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Mike LoPrete's Testimony
I guess a little background about myself before I tell my story would be in order. My
name (as per the top of the post) is Mike LoPrete, and I'm a 19 years old college student.
I was born Catholic, raised Christian, and lived in midwestern American, where it is
almost exclusively Christian (pockets of Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, but they are largely
ignored communities around here). Not until I took my own initiative did I learn about
Islam in an unbiased fashion (my mother has said of Egypt that "if you sneeze the
wrong way, they'll throw you in jail" and that based on the current situation in
Pakistan, she concludes that it is a 'God-forsaken' country)...I am at heart both a mystic
and an academic at the same time; on one hand I am intensely curious about the world, and
generally don't accept "I don't know" as an answer, but on the other I do tend
to embrace the mysteries and surprises of this world.
I started learning about Islam about a year and a half ago, nothing too in depth, and I
certainly didn't think I was going to convert. Ironically, I was going through a period of
spiritual renewal; I was agnostic for a few teenage years, and thought that I had
'refound' Christianity, as it were. But all my life, I've had problems with some of the
things about Christianity. I didn't get the idea of the trinity, or of Jesus being all man
and all God at the same time. If Jesus was God, why did he pray to God, and why did he say
'God, why have you forsaken me?' when he was on the cross? It didn't make sense, and it
didn't seem right. I'm a student of religion in my university, and since most of the focus
is on christianity, I have learned a great deal about it, and the deeper I went, the more
problems I had.
And then I started learning about Islam. I met someone online one day (January 14, 1999, I
will always remember that), and she was a Muslim girl my age who just needed someone to
talk to b/c she was going through tough times. As I helped her through, we started
becoming good friends, and started talking about islam as well. She had basically told me
about the 5 pillars, about the quran, how it is similar to Christianity, etc...my academic
flame lit, I had no end to my questions, and she always gave me a straightforward answer
that came from her heart, rather from impersonal dogma other people regurgitated to her. I
took this last summer to study it more, but by june or so I was pretty much drawn in. I
said the shahadda in the beginning of october, I can't remember the day exactly, but by
this time I had already embraced islam.
I'm currently still studying islam, memorizing the prayers and hopefully a sura or two for
Ramadan, beginning to learn Arabic, and reading some of the hadith. It is really a very
exciting time right now, but I still have many worries about whether I will be accepted by
my family (they are all fairly religious Christians, and I haven't told them yet) and
questions that will be answered in time.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read my ramblings,
Mike LoPrete
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