assalaam alaikoum all
long time no write,
I just want to ask if these stories are copyrighted.May I translate some of them in my mother lang and maybe one day press them?
Rabi Mansur;1346884So now I am a new revert..[/QUOTE said:Welcoem to Islam , brother . May Allah bless you always and guide your family members .
I am a little bit apprehensive about this, but thought I would post my story here. It definitely is not one of your average revert stories. This is a condensed version.
First, a little about my religious background. I was born Mormon in a devout family in the Northwest USA. The heart of Mormon country is Utah, and I was born and raised there. If you are familiar with Mormons you will understand my upbringing. It was a pretty conservative lifestyle, and we attended church every Sunday, read the scriptures, etc. When I was out of high school I went on a mission for the church. Young men are expected at age 19 to serve a 2 year mission for the church and try and convert other people. I was sent to Japan for 2 years and actually baptized a few people. A mission can be a very challenging experience as you are expected to read and study the scriptures daily, learn the language, keep the strict mission rules, go door to door seeking converts, etc. Japan is mostly Buddhist but actually atheist IMO so it was a constant challenge for me, less than 1 percent of the population is Christian. By the end of my two years, even though I actually had a hand in converting some people to Mormonism, I began to have doubts about my own religion. Much of Mormonism is based on a prophet (Joseph Smith) who supposedly restored scripture and the true christian church to the earth. I learned enough on my mission from constant study of the bible and other scriptures that it was doubtful that he was actually a true prophet. I also figured out that the leadership of the Mormon church had withheld a lot of negative information about Joseph Smith. This was very disturbing to me and caused me to begin to lose my faith.
Anyway, after serving two years in Japan I came home, went to college, got married and started a family. I tried to keep up appearances that I believed in Mormonism but eventually it just got too difficult. It was just so obvious that the Mormon church started as a fraud that I couldn't keep attending. There was a mountain of evidence I found on the internet that prove it was false. I started to drift away and then I started an intensive study of other religions. I studied the bible in the original languages, considered Judaism, Catholicism, etc. I even spent time studying Hinduism, and about everything else I could. In 2000 I started to read the Quran and actually felt good about Islam. It made a certain amount of sense to me. Then 9/11 happened. I had such a negative reaction to Islam at that point that I stopped studying altogether. I wondered how anyone could consider themselves to be religious and then turn around and commit such evil.
For a few years I drifted. The only thing that made sense to me was science. And I guess you could say I was an agnostic. I didn't really believe in anything. I couldn't say one way or another whether God existed.
Then a few things began to happen to me that were somewhat serendipitous. I met a couple of Muslims who impressed me. I couldn't get them out of my mind. I had a spiritual experience concerning them. I found out I had some Arab ancestors. I had a chance to learn some basic Arabic. Something was coming alive inside of me. I went back and began to study the Quran again and learned that there is a big difference between true Islam and what is portrayed in the media. Muslims are not terrorists. I started posting on Islamicboard and learning more about Islam. It all came together. I slowly felt that something was unfolding inside of me. I just realized one day that I was a Muslim and always had been. I believed in one God. I believed that Muhammad really was a prophet. I loved Jesus and all of the scriptures and didn't have to reject what I knew to be true. It all opened up to me and I just surrendered to it.
I found a site online and did Shahadah on April 9, 2010. I learned how to do Salat. I memorized the opening of the Quran.
So now I am a new revert. But I have to remain somewhat secret from my family. They hate Islam. I am in the middle of a very conservative, Republican region and all of my friends hate Muslims. They don't understand it. I have to practice in secret. I live hundreds of miles from a Masjid. But I am okay. I love my new faith. I love my new life.
:inshallah everything will be okay.
Peace and love.
P.S. The Muslim name I have adopted is Rabi Mansur. Mansur means one helped by God or victorious. I think that is appropriate for what I have been through. Rabi means something like gentle wind, but it is close to my given name so when I put them together it made sense to me.
MashaAllah akheee....... Thank you soo much for sharing with us your story. You have truly inspired us. Please make dua for us too since you're new revert and have less sins than us huhu
I am a little bit apprehensive about this, but thought I would post my story here. It definitely is not one of your average revert stories. This is a condensed version.
First, a little about my religious background. I was born Mormon in a devout family in the Northwest USA. The heart of Mormon country is Utah, and I was born and raised there. If you are familiar with Mormons you will understand my upbringing. It was a pretty conservative lifestyle, and we attended church every Sunday, read the scriptures, etc. When I was out of high school I went on a mission for the church. Young men are expected at age 19 to serve a 2 year mission for the church and try and convert other people. I was sent to Japan for 2 years and actually baptized a few people. A mission can be a very challenging experience as you are expected to read and study the scriptures daily, learn the language, keep the strict mission rules, go door to door seeking converts, etc. Japan is mostly Buddhist but actually atheist IMO so it was a constant challenge for me, less than 1 percent of the population is Christian. By the end of my two years, even though I actually had a hand in converting some people to Mormonism, I began to have doubts about my own religion. Much of Mormonism is based on a prophet (Joseph Smith) who supposedly restored scripture and the true christian church to the earth. I learned enough on my mission from constant study of the bible and other scriptures that it was doubtful that he was actually a true prophet. I also figured out that the leadership of the Mormon church had withheld a lot of negative information about Joseph Smith. This was very disturbing to me and caused me to begin to lose my faith.
Anyway, after serving two years in Japan I came home, went to college, got married and started a family. I tried to keep up appearances that I believed in Mormonism but eventually it just got too difficult. It was just so obvious that the Mormon church started as a fraud that I couldn't keep attending. There was a mountain of evidence I found on the internet that prove it was false. I started to drift away and then I started an intensive study of other religions. I studied the bible in the original languages, considered Judaism, Catholicism, etc. I even spent time studying Hinduism, and about everything else I could. In 2000 I started to read the Quran and actually felt good about Islam. It made a certain amount of sense to me. Then 9/11 happened. I had such a negative reaction to Islam at that point that I stopped studying altogether. I wondered how anyone could consider themselves to be religious and then turn around and commit such evil.
For a few years I drifted. The only thing that made sense to me was science. And I guess you could say I was an agnostic. I didn't really believe in anything. I couldn't say one way or another whether God existed.
Then a few things began to happen to me that were somewhat serendipitous. I met a couple of Muslims who impressed me. I couldn't get them out of my mind. I had a spiritual experience concerning them. I found out I had some Arab ancestors. I had a chance to learn some basic Arabic. Something was coming alive inside of me. I went back and began to study the Quran again and learned that there is a big difference between true Islam and what is portrayed in the media. Muslims are not terrorists. I started posting on Islamicboard and learning more about Islam. It all came together. I slowly felt that something was unfolding inside of me. I just realized one day that I was a Muslim and always had been. I believed in one God. I believed that Muhammad really was a prophet. I loved Jesus and all of the scriptures and didn't have to reject what I knew to be true. It all opened up to me and I just surrendered to it.
I found a site online and did Shahadah on April 9, 2010. I learned how to do Salat. I memorized the opening of the Quran.
So now I am a new revert. But I have to remain somewhat secret from my family. They hate Islam. I am in the middle of a very conservative, Republican region and all of my friends hate Muslims. They don't understand it. I have to practice in secret. I live hundreds of miles from a Masjid. But I am okay. I love my new faith. I love my new life.
:inshallah everything will be okay.
Peace and love.
P.S. The Muslim name I have adopted is Rabi Mansur. Mansur means one helped by God or victorious. I think that is appropriate for what I have been through. Rabi means something like gentle wind, but it is close to my given name so when I put them together it made sense to me.
Just reading these increases my... uh... what's that word... means something like faith. But it feels nice.![]()
Just reading these increases my... uh... what's that word... means something like faith. But it feels nice.
I do have a revert story but it's not very interesting to an outsider. But I'm going to post it anyway because it helps me:
A little background on me. I was born into an unstable family. They weren't bad people but the relations were frayed. They were loving but very negative most of the time, looking on the cloudier side of life, glass was always half empty to them, that kind of thing. My parents were teenagers and split up when I was three. Mum worked a lot after we moved out of my grandparents' house. Being unable to see my dad I can remember broke my heart, I wailed and sobbed for a long time for him. But I was that quiet, non-aggressive type who eventually just gave in to whatever happened, I developed coping mechanisms such as immersion in fantasy, drawing animals, masturbation (yes, as early as five years old) and talking to myself a lot. I was also a very sensitive child in a rough neighbourhood and didn't make any real friends. I also love(d) animals and cried when someone squished a bug.
I never at any point had any concept of God until primary school when a very vague version of Christianity was forced upon is. We were expected to pray and sing hymns. I did it, but my heart wasn't into it. I couldn't grasp what or who this "God" was so I just decided it was another fantasy, one I didn't take any notion to. At that age dragons and dinosaurs were far more interesting to me. That and drawing. By this stage drawing animals was the only real skill I had and it's one I totally focused all my attention on. Fictional worlds were my home, I didn't live in the real world.
Teenage years were more troublesome. Over my early school years I had developed behavioural problems and couldn't adjust to socialising with children my own age. I just did and said a lot of strange things, things that seemed strange to everyone else but perfectly normal to me. So when I entered high school I was in for a wee bit of a shock. Needless to say, in a western public school in a low-income area in a school that's renowned for being really bad, I did not have friends. I could have had friends if I had adjusted, but I couldn't adjust no matter how hard I tried. I was too sensitive and unwilling to hurt people, and in that school being a jerk was the only way to score friends. So I started just being scary. I decided if I wasn't going to have friends I at least wanted to prevent people from picking on me. So I started dressing scary and acting scary and I became very much a typical teenage brat. I liked baggy jeans and baggy tops and lots and lots of baggy things. People steered away from me in the corridors, but I still got picked on. I tried putting on this tough-guy(girl) façade but it didn't work too well. Still, I had a lot of dark twisted thoughts and said some really frightening things that still scare me to this day. I cursed God a lot, I cursed life, I cursed everything good. I was so, so ungrateful. And at the same time still very much (or even more so) out of touch with reality as I was before entering school.
I was very angry at the western system because I couldn't accept that it was the be-all and end-all of life like I was taught it was. My family were a very typical atheist western family and I hated the fact that I just didn't fit in. I had a lot of moral values back then that I didn't share with my family. I frequently judged them (I know I shouldn't have) by what they watched on TV, the way they talked to one another and the way they were much like big children that never grew up (I still think this in some ways, but a lot has changed and they're different now). Same goes for the teachers. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with the system, it just was wrong to me. It lacked morals, lacked humanity, lacked something that felt real. So, as ever, I was further immersed in fantasy but for the first time I was beginning to want to see beyond fantasy and see the reality. I became angry and frustrated that I couldn't see the reality because I didn't know where to look.
There was this one friend I had that didn't abandon me even though my other so-called friends did. After high school we stayed in touch and became the closest friends. What drew me to this person was that he was patient and kind, didn't judge me, gentle, and seemed to think on a much deeper level than most of the other kids. I was much like that too, thinking on much deeper levels and always wondering how others could get on with their lives without touching upon these depths, the tough questions nobody wants to ask. Yeah, that's right, I was a pseudo-philosophical pot-smoking brat after high school, lol. Though, like my friend, I would rather agonize over questions regarding life and reality than sleep easy. That's just the way my brain worked. I guess I kind of knew I was missing something important and there was this urgency to find it...
I was still pretty messed up. I think probably because I was still very socially immature despite my age! I was like an eight-year-old trapped in a seventeen-year-old's body, except I felt I had destroyed my own innocence with drugs and sex and alcohol. So immature, so ungrateful, and so naive.
After getting my thoughts together I decided to follow my friend and explore college courses and try and "make something of myself" as the saying goes. Despite my failure in high school I was still orientated for academia and (not to brag) quite intelligent, teachers had always said how intelligent I was, even ones who hated my guts. So I felt it was my only option. By this point I was still drawing lots and lots but figured "what good am I going to do for the world by drawing animals?" (yeah I was ambitious), and felt going back to school was my only real option. Then my friend told me he was a muslim. I didn't really care to be honest, he was still my best friend, but I really, really didn't care. So I was just like "... okay. So?" He was just relieved that I didn't take it badly so it was all good.
Over time Islam became a topic of conversation with increasing frequency. But rather than moving towards it I was moving away from it, but at the same time I was drawing to it... if that makes any sense? Like something inside me was fighting against it. I was at the stage where I was becoming quite set in what I believed, no God, only nature and only survival of the fittest. I guess that's why my self confidence was so low, I didn't see myself as very "fit". Then about a year or so ago I joined an internet community that was generally about spirituality but it was quite corrupt too. Why? I was desperate. I felt like I was going mad. I needed guidance and I wasn't finding any anywhere. Little voices in my head told me that this CANNOT be all there is to reality. It just COULDN'T BE. I started to remember my childhood again and how I felt and little things were clicking into place. I quit the forum because it was really dodgy and there was some really dark stuff on it, but it gave me an initial boost. It made me feel more receptive to what my best friend said, I began to feel there really was something special to this "Islam". Nothing had made any sense in my whole life but Islam... it made sense. And it was something I could wholeheartedly agree with without ifs or buts. Yet still I denied Allah (subhana wa ta'ala, His mercy is limitless)! By this point I was just getting plain foolish about my rejection...
So recently we visited another city. While we were there we stayed in a mostly ethnic minority area, largely of muslims and hindus (I'd still say muslim dominant). It was like being on a whole other planet. We met some very special brothers and sisters there. They changed my outlook forever. I will never forget the generosity and kindness that these people had for complete strangers such as ourselves! Some of them taking us into their home even. I won't forget the sheer amount of faith that seemed to just radiate off of them like a light. I can't really describe it in any words. It makes me cry just to think about it... trying to avoid crying so close to bed time, I have to sleep after typing this. I read a lot of pamphlets, booklets and books on Islam on the train ride and just after getting home.
Needless to say I took my shahada when I got back home. I couldn't live in denial any longer because I felt that the teachings of Islam and the followers of Islam were more real than anything or anyone I had ever come across. The whole thing was perfection to me, and thus could only have been brought down by a perfect being. Who is more perfect than Allah? Nobody.
(yay I didn't cry this time)
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.