreign to him, he responds; “Why is a baby
comforted by his mother’s voice?” He said reading the
Qur’an gave him a great deal of comfort and strength
in difficult times. From there on, faith was a matter
of practice for Lang’s spiritual growth.
On the other hand, Lang pursued a career in
mathematics. He received his master’s and doctoral
degrees from Purdue University. Lang said that he had
always been fascinated by mathematics. “Maths is
logical. It consists of using facts and figures to
find concrete answers,” Lang said. “That is the way my
mind works, and it is frustrating when I deal with
things that do not have concrete answerers.” Having a
mind that accepts ideas on their factual merit makes
believing in a religion difficult because most
religions require acceptance by faith, he said. The
Muslim religion appeals to man’s reasoning, he said.
As faculty advisor for the Muslim Student Association,
Lang said he viewed himself as the liaison between the
student and their universities. He gets approval from
university authorities to hold Islamic lectures. “The
object of being their faculty advisor is to help them
get their needs met as far as adjusting to the
American culture and to procedures of the university.
They appreciate the opportunity to have misconceptions
corrected,” he said.
Lang married a Saudi Muslim woman, Raika, 12 years
ago. Lang has written several Islamic books which are
best sellers among the Muslim community in the US. One
of his important books is “Even Angels ask; A journey
to Islam in America”. In this book, Dr. Lang shares
with his readers the many insights that have unfolded
for him through his self discovery and progress within
the religion of Islam
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