How I came to Islam 1

As I move forward in my search,

don't think for one moment that I was waking up every morning and saying now Who am I going to go and find today? No.

But

the worlds is a place. And it was a place then, particularly then, where people would grab me every now and again and try to pull me back into the dunya. And just

let the desires explore. You see, so come here, have this drink, have this have that is great. You don't need all that rubbish. And there was a guy all this time he'd I'd spend some time with him at the weekends. You know, for eight years, I was with him.

And I remember one day, on the weekend. And he would say to me,

you know, there's something wrong with you.

It really is, what's wrong with you? Why are you

so concerned about things you almost mad. And he suggested that even he would get me a doctor. You see,

because I was striving against the norms in society.

And that time I went through a lot, I was reading a lot, and I started to drink. Because I just wanted to just relax and just take all the pain away of the world. And they would days, then when I would look outside and see the light, and then just want to turn the light off. You see. And I would look out and outside and just say to myself, hey, I don't need this dunya I don't need this world. You know, there's no purpose to it. So why am I bothering? There were times when

I spent days and days and days on my own didn't talk to anyone.

And there were times when I used to look out the window in the night and just search

search for the truth in the skies. I used to look at the stars. And I started reading about astronomy.

I would look at the sun and the moon, I would read about these heavenly bodies. And I would say I would say look, the enormity of this world, the universe.

The nearest star being, you know, four light years away 186 meters per second per second light traveling from my eye to that staff at that speed for four years before I'd even get to the nearest star. And I said, Oh, I really was frightened. I was so petrified. Because I didn't know why. And I was looking at these amazing things going on around me.

There was one day

that I decided I'm gonna walk into the church across the road. I said the church, they must have the answer in the church. I went in there and he wasn't ready to see me. But he told me booked an appointment to see.

You see. So we booked the appointment to see the person who's going to tell you why you're here. Like a doctor is going to give you the medicine.

The day after I came in his office, the first thing I noticed he was too busy to talk to me

shuffling books around papers around answering the phone, see Nananana what what can I do for you?

So at that point, I said, Look, I'm gonna tell you that. And I poured my heart out to this man, stranger.

I said, Look, you're a man of God.

I want you to tell me who is God? And why am I here?

You have to tell me.

He said Well,

have you ever thought about doing a theology degree? I said yes, I have thought about it. And I tried to go to Dublin Trinity. But I decided that all of this stuff seemed like dogmatic

Can it? It didn't make sense to me.

It wasn't the truth.

said Oh,

oh, well, I'm

like, I don't know. Then he suddenly he got dumbstruck because he didn't expect the answer.

He said, Well, why don't you?

You know, why didn't you just study a little bit about, you know, the world's religions and everything? I said, Well, look, I can't do that. I want to know this. Tell me, Look, just explain to me who is Allah? Who is God? You see, and why am I here? He said, You know what?

I'll be honest with you. I can't really help you.

He's you see that church over there. And the person who opens it and closes it. I'm the person who looks after the people that come in, and they leave. And that is it. That's my job.

That I just realized that doesn't matter whether you're a you're in a church, it doesn't matter where you are, who you are, if Allah hasn't guided a person, it doesn't make any difference. You know, that person is not going to be able to help you.

So imagine I've gone through Buddhism, I've gone I also went through Hinduism, Arthas, socialism. I went through Christianity now twice, I've met the Christians and I hadn't got the answers. I had gone through, you know, Tai Chi, I was doing Tai Chi and martial art, meditation. And I done I tried veganism as well. vegetarianism and veganism. It didn't give me the answer. None of them gave me the answer.

At one point, I got into science, and I started studying silence and science and astronomy. And

that just confused me. Because what I realize is science is just about attaching labels to things which are obvious, but there's no explanation.

And that really worried me because I realized then that this 5%, they didn't have a clue. In fact, they were hiding the truth away from the rest of humanity, because they did have the truth. But they just weren't experimenting properly, they weren't asking the right questions like, why am I here? How, where am I going to go after this? These are the important question, the perennial questions of every human being nice to pose to himself and to others around him. So then,

Ramadan,

14 1415 years ago now,

in the university, I didn't know is Ramadan.

I had this girlfriend.

And we want for obvious reasons, we won't identify the person.

But she happened to be a Muslim.

I didn't know that at the time. And I didn't even focus on the Muslim bit because it wasn't important for anyone.

Malaysian.

And as it happened,

one day, she came to me and she said, Look, this month, this coming month,

please don't come here.

And I had struggled to make relations with this girl, because I thought it would help me spiritually, emotionally, etc. And then she turns up and says, Don't come here for the next month.

So I said to her, simply, I said, either your religion doesn't make any sense.

When she told me then, of course, it was religion, and it was Ramadan, or

you're not following your religion properly. She became angry. She said, don't you customer religion?

Don't you dare do that became angry.

So I've moved off, I pulled off. And straight away the next day, I went straight to the Islamic Society, in the university, and said, You got to tell me about Islam. There's this girl. And I love her. And I want to find out about it. So maybe we can patch things up.

They said to me, I said, Brother, you know, you have to leave that. The first thing is, don't, don't go with that go.

I said, Well, you know, that's not really very fair, because I love that girl. What's wrong with her?

No, no, no, because she's not supposed to do these things. You see, so they gave me some books. I started reading loads and loads of books about Islam.

I go back to her. And I'd explained to her the you know, I've read this stuff. And by the way, do you know you're not supposed to do this and this? Why didn't you tell me these things? You know, I would have respected you. I wouldn't have done those things.

Certainly for religious people and stuff like that, to come back with the answers.

I said, well look at the end of the day, you know, why don't we just get married? We can sort this out. You know, that time I didn't I hadn't read that, of course I have to be a Muslim and to marry

you know, a Muslim girl.

So she put me off and she became very angry with me. Because, you know, she saw that I was getting close to this thing which was gonna maybe ruin things.