The Long Way Home
Abdul Wahid Pedersen
08 July, 2020
It was a nice moonlit night. My body was tired, but I felt wonderfully fresh inside as I sat on the hillside looking out over the Humpi Valley in central India some time in 1977.
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We sat around 12-15 young Western people there in the middle of the night, on a barren hillside, listening to the monotonous but rhythmic chanting from the top of the mountain.
Next to us, a small stream gurgled its quiet trundles out into the night. I sat and listened to the beautiful sound that flowed over the mountain from the temple high up.
A loudspeaker from the temple had been cunningly immersed between two large mountain faces perpendicular to each other, so that these formed a kind of gigantic natural amplifier for the speaker signal.
This allowed it to be heard for miles around. It was a kind of praise of some Hindu deity that sounded through this stone amplifier. At that time I was a practicing Hindu myself, trying to the best of my ability to put myself into this religion.
I felt I understood what was being chanted. What I experienced was that the message was about the total cosmic connection between man and everything around us.
Meditating Nature
Suddenly, there was not really a border between myself and the mountain. The mountain was part of me and I was part of it. We were part of the same thing. We were the same. Made of the same fabric. I was also part of the view that was in front of me and it was part of me. I don’t know how long I sat there overwhelmed by this feeling.
At one point I became thirsty and went to the stream to drink. There was only one way I could get water, namely by lying down on my stomach, reaching down to the water and scooping it up in my hand, which I did.
And just as I lay on my stomach, totally engrossed by the feeling, that everything basically belonged together, I knew with every cell in my body that the whole world is governed by one and the same power, and that I lay there on my stomach before my God.
It was not an intellectual or rational finding. It was more of an overwhelming feeling coming from deep inside. I had no doubt at all that I lay there stretched out for the Creator. That He has put me in a position, where I had to throw myself in the dust for Him.
The Long Way Home - About Islam
The Smile That Changed My Life
Searching for the Ruling Power
Only much later, when I thought back of this night on the mountain, I understood that the sensation I experienced there was my first clear and unequivocal realization that there is only one God to worship and that we all have to throw ourselves in the dust before Him. We have to yield to His will and surrender to Him. Spiritually, mentally, intellectually and physically.
Brought up in a fairly ordinary Danish home, I had no real relationship with God when I was a child. I confirmed my Christianity at my early teens, just like my peers, but in the same process I began seriously to think about whether I really belonged to the Danish national church or if it was just something I was culturally influenced to feel. If it was merely something I had inherited.
Quest for the Truth
At the age of 16 I left the Christian belief, not to stand there under false pretenses, and now I wanted to find out where I actually belonged. I felt that I could do this best from a position of not being aligned to any religion. So it was not in protest that I opted out, but simply not to be a hypocrite until my choice was made.
I quickly realized that it seemed quite clear and beyond any doubt that a governing force existed. This was most clearly reflected in the uniformity of the atoms. From the simplest atom to the most complex, they are built on the same basic model.
It was impossible for me to believe that this was due to chance. All the substances were obviously somehow related – made of the same “building blocks”. And when a structure similar to that of the atom could be seen in the macro-cosmic perspective of the solar system, galaxies and mega galaxies, it became clearer that there was a ruling principle.
At that time I did not dare to give this “force” a name, and merely thought of it as a force.
Description: Et billede, der indeholder lysAutomatisk genereret beskrivelse
Starting the Journey
From the age of 21 to the age of 25, I spent most of my time travelling around Africa and Asia, where I was trying to connect with the big world. Together with a friend, I set off from Denmark in 1975.
Universe
Harmony in Allah's Universe
We were two young people hitting the road with our musical instruments and a great appetite for the World in our young hearts. We had our instruments with us, because we figured that once in a while we could make some money by playing music.
We visited and lived among people of many different nations and perceptions of life, and we gained many experiences by constantly facing new challenges.
As the months went by, I began to travel inward as well as outward, and I saw that many of the people I met along the way could add new aspects to my own life.
For example, I experienced that even very poor people who did not have as much as a place they could call their home, could still smile real human smiles – that is, smiles that came fully and clearly from a sincere heart. Not the professional smiles that can be common among people.
I met people who had deliberately forsaken all earthly goods, and had made it their life’s mission to walk on an eternal pilgrimage without any possessions – and some of these people almost glowed with an inner strength and power so intrusive that it seemed as visible on their outside as inside.
I met a man who, at the age of 178 (that is what people said he was), still sat and meditated for several hours every day, and took a bath every day in a river that was at most 4-5 degrees warm.
I met people who showed me that there were other ways of viewing existence than the traditional Western material view, that I had been brought up with.
Searching for the Original Source
At the same time, I saw that there were so many similarities between the different world religions that they nearly had to be from the same place. They seemed to me to be water from the same source.
In some of the rivers that flowed from the well, some extra water had been added, while something had been taken out from others along the way.
My immediate goal, as I saw it, would be to find a way to the original source, so that I would get the “pure product”. An original product without anything being added or taken out. So I just had to go and find the source and drink from it, was my logical deduction.
And since all the religious “streams” appeared to come from the same source, I could jump into any of the rivers and “follow it upstream” to the source.
That is why I became a Hindu. I was in India when this idea came to me and Hinduism looked quite appealing.
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After approx. 2 years as a practicing Hindu. having visited a number of the most sacred places for Hindus in India, I realized that I was not a Hindu anyway, since Hinduism in its entire practice is polytheistic – one worships several different gods. And I knew very well that I was a monotheist myself. I believed, as I have always believed, that there was only one God.
Thus, when I became aware that I was not a Hindu, I left my Hindu practice. However, I still had a strong longing to approach my God somehow. And since I didn’t know where or how to find God, it was obvious to let God find me.
Therefore, I began from time to time to sit with my eyes closed and pray a kind of prayer. I would then, for example, say something like:
Dear God! If you exist, You know who I am. You can see me, though I can’t see You. You can hear me, though I can’t hear You. You know my needs, which I am poorly aware of myself. You know what’s good for me and what’s not good. Show me the right way to move on!
At this time, I was back in Denmark, where I lived as a Rock & Roll musician with a number of friends in a shared premise in central Jutland.
Meeting Old Friends
One day, a friend of mine, who had become a Muslim a few years earlier, came and invited me to visit him in Copenhagen. I knew that he was living with another old friend who had also become a Muslim, and I left to visit them.
The Long Way Home - About Islam
God, If You Exist Then Guide Me!
They actually lived three men together, two of whom were my old friends, a Norwegian and a Dane. The third man in the company was an Englishman.
That was in May 1982.
Best as I lay sleeping at night, the first night I was with them, I was awakened by a “crazy shout out” into the night. I thought somebody was on some kind of a bad-trip. But it turned out that it was the Norwegian who stood and called for the first prayer of the day.
It was in the dark of the night at about 2.30 AM, and the time of night when the duvet is at its best – where you at least want to let go. And yet the others stood up and went to wash and pray. I was deeply puzzled and impressed. It was like a slap in my face.
It was clear to me that if you really grabbed hold of yourself, got out of bed, washed and stood to pray in the last hours of the night, shortly before daybreak, it would be something that was significantly more powerful, than the prayers I used to pray once in a while when I managed to curb my own vain desires.
So I got up too and stood to pray with them. I thought to myself that no matter who or what they prayed to or for, I knew, at least, that I prayed to the Creator, and I had something that I wanted from Him.
At this point I had long known that I was a believer in one God, and I did not hesitate to use that term.
A Closer Examination
I Found what Islam Was and it Made Sense
I Found What Islam Was and It Made Sense
When we finished the prayer, I started asking questions, and I continued that for the next two or three days, and I soon realized that I was facing something here that I couldn’t deny.
The three European Muslims told me that the only thing required for a man to call himself a Muslim is that one can declare one’s belief that God is one and absolutely only one without a partner or equal, and that you further declare your belief that Muhammad (peace be upon him) was the Prophet of God.
As I had no filter to pour prophets through, I couldn’t see how I could leave one of God’s prophets out and approve the others (as Christians do in relation to Muhammad), and when they also told me that a Muslim should not believe in Muhammad alone as a prophet, but in all the prophets of God from Adam through Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus to Muhammad plus so many more (may the endless and choicest blessings of Allah and peace be upon them all) I had to acknowledge that this was what I believed.
When they eventually also let me understand that the Quran is word-for-word the revelations that Muhammad received — that is, God’s own revealed word — I was no longer at all in doubt.
Coming Home
For now, I suddenly stood in front of the fountain, able to drink. I had found the original source, that I had spent years looking for. The door of the ultimate truth.
The only thing I needed to drink freely would be to learn Arabic. So that is why I declared without hesitation that I was a Muslim.
The Long Way Home - About Islam
The ruling power that I had recognized so many years ago was now given its name – Allah; my worship was structured, which I greatly needed, and I knew I had finally come home.
The long journey, which had begun approximately 12 years earlier had finally ended and a new one could begin.
My initial quest was complete and now there was the big challenge in starting the walk on the way towards closeness to Allah. To become a sincere follower. To clean up my act and turn the gaze inwardly and protect myself outwardly by following the rules.
At no point did I ever doubt that this was the right thing to do when I declared myself a Muslim. It was a leap from darkness to light, from quest to safety, from wavering and hesitation to firmness and form. Allahu Akbar!
And honestly, I had no choice. As I stood with the door on the handle of Islam, my only other option was to continue my life on a lie, to pretend that I had not seen what I saw, and that never was an option. I thank and praise Allah for directing me to the right path, and I consider it a great privilege to be allowed to pray daily and pray many times a day to be kept on the right path.
