My Reversion to Islam

I decided for my first post, I would write what would inshaAllah be an uplifter of eman for those who read by sharing the personal story of how I embraced Islam. I wrote this about 2 years ago, and made some minor edits since. Here is my story:My story is really unlike those of most reverts. See, my parents (may Allah guide them) were both born and raised in Iran as essentially non-practicing Shia 'Muslims'. When the violence and fervor surrounding the 1979 Iranian revolution began, my parents were even more turned-off from the deen. All they really knew about Islam was what they saw from the actions of the Muslims in Iran… which unfortunately did not paint a very favorable picture… they knew very little about Islam itself. They moved to America right before the revolution finally materialized; being very irreligious Muslims, they quickly adopted the “religion of the land,” Protestant Christianity, as their own. However, my mother in particular soon became a very very religious Christian… thus, me and my two sisters were also raised up as very religious Christians… Southern Baptists specifically (perhaps among the most fundamentalist brands of Christianity).

Well, growing up, all I would hear from my parents would be horror stories about Islam, Muslims in Iran, and especially the governing “Islamic” Republic. I never thought too much of these stories, but they were certainly ingrained in my head. When I was going to enter high school, my parents decided that I should go to the hometown Catholic school instead of the public school I had been attending all my life. Alhamdulillah, this was the beginning of what would be the most amazing change in my life.

I don't know how much everyone knows about Catholics, but they are much more open-minded and liberal in their understanding of Christianity than perhaps almost all Protestant sects. Being raised in a Southern Baptist church all my life, I had always been told that the Bible, Old Testament and New, is the 100% completely accurate and preserved word of God without any doubt. Even though there was not a shred of evidence to support that the Bible even stayed the same since the time of the Prophets (peace be upon them), to question the preservation of the Bible or its divine nature meant you had serious faith issues. It always came down to…. “brother, you gotta have faith”… Going to the Catholic school was quite a different experience. I had to take four years of Catholic theology, and this was the eye-opening experiene. The teachers there openly admitted that there is no evidence to show that the Bible had been preserved, and even gave proof upon proof showing just how it had to have been changed. I first tried to argue with the teachers, but they had evidence, and I had “ya jus' gotta believe.” It did not take long for me to realize they were right about the Bible… I remained a Protestant Christian, but just with very reasonable views about the authenticity and accuracy of the Bible. I still considered myself a very religious Christian, just not a fundamentalist by any means.

Then came college… alhamdulillah, Allah sent me a second eye-opener. Having lived in small-town South Texas before college, the only people I interacted with were Christians…. going to college changed all that. I met Jews, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, and eventually…. later on…. Muslims too (alhamdulillah). I became really good friends with a certain “agnostic Jew” if you will, and we would often get into deep discussion about God, religion, etc. The new setting I found myself in, combined with a constant bombardment of questions about God led me to realize the fact that I had no proof for believing what I believed. I always knew this in my heart, but for some reason, before college, I was OK with believing in Christianity without having any proof for it… but at that later stage in my life, blind following was no longer acceptable for me. I knew deep in my heart of hearts that there is only One God… “La ilaha illa Allah” (There is none worthy of worship except Allah) was already in my heart; most people (Muslim or not) agree such a belief is human nature… but I had no idea exactly what to believe about this One Almighty Omnipotent God. Christians would say to just have faith, but I found that following them blindly would not be a manifestation of my faith in God, but rather of my faith in those Christians… after all why not have faith in Jews, or Hindus, or Muslims for what to believe about God…. right?

So I became what you could call a “monotheistic agnostic” up through my 2nd year in college. Again I knew there was one God, but I knew nothing more… I always told myself that it is my duty to search for the truth about God, after all He created me… and if I were to ever find that truth, then I should follow it in full submission. What amazes me still to this day in retrospect is that I was already using “submission” to describe my beliefs, but I knew nothing about Islam at that time (save the horror stories from my parents).

All the while, one of my closest friends in my sophomore year was a Sunni Muslim from Nigeria… we never really discussed Islam that much, but he was very devoted to practicing it himself. A little later that year I meet another guy, not a Muslim, but a Qadiani… subhanaAllah, it really amazes me how Allah can guide one to the truth even through the kuffar. When we would speak to each other about God, for some reason, he would always make it very clear to me the differences between his own beliefs and orthodox Islam. He would always talk about the Islam ending with Muhammad (SAWS) and then talk about his so-called messiah (Mirza Ghulam of Qadian). All the same, our conversations sparked an interest in me to actually do my own research about Islam. I first looked up the Qadiani thing and within minutes I was like “this stuff is wack,” but alhamdulillah, that did not keep me from learning about true Islam. I began learning about Islam and a few things just stuck out so vividly and struck me like daylight. The first thing that hit me was the true and pure monotheism of Islam…. I could not find any religion as purely monotheistic in its teachings than Islam… which completely fit with that innate calling in my heart about God's oneness. Then came the fact that Islam meant “submission to God”…. “wow,” I thought, “this is exactly what I have believed in my heart… that we must submit to the One God if we ever learn any truth about Him.” Finally, I started learning about the Qur'an, and I was utterly amazed at the amount of evidences showing that it was 100% preserved to the letter to this day in the exact same form it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (sall Allaahu alayhi wa sallam). Then came its own internal perfection and consistencies…. I already knew of the hundreds of inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, and, for some reason, I expected that all religions, including Islam, should have the same problem… how wrong I was. Let's suffice it to say that the more and more I learned about Islam, the more and more convinced I became that it WAS INDEED the truth from Allah. And all the evidences to back it up, subhanaAllah… since when did religion have evidence? (so, I thought to myself).

By August 2003, I was 100% thoroughly convinced Islam was the truth, yet I was not ready to accept it… for many reasons. Would I have to stop dating, and grow a beard? Wouldn’t everyone think I became a terrorist? I could make a list of excuses if I wanted to… but I always thought to myself that I would get over them by Ramadhan so that I could fast as a Muslim.
Well, sure enough, it was late October, and Ramadhan was a day or two away… I finally said, “OK ,I'm just gonna do it…. I know it's the truth, so why hesitate any longer.” So finally I embraced Islam and became a Muslim (October 2003 / Sha’ban 1424)…. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil'aalameen, Islam is the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life.

Well that's the story of how I was guided to Islam, alhamdulillah. May Allah have mercy on all my Muslim brothers and sisters. Aameen.

Wasalaamu alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh,
Ahmad AlFarsi