Aminah 4 Allah
I beleive in Allah
Assalamu Alaikum Brothers and Sisters in Islam,
I am sure that you are all wondering what my story is....well I will tell you inshallah.
I actually don't get asked very often why I converted/reverted (went back to following my roots at the time of my creation and submit myself to God entirely) to Islam especially by non-Muslims but recently I have had a few people inquiring about my decision. I think that most people are afraid to ask because they think that I will get offended which is not the case at all. So here it is: my story...
I have always believed in God. I used to attend a girls group at the local Baptist Church when I was in elementary school. On Sunday mornings I would also attend the church service and Sunday school. As I got older I stopped going to church altogether and it wasn't until I went to Concordia High School for grade 12 that I returned to my faith. My husband was a Christian when I met him and he took me to the Pentecostal Church and this is where I really embranced God and Jesus which was great for me. As Concordia is a Christian High School it was mandatory for grade 12 students to take a World Religions course and that's when I first began to learn about Islam. At that time I actually wanted to convert but my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, told me that I was crazy so unfortunately I forced myself to forgot about it for a time. Then during the summer of 2006 there was the big crisis in Lebanon. My husband started looking into what was really going on in the Middle East and the history behind all of the fighting and choas which led him to learn about Islam and the final Prophet of God that came after Jesus (peace be upon him). This is when the tables really turned and he told me that he was going to revert to Islam and I was now the one to tell him that he was crazy!! But he was very determined and I agreed to take him to the Mosque so he could recite the Shahada. Immediately after he did this I really saw a good change in him and this sparked my interests so I started to read about Islam again, online mostly and everything that I knew from being a Christian and attending church and everything that I had always doubted about the Bible and Christian tradition all became clear to me and then I couldn't undo the knowledge I had gained. I decided I would revert as well. So a few days after my husband reverted, I did and then we were married a couple of weeks after that at the Mosque during the first week of the month of Ramadan.
Anyways back to the reasons why I reverted to Islam: I am not sure if you have read the Bible or how much you know about the story of Jesus (peace be upon him) and stuff but I am sure you are at least aware of the stories. The difference between Christianity and Islam really starts with something that I always had trouble with as a Christian. Christians believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) is actually in physical reality the son of God. To me this seems to be impossible because how could God biologically have a son when it's God. We don't see God, he's not a human like us living on the Earth but he does take care of the entire universe! It just never made that much sense to me so I sort of ignored that part of the Bible and Christian tradition and decided that it must be a misinterpretation from the Hebrew translation or something and that what is actually meant is that Jesus (peace be upon him) is the son of God as we are all the sons and daughters of God. After all he is our heavenly father and our creator. I figured that it had to be along the same idea of creating Adam and Eve from nothing. If God can do this then why couldn't he make the virgin Mary pregnant with Jesus (peace be upoon him) and allow Jesus (peace be upon him) to be born of a miraculous birth? There are other things that I had trouble accepting when it came to studying the Bible such as why do Christians hardly ever read the Old Testament (the Jewish Torah) because it is all part of the Holy Bible, isn't it? Also, I was always uneasy about how the Bible was sort of complied by Constantine quite some time after Jesus (peace be upon him) had been raised up to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. Plus things were changed and omitted by Constantine in order to surpress the people of Rome in his time. Who knows what else was done and made up by this power hungary ruler Constantine so I drew the conclusion that the Bible was not entirely accurate because of all the tampering and that's why I had trouble accepting things in Christianity even though I had always believed with my whole heart in God and all of his Prophets (peace be upon them all). When I started researching Islam I found out that the Quran is not a recollection of diciples and companions of God's Prophets (peace be upon them all) that were written down years after the knowledge was first acquired, but that God actually spoke directly to Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the Angel Gabriel and revealed a Message to Humanity (the Holy Quran) in his own (that is God's own) words. It's hard to imagine that there are so many people in the world unaware of the message God has revealed to humanity. So far it seems that the leaders of the Church have been able to blind sight people quite well. And likely many church leaders are unaware of the true meaning of the Holy Quran and it's relevance to what they preach each Sunday. It is going to be interesting in the next few years as Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the world and by 2010 it is expected that it will be the most predominant religion in the world. As I have now been Muslim for more than a year alhumdulilah I don't doubt this at all. At our Mosque I see new sisters reverting all the time. In fact just last night I attended an Iftar party for a new sister who has just embraced Islam, alhumdulilah. As the revelations from God came to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the Angel Gabriel they were written down immediately by his companions that were scribes and professional orators. It is amazing to find out that an authentic copy of the Quran is actually still in tact and available to read to this day. I can hardly believe that there are actual copies of the original Quran is in a museums in both Istanbul, Turkey and Tashkent, Uzbekistan and that you can actually go there and see them! Finding this out completely blew my mind! God promised to protect the original Quran and he has even after all of these years. Amazing!! Since all Arabic copies that have been made of the Quran are identical I love that Muslims strive to learn Arabic so they can read the Quran in the exact words and language it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in. I do not speak much Arabic yet but am trying to learn more all the time and have so far only read the Quran in English. There is just so much to say about why I reverted because it's all so complex and intertwined.
Another thing about the Holy Quran is that it directly refers to the scriptures (Torah or the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament including the Gospels) that came before it. Muhammad (peace be upon him) being illiterate and raised in Saudi where at the time they still worshiped multiple Gods would never have had any exposure to Christian or Jewish teachings, culture and beliefs. I found that to be indisputable evidence that only God could have revealed the Holy Quran to Muhammad (peace be upon him) otherwise how would he ever have known about the past Prophets (peace be upon them all) and scriptures and other things that are referred to throughout the Holy Quran.
I find it so interesting how Islam is the only religion that I am aware of that is not named after a people (eg. Judaism is named after the Jewish people who were from Jerusalem) or a founder of the religion (eg. Christanity is named after Jesus Christ or Buddhism is named after Buddha). Islam is the perfect word for faith in God, as of course it means submission to God. Then to follow that suit Muslim meaning one who submits themself to God is the perfect word for Islam's followers. I could hardly believe it when I learnt that Allah meant God and that even Christians and Jews who speak Arabic worship Allah, after all there is only one God. I find it so interesting that all living creature: humans, animal, etc. are born as Muslims as before birth and as babies we are all completely submitted to the will of God. In making the decision to re-submit myself entirely to God I have reverted and gone back to how I was submitted to God as a baby and man does it ever feel like home, what can I say?
My decision to revert was solidified when I learnt about all the rights that women are given in Islam as women are held in the highest regard and must be respected and listened to. It is vitually unbelievable for a woman raised in the 'West' to find out that at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) 1200 years ago women were given the right to vote. When I found that out I nearly flipped because women in the West have been suppressed for soooo long and have not even had the right to vote for 100 years. Women were still seen as second class citizens even when my Grandmothers were girls. The guidelines set out in the Holy Quran about marriage and divorce and how a husband must treat his wife are beautiful. I love that God commands in the Holy Quran that a husband is never to leave a mark on his wife and that he should treat her with love and kindness. It's so amazing that women had the right to ask for a divorce if their husband mistreated them for any reason and would be granted hundreds of years ago. I know that divorce was not even allowed in Christian nations until recent years and even more recent years where women can ask for the divorce. And of course divorce is completely frowned upon by Christians and I would imagine Jews as well because they think you should never break the sanctity of marriage but what if your husband, or wife for that matter, is beating you? That is insane to ask someone to stay in an abusive relationship just because breaking the holy sanctity of marriage is a sin. I sincerely believe that God would never want anyone to be harmed, what kind of God would that be??? Then there is of course the issue of covering from head to toe pretty much, well that's what I've heard it described as anyways. I love the reason why Muslim women do this is because their beauty is sacred. A woman's beauty should be saved for her husband alone and of course we know that all women's bodies can be used as a sex weapons as we see daily in ads and on billboards to attract...well men and also to motivate women into buying things and it's all for the wrong reasons. I believe women have the right to be taken seriously for what they think and the ideas they have so covering allows their intellectual beauty, what really counts, to shine through and not just physical beauty to be exploited. It really amazed me when I learnt all of this because I had actually been involved in some activism and stuff for women in Afghanistan who covered themselves in the Burka and I thought it was so repressive and was convinced they must be forced to wear those long dresses and head scarf's by their husbands and fathers. And maybe in some cases they are as through reasearch in the area I learnt that the Burka is actually a cultural thing from Afghanistan but Muslim women have a choice to cover or not as there is no compulsion in religion and no one can force you to do something or believe something. You can only follow what is in your heart. I chose to wear hijab as it is what is in my heart. It is for me and I truly believe in all the Islamic reasons for doing this. I have been following this dress since right before I reverted and it is amazing! I never thought that I could be so confident in myself it has really changed me for the better and let me really be me. Absolutely liberating, that's all I can say. I love not having to worry about what I look like in skimpy little clothes and having guys looking at me and thinking oh she's so hot or ugly or I want to get with that or whatever. Now that is all saved for my husband to look at!
Who is really the only person that should be looking at me in that way.
So those are pretty much the main reasons that I decided to revert myself so I hope you found it interesting to learn about my decision. I truly feel that I have been a Muslim my whole life and that I just didn't know what to call myself. Alhumduliah I now know that I am MUSLIM!!! :tti_sister:
I think that being Muslim is far from what anyone who knew me when I was younger thought I would go for but I have and I am honestly so happy and life has never been better.
Inshallah you have enjoyed reading about my story.
Wassalam,
Aminah
I am sure that you are all wondering what my story is....well I will tell you inshallah.
I actually don't get asked very often why I converted/reverted (went back to following my roots at the time of my creation and submit myself to God entirely) to Islam especially by non-Muslims but recently I have had a few people inquiring about my decision. I think that most people are afraid to ask because they think that I will get offended which is not the case at all. So here it is: my story...
I have always believed in God. I used to attend a girls group at the local Baptist Church when I was in elementary school. On Sunday mornings I would also attend the church service and Sunday school. As I got older I stopped going to church altogether and it wasn't until I went to Concordia High School for grade 12 that I returned to my faith. My husband was a Christian when I met him and he took me to the Pentecostal Church and this is where I really embranced God and Jesus which was great for me. As Concordia is a Christian High School it was mandatory for grade 12 students to take a World Religions course and that's when I first began to learn about Islam. At that time I actually wanted to convert but my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, told me that I was crazy so unfortunately I forced myself to forgot about it for a time. Then during the summer of 2006 there was the big crisis in Lebanon. My husband started looking into what was really going on in the Middle East and the history behind all of the fighting and choas which led him to learn about Islam and the final Prophet of God that came after Jesus (peace be upon him). This is when the tables really turned and he told me that he was going to revert to Islam and I was now the one to tell him that he was crazy!! But he was very determined and I agreed to take him to the Mosque so he could recite the Shahada. Immediately after he did this I really saw a good change in him and this sparked my interests so I started to read about Islam again, online mostly and everything that I knew from being a Christian and attending church and everything that I had always doubted about the Bible and Christian tradition all became clear to me and then I couldn't undo the knowledge I had gained. I decided I would revert as well. So a few days after my husband reverted, I did and then we were married a couple of weeks after that at the Mosque during the first week of the month of Ramadan.
Anyways back to the reasons why I reverted to Islam: I am not sure if you have read the Bible or how much you know about the story of Jesus (peace be upon him) and stuff but I am sure you are at least aware of the stories. The difference between Christianity and Islam really starts with something that I always had trouble with as a Christian. Christians believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) is actually in physical reality the son of God. To me this seems to be impossible because how could God biologically have a son when it's God. We don't see God, he's not a human like us living on the Earth but he does take care of the entire universe! It just never made that much sense to me so I sort of ignored that part of the Bible and Christian tradition and decided that it must be a misinterpretation from the Hebrew translation or something and that what is actually meant is that Jesus (peace be upon him) is the son of God as we are all the sons and daughters of God. After all he is our heavenly father and our creator. I figured that it had to be along the same idea of creating Adam and Eve from nothing. If God can do this then why couldn't he make the virgin Mary pregnant with Jesus (peace be upoon him) and allow Jesus (peace be upon him) to be born of a miraculous birth? There are other things that I had trouble accepting when it came to studying the Bible such as why do Christians hardly ever read the Old Testament (the Jewish Torah) because it is all part of the Holy Bible, isn't it? Also, I was always uneasy about how the Bible was sort of complied by Constantine quite some time after Jesus (peace be upon him) had been raised up to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. Plus things were changed and omitted by Constantine in order to surpress the people of Rome in his time. Who knows what else was done and made up by this power hungary ruler Constantine so I drew the conclusion that the Bible was not entirely accurate because of all the tampering and that's why I had trouble accepting things in Christianity even though I had always believed with my whole heart in God and all of his Prophets (peace be upon them all). When I started researching Islam I found out that the Quran is not a recollection of diciples and companions of God's Prophets (peace be upon them all) that were written down years after the knowledge was first acquired, but that God actually spoke directly to Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the Angel Gabriel and revealed a Message to Humanity (the Holy Quran) in his own (that is God's own) words. It's hard to imagine that there are so many people in the world unaware of the message God has revealed to humanity. So far it seems that the leaders of the Church have been able to blind sight people quite well. And likely many church leaders are unaware of the true meaning of the Holy Quran and it's relevance to what they preach each Sunday. It is going to be interesting in the next few years as Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the world and by 2010 it is expected that it will be the most predominant religion in the world. As I have now been Muslim for more than a year alhumdulilah I don't doubt this at all. At our Mosque I see new sisters reverting all the time. In fact just last night I attended an Iftar party for a new sister who has just embraced Islam, alhumdulilah. As the revelations from God came to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the Angel Gabriel they were written down immediately by his companions that were scribes and professional orators. It is amazing to find out that an authentic copy of the Quran is actually still in tact and available to read to this day. I can hardly believe that there are actual copies of the original Quran is in a museums in both Istanbul, Turkey and Tashkent, Uzbekistan and that you can actually go there and see them! Finding this out completely blew my mind! God promised to protect the original Quran and he has even after all of these years. Amazing!! Since all Arabic copies that have been made of the Quran are identical I love that Muslims strive to learn Arabic so they can read the Quran in the exact words and language it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in. I do not speak much Arabic yet but am trying to learn more all the time and have so far only read the Quran in English. There is just so much to say about why I reverted because it's all so complex and intertwined.
Another thing about the Holy Quran is that it directly refers to the scriptures (Torah or the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament including the Gospels) that came before it. Muhammad (peace be upon him) being illiterate and raised in Saudi where at the time they still worshiped multiple Gods would never have had any exposure to Christian or Jewish teachings, culture and beliefs. I found that to be indisputable evidence that only God could have revealed the Holy Quran to Muhammad (peace be upon him) otherwise how would he ever have known about the past Prophets (peace be upon them all) and scriptures and other things that are referred to throughout the Holy Quran.
I find it so interesting how Islam is the only religion that I am aware of that is not named after a people (eg. Judaism is named after the Jewish people who were from Jerusalem) or a founder of the religion (eg. Christanity is named after Jesus Christ or Buddhism is named after Buddha). Islam is the perfect word for faith in God, as of course it means submission to God. Then to follow that suit Muslim meaning one who submits themself to God is the perfect word for Islam's followers. I could hardly believe it when I learnt that Allah meant God and that even Christians and Jews who speak Arabic worship Allah, after all there is only one God. I find it so interesting that all living creature: humans, animal, etc. are born as Muslims as before birth and as babies we are all completely submitted to the will of God. In making the decision to re-submit myself entirely to God I have reverted and gone back to how I was submitted to God as a baby and man does it ever feel like home, what can I say?
My decision to revert was solidified when I learnt about all the rights that women are given in Islam as women are held in the highest regard and must be respected and listened to. It is vitually unbelievable for a woman raised in the 'West' to find out that at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) 1200 years ago women were given the right to vote. When I found that out I nearly flipped because women in the West have been suppressed for soooo long and have not even had the right to vote for 100 years. Women were still seen as second class citizens even when my Grandmothers were girls. The guidelines set out in the Holy Quran about marriage and divorce and how a husband must treat his wife are beautiful. I love that God commands in the Holy Quran that a husband is never to leave a mark on his wife and that he should treat her with love and kindness. It's so amazing that women had the right to ask for a divorce if their husband mistreated them for any reason and would be granted hundreds of years ago. I know that divorce was not even allowed in Christian nations until recent years and even more recent years where women can ask for the divorce. And of course divorce is completely frowned upon by Christians and I would imagine Jews as well because they think you should never break the sanctity of marriage but what if your husband, or wife for that matter, is beating you? That is insane to ask someone to stay in an abusive relationship just because breaking the holy sanctity of marriage is a sin. I sincerely believe that God would never want anyone to be harmed, what kind of God would that be??? Then there is of course the issue of covering from head to toe pretty much, well that's what I've heard it described as anyways. I love the reason why Muslim women do this is because their beauty is sacred. A woman's beauty should be saved for her husband alone and of course we know that all women's bodies can be used as a sex weapons as we see daily in ads and on billboards to attract...well men and also to motivate women into buying things and it's all for the wrong reasons. I believe women have the right to be taken seriously for what they think and the ideas they have so covering allows their intellectual beauty, what really counts, to shine through and not just physical beauty to be exploited. It really amazed me when I learnt all of this because I had actually been involved in some activism and stuff for women in Afghanistan who covered themselves in the Burka and I thought it was so repressive and was convinced they must be forced to wear those long dresses and head scarf's by their husbands and fathers. And maybe in some cases they are as through reasearch in the area I learnt that the Burka is actually a cultural thing from Afghanistan but Muslim women have a choice to cover or not as there is no compulsion in religion and no one can force you to do something or believe something. You can only follow what is in your heart. I chose to wear hijab as it is what is in my heart. It is for me and I truly believe in all the Islamic reasons for doing this. I have been following this dress since right before I reverted and it is amazing! I never thought that I could be so confident in myself it has really changed me for the better and let me really be me. Absolutely liberating, that's all I can say. I love not having to worry about what I look like in skimpy little clothes and having guys looking at me and thinking oh she's so hot or ugly or I want to get with that or whatever. Now that is all saved for my husband to look at!
Who is really the only person that should be looking at me in that way. So those are pretty much the main reasons that I decided to revert myself so I hope you found it interesting to learn about my decision. I truly feel that I have been a Muslim my whole life and that I just didn't know what to call myself. Alhumduliah I now know that I am MUSLIM!!! :tti_sister:
I think that being Muslim is far from what anyone who knew me when I was younger thought I would go for but I have and I am honestly so happy and life has never been better.
Inshallah you have enjoyed reading about my story.
Wassalam,Aminah
:tti_sister: Alhamdulillah Sister Aminah .Welcome to the deen and may Allah swt keep us all steadfast in our deen 