This Former MTV Icon Found Inner Peace Through Islam: Her Ramadan 2017 Message
13 July 2017By Akbar Ahmed,
Contributor
Chair of Islamic Studies at American University
“[It’s] a religion for all times and all worlds ... I’m living proof,” says
Kristiane Backer.
BERLIN/LONDON ― In her early 20s, Kristiane Baker was having the time of her
life. She was living her dream as a presenter for MTV Europe, brushing
shoulders with celebrities like Mick Jagger and Bono on a regular basis ― and
getting paid to do it. From the outside, it was everything she had ever hoped
for. But on the inside, she sometimes felt a crushing sense of depression and
anxiety that she couldn’t shake.
And then she met Imran Khan, the famous Pakistani cricketer who through music
would lead her to Islam and a new sense of inner peace.
“He was my introduction to Islam,” she said of Khan. “I like to say I wasn’t
looking, I was found.”
As a German growing up in Hamburg, Backer had always been passionate about the
arts, so when she heard a qawwali, the devotional form of music often
associated with Sufi Islam, during a trip to Pakistan to visit Khan, it was no
surprise that she was intrigued and moved by its beauty. What was different
this time though, was the depth she experienced with every note. Each lyric
seemed connected to a higher form of love that could not be felt between
humans.
Beyond the music, Backer said she was “very much touched by the humanity of
the people, by the hospitality, by the warmth,” in Pakistan. Everyone she came
across, no matter what their financial situation, was willing to donate funds
to Khan’s charity project, a cancer hospital in Lahore.
“We met people who were very poor in the mountains, in the northern areas of
Pakistan, who welcomed us with generosity,” she said. “Men in rags with teeth
missing dropped a few rupees into Imran’s hands ― for the hospital. Women took
off their jewelry and donated it for the hospital.”
Backer was in awe. She was taken aback by the stark difference between the
attitudes she experienced in the entertainment industry life, especially the
superficiality of Western pop music, and the spirituality she witnessed in
Pakistan.
It would be three years before she finally converted to Islam, but the trip
had struck a chord.
Backer began researching about Islam, spending many days with Khan constantly
exposed to his religion and way of life. This, she would later admit, helped
her to spiritually awaken and discover a way of life that she could truly
identify with.
“I read a lot of books, and what I discovered was mind-blowing,” she said. “It
was like a whole new universe. I was intrigued from the first book I read, and
I wanted to know more. I realized … there is one God ... and that we’re
self-responsible for our own deeds and [that] babies are born pure, not as
sinners. ... I also learned how verses from the Quran can help me in my daily
life.”
Backer was inspired by it all.
“I was convinced,” she continued. “I converted because I wanted to bring God
into my life, and I wanted to purify myself to taste the spiritual fruits I
was reading about.”
But just as Backer’s interest in Islam was growing, something in her life
shifted again. Khan, the man she was expected to marry, abruptly ended their
relationship and married another woman.
At that point, Backer no longer had a direct reason to understand Islam. If
she had recoiled against Khan and his religion, it would have been
understandable. Instead, she embraced the faith without skipping a beat and
converted.
Islam provided Backer with the solace and strength to remain dignified
throughout Khan’s instant and very public marriage to another woman. What
began as a journey of discovery prompted by love for a man became a discovery
of eternal love for someone else: God.
It was her newly adopted faith that helped Backer reconcile life in a glitzy
pop icon world ― where she had previously felt unsure of her place ― and find
meaning in European culture. There were no more clouds in her life; the
confusion and inner conflict had lifted.
A Rocky Conversion
Backer, now 51, is one of the most well-known German converts to Islam. But
sadly, her conversion was not well-received by everyone at home.
“When it became known that I am a Muslim, a very negative press campaign
followed,” Backer said. “I was an award-winning TV presenter, a popular icon
over there for over seven years, and suddenly I was accused of being a
supporter of terrorism. The papers suggested I had lost the plot. … Soon
after, I was sacked from all my TV programs and practically lost my
entertainment career in Germany.”
This reaction had surprised Backer, because while she did enjoy an increased
sense of modesty in her Muslim life, she had never associated Islam with the
compulsion to wear burqas or found the stereotype of repression of women in
the religion to ring true in her personal experience.
“The first thing I changed was my sense of dress a little bit,” she said. “I
ditched the miniskirts … I felt more feminine … Who needs those whistles on
the streets?”
“I was working in this industry where the motto was: ‘If you’ve got it flaunt
it,’” she continued. “And now [I was] suddenly learning about the concept of
modesty. You know, how it’s actually more dignified for a woman to cover her
assets and not show them to everybody.”
But others didn’t seem to understand her abrupt identity change. She found the
double standard towards Muslim women confusing.
“It’s fine if you … show your tummy and have a piercing in your tummy and wear
miniskirts, but it’s not fine to wear long clothes and a headscarf? That’s
wrong.”
Her parents also held these unfair perceptions of Islam, and though they loved
her in spite of her conversion, they struggled to move beyond them.
“They had some serious prejudices against Islam and especially Muslim men ―
prejudices that Imran’s way of ending our relationship had only confirmed,”
Backer recalled. “I tried to explain to them that I had discovered the
religion for myself and had made it my own. Imran had merely opened the door
for me … My father even mentioned the word ‘pantheism’ ― in his view, Muslims
wanted to take over the whole world. He eventually asked me to stop talking
about Islam and from then on, the topic became taboo in the house.”
The reactions frustrate her to this day. In Backer’s experience, German
identity is not all that different from Islamic identity, so why should she
have to choose between the two?
“Being German,” she said, “doesn’t mean drinking beer and being nationalistic.
I wholeheartedly believe and know that Islamic values are compatible not only
with German values, [but] with European values generally. Islam is a religion
for all times and all worlds ― and therefore also for Europeans in our day and
age. I’m living proof.”
And the Germans before her were proof as well, Backer said. In embracing Islam
and Eastern culture, she was merely following in the footsteps of Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, Martin Heidegger and Johann Christoph Friedrich von
Schiller ― German thinkers who were influenced by Eastern and Islamic texts,
including those by Persian poets Jalaluddin Rumi and Hafez.
But Backer’s own convictions couldn’t change the perceptions at home, and she
found many German doors closed on her. Realizing that her career in Germany
would be difficult to salvage, she decided to remain in London, where she had
been living and working as a broadcaster since she began presenting on MTV
Europe in 1989.
In England, Backer found a much different reception to her adopted religious
identity. Despite continued Islamophobia across Europe, the United Kingdom had
a more established group of Muslims working across the country. This was
largely due to the fact that a number of Muslims in England had often come to
the country for educational and intellectual pursuits, whereas those entering
Germany historically came as guest workers, she said.
But life as a Muslim here isn’t entirely easy, especially as a convert. There
is a sense of community among Muslims in general, Backer said, which makes the
climate for converts in particular quite lonely.
“We are a minority within the minority. Where do we pray? Which mosque do we
go to, the Pakistani, the Persian or the Turkish mosque?”
Initially, Backer struggled to find her place in the Muslim community in
England. It wasn’t simply not having an ethnic group to latch on to, but also
the fact that she hadn’t made friends and didn’t have family to break her fast
with during Ramadan. Today, Backer rarely feels that her status as a convert
makes her an outsider. She’s found a tiny multicultural mosque near where she
lives, and she regularly breaks fasts with her large group of friends.
For Backer, the backlash she faced as a result of her conversion and her
ability to move beyond that to build interfaith bridges, have only made her
more determined to speak out on issues of Islam in the media. To Backer, it’s
not just about combatting stereotypes head-on, but about showing how her
everyday life is perfectly compatible with European life. And she hopes other
Muslims in the West can continue to change the narrative in a similar way.
“Do your job ― whatever you do ― really well so people admire you,” is the
advice she gives Muslims struggling to assimilate in Western society today.
“Remember [that] whatever you do, … you are not only a servant of God, but
also an ambassador of Islam,” she said.
But Backer knows that Muslims doing good in their own communities can only go
so far, so as a member of the media, she constantly advocates for stronger and
more accurate representations of Muslims in pop culture.
“Nowadays,” she said in light of the disproportional and often Islamophobic
coverage of terrorist acts, Muslims need “to compensate for the news coverage
in other sections of the media, to make documentaries on Muslim culture and
have Muslims characters featured on soap operas.”
This need for a more accurate representation of Islam and Muslims is why she
published a book about her journey to the faith. With From MTV to Mecca: How
Islam Inspired My Life, Backer aspires to show Europeans that outside of the
terror and suppression they see on the news, the majority of Muslims are in
fact normal, wholesome and productive members of their society.
And she has already seen results. In her newfound role as a spokesperson for
Islam in Europe, she’s noticed some attitudes in Germany toward her greatly
improving.
Yet the future of Islam rests on the youth in the community, not her, Backer
said. Young Muslims, she stressed, must teach the world that Islam is a modern
religion and show people that it’s not something backward or incompatible with
the West.
“Islam here in Europe is a little fossilized, and it is up to the young people
to take this forward and to really look into the sources of Islam, study the
religion thoroughly through contemporary and classical scholars. And then
educate not only the mainstream society, but even their own parents, because I
tell you, I’m always so shocked when I hear young Muslims here are losing
their faith.”
Ultimately, Backer said, it’s about making others understand the faith and
closing the empathy gap, like Imran Khan did with her all those years ago in
Pakistan.
“It’s befriending other people; it’s reaching out,” she said. “That is how I
became a Muslim. Because I was touched by the generosity and friendship and
the wonderful manners of the Muslims who I met.”
Her parting advice to Western Muslims, convert and otherwise?: “Never retreat
just in your own Muslim bubble … Mix with mainstream society.”
If professional Muslims in the West “suddenly roll up their prayer mat in
their offices and step away to pray or fast on Ramadan,” colleagues will be
exposed to Islam, she said. “And [this is how they] will understand it better.
”
After all, Backer said: “The beautiful values of Islam and the teaching[s] of
our noble Prophet [Muhammad] are [some] of the best-kept secrets in the West.
... [It’s] time we lift that veil.”
Like Goethe before her, Backer is a bridge between Europe and the Muslim
world. Here is her Eid message:
This Ramadan has been an especially trying month for Muslims. Long
summer days without food or water have been made all the more challenging
given such tragedies as the attack on a mosque in London, the heartbreaking
story of young Nabra in Virginia, who was on her way to the mosque to start
her fast when she was bashed to death with a baseball bat, and the numerous
attacks on innocent civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries
in the Muslim world. The only antidote to the despair brought on by such
suffering and violence is the message of Ramadan ― a message of compassion, of
unity and of spiritual connection to our fellow human beings and to God.
I hope that the stories in this series of Western Muslim converts reveal how
every individual is constantly seeking spiritual fulfillment. In our case,
these individuals have found their spiritual home and solace. I pray that the
readers of this series, in their own way, through their own traditions, also
find the spiritual solace they are seeking.
Although the month of fasting has come to an end, we need more than ever to
keep the message of Ramadan alive. Muslims across the world are marking the
end of this holy month this weekend with the festival of Eid al-Fitr and a
message of “Eid Mubarak.” So to all of you, Muslim and non-Muslim, I wish to
extend these greetings of compassion and unity to you as we end our series.
Eid Mubarak!
This series was produced with the help of Frankie Martin and Patrick
Burnett and edited and assembled by Farah Mohamed and Suzanne Gaber. The four
converts, Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, Tim Winter, Annette Bellaoui and
Kristiane Backer, will also appear in the forthcoming book Journey into
Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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