Thoughts of an American Muslim September-October

What enchanted the story was the understanding that prevailed throughout, an understanding of an Islamic Ummah, of compassion, of knowledge of the world, of tolerance and of the recognition of the different kinds of people which constitute the Muslim world. I must admit, however, to one question which continued to bother me until most recently. Was Rumi’s society an ideal or did it really exist? Then, a couple of weeks back, I read in a special travel supplement to The New York Times of an American author, Annie Dillard, giving a short description of her ‘sojourn’ in North Yemen. She was there during an earthquake and she described how people shared their possessions with the victims and gasoline station owners’ opened their tanks’ so that the gasoline would be free and how wage earners contributed one month’s wages. A Yemeni told her of some of his people’s responsibilities: ‘If someone is sick, or old, or poor, well, we give our food; we get that person clothes; we build for a widow a new house if the old one is falling down.’ The remarkable thing about Dillard’s description is how full of appreciation it is. Most American travelers, returning from Islamic countries, do not give positive reports of Muslims, even of those who have been hospitable to them. They were unable to see any women, these travelers complain, except those who were heavily veiled. They mention how exasperated they became because of the constant references to God and the frequent addition of lnsha’ Allah to statements about the future. Even writers sympathetic to Islam often reveal a bias. They describe the tasbih as ‘worry beads,’ without any regard to what dhikr is and how serenity is achieved through the remembrance of Allah.