(indistinct talking) - My name is Sandra and I
embraced Islam 10 years ago at the age of 31. I was born in Columbia and
I was born into a Catholic family. Since a very young age I was
very involved in the church and especially in the choir. At the age of six I started
singing in all Christmas events and Easter events and
I was pretty much into it. And that's how my life developed. I was very close to the church,
especially anything that had to be with music I was into it. I joined the choir, a
children's choir and I was being always active in the church. So when I finished my high
school I realized the love I had for music and I wanted
to move forward to it. And I knew I had a very
strong potential as a singer. I had been done a lot of
solo singing and classical repertoire. I was very much involved
in a lot of Colombian level musical performances. So I joined the musical
program to develop myself as an opera singer. And I finished my career as
an opera singer in Columbia. Then I moved to Austria. I was accepted to entering
the Vienna Conservatory. And then I was exposed for
the first time to what the real life of music was. I was very dedicated in my
music, but I was always feeling an emptiness in me. Of course I moved alone,
I went by myself and I was living with friends. But always my family was
not there so I would always feel like I had the voice
of my family telling me, "Keep connected to your faith." So I remember every day
going to the Conservatory, I would stop and I would go
and enter into the church and I remember my impression
going inside and see all these statues and seeing
people mainly with white hair. You would rarely see young people there. Although the places were
amazing, it was really like a piece of art, but there
was no soul inside of them. But I just wanted to keep
connected to my family and to what I was as a child,
connected to the church. So I will keep on going. And I remember going inside
the church and feeling like, "Okay, this Mary looks beautiful
today let's put a candle "here and make a prayer here." And the next day I will go
into another church and maybe it was a church with the
name of a saint so I will go and pray to the saint. And it was just starting to
feel like it's really confusing. When you are out of the
environment where you are grown, you start to make your
questions and start to think outside of the box and, as
much I wanted to keep connected to God, because that's how I was raised, I was feeling there were many
things that were not clear to me and there were many
questions that were opening up and I wanted to understand. But I knew since the beginning
that I arrived to Austria that once I would finish my
degree I wouldn't like to stay there. I felt like I was completing
my degree to please my family. I grew up feeling that I
wanted to please everybody and I felt that with my singing
I made many people happy. I could bring peace, I could
make a religious event, wedding beautiful. Sometimes after the wedding
people wouldn't say how nice the priest spoke, but how
beautiful the music was. It was like music was
the center of the faith. Like, people go, were going
to the church looking to being satisfied with the music. People will go to these
amazing Cathedrals just to hear the music. And once the big pieces of
the repertoire were done, half way the mass, suddenly
the church would be empty. I remember Japanese buses
stopping just next to the Cathedrals and then the
church will be full of people and once the communion
started that usually the, if you think about
(mumbles) masses, or masses, the music goes until the
communion and then after that, once the communion was
over the church was empty and the priest was really upset. Once I continue studying
and I was about to reach my final diploma, that final
degree, I remember feeling this sense of loneliness and
confusion and frustration and not clarity where my
life was going towards. I was raised to be somebody
helpful in society, very caring, very loving,
my family has done amazing charity work and I grew up with all that. And then I would see how they
behavior of people in the music world was the opposite. Environment of one pushing
the other one or doing things that were not right in order to show, to show or to glow. And I couldn't see myself doing that. It was very difficult
because I knew it was a big expectation behind what I was doing. So I remember very well maybe
two months before finishing my degree and going like, it was late, and I remembered this prayer I did. And that day I felt, for the first time, I'm not praying to a
saint or to the virgin, or to Jesus, I felt I was
praying with the real truly God. And I was saying, "Please
guide me, I'm completely lost. "I don't know what I
should do with my life, "so please, please guide me." And it was very truly do
a prayer for guidance. And I had the opportunity
at that moment either to go to Spain and join an aunt
or to apply to move as an immigrant to Canada. I applied and it was amazing. After three months, just
at the moment of my degree being finished I got the
acceptance to move to Canada. So I felt this is a clear
sign, I should go there. Canada's an amazing place
because it's very much cultural, I had the
opportunity to see people from many places that I never
had the opportunity before in my country or in Austria just studying. And I got in touch with
Muslims, at an event, a multi-cultural event, and
there they started asking me about my faith. I felt, "I have to be strong
and I know I have my doubts, "but this is who I am
so I will try to repeat "what I was raised up having to say." But then, of course, as a
diplomatic way somebody had asked me about my religion,
I had to ask back. So it was the first time
I was encountering Muslims and so I was asking, "Okay,
so what do you believe in?" I didn't know anything
about Islam and I was amazed to know that in Islam,
Mariam, the virgin Mary in Catholicism was a very important woman. One of the fourth most
important women in Islam. And the Jesus, (mumbles)
was very important prophet and that they had the same
prophets that I grew up knowing in the Christianity. So I didn't know that so
I was really mesmerized. I felt like, "We are so
close, I didn't know." I just heard always from the news, these people are doing
things that are wrong. So I started to what to
know more about Islam. I remember going to the
priest in the university and asking him, "What do you
think about these questions "I have?" And I felt there was no answer. And then if I would go to
Islam I would see so clear and pure and everything is there. It's so close, but it
completely started to answer all my questions. So Ramadan was coming soon,
very blessed to be invited to a mosque for an Iftar
and there was going to be (mumbles) after. And since the communities are
small people will come from Iftar and then they will stay
for the prayer of Taraweeh. So I remember going for Iftar
and I remembered how these ladies who had been fasting
for a whole day would give me food first. And I was like very impressed
how people were not just jumping, they were doing
a prayer before eating. And then I saw for the first
time the prayer of Islam and it was the most beautiful
thing I had encountered until that moment to see
how people were all standing in lines and doing the same
movements at the same time and then to hear the
Koran for the first time, for me was like a kinesthetic experience. I remember feeling like
I was embraced and it was something really out of this world. I felt I need to listen to
more of these and I need to know more about this
religion because I really, really love how it looks and how it feels. It was, for me, really
the spirituality was there and I wanted more of it. And then I had the
opportunity to compare both. And for me it was clear that
what really the connection with the only God was in this Islam. So once I came back from
Columbia, I had to do my Shahada. That was for me, it was only very clearly. It took more or less like
a year or less than a year, but then it was just the beginning. You need to learn so many
steps and you need to give yourself time. And of course I didn't
tell my family right away. I had, I started chatting with them, especially with my brother
who was present in Canada, then my parents over the phone. I would just throw questions
and then of course they started seeing that there was
something happening with me because I was making
questions that I didn't do. And to see Jesus, did you know
that Jesus is so important in Islam, but he's a prophet. Did you know that God doesn't
have to die to forgive us? It's everybody's responsibility
to perform in this life, to gain heaven. It's not granted because
somebody does something for you, that means that you're
going to go to heaven. It's really up to each one. So they started to see that
I was questioning myself and in my path I was questioning them. But it took me a year to tell
them about my conversion. And once I told them, which
for them was almost like, at that point my brother
already knew because he would see me and I was going to
the Islamic centers and meeting up with people. So he saw, obviously, my change. And I told them, they kind of accepted, but I felt I need to do something, even for the people in my
environment to see that I'm truly meaning my conversion, my new faith. I have to put a Hijab on. I remember telling a friend, "Next Ramadan I will
start wearing a Hijab." And then she told me, "Why
do you have to wait until "Ramadan?" And I remember coming back home and, "Yes, why do I have to wait?" And I started reflecting on it and I said, "Very good to show that Islam was good." So it was like a protection
of myself if I would like to do something that it was not accepted, I would remind myself, "Oh I
have the Hijab to be good." So Hamdallah, they accepted
me, they respected me. Mainly with my mom and
my father I had a lot of opportunities to talk about it in detail, with my brothers and sisters
it's more like an acceptance. At the beginning of my
conversion I felt like I had to talk with everybody,
I need to tell everybody, everybody has to be Muslims. And then I realized everybody
needs a time and it's only Allah who guides and
through my behavior I do more than speaking out. So every time I see
them, they can feel it. And I might do as they are
always there and I pray that Allah will guide them. Islam has been, for me, the
greatest gift I ever had. Now I married I have a
daughter and I keep on telling my husband and my daughter,
"I love you a lot, "but for me the first
thing and the first thing "that ever happened is Islam." It completely took away
all the questions I had and all the anxiety I had
and gave me this peace and this light and this clarity
that I didn't have before. For me the main concern is
that I felt I have to give up my music because I felt I
couldn't deal with music and Koran at the same time. So there was a big transition there, but I ended up giving up music and that, I completely never missed
it after that, you know? I felt that all what the
skills that I acquired through my studying, Hamdallah
was able to use them to learn about Koran, to
learn how to read Koran, and to memorize and to be
able to learn the language. You and me and everybody
and everything around us was born to submit to the creator. Once you feel that you belong
to him and that you know that you're going to
meet him after you die, you should not wait until
this moment comes for you, because you never when
this coming might come. It might come tomorrow and you
don't want it to be too late and the reward of being a
Muslim is so much greater than all the difficulties
you might face in your transition. It is actually very easy if
you hold yourself to Allah and he will make everything easy for you. Just with your trust there,
he will make the path for you. Sincere prayer to him from the
deepest place in your heart and that will bring the
clarity and that will give you the strength that you need in
order to make your decision.
