Introduction and Conversion Story

[al-Muwahid]

:statisfie السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته


I just signed up to this forum and to start out I'd like to share my conversion story to Deen al-Islaam. Well, I was born into a slightly awkard religious environment - my father was a typical American conservative Christian while my mother was a Roman Catholic coming from an ethnic Filipino-Italian background. My mother was extremely liberal in her religiosity whereas my father was an outspoken fundamentalist who would often quarrel with her and the rest of the family about this subject. Long story short, I ended up being Baptized as a Catholic and grew up going to weekly church with my mom along with traditional Catholic CCD classes. I never was very devout, and I didn't really understand that much about Christianity in general. My father attempted to sit me down frequently and teach me about Christianity out of a children's Bible. I never paid attention and none of this ever stuck - I just wanted my free time.

All my life I had believed in this entity called "God" but I never understood the Christian view of Jesus and I never called myself a Christian. When asked my religion, I would say I was a Catholic, but I had no commitment to those beliefs. My mother taught me to say the famous "Our Father" prayer every night before I went to bed but that was about it.

When I got older, all of this soon began to change. My best friend growing up was a Christian with similar leanings to my father, and he began trying to preach to me about his beliefs and convert me. This is what began my interest in religion. The only problem was that the entire concept of Jesus just didn't make any sense to me. Was he God or the son of God? I didn't know.

One day when I was sitting in a World Geography class, we began a chapter on the middle east, and we had to memorize the country's names in the gulf region. Along with this chapter, we learned about culture and religion. My teacher, a Christian, gave us some very brief notes about Islam and told us to review for the next day's quiz. Well, I don't normally study anything, but for some reason I became intrigued by the notes on Islam. I had many misconceptions, and I was attracted to the pure monotheism and the 5 daily prayers. It seemed like these people were very devout and something about that agreed with me deeply.

I went onto YouTube and searched for "5 Pillars of Islam" and I came across a very informative children's cartoon directed at Muslim youth. I absolutely fell in love with the religion after that video, and I continued to research more on my own after that. I was very worried that my father would find the history on my computer because he had a strong bias against Muslims. Once I remember him wanting to buy some Iraq War video game so he could "Kill Muslims." It certainly worried me what he would think about my interest.

I would watch street Dawah videos and absorb Islamic content during all of my free time. I was hooked. Somewhere down the line I landed on a video entitled "How to become Muslim Easy" and it explained in detail how to say the Shahada. I didn't consider myself a Muslim yet but I continued to research. Around that time is when I taught myself the Arabic alphabet and began teaching myself some phrases. I downloaded a Qur'an onto my phone and began reading from it daily. Eventually I learned the Salah in English from Wikihow and experimented with doing that.

I ended up changing my Facebook religion to "Islam" and sharing Dawah content from Islamic pages. All of my family on there freaked out and I quickly removed it all and changed it back to "Catholic." That moment was very anti-motivational.

That summer is when my parents' differences came to a climax and they divorced. My best friend from earlier convinced me that Islam was wrong and I started going to church with him. I went through some difficult times during this period and something just didn't feel right. I went with the flow of things anyway. The people at the church would make fun of me and joke about me being a 'suicide bomber' because I knew Arabic. At that point, I knew there was a problem. I began distancing myself from Christianity as a whole, and stopped attending church with my friend.

I finally realized that Islam is the truth, and I just let everything go. I was a Muslim. I then memorized al-Faatiha and began reciting the full 5 prayers in Arabic. On August 11th, 2014 the most relieving moment of my life took place and I dialed up a Muslim hotline called WhyIslam and took my Shahada over the phone with the operator. May Allah guide and reward that Sister. After hanging up the phone, I cried (which I never do) and I immediately made Sajdat ash-Shukr. It was like a heavy weight being lifted from my shoulders. I was free at last. And I quit caring what people thought.

I know this was long, but I just wanted to get my story out there. Thanks for reading if you made this far.

[greenhill]

Welcome to the forum.

Wishing you a great stay.


:peace:

[sister herb]

Salam alaykum

Welcome to forum and thanks for your conversion story. As I remember when I said my shahada 20 years ago, this was just the same feeling I got:

It was like a heavy weight being lifted from my shoulders. I was free at last. And I quit caring what people thought.

:D

[Muhammad]

:wasalamex

Welcome to the forum, brother. I enjoyed reading your conversion story, it was an inspirational read, :ma:. Often people mention meeting Muslims or starting to attend classes to learn basics. Most of your research seems to have been self-led, of course with guidance from Allaah :swt:. When you would read Qur'an, was it a translation?

May Allaah :swt: keep you and all of us steadfast, Aameen.

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[al-Muwahid]

The first time I read the Qur'an it was an English translation that I downloaded on my phone. I also bought a paperback English-only translation from the local book store; however, that wasn't a very good translation and it seemed like it was trying to imitate the King James Bible. As I started teaching myself Arabic I bought one of my favorite Qur'ans, this one I still read today. It's the Abdullah Yusuf 'Ali translation with Arabic and English side-by-side. This is the one that I used when I first memorized Faatiha in Arabic. Nowadays I read an Arabic-only Masjid al-Aqsa Mushaf that's pocket-sized and I can take with me anywhere I go.

[Lady A]

:wasalam:

That was a great and inspirational story! Many can relate to the struggles you had gone through. Some have it easy while others have it hard. In 10 days you will mark the one year anniversary of converting to Islam and being Muslim!! How exciting!