A Talk With The Rev

A talk with The Rev
By Taj Ashaheed
The Denver Post - May 2006

I called my grandfather in Florida a couple weeks ago, just after his 90th birthday. I told him I would be down to see him soon. "Great!" he said, "And we can have that talk."

I chuckled in agreement, despite the silent "Uh-oh" in my mind. "That talk" has been promised for quite some time. It is going to be about religion; more specifically, my religion.

I am a Muslim convert and my grandfather, who we call "The Reverend" (or simply, "The Rev"), has spent much of his nine decades of life as a Baptist minister.

My apprehension isn't so much from thinking that we will have a confrontation or that he will make some last-ditch effort to "save" me, as much as it is the challenge I face balancing respect for my elder and confronting misconceptions about my faith.

I will have to share with him my own experiences with anti-Muslim anger, prejudice and bigotry that are held worldwide and in my own Colorado backyard. He'll knowingly smile as I tell him the trip I am planning to take to New York to celebrate my upcoming anniversary, and how as soon as the DIA security worker reads the Arabic name on my license, I will be asked to "Step right this way, sir, please." (I'll be prepared, though, because I will be 2 hours early and my shoes will already be untied.)

He'll laugh when I tell him about the time my wife and daughters were walking to the store when a passerby yelled , "Go back where you came from!" He obviously had no clue that my wife is from Dallas.

I will have to assure my grandfather that despite what he may have heard on cable news or from televangelists, I don't want to convert the world or die trying. I would never consider committing a suicide bombing; my religion actually forbids such an act of violence.

I'll likely tell him that the real reason my local television stations or newspapers shouldn't have rebroadcast or reprinted the Danish Muhammad cartoons is analogous to why the media stopped showing the planes hitting the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001: a simple matter of respect.

My grandfather will know that I spend nary a second plotting the overthrow of my country; that a terrorist who threatens Americans is my enemy since, after all, I am an American. That, like him and others of his generation who fought for civil and human rights, I too desire to see my country and countrymen become better at representing the ideals we give lip service to, and this is what the idea of "jihad" itself constitutes: striving for betterment.

I know The Rev will ask just who we Muslims are at war with. And I will tell him, "I am at war with my daughter about her doing homework and cleaning her room. With my wife and her cellphone bill and her propensity to forget that the fluids in her car actually need to be checked. I am at war with the spiders in my basement and the crack dealers up the block."

I will need to assure my grandfather that as a convert, while my name and eating habits have changed, not much about me as a person has - except, hopefully, for the better. And that because I am African-American and Muslim doesn't mean I now wear bow ties or follow the Nation of Islam. One of my colleagues I admire most is a Jew, and one of the few people I call a "best friend" is a Caucasian from Waterbury, Conn., so I don't hate Jews and I don't think white people are devils.

It might be that the picture I paint for my grandfather goes against the norm of how he views Muslims and Islam, but I want him and everyone else to know that there are millions throughout the world who share the same philosophy, experiences and outlook as I do - although they don't all drive a '74 Plymouth muscle car like me. We are all "everyday Muslims" whose faith is the real epitome of Islam and is hardly represented by terrorist acts or fatwas issued from caves. Yeah, we'll have that talk, and I hope The Rev - and the many other people I talk to - will truly hear me.