My Husband's Conversion Story

This was an email from my husband to an old friend of his from Youth Group (church) when they asked why he converted to Islam.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

The points I want to share are simple.

I've enjoyed doing things the way I think is right even when the main stream of like-minded, same faith individuals practice otherwise. A shorter way to say that is I like to do things the way I want even if most other people in the same category of belief as me do those things a different way. Hmph. That wasn't a shorter version at all. I know you get the point now, though.

A couple years ago, as a Christian, I decided not to pray or sing to Jesus anymore. I was still a Christian. But whenever a song at church was directed to praising or worshiping Jesus, my mouth was closed. Isn't this ant-Christian? No. It is pro-Christian. Worshiping God, our Father, alone, was Jesus' directive. He led us to worship the Father. Never did he direct praise upon himself nor instruct anyone to pray to him. Thus, how I came to the conclusion to only worship the Father.

Another point I looked into was when Jesus said people's sins were forgiven. I couldn't find any spot where Jesus said that he himself forgave anyone of their sins. Even John the Baptist told people when their sins were forgiven.

All my personal curiosities were satisfied by looking only in the Bible at this point. But as you can imagine, my view of Jesus' role was already drastically different than most Christians by only coming to those two points so far.

Here is the part where people seem to doubt the genuineness of my conversion. I worked with *Durriyyah* before we got married. Once she started wearing hijab (the covering most Muslim women wear), I got curious. I got curious because I knew it had to have been a hardship for her to do that in a leadership role in the IT field where most co-workers are men. I thought she must have been serious. I started asking questions. We talked about Islam and Christianity for a period of time. Eventually, I ordered a Qur'an from amazon.com to read it. I wanted to know more about this religion. I also thought, "How much faith do I have in my beliefs if I'm afraid to read about someone else's beliefs?"

In reading the Qur'an, I found the same message in the Old Testament and of Jesus. The simplest way to put it is: There is no god but the One God; you need to worship Him. I kept thinking, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One." I began to think, "Why would God stick to this simple principle and then later introduce a theology of a trinity that reduces His glory (since it's now shared), doesn't make sense, and conforms to pagan theories?"

Islam does not count Paul as a prophet of God. This means that though he very likely wrote some inspired things, he did not have the authority to change any doctrines. This was hard for me to do, but if you take Paul's strange concepts out, the New Testament makes more sense with the Old. It makes more sense that God is the same God and is calling the same people. Islam was needed to bring "the people of the Book" back to the original doctrine of God and away from the pagan contaminated ideologies of multiple gods in one or multiple gods period. Think of the christmas tree. Why does it exist as a Christian practice?

After I was 2/3 through the Qur'an, I read a book on the origination of the trinity doctrine. Now, I already knew some of the details as to how it became accepted into the formal church. But reading this book made it silly. It was after reading that that I knew Islam was the same old message that God has always been giving and that Christians of today are not like the Christians of Jesus' time. And I mean so different that Jesus would say to Christians of today, "I know you not."

That is my story. I hope very much that my words are not too upsetting. You know I was a strong Christian. Converting was wrenching. Now, I am a submissive follower (Muslim) of the one and only God, Who has no partners and no equal.