A time comes in everyone’s life, or at least I hope it comes when they realize that they have to not only believe what they believe in, whatever it may be but get out there and proclaim it to the world. Luckily, that time came early for me. I am 17, and I am a convert to Islam which is the belief that I’m proclaiming.
I was raised Catholic. Not internally as much as externally. I went to Catholic Sunday school, called CCD, but the Catholic view of God never played a major role in my childhood. It was a Sunday thing. Anyhow, I started to enjoy Mass around 7th grade. It made me feel good to do the right thing. I was always a rather moral person, but I never really studied the fundamentals of Catholicism. I just knew that I felt good worshipping my creator. […]
Before I was confirmed in 8th grade, in the fall of 1999, I learned a lot about what Catholicism was. The Catholicism of the Church had a lot on viewing Jesus as God in it. Nothing like my “undivided God being worshipped by me with Jesus as an example” train of thought. It was like they just opened up a can of cold, illogical confusion and tried to feed it to me. It didn’t feel right.
I continued with the Catholic Church and kept on worshipping. But I talked to many in the church about my feelings that Jesus wasn’t God but more of a Prophet, an example. They told me that I had to accept him as God and as a sacrifice, and so on. I just wasn’t buying it. I tried to buy it, but I guess God withhold the sale for my own benefit. There was a better car out there for me. I continued at the church.
Sometime in mid-December of 1999, for no reason that I can recall I started reading up on Islam in encyclopedias. I remember making a list of bolded words in the entry for “Islam” in an old 1964 Grolier World Book that I found in my closet, and studying them.
For some reason I was amazed by this faith and that it was all about God and that it was everything that I believed all my life - right here. Previously, I had accepted that there was no faith like I felt inside of me. But I was amazed that I had found this faith. I found out that “my” faith had a name and millions of other adherents!
Without ever reading a Qur’an or talking to another Muslim, I said shahada (declaring your belief in no god but God) […]. As the months passed, I learned more. I went through many periods of confusion, happiness, doubt, and amazement. Islam took me on an enlightening tour of me, everyone else, and God.
The transition was slow. I was still attending Mass five months into my change of faith. Each time I went, I felt more and more distant from the congregation, but closer and closer to God and the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him.
During Ramadan […], the second time I fasted (the first year, I converted during Ramadan and did not fast), I went to the library during lunch period. It was better than sitting at a table with my friends because I got work done in the library. I swear my grades went up. Anyways, I started talking to the only other Muslim at my school, John. We talked about Islam a little more each day. He’s an awesome brother, and he took me to the mosque on the last Friday of Ramadan.
Going was one of the best things I ever made in my life. God really answered my prayers this time. I thought I would be nervous, but I wasn’t at all. It was the most natural thing I ever did in my life. I felt at home. I realized something before leaving. As I sat there on the floor, praying to God, I realized that the room was full of others, but it was OK.
See, at home when someone asks me what I am doing, I never say I am praying. I never admit it to anyone. It is too awkward. But there, at the masjid, I was praying to God in front of a score of other Muslims, and I felt perfectly fine. Better than fine! I felt secure and safe. It was the most liberating thing since I accepted God into my heart that cold New Year’s Eve almost two years ago.
To be continued…
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My name is Abdullah Al-Kanadi. I was born in Canada. My family, who were Roman Catholics, raised me as a Roman Catholic until I was 12 years old. I have been Muslim for approximately six years, and I would like to share the story as a new muslim with you.
During my childhood I attended a Catholic religious school. […] The more I learned about my religion, the more I questioned it!
At the tender age of twelve, I decided I would be an atheist in order to punish God. […] My teenage years were filled with misery and loneliness. I was accepted in a local technical school and decided that I should further my education and maybe make some good money, so that I would be happy. […]
I would forget my family and be with my friends all the time. One night, I told my parents I was going to move out. They told me, I couldn’t, and that I wasn’t ready for it and that they wouldn’t allow it! I was 17 years old and very headstrong; I swore at my parents and said to them all sorts of evil things, which I still regret to this day. I felt emboldened by my new freedom. […] I was working and going to school when my roommates introduced me to marijuana. […]Soon though, I started to smoke more and more, until during one weekend I had smoked so much, that it was Monday morning and before I knew it, it was time for school. I thought, well, I’ll take one day of school off, and go the next day. […] I never returned to school after that. I finally realized how good I had it. […] Who needed school anyways?
I was living a great life, or so I thought; I became the ‘resident’ bad boy at work. […]I felt worthless and completely valueless. I was stealing from work and from friends to help maintain the ‘chemical haze’. […] I was beginning to crack and I needed a solution, and I figured that religion would help me.
[…] I bought a couple of books on Wicca and Nature Worship, and found that they encouraged the use of natural drugs, so I continued. People would ask me if I believed in God, and we would have the strangest conversations while under the ‘influence’, but I distinctly remember saying that no, in fact I don’t believe in God at all, I believe in many gods as imperfect as me.
Through all this, there was one friend who stuck by me. He was a ‘Born Again’ Christian and was always preaching to me, even though I would mock his faith at every opportunity. He was the only friend I had at the time who didn’t judge me, so when he invited me along to go to a youth weekend camp I decided to go along. I had no expectations. I thought I would have a huge laugh making fun of all the “Bible Thumpers”. […]They played all sorts of music which praised God. I watched as the young and old, male and female cried out for forgiveness and shed tears over everything. I was really moved and I said a silent prayer along the lines of “God, I know I have been a horrible person, please help me, and forgive me and let me start fresh.” I felt a surge of emotion come over me, and I felt tears roll down my cheek. […]
I returned to my party home and eschewed all drugs, intoxicants, and girls. I promptly told my friends how they needed to be Christians so they could be saved. I was shocked that they rejected me. […]
I started to hang out at a Christian “youth house” which was basically a house where teens could go. […] In spite of this, I felt like a fraud, for I started drinking and dating again. […] Through all this, my one Christian friend would try to council me and keep me on the right track.
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My name is Ali. I’m a 3-year-old Mexican born in America or as some would say a Chicano. […]. I think it will Insha’Allah (God willing) help people understand Islam and why it attracted me. People have a wrong perception About Islam and Muslims, what little they know is usually from movies and television which is almost all the time false and not in peace.
My life before was bad I had no direction in life. […] I would hang out in the streets with my friends “partying” getting high, drinking, and selling marijuana, most of my friends were gang members. […]
One day a friend of mine told me that he knew where to get some good marijuana, I agreed to go check it out. We arrived and went inside this apartment. There were a couple of people inside […]. My friend and I bought some and were getting ready to leave when my friend said one of the guys there invited us to his apartment to give him a book.
We left for this guy’s apartment when we got there, he gave my friend a book and asked him to read it, and said that it might help him out with his problems in life. On the way home I asked my friend to show me the book that the guy gave him, it was the Quran (Koran).
I had never in my life heard of The Holy Quran, I began to briefly read some pages, while I was reading I knew that what I was reading was true, it was like a slap in the face, a wake up call. The Quran is so clear and easy to understand. I was really impressed and wanted to know more about Islam and Muslims.
The strangest thing is that I was not looking for a new religion, I used to laugh at people that went to church, and I sometimes said that there was no God. Although deep down I knew there was. I decided to go to the library a couple of days later and check out the Quran. I began to read it and study it, I learned about Prophet Muhammad (PBUH&HP) and the true story of Jesus son of Mary (Peace be upon him). The Quran stressed the fact that God was one and had no partners or a son, this was most interesting to me since I never understood the concept of the trinity. The Quran describes the birth of Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, and his mission. There is also a Surah (Chapter) called Maryam (Mary) and tells her story as well.
As a child I always went to church, my mother was a Seventh Day Adventist and took my sister and me every Saturday. […]
I did months of research on Islam. I bought a Holy Quran at a bookstore and studied about world’s and Islam’s contributions to medicine and science.
[…] After months of study and research I could not deny the truth anymore I had put it off too long, but was still living the life I was before and knew that if I became Muslim I had to give all that up. One day while reading the Quran, I began to cry and fell to my knees and thanked Allah for guiding me to the truth. I found out that there was a mosque by my house so I went one Friday to see how Muslims prayed and conducted their service. I saw that people from all races and colors attended the mosque. […] After going a couple of Fridays I was ready to be a Muslim and say my Shahada (declaration of faith).
I told the Khatib (person giving the lecture) that I wanted to be a Muslim, the following Friday in front of the community I said my Shahada first in Arabic then in English […]
When I finished a brother shouted Takbir! and all the community said “Allah u Akbar (God is great)!” a few times, then all the brothers came and hugged me. I had never received so many hugs in one day, I will never forget that day it was great. I have been Muslim since 1997, I’m at peace with myself and clear in religion, being Muslim has really changed my life for the better thanks to Almighty God. I went back to school to get my High School equivalent and computer repair training.
[…] Alhamdulillah (praise be to God) in December of 2002, I got married in Morocco to a very good Muslim woman.
I think that Islam is the answer for the problems of the youth and society in general. I hope my story Insha’Allah (God willing) will attract more Latinos and people of all races to the light of Islam.
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