My conversion to Islam began in my eighth grade year. There was a Muslim student by the name of Raphael who first told me a little about Islam. At the time he was not so knowledgeable about Islam, but he put the initial interest in my mind which never went away.

In the ninth grade there was another student by the name of Leonard who claimed at one time or another that he was a Muslim but he was more or less a 5 percenter. The one thing he did do was to give me a pamphlet on true Islam which increased my interest in Islam. I didn't hear much more about Islam until my tenth grade year.

That year me and Leonard would sit in the back of geometry class and blame all of the world's problems on white people while we would exalt the status of black people above all other races. At that time in my life I thought that Islam was the religion for black people, but unfortunately the Islam I was talking about was nothing more than black nationalism with a slight touch of true Islam. It was very similar to The Nation of Islam. As time went on I began to see that my black nationalist views and my perception of what Islam was about became tired. It was useless to hate almost all white people and to blame this on Islam. Around the same time I totally denounced Christianity as my religion. I got tired of the unintelligible doctrines and the many contradictions within the religion.

The next year of high school I was conversing with a few students about religion and they told me to buy a Qu'ran so I did. I went to the nearest bookstore and bought a very poor translation of the Qu'ran but it was the first real look into the truth about Islam. Within a few weeks I took on the beliefs of a Muslim even though I hadn't taken shahadah yet. Most of what I was doing concerning Islam was wrong because I never had a chance to go to a masjid because my mother totally forbade it. As time went on I finally got an Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation of the Qu'ran which opened my eyes to so much about Islam.

In the meantime my mother was doing everything in her power to prevent me from embracing Islam. She took me to see her preacher three times which was of no avail. As time passed I began to learn more and more about Islam from various books I could get my hands on. I finally learned how to make salat correctly from one of these books. My mother was still trying her best to make me become a Christian again.

My mother and I would frequently argue about religion until one day my mother had enough and told my dad that I was going to have to live with him. He had absolutely no problem with this. The day after I graduated from high school I moved in with my dad. I can see now that my parent's divorce was actually a blessing in disguise. Their divorce provided me with a place to live in which I could practice Islam freely. My dad had no problem with my interest in Islam.

One day I called the Islamic Learning Center in Fayetteville and a brother by the name of Mustafa told me to come down for the Taleem (lesson) to learn more about Islam. Everybody was extremely hospitable and Mustafa even gave me a ride home. After three weeks of going to Jumuah (Friday congregational prayers) and Taleem I finally took my Shahadah on July 2,1995. Ever since then I have been an active member of the Islamic community. I am also very pleased to say that Raphael (the person who gave me my initial in interest in Islam) got back to Islam seriously and took shahadah a few months before I did. We still keep in touch even though he is in England.

October 28, 1996

A CHRISTIAN MINISTER�S CONVERSION TO ISLAM

� 2002 (Abu Yahya) Jerald F. Dirks, M.Div., Psy.D.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of hearing the church bell toll for Sunday morning worship in the small, rural town in which I was raised.  The Methodist Church was an old, wooden structure with a bell tower, two children�s Sunday School classrooms cubbyholed behind folding, wooden doors to separate it from the sanctuary, and a choir loft that housed the Sunday school classrooms for the older children.  It stood less than two blocks from my home.  As the bell rang, we would come together as a family, and make our weekly pilgrimage to the church.

In that rural setting from the 1950s, the three churches in the town of about 500 were the center of community life.  The local Methodist Church, to which my family belonged, sponsored ice cream socials with hand-cranked, homemade ice cream, chicken potpie dinners, and corn roasts.  My family and I were always involved in all three, but each came only once a year.  In addition, there was a two-week community Bible school every June, and I was a regular attendee through my eighth grade year in school.  However, Sunday morning worship and Sunday school were weekly events, and I strove to keep extending my collection of perfect attendance pins and of awards for memorizing Bible verses.

By my junior high school days, the local Methodist Church had closed, and we were attending the Methodist Church in the neighboring town, which was only slightly larger than the town in which I lived.  There, my thoughts first began to focus on the ministry as a personal calling.  I became active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and eventually served as both a district and a conference officer.  I also became the regular �preacher� during the annual Youth Sunday service.  My preaching began to draw community-wide attention, and before long I was occasionally filling pulpits at other churches, at a nursing home, and at various church-affiliated youth and ladies groups, where I typically set attendance records.

By age 17, when I began my freshman year at Harvard College, my decision to enter the ministry had solidified.  During my freshman year, I enrolled in a two-semester course in comparative religion, which was taught by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, whose specific area of expertise was Islam.  During that course, I gave far less attention to Islam, than I did to other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as the latter two seemed so much more esoteric and strange to me.  In contrast, Islam appeared to be somewhat similar to my own Christianity.  As such, I didn�t concentrate on it as much as I probably should have, although I can remember writing a term paper for the course on the concept of revelation in the Qur�an.  Nonetheless, as the course was one of rigorous academic standards and demands, I did acquire a small library of about a half dozen books on Islam, all of which were written by non-Muslims, and all of which were to serve me in good stead 25 years later.  I also acquired two different English translations of the meaning of the Qur�an, which I read at the time.

That spring, Harvard named me a Hollis Scholar, signifying that I was one of the top pre-theology students in the college.  The summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Harvard, I worked as a youth minister at a fairly large United Methodist Church.  The following summer, I obtained my License to Preach from the United Methodist Church.  Upon graduating from Harvard College in 1971, I enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School, and there obtained my Master of Divinity degree in 1974, having been previously ordained into the Deaconate of the United Methodist Church in 1972, and having previously received a Stewart Scholarship from the United Methodist Church as a supplement to my Harvard Divinity School scholarships.  During my seminary education, I also completed a two-year externship program as a hospital chaplain at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.  Following graduation from Harvard Divinity School, I spent the summer as the minister of two United Methodist churches in rural Kansas, where attendance soared to heights not seen in those churches for several years.

Seen from the outside, I was a very promising young minister, who had received an excellent education, drew large crowds to the Sunday morning worship service, and had been successful at every stop along the ministerial path.  However, seen from the inside, I was fighting a constant war to maintain my personal integrity in the face of my ministerial responsibilities.  This war was far removed from the ones presumably fought by some later televangelists in unsuccessfully trying to maintain personal sexual morality.  Likewise, it was a far different war than those fought by the headline-grabbing pedophilic priests of the current moment.   However, my struggle to maintain personal integrity may be the most common one encountered by the better-educated members of the ministry.

There is some irony in the fact that the supposedly best, brightest, and most idealistic of ministers-to-be are selected for the very best of seminary education, e.g. that offered at that time at the Harvard Divinity School.  The irony is that, given such an education, the seminarian is exposed to as much of the actual historical truth as is known about :  1) the formation of the early, �mainstream� church, and how it was shaped by geopolitical considerations; 2) the �original� reading of various Biblical texts, many of which are in sharp contrast to what most Christians read when they pick up their Bible, although gradually some of this information is being incorporated into newer and better translations; 3) the evolution of such concepts as a triune godhead and the �sonship� of Jesus, peace be upon him; 4) the non-religious considerations that underlie many Christian creeds and doctrines; 5) the existence of those early churches and Christian movements which never accepted the concept of a triune godhead, and which never accepted the concept of the divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him; and 6) etc.  (Some of these fruits of my seminary education are recounted in more detail in my recent book, The Cross and the Crescent:  An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity and Islam, Amana Publications, 2001.)

As such, it is no real wonder that almost a majority of such seminary graduates leave seminary, not to �fill pulpits�, where they would be asked to preach that which they know is not true, but to enter the various counseling professions.  Such was also the case for me, as I went on to earn a master�s and doctorate in clinical psychology.  I continued to call myself a Christian, because that was a needed bit of self-identity, and because I was, after all, an ordained minister, even though my full time job was as a mental health professional.  However, my seminary education had taken care of any belief I might have had regarding a triune godhead or the divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him.  (Polls regularly reveal that ministers are less likely to believe these and other dogmas of the church than are the laity they serve, with ministers more likely to understand such terms as �son of God� metaphorically, while their parishioners understand it literally.)  I thus became a �Christmas and Easter Christian�, attending church very sporadically, and then gritting my teeth and biting my tongue as I listened to sermons espousing that which I knew was not the case.

None of the above should be taken to imply that I was any less religious or spiritually oriented than I had once been.  I prayed regularly, my belief in a supreme deity remained solid and secure, and I conducted my personal life in line with the ethics I had once been taught in church and Sunday school.  I simply knew better than to buy into the man-made dogmas and articles of faith of the organized church, which were so heavily laden with the pagan influences, polytheistic notions, and geo-political considerations of a bygone era.

As the years passed by, I became increasingly concerned about the loss of religiousness in American society at large.  Religiousness is a living, breathing spirituality and morality within individuals, and should not be confused with religiosity, which is concerned with the rites, rituals, and formalized creeds of some organized entity, e.g. the church.  American culture increasingly appeared to have lost its moral and religious compass.  Two out of every three marriages ended in divorce; violence was becoming an increasingly inherent part of our schools and our roads; self-responsibility was on the wane; self-discipline was being submerged by a �if it feels good, do it� morality; various Christian leaders and institutions were being swamped by sexual and financial scandals; and emotions justified behavior, however odious it might be.  American culture was becoming a morally bankrupt institution, and I was feeling quite alone in my personal religious vigil.

It was at this juncture that I began to come into contact with the local Muslim community.  For some years before, my wife and I had been actively involved in doing research on the history of the Arabian horse.  Eventually, in order to secure translations of various Arabic documents, this research brought us into contact with Arab Americans who happened to be Muslims.  Our first such contact was with Jamal in the summer of 1991.

After an initial telephone conversation, Jamal visited our home, and offered to do some translations for us, and to help guide us through the history of the Arabian horse in the Middle East.  Before Jamal left that afternoon, he asked if he might:  use our bathroom to wash before saying his scheduled prayers; and borrow a piece of newspaper to use as a prayer rug, so he could say his scheduled prayers before leaving our house.  We, of course, obliged, but wondered if there was something more appropriate that we could give him to use than a newspaper.  Without our ever realizing it at the time, Jamal was practicing a very beautiful form of Dawa (preaching or exhortation).  He made no comment about the fact that we were not Muslims, and he didn�t preach anything to us about his religious beliefs.  He �merely� presented us with his example, an example that spoke volumes, if one were willing to be receptive to the lesson.

Over the next 16 months, contact with Jamal slowly increased in frequency, until it was occurring on a biweekly to weekly basis.  During these visits, Jamal never preached to me about Islam, never questioned me about my own religious beliefs or convictions, and never verbally suggested that I become a Muslim.  However, I was beginning to learn a lot.  First, there was the constant behavioral example of Jamal observing his scheduled prayers.  Second, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal conducted his daily life in a highly moral and ethical manner, both in his business world and in his social world.  Third, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal interacted with his two children.  For my wife, Jamal�s wife provided a similar example.  Fourth, always within the framework of helping me to understand Arabian horse history in the Middle East, Jamal began to share with me:  1) stories from Arab and Islamic history; 2) sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him; and 3) Qur�anic verses and their contextual meaning.  In point of fact, our every visit now included at least a 30 minute conversation centered on some aspect of Islam, but always presented in terms of helping me intellectually understand the Islamic context of Arabian horse history.  I was never told �this is the way things are�, I was merely told �this is what Muslims typically believe�.  Since I wasn�t being �preached to�, and since Jamal never inquired as to my own beliefs, I didn�t need to bother attempting to justify my own position.  It was all handled as an intellectual exercise, not as proselytizing.

Gradually, Jamal began to introduce us to other Arab families in the local Muslim community.  There was Wa�el and his family, Khalid and his family, and a few others.  Consistently, I observed individuals and families who were living their lives on a much higher ethical plane than the American society in which we were all embedded.  Maybe there was something to the practice of Islam that I had missed during my collegiate and seminary days.

By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself some serious questions about where I was and what I was doing.  These questions were prompted by the following considerations.  1) Over the course of the prior 16 months, our social life had become increasingly centered on the Arab component of the local Muslim community.  By December, probably 75% of our social life was being spent with Arab Muslims.  2) By virtue of my seminary training and education, I knew how badly the Bible had been corrupted (and often knew exactly when, where, and why), I had no belief in any triune godhead, and I had no belief in anything more than a metaphorical �sonship� of Jesus, peace be upon him.  In short, while I certainly believed in God, I was as strict a monotheist as my Muslim friends.  3) My personal values and sense of morality were much more in keeping with my Muslim friends than with the �Christian� society around me.  After all, I had the non-confrontational examples of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa�el as illustrations.  In short, my nostalgic yearning for the type of community in which I had been raised was finding gratification in the Muslim community.  American society might be morally bankrupt, but that did not appear to be the case for that part of the Muslim community with which I had had contact.  Marriages were stable, spouses were committed to each other, and honesty, integrity, self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized.  My wife and I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for several years I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a moral vacuum.  The Muslim community appeared to be different.

The different threads were being woven together into a single strand.  Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral society, and my contact with the Muslim community were becoming intricately intertwined.  My self-questioning came to a head when I finally got around to asking myself exactly what separated me from the beliefs of my Muslim friends.  I suppose that I could have raised that question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn�t ready to take that step.  I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with them, and I didn�t think that I wanted to introduce that topic of conversation into our friendship.  As such, I began to pull off the bookshelf all the books on Islam that I had acquired in my collegiate and seminary days.  However far my own beliefs were from the traditional position of the church, and however seldom I actually attended church, I still identified myself as being a Christian, and so I turned to the works of Western scholars.  That month of December, I read half a dozen or so books on Islam by Western scholars, including one biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.  Further, I began to read two different English translations of the meaning of the Qur�an.  I never spoke to my Muslim friends about this personal quest of self-discovery.  I never mentioned what types of books I was reading, nor ever spoke about why I was reading these books.  However, occasionally I would run a very circumscribed question past one of them.  

While I never spoke to my Muslim friends about those books, my wife and I had numerous conversations about what I was reading.  By the last week of December of 1992, I was forced to admit to myself, that I could find no area of substantial disagreement between my own religious beliefs and the general tenets of Islam.  While I was ready to acknowledge that Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a prophet of (one who spoke for or under the inspiration of) God, and while I had absolutely no difficulty affirming that there was no god besides God/Allah, glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any decision.  I could readily admit to myself that I had far more in common with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with the traditional Christianity of the organized church.  I knew only too well that I could easily confirm from my seminary training and education most of what the Qur�an had to say about Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, peace be upon him.  Nonetheless, I hesitated.  Further, I rationalized my hesitation by maintaining to myself that I really didn�t know the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that my areas of agreement were confined to general concepts.  As such, I continued to read, and then to re-read.

One�s sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful affirmation of one�s own position in the cosmos.  In my professional practice, I had occasionally been called upon to treat certain addictive disorders, ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to drug abuse.  As a clinician, I knew that the basic physical addiction had to be overcome to create the initial abstinence.  That was the easy part of treatment.  As Mark Twain once said:  �Quitting smoking is easy; I�ve done it hundreds of times�.  However, I also knew that the key to maintaining that abstinence over an extended time period was overcoming the client�s psychological addiction, which was heavily grounded in the client�s basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to himself that he was �a smoker�, or that he was �a drinker�, etc.  The addictive behavior had become part and parcel of the client�s basic sense of identity, of the client�s basic sense of self.  Changing this sense of identity was crucial to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic �cure�.  This was the difficult part of treatment.  Changing one�s basic sense of identity is a most difficult task.  One�s psyche tends to cling to the old and familiar, which seem more psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and unfamiliar. 

On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and used it on a daily basis.  However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to apply it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding my religious identity.  For 43 years, my religious identity had been neatly labeled as �Christian�, however many qualifications I might have added to that term over the years.  Giving up that label of personal identity was no easy task.  It was part and parcel of how I defined my very being.  Given the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that my hesitation served the purpose of insuring that I could keep my familiar religious identity of being a Christian, although a Christian who believed like a Muslim believed.

It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle Eastern journey could become a reality.  One of the questions had to do with religious affiliation.  I didn�t even think about it, and automatically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in �Christian�.  It was easy, it was familiar, and it was comfortable.

However, that comfort was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me how I had answered the question on religious identity on the application form.  I immediately replied, �Christian�, and chuckled audibly.  Now, one of Freud�s contributions to the understanding of the human psyche was his realization that laughter is often a release of psychological tension.  However wrong Freud may have been in many aspects of his theory of psychosexual development, his insights into laughter were quite on target.  I had laughed!  What was this psychological tension that I had need to release through the medium of laughter?

I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I was a Christian, not a Muslim.  In response to which, she politely informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written �Christian�, or �Protestant�, or �Methodist�.  On a professional basis, I knew that a person does not defend himself against an accusation that hasn�t been made.  (If, in the course of a session of psychotherapy, my client blurted out, �I�m not angry about that�, and I hadn�t even broached the topic of anger, it was clear that my client was feeling the need to defend himself against a charge that his own unconscious was making.  In short, he really was angry, but he wasn�t ready to admit it or to deal with it.)  If my wife hadn�t made the accusation, i.e. �you are a Muslim�, then the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was the only other person present.  I was aware of this, but still I hesitated.  The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of identity for 43 years was not going to come off easily.        

About a month had gone by since my wife�s question to me.  It was now late in January of 1993.  I had set aside all the books on Islam by the Western scholars, as I had read them all thoroughly.  The two English translations of the meaning of the Qur�an were back on the bookshelf, and I was busy reading yet a third English translation of the meaning of the Qur�an.  Maybe in this translation I would find some sudden justification for�

I was taking my lunch hour from my private practice at a local Arab restaurant that I had started to frequent.  I entered as usual, seated myself at a small table, and opened my third English translation of the meaning of the Qur�an to where I had left off in my reading.  I figured I might as well get some reading done over my lunch hour.  Moments later, I became aware that Mahmoud was at my shoulder, and waiting to take my order.  He glanced at what I was reading, but said nothing about it.  My order taken, I returned to the solitude of my reading.

A few minutes later, Mahmoud�s wife, Iman, an American Muslim, who wore the Hijab (scarf) and modest dress that I had come to associate with female Muslims, brought me my order.  She commented that I was reading the Qur�an, and politely asked if I were a Muslim.  The word was out of my mouth before it could be modified by any social etiquette or politeness:  �No!�  That single word was said forcefully, and with more than a hint of irritability.  With that, Iman politely retired from my table.

What was happening to me?  I had behaved rudely and somewhat aggressively.  What had this woman done to deserve such behavior from me?  This wasn�t like me.  Given my childhood upbringing, I still used �sir� and �ma�am� when addressing clerks and cashiers who were waiting on me in stores.  I could pretend to ignore my own laughter as a release of tension, but I couldn�t begin to ignore this sort of unconscionable behavior from myself.  My reading was set aside, and I mentally stewed over this turn of events throughout my meal.  The more I stewed, the guiltier I felt about my behavior.  I knew that when Iman brought me my check at the end of the meal, I was going to need to make some amends.  If for no other reason, simple politeness demanded it.  Furthermore, I was really quite disturbed about how resistant I had been to her innocuous question.  What was going on in me that I responded with that much force to such a simple and straightforward question?  Why did that one, simple question lead to such atypical behavior on my part?

Later, when Iman came with my check, I attempted a round-about apology by saying:  �I�m afraid I was a little abrupt in answering your question before.  If you were asking me whether I believe that there is only one God, then my answer is yes.  If you were asking me whether I believe that Muhammad was one of the prophets of that one God, then my answer is yes.�  She very nicely and very supportively said:  �That�s okay; it takes some people a little longer than others.�

Perhaps, the readers of this will be kind enough to note the psychological games I was playing with myself without chuckling too hard at my mental gymnastics and behavior.  I well knew that in my own way, using my own words, I had just said the Shahadah, the Islamic testimonial of faith, i.e. �I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah�.  However, having said that, and having recognized what I said, I could still cling to my old and familiar label of religious identity.  After all, I hadn�t said I was a Muslim.  I was simply a Christian, albeit an atypical Christian, who was willing to say that there was one God, not a triune godhead, and who was willing to say that Muhammad was one of the prophets inspired by that one God.  If a Muslim wanted to accept me as being a Muslim that was his or her business, and his or her label of religious identity.  However, it was not mine.  I thought I had found my way out of my crisis of religious identity.  I was a Christian, who would carefully explain that I agreed with, and was willing to testify to, the Islamic testimonial of faith.  Having made my tortured explanation, and having parsed the English language to within an inch of its life, others could hang whatever label on me they wished.  It was their label, and not mine.         & amp; nbsp;      

It was now March of 1993, and my wife and I were enjoying a five-week vacation in the Middle East.  It was also the Islamic month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from day break until sunset.  Because we were so often staying with or being escorted around by family members of our Muslim friends back in the States, my wife and I had decided that we also would fast, if for no other reason than common courtesy.  During this time, I had also started to perform the five daily prayers of Islam with my newfound, Middle Eastern, Muslim friends.  After all, there was nothing in those prayers with which I could disagree. 

I was a Christian, or so I said.  After all, I had been born into a Christian family, had been given a Christian upbringing, had attended church and Sunday school every Sunday as a child, had graduated from a prestigious seminary, and was an ordained minister in a large Protestant denomination.  However, I was also a Christian:  who didn�t believe in a triune godhead or in the divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him; who knew quite well how the Bible had been corrupted; who had said the Islamic testimony of faith in my own carefully parsed words; who had fasted during Ramadan; who was saying Islamic prayers five times a day; and who was deeply impressed by the behavioral examples I had witnessed in the Muslim community, both in America and in the Middle East.  (Time and space do not permit me the luxury of documenting in detail all of the examples of personal morality and ethics I encountered in the Middle East.)  If asked if I were a Muslim, I could and did do a five-minute monologue detailing the above, and basically leaving the question unanswered.  I was playing intellectual word games, and succeeding at them quite nicely.

It was now late in our Middle Eastern trip.  An elderly friend who spoke no English and I were walking down a winding, little road, somewhere in one of the economically disadvantaged areas of greater �Amman, Jordan.  As we walked, an elderly man approached us from the opposite direction, said, �Salam �Alaykum�, i.e., �peace be upon you�, and offered to shake hands.  We were the only three people there.  I didn�t speak Arabic, and neither my friend nor the stranger spoke English.  Looking at me, the stranger asked, �Muslim?�

At that precise moment in time, I was fully and completely trapped.  There were no intellectual word games to be played, because I could only communicate in English, and they could only communicate in Arabic.  There was no translator present to bail me out of this situation, and to allow me to hide behind my carefully prepared English monologue.  I couldn�t pretend I didn�t understand the question, because it was all too obvious that I had.  My choices were suddenly, unpredictably, and inexplicably reduced to just two:  I could say �N�am�, i.e., �yes�; or I could say �La�, i.e., �no�.  The choice was mine, and I had no other.  I had to choose, and I had to choose now; it was just that simple.  Praise be to Allah, I answered, �N�am�.

With saying that one word, all the intellectual word games were now behind me.  With the intellectual word games behind me, the psychological games regarding my religious identity were also behind me.  I wasn�t some strange, atypical Christian.  I was a Muslim.  Praise be to Allah, my wife of 33 years also became a Muslim about that same time.

Not too many months after our return to America from the Middle East, a neighbor invited us over to his house, saying that he wanted to talk with us about our conversion to Islam.  He was a retired Methodist minister, with whom I had had several conversations in the past.  Although we had occasionally talked superficially about such issues as the artificial construction of the Bible from various, earlier, independent sources, we had never had any in-depth conversation about religion.  I knew only that he appeared to have acquired a solid seminary education, and that he sang in the local church choir every Sunday.

My initial reaction was, �Oh, oh, here it comes�.  Nonetheless, it is a Muslim�s duty to be a good neighbor, and it is a Muslim�s duty to be willing to discuss Islam with others.  As such, I accepted the invitation for the following evening, and spent most of the waking part of the next 24 hours contemplating how best to approach this gentleman in his requested topic of conversation.  The appointed time came, and we drove over to our neighbor�s.  After a few moments of small talk, he finally asked why I had decided to become a Muslim.  I had waited for this question, and had my answer carefully prepared.  �As you know with your seminary education, there were a lot of non-religious considerations which led up to and shaped the decisions of the Council of Nicaea.�  He immediately cut me off with a simple statement:  �You finally couldn�t stomach the polytheism anymore, could you?�  He knew exactly why I was a Muslim, and he didn�t disagree with my decision!  For himself, at his age and at his place in life, he was electing to be �an atypical Christian�.  Allah willing, he has by now completed his journey from cross to crescent.               

There are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim in America.  For that matter, there are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim anywhere.  However, those sacrifices may be more acutely felt in America, especially among American converts. Some of those sacrifices are very predictable, and include altered dress and abstinence from alcohol, pork, and the taking of interest on one�s money.  Some of those sacrifices are less predictable.  For example, one Christian family, with whom we were close friends, informed us that they could no longer associate with us, as they could not associate with anyone �who does not take Jesus Christ as his personal savior�.  In addition, quite a few of my professional colleagues altered their manner of relating to me.  Whether it was coincidence or not, my professional referral base dwindled, and there was almost a 30% drop in income as a result.  Some of these less predictable sacrifices were hard to accept, although the sacrifices were a small price to pay for what was received in return.

For those contemplating the acceptance of Islam and the surrendering of oneself to Allah�glorified and exalted is He, there may well be sacrifices along the way.  Many of these sacrifices are easily predicted, while others may be rather surprising and unexpected.  There is no denying the existence of these sacrifices, and I don�t intend to sugar coat that pill for you.  Nonetheless, don�t be overly troubled by these sacrifices.  In the final analysis, these sacrifices are less important than you presently think.  Allah willing, you will find these sacrifices a very cheap coin to pay for the �goods� you are purchasing.

USA/Catholic - "How can we be monotheists yet believe in trinity?"

The path to religious conversion is never easily explained. I have had many an individual ask me the question: "How did you come to Islam," expecting an answer within the confines of the passing conversation in which we were engaged. I always feel at such a loss in these situations, for I can never do the conversion process true justice under such constraints. So what follows is my attempt to more adequately explain my journey to Islam. It is my hope that it will serve as a point of reflection for myself, a source of inspiration for other Muslims, and a tool for understanding for non-Muslims.

The Early Years

If you have been to my "Personal" page, you will no doubt notice that I was raised under influence of Christianity. Indeed I attended both a Catholic elementary school and a Jesuit Catholic high school. And for those unaware of Catholicism, being associated with the Jesuits, has quite an indoctrinating potential, for their history as a religious order is one devout missionary work and stalwart defense of the Catholic faith. So from an early age, I was given all the dogmatic tools necessary to forge a solid Catholic persona in my later years.

Catholicism is full of ritual practice, and I was schooled in all the sacraments. At the age of about 13, I had my Confirmation, which as the terms denotes, meant that I confirmed my beliefs as a Christian and professed them publically to my religious community. I must admit this was a turning point for me, because, it was at this time that I realized that I felt a bit uneasy about my faith. It is no doubt asking a lot of a 13 year old in this society to willfully accept the religion of his or her parents. For me, it was not a situation of informed consent; rather it was the acceptance of a status quo for which I had inadequate information to either confirm or refute. It was the beginning of my move away from Christianity.

As I proceeded through high school, I became less and less interested in matters of spirituality and religion and became engrossed with matters of adolescent temporal importance: sports, college, girls, friends, social life, etc. And while I was a very well behaved and conservative young man, my morals and ethics were more an outgrowth of my fear of my father's wrath than anything. So religion was of no serious importance in my life.

Nonetheless, I was attending a Catholic institution, and was required participate in the religious services and events provided for its students. The most important of these requirements, was that each 4th year student, spend a weekend in retreat with the priests and religious staff of the school. It was contructed to be the culmination of one's religious development at the school; transforming students spiritually, and giving them the resolve to be steadfast men of the religion thereafter. Indeed, many people were transformed by the experience, and I vividly remember the scence upon our return from the trip.

Parents had been gathered to meet their sons at the school, and when we had all amassed in the school library, students began to one by one, give their emotional testimonials of enlightenment and empowerment. When my turn came, I found myslef unable to speak as the others had. Over that weekend, I had had more questions about Christianity than anything: Who was Jesus, really? How can we be monotheists yet believe in a trinity? How are we exempt of sin by someone else's death? Why must we believe that during church services, that we actually eat true flesh and drink true blood of a man who has been dead for almost 2000 years? All of these questions went unanswered, and I was therefore not able to have any sort of deepening spiritual experience. So when my turn came to speak, I simply explained that I had felt nothing and that I was not sure of what I was supposed to feel from all this. Needless to say, this was pivotal in my movement toward Islam; for I was at the point in my life where I had basically rejected Christianity. I had not yet embraced anything else; but I was definitely quite far from the fold of the belief of my upbringing.

The College Years

I don't listen to Howard Stern (the sleazy radio disc jockey from New York) on the radio anymore, but I did happen to be listening one morning a while ago, when he said something I completely agreed with . That morning, he asserted that college is nothing more than a place for young people to go and have sex. Now while that is not the only thing college is good for, he did touch on the a basic failure in our higher eductional system: that college has become a right of passage in which people are given wholesale liscence to explore anything and everything. And the things that are most frequently explored are things of vice, and matters of cynicism toward established norms and values, especially of religious nature. I was very caught up in this culture of excess.

I had been a competitive swimmer all through my childhood and high school years. I had competed at the Junior National level, and was on the verge of making some positive strides in my sport. Unfortunately though, I was attending Stanford University, a school where even nationally ranked swimmers sometimes fall to the wayside due to the calibur of swimmers it attracts. The result was my being cut from the swim team in the middle of the fall quarter. Suddenly I found myself with far too much time on my hands, with no contructive way to fill it. I turned to a fraternity to fill the void.

By the time spring quarter of my frshman year arrived, I was well ensconced in fraternity life, and well on the road to destruction. Stanford's swim coach allowed me to come back to the team that quarter; but fraternity life, academics, and work had stretched me so thin that I was not able to withstand the rigors of a collegiate swimming program. Therefore I stopped swimming, and did not return to the sport until my senior year.

In the interum, I filled my time with may social activities, community service, activism in the african-american community, chasing women, wasting time, etc. I paid too little attention to my academic responsibilites, and my record suffered as a result. Religion was far from my mind, and morals and ethics were slipping away as well. But as I apporached my final year of school I realized somehow that my life needed a change. It was at this time that Islam came into the picture.

During high school I had taken a comparative religion course in which Islam was discussed. I understood the tennants of faith, and actually thought that it seemed a logical progression after Christianity. As an african-american, I had always had a favorable notion of Islam, since many african-americans looked at Islam as a religion that belonged to our slave ancestors from Africa. So Islam had always been in the back of my mind. I also perceived a devotion of Muslims to moral and ethical excellence, and I appreciated and respected that greatly. Therefore, I began to look at practical ways in which some of Islam might help pull me from the difficultly in which I had found myslef.

Number one on my list of refinements, was to cease sexual and dating activity. I had become far to enamored with the romance games played regularly by my contemporaries. I saw this preoccupation as a serious impediment to my progrgess. The second element of my lifestyle to be tackled was my drinking of alcohol. I had not been a very regular drinker, I felt what drinking I was doing was also very detrimental to my personal improvement.

Both of these changes came in the beginnning of my senior year. I also began to train again in the swimming pool. I practiced by myself and competed on one occassion as well. This drove me to want to truly regain my competitive form, and at that time I solidified my resolve to join a team again upon my graduation from Stanford. By swimming more and more; I had less time to involve myself in social activity and I began to step away from my life of excess. By the time I graduated, I was fairly pleased with my moral and ethical progress; yet I still had not had any spritual growth.

The Conversion

I finished my degree in the fall of 1993, and began swimming for Palo Alto Swim Club shortly thereafter. As I involved myself with the sport more, I became more disciplined. I was working part-time on Stanford's campus at the school's career center, so I had some stability in my life.

During my college years, I had become good friends with a young high school girl. I was a tutor at her high school, and we had a good rapport with one another. During my senior year, she had become very interested in Islam, and had converted shortly after her graduation. Although she was in New York for college, we stayed in touch, and often discussed Islam. I talked to her about my understanding of and agreement with its moral practices. She also talked about the belief as well, and introduced me to the actual matter of faith and recognition of God in one's life.

Our conversations continued for almost a 9 months; and in the summer of 1994, I decided to exlore Islam more fully. I figured that it could not hurt, since I already agreed with much of its practice. So I posted a some questions on the internet in the newsgroup soc.religion.islam; and to my surprise I was greeted with over 200 messages over the next week. Two message in particular stood out as momentous in my conversion. The frist came from Yousef Ismail, the then president of the Islamic Society of Stanford University. He inivited me to come to one of their regular meeting. The other came from a brother in New Jersey (Alledine Zeneidine(sp??)), who offered to call me should I ever want to talk about Islam. In short, I went to the ISSU meeting, and spoke with Alledine.

The ISSU meeting opened me up to people in my area I could ask questions; and although I did not go to another ISSU meeting until after my conversion, I did begin to see Muslim brothers on campus as I went about my daily business. My conversation with Alledine impressed me greatly. Here was a man, who did not even know me, yet was willing to spend his time and money (2 hours!!!) on the phone with me, willing to answer any question I asked. I had never had anyone go out of their way for me in such a manner.

From June until September, I wrestled with questions of Islam. I had no logical difficulties with it as a faith; in fact, it all made perfect sense to me. It seemed to put the monotheistic faith started by Abraham back into its proper context. However, I was being pulled by something, in the opposite direction. I began to have doubts that I could withstand formal adherence to the moral code. I was reluctant to walk away from being able to date girls, and have a "social life." Even though I had already given up much of this, the prospect of formalizing it seemed difficult. There were two events however that proved to me that God was indeed calling me to Islam.

First, I had gotten a call from some friends to go to a party with them one evening in early september. They had planned to go to a local bar for some beers and general "merry-making." I had told them no earlier, but began to feel that I didn't have the resolve to be Muslim anyway, and that I should go with them. I happened to be at the swimming pool doing a workout, when I decided that I just didn't want to deal with Islam anymore, and that I wanted to be free to have a drink with my friends when I wanted. I made up my mind and went to dry off and get dressed. As I was putting my shoes on though, I looked up and saw one of the Muslim brothers from the Islamic Society. Even though it had been 2 months since I last saw him, he recognized me and came over to say high. We ended up talking for 45 minutes, and in that time, I felt more empowered about Islam, and decided to stick to my quest to understand Islam. So I didn't go out with my friends that night, and I did begin to think more seriously about Islam again.

Some time later, I happened to be watching television. I was always a big fan of the Spanish language station in the San Francisco area, because they had a tendancy to put on shows where the women don't wear much clothing. So I while I wasn't dating anyone, I dated my television on occassion. One night I happened to see a program with so many attractive women, and I began to feel that I didn't want to walk away from the possibility of being involved with such beautiful women. I felt that Islam was too strict. And just as I was about to again discard my quest toward Islam, the phone rang, and it was the Muslim sister I had known from my college years. We talked for some time, and I began to realize how much I respected her and how beautiful she seemed to me, even though she covered her head and wore modest clothing. Once again I pulled back into my quest.

For the next month, I explored Islam more and more. Finally I came to a point of decision. I found that I definitely agreed with the moral and ethical system. But what is more, I realized that God was giving clear signs of what he wanted me to do. And when you realize that God actually communicates his will to you (not in the human way, of course), your eyes suddenly open up and things become much clearer. It was scary and empowering at the same time. I realized that God was talking to me, and once that happens, there is no turning back. At that point I knew that while I did not call myself a Muslim, I was nonetheless leading the life that a Muslim leads. So I decided to make it formal, and one night while watching the movie "The Message" with a brother from the Islamic Society, I decided to profess my faith to him. I did so, and thus began my life as a Muslim.

My 3 years in Islam

Since becoming Muslim, my progress has been fast and furious, and I am trying to become knowledgeable as to matters of faith and practice. The first year and ahlf was full of interaction with the Islamic Society, and I grew tremendously from spending time at meetings with other brothers. Our conversations ranged from topic to topic and I was given a great introduction to the religion. After that first year and a half, I was posed the opportunity to go to Saudi Arabia to live and work for a year. So I took it, and was able to make Hajj, Ummrah, learn some Arabic, and grow in my faith more. And as I close in on my 4th year as a Muslim, I look to formalize my education as a Muslim, and get a true handle on the religion. May Allah (swt) keep me on the straight path, and may we all continue to make positive progress as an Ummah.