Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [70]
Further, what would be my love for Islam, the religion of mercy, the final message of God, the testament of total truth, if I didn’t guide the non-Muslims of the world toward its blessed shade? I felt an overwhelming need to invite people to Islam—to do da’wa.
My first target was a Pentecostal girl named Rita, a fellow student at the university. She was a South Indian, and because her parents had already converted once—from Hinduism to Christianity—I figured she would be predisposed toward switching religions. Another thing that made her a good target was that she was willing to spend many hours talking to me. This was because she secretly liked Moosa, who refused to talk to women because they tempted him; by talking to me, she was at least able to remain in his vicinity.
I was confident that by the end of the academic year she would be a Muslim and God would reward me by cleansing all my sins. It was important for me to be as innocent as possible, given my lineage.
I started the conversion effort by trying to persuade Rita that Islam was the natural evolutionary advance from Christianity. I explained that the doctrine of the Trinity was illogical, pointing out that the idea of a single, monotheistic deity made much more sense. I told her that God and Jesus were separate entities, with God being divine and Jesus being just a prophet—a man carrying God’s message, similar to Muhammad. I pointed out that, in fact, according to the lost Gospel of Barnabas, Jesus had prophesied the arrival of a man named Ahmed—which was Muhammad’s alternative name—who would bring salvation to the world.
Rita always listened to me, then—promising to “think things over”—called it a night. The next night, though, we’d be back at square one.
I couldn’t understand why someone whose faith was so weak that she needed to “think things over” after hearing about an alternative path wasn’t able to see how secure I was in my faith—and from my confidence infer that I was on the true path, a path she should join.
After a week of this, her reluctance to become Muslim infuriated me. Our friendship was saved when, the very next day, Rita told me that she wanted to learn about Muslim history, not theology. Considering this a sign of progress, I promised that I’d give her a comprehensive lesson. I put it off for a few days so that I could prep.
The next morning I set about putting together a list of various facts in history that cast Islam in a positive light. But that wouldn’t be enough, I realized. To convert Rita I’d have to do more than simply make Islam look good; I’d have to make it responsible for every good thing in the world. I decided that the best way to demonstrate superiority to Rita, who was majoring in engineering, was to show her that long before Western civilization attained technical proficiency, the Islamic civilization had been at the vanguard of science. I was certain this would convince her that Islam was the best religion.
Hitting the books, I discovered that Muslims had a long-standing fascination with flying. (I figured this was because of the story of Muhammad’s ascension to heaven on a horse.) Armen Firman, a ninth-century Spanish Muslim, had tried to fly from a tower in Cordoba with a wing-shaped cloak; and even though he failed, he survived the crash because air became trapped in his cloak and slowed his descent (which made him the inventor of the parachute—sort of). In similar fashion, his compatriot Abbas Ibn Firnas tried to fly from a mountain with a glider, and though he ended up breaking his back in the landing, he lived as well. Later, Hezarfen Ahmed Celebi, a seventeenth-century Turkish scientist, became the founder of modern aviation when, long before the Wright brothers, he used a winglike glider and flew a distance of about one mile in front of Ottoman Sultan Murat IV—from the gigantic Galata Tower on one side of the Bosporus Strait to Uskudar on the other. He landed successfully as well.
Then there