Lihat Bagaimana Allah Menggantinya | Kisah Dr. Laurence Brown

greetings and peace this is dr lawrence brown with another episode of interfaith issues i'm going to be speaking today as if i am interviewing myself i have received a number of questions from a variety of people over time and i thought that it would be fun for me hopefully interesting to you to hear me answer some of these questions so let us begin in one of the earlier episodes i just the pathway by which i became muslim i have been asked one of the questions i have been asked is what happened to me after i became muslim did i encounter any difficulties well i think it's very difficult for anybody to make such a radical change in their life especially in the west to become muslim and not encounter difficulties i remember that initially i had an overwhelming feeling of peace and contentment and in a very large way that feeling has never left me but my worldly life was thrown into turmoil my parents could not understand my choice my brother had become muslim before me and he is actually the one who introduced me to islam and we are the only two children in the family just my brother and myself so when i became muslim my parents felt like they had lost their only other child to islam now my parents during my time with them were never practicing christians but all the same they saw my conversion as disruptive to their lives and i think it was it is almost impossible to convert to islam or to make as large a change as a person makes when you change religions without having it be disruptive to some degree so i admit i was a little bit like the reformed smoker i couldn't talk about anything else i was probably a little bit overbearing in my opinions but all the same in very short order my friends deserted me my parents did not want to have any contact with either my brother or myself i remember one time we actually received a message where where we were told by them do not visit do not call do not write do not want a postcard email nothing they did not want any contact from us whatsoever so i was cut off from friends i was cut off from family i was treated differently at work what is now my ex-wife became my ex-wife she divorced me and she took the children i lost of course in the process i lost my house i lost my property i lost my car you know it sort of sounds almost like a country song because i also lost my dog but no this is not one of those cases where i lost my wife and my dog and gee i really miss my dog no you know that's good for a country song but it's not good for reality the fact of the matter was that it was very traumatic and i remember as i was going through all of this i went from living on a country estate we had a couple of acres i don't know if you could call it an estate but we had a couple of acres with a very large house and a second guest house not a guest room a guest house on the property and uh i went from living in that to living in a little rent by the week studio apartment that when you walked to it up the stairwell or in the elevator it reeked of urine to give you an idea of the quality of people living there and not only living in this miserable little studio apartment but sharing it with another brother who was getting divorced and who was on hard times and the funny thing about it was i remember that those were some of the happiest days of my life i remember looking around and thinking what's wrong with me i mean in the movies when you get divorced you become dysfunctional you start punching holes in walls and and uh you know causing deliberate accidents with your car and and uh you just become dysfunctional but i was happy as a matter of fact as i said it was some of the happiest days in my life and it was then that i remember looking back on it that before i became muslim i had prayed a prayer called the istahara prayer the guidance prayer and in this prayer we ask god we ask allah to choose for us to guide us to what he knows to be best for us and to bring it to pass and to make us pleased with it and it was then that i realized the mercy of our creator when he answers a prayer how completely he answers it because he had chosen for me what he knew to be best for me in answer to this prayer not only that but as much as i felt a dislike for what was happening he had made me happy with it in a way that i almost could not understand truly our creator speaks the truth and we are promised in this religion that you do not give up anything for the pleasure of allah except that he replaces it with that which is better when i became muslim i became divorced allah gave me another wife i lost children to custody in the first family allah gave me a new child and a new family eventually i was squeezed out of my job because of the anti-islamic anti-muslim prejudices in the military which is where i worked i felt i could not continue because of the prejudices that i was experiencing from my co-workers i gave up my job allah gave me a better job times and times better i lost my house to the divorce allah gave me a home in the holy city of medina i lost my wealth allah replaced it and multiplied it i cannot think of anything i lost except that allah replaced it with what he knew to be better i didn't lose my parents forever eventually we were able to talk again and in a way i feel our relationship is better now than it ever was before so i think what i can say is for a person who considers making this change nobody gives up anything for the pleasure of allah except that allah will give you what is better that doesn't mean that it won't be hard it doesn't mean that it will be to your liking at least maybe not initially there may be a period of trial a period of test a period you have to get through before you find the benefit but when you do find the benefit subhanallah you will realize the completeness of the mercy of our creator another question that people ask they'd like to hear an answer to is well what does islam mean to you i can tell what i have found islam to be i found islam to be a religion of modesty and humility it's a religion of peace and submission submission to god but also submission in a general sense submission to those who know better you know i grew up in the west where we were raised on the concept of questioning authority question everything it's a popular saying but the fact of the matter is it's destructive we have authority figures for reason they are people of greater knowledge or greater experience or they have been empowered to enforce certain regulations and if you are constantly questioning them or defying them it will be hard on you hard on them and hard on all of society so i found islam to be a religion that put things in order as an individual within a family within a society within a country and as a world i found islam is a religion of peace this does not mean that muslims are necessarily pacifist it does not mean that if you go and attack a muslim he will not defend himself of a certainty he or she should because everybody has the right to defend themselves but it does mean that i found islam to be a religion of peace before islam i didn't have peace in my life i cannot remember ever having peace in my life until islam after islam i found peace in practically everything i did before islam i was fascinated with certain things i was interested in knives i was interested in guns i used to play paintball look i was in the military it's something that we did it's something in the west that we enjoyed i watched the rambo movies the commando movies the james bond movies i lived that life i dreamed those dreams but something happened to me after i became muslim that i can't explain except to say i simply lost interest in all of those things i sold or gave away my guns the same thing with my hunting knives and my this and that knives something entered my heart to where i did not even like to see a knife with a tip to it you go to my kitchen and you will find two things you will find my wife annoyed at me because of the second thing which is that i've taken all the kitchen knives and broken the tips off of them i honestly cannot understand the need for a tip to a kitchen knife nobody ever uses it and it is only something that can cause harm in my transition from a relatively unordered somewhat paranoid life to a life of peace things like this became visible to me that i never saw before and what i feel is what i am now a man at peace with himself at peace with the people around me at peace with society at large

Channel: Ayatuna Ambassador

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Keywords: ayatuna, ayatuna ambassador, Kisah mualaf, mualaf, kisah mualaf terbaru, kisah mualaf 2021, tasik ngaji, murtadin, salam akal sehat, sas, Diceraikan istri gara-gara jadi mualaf, mualaf center

Id: 5rEgC8bJUe4

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021