In faith I remain an idealist--a literalist to some--who takes the words of the Messenger of God to heart. Abu Musa said, "I said, 'Messenger of God, whose Islam is best?' He said, 'The one from whose tongue and hands the Muslims are safe.'" Some Muslims mock this simple faith of mine, placing conditions upon those words, loosening the tongue for those perceived to be heretics. Thus disappointment is a word that frequently returns to my mind as I encounter people of knowledge from whose tongues we are not safe, but such feelings can lead to resolve. Though the road will be long and I must forever fight the laziness that has always accompanied me in life, I am determined now to seek true knowledge. In the meantime this simple faith remains with my literal readings of "speak good or remain silent", "your mother, your mother, your mother", "the one from whose tongue we are safe" and "this brotherhood of yours is one brotherhood." Fortunately I am not alone in walking this path. A stranger once wrote some words that struck a chord with me:

For myself, my journey began on these reflections... though blessed with a family and community of Muslims, something was lacking: the frequent quarrels, petty back talking that I witnessed between Muslims and even at the mosque made it obvious that something was missing and soon I was on a search for something greater, and that was the "Prophetic Character", as I realised that truly that was the foundation of Islam.

He went on:

So my search began to find the scholars who called to God with the display of the Prophetic character, following the footsteps of the noble Prophet (peace be upon him) building solid communities based on firm and pure hearts, who went on to call the masses to the religion with the precious light that emitted from the very inner fibres of their beings.

The journey to reconcile oneself with God is ongoing and continuous, and in my case it is one that has only just begun. Though my knowledge now is little, I already know well the gems of the Prophetic Character in those few words I have learned from their renderings into the English language. This is a journey I must undertake myself, for it is my heart and my soul that seeks redemption after all. I have done the bare minimum for the past five years, but my soul tells me that this is not enough. I do not wish to become a scholar, but merely wish to redeem my soul, to put the confusion behind me and to live as our blessed Prophet taught us to. I want to live a good life and perhaps--if God wills--embody however faintly the true light of Islam.

I came to Islam towards the end of the twentieth century of the Christian Era, over fourteen hundred years after the Prophet's migration to Medina. I came to Islam after the European colonial age which saw the slaughter of Muslim scholars and the Great Powers playing different groups of Muslims off against each other. I came to Islam after the seed of nationalism had grown into a vast but barren tree. I often reflect that those born into practicing Muslim families can at the very least grasp on to the tradition of their parents, seeking refuge in the remains of a living tradition. As converts to Islam we are thrown into the deep sea of confusion, looking this way and that, listening to the competing claims of Muslims here and there. The Scholars are the inheritors of the Prophet we are told, but perpetually we are warned of corrupt scholars, government scholars, wolves in sheep's clothing and pretenders to the throne. We do not have Muslim heritage to look back on and we cannot ask our grandparents about their grandparents.

Over a year ago I found myself harking after the simple faith of the nomad. If I was asked what my aqida was, I would only answer with the Prophet's words when questioned by the Angel Gabriel for the frequent, complex debates on the topic meant nothing to me. I simply prayed, fasted and gave charity, and tried to be kind to those around me. I clung to the jamat wherever I found myself and focused on those actions about which there is no disagreement: the smile which is a charity, control of the tongue, the five prayers and their companions, a few coins to one in need and responding to the one who asks.

I could not do more than this, I felt, because my mind was too small to fathom the pathway to the past as it passed through the era of European Empire and beyond. An Armenian observer is not alone in her scathing attack on the mischief of the British as they encouraged the Armenian uprising whilst the Turks were defending their borders at the start of the twentieth century, for this scene was replicated throughout the colonised lands. Ethnic groups turning on one another, scholars of religion slaughtered and the European Powers promoting one group of Muslims against another; the simple faith of the nomad seemed safer somehow.

As an agnostic over ten years ago I wrote a somewhat irreverent piece about my search for Truth. While I have faith today, testifying that none has the right to be worshipped except God and that Muhammad is His messenger, there remains a mustard seed of truth in that piece. For me it is no longer a question of religion, but of navigating the competing claims of self-appointed spokesmen. Just follow the Qur'an and Sunnah, say some, but it is not so simple. Am I to interpret them myself given my distance in time, space and language from the Prophet and his companions? Everyone agrees that the scholars are the inheritors of the religion and best placed to explain these matters to us, but the most vocal commentators insist on warning us of wolves and pretenders to the throne. In reality we have the ijazzah that can be traced to ijazzah, back through the generations, which remains even in this age, but there remains a grain of truth in that piece of mine from a decade ago:

Question everything, but don't tell anyone. When you're on that journey of yours, never confess that you're completely lost. Just smile, grin, and bear it. It's going to infuriate you, but nobody will understand. In their control rooms, they have their timetables and maps. To them it's obvious, so why can't you see that?

Recently, you were going to church every Sunday, hoping a sermon would cure your questioning mind. And one day, your lucky day, they invite the unsure, the faithless, the agnostic, to stay behind after the service, where they'll explain it to you and make you see the truth. You sit there and wait: you pray they'll make you see, but soon you discover that it's not you who's blind. The preacher arrogantly assumes that you?re just ignorant, that you don't have faith because you're ignorant. Because you didn't read the Bible.

Well, actually, I was reading the Bible, I just didn't see the proof.
And what is the preacher's proof? He says it's obvious. Well, no, it isn't obvious, because you wouldn't be sitting here listening to him if it was. He arrogantly assumes that those without faith simply have no faith because they never tried and never thought about it. He tells you that it's obvious, so obvious that even a four year old could understand. But wait. You're not four years old; the four year old didn't read the Bible, she just sucked on her lolly and never wondered if the sugar would rot her teeth.

Yet there is an antidote: I have long noticed how love for the Prophet permeates the actions of those who sit and learn and who immerse themselves in learning. Noting how distant I am from that example, I found that their love inspired me to learn, for I have the faith of the nomad, but I want so much more. Taking stock of the longing of my heart, I once came across some more words that resonated with me. It was an article in which the author had written about what traditional Islam meant to him. Part of that description included this sentiment: "?It is the Islam of the quaint villages..."

It reverberated in my mind because for weeks I had been thinking of a faraway place I passed through the previous summer. It also touched me because there is a part of me which does not sit well with the modern age. Throughout my teenage years I was something of an eccentric. While my friends were interested in mountain bikes, football, Nintendo and Baywatch, I was a dreamer. I yearned after a romantic past, of a wood-framed house surrounded by the cottage garden, of self-sufficiency, spring-fed waters, of the homestead farm. I would sketch out my rough architectural diagrams of my self-build Tudor house. My favourite book as a child was Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy: I imagined I was Almanzo and I dreamed of living my life as he had all those years ago. Later--and this led to my eventual arrival as a student of development studies--my attention turned to sub-Saharan Africa. An article about life in Burkina Faso offered me unimaginable inspiration.

With the wisdom of age I now realise that all those dreams were indeed for a romantic past. The reality of life is that it is hard: inoculated from birth against mumps and rubella, and against tetanus, living in an age protected from TB, and able to access an education from the age of five to twenty-one, we forget the realities of existence in different times and different places. Still, that was my dream and an element of it remains with me even today. Something was bothering my heart and that article gave me an inkling of what it was: a kind of discomfort with the age we are living in.

One summer I spent two weeks up in the highlands of eastern Turkey with my mother-in-law, up above the clouds. My wife's family originate in Hopa on the Black Sea, close to the border with Georgia in Artvin province. Every year, to escape the summer heat, my mother-in-law packs up her possessions like the nomads of old and ascends the mountains for the refuge of that usually cooler air. Life up there is quite primitive: the houses are simple stone-walled structures without cement, covered with the tarpaulin these travellers bring with them. The evening meal is prepared on wood burning stoves, which in turn warms the shelter as the cold evening draws in.

That August my wife and I began the journey in the early morning one Friday, looking forward to our reunion with her mother after such a long time. There is a vast dam building project underway in the valley between our village just inland from Hopa and Artvin, so we had to leave at first light so we could travel while the road along the bottom of the valley was still open. We travelled inland rising steadily higher and higher into the mountains. At around eleven in the morning we stopped in Ardanuc to get some vegetables and have a rest, but not for too long. Soon we were winding up a dirt track through a beautiful landscape which reminded me of my holidays in Switzerland as a child. It was a steep landscape of meadows, streams and log chalets. It was a landscape that almost made me cry tears of joy. We were heading for a Yayla about two hours short of Ardahan, but I could have stopped just there, so magnificent was the scenery.

We continued onwards however until we came to a camping ground on the side of a valley, where we stopped for lunch. There was a shack on the edge in which a group of men were preparing to barbeque cubes of lamb meat. I sat down on a bench with the lady-folk close to an ice-cold spring, for we had just discovered that the men were chilling bottles of Turkish spirits beneath the bubbling surface. After lunch, leaving my male travelling companions to their Reki and the ladies to their conversation, I caught a lift with an old Muslim man back to the mosque for the Friday prayer. I speak very little Turkish, but that ride was an immense blessing: we exchanged salams and I watched as those I had left behind appeared as dots across the valley.

It was this trip to the mosque that had been in my thoughts for those past many weeks, which made those words strike such a chord with me. I should think that mosque had never seen an English Muslim enter its doors before in all its ancient history. We parked our car just off the road, because the mosque could only be reached on foot. Together, communicating with one another only by hand gestures and that brotherly fondness in our hearts, we walked up the hill through that village that seemed to be caught in a time warp. There was a water-trough fed by a stream out in front of the mosque--what a beautiful sight--but what touched my heart was the sight in the small garden in front of that place of prayer. All of the men were gathered in a circle, awaiting the call to prayer, expressing such affection for one another, conversing with kind words. We exchanged salams, but I did not join them, entering the mosque instead with my old companion. That building seemed centuries old inside. It was dark, and yet it seemed light. The walls were stone, not decorated like those fine mosques of Istanbul. There were some pieces of calligraphy high up on the walls and old worn out rugs on the floor. There was a spirit in that mosque which warmed my soul. This was the place that occupied my thoughts.

The tale of the remainder of my journey up into the mountains is for another time. This story is about that place in my heart. It is not a geographical space, but an emotional place. That place that the author described: "It is the Islam of the quaint villages..." Yes, this is the yearning of my heart. That place of true brotherhood outside the mosque, that place of a simplicity that does not care for our modern-day obsessions with labels and debates. That place where God is remembered, where life stops for the prayer, where brothers respect one another and welcome the stranger passing through. That place of beauty.