Real & Wonderful Stories

Compiled by: Abdurahim bin Mizhir Almalki

Karimah

     My mother’s brother was married to a lady who was raised Muslim. She had been my “aunt” from the time I was born until around age five, when she was divorced from my uncle. My father and mother also got divorce when I was five. After both divorces my father and aunt remained friends and kept in contact.

     My father was raised in a strict and devout Christian home, Southern Baptist to be specific. He was extremely dogmatic in his beliefs. As one may imagine, when he encountered Islam, he wholeheartedly rejected it – as any good Christian might. But he didn’t just reject it, he wanted to prove it wrong. This is always the kicker!

     He began his mission of studying the Bible and the Qur’an, and comparing the two. He wound up learning more about the Bible than he had intended to learn! See, the preachers in our churches would pick a topic for a sermon and then find passages that were relevant to preach. Therefore, one never actually heard the whole Bible – only selected verses. He started discovering discrepancies within this religious manual and subject matters which he was unaware of. To make a long story short, he isolated himself for a period of three years except for consulting with certain Christians for answers and arguing occasionally with my aunt about Islam.

    He finally gave in to the realization that there are no errors in the Qur’an and that there was no way he could go on following a book as the word of a true , perfect God which was saturated in flaws. That’s how he came to accept Islam, and it was through him that I found Islam.

     I always believed that God was perfect, supreme, and much greater than man. For this reason I never believed as a child that Jesus was God. Even though this message was tossed to me from every angle. But I had always heard the word “lord” accompanied by Jesus’ name, so I previously assumed that Jesus was the lord and God was God. I really didn’t know what “lord” meant, but I was sure it didn’t mean “god” because only God could be god, and Jesus was a man! And that’s how I initially recognized Islam as the truth.

     My father and I took shahadah the same night at the Birmingham Islamic Society mosque, al-hamdulillah!