Ingrid Mattson – Finding Islam Stories of American Muslim Converts 52nd Annual Convention
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AI: Transcript ©
I'd like to welcome you to, our session,
in this convention we've been talking about the
stories of resilience.
And
this session is,
you know, really looking at at the experience
at Cromwell. What does that mean to have
an early bird
story, for Convert in America, what are the
challenges? What does it mean? I remember once
when I did a paper
being a convert myself, I did all kinds
of research on culture shock, and I did
research on what happens with with the conversion
process, and I remember,
reading a quote once from, Abdulhakim Murad, when
we talked about the fact that the convert,
their whole-
all the signposts of the world are changed
all at once.
Okay?
So, you know, when we're talking about becoming
Muslim in America,
we're not just talking about the belief in
la ilaha illallah, Muhammadu Rasoolallah.
We're not just talking about the beliefs, we're
talking about coming into a community that may
be very different,
from what we grew up with.
So sometimes, you know, I think,
you know, we experience that there's even more
challenges, you know,
learning all these different cultures, and it's both
a joy,
but it's also something that that can sometimes
be be difficult. And we have
a really amazing
group of publics who
have
gone through this journey and and are several
years into their journey, and they are here
and they're able to to really share with
you.
I wanna I'm not gonna do a formal
bio thing. I'm gonna let them, sort of,
introduce themselves,
and we'll try and just have a little
discussion. And I think what I really wanna,
start with is is just saying, okay,
you know, tell us about,
you know, tell us about who you are,
kind of, briefly,
and maybe just talk about let's start with
who you were. What what what was life
like, where were you before,
you became Muslim?
You probably see me, near the booths and
everything. My name is Edgar Mokita
and I'm the communications director for ISNA.
So hopefully all of you are having a
great time.
Just to answer what sister Patricia's question was
about who I was before I became Muslim.
I was actually 21
before I converted to Islam.
I'm Filipino American
coming from a military background.
I was at the height of my partying
and college days,
university days,
but again I went through a spiritual crisis,
and I was also finding out who I
am and who I was as a
Filipino American.
And I'm asking you my little teaser text
for, or my teaser speech for Leira Insha'Allah.
Yes. My name is Kolar Harding,
and I also
took my shahada when I was 21. 21
seems to be popular age to
sort of reflect on life and the purpose
of life.
Who I was before I took my shot,
I was a
university student,
sort of searching for,
I know it sounds so cliche, but searching
for the meaning of life.
I was raised in a faith tradition that,
I slowly started to feel, like, was not
able to answer the questions that I had
for some of the social injustices that I
saw around me.
And,
so Islam came to me as a gift
that happened at the perfect time.
I definitely wasn't looking for it, but when
I was,
when I start to interact with other Muslims,
not really knowing what they had, what that
was about them that made them,
what what made them unique. That was sort
of what made me take a look at
what what their faith tradition said, and that's
what changed my,
opinion about Islam.
My name is Evans.
Unlike Kalara and Edgar, I didn't convert to
Islam when I was 21.
I converted to Islam when I was 15.
I was in high school
and, you know, it's a very complex relationship
that
the African American community from, you know, community
that
I represent ethnically
has with Islam.
So members of my family,
my grandmother's father,
belonged to the Ahmadiyya
Muslim Movement.
In terms of what we know,
when he arrived in Chicago, his surname was
already Mohammed
And,
although by the time
I was born, there were really no remnants
of the Sami practice in our family besides
the fact
that my uncles had very strange names.
And my aunts had very strange names. So
Aboloa,
Mustafa,
Lotifa,
Maria,
and
I always wanted to know how that related
to my personal story
and,
eventually it led me to
some inquiry about this man and at 100
Ibadan, raised this man when I was,
I wanna say, a sophomore, junior high school.
100 Ibadan.
Thank
you.
Assalamu alaykum.
I was raised, Roman Catholic, went to Saint
Mary's Elementary School, went to Saint Mary's High
School, my brothers went to Saint Jerome's High
School,
went to Saint Mary's Church,
you know, I mean, that was my life
was in the Catholic community and I'm so
grateful for that community. I got an excellent
education.
I had excellent role models,
most of the,
the nuns, the religious women in my community
had a strong keen sense of social justice
and activism,
and they modeled that for us and taught
it.
So I'm I'm
I will always be in some sense, a
person who is Catholic in terms of that
formation, my educational formation, my values, and outlook.
The only problem I had
was with Catholic theology, Christian theology.
And,
at 15, I
I,
absolutely
knew that I didn't believe in it. It
was sad for me because I I loved
going to church, I loved the
the art of the church, I love this
I love sacred space, I love the quiet,
I love, you know, so much about it,
but I didn't believe
what we were saying.
So I I left that and I thought
I was leaving religion behind. I wasn't a
seeker, I wasn't a searcher, I
just left it.
And it wasn't until I was in my
last year of university,
that when I was studying in Paris,
one summer I was studying film in Paris,
where I made friends with, some Muslims from
Senegal,
and,
they became very good friends,
and I was interested in my friends
and their life and their culture, and so
I started reading West African literature and Franz
Fanon
and, you know, about
West African colonialism
and everything about their lives
including,
about this they said they were Muslim,
so I started reading about what that meant.
I did not know anything about Islam,
and that's what exposed me to the Quran.
My friends were really
sweet, lovely people, they were part of a,
network of Senegalese communities that operated,
you know, feeding stations
and visiting the sick.
Most of them abstained from alcohol,
most of them went to this clubs,
and, you know, they were just like, they
seem to be pretty much, like, normal young
people, but but
more connected with their community and most of
them didn't drink. So that was pretty so
it's not like they were proselytizing or anything.
But because of that encounter with them, that's
how I started reading a translation of the
Quran. And to my surprise,
within a few months, I had
regained,
you know, I was aware of God. I
mean, I really
regained my faith in God and it was
through
and then the question was, what do I
do about it now?
You know?
And,
and I decided that it meant that I
should become part of this community that preserved
this book for me, that gave me back
my faith in God.
But those,
that community,
those people will always be, for me, the
best example of Muslims. And you may be
surprised and say, well, you know, they wrote
my clubs or they were this and that,
but there was
absolute,
integrity to them in terms of their,
their character,
their generosity, their kindness,
and,
their sense of inclusive they
they they I didn't see them ever turn
away anyone from their community.
You know, they really accepted people, they accepted
me, I was not a Muslim.
So to me that is is
a good Muslim community,
and has been a touchstone for me, for
for my my life.
Yeah. Unfortunately, we only have we have 1
mic, so it's it's complicated thing. You know,
I've known doctor Mattson for, I think, over
15 years now,
and I think we've we've had conversations
time and time again, but,
you you know, I I I just had
a moment of resonance that I didn't know
we have, which is that I was also
very much raised Catholic. You know, my parents
were married at the Saint Mary's.
And I also at the same at the
same time, I was very much in I
went to Catholic school.
I was very much involved in in this
youth group, but when it take time to
convert, which is like making declaration of faith
for yourself, and I ended up, which would
have been around 15,
I ended up saying I I don't believe
this. I don't believe the doctrine.
So so that that was that was the
point. Similarly, with with some of our other
panels, for me, I I,
I think I first learned,
you know, started learning about Islam, actually, at
the university through a class which was an
introduction to Arabic culture class,
and there, they had just the basis of
Islam. It was, like, our vocabulary words were,
like, what is Kaaba? What is, you know,
the Greek in God, the Greek in the
prophets?
And I just had this
profound
thing,
a moment of continuity,
that really struck me, because I felt like
as a Christian growing up, I was like,
you you know, there was this Old Testament
God and then the New Testament God, and
it's like, I want your personality change. And
then all of a sudden, you know, here
I was learning about Islam, and it's just
like everything came into a really nice
flow for me. So it became, you know,
one academic year became so intense. We now
come a small town, which is actually called
Medina,
which is named after the city of the
prophets on IAS 7.
Our our high school mascot with the bees
and our colors were were green.
The symbolism was there,
but I never I never met a Muslim
until until I went to the university. But
but that year was just a a really
profound,
you know, coming from a small town to
not only learning about Islam, but also learning,
the cultures of different Muslims. Muslims. You know,
having now Pakistani friends, having Arab friends, having
African American friends, and learning all of these
different cultures and foods and everything that I
hadn't been exposed to before, as well as,
you know,
you know, international relations that I I was
really pretty ignorant about at that time.
And so then I ended up,
just going through this process of learning where,
you know, at the end of the academic
year, I was like, there's nothing I disagree
with, and and that that really had implications
for me. And I ended up, even becoming
a Muslimer at that time.
So I guess, listen, the the next the
next question I just wanna ask, I mean,
I know you I I was gonna the
next question is really about how you found
Islam and
and and, you know, the inspiration of that.
And I know you you all kinda got
into it a little bit. Well, I didn't.
I didn't. Okay. Yeah. You you didn't. So
It's it's a magic thing first, I went
out for a short
you have a great short. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Those my answer was shorter before I end.
But, to to answer the question,
as I as I alluded to earlier,
I was going through 2 phases.
One is I was trying to find because
just to give some background about being Filipino
American in this country,
this is a very
broad generalization
is that Filipino parents that have immigrated to
the United States
generally do want their kids to be more
assimilated, acculturated,
speak English without an accent. Don't worry about
our ethnic culture. We'll give you the Filipino
food and the dances and everything, but we
want you to be totally American.
So I was so I'm monolingual because of
that. I I I was wrong. Although my
parents are upset with me, I can understand
what they're saying even in their native tongue.
So
unfortunately,
most Filipino Americans were not given the blessing
of of learning about their ethnic culture. And
of course, when you're in public school, you
want to fit in, you don't care who
you're with, as long as you're part of
the cool crowd. But once you get to
college, you're all alone
and you're trying to find out who you
are as a person.
And that's how I connected,
with
Islam was I learned that in Filipino history,
that the first monotheistic religion to come to
what we now call the Philippines
was Islam through the Islamization of Southeast or
Southeast Asia through Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
And so, back then when I was in
college, I was going through my radical activist
Filipino phase, you know. It's like why should
I be the religion of my oppressors, the
standards that colonize the Philippines,
when I could be part of the religion
that my people actually chose, which was Islam.
So I got so that's one part of
the journey. The second part was,
what I didn't mention earlier was my fake
before, which I was most Filipinos are Roman
Catholics
and I I consider myself a pretty okay,
not nominal Catholic, but an okay Catholic. I
was a volunteer catechism teacher.
I was
an usher, although,
for the wrong nia, for the wrong intentions.
I was trying to- there was a girl
I wanted to date at the time, so
I was saying that, but actually because of
that, you know. So that there's no- there's
the nipa, there's hypocrisy in that.
But,
when I was a catechism teacher, what struck
me as very,
sharp
into my into my spiritual development
was, one of the junior high students that
I was teaching asked me
quite frankly,
how what is the proof text? What is
the proof that that God is a trinity?
And of course, you know, you can look
at deeper to the theology of it, but
then
a really, you know,
explicit verse in the Bible was not really
there,
and that brought me into a spiritual crisis.
And
unlike others that, you know, go through the
conversion process differently,
I delved into many good and bad books
about Islam.
Because back in 'ninety eight, we didn't have
Amazon. I used to go to school rudimentary.
We didn't- I used to have to cut
out little
things out of the catalogs and mail it
to get a book. You couldn't really order
online back then, and so I also went
to the library. So so that was my
process, was that I went through
the ethnic process. I found that it's indigenous
to my culture. We weren't always Catholic, but
also, and then the spiritual side was I
had a spiritual crisis,
and that's what sparked me to journey toward
a slab. I'm just asking to answer the
question.
You know, it's interesting because,
you know, my wife
swears that I'm lying.
That's an interesting way to start a question
because every time
I tell a story about my conversion to
Islam,
I tell a different version of the story.
However,
the secret is that they're all true.
It's just that so many things were happening
all at once.
So I remember as early as,
I think when Spike Lee's,
Malcolm X came out.
I would think I was about 11 or
12.
When I finished watching that movie, it was
such a story of transformation.
I said to my mother,
whatever he is, I'm that.
I'm Muslim.
And, I really loved smothered pork chops. Even
to say it now, just
giving me a willy. You know? But
I still remember my mother saying to me,
what about the pork chops?
You have to stop that.
And I said, you know what? You're right.
Maybe you should postpone this Muslim thing.
At least until after dinner.
But that was like my initial exposure to
Denzel Washington
really played that role well.
So well that, you know, when I saw
the movie Fly It I was thinking, what
is Malcolm X doing flying a plane?
Malcolm X can follow the dots. That's Denzel
Washington. That's not Malcolm X. And so after
that,
I was aware of Islam,
Both within my family and from without my
family.
And then there was also a street gang
component because I grew up in an area
that was controlled
by a street gang whereby that would even
they would find that, offensive. A street organization
that
had some pseudo Islamic
influence.
And so I would and also to some
mild,
not very strict, strict, but mild behavioral
expectations.
So, you know, we were that they thought,
you know,
referenced or hearkened back to Islam.
So we were forbidden to straighten our hair.
This was a big thing. My doer s
curls, dupes,
and texturizers.
They would say, brother,
if I ever see it with something like
that in your head, you know, right? We
couldn't call each other the n word.
We didn't do that. We said brother. It
was a street organization, but there was
and when we had session
in our neighborhood,
they would open with the bus.
And they're beside the family and they talk
about drug sales and everything.
Very, very,
Very peculiar,
but it existed.
And so he kind of, you know, it
it heighten this, you know, awareness.
Then listening to hip hop.
A lot of people don't like to talk
about the Islamic influences that were in hip
hop. Just hearing the name
Allah. Hearing, you know, references to Islam, references
to Mecca.
All of that is taking
place. But it really culminated for me, I
was in,
Saturday, the 10th year.
I'm not going to tell you how I
got there.
Suffice it to say I was there.
And even then, I was an avid reader.
I've always had a very
deep passion for reading,
and I was just reading a world civilizations
book.
Why? I don't know. Just reading the book.
And I came to the Ottoman Empire,
and there was a small
subsection
on Ottoman
religious
life.
And the section was entitled,
there is no God but God.
And the statement was so counterintuitive
to me. How can we negate?
Now if it had been translated, there's no
God but Allah,
I don't think it would have generated the
same level of interest or intrigue.
That's okay. They're negating
the existence of other deities but then affirming
the existence of their own. But because the
translator translated there's no God but
God, it really, really piqued my interest. And
I started to just I read that subsection
and then any book I could find in
the library about Islam, I would just drift
through it in just a couple of days.
And so, when I came to the section
of Ramadan,
I remembered a Nigerian
friend that I had named Siraj.
And he had the most peculiar
habit
of not eating at lunch
for a number of days
in the year. And then we used to
make fun of him. You know, we used
to say, you know, what kind of religion
would tell you not to eat?
That's crazy, man. And he would just sit
there and just deal with our ridicule and
deal with our, you know, name calling and
jesting and jostling.
And when it hit me that he was
fasting for the month of Ramadan, I looked
at him and I asked, I said,
yes, sir. And I felt good because I
knew something. I said, at those times during
the year when you abstain from lunch,
I didn't say abstain. I said something
wrong.
You know, that's like Muslim speak. Abstain there.
When you don't eat lunch.
Are you fasting for the month of Ramadan?
And I didn't say Ramadan, I said something
else.
He said,
Yeah.
I said, so you want some? I said,
can you tell me about this slab? He
said, I don't know anything about this,
but my dad does.
Why don't you come by the house? My
father,
you know, to him, his father was like
shaking the slab.
My father said, anything you wanna know about
the slab?
So I went over, same day. I said,
son, I've been reading, you know, the encyclopedia,
you know, probably more reliable than some information
you find out about Islam
and a few other books and I wanna
know about Islam.
And as soon as he got through that,
I just
said that's it for me.
That's what I wanted. He said, how would
your mother feel about this? And my mother
is a is a chemist.
She wasn't you know, she encouraged reading, encouraged
exploration,
encouraged, you know, personal study, and she was
very open minded. I said, you know, she
won't mind this. So I took my Shahabi
right there in his kitchen,
and I was about 15 years old. But
I still remember this is a funny, you
know,
anecdote.
The 2 things he gave
were
a kulfi
and a mismac.
And I thought both of them were sacred.
The person asked me, are you Muslim? I
would just pull up to see why.
How could I have this
You know, one thing that that doctor Mazak
referred to, and and I think it's just
an important point, is that when we we
talk about most commerce, you know, and when
we talk about, sometimes you think about
just, like, just perfect for someone to go
out and do, but I think that sometimes
the most most effective is is not the
people who are, you know, we think of
as the shayef or we think of as,
you know,
necessarily soul, religious, and all these things, but
it's the everyday Muslims, you know, that have
personal relationships,
and and that is being good with people
and actually having that interaction, people, you know,
I think that that's what makes the most
impact. So I think I think, the next
question is just really to ask, you know,
okay, after you converted, you know, then what
happened? What was it what was it like
when you were
you know, okay, after you converted, you know,
then what happened? What was it what was
it like when you became more from? What
is it that you that you encountered in
this case?
Okay. What did I encounter after I became
this time?
So
I had raised this, probably about 3 weeks
before I
graduated from from university. And then I started
dental school, and I switched from,
a small town. I went to Champaign, so
anyone who knows University of Illinois Champaign
knows it's it's a big university,
with the Muslim
community is rather small.
And that is
sort of what drew me into Islam.
Just this the sheer diversity
of the community.
That's part of what I was searching out.
I I I had been raised,
in a very
we were actively
taught to appreciate
the differences between people. And so coming to
Champaign was like a culture shock,
because,
it's representative of the state of Illinois, very
segregated.
And so
when
Islam was presented to me, I I thought
this is, like, this is the answer. This
this brotherhood is, you know,
just, you know, sort of love between people
based on on God. So coming to Chicago
was a little bit of a deeper culture
shock,
because that was,
you know, Chicago, my beloved city is
very segregated.
And,
the community
is sadly somewhat reflective of that. And so
there was there was a little bit of
a learning curve,
that's still going on, that
how how do we
sort of embrace one another and really cherish
one another, what we all bring to the
table.
So,
I I was able to connect with people
who through networks,
of folks who knew me,
from Champaign, and I found really tight alliances
with with
with people who I basically consider family.
They were instrumental
in me being able to hold on to
my to my religion.
But in terms of the broader community,
it's still an ongoing struggle for quite a
few, for the majority of congress. Just how
to
how to connect with a community that may
or may not be as
receptive to them post
convertible?
I guess for me, I didn't really go
over my commercial slides. I just went over
what led me to Islam, is that
so after I went through that process of
okay, it's ethnically
cool and
it made sense theologically,
Where do I go? Because it's not like
I know where any mosques at. I couldn't
Google it because Google didn't exist back then.
So where do I go? And I was
at San Diego State University at the time
and this is where you get the whole
Kevin Bacon 7, you know, grades of Kevin
Bacon or whatever.
So,
I was dating a law student who was
a little older than me and I was
at a Filipino history class and,
the person you know, the middle of it
is Mohammed Morales.
At the time, he was not he just
converted to Islam.
He was in my
history Filipino history class, and I was with
my girlfriend at the time
for a lecture and then she came up
to me and I just learned,
Assalamu alaikum. I know I might butchered it
in there. I'm butchering it now, but
I went up to I saw the I
saw one of the crochet crew feet and
then he came up to me and said,
hey, do you have notes from class? Like,
you know, we're we're we're classmates.
I said,
And he's like, are you a Muslim? I
was like, no. But I'm interested in learning
more about it. And then that I got
soft from my lost my lost student girlfriend
because she's a hardcore Catholic so I got
I got out of touch.
And then I just ignored her. I said
and then then he started throwing all kinds
of words at me. Masha'Allah,
hamdulillah,
inshallah, I'm gonna get
so I was like oh, I was like
okay.
Yeah. So
so I finally got, you know,
he introduced me to the MSA at San
Diego State
and alhamdulillah, because he took a shahada at
Valentine's Day, and I remember this. And then
I took shahada 2 weeks later,
and he's Filipino American too.
So I took my shahada, I took my
shahada.
So then,
where does it all go? And I like
what Doctor. Sherman Jackson said, in one of
his talks. He said that conversion is not
an event, it's a process
because but I did it as an event
quite quite, tragically.
I I try to become super Muslim, and
I regret this now because I destroyed my
whole hip hop collection.
I almost destroyed all I I got rid
of almost all my clothes.
I was introduced into Arab and Pakistani friends
so they're giving me clothes that they wore,
like, ethnically. So I had like an Arab
shirt but then I had Pakistani pants and
I saw
it. And I I didn't know. I was
like this is Islam. Okay, I'm cool.
And then I thought but I didn't get
I didn't get home yet. So I was
still living with my parents at the time.
I went home
and they're like what's going on with you?
And I said, I can write to Islam
mom and dad.
Okay, we're going to fit you some bacon
in the morning.
They thought I wasn't serious.
Was lucky because some of my other Filipino
friends, and we call ourselves the class of
90 8 because that's where a lot of
us, because, Masha'Allah, what happened was Mohammed Morales
became Muslim,
then me, then Mohammed Wallace's best friend, his
best friend's father, younger brother, cousin.
There's like 30, 40 Filipino Americans that became
Muslim in 1998,
at least from San Diego.
But,
my parents died. I was joking until they
heard me pray. I got fudger.
It was like it was like it was
really early, like 4:45 in the morning. What
is he doing?
You know? And then I they they went
up to me after prayer and said, are
you seriously reading about Muslims not a face
for you? I said, yes. I'm Muslim. Mom,
I'm gonna give Earl, my older brother, my
liquor cabinet. Because I had a liquor cabinet
at age 21. I had my own liquor
cabinet. And my mom said, oh, I'm not
so I kept Anak being silent. My dear
son in Tagalog. Oh, my Anak, I'm so
happy that you converted to Islam because I
was afraid you might become an alcoholic from
all the liquor that you've been drinking.
So they thought it was a phase and,
and then my friends thought it was a
phase, but eventually they they when I just
start, you know, because I have some Spanish
in me so I I could grow facial
hair like other Filipinos.
But I,
I was still navigating through my way so
but that that's how,
well, that's a question, by the way.
It was like, yeah, well, how they reacted,
right? How how what will happen afterwards? So,
yeah. So I try to become ethnic most
ethnic Pakistani Arab Muslim rather than, you know,
find my own way. So and I had
a big learning curve to go.
Well there's so many things that happened after
but I think perhaps the most,
useful thing to share with this audience is,
some some of the very unfortunate things as
a kind of word of of warning to
when you deal with people.
I when I when I learned the Quran
and then I looked for whatever Muslim community
was local, it was only the the MSA
at the university and with some
other kind of adults from the community.
And they were very warm and welcoming at
the beginning,
and especially just the ordinary people, you know,
the ordinary,
you know, there was one mom and someone
warm, loving people.
Unfortunately, the couple that considered themselves, I think,
the kind of
they weren't they weren't scholars, but I think
they considered themselves the most knowledgeable
in that community, and they did help me
learn some of the basics of Islam before
I was a Muslim.
It was almost like bait and switch. As
as soon as I became a Muslim, suddenly
they were laying on all of all these
demands on me that were completely
absurd and unreasonable.
Insisting that I should get married because I
can't live with my non Muslim family,
you know. And I and,
I had
already planned to go travel and do relief
work the next year insisting that it's impossible
for a woman,
to travel by herself,
all of these gender, the centralizing
stereotypes,
not even travel but like basically almost to
go to another city.
I had met my Senegalese
Muslim friends,
during the summer not only of living in
Paris by myself,
studying film, but I spent 3 months riding
my bike by myself all over France.
And that was the second time I've been
to Europe traveling for months by myself,
you know. I had just spent,
I had tree planted up north in Canada
for months by myself.
I've worked since I was 14 years old.
When I was 14 years old, I used
to take the bus
to my first job, you know,
like the kind of things they were saying
about women's
weakness
and inability
and I mean it had nothing to do
with my experience.
And then they,
they started trying to alienate me from my
family,
you know, my mother who had
lost my father,
44 years old, left her with 7 kids,
between the ages of 10 20,
who had struggled so, you know, and I'm
living with her and,
like,
a a a great person, a great human
being and demonizing
her,
then handing me, say, Qutub's milestones and saying,
this is what you need to know. But
Islam, I read this book and it's like
this
completely,
you know,
everything around you that actually has formed you
until this point as a good human being
is horrible.
It's all jammidiah, and you have to separate
yourself from it. So this was it was
mind blowing. It was, like, really, really distressing
because my experience was a very deeply personal
experience of encountering God again in my life.
That was what my conversion was, and it
had nothing to do with
political theories or social theories or cultural theories
or ideas about femininity and masculinity, all these
things they were throwing on me that were
necessarily
Islamic.
And I have to say that I I
think I was almost ready to throw that
whole thing in in
when I got on, I but I was
saved by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. I was
on my way
to go up to Northern Canada on a
tree planting contract for the summer so I
could pay off my student loans.
I stopped in on the way at the
University of Toronto Bookstore
and I came across Fazlir Rahman's Islam.
And I read that book on the train
and that saved my faith. And I wrote
up I wrote a letter and I I
wrote a letter to Fazil Rahman,
no email in those days, and I dropped
off in the mailbox. I said, you know,
I'm a new Muslim. I have an undergraduate
degree of philosophy in fine arts. I was
gonna go on to, you know, study in
Lilly's field, but this is what happened to
me. It's my story.
I wanna come and study with you. And
when I got back 3 months later from
tree planting all across Canada, there was a
letter from him that still have that letter
inviting me to come study with him.
Now
between the time that, that he accepted me
and I actually actually came to Chabot because
I ended up going to Pakistan, working with
refugees and wanting to continue my work, extended
it for a year, he actually passed away.
But when I when I arrived at the
University of Chicago, there was a community of
students who had come to study with him
who were a wonderful,
you know, group, people like Mohammed Fadl, who,
you know, teaches us
at the University of Toronto, you know, many
good people. Plus I had his his books.
I mean, he was a scholar, and I
was able to really understand how to separate
some culture from Islam and to what for
me what the message was
that that the key of Islam is this
really deep sense of morality underlying any law,
you know, it has to be about about
morals and ethics. So,
I really, you know, again, Allah saved me
really through through that kind of dialogue.
Thank you all for sharing that.
You know, for me, I I, you know,
I I I mentioned at the beginning that
I ended up writing a paper about conversion
and culture shock.
You know, some years after after I had
become Muslim because, you know, when I learned
about, like, kind of, the psychology of culture
shock, I was, like, wow. That's what I
went through. Like, there was this stage of
just being so excited,
but then there was there was, you know,
this,
kind of, almost like a depression that happened,
you know.
I became Muslim as a student in in
the MSA,
and,
you know, it was great sitting with students
and learning and talking, but, you know, as
I went to Muslim events,
absolutely, every time I went somewhere, I, you
know, I would run into 2 things that
would people would tell me that I'm doing
something wrong,
you know,
and and then, of course, there was the
whole,
you know, kind of marriage thing, which is
a very different
way of of interacting.
I think I was I was slightly traumatized.
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like you
you, you know, go to Jumakkahir and you
go to make wagyu, and there's somebody in
the bathroom going, 'Salaam Alaikum, are you married?'
Nice to meet you too.
You know?
And, yeah, and, you know, I had to
learn that, you know, you couldn't politely say
no. You had to be more firm, and
I think I think I had a little
bit of resentment over that. But, I mean,
I think that that I ended up having,
this this this profound sense of insecurity,
and, you know, I wanted to be the
best Muslim that I could be,
but, you know, and I would hear so
many things, and I and I just had
so much self doubt. And and I know
that I carried that back. When I would
go to my family,
you know, I would have, you know, so
much,
you know,
self doubt, and,
you know, she talks about, you know, just
meeting the right person that saved you. For
me, actually, that that was Isma.
I had just graduated,
and I've probably been Muslim for a couple
years, and I and I had, just graduated,
and I was walking around with my resume
and my bag. When I went to the
ISNA Islamic America Conference that was,
held at my campus,
and that- there I met Doctor. Saeed, and
he was like, you know, why don't you
come be an intern at the ISNA headquarters?'
And I did, and,
you know, it was it was a major,
you know, thing for me because, you know,
I went there as an intern and I
ended up doing the fellowship in non profit
management,
but, you know, I also, you know, encountered,
you know, instead of being just around students
who I think students also were
navigating their own sense of trying to be
a good Muslim and what does that mean,
and and and trying to be super vigilant
and and sometimes being a little too harsh,
that it was so profound for me when
I actually met,
some of the first actual scholars, and and
just how humble and how gentle and how
non judgmental that they actually were.
That I was really I mean, I've really
been blessed by Ismael,
I know it's probably why I'm still here
today.
I'm good.
But, you know, this this sense of of
feeling, like, you know, I think on one
hand, it's like you're this you're the inspiration
because you're the convert,
and and you're so you keep putting this
role and people want you to do things
and and and and to be inspiring.
But then feeling like at the interpersonal level,
I think socially I felt very rejected. I
felt very much like there was an archetype,
and I think there there was there was,
a standard of what a good Muslim was,
and I'm not that.
So no matter how much
I am trying and struggling,
I'm never gonna be that.
And it's something that I carry with me,
and it improves my work to this day.
And so when I've done, like, youth education
program at at the loss,
like, I know that it's,
conversation. I know that that that other people
experience this,
so it's definitely something that had an impact.
Anyway, let's turn back to to our panelists,
but,
again, we all go through that that phase
of early learning and and and, you know,
what does it mean and how do you
integrate and how do we do that change?
Can Can you talk a little bit more,
share with us a little bit about
the long term process? You know, how often
this change, you know, some people, I think,
sometimes they have risks with their families. They
have different things. How do how do you
repair and how do you move on?
You know, it's interesting because,
you know, I still remember
attending Jumak for the first time.
I attended Jumak
in a masjid that is located in Frankfort,
Illinois, which is about
20 minutes from my,
house.
And
I knew that when you enter
sacred space, you're supposed to,
you know, get up to the occasion of
entering sacred space. So I tried to dress
as nicely as possible and I put on
an argyle sweater vest and blue corduroys,
argyle
socks,
They told me that July is Friday, but
I assumed it would be like church.
I assumed it would be at church.
I still remember,
and I was certain that my friend's father
told me Friday.
So I said, they're they're gonna come. They're
gonna come. And I sat there until the
first person came in at 12:30,
And I just I was sitting in my
car, you know,
and,
as soon as the Pakistani uncle saw me,
he said,
are you in the right place?
I said, this is the mosque. Right?
Well, this is where I'm supposed to be.
I'm in the right place.
He said, you know, there's a hadith. I
love this man. To this day, I think
about him and I pray with him. He
said, there's a hadith that the first person
that comes to Jumah I didn't know what
hadith was. I just knew it was some
scripture. Right?
The first person that comes to July, they
get the sacrifice of a cow.
And then after that, the second person, a
cow. And then all the way down to
an egg.
Today, you got a really big one.
I still remember us going in praying and
I didn't I had never prayed before.
So when he made he just said I'm
gonna pursue. They're gonna pursue? And I said
that's pretty social.
I had no idea what I was doing
and I'm just trying to mimic his, you
know, trying to copy his movement. And when
he made such that I just put my
hands on, way out.
And afterward he said to me, you know,
Pablo, we're not swimming.
We're afraid. You know?
And then, you know, he gave me some
clothes. He gave me, you know, Shawwar Gamiz
and he gave me,
Golan Sawar's
Islam, Buddhism teachings. He gave me this book,
and I was completely
enraptured with Islam.
It was
the best time of my life.
Now that did include this kind
of Pakistani and sometimes auto acculturation
that I began to take on.
But at that time, it was deeply liberated.
And I think that I was
reacting to something very
troublesome
in my received culture. It wasn't you know,
sometimes we we make it sound I know
when I when I sometimes even when I
speak about it, it sounds just like a
cultural
imperialistic
project.
They're breaking me down and reconstructing me, but
I myself was also reacting to something that
I found
distasteful.
Something I found
disquieted,
concerning
about the culture that I had received.
And,
you know, before you know it,
I only wore
jalaviyas,
shawar kameez.
I didn't want
don't give me burgers. Give me kofta.
You see? Don't give me burgers. Give me
kofta. And I still remember,
you know, that feeling of wanting to be
authentically Muslim. So that when I saw somebody
that was, you know, of Arab descent, I
would speak every Arab word I knew.
They forgot.
I I I don't have any anything that
I because I wanted to feel Muslim.
You know? And when I look back, I
mean, it is it is sinning.
But I think that
sometimes
those experiences are necessary. This
it's it's it's
it has a therapeutic
value.
And I think the long term project
has been working my way back
to where I'm culturally
comfortable
and always trying to infuse that authentic religious
experience
in that place.
You know, because that was that was a
deeply religious experience for me. I still remember
I'll say this in closing.
I had a friend that, he had recently
taught me about jazz music.
I just saw him yesterday, Masha'allah. And he's
Muslim now to Hamidullah.
And I used to read a translation of
the Quran and listen to John Coltrane. That
was like my that was like my weird.
Right?
Listen to John Coltrane, read the Quran. You
know what I'm saying?
And it was just this amazing time. Now
somebody told me,
you do what?
You don't mix the sacred and the profane
like that. Are you crazy? I said, I
didn't know any better. Right? But it was
a deeply religious time for me.
Culturally, I was all over the place and
I think the long term project is just
recapturing that but as meaning
and not someone else. Now I haven't resumed,
you know, reading what I'm listening to. I
don't do that, but
try to recapture, you know, something of that
experience.
I guess the question
I guess the question was how to get
back to the equilibrium, right? Basically long term.
Long term. Okay, long term.
So I mean so what happened to me,
you know, after I went to all those
spaces where I was wearing Hokkaido clothes at
all at one time,
Then there's all these groups that are pulling
at me, you know, you know, I don't
want to mention all these but in the
nineties, I don't know if you guys remember,
for those who are older, there was a
lot of sectarianism
during the nineties. There was a lot of
pulling and pulling and they're trying to pull
my community, you know, all of us Filipino
Congress at the time, you gotta come out
with this match. Well, you gotta go this.
You gotta go that. You gotta go to
this. And I got really fed up and
then they're teaching me, you know, sectarian things
and sectarian this and that. It's like,
can I just be Muslim without having to
deal with all this issue? And, hallelujah, may
Allah bless this brother who came from the
Bay Area, his name is Omar Dakota,
and he actually came to Islam through hip
hop
and he was the one that helped Muhammad
Haralds get Takisha Haida.
And he said, you know what,
have you have you ever like studied what
they call, you know, traditional classical, the classical
Islam? I said, what a classical way? A
classical traditional Islam.
And he said, there's this guy watching me.
He's like an American Muslim guy. He's he
has a small little group. It's called,
the Islamic Studies School, which eventually became, like,
Zaytuna Institute. She comes a use of I
say, use of Islam? I heard about use
of Islam. No. No. No. How's use of
that?
They're both white. Right? It's like, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
And so we drove from San Diego to
the Bay Area. For those who are from
California, that takes about a good 7 and
a half to 8 hours
on college student,
money. So that that's a lot. We all
packed like 8 people in in a car
for 4 to go up to the Bay
Area just to listen to one lecture that
she comes with. And after that, I was
I fell in love with knowledge
because
all the stuff that I did, whether it
was,
acculturating to something different culturally,
wearing this or wearing that, all of that
stuff is superior once I started learning from
people like Sheikh Hamza, Doctor. Irvin Madsen, Doctor.
Sherman Jackson, Doctor. Omar Farooq Fatima,
various others that were American Muslim,
but kept their,
their identity as as Americans
or their ethnic background or African Americans,
that got me comfortable back into my own
skin. It's like, I could wear American clothes
while still being Muslim
And with knowledge, you know, learning thick, learning
alpida, learning all these various sciences,
I knew how to differentiate
between
what was, you know, permissible, what was macrut,
haram,
etcetera.
And I was comfortable in my own skin.
All night, you know, that was cool to
wear a kufi still, so I still wear
one. But I know that it's it's it's
muzahab, you know, it's it's it's, you know,
a very or a sunnah to for a
man to cover his head, but it's not
imagined, you know, it's not alleged, it's not
obligatory.
But because I can do my take off
my head, I'll be another Filipino from Southern
California.
And they all said, are you Muslim? Are
you smoking the mask
I wear the kufi just to identify myself
that I'm comfortable,
and I think the long term project was
I tried to be super Muslim
in the beginning and I almost had what
they call convert burnout,
which, you know, for those who are not
part of born Muslim,
don't get your your your new Muslims as
convert burnout because you pressure them too much
to keep pushing them. And I've witnessed, you
know, and my mom forgive me for my
role as a part of it. Some of
the people that they couldn't work with us
didn't leave Islam because we're trying to be
super Muslim. And so I learned that, you
know, last Sherman Jackson said that it's a
process,
you know. It took the Sahaba 23 years
to get through the message of Islam
and they were still having issues.
Yet we are expected as good Muslims to
be,
you know, at the level of the Sahaba,
you know what I mean? So I mean,
I I saw I got to really get
comfortable with my own skin
and I feel that now, you know, I'm
married I'm married to a Canadian by the
way, Doctor. Radzi.
They're they're very excellent. She's Filipino, but she's
Canadian and,
a beautiful soul and she's a convert too.
And she was a new Muslim when I
married her. I didn't marry she didn't marry
me because I was, you know, whatever. People
say, oh yeah, because you convert she converted
because of you. So no. She actually converted
and then she was dating a Pakistani guy.
Oh, oh, oh, before I go move on,
the law student the law student girlfriend that
punched me in the arm ended up breaking
up with her when I picked Shahada. So,
yeah.
And then one of the things
going back to the story, the long term
thing
that I got to do was, yeah, I
got to be comfortable in my skin because
I got to learn Islam
as, at least, how Islam was transmitted through
history,
learning with scholars, learning with people of knowledge,
and they they taught me that
you could be, you know,
Sherman Jackson said,
you're
a shrub or a bush,
and this slab just trims away all the
stuff that's not acceptable in a slab, but
it keeps your it has to run your
core
of who you are.
So I had to rebuild my hip hop
collection,
I had to rebuild all of my, I
got I got some clothes. My wife asked
me to buy more, you know, clothes.
I have less stokes because I'm not Arab,
but I do shop occasionally at sugar.
I'm not plugging them in by the way.
Just so that I thought I'd call the
black, but I am I am wearing Hanau
Thai, I am wearing Jan Jai Thai,
I keep it within, but I could be
totally American, I could be totally Filipino,
and be totally Muslim. So that's that's my
long term project.
I don't have anything to add to that.
That's I mean, between the 2 of you
all, that just echoes everything that I experienced
exactly except for, you know, as a woman.
So yeah.
I think I had a
I feel very
fortunate
that I had a
a extreme kind of experience within a year
of being Muslim,
because
I I had decided decided anyways that I
was going to do relief and development work.
I'd always volunteered
since I was a young person,
in this area.
First with when I was Catholic with, you
know, missionary
kind of whatever raising money, and then when
I was a secular person with with what
we used call in those days 3rd world,
you know, development
issues, right, you know, from a very secular
leftist perspective so I've done a lot of
volunteer work in education
and organization in that area,
and so I knew I was going to
graduate school but I wanted to do this
relief and development work. I was
all I was on my way
to go to the Gambia
when I was asked by some people if
I would,
consider going to
Pakistan to work with Afghan refugees.
It was 1987
because the Soviets were still occupying Afghanistan and
they couldn't find a Muslim woman
to go work with
the Afghan refugee women because Muslim women
were not being allowed by their parents or
not being allowed by their husbands
to be in
this uncomfortable,
dangerous atmosphere, which is,
you know, really interesting when you think the
word million.
And,
so I changed my mind and I decided
to go there, so I landed in Peshawar,
which all of us know where that is
now,
the wild wild west,
of the Muslim world,
and everyone was there. I mean, there was
an active war still going on, the Soviets
were occupying Afghanistan,
everyone from the CIA
to
evangelical Christian missionaries
to
all different kinds of Muslim relief organizations.
I mean, I I had been a Muslim
less than 1 year and every day I
was hearing Wahabi, Sadaf, Sunni, Shiite, Shiite,
Muertad, Tekfid, the you know, like all these
terms
trying to people were classifying other people and
saying why they were bad or, you know,
bad Muslims, they these weren't real Muslims either,
and not only were they saying that but
some of them were fighting each other,
actually with weapons
and,
meeting,
you know, the good and the bad and
the ugly, it was all there,
and it was very confusing.
I was I really missed being able to
speak English, you know, I missed my brothers,
1, because it was so gender segregated and
I grew up with 4 brothers so I
was like,
you know, because
that was very strange to me. But I
also just missed
English, you know, having very, you know, tense.
So I was lucky I went to the,
you know, bazaar and I found an English
translation of Sahih Muslim
and and the history of Oxford history of
India, and I read them all. So those
were a good foundation for a lot of
things,
but
those
fights, those categories, those
all seeing so much tech field was also
very good
because
I felt one thing coming out of there
after the work that I did
which is
that
that kind of
ideological
sectarianism,
this kind of litmus test for who's a
Muslim and who's not, who's good and bad
are absolutely destructive.
And I I, you know, that just I
was committed to never falling into that and
then spent really the rest of my life
until now trying to understand how did we
get there. You know, I was fortunate to
come
and study Islamic history and theology and law
and be able to start to understand where
did these terms arrive, why, you know, why
are these different sectarian communities, theological
schools, legal schools,
all of these different divisions, and
to try to then take that information
and teach my students about how we arrived
there because we, you know, Muslims, when you're
a Muslim you grow up in a certain
community and you don't even know the history
of where that came from.
But I think the other thing that really
stuck with me was there as in
as with my Senegalese friends, I also met
the most incredible
people, ordinary people who were in situations of
extreme
hardship,
difficulty, you know, the the seniors about resilience.
I mean, my god, you know,
a woman from Kandahar,
and we all know where Kandahar is, right,
is this is the heart of Pashtun territory,
very
strict illiterate woman
who in the camp, a dry camp with
nothing there,
organized a school for kids even though she
couldn't read.
And she did everything to bring all of
the kids that, that were in this area
and bring the resources and ask for an
advocate for it. And that taught me something
with my
my community work which is that everywhere you
go, you know, as a as a scholar,
as a leader, whatever I am,
you know, I'm not, like, bringing this, like,
stuff on high to the masses or something
like that. Look, ordinary people have goodness in
their heart, they have they're people with
drive to to change society, to really do
something good, and the only
my only role there is to ask them
how can I help,
like, how can I bring some resources and
those resources might be knowledge,
those resources
might be connections with other people,
other organizations
to
to let you
to do this work?
And and that's why I started midwife training
program there for the women who were already
trying to help all of those babies that
were dying, all those women that were dying,
you know, to equip them, that's how that
gave me the quantiles over the chaplaincy program.
Who are the people in our community who
are already doing something? What do they need?
And that's why I started that program at
Harpreet Seminary. So I'm really grateful to a
lot to have
to have seen that. It was,
you know, kinda lucky
you you just say it could have gone
many ways, but I'd humbly that it turned
out to be to be good for me.
Thank
you so much.
Now I think,
when I look at myself as a convert,
you know, at the beginning, I talked about,
like, just learning so much. And I think
when you look at
at the people who were who were converted
and who successfully, you know, make this transition,
you know, there's there's a love of Allah,
there is the love of this way, and
this path, and this belief,
but there's also, I think, tends to be
a couple other things. One is that you
actually love the diversity too,
and that makes it, you know, it's interesting,
and we love the diversity of people. We
love exploring those different cultures. And the other
thing is I think a lot of us
are a little bit stubborn.
We have that in our personality, but but
but you have a little bit of perseverance.
You know, and I think as a new
Muslim, I I had so much love for
Islam, and one thing that I would want
them is that I would think about my
friends, and I would think about my family,
and I would want them to
understand and know and experience what I was
learning and what I was experiencing.
And I would see
things that might not be an obstacle for
me would be an obstacle for other people.
And and sometimes that anxiety is some of
the cultural things.
So when I think about, you know, what
I want what I want to see happen,
and I think it already has happened. I
mean, you know, it's it's it's been close
to 20 years since I I began my
journey,
and there's just so so much that has
changed in our community.
You know, I I live in a Christian.
I grew up riding horses, and I love
being outdoors.
When I came into the Muslim community, I
had no
friends to share that kind of stuff with
anymore.
Now I do. But it took, you know,
and I know these these are small things,
but this is part of what I hope
for the future in America, and I think
that it's it's already happening,
is that, you know, when people become Muslims,
it's about the journey
to God, and it's about belief, and it's
about that personal transformation, and it doesn't have
to be about leaving behind your food, it
doesn't have to be about
adopting different clothes and and all those kind
of things.
You know, I just, I had a reflection
the day after I became Muslim, like, I
just had this moment of of realizing that
everything that had happened in my life had
led me to that moment.
That that every small little thing was like
a puddle that directed the water along that
path that got me to that point.
Shaye a couple years ago,
and he was telling me, you know, this
is this is the point of arrival. Everything
in your life brings you to this point.
Because it's not just a point of arrival,
it is a point of departure.
And and so, you know, it brings us
here and then we go forth, and everything
in our life also comes from that point.
So I just wanna, you know, I I
would have asked another question about about just
what advice you would have for people who
want to be supportive of new Muslims and
new Muslims today, but we are out of
time, so I'm gonna go there was a
session earlier today where they quoted doctor Stusz
to say, you know,
a child can smell a whirl from a
mild, and so I think you'll hopefully be
able to maybe
get from some of this, and through some
reflection,
some of the advice that that might come
from it.
And, please,
make a lot for everyone on this panel,
everyone of the essential organizers, everyone who's, you
know, been supporting people on on their on
their path and for everyone who's struggling on
their path, and that I think includes probably
every single one of us in this room.