A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The following was written by Shaykh Dawud David Rosser Owen ( r.a. ), on the 01 st September 2011.   The famous Tudor dramaturge, Christopher Marlowe, wrote circa 1592 to the prologue of his play, “The Jew of Malta”, “I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance”.   While I do not agree with him about religion, nor the solitariness of the sin, I certainly hold with him that ignorance is sinful.   I do not mean ignorance as in simply not knowing something.   I mean ignorance as refusing to find out.   Indeed, in these days of the easy accessibility of information through the Internet and widespread literacy, I would consider such ignorance not merely to be a sin, but worse – a willful and inexcusable self-indulgence.   And, as it affects Islam and Muslims in the British Isles and even elsewhere in that putative entity “The West”, outrageous and with the wrong people positively d...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ This is the short biography and conversion narrative of our Naqshbandi khalifah , Shaykh David Rosser Owen   ( r.a. ) , also known as Shaykh Daoud.   “I was born in Swansea in South Wales.   My paternal great-grandfather had been a Church of England curate in Northamptonshire but he changed to the Congregationalist Church and became a well-known Minister in the port, marrying the daughter of the harbour master.   My maternal grandfather was an Elder of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Wales, a local church in the west of the city – this was somewhat strange as most of the congregation were Scots from the Islands and West of Scotland who had drifted down the coast and settled for one reason or another and were presumably attracted to the church because of its name.   I grew up in that church, and in my grandfather’s Presbyterian household.   I was always a fairly devout and practicing Christian, but there were ...