Local Muslims cope with misconceptions about their faith

Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series of stories about faith traditions in the valley, called My Faith. In the opening story, we ask Muslims what they would like others to know about their faith.

As a Muslim who follows the practice of praying five times throughout the day to show submission and devotion to God, Shahzad Razi has found himself bowing on prayer mats during work meetings in corporate conference rooms, on airplanes, sidewalks, even at busy roadside gas stations.

Once, during a business trip in the Midwest, a truck driver saw him performing the daily ritual and started accosting him for everything from his religion to taking away American jobs.

Razi, a 50-year-old software engineer and consultant with an easygoing manner, remembers simply giving the man a quick lesson on Islam and, as far as the jobs, ended it with something to the effect of, “There are Americans (working) with me. If you want to do it, do it, come.”

By the end of the conversation, and to Razi’s astonishment, the man hugged and thanked him.

Razi has a few other stories with differing degrees of misunderstanding and tells them all with the good humor of someone who has learned to take things in stride. But, he said, there comes a point when there is a longing to answer questions from a place of natural curiosity.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed is people (in the United States) don’t ask, don’t talk; there are certain ethical standards that are there. I appreciate people when they ask, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?’ I try to initiate conversations,” he said.

Every religion has its own load to carry in terms of how it is perceived. In these times, the Islamic faith has a burden far heavier than most; the 24-hour news cycle shows a very different religion from the peaceful version practiced by the majority of Muslims around the world.

The story of the truck driver is almost symbolic of an underlying mixture of misconceptions and acceptance local Muslims say they often find among their friends and co-workers.

Dr. Sayed Qazi, a 52-year-old physician who has lived in Las Vegas since 1998, noted that he is grateful the way this country embraces religious freedom and said it is his responsibility as a Muslim to reflect the Islamic faith through example. But he also understands the importance of dialogue, education and looking at the similarities, not just the differences.

Recently, he sat in his home with a visitor in search of a lesson on Islam, and began by bringing out a small stack of scholarly works about the history of the first Muslims in America, a past that goes back hundreds of years.

He avidly leafed through the books and explained it is part of the Muslim-American experience that has been largely ignored.

He also noted that one of the more common questions he gets from non-Muslims is, “Who is your God?”

“And I explain to them, I tell them, ‘The same as yours,’ ” he said.

Muslims, in fact, do believe in the same God of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, as well as the books’ prophets such as Abraham, Isaiah, Moses and Jesus. There is even an entire chapter in the Quran, the Muslim holy book of the prophet Muhammad’s revelations, devoted to Jesus’ mother Mary, Qazi noted.

“I cannot lay claim to being a Muslim, nor can I claim to Muslim identity, if I were to eschew Jesus from my consciousness or, for that matter, if I were to put a question mark on his miraculous work,” Qazi said.

Hira Moten, a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, gets only the occasional question about her Islamic faith, such as whether she practices the daily prayers. She understands there are misperceptions about the rights of females in her religion, but “I am anything but oppressed,” she said.

“I have my own car. I was never forced to wear a head scarf. … I can work in any field.”

She also noted that Islam is more than a series of beliefs but a way of life that gives her a sense of “peace and happiness.”

“If you could read what the Quran has to say, not what people have to say about it, not what everyone talks about it, but what it really has to say, you would be amazed at the wonders and how compassionate and how kind that God has wanted us to be. … You would be amazed at the beauty of it, and the poetry and the way it’s written,” she said.

The essential practices of religious life for a Muslim are the Five Pillars of Islam: recitation of the profession of faith at least once during one’s lifetime; prayer, which includes prostration, five times throughout the day beginning at dawn; alms giving; a month of fasting from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan; and a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca at least once in a lifetime.

For Muslims such as Razi, the Five Pillars are combined with specific daily rituals regarding everything from diet to sleep, so it’s a process of “remembering God at every moment of your life and submitting to him in every aspect of your life,” he said.

This includes striving for the purest of intentions in everyday actions and thoughts, he said.

“Thinking ill about someone, no matter how good you are to someone, but even thinking ill about someone, is a sin and you have to repent. … You may not have to really go to that person and say, ‘I thought bad about you,’ but you have to repent to God and clear your heart,” he said.

Qazi agreed that his faith is like a constant offering, a moment-to-moment submission to God through thoughtful actions, purpose and intention.

“If, as a Muslim, I can’t be a better neighbor or a good neighbor, then my Islam has come to naught,” he said.

This includes helping others to understand Islam during a time when the loudest voices are the antithesis to what he wishes people understood.

For both men, however, there are those moments when what is possible quietly appears. And those are the stories and images onto which they cling.

Once, on a flight to London, an attendant asked Razi if he wanted to be awakened in time for his dawn prayer. He was given a prayer mat and allowed to conduct his prostration in a small open space by the galley.

A few years ago, Qazi was traveling with his family from Chicago to Canada, and as dawn approached they began their first prayer of the day in the airport terminal.

“And then an elderly Jewish man, Hasidic, comes and then he puts on his prayer paraphernalia, and just as I finish my prayer, he stood up and he started praying, and it was one of the most amazing sights. The sun is about to come up, the dawn is breaking, and then there’s glorification of God.”