Muslim Outreach

by Maryum Jameelah (formerly Margaret Marcus), an American Jew who convert to Islam in the late 1950's.

I trace the beginning of my interest in Islam when as a child of ten , while attending a reformed Jewish "Sunday School" , I became fascinated with the historical relationship between the Jews an the Arabs. From my Jewish textbooks, I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as well as the Jews. I read how centuries later when in medieval Europe, Christian persecution made their lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in Muslim Spain and that it was the magnanimity if this same Arabic-Islamic civilization which stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak of achievement. Totally unaware of the true nature of Zionism, I naively thought that Jews were returning to Palestine to strengthen their close ties of kinship in religion and culture with their Semitic cousins. Together I believed that the Jews and Arabs would cooperate to attain another Golden Age of culture in the Middle East.