Former Christian Priests and Missionaries who have Embraced Islam
- And thou wilt find
the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to
be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because
there are among them priests and monks, and because they
are not proud. When they listen to that which hath been
revealed unto the messengers, thou seest their eyes
overflow with tears because of their recognition of the
Truth.
- They say: Our Lord,
we believe. Inscribe us as among the witnesses
[Qur'an 5:82-83]
Why
are Christian priests and missionaries embracing Islam ?
Join our discussion board and share your views ! You can find many
converts from Christianity to Islam there, as well as Christians
who are learning more about Islam. If you are a former Christian
priest or missionary who has embraced Islam, please email your testimony
to us at mifo@missionislam.com
- Dr. Jerald F. Dirks - Former
minister (deacon) of the United Methodist Church. He holds a Master's
degree in Divinity from Harvard University and a Doctorate in
Psychology from the University of Denver. Author of The Cross
and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity
and Islam (ISBN 1-59008-002-5 - Amana Publications, 2001).
He has published over 60 articles in the field of clinical psychology,
and over 150 articles on Arabian horses- Abdullah al-Faruq - Formerly
Kenneth L. Jenkins, minister and elder of the Pentecostal Church
- Viacheslav Polosin - Former
Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church- Anselm Tormeeda - 14th century
CE scholar and priest- Khadijah 'Sue' Watson - Former
pastor, missionary, professor. Master's degree in Divinity- Ibrahim Khalil - Former Egyptian
Coptic priest- Anonymous Female Missionary
- Former Catholic missionary- Martin John Mwaipopo - Former
Lutheran Archbishop- Raphael - Former Jehovah's
Witness minister- George Anthony - Former Catholic
priest- Dr. Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad
Omar) - Former missionaryDr. Jerald F. Dirks
- Former minister (deacon) of the United Methodist Church. He holds
a Master's degree in Divinity from Harvard University and a Doctorate
in Psychology from the University of Denver. Author of The Cross
and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity and
Islam (ISBN 1-59008-002-5 - Amana Publications, 2001).
He has published over 60 articles in the field of clinical psychology,
and over 150 articles on Arabian horsesA 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 neighbouring 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 paedophilic 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 counselling 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 behaviour, 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 behavioural
example of Jamal observing his scheduled prayers. Second,
there was the behavioural 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 behavioural
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 cantered 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 proselytising.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 behaviour 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 behaviour 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 behaviour 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 behaviour.
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 behaviour 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 behaviour. 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.
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 behavioural 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 neighbour 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 neighbour, 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 neighbour'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 savoir”. 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.
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