MY JOURNEY TO ISLAM

rom: www.islamicity.com

By: Sister Yasmin Umm Amani

I was born in the 70s to a middle-class family consisting of my mother, father and two older brothers. My memories of family life are of a happy, secure, very close and loving family. Although my parents were not religious they were very strict in certain areas of my upbringing such as instilling good manners, generosity and consideration for others.

Despite the lack of religious guidance in my early years of life there were certain times that I remember just naturally turning to God for guidance and simply accepting the existence of God. For example, at the age of six I asked my parents if I could attend Sunday School at our local church and at the age of ten I registered with a distance learning Bible course. Also, at the age of 13, I remember passing by the scene of a road accident on my way to school and noticing a pool of blood by the roadside. That evening I prayed to God for the man who was knocked over to return to good health.

However, such moments of religiosity were always short lived. Despite these few God conscious moments of my childhood the majority of my life I lived as a typical 'English girl'. Without any religion to teach me what was right or wrong...I simply followed the crowd.

However, there were times when I would feel unhappy with the way I was living my life. It was at night when I would sometimes lay in bed and think about the things I was doing and feel ashamed and sometimes even cry. I always wondered if there would ever be a point in my life when I would not feel guilty about how I was living my life. At times, I would pray to God, crying for forgiveness and help.

But why would such a young girl turn to God asking for help? My family was not teaching me about God, nor my friends or society. So, why did I even believe in the existence of God? And why in such times of trouble did I turn to Him?

Now that I am Muslim I understand how all human beings have a natural disposition to believe in the existence of God. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Every new-born baby is born on the fitrah (natural state i.e. Islam). It is his parents who make him a Jew, a Christian or a Magian." [Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi & others]

However, now that I am Muslim, I am totally content with the way I live my life and I no longer feel ashamed about my past. In Islam, the moment you become a Muslim and declare your faith in God you become like a new-born baby totally free of sin. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "If a person embraces Islam sincerely, then Allah shall forgive all his past sins, and after that starts the settlement of accounts: the reward of his good deeds will be ten times to seven hundred times for each good deed, and an evil deed will be recorded as it is unless Allah forgives it. "[Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol 1 Hadith No. 40a].

At the age of 15, more major events started to take place which affected my whole outlook in life. In my last school year three of my school friends died.

The first to die was a seventeen-year-old boy. It was a typical school evening spending time at a friend's house. The evening was spent as usual, chatting, laughing and joking. But little did I know that this would be the last time I would see one of my friends. For the next day he had fallen off his motorbike in bad weather and been hit by a car. Two days later he had died.
A few months later a friend from school suffered a severe asthma attack, collapsed during surgery and died. I can remember seeing her the day she died walking around the school playground totally unaware of what lay ahead of her that evening.

I was so shocked at the deaths of two young people in such a short space of time but I didn't know how to cope with it. But little did I know that the most disturbing incident was yet to come.
It was two months later and my last lesson of the school day, Physical Education. I was laughing and joking in the changing room with one of my close school friends. We said our goodbyes to each other when the school bell sounded and went our separate ways.

The next time I saw her she was laying on a roadside after being hit by a car outside our school. I gave my cardigan to be used as a cushion for her head as my teacher tried to resuscitate her. The ambulance came after what seemed like hours. I will always remember watching her motionless hand, displaying all the rings that I had given her, fall off the stretcher as she was being ushered into the ambulance. She died a few days later and the last time I stood so closely to her was sitting inches away from her coffin in the small local church at her funeral.
For weeks I would sleep with my light on and every time I shut my eyes I would see her face. I went totally withdrawn and became obsessed with life after death. I just simply could not accept that there was nothing after death. Again it was my natural disposition guiding me to the existence of God. But at this stage of life I did not look for the answers in religion but rather found myself scouring the library shelves for books on near-death experience and clairvoyancy. And at that stage of my life it was convenient, and a comfort, to accept these ideas.
But for me the most important lesson I learned from that year was that our lives could end at any moment -old, young, healthy, unhealthy. One day, and it could be today or tomorrow, we could be in our graves having to answer to God.

Why did we not live according to His rules? It is not enough that we were good to others and were careful not to harm anybody. What about the God who created us, who provides us with everything to keep us alive like air, a heart that beats and plentiful food to eat? We take His blessings throughout our lives yet fail to even acknowledge His existence or thank Him! How would we feel if after bearing our children and providing them with all their needs that they just lived their lives never speaking to us, never even thinking of us or even uttering one word of thanks to us! Would we want to reward a child like this? Then why do we live our lives expecting to receive God's ultimate reward of Paradise when we have never acknowledged His existence or turned to Him in gratitude for His endless blessings?

In 1991 I moved to London to study Law at a university and my life finally began to turn around. It was here that I met my future husband, who was a Muslim, and his group of Muslim friends. I specifically chose a university in London that was multi-cultural because coming from a very White area I wanted to meet people from different backgrounds. My boyfriend and his friends were not practicing Islam wholeheartedly at that time so we spent many nights out in Central London.

Then one day one of the boys from the group visited my student house fully clad in shalwar kameez and a significant beard. I was amazed - he had decided to start practicing Islam. Where he used to greet me with a big hug he just smiled and walked past me making a joke that "I won't be hugging you anymore!" I always had the perception that someone who was following a religion would frankly be very serious and boring. But here was a boy whose face was alight with happiness in his own life choice to turn his back on partying and the so-called "high-life" and practice Islam in its entirety.

From that day on every time this boy came to visit my student house he would talk about Islam. It was very strange because from that instant I became extremely shy in his presence out of respect for him and his values. I would simply sit quietly and listen to what he was saying about Islam. When they went home I would often debate the points discussed with my then-boyfriend but I was always left having to agree the viewpoint given in Islam made perfect sense. Slowly I began to picture together in my mind a view of how perfect the world would be if we all lived our lives as dictated by God in Islam.

Many aspects of Islam appealed to me directly. Many issues that If I had implemented in my teenage years, would have made such a vast difference in my upbringing. For me, it was some of the prohibitions laid down in Islam that appealed to me. For example, the prohibition of alcohol. We are told in the Holy Qur'an that there is some benefit in it but the harm outweighs the good.
"They ask you (O Muhammad) concerning alcoholic drink and gambling. Say: "In them is a great sin, and (some) benefits for men, but the sin of them is greater than their benefit."