Why did you become Muslim?
Reply #21 - November 16, 2013, 10:48 AM
@ Cornflower, I think I have quite a similar experience, though some differences in the details.
I was baptised catholic as a child, my mothers family from a catholic background and my Dad was culturally Asian Muslim. I had a bit of both religions from my grandmothers on both sides, but my parents never really put emphasis on it, it didn't really matter. I wasn't in contact with my dad's side of the family for a large majority of growing up till my late teens, so I considered myself as a Christian, partly because I lived with my uncle for a while and though not religious in the way they conducted themselves, we went church every sunday. My mum never felt the need for me to have my communion and all the rest, I left Catholicism in my teens, and thought of myself as without religion but I still believed in God, Christianity didn't make sense to me, it was just a cross around my neck, I didn't believe the priest could bless me or that he had a higher status than me, and then the three in one didn't make sense to me either, all the intermediaries, praying to jesus to pray to God, or talking to dead family members to get them to talk to God cos they are up there, or saints, priests, blah blah... Just didn't make sense to me. I considered myself as agnostic for most of my teens but kind of wore a cross as a good luck charm.
I was dating a Muslim and he was culturally Muslim himself so he didn't know much about his religion, but he knew that when he was older he wanted to be religious. So I used to research this stuff for him, on his behalf and tell him what he is allowed and not allowed to do. We'd argue about it a lot but I still thought it was bullshit at the time but I respected it and all religions, and perceived it as a good thing to be close to God in whatever form. I was a religious agnostic if that makes sense, I would pray every night, to the creator, and for him to guide me if there was a path to follow. In the meantime anything I found from different religions that I liked, I thought was beneficial or that made sense to me I would adopt. For example I really wanted a tattoo, so I checked what the major religions said and concluded that the majority don't exactly agree with it so I didn't. So in this multi-religious time, I also stopped eating pork because of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, fasting in Ramadan, trying to abstain from intimacy, and I just generally had never been too fond of alcohol, only had it on birthdays, Christmas and new year and eventually that stopped as well because I have control issues and would never let myself get drunk anyway. So then dude leaves me, because the things i was making him aware of in his religion and I'm not Muslim and so he couldn't marry me. I was back in contact with my Dad at this point and he more or less denounced religion, not that he ever followed it. I was in my final year at uni, and as a rebound I starting seeing another Muslim guy who had been pestering me for a while but nothing serious. He was the most unreligious guy so when he turns around and decides he is going to Palestine, comes back with a fully grown beard and wasn't perfect but tried to refrain from things he shouldn't so he was still seeing me, and another girl. Then a couple of my other friends were going through a similar thing were they started to take religion seriously. This guy I was seeing didn't directly preach to me, but he'd tell me about how he's preaching to the other girl, so we'd discuss it sometimes, I was in slight awe of him, because I hadn't known anyone that willingly goes into warzones to help people and the mad stuff he was doing to raise money. He mentioned something about people always ask for signs in out of the ordinary miracles, waiting for writing in the sky and miss the signs they are being given everyday. If you've heard of the story of the man who was stranded in the sea praying for God to help, 3 boats came by and he said no to all of them because God was going to save him, he died, he asked God why he didn't save him, and he said he sent three boats but he refused them all. So I started to think were there signs? A lot of people I knew had started practising Islam, his other female friend converted and I heard of one other, no other religion was being shown to me, a lot of the religious things I had cherry picked were from Islam, so I thought it was the sign to look into it deeper. So I started with things I thought would nullify it straight away e.g 4 wives, beating your wife, and it wasn't what I thought it was, I could understand their explanations for it. I then became obsessed with watching lectures it was all I would do in the breaks I had when writing my dissertation, I adopted more things from Islam such as halal meat, getting involved with the political side of things. I loved the character of the Prophet and how Muslims were meant to be, and the last straw for me was watching Yusuf Estes conversion story for some reason, I searched the shahadah and done it with a youtube video.
Like conrflower my childhood wasn't very stable, which made me feel a need to control things around me, there wasn't a consistent fulfilment of love or emotion, I needed the rules, I needed it as a safety net. I knew what people were allowed or not allowed to do to me. If I had a husband there was rules he had to follow and it was less scary than being with a man that could do anything, because I knew what to expect, I could prepare myself for anything. I also had a relationship with God who loved me, and chose me, so if I never got that from anyone else it was ok, although I did want a new husbands muslim family to love me lol. So for me there was many reasons to convert, unstable family life, I felt God was guiding me, trying to find an identity that I had lost ( I hated the Asian culture so Islam was the alternative even though my family aren't practising, they don't even fast, they just don't eat pork, apart from my grandma and one uncle). My long term bf left me because of it, seeing lots of people turning to it, and it just made sense to me at the time, it didn't have the hierarchy that other religions have, on a surface level you could make sense of it. It didn't seem to have as much ridiculous stuff, maybe I ignored it because I was in awe of the good aspects, it was a structured way of life rather than believing in odd things. Then when you accept it you accept it all, so you snowball into this individual you don't recognise. I was also a very depressed person but while I was a Muslim it was gone, I didn't feel depressed, I felt content and thought that was a clear sign anytime I had doubts, in fact that still makes me question now, because I went about 3 years in a reasonably contented state, it wasn't about being happy, it was about not being depressed, and now I feel depressed again lol.
Extremely long post lol sorry.
"Make anyone believe their own knowledge and logic is insufficient and you'll have a puppet susceptible to manipulation."
Topic: Why did you become Muslim?