Daughter of a military officer shares her story of converting to Islam

i was born in puerto rico and my father joined the army the u.s army when i was about maybe five or six years old and eventually we moved to the united states we moved to el paso texas when i was eight years old and i was also in third grade and didn't know english through my my youth my parents and i we moved around the u.s all over every two or three years we were moving to a different place because when you're in the military you go from base to base to different jobs and everything so we would follow wherever my father went that's where we would go so i got to experience and meet a lot of different people alhamdulillah when we had moved to el paso there was a large hispanic community and latinos they tend to be catholic and my parents were catholic so they began to take us to a church and we started going to catholic school we would go to sunday school i actually went to catholic school in puerto rico as well and once we were in el paso we continued on with that i went to a regular public school but then i would go to catholic school for sunday school and in el paso i did my my first communion first confession i went down through the sacraments in the catholic church for some reason as a child i never felt comfortable going to the catholic church there was something about walking inside the church and seeing many statues many paintings of of jesus of saints of supposedly mary the virgin mary i would feel uncomfortable i felt like the statues were looking at me and i i was a little little girl scared and i would see the statues of jesus and it would be bloody and gory and i just didn't think that it was something that would make anyone want to really go to a church and sit there so even as a child i felt disconnected so eventually after moving again we went to alaska and i lived there for two years when i was living in alaska my parents they stopped going to church they my mother would always say we believe in god and we can pray to god wherever we are so we don't have to go to church if we don't want to and so i felt comfortable with that so we stopped going to church at that point then we moved to savannah georgia we went literally from one side of the u.s to the other very opposites in the spri in the spectrum and while we were enjoying that part of georgia we also did not attend church again we moved and we went to maryland and we were living in a place called odenton maryland which is very close to baltimore by that time i was really fed up of all the moving i don't know how many elementary schools i went to i think it was about three and when we moved to mayor to maryland i think that was the second high school that i was going to and to be going into a whole new place and making new friends and leaving old friends it was something that was very difficult so when i i went into maryland i became a little depressed because i didn't know anyone so during that time i had seen a movie that caught my attention it was called malcolm x and i was very very impressed by the person malcolm x and when i watched the movie i said i need to read this man's autobiography so i bought his autobiography and i read it from cover to cover and that was the first time that i ever learned anything about islam first about the nation of islam and then i learned about the true form of islam during that time alhamdulillah allah he puts you in the right place and he puts the right people in front of you at the right time it so happened that during that time i had met a girl that lived close to me and she was christian and her her father was a pastor so i started she asked me once why don't you come to church with me because i go to church on sundays and it's really fun you know there's a lot of people our age and i think you would enjoy it and i told you know i don't like church you know i really i don't think so i don't want to go and she said why and i said because you know they have all these statues they got all these pictures you know i don't like that and she said don't worry we're a non-denominational christian church the only thing that we have is a cross in the middle of the room and i said seriously no pictures no statues nothing like that you don't burn the candles you know in front of the altar and no we don't do any of that and i said okay if it's like that then i'll go so i went with her and i started going to this church at the at during this time in one of my english classes in high school there was a girl that used to sit across from me and in maryland i didn't know many latinos and this girl she i assumed she was latina she had similar looking features the latinos do and i said you know i want to maybe befriend this girl because maybe she is latina we can speak spanish to each other we can talk so i approached her and we started talking and i found out that she was egyptian and i thought that was the strangest thing this was the very first time that i had come across from anyone from the middle east and i had all these stereotypes and i was like really like you're egyptian like the pyramids and stuff where the pyramids are and tell me about this so you know her and i we started talking a lot and we became close and one thing that we really had in common was that both of our parents were very strict my parents were so traditional so strict that they wouldn't even let me go out with fema girlfriends outside to the mall or any place i couldn't go anywhere with anyone so her parents were the same way they wouldn't let her go out they wouldn't let her do certain things they they if if you were to go out with a friend you have to have your parents with you like if you want to go to the mall and hang out with your friends that's fine i'll take you to the mall i will let you meet your friend there and i'll walk a few steps behind you while you and your friend are looking around and you know you call us you flag us down when you need us or when you're ready to go home this is the same way that my parents were so during the time that i met my friend uh i had my parents meet her parents so that her and i could hang out so my parents would take us out together and she would come to my house and i started to go to her house and this was at the same time that i was also going to church so in the church i started to go and i felt comfortable there it was they had a lot of singing and music they had a lot of social socializing after each service they would have a big huge buffet of food they um they had like uh the youth group that would play basketball they would do all kinds of things so it was a very welcoming environment for a teenager and this is one of the things that i liked about going there but i didn't really find any spiritual fulfillment while going to the church but i i was trying my best to find a connection so as i started hanging out with my other friend her name is hebato law by the way which means a gift from allah when i started hanging out with her i saw that her family was muslim her mother wore hijab and her father prayed they both prayed and so i started to wonder what is this and i asked her and she said we're muslim and i it clicked in my head like malcolm x muslim okay i understand and i thought that they were such good people that they were trying so hard they were striving to be good and righteous and when i saw that i went back to my friend's father who was a pastor at the other church and i said you know hibba's family they're very good people they pray the her mother she covers herself like the virgin mary does and or did and they do all of these things and they try to please god so do you think that they're going to go to hell and the pastor he got very quiet and after some time he said if someone does not believe that jesus christ is their lord and savior then yes they're going to go to hell and that was just something that was like a stab to my heart because i really loved my friend that was muslim and i said i don't i don't know if i can accept that and my next question was so are you telling me that all the jews that died during the holocaust that they're also going to hell and he said um well if they didn't accept jesus christ as their lord and savior then yes that that's that's right that's right so that was something that i couldn't really accept so by this time when i have all these conflicts in my mind it was time to move once again and i moved to augusta georgia another part of georgia when i went to georgia i was i wanted to continue to go to church or to feel some kind of spirituality so i took my father and i said can you take take me somewhere so we can find a place for me to worship and he said um no problem so we went and we saw two churches sitting side by side in the on the road and um there was one that was a little it looked like maybe people didn't go there like it was old then there was the other one that looked really nice so i said let's go to that one when we walked in they were having a service everyone turned around and looked at us and one man got up and he approached my father and i and he said if you're looking for the black church it's over there if you're looking for the black church is that one right there and basically he walked us out and it was shocking because this is the first time that i experienced something like that my father is dark darker skin than i am he has darker skin than i am but everyone in that church had white skin blue eyes light eyes so we just looked we stuck out like a sore thumb so we walked over to the other church and mashallah they was a small community they welcomed us and we sat there but i didn't feel right after that and i told my dad you know what that's it i'm done i'm good you know i'm gonna worship god in my own house so i continued going to high school and i finished high school my father saw that again i was depressed because i didn't have many friends this was a new high school i was actually a senior at that point and it was my the last high school that i attended i didn't know anyone everyone was just talking about their yearbooks and the prom and graduation and they'd gone the whole four years with all their friends and i was the newcomer coming in my senior year so i asked my father can i go visit hibba i want to go see her so he said you know i'll buy you the plane ticket and you can go he spoke with her family and he they bought me a ticket and i flew to maryland to visit my friend when i got to maryland it happened to be my friend said you know you can come but i'm just gonna warn you we'll be fasting but then we're gonna break our fast and then we're gonna you know we're gonna party and hang out i said no problem so i got there and it was actually during the month of ramadan and this was in it was 1999. so one of the days that we got there hibba told me we have to wake up early and we have to go to them to the mosque do you mind if you come with us i said no no problem and i started she told me okay well if you're going to come inside can you wear a scarf i said no problem i'll go so we went and it it happened to be the day of raid it was the the end of the month of ramadan it was aid and we went early prayer was about i think eight o'clock and when we were approaching the masjid she said you know you might want to just stand outside and i said i don't feel comfortable standing outside i want to go inside and she said okay you can come inside so once we were inside she said you know we're going to pray soon so you might want to sit in the back and i was like i don't i don't want to sit in the back because then people are going to look at me funny and you know she said okay then come and sit next to me so i sat with her for a while and people were talking and i i was hearing something and i didn't know what it was but it kept on going over and over and over and while i was sitting there then all of a sudden everyone started to get up they were about to pray and my friend said um you know we're gonna pray so now you can go to the back and i was like no it's so embarrassing can i just stand next to you can i i'll do whatever you do i'll do it and she was like okay just you know put your foot next to mine and just do what i do and i said okay all right inshaallah i'm gonna do this well i didn't say that at that point so they started to pray and i followed them and i did the whole prayer and then we we went out when we went outside during that time my friend wasn't wearing hijab so as soon as we got back in the car she took off her scarf and she was like oh she took it off and she was like oh now you take yours off and i was like we haven't even left the parking lot yet just no i'm not taking it off right now and her parents were just giggling and she she was like just take it off don't be silly and i said no i want to keep it on so we went back to her house by that point i took it off and she said you know it was early let's go take a nap and then we'll wake back up and then we'll go out and i said okay no problem so i laid next i i was with her in her room and we we laid down in her bed and we started to fall asleep but something kept on going in the back of my mind and it was something like allahu akbar and i was like what is that and it just kept on going like a song when it gets stuck in your head when you go out into the supermarket or something and it was just there and it kept repeating itself and i just i shot up and i said hibba she was like what what she was already sleeping what is allah what does that mean and she was like oh you know god is great god is great god is great there is no god but god i said okay all right went back to sleep so after that i start we went out again and we went to different place uh we went to a gathering of muslims and i saw people praying for the first time as muslims and i started asking questions why do the women have to pray behind the men and i'm sitting with my friend we're young and she tells me hello don't you know if the women were praying in front of the men what do you think the men would be thinking about and i said that makes sense subhanallah that makes sense and i said okay okay and i kept on coming with more questions more questions and you know she would answer them and i'd be like wow this is so easy and then i started asking her parents questions and i asked questions to the point that her father said you know what look take some books here you go you take these books you read them stop asking me and i said okay so i took the books back with me to georgia and i read the first one that i read was called islam versus christianity and it was a very small book and when i read that book every single question that i had ever had about god about life about jesus who he was why i didn't feel right going to the catholic church why going to the christian church wasn't enough for me because i was looking for an answer that i finally found in this little book after asking some questions it took a while though for me to to understand what i needed to do to become a muslim so i started during this time it was the age of aol america online chat rooms and such i started looking for muslims on the internet and i wanted to find a muslim that lived close to me so i went into a chat room and it was like an atlanta chat room and i saw a name that came out as a it looked like a muslim name and it was fada and i i am the person i sent them a message and i said i'm interested in knowing about islam and it was a it was a man it was a brother and since he saw that this strange woman was messaging him he said you know like whatever no i'm like i'm not gonna talk to you and i said okay i said and i put masala which means goodbye in arabic because at this point i knew a few arabic words and then he he he sent me a message and he said how do you know that and i said because i told you i'm interested in learning about islam i have an egyptian friend she's muslim i told him the whole story and he said send me your number and i'm going to call you right now and i said this is crazy for me to do but i sent him my number he called me and he said do you believe that god is one and i said yes and he said do you believe that muhammad by this point i had read about muhammad the prophet muhammad and as long as it's not an attacking attack on me ready okay so by this time by this time i had learned about the prophet muhammad saw it was and he asked me do you believe that muhammad is a pro was the final messenger and i said yes and he said okay repeat after me and i did so and he said i'm going to come and see you i live in atlanta but i'm going to come and i'm going to bring you some things and we're going to do this but you need some witnesses so i met him and his family in he happened to have cousins that lived close to me we met there and i set my shahada there in front of them alhamdulillah this was in the year 2000 i think it was about august or september of 2000 and after that i called my friend the egyptian friend and i told her she didn't even know i knew certain things she didn't know what words i had learned or anything so when i called her i said um how about you know after we said how you doing what's going on and everything i was like you know i took my shahadeh yesterday and she said what you did what i took my shahadah yesterday all i heard was mama as she was screaming to her parents what i had done and immediately her parents they they they begged me to fly to to see them and i did so and they took me to the mosque and they said you have to do your shahada in the masjid so i i did my shahada three times alhamdulillah it's like the sunnah is three and alhamdulillah and that was how when and why islam for me alhamdulillah right now i um i want to take the opportunity to tell you that my i met my husband seven years ago a little over seven years ago alhamdulillah him and i we're both latino and we we wanted to also give dao to people that speak spanish and so we started doing different things and one of the things that we did after we had children because we realized that there weren't enough resources in spanish for um for children about islam we started an organization called islam and if you go on our website www.ablamoseislam.com i have cards i can give out you can go in and and see what we have and also we have the project ninos right now we're trying to raise funds so that we can distribute our we do books and we also have videos online that are free we want to distribute them in countries that don't have these resources because surprisingly when i went to puerto rico i didn't know that there were muslims in puerto rico and all over latin america when i went to puerto rico i really i found out that there are actually nine masajid actually eight massaging in puerto rico and it was mind-boggling i thought that i would be the only latino muslim in the world but it's not the case alhamdulillah so uh inshallah please visit our site and just show us your your support okay you

Channel: 877-Why-Islam

Views: 769,106

Rating: 4.8204041 out of 5

Keywords: icna, Quran (Book), Islamic Circle Of North America (Nonprofit Organization), Hispanic And Latino American Muslims, Muslim (Religion), Hispanic And Latino Americans (Ethnicity), Religious Conversion (Field Of Study), Islam (Religion), Religion (Literary Genre), Story, Love Story, koran, quran, church, Church (Type Of Place Of Worship), Christianity (Religion), purpose of life, your goal, life, why am i here, what will happen, happiness, mohammad, muhammad, muhamed, mohamed, revert, convert

Id: aBiHpmRWgCI

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Thu May 29 2014

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Umm Uthman is a Latina convert and the daughter of a US military officer, who had the chance of traveling all over the US. She is now involved in helping other Spanish-speakers learn about the beauty of Islam through her education-based organization Hablamos Islam (We Speak Islam) and its project Hablamos Islam Niños (We Speak Islam, Kids). She has written and published several bilingual children's books about various Islamic topics, which have been distributed in countries all over Latin America, Spain and the US.

check her website