Asalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakathuhu

Nothing makes Truth stand out more clearly than Falsehood! I embraced Islam 6 months after I arrived in the US, thanks to my encounter with Christianity!

I was born in India and grew up among people who worshipped many gods and goddesses - the Hindus.  At every street and corner in India, you will find temples housing idols of wood, stone, ivory, even gold and silver.

I do not come from a Hindu family.  My parents do not believe in God.  They are atheists.

They taught me there was no such thing as God.  As a child, I believed whatever my parents told me.  I looked up to them and believed they knew everything.  I thought they were perfect.  As I grew older however, I realized that my parents did not know everything.  They were certainly not perfect.  And they made mistakes.

At some point, several questions about life began to arise in my mind.  I’m sure these questions arise in the minds of most people at some time or other:

What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why is man faced with the predicament to choose between good and evil? Why do people die? What happens after death?

My parents did not have the answers to these questions.

I began to think independently and eventually, after deep contemplation and reflection I came to the conclusion that God did exist! In fact, God was the only reality!

There is order and perfection in nature which cannot possibly be the result of chance.

There can be no design without a Designer, and no creation without a Creator.  We human beings are products of creation, not chance, accident or evolution.

It was obvious to me that there was only one Creator.  There could not be more than one since that would cause a division or split in power and consequently result in chaos and disorder.  Isn’t there a saying that goes, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”?

So, I began to believe in God.  I also believed in accountability for my actions.  Our actions are the only things we can control.  Nothing else besides that lies in our power.

Since God created us with the freedom to choose between right and wrong, it was evident to me that it mattered a lot what I chose to do or how I chose to act.  Deep down inside I knew that one day I would have to give an account for all my deeds.  God has all power, and He has the ability to reward and to punish.  So I greatly feared God.

I believed in God, but I did not have a religion.  I used to think it didn’t matter what religion a person belonged to as long as that person was good.  Now, there is something seriously wrong with that kind of thinking.  Anyway, I had no understanding then, and all I cared about was finding a God-fearing man to be my husband.  Being a monotheist, I was willing to marry a Christian, a Muslim or a Bahai.

I met my husband under the most peculiar circumstances.  He was a Christian.  And he was from America.  We had known each other for only three days.  But he proposed to me.  I thought he was very honest and had his heart full of the fear of God.  We got married.  Two weeks later, he had to go back to the US.  He couldn’t take me with him.  It was a year and a half before I got my visa to go to the US.

America is very different from India.  It took me a while to adjust to the American lifestyle.  My husband was a very devout Christian.  He was a member of the Worldwide Church of God.  He read the Bible regularly, frequently, almost fanatically! He used to observe the Sabbath and attended the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  I went to church with him several times.  I also read the Bible and found a lot of things in there that supported what I believed about God.  I liked the proverb “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom”.  I met many nice people at church.  I even made some very good friends.  I was particularly attached to an elderly couple.  I was pretty happy with the way things were going....... until I went to California to visit my in-laws.

It was when I was travelling in the metro train, on my way to Los Angeles, that some people entered the train and passed slips of paper to the passengers.  I looked at the piece of paper in my hand and read it with utter disbelief.  I have carefully preserved that piece of paper.  This is what it said: What must I do to be saved?

WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?

The answer to this question is: absolutely nothing! The only requirement is to believe what God has said in His word, and He says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”.

Only believe? Yes, that’s all! Believe means to trust completely in what God has said concerning salvation.

What do we have to believe?  That Christ died for our sins, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.

Christ died to give us eternal life. If you desire to have eternal life make the following prayer:

Heavenly Father, I know that I am a sinner and that I have a need to be forgiven. I now receive Christ Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Thank You for having forgiven my sins. In Jesus name. Amen.

John 1:12 But as many as received Him, (Jesus) to them gave He (God) power (authority) to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.

This little slip of paper changed my entire life! My heart was screaming that this simply could not be true!  It was so evidently false that I was surprised that anyone actually believed in it! This was the beginning of my first real acquaintance with modern Christianity.

I was completely overwhelmed with amazement to learn some of the fantastic beliefs of modern Christians. The following is a list of beliefs which made absolutely no sense to me:

1.    That Jesus is God.

2.    That is Jesus is Lord and our Savior, who came down to earth in the form of man to die for our sins.

3.    That God is three in one.......a concept called the Trinity.

None of the above beliefs are supported by the Bible! Jesus never claimed to be God. He never said that he had come to die for our sins. And you can scour the Bible from cover to cover. You will not find the word Trinity in it!

Several questions arose in my mind about the above mentioned beliefs. Why would God personally need to come down to earth if He has all power?

If He wants to get something done, all He needs to do is say the word and it is done! Jesus was a man.

If he was God, then how could he die? Can God die?

Furthermore, if Jesus was really God in the flesh, who did he pray to? Did he pray to himself?!

If Jesus is God, how can we even think of God subjecting Himself to the temptation of the devil?

How can the devil offer Jesus the kingdoms of the world, if everything in the heavens and earth all belong to God? Besides, wasn’t it God who created the devil?!

If the Trinity is indeed an important article of faith, why does not Jesus preach this trinity?

It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand that the Creator cannot become His creation, or part of His creation. Even if God could become His creation, why would He want to do that?!! And if it is true that God became Jesus and did indeed die for our sins (which sounds like a very drastic step to me), then the world as we know it today should be free of sin. If it is not free of sin, then what was the point in dying for our sins?

What did it accomplish?!

I was staring at first-class Falsehood. I knew it was false right to the very core.

You will not find a single flaw in God’s creation. It is perfect. It is God who has given us the power of reason and common sense. Would God ask us to believe in anything that didn’t make sense? Truth must make sense. When a detective wants to find the truth, he looks for clues, examines the evidence and uses his power of reasoning. People employ this method for all matters, except in the field of religion! This is where they abandon their reason and believe blindly in whatever they are taught!

I wondered how people could actually believe that Jesus died for their sins! I want to ask this question to you. If you were sitting for an important exam, would you believe anyone who said that you had to do absolutely nothing in order to pass that exam?!

Would you believe anyone who said all you had to do was believe that your teacher himself would study for the exam and do all the hard work for you? All you needed to do was believe and that’s it!??

Well, you could believe and believe all you want, but when the results of the exam are announced, you will discover that you’ve got zero! Not only that, when your teacher learns that you had been entertaining the funny thought that he was going to do the studying for you, he would probably expel you from school and send you to the lunatic asylum to have your head examined!

What am I doing down here?  I wonder, my nose and forehead pressed to the floor as I kneel in prayer.  My kneecaps ache, my arm muscles strain as I try to keep the pressure off my forehead.  I listen to strange utterings of the person praying next to me.  It’s Arabic, and they understand what they are saying, even if I don’t.  So.  I make up my own words, hoping God will be kind to me, a Muslim only 12 hours old.  OK.  God, I converted to Islam because I believe in you, and because Islam makes sense to me.  Did I really just say that?  I catch myself, bursting into tears.  What would my friends say if they saw me like this, kneeling, nose pressed to the floor?...They’d laugh at me.  Have you lost your mind?  They’d ask.  You can’t seriously tell me you are religious.  Religious...I was once a happy ‘speculative atheist,’ how did I turn into a believer and a Muslim?  I ask myself.  I turn my mind into the past and attempt a whirlwind tour through my journey.  But where did it begin?  Maybe it started when I first met practicing Muslims.  This was in 1991, at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

I was an open-minded, tolerant, liberal woman.  24 years old.  I saw Muslim women walking around the International Centre and I felt sorry for them.  I knew they were oppressed.  My sorrow increased when I asked them why they covered their hair, why they wore long sleeves in summer, why they were so ill-treated in Muslim countries, and they told me that they wore the veil, and they dressed so, because God asked them too.  Poor things.  What about their treatment in Muslim countries?  That’s culture, they would reply.  I knew they were deluded, socialised/brainwashed from an early age, into believing this wicked way of treating women.  But I noticed how happy they were, how friendly they were, how solid they seemed.  I saw Muslim men walking around the international centre.

There was even a man from Libya - the land of terrorists.  I trembled when I saw them, lest they do something to me in the name of God.  I remembered the television images of masses of rampaging Arab men burning effigies of President Bush, all in the name of God.  What a God they must have, I thought.  Poor things that they even believe in God, I added, secure in the truth that God was an anthropomorphic projection of us weak human beings.  But I noticed that these men were very friendly.  I noticed how helpful they were.  I perceived an aura of calmness.  What a belief they must have, I thought.  But it puzzled me.  I had read the Koran, and hadn’t detected anything special about it.  That was before, when the Gulf War broke out.  What kind of God would persuade men to go War, to kill innocent citizens of another country, to rape women, to demonstrate against the US?

I decided I’d better read the Holy book on whose behalf they claimed they were acting.  I read a Penguin classic, surely a trustworthy book, and I couldn’t finish it, I disliked it so much.  Here was a paradise described with virgin women in it for the righteous (what was a righteous woman to do with a virgin woman in Paradise?); here was a God destroying whole cities at a stroke.

No wonder the women are oppressed, and these fanatics storm around burning the US flag, I thought.  But the Muslims I put this to seemed bewildered.  Their Quran didn’t say things in that way.  Perhaps I had a bad translation?

Suddenly the praying person I am following stands up.  I too stand up, my feet catching on the long skirt I wear; I almost trip.  I sniff, trying to stop the tears.  I must focus on praying to God.  Dear God, I am here because I believe in you, and because during my research of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Islam made the most sense.

Bending over, my hands at my knees, I try hard to reassure myself.  God.  Please help me to be a good Muslim.  A Muslim! Kathy, how could you - a white western women who is educated - convert to a religion which makes its women second class citizens!

But Kingston’s Muslims became my friends, I protest.  They welcomed me into their community warmly, without question.  I forgot that they were oppressed and terrorists.  This seems like the start of my journey.  But I was still an atheist.  Or was I?

I had looked into the starry night, and contemplated the universe.  The diamond stars strewn across the dark sky twinkled mysterious messages to me.  I felt hooked up to something bigger than myself.  Was it a collective human consciousness?  Peace and tranquility flowed to me from the stars.  Could I wrench myself from this feeling and declare there is no higher being?  No higher consciousness?  Haven’t you ever doubted the existence of God?  I would ask my believing Christian and Muslim friends.  No, they replied.  No?  No?  This puzzled me.

Was God that obvious?  How come I couldn’t see God.  It seemed too much a stretch of my imagination.  A being out there, affecting the way I lived.  How could God listen to billions of people praying, and deal with each second of that person’s life?  It’s impossible.  Maybe a First Cause, but one who intervened?  And what about the persistence of injustice in the world?  Children dying in war.  A just, good God couldn’t allow that.  God didn’t make sense.  God couldn’t exist.  Besides, we evolved, so that disposed of a First Cause anyway.

We kneel down again, and here I am, sniffing, looking sideways at my fingers on the green of my new prayer mat.  I like my prayer mat.  It has a velvetty touch to it, and some of my favourite colours: a purple mosque on a green background.  There is a path leading to a black entrance of the mosque and it beckons me.  The entrance to the mosque seems to contain the truth, it is elusive, but it is there.  I am happy to be beckoned to this entrance.

When I was much younger I had a complete jigsaw picture of the world.  It fell apart sometime during the third or fourth year of my undergraduate study.  In Kingston I had reminded myself that I had once been a regular churchgoer, somewhat embarrassed, since I knew that religious people were slushy/mushy, quaint, boring, old fashioned people.  Yet God had seemed self-evident to me then.  The universe made no sense without a Creator Being who was also omnipotent.

Leaving church I had always had a feeling of lightness and happiness.  I felt the loss of that feeling.  Could it be that I had once had a connection to God which was now gone?  Maybe this was the start of my journey?  I tried to pray again, but found it extraordinarily difficult.  Christians told me that people who didn’t believe in Lord Jesus Christ were doomed.  What about people who’ve never heard of Jesus?  Or people who follow their own religion?  And society historically claimed women were inferior because Christianity told us it was Eve’s punishment; women were barred from studying, voting, owning land.  God was an awful man with a long white beard.  I couldn’t talk to him.  I couldn’t follow Christianity, therefore God couldn’t exist.

But then I discovered feminists who believed in God, Christian women who were feminists, and Muslim women who believed Islam did not condone a lot of what I thought integral to their religion.  I started to pray and call myself a ‘post-Christian feminist believer.’