"Islam presented a needed balance for my family"
Muhammad Amin Bootman
Vice President, Bank of America
My wife and I converted to Islam a few years ago and, more recently,
some of our older children have as well. Admittedly, our path to this
religion has been traveled in slow motion. I had studied the ideas of
George Gurdjieff for over 30 years, all of my adult life.
Here in California, where New Age religions and Eastern philosophies
flourish, there has been a decided lack of popular interest in Islam.
Negative press is certainly part of the reason, but at a personal
level I can only say that Islam was simply invisible.
In this culture, everyone loves to shop. New malls, subcultures and
belief systems seem to pop up overnight. Ironically, locked within the
confines of the ultimate secular state, increasing numbers of people
are shopping for religions.
As a convert, I can now see that it is a great pity that this religion
is not at the top of the shopping list because, in some strange way,
Islam includes everything else. As a newcomer it was something of a
shock over the last few years to encounter the marked Islamic
reverence for all the prophets of the Torah and the Gospels. There
seems to be a lot more about Moses and Abraham in the Qur`an than the
Prophet himself, (peace be upon all of them). When you think about it,
such deference and innate modesty would, indeed, befit the bearer of
God's final and perfected message to all of mankind. A faith such as
Islam, which resolutely focuses on the unseen One, has an uphill
battle to get noticed at all.
My hope at this point, as a husband and a father, is that Islam will
provide a much-needed balance for my family. Children learn by
example, and this religion presents a standard of behavior quite
beyond anything I've encountered in my own culture. This religion is
imminently practical and yet profound. In fact, Islam seems to be
constructed along the lines of a whole series of balances. It is
direct and yet sophisticated. |