Religions > Atheism > Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Buddy III" |
| Date: |
13 Oct 2007 10:49:01 PM |
| Object: |
Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus) - Taken from
The Islamic Bulletin, San Francisco, CA 94141-0186
Q: Would you kindly tell us how your interest in Islam began?
A: I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child I possessed a keen
interest in music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and
symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music was my favorite
subject in school in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer
chance, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio which so much
pleased me that I was determined to hear more. I would not leave my
parents in peace until my father finally took me to the Syrian section
in New York City where I bought a stack of Arabic recordings. My
parents, relatives and neighbors thought Arabic and its music dreadfully
weird and so distressing to their ears that whenever I put on my
recordings, they demanded that I close all the doors and windows in my
room lest they be disturbed! After I embraced Islam in 1961, I used to
sit enthralled by the hour at the mosque in New York, listening to
tape-recordings of Tilawat chanted by the celebrated Egyptian Qari,
Abdul Basit. But on Jumha Salat (Friday Prayers), the Imam did not play
the tapes. We had a special guest that day. A short, very thin and
poorly-dressed black youth, who introduced himself to us as a student
from Zanzibar, recited Surah ar-Rahman. I never heard such glorious
Tilawat even from Abdul Basit! He possessed such a voice of gold; surely
Hazrat Bilal must have sounded much like him!
I traced the beginning of my interest in Islam to the age of ten. While
attending a reformed Jewish Sunday school, I became fascinated with the
historical relationship between the Jews and the Arabs. From my Jewish
textbooks, I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as well as
the Jews. I read how centuries later when, in medieval Europe, Christian
persecution made their lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in
Muslim Spain and that it was the magnanimity of this same Arabic Islamic
civilization which stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak
of achievement.
Totally unaware of the true nature of Zionism, I naively thought that
the Jews were returning to Palestine to strengthen their close ties of
kinship in religion and culture with their Semitic cousins. Together I
believed that the Jews and the Arabs would cooperate to attain another
Golden Age of culture in the Middle East.
Despite my fascination with the study of Jewish history, I was extremely
unhappy at the Sunday school. At this time I identified myself strongly
with the Jewish people in Europe, then suffering a horrible fate under
the Nazis and I was shocked that none of my fellow classmates nor their
parents took their religion seriously. During the services at the
synagogue, the children used to read comic strips hidden in their prayer
books and laugh to scorn at the rituals. The children were so noisy and
disorderly that the teachers could not discipline them and found it very
difficult to conduct the classes.
At home the atmosphere for religious observance was scarcely more
congenial. My elder sister detested the Sunday school so much that my
mother literally had to drag her out of bed in the mornings and it never
went without the struggle of tears and hot words. Finally my parents
were exhausted and let her quit. On the Jewish High Holy Days instead of
attending synagogue and fasting on Yom Kippur, my sister and I were
taken out of school to attend family picnics and parties in fine
restaurants. When my sister and I convinced our parents how miserable we
both were at the Sunday school they joined an agnostic, humanist
organization known as the Ethical Culture Movement.
The Ethical Culture Movement was founded late in the 19th century by
Felix Alder. While studying for rabbinate, Felix Alder grew convinced
that devotion to ethical values as relative and man-made, regarding any
supernaturalism or theology as irrelevant, constituted the only religion
fit for the modern world. I attended the Ethical Culture Sunday School
each week from the age of eleven until I graduated at fifteen. Here I
grew into complete accord with the ideas of the movement and regarded
all traditional, organized religions with scorn.
When I was eighteen years old I became a member of the local Zionist
youth movement known as the Mizrachi Hatzair. But when I found out what
the nature of Zionism was, which made the hostility between Jews and
Arabs irreconcilable, I left several months later in disgust. When I was
twenty and a student at New York University, one of my elective courses
was entitled Judaism in Islam. My professor, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Katsh,
the head of the department of Hebrew Studies there, spared no efforts to
convince his students--all Jews, many of whom aspired to become
rabbis--that Islam was derived from Judaism. Our textbook, written by
him, took each verse from the Quran, painstakingly tracing it to its
allegedly Jewish source. Although his real aim was to prove to his
students the superiority of Judaism over Islam, he convinced me
diametrically of the opposite.
I soon discovered that Zionism was merely a combination of the racist,
tribalistic aspects of Judaism. Modern secular nationalistic Zionism was
further discredited in my eyes when I learned that few, if any, of the
leaders of Zionism were observant Jews and that perhaps nowhere is
Orthodox, traditional Judaism regarded with such intense contempt as in
Israel. When I found nearly all important Jewish leaders in America
supporters for Zionism, who felt not the slightest twinge of conscience
because of the terrible injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian Arabs,
I could no longer consider myself a Jew at heart.
One morning in November 1954, Professor Katsh, during his lecture,
argued with irrefutable logic that the monotheism taught by Moses (peace
be upon him) and the Divine Laws reveled to him were indispensable as
the basis for all higher ethical values. If morals were purely man-made,
as the Ethical Culture and other agnostic and atheistic philosophies
taught, then they could be changed at will, according to mere whim,
convenience or circumstance. The result would be utter chaos leading to
individual and collective ruin. Belief in the Hereafter, as the Rabbis
in the Talmud taught, argued Professor Katsh, was not mere wishful
thinking but a moral necessity. Only those, he said, who firmly believed
that each of us will be summoned by God on Judgement Day to render a
complete account of our life on earth and rewarded or punished
accordingly, will possess the self-discipline to sacrifice transitory
pleasure and endure hardships and sacrifice to attain lasting good.
It was in Professor Katsh's class that I met Zenita, the most unusual
and fascinating girl I have ever met. The first time I entered Professor
Katsh's class, as I looked around the room for an empty desk in which to
sit, I spied two empty seats, on the arm of one, three big beautifully
bound volumes of Yusuf Ali's English translation and commentary of the
Holy Quran. I sat down right there, burning with curiosity to find out
to whom these volumes belonged. Just before Rabbi Katsh's lecture was to
begin, a tall, very slim girl with pale complexion framed by thick
auburn hair, sat next to me. Her appearance was so distinctive, I
thought she must be a foreign student from Turkey, Syria or some other
Near Eastern country. Most of the other students were young men wearing
the black cap of Orthodox Jewry, who wanted to become rabbis. We two
were the only girls in the class. As we were leaving the library late
that afternoon, she introduced herself to me. Born into an Orthodox
Jewish family, her parents had migrated to America from Russia only a
few years prior to the October Revolution in 1917 to escape persecution.
I noted that my new friend spoke English with the precise care of a
foreigner. She confirmed these speculations, telling me that since her
family and their friends speak only Yiddish among themselves, she did
not learn any English until after attending public school. She told me
that her name was Zenita Liebermann but recently, in an attempt to
Americanize themselves, her parents had changed their name from
"Liebermann" to "Lane." Besides being thoroughly instructed in Hebrew by
her father while growing up and also in school, she said she was now
spending all her spare time studying Arabic. However, with no previous
warning, Zenita dropped out of class and although I continued to attend
all of his lectures to the conclusion of the course, Zenita never
returned. Months passed and I had almost forgotten about Zenita when
suddenly she called and begged me to meet her at the Metropolitan Museum
and go with her to look at the special exhibition of exquisite Arabic
calligraphy and ancient illuminated manuscripts of the Quran. During our
tour of the museum, Zenita told me how she had embraced Islam with two
of her Palestinian friends as witnesses.
I inquired, "Why did you decide to become a Muslim?" She then told me
that she had left Professor Katsh's class when she fell ill with a
severe kidney infection. Her condition was so critical, she told me, her
mother and father had not expected her to survive. "One afternoon while
burning with fever, I reached for my Holy Quran on the table beside by
bed and began to read and while I recited the verses, it touched me so
deeply that I began to weep and then I knew I would recover. As soon as
I was strong enough to leave my bed, I summoned two of my Muslim friends
and took the oath of the "Shahadah" or Confession of Faith."
Zenita and I would eat our meals in Syrian restaurants where I acquired
a keen taste for this tasty cooking. When we had money to spend, we
would order Couscous, roast lamb with rice or a whole soup plate of
delicious little meatballs swimming in gravy scooped up with loaves of
unleavened Arabic bread. And when we had little to spend, we would eat
lentils and rice, Arabic style, or the Egyptian national dish of black
broad beans with plenty of garlic and onions called "Ful".
While Professor Katsh was lecturing thus, I was comparing in my mind
what I had read in the Old Testament and the Talmud with what was taught
in the Quran and Hadith and finding Judaism so defective, I was
converted to Islam. (MORE)
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| User: "Geoff" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 09:01:43 AM |
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Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the thousands
of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
.
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| User: "Buddy III" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 09:50:40 AM |
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Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the thousands
of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with that?
The post is on-topic.
.
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| User: "Smiler" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 08:34:33 PM |
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"Buddy III" <buddy_al_irani@tehran.com> wrote in message
news:fetac4$s0a$1@aioe.org...
Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with that?
The post is on-topic.
She was Jewish and converted to Islam.
Nowhere in that article does it say she was an atheist, liar.
So no, no problem with a Jew converting to Islam.
But we do have a problem with lying moronic theists, of whatever flavour,
who barge their way into a.a. to try to convert us.
We don't believe you.
Smiler,
The godless one
a.a.# 2279
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| User: "Geoff" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 10:02:03 AM |
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Buddy III wrote:
Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with
that? The post is on-topic.
We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we?
What the ***** do you hope to accomplish by this childishness? No one knows
or gives a flying ***** who this person is but she must not have been too
intelligent to have fallen for any religion, Islam especially.
.
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| User: "Buddy III" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 10:42:43 AM |
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Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with
that? The post is on-topic.
We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we?
What the ***** do you hope to accomplish by this childishness? No one knows
or gives a flying ***** who this person is but she must not have been too
intelligent to have fallen for any religion, Islam especially.
SHE IS A JEWISH ATHEIST. DO YOU GET IT: A T H E I S T !!!!
aND I'm not POLLUTING this ng. So far it is you people who are doing
so by using f*** words, insults etc, behaving like degenerated beats.
If you don't like what i post, USE YOUR IGNORE BUTTON AND PROBLEM IS SOLVED.
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| User: "Geoff" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 08:38:42 PM |
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Buddy III wrote:
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with
that? The post is on-topic.
We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we?
What the ***** do you hope to accomplish by this childishness? No one
knows or gives a flying ***** who this person is but she must not
have been too intelligent to have fallen for any religion, Islam
especially.
SHE IS A JEWISH ATHEIST. DO YOU GET IT: A T H E I S T !!!!
"Jewish atheist"? Kind of like a Muslim atheist. Are you that fucking
stupid?
aND I'm not POLLUTING this ng.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is shite.
So far it is you people who are doing
so by using f*** words, insults etc, behaving like degenerated beats.
If you don't like what i post, USE YOUR IGNORE BUTTON AND PROBLEM IS
SOLVED.
Oh, don't worry dipshit. You *will* get plonked. But not before I have my
fun toying with your juvenile intellect.
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| User: "Nosterill" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
15 Oct 2007 06:02:21 AM |
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On Oct 14, 3:50 pm, Buddy III <buddy_al_ir...@tehran.com> wrote:
Geoff wrote:
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the thousands
of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
She was an atheist and converted to Islam. You have a problem with that?
The post is on-topic.
If you read the interview, she was atheist from the ages of eleven to
fifteen only. Jewish before that, briefly zionist at 18, mainstream
Jewish again at twenty and muslim thereafter. Typical straw in the
wind. She probably only stayed Muslim because the exit strategy is so
scary.
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| User: "Johnny P" |
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| Title: Re: Margaret Marcus, Ex-Atheist, becomes maryam Jameelah Part I |
14 Oct 2007 11:15:30 AM |
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heh
"Geoff" <gebobs@yahoo.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:2eCdnX3-KeXMvI_anZ2dnUVZ_o6knZ2d@giganews.com...
Buddy III wrote:
Maryam Jameelah
Interview with Maryam Jameelah(formerly Margaret Marcus)
Who cares. We don't pollute your newsgroups with stories about the
thousands
of Muslims that no longer believe your *****, do we.
Now stop being such an annoying little cuss and do *****.
.
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