My name is Abdullah DeLancey.  I am Canadian and I am employed as a Patient Service Worker at the local hospital. […] I was a Protestant Christian for all of my life.

My family brought me up in the Pentecostal Church until I was an adult at which time I moved to a fundamental Independent Baptist Church.

As a faithful Christian I was very involved at Church, giving lectures for the Adult Sunday School and other duties.  I was eventually elected as the Deacon of the Church.  I really wanted to further my dedication to God and decided to pursue a career as a Minister.

I was awarded a scholarship to help me start taking a degree in Divinity.  My goal was to be a Pastor of a Church or a Missionary.  […]

I thought it best to look at Christianity critically and ask some very serious questions about my faith.  I questioned the Trinity, why God would need a son, and why the human sacrifice of Jesus, as stated in the Bible, was needed to provide me with forgiveness.

I questioned the Christian belief of how all the righteous people in the Old Testament were “saved” and in heaven if Jesus wasn’t even born yet. […]

Realizing that I had always accepted Christianity, with blind faith for my entire life and never had questioned it, was perplexing to me.  How could I have not realized this before?

I could not find the answers in the Bible.  Once I realized that the Trinity was a myth and that God is powerful enough to “save” someone without the need for help from a son or anyone or anything else.  Things changed.  […]

I left the Church for good and my wife dutifully left with me, as she was having trouble accepting Christianity too.  This was the start of my spiritual journey.  I was now without a religion but believed in a God.

This was a very hard time for me and my family as Christianity was all we had ever known.  I had to search for the truth.  I began studying various religions and found them as false one after another.  Until, I heard about Islam.

Islam!!!  What was that? As far as I could remember, I had never known a Muslim and Islam was not heard or spoken of “as a faith” in my part of Canada.  Unless, of course, it was news stories talking bad about Islam. […]

But then I started to read a little about Islam.  Then, I kept reading a little more.  Then, I read the Quran.  This wonderful revelation of truth changed my life forever.  […]

I discovered the nearest mosque was about 100 miles away from my city.  So I promptly loaded the family van and drove my family to this mosque.  […] I asked myself, was I even allowed in the mosque because I wasn’t an Arab or a Muslim?

However, after arriving at the mosque, I quickly realized I had nothing to fear.  I was greeted by the Imam and the Muslims with a most warm greeting.  I found them very nice.  Nothing like the bad things the news always said about Muslims.

[…] After studying I was in shock.  How could I have been a Christian for so long and never heard the truth? I now believed in Islam.  I knew it and I wanted to convert.

I was put in contact with the small Muslim community in my city.  […]  Just before Friday prayer started and with most of the local Muslim Community present as witness; I testified that “La illaha ill Allah, Muhammadur Rasul Allah” (There is no God but Allah, Muhammad (PBUH&HP) is the Messenger of Allah).  I was now a Muslim.  It was the best day of my life.  I love Islam and have peace now.

Difficult times have come since I became a Muslim.  When people started realizing I was now a Muslim they would shun me or laugh at me, most of our old Christian friends have never talked to us again.  My parents have all but disowned me.

I love being a Muslim and it doesn’t matter if some of my fellow Canadians think of me as odd for becoming a Muslim.  Why? The reason is that I alone, am the one that will have to answer to God after my death. […]

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The Beginning: Early Life Trials of Clinton Sipes

I grew up in a dysfunctional family setting in the atmosphere of alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse that came from my father. […] I began to imitate what I was being exposed to, this process of imitation began unconsciously. […]

[…] I began to hang out with the young adult type who welcomed my willingness to participate with no reservations in anything under the title of alcohol, drugs, crime, violence and racism.  […] After 3 years of this (reform period) I was released.  I was a walking grenade.

[…] At 16, I found myself incarcerated serving a 6 1/2 year sentence in the California Youth Authority for robbery, assault and weapons charges. […] I began correspondence with the KKK, and upon my release on parole, I was a full-fledged card carrying hate-monger.  […]

Search for Peace: Young Adult

With this last violation of parole, at the age of 20, the search for peace began. […] In a haze of anger and rage, I found myself stripped naked in solitary confinement with not even a mattress.  Only me and a styrofoam cup.  I began to review my past and the negatives which brought me to this point of reduction to the lowest terms.

While I was there my daughter was born.  I began to assess my future.  […] I said to myself, “Clint, you must make a choice between this evil or a good future. […] I had become alienated from them.  I began searching for a purity to purge the cancer of hate from inside me.  […].

I became involved with human rights groups and I started my own human rights group.[…] My goal was to reach out to children to help them escape the environmental circumstances that had overwhelmed me once […] but I was still involved in crime. […]

It began upon my arrival to federal prison.  An African American offered to assist me in my cosmetic needs.  He said he was a Muslim, and Muslims are commanded to help those in need.  It struck my interest to check this Islamic thing out.  However, I was under the impression that this was a religion exclusively for African Americans.  I was thinking, no way I can become a Muslim, I’m white!

Still, I asked this brother for some literature on Islam.  I found out about the universality of it, how it transcends color, ethnicity and race.  It sounded real and pure.  It began to appeal to me.  […] I was given a Quran, and as I read the translation, I felt the purity and truth of it.  There was no hocus-pocus, no spookism, no mysticism, just plain, simple understanding of the “Truth.”  When I heard the Adhan (the call to prayer) I felt a closeness to God that penetrated my heart and soul. After some research and study of the Quran, I discovered its total infallibility, no contradictions in it.

There are religions based on believing in certain sciences, multiple deities, the religion of 3 gods in one.  I was a thinking man, and none of them made any logical sense to me.

Here was Islam, based on the belief in One God who created the creation itself out of nothing, and the fact that this book I was reading (Quran) had not one vowel or language changed in over 1400 years was a miracle in itself.  Thus, I was sold on the oneness of God and the unity of Islam.

[…] There is only one God and one Religion, and religion is “Submission” to the one God.  This is the meaning of Islam. […]

After years of falsehood, half-truths, following others on the road, and then, from within a place (prison) where more than one million people are cast away, the same environment that once honed my anger and hate to a razor sharpness was now the place where Islam greeted me and proceeded to change me into a “Servant of [the Source of] Peace.”  […]

The Creator, Originator of the very existence of peace.  There is no peace but the Peace of God (Whom all praise is due).  I have found this Peace, I am now “Abdus Salam,”  the slave and servant of The Originator of the one and only source of Peace...God, The Most High, Whom all praise is due.

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By Clinton Sipes