online rihla

me

I left Wisconsin, my birthplace, in the summer of 2001, being at the time the age of 19, with the intention of searching for spiritual meaning in my life.

I set out alone, finding no companion to cheer the way with friendly intercourse, and no party of travellers with whom to associate myself. Swayed by an overmastering impulse within me, and a long-cherished desire to visit those glorious sanctuaries, I resolved to quit all my friends and tear myself away from my home…

…ok, ok, so I didn’t actually leave Wisconsin, but I did log onto the world wide web and began the online spiritual journey that I still find myself on today. Also, I didn’t actually dump all my friends. In fact, I found quite a few new ones along the way (one of whom I eventually married).

Anyways, back to my narrative:

In August 2000, I found myself at a Lutheran University, enrolled in the honors college. Little did good lutheran parents know, but the curriculum taught to smart little freshmen often had a very negative impact on their faith. Throughout the school year, my faith gradually weakened to the point of near shatterable fragility.

In the midst of this all,I signed up to by a counselor at a youth camp I had frequented as a child…a christian youth camp. Freshman year ended, and off I went, faith dangling by a thread. Lots happened, and the little faith I had left in Christianity and the Bible shattered. I found myself on half.com, ordering a number of religious books, including a copy of the Qur’an.

I returned to the lutheran university for my sophmore year and threw myself headlong into the world of online religious content. I explored buddhism, universalism, christianity, the baha’i faith, wicca, assorted brands of paganism, you name it, I probably read about it. I signed onto ICQ and yahoo chatrooms, and met people of a wide variety of faiths.

Along this journey, I found myself sticking more and more to one particular branch in the road - Islam.  In my heart, I knew that there was a single Divine Being, who was meant to be worshipped.  I longed for direction from this Being on how best to know Him.   In the church of my youth, we had hymns, bible readings, sermons, and prayers.  But how did we know that this is what God asked of us? 

In Islam, we have a single Divine Being, known to us by 99 names.  He sent us His word in the Qur’an, and gave us the best example to follow in His Prophet Muhammad (saws).  Worship in Islam is directly from God.  Allah (swt) gave the Prophet (saws) the directive of salat Himself.  Rememberance of God should contantly be on our tongues and in our hearts, every second of every day.

When I listened to the Qur’an being recited, my heart was strangely moved.  It tugged at my heart strings and brought tears to my eyes.  These were the words of God, and I was hearing them as they had been heard for 1400 years.

At a certain point in my study of Islam, and in my conversations with muslims, I knew in my heart that I believed La ilaha il Allah, Muhammadur rasul Allah.  There is nothing worthy of worship except God, and that Muhammad is his final messenger.  Even after accepting Islam, I continued to journey around the muslim ummah online. And alhamdulilah, it grows everyday, so there’s always something new for me to find.

In this humble blog, I hope to document the internet resources that have been helpful to me over these last years as a seeker and then as a believer, and those that I continue to find and use as I seek to become a muminah, inshaAllah ta’ala.

and my blog

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim

In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

In the traditional sense of the word, a rihla is sacred travel in order to gain knowledge. Throughout Islamic history, students and adventurers traveled to the ends of the earth in order to gain knowledge and improve their deen.

On occasion, these travelers left behind journals detailing their adventures. Perhaps the most famous of these chroniclers was Ibn Battuta. His journals available today, online and in print. His Rihla was required reading for my Islamic History class at Madison, and I still have it on my bookshelf today.

Today, people still take these sacred journeys, but now, we have more options. Students of knowledge still travel to sit at the feet of scholars, but rihlas now are also made on television and documented online.

My intention is to one day make a real, physical rihla, inshaAllah. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf of the Zaytuna Institute and many other fabulous teachers have been leading a rihla of mainly american seekers of knowledge to the City of the Beloved, Medina, for a few years now. inshaAllah ta’ala, I hope to join them someday.

For now, however, my rihla will be made from my computer. I hope that this blog will serve as my journal of my journey through the online ummah. SubhanAllah, there are a ton of fantastic resources out there for muslims. I spend plenty of time surfing the web as it is, so why not create something beneficial from it, inshaAllah.