| How I Came to Islam |
| From devoted Christian to devoted Muslim... I was raised in a religious Christian family. At that time, Americans were more religious than they are now—most families went to church every Sunday, for example. My parents were involved in the church community. We often had ministers (Protestant “priests”) in the house. My mother taught in Sunday school, and I helped her. I must have been more religious than other children, although I don’t remember being so. For one birthday, my aunt gave me a Bible, and my sister a doll. Another time, I asked my parents for a prayer book, and I read it daily for many years. When I was in junior high school (middle school), I attended a Bible study program for two years. Up to this point, I had read some parts of the Bible, but had not understood them very well. Now was my chance to learn. Unfortunately, we studied many passages in the Old and New Testament that I found inexplicable, even bizarre. For example, the Bible teaches an idea called Original Sin, which means that humans are all born sinful. I had a baby brother, and I knew that babies were not sinful. The Bible has very strange and disturbing stories about Prophet Abraham and Prophet David, for example. I couldn’t understand how prophets could behave the way the Bible says they did. There were many, many other things that puzzled me about the Bible, but I didn't ask questions. I was afraid to ask—I wanted to me known as a “good girl.” Al-hamdulillah, there was a boy who asked, and kept asking. The most critical matter was the notion of Trinity. I couldn’t get it. How could God have three parts, one of which was human? Having studied Greek and Roman mythology at school, I thought the idea of the Trinity and powerful human saints very similar to the Greek and Roman ideas of having different so-called “gods” that were in charge of different aspects of life. (Astaghfir-Ullah!) The boy who asked, asked many questions about Trinity, received many answers, and was never satisfied. Neither was I. Finally, our teacher, a University of Michigan Professor of Theology, told him to pray for faith. I prayed. When I was in high school, I secretly wanted to be a nun. I was drawn to the pattern of offering devotions at set times of day, of a life devoted entirely to God, and of dressing in a way that declared my religious lifestyle. An obstacle to this ambition, though, was that I wasn’t Catholic. I lived in a midwestern town where Catholics were a distinct, and unpopular minority! Furthermore, my protestant upbringing had instilled in me a distaste for religious statuary, and a healthy disbelief that dead saints had the ability to help me. In college, I continued to think and pray. Students often talk and argue about religion, and I heard many different ideas. Like Yusuf Islam, I studied the Eastern so-called religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. No help there. I met a Muslim from Libya, who told me a little about Islam and the Holy Qur’an. He told me that Islam is the modern, most up-to-date form of revealed religion. Because I thought of Africa and the Middle East as backwards places, I couldn’t see Islam as modern. My family took this Libyan brother to a Christmas church service. The service was breathtakingly beautiful, but at the end, he asked, “Who made up this procedure? Who taught you when to stand and bow and kneel? Who taught you how to pray?” I told him about early Church history, but his question made me angry at first, and later made me think. Had the people who designed the worship service really been qualified to do so? How had they known the form that worship should take? Had they had divine instruction? I knew that I did not believe in many of the teachings of Christianity, but continued to attend church. When the congregation recited pieces I believed to be blasphemous, such as the Nicene Creed, I was silent—I didn’t recite them. I felt almost alien in church, almost a stranger. |