Three months before 9/11 (thank God I got in under the wire, so to speak!) I accepted Islam thanks to a Jewish Sufi housemate. I did so to become a better Christian which has worked out better than I could have ever hoped, or that most people are willing to accept. Oh well, that's their choice to ignore the truth that "Islam" means "peace" as well as "submission (to the Divine Will of Love)".
The real shame of the world is that neither the Islamic world, Christian world, nor Jewish world has truly accepted Christ's teachings of the ultimate importance of love in all our worldly affairs. Hypocrisy and willful ignorance (of Love) are but two of the 19 vices of the human heart (nefs), and, boy oh boy, are they playing out belligerently on Earth here in 2025.
We Sufis have, however, taken His teachings to heart (pun intended) because the only reason God has given us any messages is to help us be happier by avoiding conflict within and between ourselves. As communal beings, we must work together to succeed, so loving each other helps keep us peaceful and efficient and less brutal to our beautiful Mother Earth.
Of course, even a person not involved in religion can choose to love their neighbor, be charitable and kind and manifest the other 17 virtues as well. It's all our choice; it's just that being prayerful can help the "better angels" side of our potential prevail, but seeing how so many Muslims mistreat both other people and even their own folks, it's obvious that most folks aren't praying to be better people.
However, some of us are, my dear brother, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, ... , ALL the forms of religion, even atheists and agnostics, so take heart! Love is all that matters in this world, and we are each only responsible for the love we manifest, not how others fail to know and live the truth of Love.
Wow, how surprising, I had no idea. It opens up all sorts of questions. What do you do? How do you operate in a world like this? I was born into a muslim family but it wasn't until much later in life that I started to understand everything for what it is, now at 40, I feel like that's why its seen as the coming of age in Islam and when the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) received revelation.
I mean what do we even do? Where do we even start to correct so many of the societal problems. It feels like Islam has the solutions but people feel averse to it because of the continuing islamic terrorist connotations and related extremism or "backwards culture" that's not inline with western values.
We first must learn how to self-evolve ourselves out of our own selfish mistakes, borne of vice, and become more virtuous. That is the starting point for ALL human beings' advancement, alone and in our societies. Only after beginning that process can we then learn how to educate our contemporaries about how our societies have strayed from compassionate, humane service into selfish, animalistic predation. And we ALL start in an unevolved state, as per our cultures' less-than-virtuous tendencies, plus our own susceptibilities to vice, so we all have correctable ideals, attitudes, and behaviors.
Our teacher (Murshid) passed away just before the COVID outbreak. His teachings are presented in many languages at mihr.com .
Our most senior student is his successor, a Kurdish-Turkish Ph.D. nuclear physicist named Dr. Abdulcabbar Boran, who lives to spread our teacher's Sufi teachings of Love.
If you want to see a picture of a fully-submitted lover of all human beings and the happiness that shows on their face, Dr. Boran's site is zwwa.de , but is only in German.
Send me an email and we can talk about more our personal situations there. I am grateful for the HN folks to allow this conversation, but I don't want to use any more of their bandwidth for personal stuff.
To sum up the answers to your questions about how? I will say that people have misrepresented the teachings of the Quran since the third generation after Prophet Mohammed, having removed how everything must be viewed in terms of love via zikr and wishing to reach God with our spirit (Ruh) to cleanse and purify our soul's heart (nefs' heart), thereby removing over time our selfish tendencies, leaving only loving service to one and all.
That ethos should be inculcated into our societies: that we should be acting for the betterment of all human beings, especially the most downtrodden, irrespective of which groups they belong. No one should be persecuted because of their religion (or lack thereof), ethnicity, sexual preference, or gender identity. What a person does in the privacy of their own home is their own business, so long as they are not oppressing another human being there. We are to be just in this love, preventing oppression and being merciful and loving (especially) to those who fight this love (when possible), so that they can change course and join the ranks of the happy.
Happiness is our choice, but only if we learn how to treat others, and then choose to do so. It really is a very simple math, but difficult to manifest without the help of our Creator.
Always love. Teach to always love. Never hate. Teach to never hate.
Three months before 9/11 (thank God I got in under the wire, so to speak!) I accepted Islam thanks to a Jewish Sufi housemate. I did so to become a better Christian which has worked out better than I could have ever hoped, or that most people are willing to accept. Oh well, that's their choice to ignore the truth that "Islam" means "peace" as well as "submission (to the Divine Will of Love)".
The real shame of the world is that neither the Islamic world, Christian world, nor Jewish world has truly accepted Christ's teachings of the ultimate importance of love in all our worldly affairs. Hypocrisy and willful ignorance (of Love) are but two of the 19 vices of the human heart (nefs), and, boy oh boy, are they playing out belligerently on Earth here in 2025.
We Sufis have, however, taken His teachings to heart (pun intended) because the only reason God has given us any messages is to help us be happier by avoiding conflict within and between ourselves. As communal beings, we must work together to succeed, so loving each other helps keep us peaceful and efficient and less brutal to our beautiful Mother Earth.
Of course, even a person not involved in religion can choose to love their neighbor, be charitable and kind and manifest the other 17 virtues as well. It's all our choice; it's just that being prayerful can help the "better angels" side of our potential prevail, but seeing how so many Muslims mistreat both other people and even their own folks, it's obvious that most folks aren't praying to be better people.
However, some of us are, my dear brother, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, ... , ALL the forms of religion, even atheists and agnostics, so take heart! Love is all that matters in this world, and we are each only responsible for the love we manifest, not how others fail to know and live the truth of Love.
Peace be with you. I am at your service.