I recently watched a video on Jordan Peterson’s Youtube channel where he has a discussion about Islam with the well-known speaker and vlogger Muhammad Hijab. While it was generally well received, and there was some fruitful discussion refuting the notion that Islam is a more violent religion than others, I feel that the opportunity for da’wah (inviting others to Islam) was not taken advantage of as much as possible by Muhammad Hijab. In my opinion, this is because he lacks knowledge of the Sufi tradition, he failed to address the chief concerns of Peterson, and instead fell back on the combative discourse he has developed in public debates and commenting on others in his vlog to defend Islam against atheism and the doctrines of other religions.

Firstly I must acknowledge that public speaking is a difficult task, and any efforts by a fellow Muslim to defend the Dīn of Allah should be commended. However, I believe that some constructive criticism is due where methodology is concerned. Muhammad Hijab is highly educated with a PhD from a prestigious university in the UK. Nevertheless he may have failed in this instance to seize upon the essence of Jordan Peterson’s discourse, the reason why he is popularly listened to, even among Muslims, and why his positive traits and focus as an intellectual need to be addressed differently.

Jordan Peterson talks about a return from our society’s obsession with rights and freedoms to Truth and responsibilities. Talking about metaphysical reality has been an anathema in modern universities since Immanuel Kant. Post-modernism focuses on deconstructing without constructing anything to fill its place. Peterson’s psychological expertise coupled with his diverse interests in literature, politics and philosophy give him the attributes simultaneously of a life coach and political touchstone for the disaffected, especially conservative young white heterosexual males who have been consistently vilified for 50 years by the liberal left which dominates university campuses. He combines all this with a charismatic earnestness and a highly logical way of speaking. With his popularly available talks on the life lessons derived from a Jungian analysis of the archetypes present in famous stories, including religious Biblical narratives, he has the potential to reopen the door of traditional religion to a generation who are otherwise heavily conditioned to keep it closed. While he identifies with the Christian tradition as his heritage, he is not a bigot. Rather he maintains a scholarly open mind to where logical discussion will take him. I feel that Muhammad Hijab understood this, and perhaps took it to mean that throwing logical arguments at Peterson point blank would convince him on the spot. This is very counterproductive.

Peterson, whilst he speaks in a structured and logical way, is also a clinical psychologist by profession. The majority of his career has been concerned with the very unstraightforward and nebulous phenomena of the human mind; dreams, neuroses, psychoses, depression and dysfunctional relationships are the bread and butter of the clinical practitioner. And these issues are not solved simply through the robotic formula of syllogistic logic. Peterson has to have the subtle perception of the artist, a level of insight into the individual yet universal symbolism of dreams which does not follow straightforward rules. Philosophical though he is, I believe that Peterson is ultimately more interested in answering the question of how to live the Good Life than the fine details of ontology.

In short, you have to take a human-centred approach. I believe this involves more of a focus on the points towards the end of this piece below. I know from experience that even people who think they are highly logical are not convinced by intellectual arguments alone. People are complicated and often their hearts need more convincing than their heads.

I once tried to make a schema for the main hurdles one needs to jump to prove to someone that Islam is the true religion and it went like this:

1. Prove that Allah, the Creator, exists. The main arguments being the cosmological argument, the ontological argument and the teleological argument.
2. Prove the elegance of the metanarrative. The metanarrative of Islam is the best fit with what we experience in life, as well as logic. The metanarrative is that God sends selected infallible human beings called prophets to guide humanity, that He has done this throughout human history and that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the final Messenger abrogating all previous dispensations. It would also include the other creedal beliefs in angels, divine decree and so on. This involves, for example, working with inductive premises like ‘all men are mortal’ and showing how (following the Pascal’s Wager argument) belief in an afterlife and preparing for it with righteous deeds and establishing a prayerful relationship with the Creator is preferable (in terms of risk vs. reward) to taking the chance that nothing exists after death. In general, alternative states of consciousness and paranormal experiences are other phenomena that can be used in this ‘best fit’ approach.
3. Proof that the Quran and the Sunnah truly source back to one person in 7th century Arabia, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). This requires studies of the historical evidence for the textual integrity and preservation of the Quran and the authentication of the Sunnah traditions as they are explained by traditional Muslim scholars.
4. Demonstration that all the Islamic sciences are authentically rooted in the tradition of the Quran and Sunnah. This requires another presentation of the historical development of the four canonical schools of law, the orthodox schools of theology and the sourcing of the formalised Sufi tariqas within traditional Islam’s early community, and not as a process of ‘syncretism’ or ‘folk practice’ that accreted later. The brilliance of the Sanad tradition must be emphasised here. At this point if successful you have narrowed down the discussion to the premises of traditional Sunni Islam!
5. Show that while Islam is an integral whole, a universal religion, it historically was able to become embedded in diverse cultural frames and successfully integrate ideas, traditions and culture from outside of its temporal Arabian origin. For example, the Baghdad translation movement which resulted in the defence of Islamic doctrine using a modified form of Greek Aristotelian logic, and the dissemination and development of medical and mathematical knowledge. This subtly starts to address the psychological needs of the person you are addressing (fear of losing identity).
6. Hone in on the psychological needs which Islam directly addresses. Islam in the Quranic and Muhammadan dispensation is the religion for the end times, and it speaks to modernity’s post-enlightenment humanism, existential ennui, alienation from nature and secular collapse of belief in the Christian narrative, with a strong tradition of purifying the human self in a life affirming embodied way and the doctrine of Fitrah.
7. Leave theory and show examples of inspiring Islamic character through the Sirah of the Prophet (PBUH) and from the biographies of his companions (RA), Muslim saints and major figures throughout the centuries, as well as the beauty they left behind in poetry, architecture etc. Don’t forget, of course, to have the best behaviour in your own interactions with the person so that the water is not made murky by a dirty vessel!

And Allah is the One who guides.

I’ve realised more elaboration is needed on my personality to understand why I would come to the conclusion that joining an organised religion was necessary. After all, many people in today’s society find an identity and meaning to their life by joining a subculture, like biker gangs or goths, or by becoming a fan of a particular sports team or devoting themselves to a hobby. Others become volunteers at homeless shelters or tree planting centres, or activists for a cause. So why not choose any one of these options?

I’ve always been searching for an explanation.

Ever since as young as I can remember I loved reading. According to my parents I started at age 3, and by mid-primary school I was devouring everything I could find. Seriously, think Matilda. Stuff that was above my age bracket. Fiction and non-fiction. Of course this meant that I did well at school but that was never the aim for me per se. I just loved learning and if that meant I got good report cards, happy days. Intrinsic motivation drove me to pore over the Oxford Dictionary, atlases and encyclopaedias. I learned about history, geography, science, languages. I loved seeing the periodic table, the biological phylum family tree, the Indo-European language family tree, and timelines and tables about the nations. To this day I still love poring over maps and stats.

Then why didn’t I become a scientist, fitting into the sci-fi loving ‘geek’ subculture which is widespread in our times and has the added bonus of prestige and potential for high paying jobs in our times?

Maybe my interest in the humanities was piqued by the closer link to historical fiction literature and the fantasy novels that were so popular when I was growing up. Maybe it was the enthralling Horrible Histories series by Terry Deary, or the Wally’s World magazine collections in geography and then history that I assiduously collected at that critical primary school age alongside scattered comic books that are more widely popular. Maybe it was because my father always took me along while he was birdwatching, snorkelling and hiking in the mountains, and fostered in me a deeper love for nature and the world in its more primal, wild state than the world of machines that seems to be our urban present and probable (certainly sci-fi) future. A love for biology over chemistry and physics. A love for the past and the eternal over the future and the changing. A love for universals, which physics and chemistry certainly deal with, yes, but less abstract.

To be honest, the division between the ‘humanities’ or ‘arts’ and the ‘hard science’ maths-centred world of abstract calculations, upon which all our modern technology depends was not my own decision but forced upon me by current paradigms in education which are influenced by prevailing philosophies. I felt immense anguish in late high school at the thought that I would soon have to ‘specialise’, at the very least into one of the degree types offered at university (and it had to be university!): Arts or Sciences, with a few other options like business studies, law and architecture, maybe medicine and that was it. I considered and tried for medicine, with my father being in allied health and its helping-people-and-getting-well-paid combo appealing to me like countless others, but I did not pass the Year 12 entry exam and did not have the specific interest in it to pursue a bridging course. I never had interest in business, seeming the least related to my intellectual goals. What were they again? Oh yeah:

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING!

But seriously I didn’t think like Stephen Hawking, looking for a formula that would explain the universe. I was brought up within an evangelical church-going household where God was meant to be experienced in the spirit. Music, dance, even witnessing the peculiar phenomenon of glossolalia or speaking in tongues at times, the gratitude to God for bringing you to the top of a mountain safely at sunrise. The ‘oceanic feeling’ as Freud calls it, echoing the German Romantics. It was a profoundly subjective and aesthetic experience. But unlike some of the subjectivities that have evolved in modernity to be enjoyed by some and not others (heavy metal, anyone), I liked the aesthetics that most fitted classical understandings of beauty, and these seemed to have been set a very long time ago in the Western tradition, at least since classical Greece.

Did I mention I really loved Latin too?

I went to a selective secondary school in the UK where French and German were compulsory for the first two or three years, and then in third year Latin was offered. I loved learning all languages, which I put down to the school’s exceptionally strong language department as well as my natural flare for it. Latin was where it really started to get interesting for me. I always found recognising cognates, or words that are derived from the same root, easy in French and German. They share a lot with English. Latin added the historical dimension. Not only did it fascinate me that the language of Rome evolved into French, Spanish and Italian, but I also loved learning about the empire that conquered Britain 2000 years ago, that forms the backdrop to the events of the New Testament, and that left huge relics visible today like Hadrian’s Wall not far from where I grew up. I had, of course, visited it.

It’s a shame my education was not classical enough to learn that architecture also has universals (Quadrivium, anyone?). I loved old buildings, always feeling fascinated and happy in the pre-19th century dominated architecture that was so common in most areas of the UK and Europe. When I moved to Australia I would learn to enjoy the aesthetic of Australia, with its clean new streetscapes, the corrugated metal roofs forming elegant colonial-era verandas for the endless bungalows bathed in pure antipodean sunshine. But I had deep, deep nostalgia. Not just for my Britain, but the almost impalpable ancient stone roots of human integration into the landscape of the whole continent.

So at 16, just before I moved to Australia, it looked like I would take A-levels in Latin and at least one other language, 2 out of my 4 options which would have forced me to specialise possibly go on to study ancient history, archaeology, or some combination of languages and teaching or even law or some other subject that would take high humanities A-levels. I don’t know what direction I would have taken in those years. But that was my trajectory and it was totally waylaid by moving to a land where history barely goes back 300 years and learning Latin sounds like an absurd folly. My growing interest in Linguistics continued but I did not find a proper outlet for it at school, where the well-rounded all-boys Anglican private school curriculum only allowed me one language – French (with the choices I was not allowed of Mandarin and Indonesian fostering a lingering fascination with Asia..) and filled my days with sports carnivals and other pageantry. I did excel in English, being put into the top stream of literature. However, in all other subjects, I found, whether due to the different education system a shift in my own mentality, or a lack of readiness for the more mature self-directed study now expected of me that was required to memorise formulas efficiently and reach the highest grades in an overtly competitive classroom environment; my grades suffered. I finished with an ATAR impressive enough to get me into any uni but not at the level needed to enter the most prestigious courses.

When I meet people, they often ask me, “Why did you embrace Islam?”

I usually respond with either a short answer like ‘it is the religion that made the most sense to me’ or I attempt to give an account of some events prior to my shahadah. Neither is satisfying, because the first response begs the question of why I was looking to embrace any religion at all, and the second one is inconsistent. I pick a few events that seem linked and run with them.

The reality is that religious conversion is very personal thing and in many ways it is mysterious. Allah SWT guides whom He wishes.

But without getting lost in the details I think you can start by saying something like this: I moved to Australia at an age when most people are closing their selves up as their identity solidifies and in doing so they lose the childhood sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around them. This allowed me to question the status quo, but with a strong sense of loyalty to the Creator, who remained my reliance through all the changes and uncertainties, and pursue the truth wherever it took me. I looked into all the major alternatives, and the one that won out was Islam.

Here’s the slightly longer version:

Soon after moving, aged 16, I began to question if the Australian Dream we had bought into by migrating here was really all it was cracked up to be. It just seemed like we were a vestige of the settler colonialism that had reproduced all the problems of Western culture I had known in Britain in an exotic location, and had for the last 200 + years been reducing the adventurous wild beauty of a pristine natural environment that had attracted me in the first place. My childish idea of moving to Australia was less Neighbours and Home and Away and more Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin.

I learned about (Plato’s) philosophy around the same time I began to really question Christianity. Probably through that, I managed to keep a sense of relationship with the Absolute despite some intellectual problems with Christian theology. Then when I went to university I started to learn about the reality of the world’s diversity in religions and worldviews. Suddenly I knew Muslims, Marxists, Buddhists, LGBT and not just as fellow students or sports players in a secular environment, but in a place where people accosted you with pamphlets and had debates.

I went through a stage of exploring different religions. Like many people from my background who have that openness, it was someone relativistic and I was open to hearing from any self-proclaimed guru, no matter how new age and weird. I even looked into Marxism and realised that it is also a kind of belief system, with an imminent eschatology of utopia in this world. It has many links to other flawed movements of our times, like the feminist agenda and the push for LGBT ‘liberation’.

After my degree I took a gap year working as an English teacher in South East Asia, spending most of my time in Malaysia where all major world faiths are practiced devotedly. I got to see, in all their amazing public festivity, the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival and Taoist and Buddhist Hungry Ghost Festival, Buddhist Vesak, Hindu Holi and Deepavali, and Tamil Hindu Thaipusam, as well as the Muslim Eids and Ramadan and seeing how non-European Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter.

Seeing the Indic religions in practice made me realise how absurd it had been to even consider them. Holi was fun, as a secularised music festival for throwing paint at people. But everything else had a frightening and sinister air to me. I saw people in crazed trances sticking hooks into their body, and I suspect they were possessed. I saw burning effigies of demonic entities.

This contrasted so, so sharply with the simple beauty of Islam, with it’s time-honoured practices of sober fasting and generous feasting, and uncompromising belief in a pure monotheism that made perfect sense and connected me more authentically with Almighty God and all of those incredible stories of the prophets of old that I had learned about as a child.

And so, not long after Hari Raya in 2015, after trying out a month of fasting for God in solidarity with my Muslim friends, I took the plunge and embraced the Deen of Islam.

Alhamdulilah

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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