Muslim Converts New Lives, New Challenges

lowing Oh servitude to Allah God and it's basically implementing a way of life that God has prescribed for us and and having a relationship with him my family basically said come home but don't be Muslim so I decided just to stay here Jamaica when a slave was brought to Jamaica there were Muslims but because of the Coliseum that was taken away from them the most important fact I'm today's extremism you know for mom to wear hijab is extreme in their point of view that was one of the questions I had I was to say to Allah please guide me to your true religion so I know how to worship you properly you you my name is Julian gray and I'm a professional football player I remember being when I was young my mom obviously told me the first steps I ever took was to stand up on what to kick a football so obviously I think from early stages of my childhood I was waste wanted to play football and I loved my foot and everywhere I went my foot went with me well obviously I touched on Islam maybe in 2001 2002 because my brother reverted to Islam and obviously he was the only one in the family at the time that did and he was went to Holiday on Jamaica I was injured at the time I had an operation so I was recuperating and went to Jamaica to see family and rest then he had some books and in which he gave me on Islam and that was my first obviously insight into I read those books was intrigued obviously to find out one true God my name is well short for William I'm 19 years old and I'm a social science student at the University of Birmingham when I was little um I went to an infant school in a primary school called st. Lawrence Church of England school so it was an Anglican school and and it was basically just a normal school apart from it was a faith school so they did do things like um you know assemblies where they'd bring in um like a they called him father Robert he's basically like a priest they bring him in he would tell was biblical stories and things like that we would sing hymns we would go to church every now and again so it was a faith school and you know we just did the normal things that that sort of you do at a Christian school I was never attracted to Islam to begin with I think the thing that and drew me to want to learn about it was the fact that it was so potently sort of different obviously every sort of religious tradition has their own distinctive or the followers of it have distinctive features and things like that so with the Muslims that is you see people who are and you know wearing phobes or wearing hijab or something like this so that's the thing that sort of made me think why are they different I was born in Canada small town outside of Toronto the town was pretty pretty much all white people not a lot of different cultures not a lot of different religions um so didn't have that much exposure I was raised with no religion um my mom is from a Christian background so her parents are practicing my dad is from a Roman Catholic background so his parents were practicing but neither of my parents were and I think at a very young age I realized that religion wasn't was taboo in our home and it wasn't something that was to be talked about and it wasn't um it wasn't acceptable I remember at one point when I was studying religious philosophy I looked into every different religion but I was so afraid to google Islam in case it was seen on my history so yeah I think it it deterred me a little bit my name's Dowell trunnion I was born as David Runyon I've been Muslim for nearly 12 years for several years of my spare time and now you know as a full time I been calling people to Islam you know running stalls educational stalls in the city center first in Sheffield and now here in Esther so get a lot of people they ask want to ask questions about Islam or we will ask them you know watching a purpose in life is try an initiator conversation a very solid polite way did God become man because how can they unlimited all-powerful yeah they can limit it okay but is Jesus God okay dude so it's got all-knowing he's God or powerful is Jesus or knowing Jesus self in the Bible says as of myself as mass in the hour he says I don't know the hour okay but Jesus himself says I do not know the hour only the father above knows the hour so he wasn't drawn only was it so you said one of the traits of divinity was being all-knowing we agreed upon that and I asked you if Jesus was all-knowing but according to your Bible Jesus was not all-knowing was actually raised as a atheist my father's an atheist or was an atheist my mother was a lapsed Methodist Christian so she you know had some beliefs about some creator but she kept it to herself but I was actually raised as an atheist I was raised to believe there was no creator at all I obviously was on holiday in LA and had been in a night club with my friends obviously they all drinking and point I wasn't really a drinker heavy drinker what was there was partying and I'm just sitting down on the sofas watching them and it's like saying to myself what am I doing here so I ended up leaving going back to my hotel on my own obviously phoned my wife who was my girlfriend at the time obviously because I wasn't practicing then and said to her look I need to when I come back to England I need to get closer to God yes this is what's missing in my life I need that closeness to God I remember it like it was yesterday I'm Delilah and I said obviously she told me about a guy his name's Wally who reverted to Islam many years ago but she obviously came into contact with him in a place that she was working and actually I was studying an Applied biology degree at the time you know from looking down a microscope looking at all the organisms and you know walking out in the countryside especially at nighttime he still loved walking at nighttime you look at all the stars and it doesn't make sense that there is no creator it made no rational sense it started to really rate on me that I couldn't think my way around this problem why is it all this stuff you know how can it come by accident and so I became a believer in ecker ater you know I left my fizz Mbeki at least I believe in something when I spoke to my friends in college and I to be honest with you I started asking them very kind of a sort of harsh questions things like oh is it true that Muslims you know stone people and stuff like this it was kind of like difficult questions to grasp if you're somebody who hasn't studied the religion and so I was asking them these kind of questions and you know fair enough they basically said look um we don't we don't know the actual real answers to these questions we know there are answers but we don't personally know the right answers can we take you to people who can explain and I was like okay fine so they took me to this Taoist and in the city center every saturday a group of a group of guys basically have like a stand where they have lots of literature and they can just basically educate people about the religion really so they took me to them and I fired a few of these kind of hard questions at them after that and I decided that I wanted to do further research because one thing I found interesting was that I could ask sort of you could say hostile questions and they were able to actually give satisfactory sort of answers although make me look a certain issue in totally different way and it sort of opened my eyes to the idea that and there are different sort of perspectives on life and there's different ways you can live your life he lets me have a few DVDs and some books I started searching more reading them and hamdulillah we kept in contact Ramadan came in he took me to the mosque during Ramadan obviously the first time I've gone to the mosque and all these strange people are greeting me hugging me and saying soonerlater and hugging me and embracing me and showing me all this love and I'm like wow I have not experienced that before from strange people you know obviously he was praying finished praying and then when we left the mosque I felt really good went back a couple other times with him to domestic same thing every time I went same reaction and the these Muslims at work and their facts when their families off to give me a translation of the Quran to read so I thought I'd be able to read this like the Bible I thought is going to be just like the Bible yeah our tip was good if he's anything new or that I've not got there and I'll leave everything else however when I started to read the Quran in translation it's a it was an entirely different book when I read it I couldn't find the the logical inconsistencies you know the flaws in it like you can read the Bible and that was obviously you know quite a shock to me cuz I thought this is when people just like the Bible and in fact the book was totally different this Miller he Rukmani r-rahim al-hamdu lillahi rabbil aalameen ar-rahman rahim Molly kiran bedi iya carnival's worry i canna stain in the restaurant pubs talking Surratt Palani Nam dalla him when he ma Doody Elohim Walker coming from a Christian background I've been brought up as a very early age I found there's a lot of similarities with Christian and mozi but one of the things that strikes me more for me just a spiritual thing I for me was spiritual thing there was a bit more guidance things that you should do to follow the five pillars etc your daily I should leave it in a life amongst you you Phil oh man I just felt there was more of a structured things there was more information that I could read and get that guidance that that teaching over my kind of year period of research I had kind of ups and downs there were some times where where I would kind of like read certain things and I'd get really kind of I'd think you know them there must be something to this there must be something behind this and I'd actually start thinking you know maybe Islam is true and then there'd be other times where I would perhaps read something else or I just wasn't kind of feeling it I would be thinking actually I'm not sure I don't know about this and those kind of ups and downs over this year period and eventually I've got to odorous year towards the end of it I got to a point actually where I decided you know what I don't know I just don't want to I think I got overwhelmed I think intellectually and I just kind of pushed it all away and for a while I stopped doing my research and but then there came a point where I went back to it and I started watching a new I guess speaker and who you who his his style of lectures appealed to me quite a lot because they were very very kind of intellectual philosophical sort of stuff the speaker that I really liked was coming to do a talk at Aston University so I thought you know what after I've watched that speech I'll be really really kind of inspired in everything and that will be enough for me to just go with it and just accept Islam then so I thought okay I'll do that so I planned it all out I I I was going to go to the lecture and after the lecture takes you harder and from that day forward I was going to try my best to implement everything can learn as much as possible and so on and just be Muslim from that point forward I couldn't get my head around the concept of God and or and they would say it was confusing Jesus is the Son of God a lot tiled Jesus is God so there's a contradiction there and the same to free the Father Son the Holy Spirit this goes against the first commandment so for me Islam obviously puts that it's the same as what the first Quran is to not worship God for me to worship God alone and not to associate a partner with him and that's Islam and I prayed to God direct to God I don't go through somebody like through Jesus are those to understand I go this just between me and God and that's how it should be one of the key aspects is that God is is indiscreet so you can't separate God in two parts and that is why he's totally different from the creation leisa can be cliche that's why because the creation everything in the creation you can break down into different parts you could take one human being but say actually this human being is a collection of organs and limbs you could take one organ and say this is one stomach but actually it's made up of the stomach lining and muscle and whatever so everything in the creation you can break down into different bits when it comes to Allah you can't do that at all which is the whole meaning of a head one of his name's something which is so uniquely sort of singular one I became a Muslim in 2010 right before Ramadan and it started with me just hearing some Arab people speaking at school and they were hearing the Arabic and I was fascinated by it so I asked them what language they were speaking and then when they told me it was Arabic I asked if they were Muslim and I just kept asking them questions eventually I was given a number of a woman who gave me who would give me toheeb lessons so about oneness of Allah and it took me a while to contact her but eventually I did and I I took lessons for three months with her and I ended up taking my shadow unbelieva I didn't go to her wanting to accept any religion I went to her because I didn't want to be ignorant because I knew like I heard people speaking Arabic I knew they were Muslim and they're around me so I wanted to know what what happens in their life I let Mia jlk the humvee that lead is the saying of one of the scholars let's say that if you want to speak to Allah praise Allah if you want a lot to speak to you read the Quran when you read the Quran it is a lot of people say this that it seems as though it was written just for them as in everything they're reading can be applied to them somehow or the way they they can perceive it in a way that applies to them a lot of people say this so when I've gone through the book again reading through the Quran again I'm fasting at the same time there's somebody I met on the internet who came from a nearby city called Sheffield and he was said was in the Ramadan there's no better time to visit the the mosque and find out about Islam so we went to the the mosque which is mushy DOMA in Sheffield and it was awfully today we saw that it was rushing in there all you know as we got there there just about - pretty sure so I sat at the back because I didn't know what I was doing and then after a shower so that the Imam invited me to the front of the Masjid I said Marcia harder and then it ones you know officer starts giving takbir and you know this mostly mostly this Masjid is full of posh tones as well so huge guys give me massive hogs and I fought them to break my ribs but also it was you know like it was like the most amazing feeling - it felt like you know everything had been lifted off my shoulders he says I'm doing a lot you take you praying five times a day he says but you've missed a step you need to take your Shahada that's the first step so do you believe in in LR and that he's alone to be worshipped and start seeing you of course I do I say do you believe in prophet Muhammad I said here hum dil Allah he said okay within if we just need to confirm that with your tongue now and what's in your heart so to testify that I said okay my wife obviously like partner at the time she wanted to take her shard of coz she had been practicing obviously learning to pray just like me so she said I'm ready to take much harder so then when I actually did take Shahada it was like a relief that are I'm I'm now my kind of like lifestyle how I want to live and what what I believe is true and so on my convictions are now in synthesis so that's why it was like a relief it's I don't know if I can find the right words but there is a kind of like yes this is I want to be yeah I want to be a Muslim was a kind of spiritual feeling that came when I sat there and took that alt I ended up leaving home um and at one point I went back on the condition that I didn't do anything Muslim or wear a headscarf or show any sign of being Muslim but they would see I would sometimes forget to put my prayer mat away my hair would be flat when I came home because I had my headscarf on take it off in the garage and it just got too hard there's a lot of conflict so I left again really like still to this day there's some members of my family you don't talk to me but my parents are coming around I decided I wanted to get married so I was introduced to a scholar who lived in the UK we got married and I moved over here and that's when I learned the hard way that not all Muslims no matter how much knowledge they have they're not all made a bowl so I ended up in the UK now on indefinite leave to remain on basis of domestic violence so that's how I ended up here fortunately lots of new Muslims do rush into marriage very soon after they said that Shahada and this leads to you know problems of divorce or marry into the totally wrong person because when you a new Muslim everybody's or everybody's Muslim it doesn't matter then later on you find out is you know some quite glaring in big differences so the person you are when you and the understanding of Islam when your first become Muslim it's gonna be very different a year or two years later so it's sometimes better than they wait a year or two before they even think about marriage working on the street whether I've got a son or not to show that a Muslim or museum and I say Salaam aleikum he's always returned today I was walking through City Center Birmingham and was the brother there with the books and the preaching on a warpath Salam aleikum and you get a return so there's a bit there's a lot more together he's a low problem within the Muslim community the sisters that I do me are a lot more welcoming and they literally treat me like they're family I was I was in London one time and I was looking for a mosque I was a bit lost and I stopped a sister and asked her and she said the mosque is far just come to my home and pray and then on the way out I needed directions back to the train station in other sister walked me to the train station and it was just Subhan Allah I think there's a lot of support between the Muslims here at least the ones that I've met togetherness is it because you have to play as a team the winning the enjoyment factor is my passion and for me this is where I get my enjoyment and I can express myself it's been a massive part of my life for a long time you know so always when you're out on the grass I'm with the ball it brings back memories and you just want to be at this is where I want to be the club's that I've been at I've been very open and helpful to assist me in every form of my religion obviously when they get halal meat for me or I saved in the open can I have fish when it's Meal Time and stuff they cater for me in that respect they respect that gotta pray and that I'm fasting fasting is not a problem for me I do it easily Ramadan did get hard though uh when you're living on your own and masha'Allah my friends were there and like a lot of them invited me to their homes and had iftar with me but at the end of the day they have their family and you will go home so there are a lot of nights when I was breaking fast alone and it's a spa villa there were times when I got like and I got really down I just had to remind myself of people who who had less we didn't family isn't even alive subhanAllah so um yeah that was the biggest challenge in Ramadan you're listening to 93.5 unity fm the heart of the city dear listeners thank you very much for tuning in and as you know there are hundreds maybe thousands of billionaires in the world you know we've got this issue where wealth is being concentrated on a global scale we've had complaints from reverts living in places outside the city that you know there's nothing for them in terms of there's no masseur g-d's they don't know any Muslims living there nothing so they feel a bit isolated and so on and so they were basically asking if there could be something tailored for them on the radio so he came to me and he said I've had this complaint would you like to make a show tailored towards sort of reverts or you know people who perhaps are living in places where there's not much you could say Muslim infrastructure if you like and so I said okay fine I'll I'll give it a go in this country most of the big kind of newspapers and things like that are owned by fairly extreme right-wing sort of organizations or people with right-wing ideologies so there's automatically going to be a bias there in terms of reverts becoming extremists first of all what is extremism because I would say that we're living in a society right now where there's all sorts of different types of extremism going on that's extremism and eating going on there's extremism in sexual desires going on there's all sorts of different extremism going on so extremism is is a broader problem so for them to pick out this one sort of religious extremism they say as an issue in itself or as a kind of separate issue or whatever they're ignoring the fact that we're in a civilizational crisis at the moment where we're just totally out of balance we're extreme in everything nowadays as allah says in the quran that he says for what your father has done your son the son will not be punished and vice-versa so if i make a do a mistake it's not not on my parent or the person who I'm with I've made that mistake is on me because I'm in control of my actions so this is how we should view people in general whether they're Muslim or non-muslim if someone makes a mistake they've made a mistake or done something incorrect it is down to that person you can't say it's because these black boys because he's white you don't it's not about this the individual and this is I think society tends to blame something else it makes it easier to associate a bad thing with something else it's dangerous I mean we've obviously seen recently people have been killed so I think a lot of the media they have blood on their hands because they they think that you know what does it matter if we attack these people we caused you know hatred against them yeah they don't see as a big issue it sells newspapers at the moment you know the Muslims are the biggest sellers selling a matter for newspapers you know ivory so tacking Islam or you know saying this about all of this about them or this current affairs haven't taken off on the or side of the world always it's attacking Muslim so it makes a lot of money for them but I think reverts perhaps as a wider role that they could play in the media they could kind of bridge the gap between the Muslim community and the the rest of society who don't really understand the Muslim community they could bridge that gap because they've kind of got a foot in both camps if you like because they've come from that cultural context and so on they understand it perhaps better than some of the Muslims but also they understand Islam as well and a lot of reverts have a good understanding because they've done through a research and things like that so I think the function they could play in the media is on wringing the Muslim community and the wider community together and educating people and dispelling misconceptions and things like that you

Channel: Turki Alshehri

Views: 87,365

Rating: 4.8946109 out of 5

Keywords: Muslim (Literature Subject), Religious Conversion (Literature Subject), Religion (TV Genre), Islam (Religion)

Id: X5w6k00IESo

Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 07 2014