Re: reversion help, finally some people to talk to!
I was raised as a Roman Catholic - most of my immediate family are Catholics.
I drifted away from my faith, when I left home and became a 'Christmas-and-Easter-Christian', then found out about other religions ... only to
return to the Christian faith with a Big Bang! ;D (Sorry, I couldn't resist it!)
The person who has found it hardest to accept my faith is my atheist husband. He
is trying to tolerate it, but I think deep down he finds it very disturbing. :X
And yes, he does the
'If-you-are-a-Christian-you must-be-in-support-of-George-Bush-thing'! Very annoying!!! :heated:
You see, these struggles are just part of our walk with God.
Despite the tensions, the sometimes heated debates, the frustrations with each other our marriage has grown stronger over the years ... and I believe that God is right in the middle of it! :statisfie
When you have time, I would love to hear what exactly drew a young atheist like yourself to Islam.
Peace.
First off, I find it very upsetting that Muslim Soldier has questioned whether I am telling the truth. Just because I have a lot of knowledge about Islam does not mean that I'm not sincere. I wouldn't have come here if I didn't know much, I would have tried to learn more. But I now know enough about my religion's beliefs, I have come here for help with putting my faith into practice.
I felt really upset by that post, and I asked Allah to comfort me, and then I found your post. Again, my prayers were answered.
Well, I would say I was a 'Christmas/Easter atheist, only celebrating because my family do, and because of the presents.
The George Bush thing is probably because the most prominent christians are those who support Bush, just like people think 'all Muslims are terrorists' or 'all converts to Islam become shoe-bombers', just because the most prominent Muslims are terrorists. This generalisation has to stop if we want to live in peace.
Well, like how I refused my first drink, my conversion to Islam started with something that I misunderstood as a miracle, and I made a terrible mistake with my creed, which is too embarassing for me to talk about here (how do I say 'Allah forgive me' in Arabic?). But what kept me in Islam after I rejected my mistakes was actually something in the Bible. It was a prophecy that even now I believe must have been reffering to Makkah (It's not that 'vale of Baca' thing). I found it on wikipedia, but you won't find it there anymore, it's been deleted because of it's lack of neutrality. I found a post in the talk section of the article that said something like 'This is a crazy atempt by Muslims to make it seem like Islam is the true sucessor to Christianity and Judaism. Keep neutral-point-of-view and everything, but I want it to seem like this is false'. This is also partly deleted now. A lot of non-Muslims claim that there is a group of Muslims censoring wikipedia, but it's actually the other way round.
I then read all the pages about Islam on wikipedia that I could understand, but felt I still wanted to know more. But I was really nervous about reading sites outside wikipedia.
After I visited my first Muslim site, I felt more and more secure with my faith. I found answers to all my questions about other religions, I found amazing prophecies in the Books of religions from around the world that must be reffering to Islam, and I found out about the miraculous nature of the Quran itself.
But then I stopped feeling so secure. I noticed that despite loads of people saying that Islam was completely compliant with science, I realised most of the 'scientific miracles' were fake, and some of what people were saying was made using psuedoscientific sites to back it up. I realised that all the people who I had counted on had been lied to, and some of them were liars themselves. I felt really sad, and I often cried at night, but Allah heard my prayers, as he always does.
I miraculously recovered from my dramatic loss of Iman. I started thinking in pure, scientific logic, questioning and evaluating my beliefs. I found explanations for the verses of the Quran I had worries about. I realised that the people who taught me were not liars, they were just making mistakes, or were being lied to themselves. I decided that when I grew up, I would free Islam from psuedoscientists like Harun Yahya, and all the others who mislead the innocent.
Afterwards is pretty much the same as before I lost my faith (and got it back again, alhamdulilah!), just reading the web as much as I can, from Islam Online to Islamic-Awareness, from Muslimconverts to Muttaqun Online. Eventually, when I had learnt enough, I knew I was ready for my proper conversion. The trouble was, I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I was too scared of their reaction to tell my parents, and I was too worried I might offend the Muslim boy in my class by accident if I told him.
After a while of just reading some more, I had a science project about famous scientists. Because I had also been reading about evolution, for my 'war (by words, of couse) on psuedoscience' that I wanted to fight in the future, I decided to do Darwin. One of my friends wrote a one-and-a-half page essay on the life of Darwin, and I wrote a 10-page book on the theory of evolution. In my book, besides other things, I talked about the Muslim theory of evolution from the Islamic golden age that was based on the Quran, in an attempt to show that there was no conflict between Islam and science.
When I finished the book, I printed five copies of it. One to give to my English teacher (it was remarkably long), one to give to my RE teacher (it dealt with religion), one to give to my science teacher (it was my science project), one to keep, and, most importantly, one to give to my Muslim friend. After I had given it to him, we talked about Islam for a bit. He didn't get the hint that I wanted to revert, but afterwards, I felt happy knowing that I had taken some important steps. That night, like I often do, I prayed that I could become a Muslim soon. My prayers were answered, in the form of this site.
Wow! I've just written out all of my life story that I don't write down in my English book!
kay:, jk.
