A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Dr. Colin Turner wrote, “I cannot pretend that this is an academic paper, although at some point it may grow into one.  At the moment it is merely an exercise in thinking aloud, so please bear with me.   In a sense, this paper represents the confluence of two streams of thought.  The first stream, the smaller of the two, concerns the notion of uswatun hasanah or the ‘excellent pattern’, which is an epithet given to both the Prophet Muhammad ( s.a.w. ) and the Prophet Abraham ( a.s. ), in the Qur’an.  The second stream, and the more substantial one, concerns an on-going research interest of mine in the concept of the ‘vital lie’, popularised by Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist who died some forty years ago now and whose main claim to fame is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ‘The Denial of Death’.   Let me start with the first stream of thought, which concerns this notion of uswatun hasanah – the notion of th...