Tom Facchine – My Shahada Experience

			If you want to take your shahada should you come to the masjid to do it. It depends. I'm not going
to pretend like the answer is always yes, because I was somebody who had a pretty poor experience.
When I took my Shahada at a machine, I was taken down into a basement alone, and I take my Shahada,
and I never heard from that person ever again, in my life, no follow up, I can't even remember his
name, right. And then certain things were said to other people that I was with that was insensitive,
okay. So if you go into just any masjid, you might have a bad experience. And if you're at a place
in your faith in your relationship with Islam, where it's kind of, you know, not solid, there's an
		

			argument to be made for waiting, okay? On the other hand, there are many massages that are very
welcoming, and very supportive, and excellent. And so you know, you shouldn't necessarily be afraid,
and especially if you feel like a strong conviction, then of course, we would, especially here in
Utica, we would welcome you to come, you know, we want you here. If it's okay with you, we would
love to have you here and announce your Chahat in front of us. And we'll give you more hugs than you
want probably and take down your information and get you plugged into the community and stuff like
that. And if anybody says anything insensitive to you, you gotta let me know. So I can, you know,
		

			get in their ear, because I don't agree with that. And I don't tolerate that. But you know, like,
yeah, you're more than welcome to but at the same time, everybody needs everybody knows their own
situation. Like for me personally, when I became Muslim, that mesh is the last thing I did. It was
the last piece of the puzzle. I had to go through certain things and I had to understand certain
things until I was confident before I was going to show up in front of other people and maybe they'd
say something to me, or maybe they disapprove of something I was doing or try to correct me and I
wouldn't know how to respond or these sorts of things. I can definitely sympathize with that. But at
		

			the same time, you know, at least I can speak for our our MSgt you're more than welcome. And we'd
love to have you