I came to Islam through the notion of cheap grace. I first heard of the term in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship (1948), he explained cheap grace this way: “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at [...]
You could argue that Allah uses our feelings of regret and guilt to get us to return to Him, not to crush us in a cycle of self-recrimination and self-loathing.
I’m not going to lie: I’m having a rough Ramadan. My greatest weakness as a Muslim has been my prayers and it hasn’t stopped being a problem just because it’s Ramadan. I know that not all converts have this problem—some seem to take to Muslim behavior like a duck takes to water—but I can’t help but think that I would be much more faithful in prayer if I had been brought up as a practicing [...]
One thing I like about Islam is its realistic attitude about human nature. Muslims are not asked to be perfect, we are merely expected to live our lives as best we can. Another thing I like about Islam is its emphasis on acquiring knowledge. Allah knows that we need to continually learn about our faith and how to practice it. But that is not to say that we can ever reach perfection. In Christianity, the [...]
I’m still glad I’m a Muslim and I’m actually a lot more comfortable with it than I was for the first few months. I won’t lie to you; those days were hard. First of all, I felt so out of my element. So much of being a Muslim is cultural and I’m definitely not from that culture. I’m as WASPy as you can get, or at least I was until I became a Muslim. (WASP [...]
I don’t get along with my next-door neighbor. Let me rephrase that: I don’t like my next-door neighbor. Oh, he always acts friendly, but then he does passive-aggressive stuff like taking over part of our yard for his garden without asking and throwing a bush that he dug up in our compost bin. I don’t know how to take his actions or what to do about them. I don’t feel comfortable making an issue about [...]
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