Ex-Priest: Reverend Anthony Swamy Accepted Islam - I Tried to Convert Muslims to Christianity

bismillah r-rahman r-rahim brothers and sisters in Islam I welcome you with the universal greeting of islam assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu I am Ayub Abdul Rahman from East Malaysia I am a rework I used to be known as Reverend Anthony Swami via Ghulam and I used to be in the Roman Catholic Church as a young boy I was brought up in the Roman Catholic teachings and when I was 17 years old I decided to join an Augustinian monastery because I was given to understand that there are three types of heaven the first the first-class heaven is reserved for those who are monks who have sacrificed their pleasures of this world and have devoted their lives to the God Almighty the second class heaven is reserved for women who have also renounced the society and have gone into a religious life the third class heaven is for married people who still follow the teachings of Christianity and when they die they are rewarded heaven for the third class level now I was a very ambitious person so I decided if I have to go to heaven i won the best so I joined an Augustinian monastery and after my philosophy and theological studies I went over to Germany in Germany I was trained to help people in the medical field during my contact with the community in Germany I met many Muslims many good Muslims who are you can say fundamentalist they follow the fundamentals of Islam and I felt pity for them because according to what I had been taught these good people will never have a chance to go to heaven because they have not been baptized with the water and the Holy Spirit and unless they are baptized they will not be able to go to heaven so I pray daily you know as a monk we used to pray 6 times a day so in the last prayer of the day especially prayed for these Muslims that God may bring them from darkness into light so one day I told my superiors that when I go back to Malaysia where Islam is the official religion more than 50% of the population are Muslims in order to convert them to Christianity I have to know something about the background of their religion so my superiors decided I should do comparative studies on Islam and Christianity and I was given the privilege to go to Mill Hill in London and there I continued my studies brothers and sisters in Islam one of the first few Muslim scholars that I met they were from Libya they were from the Islamic call Society of Libya and they gave me many interesting books among them was an English translation of the Holy Quran translated by Mahmoud Pickthall this Quran I read from cover to cover and after I had completed reading for the second time and began to have doubts within myself I thought that the Holy Bible is the only book of God and everything that is there is gospel truth but after reading the Holy Quran I found that most of the prophets whom I knew from the Old Testament this holy quran was giving a different version about their life story he said all the beautiful things all the good things that these prophets have done there was no question of incest adultery and all those bad things that I found in the Holy Bible and I read the story of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary and I compared it with the Quranic version and I found it was more acceptable to see the version from the Holy Quran so I had discussions with fellow Malaysians at the militia hall who are good Muslims and with long discussions with them I decided that Islam is after all not so bad so I wrote to my superior general from London saying that I have done a thorough study of Islam and Christianity and I find Islam has got the right answers so can I opt out of the monastery and become a Muslim within few weeks I received a reply that I should come back to the headquarters and discuss with my superiors so I returned to Germany and in front of me there was a tribunal of about 12 senior monks with them I discussed I told them what made me change my mind and instead of showing some kind of understanding they were very very annoyed with me and they made an ultimatum unless I repent I will be sent into the cells and I will not be able to go back to my own country they reasoned out with me that they will take a photo of a gravestone with my name inscribed on it that I have met with a very serious accident and I had to be buried immediately and that's the end I will have no contact with my family members in Malaysia they were quite serious about their threat and I decided from that time onwards to follow whatever they say to save my skin and if I have to embrace Islam if God wills that I should become a Muslim I will decide it in a Muslim country so I gave excuses that I have been doing a lot of studies with very little sleep and then they said I will be sent to a mental hospital in Switzerland I was sent there for three months and during the three months I met many important people that means writers on Christianity among whom I met a very famous writer who writes many things about Jesus Christ and I asked him during one of my conversations personal conversations with him does he really believe in what he writes and he told me actually I am doing it because I have been asked to do it and I am promised a good sum of money where these books are published so I say you mean to say you do not believe in the divinity of Christ he said personally no so this was one of the strong reasons for me to leave Christianity and look for the truth in Islam but anyway after the three months in the mental hospital I was sent back to Germany and there I spoke to my superiors that I would like to undergo a medical training so that when I go back to my home country I can do combine my missionary work with social work so I was sent to Cologne and at the Caritas Institute I took up a cause on medical lab technology at the end of the training I was told by my superiors to learn little bit of Portuguese language because they have decided that I should go to Brazil you know under the vows of poverty chastity and holy obedience whatever the superior says you must follow without any question poverty means at for as long as you are in service with them you do not get any form of compensation no financial compensation but everything that you need the basic needs are given to you and chasity means for the rest of my life I will not get married now in those days the earlier days when I was in the monastery I thought that is the best thing to go to the first-class heaven but after reading the Quran and seeing the false teachings in the Bible I decided otherwise but I had to follow whatever instructions came from the superiors so I went to study Portuguese language I was very sad I thought I will never ever be able to go to a Muslim country and embrace Islam but God has his way about two weeks after the instruction was given that I will be going to Porto Alegre in Brazil a telegram came from ipoh perak saying that the monk who was in charge of a new hospital had fallen down from the staircase and broken his arm and he will be sent back to Germany and as a replacement within 24 hours someone else has to be sent back to people to work in that hospital the only choice they could think of at that time was me finally alhamdulillah God had answered my prayer you know under the vows of poverty chastity and holy obedience whatever the superior says you must follow without any question poverty means ever as long as you are in service with them you do not get any form of compensation no financial compensation but everything that you need the basic needs are given to you and chasity means for the rest of my life I will not get married now in those days the earlier days when I was in the monastery I thought that is the best thing to go to the first-class heaven but after reading the Quran and seeing the false teachings in the Bible I decided otherwise but I had to follow whatever instructions came from the superior so I went to study Portuguese language I was very sad I thought I will never ever be able to go to a Muslim country and embrace Islam but God has his way about two weeks after the instruction was given that I will be going to Porto Alegre in Brazil a telegram came from ipoh perak saying that the monk who was in charge of a new hospital had fallen down from the staircase and broken his arm and he will be sent back to Germany and as a replacement within 24 hours someone else has to be sent back to able to work in that Hospital the only choice they could think of at that time was me finally alhamdulillah God had answered my prayer so I was sent back to Malaysia instead of Brazil and there I did not know how to go about to become a Muslim I was in this monastery in Ipoh so it took me some time and once I contacted a Muslim convert by the name of Jakob Shola also a German I told him of my personal wishes and he introduced me to the first Prime Minister of Malaysia the late Tunku Abdul Rahman and gave me the Holy Quran but still I was not guided on how to go about to embrace Islam once I had plucked enough courage I spoke to the regional superior for Asia and I mentioned to him of my wishes to leave the monastery and become a Muslim he said this is a very serious decision I have to put it in writing and address to the Superior General so I followed his instructions and wrote a letter to the Superior General of the Augustinian monastery after about two months I received a reply that they cannot force and keep me in a monastery but definitely I will not be given any financial compensation for the 12 years of service so I left the monastery and went home when I went home I thought my parents would have more understanding and will receive me with open arms I was mistaken my mother was not at all happy that I had left the monastery a secure place to become a Muslim she say what is so good about the Malay community in Malaysia Islam is always thought of as the religion of the Malay community so if a Malay does not live a good life they say Muslims are no good so we have black sheep everywhere in every society but the Malay community were the ones who were supposed to give the image of the true Islam so the my mother said that she will not accept me as her son and I should leave so I do not know where to go bring in the monastry for more than 12 years I was so used to the secure line so now I had to go again to look for people who look after me and decided to go to Kuala Lumpur where I have an elder brother and there I spoke to him and I told him of my position he was sympathetic but at the same time he did not know what to do he said you can stay with me but don't make it too obvious because you know I am staying with in-laws and if they come to know I am supporting you not only you will be chased that I will be chased out with you so I stayed with him for about a week in between I had applied for further studies and during that one week while I was with my brother letter came from Australia that I had been selected to undergo a six months training in Melbourne University so I went to the Qantas airlines where they had sent my ticket and left for Australia while in Australia during my training I was already making plans what do I do after the training so I decided to look for advertisements where they advertise for medical workers for Saudi Arabia and once I found that application the vacancy form I applied to doctor bug Hospital in Jeddah and I was offered a position as medical lab scientific officer so I decided to come back to Malaysia after the six months training and I embraced Islam in Malaysia at the residence of the chief minister of surah WA and after three days left for Jeddah to work in a Medical Centre during this time I made several trips to Mecca made my Umrah came to know more about Islam and after the contract of two and a half years I was invited back to Sarawak so set up a medical centre in Kuching the chief minister also advised me to get married because I am no more among but unfortunately in the 12 years as a monk nobody taught me how to date so I did not know how to go about choosing a life partner usually in our Indian custom it is customary that the parents look for a bride but in my case my parents were against my decision to become a Muslim so they will not look for a good Muslim bride but Allah has his ways by accident my conversion ceremony the photos that were taken was published in a very leading Islamic magazine and by accident my wife also saw this magazine and she said he is a former Roman Catholic monk a forgiver of sins and now he has come to Islam he must be a good person so when we met casually through our social work I also felt that if I have to get married it should be somebody virtuous does not matter if she doesn't have wealth if she is not very pretty not the prettiest in the whole country but she has virtue so I decided to marry her when to approach her parents the parents were NT Indians they did not like Indians so again I had to wave one day the governor of Sarawak casually asked me will I ever get married I am going to remain as a Islamic monk so I told him I want to marry local girls but the parents don't like me during my weekly visits to his Excellency the governor of Sarawak he asked me very casually have I found the right girl to get married and I told him of my problems I said finally I found a virtuous woman but unfortunately her parents do not want an Indian son-in-law he was taken aback so he instructed one of his lady ministers to visit this home and find out what was the thing that they did not like in me and when the minister went to visit this family they said they had doubts whether I am a married man perhaps I have a wife in India perhaps I have another wife in West Malaysia and now I have come to Kuching and asking for the hand of the one and only daughter so the minister reassured them that I was a former Roman Catholic monk I was never married and I live a very good virtuous life and it is only fitting that if the daughter agrees that I should be married to her so after these things were explained very nicely to my present mother-in-law she called for a meeting of all her relatives with me and there they started asking me whether I don't know how to recite the Fatiha whether I pray five times a day whether I know the fundamentals of Islam and when I had answered them very correctly then they decided on the amount of money I should spend for the wedding when they asked for 7,000 I said why not make it a round number make it 10,000 they were taken aback because I had saved my money so we decided on that day that we will spend $10,000 and we had a very simple wedding but to make it very very memorable even the governor of Sarawak attended my wedding so in 1983 27th March I got married to my present wife and I have now two sons and work in a clinic in Kuching but I am doing Dawa because in the past many years as a Christian monk I had baptized many many thousands of non-christians and I've brought Christianity to them so now I in a to repent for all my wrong deeds in the past I am doing Dawa to all the rural areas in Sarawak and wish to conclude Wahb allahi tawfiq qual Hidayah assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu

Channel: Digital Mimbar

Views: 64,280

Rating: 4.7772088 out of 5

Keywords: Priest (Occupation), ex Malaysian Priest, reverned anthony swamy, reverned, ex Malaysian, Islam, Ex christian, Christianity (Religion), Allah, Quran, muhammad, Koran, Prophet, false prophet, Ahmed, Nasheed, Ramadan, My Journey To Islam, accepting Islam, The Reverend (Job Title), Malaysia (Country), Anthony, Priest

Id: ju0mEGTBNf0

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 07 2013