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Originally Posted by _salam_ Well, seeing as how I am a revert to Islam I think I should jump in here, so here we go from the begining.
I was born and raised in a Catholic family, not an extremely religious family, but we did go to church every Sunday and on occasion it was more of a part of our lives than other times. My Mother had put me in Religious Education classes, or what you could call "Sunday School", starting at the time I was in grade school and going up through high school. I had gone through all the sacraments up to Confirmation but despite all of this I had never really been a religious person. I always believed in God, and had always believed in what I had been taught about the Bible for the most, but like I said religion was never really a big part of my life.
Around the time I was in high school was when I started to have my doubts about my religion. I can't say there was any one thing that caused me to start having doubts. I think it was that I was learning more about my religion and certain things within it just didn't seem to be right to me. Like the whole story in Genesis, and how when taken literally it completely goes against everything we know today, that just didn't fit with me. In my view I beleived that God was all knowing, so why would God have given us something so ridiculous. I remember being confused about how I viewed God and how the church had explained God to me, it just didn't seem to add up. So after a while I had kind of formed my own personal view of who God was and how God should/would act. However, this wasn't a huge deal for me because like I said earlier religion wasn't something that was on my mind a lot or a real part of my life.
Also around this time I went through some really rough times. I had become very depressed about life, and one of the main things that bothered me was that I couldn't figure out what the meaning of this life was. What was my purpose for being here, what was I suppose to do with my life in order to be happy. Religion didn't seem to answer these questions for me because at this time in my life I had adopted a somewhat Deist view of things. That is I believed that there was a God but that He just stayed out of our affairs and had left everything to run itself. And that religion was meaningless, after all there seemed to be no proof that religion had any truth to it anyway. All the proof, and evidence, and science of today seemed to show all the errors of religion and that the Bible just contained mere stories, and most of them appeared to not be true. After having held this view for a little while my extreme lack of faith in religion and God in general, eventually led to my disbelief in God. I had now, in my later years of high school at about age 18, considered myself an Atheist.
I was still having a lot of very hard times in my life, dealing with depression and still wondering what this life was all for. I thought certain things would give my life meanig and make me happy, and I would offten hope or fantasize about having these things, but even when I attained some of them, things didn't change and in the end I usually fealt worse about life anyway. My whole life at this point was just being with my group of friends that I had and partying and drinking, and that was about it. Now some might say that having friends around you is a good thing and I would agree, however, the group of friends I had were not "good" friends. These people were nice and everything but the truth is that they could have cared less if I was there with them or not, and those aren't good friends to have. I had become your typical American college kid who went and partied as hard as he could on the weekends, and sometimes during the week, and then spent the rest of the week waiting for the weekend to come around again. This was about all the meaning I saw for my life, with the exception of hoping to attain those things I fantasized would make my life better.
I was now into my second semester of college (or what was the second semester of just last school year) and had chosen to take a world relgions class, not because of an interest in religion (cause I didn't have one) but because I thought it would be an easy class. It was about half way through the semester that we started learning about Islam, which I didn't know much of anything about. I mean I knew/had heard, from an old friend I had in high school who was Muslim, some basic things like the 5 pillars and that Muslims believed in Jesus (pbuh), but that was about the extent of my knowledge. Then one day in class, shortly after having started talking about Islam, our teacher had us watch this brief video about Islam. Little did I know, this video was about to change my life, dramatically, forever!
I was sitting there in class somewhat paying attention to the video and somewhat thinking about other things when they recited the begining of surah 96, the very first surah to be revealed to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
"Proclaim! in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created, created man, out of alaaq: Proclaim! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful, He Who taught (the use of) the pen, taught man that which he knew not."
I can't remember what word was used to describe alaaq, but it didn't matter because right after the verse was read, a Sheik (unfortunately I don't remember his name) explained that what the word was refering to was a zygote, and how could a human living 1400 years ago know about such things. This verse immediately grabed my utmost attention, and has not ceased in holding me within it's grasp since then. I was completely dumb founded saying to myself, "How could this be? Science is actually coinciding with, and proving religion?" After class I immediately went home and started doing my own research about Islam online and I was absolutely amazed at what I found. Not only did I find proof supporting this religion, it's view of who God is was exactly the same view that I had come to on my own some time before. It was like I had believed the same things that are taught within Islam all along, with the exception of my brief touch with Atheism.
After doing quite an extensive amount of my own research about Islam I was sure that I wanted to become a Muslim. It happened a short while afterwards when I finally got up the courage to go to one of the local masjids where I was asked by one of the brother's if I wanted to take shahada, and I agreed. Around this time, either shortly before or after I took shahada, I remembered an event that took place a couple of months before when I was in the car driving. I remember I was driving to a friends apartment, most likely for a party or something of the sort, and I was in a very depressed mood at the time. I remember wondering what the purpose of my life was, and I remember being in tears crying out desperately (despite me being an Atheist at the time) "What is the purpose of me being here, why? Oh God, if there is a God, please help me, please give me some sort of answer, please give me a sign!" When I remembered this event I was trully astonished. I was astonished at how after sincerely asking for some sort of help I had recently been guided to Islam. I was astonished at how, what seemed to me to be the first time in my life, my prayers had been answered. I was astonished at how I had asked for some sort of sign and now here it was before my very eyes. And I was astonished at how Allah had bestowed His mercy on me and answered my prayers and guided me to Islam even after all that I had done in my life. My realization of this event really made true certain verses in the Qur'an such as verse 13:11
"For each (such person) there are (angels) in succession, before and behind him: They guard him by command of Allah. Allah does not change a people's lot (or condition) unless they (first) change what is in their hearts. But when Allah willeth a people's punishment, there can be no turning it back, nor will they find, besides Him, any to protect."
Just as a popular hadith says, I had to take that first step towards Allah but once I took that step Allah came running towards me. Whenever I think back on all that has taken place, all I can think to say is;
Alhamdulilah, Alhamdulilah, Alhamdulilah! |