SISTER MARYAM
CANADA
I was asked by my friend redak (kader) to write about my conversion. I did not wake up one morning saying I am muslim, my conversion was more like a journey that lead me down the road to Islam.
I was brought up in a Catholic Christian household , not a very religious household, but as most catholics my age, I went to Sunday mass and received all the “holy sacraments” that are rituals in that religion.. However even from an early age I sensed that the religion I was brought up in was not quite what I expected. My earliest memory brings me to a typical Sunday scene sitting in church and looking around me, not digesting what the priest was saying, and staring at a hall full of statues and paintings of various “religious” scenes and persons.
I always remember asking myself: can this be it? Is this the truth? Can this massive symbol of a cross that everyone kneels and bows to, be the true meaning of God? And can this priest dressed in all his luxurious garments of silk and gold be the essence of piety and humbleness and subservience to the Most Divine?
Somehow I felt inside me, that something wasn’t quite right. The mere fact that Jesus (peace and blessings be upon him) was given a godly status in the Christian religion made me questioned the teachings. The concept of the trinity (3 gods in one) I never could fully understand and no one would answer my questions. I was told that I should not ask questions , that it was wrong and that I was showing how I was lacking in my Faith.I read the Bible several times, I loved the old testament , but the more I read the new testament the more I felt it wasn’t the word of God, that men had written their own versions.I could not believe in the concept of the original sin,how could an innocent newborn carry the sin of his ancestors? Then what really turned me away from the Catholic religion was when I was told I was not really welcomed in church anymore because I had chosen to divorce my husband ( divorce is not permitted in that religion).I was told I was a sinner and could not receive pardon for my sins until I returned to my husband. First I never could understand how a man ( a priest) could pardon my sins, I believed that only God could do that. So from then on , I walked away from that religion, I truly believed in one God but not in man made religion.
Then September 11 2001 came, like the rest of the world I was touched by so much destruction and disregard for human life. I was curious, how could someone kill innocents for religion purposes, isn’t God loving and merciful??. So I decided to learn more about Islam, I read a translation of the Quran, studied the hadiths, and read everything I could on Islam. What a surprise, I discovered a religion of peace, tolerance and respect, not hate or violence. I loved the way Islam guides every aspect of one’s life.My reversion to Islam happened quite gradually after that, approximately 3 years later. I specifically remember thinking I want a religion that pleases God and is for God and only God. I want to thank God more than once a week or twice a week for all the blessings I have. I want to thank Him every day, 5 times or more if I can, not every Sunday.” This on its own made me think, it made me think that I was happy to believe in God as one complete whole, not divided into three parts.
Reading the Qu'ran and the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him) I came to realize that I did believe he was a messenger of God, and in fact the last of God’s messengers. I also began to pray at this time, and started my first fast ever that year in Ramadan. After obtaining a lot of information about Islam and asking all the questions I needed to know their answers; I finally came into the world like a new-born child. What can only be described as ‘LIGHT’ was suddenly shone upon me. I decided when Ramadan had finished and we had celebrated `Eid that there was no way I was going to be anything else BUT Muslim, and that was my deciding moment.
After so many years of being blind, and walking in the dark, one day, Allah the Most Gracious Most Merciful shone the torch in my eyes, and I woke up from the trance, from the illness, from the blindness I was trapped in for so long.?So I said the simple and so logical words. The clearest and most perfect words that have ever reached human ears. “La ilaha il Allah, Muhammed Rasoull Allah”. This sentence was the defining moment in my life which made me become a Muslim, and to this day, I have never looked back. Allah is One and Whole and Perfect and Muhammad was His last Prophet
The Qur'an for me is like a manual, just like a car needs a manual to function properly, the Holy Quran is the guide -book to life, and something which covers All areas and is something which we cannot live without.
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