I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child, I possessed a keen interest in
\nmusic and was particularly fond of the classical operas and symphonies
\nconsidered high culture in the West.
\nMusic was my favorite subject in school in which I always earned the highest
\ngrades. By sheer chance, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio which so
\nmuch pleased me, that I was determined to hear more.
\nI would not leave my parents in peace until my father finally took me to the Syrian
\nsection in New York City where I bought a stack of Arabic recordings. My parents,
\nrelatives and neighbors thought Arabic and its music dreadfully weird and so
\ndistressing to their ears that whenever I put on my recordings, they demanded
\nthat I close all the doors and windows in my room lest they be disturbed!
\nAfter I embraced Islam in 1961, I used to sit enthralled by the hour at the mosque
\ninNew York, listening to tape-recordings of tilawat chanted by the celebrated
\nEgyptian qari, Abdul Basit.
\nBut on Jumuah salah (Friday Prayers), the Imam did not play the tapes. We had a
\nspecial guest that day. A short, very thin and poorly-dressed black youth, who
\nintroduced himself to us as a student from Zanzibar, recited Surat Ar-Rahman.
\nI traced the beginning of my interest in Islam to the age of ten. While attending a
\nreformed Jewish Sunday school, I became fascinated with the historical
\nrelationship between the Jews and the Arabs.
\nFrom my Jewish textbooks, I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as
\nwell as the Jews. I read how centuries later when, in medieval Europe, Christian
\npersecution made their lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in Muslim
\nSpain; and that it was the magnanimity of this same Arabic Islamic civilization
\nwhich stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak of achievement.
\nTotally unaware of the true nature of Zionism, I naively thought that the Jews
\nwere returning to Palestine to strengthen their close ties of kinship in religion and
\nculture with their Semitic cousins. Together, I believed that the Jews and the
\nArabs would cooperate to attain another Golden Age of culture in the Middle East.
\nDespite my fascination with the study of Jewish history, I was extremely unhappy
\nWith Gals at the Sunday school. At this time I identified myself strongly with the Jewish
\npeople in Europe, then suffering a horrible fate under the Nazis and I was shocked
\nthat none of my fellow classmates nor their parents took their religion seriously.
\nDuring the services at the synagogue, the children used to read comic strips
\nhidden in their prayer books and laugh to scorn at the rituals. The children were
\nso noisy and disorderly that the teachers could not discipline them and found it
\nvery difficult to conduct the classes.
\nAt home, the atmosphere for religious observance was scarcely more congenial.
\nMy elder sister detested the Sunday school so much that my mother literally had
\nto drag her out of bed in the mornings and it never went without the struggle of
\ntears and hot words.
\nFinally, my parents were exhausted and let her quit. On the Jewish High Holy
\nDays, instead of attending synagogue and fasting on Yom Kippur, my sister and I
\nwere taken out of school to attend family picnics and parties in fine restaurants.
\nWhen my sister and I convinced our parents how miserable we both were at the
\nSunday school they joined an agnostic, humanist organization known as the
\nEthical Culture Movement.
\nThe Ethical Culture Movement was founded late in the 19th century by Felix
\nAlder. While studying for rabbinate, Felix Alder grew convinced that devotion to
\nethical values; as relative and man-made, regarding any supernaturalism or
\ntheology as irrelevant, constituted the only religion fit for the modern world.
\nI attended the Ethical Culture Sunday School each week from the age of eleven
\nuntil I graduated at fifteen. Here, I grew into complete accord with the ideas of the
\nmovement and regarded all traditional, organized religions with scorn.
\nWhen I was eighteen years old I became a member of the local Zionist youth
\nmovement known as the Mizrachi Hatzair. But, when I found out what the nature
\nof Zionism was, which made the hostility between Jews and Arabs irreconcilable,
\nI left several months later in disgust.
\nWhen I was twenty and a student at New York University, one of my elective
\ncourses was entitled Judaism in Islam. My professor, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Katsh,
\nthe head of the department of Hebrew Studies there, spared no efforts to convince
\nhis students \u2014 all Jews, many of whom aspired to become rabbis \u2014 that Islam
\nwas derived from Judaism.
\nOur textbook, written by him, took each verse from the Quran, painstakingly
\ntracing it to its allegedly Jewish source. Although his real aim was to prove to his
\nstudents the superiority of Judaism over Islam, he convinced me diametrically of
\nthe opposite.
\nI soon discovered that Zionism was merely a combination of the racist, tribalistic
\naspects of Judaism. Modern secular nationalistic Zionism was further discredited
\nin my eyes when I learned that few, if any, of the leaders of Zionism were
\nobservant Jews and that perhaps nowhere is Orthodox, traditional Judaism
\nregarded with such intense contempt as in Israel.
\nWhen I found nearly all important Jewish leaders in America supporters for
\nZionism, who felt not the slightest twinge of conscience because of the terrible
\ninjustice inflicted upon the Palestinian Arabs, I could no longer consider myself a
\nJew at heart.
\nOne morning in November 1954, Professor Katsh, during his lecture, argued with
\nirrefutable logic that the monotheism taught by Moses (peace be upon him) and
\nthe Divine Laws reveled to him were indispensable as the basis for all higher
\nethical values.
\nIf morals were purely man-made, as the ethical culture and other agnostic and
\natheistic philosophies taught, then they could be changed at will, according to
\nmere whim, convenience or circumstance.
\nThe result would be utter chaos leading to individual and collective ruin. Belief in
\nthe Hereafter, as the Rabbis in the Talmud taught, argued Professor Katsh, was
\nnot mere wishful thinking but a moral necessity.
\nOnly those, he said, who firmly believed that each of us will be summoned by God
\non Judgment Day to render a complete account of our life on earth and rewarded
\nor punished accordingly, will possess the self-discipline to sacrifice transitory
\npleasure and endure hardships and sacrifice to attain lasting good.
\nIt was in Professor Katsh’s class that I met Zenita, the most unusual and
\nfascinating girl I have ever met. The first time I entered Professor Katsh’s class, as
\nI looked around the room for an empty desk in which to sit, I spied two empty
\nseats, on the arm of one, three big beautifully bound volumes of Yusuf Ali’s
\nEnglish translation and commentary of the Holy Quran.
\nI sat down right there, burning with curiosity to find out to whom these volumes
\nbelonged. Just before Rabbi Katsh’s lecture was to begin, a tall, very slim girl with
\npale complexion framed by thick auburn hair, sat next to me. Her appearance was
\nso distinctive, I thought she must be a foreign student from Turkey, Syria or some
\nother Near Eastern country.
\nMost of the other students were young men wearing the black cap of Orthodox
\nJewry, who wanted to become rabbis. The two of us, were the only girls in the
\nclass.
\nAs we were leaving the library late that afternoon, she introduced herself to me.
\nBorn into an Orthodox Jewish family, her parents had migrated to America from
\nRussia only a few years prior to the October Revolution in 1917 to escape
\npersecution.
\nI noted that my new friend spoke English with the precise care of a foreigner. She
\nconfirmed these speculations, telling me that since her family and their friends
\nspeak only Yiddish among themselves, she did not learn any English until after
\nattending public school.
\nShe told me that her name was Zenita Liebermann but recently, in an attempt to
\nAmericanize themselves, her parents had changed their name from “Liebermann”
\nto “Lane.”
\nBesides being thoroughly instructed in Hebrew by her father while growing up
\nand also in school, she said she was now spending all her spare time studying
\nArabic.
\nHowever, with no previous warning, Zenita dropped out of class and although I
\ncontinued to attend all of his lectures to the conclusion of the course, Zenita never
\nreturned.
\nMonths passed and I had almost forgotten about Zenita, when suddenly she called
\nand begged me to meet her at the Metropolitan Museum and go with her to look
\nat the special exhibition of exquisite Arabic calligraphy and ancient illuminated
\nmanuscripts of the Quran.
\nDuring our tour of the museum, Zenita told me how she had embraced Islam with
\ntwo of her Palestinian friends as witnesses.
\nI inquired, “Why did you decide to become a Muslim?” She then told me that she
\nhad left Professor Katsh’s class when she fell ill with a severe kidney infection. Her
\ncondition was so critical, she told me, her mother and father had not expected her
\nto survive.
\n“One afternoon while burning with fever, I reached for my Quran on the table
\nbeside my bed and began to read and while I recited the verses, it touched me so
\ndeeply that I began to weep and then I knew I would recover. As soon as I was
\nstrong enough to leave my bed, I summoned two of my Muslim friends and took
\nthe oath of the “Shahadah” or Confession of Faith.”
\nZenita and I would eat our meals in Syrian restaurants where I acquired a keen
\ntaste for this tasty cooking. When we had money to spend, we would order
\nCouscous, roast lamb with rice or a whole soup plate of delicious little meatballs
\nswimming in gravy scooped up with loaves of unleavened Arabic bread.
\nAnd when we had little to spend, we would eat lentils and rice, Arabic style, or the
\nEgyptian national dish of black broad beans with plenty of garlic and onions
\ncalled “Ful”.
\nWhile Professor Katsh was lecturing thus, I was comparing in my mind what I had
\nread in the Old Testament and the Talmud with what was taught in the Quran and
\nHadith and finding Judaism so defective, I converted to Islam.
\nMy increasing sympathy for Islam and Islamic ideals enraged the other Jews I
\nknew, who regarded me as having betrayed them in the worst possible way. They
\nused to tell me that such a reputation could only result from shame of my
\nancestral heritage and an intense hatred for my people.
\nThey warned me that even if I tried to become a Muslim, I would never be
\naccepted. These fears proved totally unfounded as I have never been stigmatized
\nby any Muslim because of my Jewish origin.
\nAs soon as I became a Muslim myself, I was welcomed most enthusiastically by all
\nthe Muslims as one of them.
\nI did not embrace Islam out of hatred for my ancestral heritage or my people. It
\nwas not a desire so much to reject as to fulfill. To me, it meant a transition from
\nparochial to a dynamic and revolutionary faith.
\nAlthough I wanted to become a Muslim as far back as 1954, my family managed to
\nargue me out of it. I was warned that Islam would complicate my life because it is
\nnot, like Judaism and Christianity, part of the American scene. I was told that
\nIslam would alienate me from my family and isolate me from the community.
\nAt that time my faith was not sufficiently strong to withstand these pressures.
\nPartly, as the result of this inner turmoil, I became so ill that I had to discontinue
\ncollege long before it was time for me to graduate.
\nFor the next two years I remained at home under private medical care, steadily
\ngrowing worse. In desperation from 1957 \u2013 1959, my parents confined me both to
\nprivate and public hospitals where I vowed that if ever I recovered sufficiently to
\nbe discharged, I would embrace Islam.
\nAfter I was allowed to return home, I investigated all the opportunities for
\nmeeting Muslims in New York City . It was my good fortune to meet some of the
\nfinest men and women anyone could ever hope to meet. I also began to write
\narticles for Muslim magazines.
\nWhen I embraced Islam, my parents, relatives and their friends regarded me
\nalmost as a fanatic, because I could think and talk of nothing else. To them,
\nreligion is a purely private concern which at the most perhaps could be cultivated
\nlike an amateur hobby among other hobbies. But as soon as I read the Holy
\nQuran, I knew that Islam was no hobby but life itself!
\nOne evening I was feeling particularly exhausted and sleepless. Mother came into
\nmy room and said she was about to go to the Larchmont Public Library and asked
\nme if there was any book that I wanted.
\nI asked her to look and see if the library had a copy of an English translation of the
\nQuran. Just think, years of passionate interest in the Arabs and reading every
\nbook in the library about them I could lay my hands on but until now, I never
\nthought to see what was in the Quran!
\nMother returned with a copy for me. I was so eager, I literally grabbed it from her
\nhands and read it the whole night. There, I also found all the familiar Bible stories
\nof my childhood.
\nIn my eight years of primary school, four years of secondary school and one year
\nof college; I learned about English grammar and composition, French, Spanish,
\nLatin and Greek in current use, Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, European and
\nAmerican history, elementary science, Biology, music and art \u2014 but I had never
\nlearned anything about God!
\nCan you imagine? I was so ignorant of God that I wrote to my pen-friend, a
\nPakistani lawyer, and confessed to him the reason why I was an atheist, was
\nbecause I couldn’t believe that God was really an old man with a long white beard
\nwho sat up on His throne in Heaven.
\nWhen he asked me where I had learned this outrageous thing, I told him of the
\nreproductions from the Sistine Chapel I had seen in “Life” Magazine of
\nMichelangelo’ s “Creation” and “Original Sin.”
\nI described all the representations of God as an old man with a long white beard
\nand the numerous crucifixions of Christ I had seen with Paula at the Metropolitan
\nMuseum of Art . But in the Holy Quran, I read:
\n(Allah! There is no god but He,-the Living, The Self-subsisting, Eternal. No
\nslumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth.
\nWho is thee can intercede in His presence except as He permiteth? He knoweth
\nwhat (appeareth to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall
\nthey compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth
\nextend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and
\npreserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory).) (Al-Baqarah
\n2:255)
\n(But the Unbelievers, -their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the
\nman parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds
\nit to be nothing: But he finds Allah there, and Allah will pay him his account: and
\nAllah is swift in taking account. Or (the unbelievers’ state) is like the depths of
\ndarkness in a vast deep ocean, overwhelmed with billow topped by billow, topped
\nby (dark) clouds: depth of darkness, one above another: if a man stretches out his
\nhands, he can hardly see it! For any to whom Allah giveth not light, there is no
\nlight!) (An-Nur 24: 39-40)
\nMy first thought when reading the Quran \u2014 this is the only true religion \u2014
\nabsolutely sincere, honest, not allowing cheap compromises or hypocrisy.
\nIn 1959, I spent much of my leisure time reading books about Islam in the New
\nYork Public Library. It was there I discovered four bulky volumes of an English
\ntranslation of Mishkat ul-Masabih.
\nIt was then that I learned that a proper and detailed understanding of the Quran
\nis not possible without some knowledge of the relevant Hadith. For how can the
\nholy text correctly be interpreted except by the Prophet to whom it was revealed?
\nOnce I had studied the Mishkat, I began to accept the Quran as Divine revelation.
\nWhat persuaded me that the Quran must be from God and not composed by
\nMuhammad (peace be upon him) was its satisfying and convincing answers to all
\nthe most important questions of life which I could not find elsewhere.
\nAs a child, I was so mortally afraid of death, particularly the thought of my own
\ndeath, that after nightmares about it, sometimes I would awaken my parents
\ncrying in the middle of the night.
\nWhen I asked them why I had to die and what would happen to me after death, all
\nthey could say was that I had to accept the inevitable; but that was a long way off
\nand because medical science was constantly advancing, perhaps I would live to be
\na hundred years old!
\nMy parents, family, and all our friends rejected as superstition any thought of the
\nHereafter, regarding Judgment Day, reward inParadise or punishment in Hell as
\noutmoded concepts of by-gone ages.
\nIn vain, I searched all the chapters of the Old Testament for any clear and
\nunambiguous concept of the Hereafter. The prophets, patriarchs and sages of the
\nBible all receive their rewards or punishments in this world.
\nTypical is the story of Job (Ayub). God destroyed all his loved-ones, his
\npossessions, and afflicted him with a loathsome disease in order to test his faith.
\nJob plaintively laments to God why He should make a righteous man suffer. At
\nthe end of the story, God restores all his earthly losses but nothing is even
\nmentioned about any possible consequences in the Hereafter.
\nAlthough I did find the Hereafter mentioned in the New Testament, but compared
\nwith that of the Quran, it is vague and ambiguous. I found no answer to the
\nquestion of death in Orthodox Judaism, for the Talmud preaches that even the
\nworst life is better than death.
\nMy parents’ philosophy was that one must avoid contemplating the thought of
\ndeath and just enjoy as best as one can, the pleasures life has to offer at the
\nmoment.
\nAccording to them, the purpose of life is enjoyment and pleasure achieved
\nthrough self-expression of one’s talents, the love of family, the congenial company
\nof friends combined with the comfortable living and indulgence in the variety of
\namusements that affluent America makes available in such abundance.
\nThey deliberately cultivated this superficial approach to life as if it were the
\nguarantee for their continued happiness and good fortune.
\nThrough bitter experience, I discovered that self-indulgence leads only to misery;
\nand that nothing great or even worthwhile is ever accomplished without struggle
\nthrough adversity and self-sacrifice.
\nFrom my earliest childhood, I have always wanted to accomplish important and
\nsignificant things. Above all else, before my death I wanted the assurance that I
\nhad not wasted life in sinful deeds or worthless pursuits.
\nAll my life, I have been intensely serious-minded. I have always detested the
\nfrivolity which is the dominant characteristic of contemporary culture.
\nMy father once disturbed me with his unsettling conviction that there is nothing
\nof permanent value and because of everything in this modern age, we should
\naccept the present trends inevitable and adjust ourselves to them.
\nI, however, was thirsty to attain something that would endure forever. It was from
\nthe Quran where I learned that this aspiration was possible. No good deed for the
\nsake of seeking the pleasure of God is ever wasted or lost. Even if the person
\nconcerned never achieves any worldly recognition, his reward is certain in the
\nHereafter.
\nConversely, the Quran tells us that those who are guided by no moral
\nconsiderations other than expediency or social conformity and crave the freedom
\nto do as they please, no matter how much worldly success and prosperity they
\nattain or how keenly they are able to relish the short span of their earthly life; will
\nbe doomed as the losers on Judgment Day.
\nIslam teaches us that in order to devote our exclusive attention to fulfilling our
\nduties to God and to our fellow-beings, we must abandon all vain and useless
\nactivities which distract us from this end. These teachings of the Quran, made
\neven more explicit by Hadith, were thoroughly compatible with my temperament.
\nAs the years passed, the realization gradually dawned upon me that it was not the
\nArabs who made Islam great but rather Islam had made the Arabs great. Were it
\nnot for the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the Arabs would be an
\nobscure people today. And were it not for the Quran, the Arabic language would
\nbe equally insignificant, if not extinct.
\nThe kinship between Judaism and Islam is even stronger than Islam and
\nChristianity. Both Judaism and Islam share in common the same
\nuncompromising monotheism, the crucial importance of strict obedience to
\nDivine Law as proof of our submission to and love of the Creator, the rejection of
\nthe priesthood, celibacy and monasticism and the striking similarity of the
\nHebrew and Arabic language.
\nIn Judaism, religion is so confused with nationalism, one can scarcely distinguish
\nbetween the two. The name “Judaism” is derived from Judah \u2014 a tribe. A Jew is a
\nmember of the tribe ofJudah.
\nEven the name of this religion connotes no universal spiritual message. A Jew is
\nnot a Jew by virtue of his belief in the unity of God, but merely because he
\nhappened to be born of Jewish parentage. Should he become an outspoken
\natheist, he is no less “Jewish” in the eyes of his fellow Jews.
\nSuch a thorough corruption with nationalism has spiritually impoverished this
\nreligion in all its aspects. God is not the God of all mankind but the God of Israel.
\nThe scriptures are not God’s revelation to the entire human race but primarily a
\nJewish history book.
\nDavid and Solomon (peace be upon them) are not full-fledged prophets of God
\nbut merely Jewish kings.
\nWith the single exception of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement), the
\nholidays and festivals celebrated by Jews, such as Hanukkah, Purim and Pesach,
\nare of far greater national than religious significance.
\nThere is one particular incident which really stands out in my mind when I had
\nthe opportunity to discuss Islam with a Jewish gentleman. Dr. Shoreibah, of the
\nIslamic Center in New York, introduced me to a very special guest.
\nAfter one Jumuah salah, I went into his office to ask him some questions about
\nIslam, but before I could even greet him with “Assalamu Alaikum”; I was
\ncompletely astonished and surprised to see seated before him an ultra-orthodox
\nChassidic Jew, complete with earlocks, broad-brimmed black hat, long black
\nsilken caftan and a full flowing beard.
\nUnder his arm was a copy of the Yiddish newspaper, “The Daily Forward”. He told
\nus that his name was Samuel Kostelwitz and that he worked in New York City as a
\ndiamond cutter.
\nMost of his family, he said, lived in the Chassidic community of Williamsburg in
\nBrooklyn, but he also had many relatives and friends in Israel.
\nBorn in a small Romanian town, he had fled from the Nazi terror with his parents
\nto America, just prior to the outbreak of the second world-war.
\nI asked him what had brought him to the mosque? He told us that he had been
\nstricken with intolerable grief ever since his mother died 5 years ago. He had tried
\nto find solace and consolation for his grief in the synagogue but could not when he
\ndiscovered that many of the Jews, even in the ultra-orthodox community of
\nWilliamsburg, were shameless hypocrites.
\nHis recent trip to Israel had left him more bitterly disillusioned than ever. He was
\nshocked by the irreligiousness he found in Israel and he told us that nearly all the
\nyoung sabras or native-born Israelis are militant atheists.
\nWhen he saw large herds of swine on one of the kibbutzim (collective farms) he
\nvisited, he could only exclaim in horror: “Pigs in a Jewish state! I never thought
\nthat was possible until I came here!
\n“Then, when I witnessed the brutal treatment meted out to innocent Arabs in
\nIsrael, I knew then that there is no difference between the Israelis and the Nazis.
\nNever, never in the name of God, could I justify such terrible crimes!”
\nThen he turned to Dr. Shoreibah and told him that he wanted to become a Muslim
\nbut before he took the irrevocable steps to formal conversion, he needed to have
\nmore knowledge about Islam.
\nHe said that he had purchased from Orientalia Bookshop, some books on Arabic
\ngrammar and was trying to teach himself Arabic. He apologized to us for his
\nbroken English: Yiddish was his native tongue and Hebrew, his second language.
\nAmong themselves, his family and friends spoke only Yiddish. Since his reading
\nknowledge of English was extremely poor, he had no access to good Islamic
\nliterature.
\nHowever, with the aid of an English dictionary, he painfully read “Introduction to
\nIslam” by Muhammad Hamidullah of Paris and praised this as the best book he
\nhad ever read.
\nIn the presence of Dr. Shoreibah, I spent another hour with Mr. Kostelwitz,
\ncomparing the Bible stories of the patriarchs and prophets with their counterparts
\nin the Quran.
\nI pointed out the inconsistencies and interpolations of the Bible, illustrating my
\npoint with Noah’s alleged drunkenness, accusing David of adultery and Solomon
\nof idolatry (Allah forbid) and how the Quran raises all these patriarchs to the
\nstatus of genuine prophets of God and absolves them from all these crimes.
\nI also pointed out why it was Ismail and not Isaac who God commanded Abraham
\nto offer as sacrifice. In the Bible, God tells Abraham: “Take thine son, thine only
\nson whom thou lovest and offer him up to Me as burnt offering.”
\nNow, Ismail was born 13 years before Isaac but the Jewish biblical commentators
\nexplain that away by belittling Ismail’s mother, Hagar, as only a concubine and
\nnot Abraham’s real wife so they say Isaac was the only legitimate son. Islamic
\ntraditions, however, raise Hagar to the status of a full-fledged wife equal in every
\nrespect to Sarah.
\nMr. Kostelwitz expressed his deepest gratitude to me for spending so much time,
\nexplaining those truths to him. To express this gratitude, he insisted on inviting
\nDr. Shoreibah and me to lunch at the Kosher Jewish delicatessen where he always
\ngoes to eat his lunch.
\nMr. Kostelwitz told us that he wished more than anything else to embrace Islam,
\nbut he feared he could not withstand the persecution he would have to face from
\nhis family and friends.
\nI told him to pray to God for help and strength and he promised that he would.
\nWhen he left us, I felt privileged to have spoken with such a gentle and kind
\nperson.
\nIn Islam, my quest for absolute values was satisfied. In Islam, I found all that was
\ntrue, good and beautiful and that which gives meaning and direction to human life
\n(and death); while in other religions, the Truth is deformed, distorted, restricted
\nand fragmentary.
\nIf any one chooses to ask me how I came to know this, I can only reply my
\npersonal life experience was sufficient to convince me. My adherence to the
\nIslamic faith is thus a calm, cool but very intense conviction.
\nI have, I believe, always been a Muslim at heart by temperament, even before I
\nknew there was such a thing as Islam. My conversion was mainly a formality,
\ninvolving no radical change in my heart at all but rather only making official what
\nI had been thinking and yearning for many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child, I possessed a keen interest in music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music was my favorite subject in school in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer chance, I happened to hear Arabic…
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