Recently sister Safiya (Outlines) posted an article about the situation of women who got hurt in the Kharabsheh or “K-Town” community in Jordan; this is the community of Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller’s students who settle in or around his zawiya. One recurring theme, in a comment on that entry and on a blog linked off that entry ([1], [2]), is that there have been a few women who have left Islam after having a miserable time there.
I don’t think this is a convincing argument. For the most part, you can’t blame the people who treated someone badly for them leaving Islam, because the case for Islam is unrelated to the behaviour of any given group of its adherents. A person who leaves Islam in reaction to, say, a husband mistreating her, may think she is spiting her husband but is not really harming him, but only herself. There are, after all, Muslims who bomb underground trains and who have flown planes into buildings, and do far worse things than have been alleged of the two women who are at the centre of most of the allegations about K-Town.
Two of the three women mentioned who left Islam (assuming that one of the two whose stories are on Umm-ah — [1], [2] — aren’t the same person who writes the Tree Dreamer blog) were having doubts about Islam anyway. A brother (presumably) called Albedo linked an article at Tree Dreamer, noting that the author had become an atheist but had once been “one of our best & brightest” while she was in Jordan. However, I read the article before she withdrew it, and it is clear that she never really believed anyway:
So did I believe in the silly practices of my religion? I’d say I pretty much didn’t. It all struck me as somewhat silly, even at my most fervent. Like the commands about how to sleep. I just slept however I wanted to, without regard for how my head and arms were positioned, or which direction I was facing, and so on. I wanted this religion to be true, and when I was younger I thought it was. Speaking strictly for myself, I knew that if this religion turned out not to be true then it would be my exit from all theism. Core basics like deity and scripture were easy for me to accept – society largely conditions us to be god-believers so that even if we are questioning or disagreeing with our cradle religion or organized religion in general, many of us still say that we believe in some god out there.
The theme of someone leaving Islam after coming to associate it with a particularly unpleasant or rigid variant is not new — the essay The Wahhabi who Loved Beauty gives an example from Saudi Arabia — but it’s not an excuse at the end of the day; a person may be forgiven for it if it’s temporary, but at the end of the day accepting Truth is a duty and this means accepting that the extreme behaviour of one group is not the same as Islam itself. However, the majority of those who have defected from the community in Jordan appear not to have left Islam. I’ve been in contact with one of them. She’s still Muslim and still bringing her kids up Muslim. She’s also quite close to the group which has been bringing scholars from the Middle East to the UK (and perhaps North America) for years. It’s not a conspiracy against Sufism or traditional Islam, which is what I thought it might have been when the allegations started surfacing on Umar Lee’s blog and later on Salafi Burnout early this year. Even if most of the “speaking out” is done anonymously, I know who this woman is and I have no reason to disbelieve her.
Of course, wearing niqab and abstaining from TV are quite legitimate positions in Islam; Shaikh Nuh’s tariqa is not the first I’ve come across who hold to them. It’s not that women are being told to wear niqab and otherwise unostentatious clothing or obey their husbands. The problem seems to be the backbiting and spying, and the fact that serious marital problems, often the men’s fault, are blamed on the women, some of whom have been deceived into marrying in the first place. I can’t personally accuse Shaikh Nuh or the two women involved of anything because I have only met them briefly and my encounters with them were pleasant, but these problems are real and cannot be brushed under the carpet for much longer, even though this is not a cult, let alone a Jonestown type affair, but a dysfunctional tariqa group. It’s not about women leaving Islam; it’s about Muslim women getting hurt, and it risks undoing a lot of the good work that has been done to promote classical Islam and Sufism since the 1990s.
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Salam alaikum.
People leaving Islam because of the way they are treated is not uncommon at all.
Personally we have a friend who took such a battering — emotionally and physically — from three failed marriages, leaving her a single mother with no child-support twice, that she reached the lowest ebb where she finally said, “If I did not fear Allah, I would have left Islam.” Meaning she would have abandoned practising her faith.
People cling to hot embers day in, day out, and sometimes it’s difficult for others to understand what this means.
But we shouldn’t really be oblivious, for we all know the famous Hadith Qudsi that explains our responsibilities perfectly…
It was related by Muslim.
I Interesting.
I read the accounts via Outline’s blog a while back. Personally, I wasn’t turned off by the people leaving Islam (as stated it happens everyday for different reasons) but I disliked the whole “tariqa” talk and the whole idea of Keller’s little camp.
http://treedreamer.com/?p=309
I don’t think that blog is by a former Muslim br Yusuf.
But one thing I will say you said it is clear she never beleived anyway. I don’t think it is proper in terms of Islam, especially on a topic this serious, for you to take an excerpt from a paragraph from an internet posting from a blog by an anonymous person that another anonymous person claimed is by a former sh Keller student - and what is the proof, I’m really wondering that now - and say ‘she never beleived.’ If that is the attitude that we take with people who struggle with Islam, we will continue to have this problem with the young generation or people who’ve had a bad run with Muslims and learned wonky things from them.
I’m sure many of us know people who were with sh Keller or read that other blog too. If all you got out of it is women leaving Islam to ‘spite their exhusbands’, I think you have issues with women and our ability to contemplate - even if the conclusion is a mistaken one. It’s insulting, really.
Overall, though, very disappointing, it seems like you are attacking women, or some women as you will say no doubt, and jumping to wild conclusions all to shield a man who is old enough and able enough to answer his critics and questioners, if he chooses to do so. Otherwise, is it not best to leave his defence to Allah, as he seems wont to do?
“dysfunctional tariqa group”
Is this a cheap dig? Why don’t you just admit you have issues with Sh Nuh and his tariqa.
Assalamalaikum, brother Yusuf. Are you a mureed of Sheikh Nuh?
A murid visits his shaykh when he comes to town and goes to the gatherings when he is out of town. Also murids don’t call their shaykh’s tariqa dysfunctional.
Salaam ‘alaikum, Below is the comment that I left at Safiya’s blog, which hasn’t been approved yet.
Reading that blog, her loss of faith clearly has nothing to do with the tariqa. Rather it seems that she felt religion poorly addressed her goals in life. It should be noted that her family did not move to Jordan to be close to Sheikh Nuh. (If I recall correctly, her husband, who has no connection to any tariqa, is Jordanian and wanted to move their for his own reasons.) It’s disingenuous to associate this very sad case with Sheikh Nuh, as it has nothing to do with him.
Zaynab, Actually that person is a former Muslim: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=.....&gl=us
She took down all the stuff about Islam after her blog was linked to on the Outlines blog.
Ilyas. You’re not much of a reader, are you? Even in that post she doesn’t claim to have ever been Muslim. Only that she once lived in the Middle East — which could be anyone and she doesn’t say where — and it’s not surprising that someone who lived in the ME would be educated about Islam, even if they themselves were never Muslim. The bulk of the posts about Islam — which Tree Dreamer did take down because apparently she doesn’t want to deal with individuals with poor reading comprehension skills — were guest posts, from another woman who was a former Muslim, named Mathurine. Those posts are also accessible via Google.
You seem to feel yourself in possession of knowledge that no one else has. Frankly I find your focus on this particular blogger a bit concerning — why do you feel the need to gossip about her? Why are you posting what would be confidential information — if it were true — on public blogs all over the internet? I think that is the real issue here and I cannot believe no one has called you on it.
As-salamu alaykum,
Has shaykh Nuh or any of his murids (who support the shaykh) commented on this mess in any way?
“The blogs bark and the caravan moves on” says the Sheikh himself.
@ fulana I posted one piece of information on one blog. And it was relevant to the matter at hand. The claim was made by that albedo person that the blogger in question left Islam because a supposed connection with Kharabsheh, when in fact she (or you?) left Islam for other reasons entirely. That clarification was important to make, as her situation should not be used to besmirch a Muslim, whether a Sheikh or any other believer. The reputation of a Muslim is inviolable, while some smidgen of biographical information about a person who blogs openly about their disdain for Allah, the Prophet SalAllahu alaihi wasallam, Islam and the Muslims, is decidedly less so. My only interest in the matter (as I’ve mentioned before to the person in question) is when people use their status as former Muslims (or are used by others because of it) to bring harm to the Ummah. Other than that, I really could not care less about them and their lives (except to make dua for their regaining some perspective).
Lastly, in my comment to Sis. Safiya, I did advise her to remove that link for the sake of the blogger’s privacy, but by now that would be fruitless, as the cat is out of the proverbial bag.
Allah yihdeek.
@ br Ilyas -
I wonder about the comprehension skills of yourself and br Yusuf. I read the archived post and the one about Islam - which wasn’t even by the blog’s owner. But it seems like you guys will leap to any conclusions you must in order to slander people, especially those who decide they’d rather not follow sh Keller. But drawing in people who don’t even have anything to do with us? Low and desperate. Who is really barking here?
Also, is it now that we accuse anyone who dares to disagree with us of having left Islam? And it’s Ramzan too, Ilyas.
Sorry still bit of a headache from fasting, I left out a point, but my last post i promise. I just meant that I had read the other post fulana is referring to and that is not by the owner. The one ilyas linked to is, but she’s not saying anything there that anybody doesn’t say about islam. if that is proof of being a former Muslim, i’m curious to know when Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders left Islam.
lol, and I had a different experience. Jews made me leave Islam. Now I beleive Islam itself is corrupt if it makes us respect such racist people.
@ Leeds Lad: What a curious comment could you clarify that statement
[…] Indigo Jo Blogs » Former K-Towners who leave Islam Recently sister Safiya (Outlines) posted an article about the situation of women who got hurt in the Kharabsheh or “K-Town” community in Jordan; this is the community of Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller’s students who settle in or around his zawiya. One recurring theme, in a comment on that entry and on a blog linked off that entry ([1], [2]), is that there have been a few women who have left Islam after having a miserable time there. […]
To digress slightly..
If the evidence for a ‘truth’ is based on a teleology, then, by definition, it’s not an empirically derived truth but rather a statement of belief. Why use a capital first letter when you can say what you really mean?