I know I said I was posting these in chronological order from my journals and recollections of friends, emails, but they are a little out of order. I decided it can't really go that way. It's whatever seems the most important thing to say at the time. Sometimes I really don't have much of anything to say.
Sometimes people want to talk about the inability of Keller to pronounce Quran correctly, or whatever. I don't know if it's a "woman thing" but I am more on the effect of Keller on people's minds and hearts. I think that those shortcomings or problems of his should be and will be addressed by a man, the guys who were with him more often and saw that up close.
As I read some of the blogs that were written about the Ktown group, about Keller's effects on people, one thing that surfaced several times was this idea that many of the ex-murids are quitting Islam altogether.
I can tell you that this is true, there are people quitting Islam after their time in the cult. I'm not sure it's as many as some people want you to believe it is, but if it's just one person, isn't that enough? Maybe. Or maybe not.
There was someone, we'll call her Amy, who did quit Islam after being around the group, being married to a murid. I have been able to talk to her a few times about her experiences - which were really awful - and how she came to quit Islam. I asked her point blank, "Did you quit because of the tariq?"
She said that the answer is really yes and no. She had some personal things, some questions of her own, that I guess she felt Islam couldn't answer. However, she did say that really, a lot of the blame is to be laid at the feet of guess who? Hedaya. Besa. Nuh. Why?
Because, she said, they taught me a version of Islam that was ultimately the only way that one could not only follow Islam but live in the entire universe. If you fail to live up to it, then you are a failure - bound for the hellfire, a person of bidah, a worldling. She said, in their world, there is ONE way to be a Muslim, and one way only. I will say, that it is true that no matter what you hear outside, inside of the tariqa, it is believed that if you're not in a tariqa, you are in a serious spiritual and perhaps moral / fiqh failure as a Muslim. For as awful as they could be about non-Muslims, they were just about as nasty about Muslims who don't have tariqa.
I said to her, well when you left (your husband and the tariqa), didn't you want to explore Islam without them looking over your shoulders and find a "different" way to be Muslim?
Yes, she tried that, she told me. But in a way, she said that the tariqa "ruined her" for other understandings of Islam. There is such an exacting focus on how do you arrive at this conclusion and a dismissal, a real demolishing of scholars outside of the traditional sufi understanding of Islam - whether it's Nawawi or Ghazali - that the others look like "kindergartners playing" (her words). In other words, she's saying that the legalistic way that the tariqa forces you to understand Islam, the intellectual rigor involved, makes it nearly impossible to consider other understandings as remotely valid.
And yes, she said, the way she was treated by her husband in the name of the tariqa, by the "big ones", the things she saw, "Yes that had a huge negative impact on the way I viewed Muslims and then Islam. But it was not the only thing."
Amy had other issues that have nothing to do with the tariqa, and made the choice to leave Islam. And other murids, quite a few from what I know, have done so as well. BUT....
not all ex-murids quit Islam. I think it is just a little unfair to say "ex-murid of Keller is an ex-Muslim" or "all of them quit Islam." It is bad enough that Keller insinuates that anyone who leaves him as a shaykh is leaving Islam.
Some of the ex-murids continue on with the same sort of legalistic, more intellectually driven understanding of Islam. Some of them have become very liberal Muslims. I have not heard of any becoming Salafis.
So it seems that you either keep on with the same understanding of Islam, but quit him; or you find different understandings of how to be Muslim, which veer towards much more liberal ways ; or you quit Islam altogether. And I think if you talk to people - the ex-murids - you will find that people have many different reasons.
Because the way you understand Allah, the deen, the world is a fluid thing, it's changing over time. You have your culture, environment, work, health, anything that contributes to how you see yourself and the world around you. I wouldn't blame everything on "She left Keller and now she doesn't wear hijab", even though that might be her primary reason.
But having said all of that, I think that we as Muslims need to seriously, seriously look at why people who leave the tariqa are leaving Islam in such noticeable numbers. If it was one, even two people, you m ight say "well it's them," but when it's so many that even people who don't know anything about Keller associate him with apostasy, it's time to raise questions about what is going on in the tairqa and in Kharabsheh - no matter how much you love him or Besa. You MUST ask, it is your duty towards yourself and other Muslims. In fact, I think it is a duty to Allah and his messenger (saws) to ask "What are you doing to people, teaching them, saying to them that has caused this many people to quit the deen after they've been around you?"
Even if you don't like them, you should ask, because as Muslims, they will share some responsibility for driving people away from Allah and his religion! So as their Muslim brothers, we should be concerned for their souls, because we know that we ourselves would not want that burden hanging over our head. Enjoining the good and forbidding the evil in speech and behavior - he says it has rules because he tells us that people form the past have said so. But that attempt to shut down the common man does not mean that he, his wife, UK, the ablahs, and any of the rest of the people in the tariqa are above scrutiny. Not when it comes to people leaving Islam and risking their akhira.
