How I Found Islam - Anthony (Abdurraheem) Green

I was born in 1964 Anthony but soif Gavin green my mum is polish and my dad is British and I was born in Tanzania because my dad was a colonial administrator there and when I was two years old we left to come back to England and my dad started working for Barclays international when I was 10 years old well we moved out to Egypt in the meantime I went to boarding school initially a prep school called Gillian castle and then onto the famous well known Roman Catholic monastic boarding school amplified college my mum had signed me up for that place even before I was born I didn't really enjoy boarding school at all and I think that had a very big impact on me questioning the doctrines of the Catholic Church that I was brought up into in fact I remember that even before I was going to school my mum thought she should teach me the Catholic prayer the Hail Mary and as it goes Hail Mary Mother of God blessed art thou amongst women I started thinking mother of God how can God have a mother and those are the first questions I started asking about the religion that I was brought up into my questioning didn't end in fact it continued as I throughout my teenage years began to really question what was the purpose of life why was I here particularly I used to think why am I here in this school why am i hearing this monastic boarding school I really didn't enjoy it and I couldn't figure out really what was the purpose of it except that I was supposed to work hard get good exam results so I could go to a good university so I could get a good job so I can make enough money to send my kids back to the same school so that they could work hard and get good exam results so they could go to a good university so that they could make enough money to send their kids back to the same school and I just figured this can't be the purpose of life there's got to be something more to life than this so combining that with the sort of dissatisfaction I had of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism I began to question a lot of things another thing that really got me thinking was the contrast between the mentality and the culture of people in England and the mentality and the culture of people in Egypt which was for all intents and purposes my new home and once I'd got used to life in Egypt and began to observe people I began to realize that it was amazing how they were very very content with very very little in their life nothing really seemed to get them down they seemed to be really happy full of life and everything was insha'Allah if God wills it mallesh it's ok alhamdulillah all praise is due to Allah it's something that really really struck me how come the people in the West who have all the materialistic benefits seem to be so unhappy I used to sometimes think of it as the land of the Living Dead yet there it was in Egypt where people most of the people had so little yet they were so happy it went against everything I had been taught the equation that wealth and money equals happiness I was seeing a different viewpoint of reality it made me profoundly questioned the paradigms that I was brought up into in the ten years I spent in Egypt only two people really talk to me about Islam and only one of them was a conversation that had any real impact on me I was working on a tugboat servicing oil rigs in the Red Sea for about six weeks and the vice-captain of the boat came down decided to have a conversation with me about religion and so he started asking me questioning me about my beliefs and although I at that time was already having serious doubts about Christianity in fact I had been sort of practicing a form of Buddhism for a couple of years and was reading and studying around many many different religions but at the end of the day and people asked me I still call myself a Christian and so I started trying to explain to him the theology of the Trinity the idea that there was one God the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost but they were not three gods but they were one God and how the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost were different but yet they were all the same and of course he found this incomprehensible because it is in fact in comprehensible and at the end of this conversation he said to me okay so you believe that Jesus is God I said yes and he said and you believe that Jesus died on the cross I said yes then he said so you believe that God died and when he asked me that question it had a very very huge impact on me it it really made me profoundly question for the first time everything I believed in fact in reality he clarified for me he added up all the things that in my head already did not make sense and he really in a very simple formula made it clear in my mind why the doctrine of Christianity was really something I couldn't believe in so after looking and experimenting and with so many different religions and philosophies and ideas and different ways of thinking I actually came to the stage when I had made my own religion for myself which was sort of mixture of you know all the different things that I've been reading about and studying and so I had my own religion which is actually really the worst worst thing of all it was sold terrible that actually I just actually that stage gave up and I thought maybe there is no meaning to life deeper meaning to life maybe really all there is to life is just getting wealthy and having a good time maybe I didn't have enough money maybe I needed some more money and so I started thinking well you know if the formula really is wealth equals happiness obviously you don't want to have to work too hard for that wealth because you want to be able to enjoy all the things in life to the maximum so what I really need is a lot of wealth with very very little money how do I get lots of money with very little work so I started thinking about that and I started thinking about civilizations people societies who had lots of money and all of them whether it was the British the Industrial Revolution the American Dream the Japanese is all all-around hard work until suddenly I it popped into my head wait a minute Saudi Arabia they've got lots of money and they haven't done any work you're sitting on their camels going Allahu Akbar and you know I thought that that that sounds like a formula for success so I started thinking okay so Saudi Arabia Islam Quran I know yeah I know the Quran I know that's their book I know a bit about Islam I don't know much but I know something so anyway I went down to WH Smiths and I picked off the bookshelf the Penguin Classics series the Quran which is apparently one of the worst translations anyway but it just goes to show and I started to read it and when I started to read it I realized this was not like any other book I had ever read it first of all it's a very difficult book to read the Quran is not an easy book to read you have to really want to get through it and I did I didn't just want to read it I wanted to understand what the message of this book was how did this message so profoundly affect those people and so it forced me to think and think very very deeply in fact it's interesting that the Quran invites you to think it keeps on saying it keeps on inviting the person to look at the signs look at signs throughout the heavens and the earth and think about them deeply and profoundly and and in these things are signs for those who are wise those who have the ability to understand so it's a book that itself invites you to think and although I'm I was and still am quite a fast reader two weeks later I was still reading this book and I remember the moment very very distinctly as I was sitting on the train going over the Thames commuting on my way to work reading this translation of the Quran I looked out of the window I looked back again and I said to myself if I have ever read a book that is from God this is the one and I I think really I guess that that's the moment that was my epiphany that was the moment when in reality I embraced Islam and my further studies when I read a life history of the Prophet Muhammad I was even more convinced I then I was sure that this man was a prophet of God in fact the Quran says that those people or the meaning of what the Quran tells us is that the people of knowledge of the Jews and the Christians they know that Mohammed is a prophet like they know their own sons just just as they know this is my son they know that Mohammed is a prophet of God and I am sure from my experience of pretty thorough Christian education reading learning studying the Bible knowing the lives of prophets knowing who and what prophets were if anyone reads the Quran and reads the life of the Prophet Muhammad and they have that type of background knowledge they will definitely know that Mohammed is a Messenger of God and if they deny I truly believe they are just lying so al hamdulillah that's really my story of how I came to Islam I think the thing that Pro founded me profoundly affected me most about the Quran were two things number one what the Quran says about God the concept of God in the Quran is so clear it's so reasonable it makes so much sense it's free of all the confusions that other religions have about God it's really a god the concept of God that one can really believe in that's the first thing and the second thing was their descriptions in the Koran of the day of judgment of the paradise of the Hellfire rich full descriptions of the afterlife and that really impressed me because I thought that look if there is a life after death then surely God is going to tell us lots about it and that's something that the Bible for example is pitifully short of descriptions of what's going to happen after you die whereas the Koran is full of them an enriched detail so those were the things that really impressed me about the Koran the other was the the other the the other thing was that the court didn't seem to be anything superfluous everything seemed to be important and to have meaning and that was again to contrast with my experience of reading the Bible in particular which had a load of stuff long lists of names and details that just doesn't seem to have any relevance any spiritual or that real significant relevance so these are the sort of things that really really impressed me about the Koran and when I read the life of the Prophet Mohammed I mean what can I say it if you wanted to write the life history of a person who fits the profile of a prophet that was it I mean it was just everything was there his sincerity his honesty his kindness his compassion yet at the same time his absolute firm conviction and dedication to obeying God and worshipping God and being uncompromising in that when it came to matters of the religion he did not compromise but yet at the same time he managed to be a very compassionate merciful person and and also it's that character of the Prophet Muhammad that makes it so believable so possible that he is truly what he claimed to be a messenger from Allah and what can I say I I thank al I thank God that he guided me to Islam Islam is so beautiful Islam gives such peace and tranquility and happiness to your heart I I often think that I don't what I did to deserve to be a Muslim and I do hope that you explore this beautiful religion and that you're guided to this truth as well and may the peace and blessings of God be upon you salaam aleikum you

Channel: iERA

Views: 95,398

Rating: 4.9111109 out of 5

Keywords: arg, shahada, story, abdurrameen green, how i came to islam, islam, green, convert, revert, christianity, doctrine, trinity, no sense, sense, reason, logic, Quran, london, Barclays, Muhammad

Id: 7Evc-w9Y7KY

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2013