She said Shahada on August 21, 2001

i had studied islam for almost 10 yrs, off and on... that came about by reading a poetry book when i was about 15 which stated that "arabic is a very poetic language" and, as i'm a poet... and a total bookworm and had never heard of the word "arabic"... i went researching it...

first the dictionary, then encyclopedias... then next thing i was reading everything i could find. it was a chain-reaction. started with arabic language, then arabs, the middle east, history, and of course religion. when i was 17, i bought my first qur'an. i did not buy it for religious reasons then, but bcuz it had arabic and english both in it...

i figured in that way, i could study the arabic and learn it from the best source. since, however, i did not have anybody to help me learn the arabic (and learning to pronounce properly from reading a book, nomatter how hard they try describing how a letter sounds, does not work very well), i just started reading the english. now...

my way of reading the bible, since as long as i can remember, has always been to pray first... as for guidance, then to open the bible and start reading. i soon started doing the same with qur'an. and... always, it gave me the best advice. at first, i would read them side by side... open and start reading from bible, then open and start reading from qur'an. somehow.. i started turning more and more fully to the qur'an. by the time i got online for chatting... i had studied islam for many years, just by reading books and qur'an. but i had never met a muslim.

since i chose a muslim name (sadiqah).. naturally, any arabic speaking ppl msg'd me, and usually they were muslim. so that is how i knew anybody. until then, i had had no luck finding anything... i had even looked for a mosque in the phone book (how was i to know we have islamic centers in usa!!). i got to discuss religion a lot over the years, which helped to clarify and support and add to my beliefs. and yes, internet helped too. :) by this point... part of me felt i was a muslim already... but as i told ppl, "God knows my heart!!!" and so i was content to stay Christian in name. which... i suppose i should mention a bit of my religious history here... my first knowledge of religion was catholicism. i went to a catholic school the first and second grades... and if you arrived early to school, you were sent to church. i was there for first communion... i remember the pretty white dress and receiving a rosary and a small bible. however, after 2nd grade, the principle told all the good teachers to either quit or be fired... so many parents, in protest, removed their kids from the catholic school and put them in public schools...

i never really went to church again after that. however, i had my rosary, my bible, etc... i always set up for myself my own little religious space... and i would read the bible. i guess it was back then that i started finding my own way of reading it :) somehow... i do not know when or how... i switched from praying to mary and jesus... to praying only to God. feeling guilty over not praying to jesus, i would sometimes say a small, "hey, jesus... hi... not sure if i should be praying to you or not, but... just in case, to be on the safe side..." and make a prayer to jesus. but basically, i just prayed to God. i mean... it does make sense to go to the one in charge, right? anyways... from that time, i went to church very little. on occassion a friend would take me to a church gathering (protestant), and in high school i went a few times. but for the most part, i did not attend church, but kept my faith and belief in God. i also come from a family... well: i trace my family as "me, mom, grandma"... i don't really go beyond that... who have all, for one reason or another, lost faith in the church... not in God, but in the politics and ways of the church and the ppl within it. my grandma was run out of church for being pregnant out of wedlock... and she could not bring herself to go back to a church that would push a person away when she was in most need of God and being brought back to the right way (she was 7th day adventist).

mom... she got sick of the politics, one christian church spitting against the other, so to speak, when they are all supposedly christian and teaching the same Truths. now... the fact that my family before me had left the church, but not belief in God... i think that has only little impact. well: the faith in God part has little impact, as we were left on our own. i guess we all got just enough exposure to make us believers, but not enough to make us religious really.

however... on the other hand, i suppose the fact that it gave me the opening to believe as my heart would have me believe, instead of forcing me to church and to attend to one certain church doctrine, is a lot of what brought me to Islam. ok... so now, back to my story :) well... a year before i became muslim, i was at the point where i wanted to meet muslims in real. to me, it was still not "real" bcuz the only ppl i knew were online (thuogh much more real than the only ppl i knew were in history books).

i wanted to find the muslim community, meet the sisters, and observe from a distance. one of my net friends found the islamic center for me and told me to go on a friday... i guess on the east coast, sisters always go on friday for Jummah prayers. i went... and i was the only woman there, all alone in the women's section. after the prayers, a few bro's came over to talk to me, and to bring me info on islam. i was so embarressed!! at first they thought i was a reporter :) and then... they were telling me all the basics of islam, and things i had known from my many years of researching (which is why i told you muslims always assume new converts do not know of islam. i suppose most do not really... but it is a general assumption, and i'm too shy/nervous to tell anybody that i already know all of that, and much more).

anyways... they then told me when the women come... so i came back finally during that time, and there was NOBODY there at all. i was so embarressed after that... i never went back. so my meeting the community first was not to be. about a year after that, a friend came to visit me from New Zealand, and we drove to Canada to visit more internet friends. i met a palestinian muslim friend of mine in Calgary. he took me to the mosque... they were selling stuff in the basement, i guess as a fund-raiser of sorts... i bought books on Islam... some i wanted, some he suggested, and one was given to me free. they are all good books :) anyways.. that was not when i converted. it was just my first meeting with a real muslim. i still did not get to meet any sisters though. despite that for so long i had had a great conflict of heart... part of my soul crying out to "bow down with those who bow down!"... actually once, at a friend's house, i locked myself in her kitchen... sitting alone, with the pain in my heart. my heart was crying to me fiercely... yet i was not ready to let go of the security of christianity. though i felt my heart was muslim by this point(actually, this happened before i met my muslim friend in canada), it was still too big of a step, and i wanted to know the community. yes: i've been told since then to look at Islam as a religion... not how the ppl practice it. anyways... backtracking a small bit, my friends had nicknamed me muslim in high school due to my interest and my personality (when i got embarressed, i'd pull my hair in front of my face... it reminded them of a veil)... and after this incident, they knew fully i would be muslim someday. hmm... now back on track ;) ... the actual time of me converting... happened because one of my muslim friends came to visit me. he had been an internet friend for 6 or 7 years. one time when he was visiting, we were in the same room together and it was prayer time. up until this point, he had always prayed alone and i did not go near to the room he prayed in. however, at this point we were... and he told me, "it is prayer time. you can go or stay, but i'm praying". since i was curious... i stayed. after he started praying, i was trying to watch out... but at the same time, i felt i was intruding somehow between what was between him and God.. so i was trying to not watch. the great struggle between watching and not watching made my eyes unable to bear it, and i fell asleep. the moment i was asleep, a hand reached from behind me and firmly grabbed my right shoulder. not a "shake" but just a firm "grab"... as if to say, "Wake up and See!!" and so i did. there was nobody behind me... my friend was still on the other side of the room praying... there was no tiredness within me at all, and i was wide awake... and my heart was clear. all the hesitations and fear within me were washed away clean... even though i had never gotten to meet with sisters as i intended, or been able to observe the community... it no longer mattered. i was happy. however... just to be cautious, i did not convert then. i was afraid i woudl convert, then decide the next day that i had only been dreaming. so i waited until after my friend was gone.

i then contacted a muslim student association i knew about which was 3 hours from me... and they just happened to know 1 pakistani family near me (the only muslim family, so far we know, in my city). i met with them... they talked with me for 2 hours, drilling me and making sure that nobody was forcing me to convert... and then they helped me to say shahada. so.... there is my long-awaited story ;) i'm sure i've probably missed a few small points here and there... such as how i believe in angels, and how i follow dreams and visions like that... and how i've been protected and guided so often in life. and how Allah always, if i'm heading in the wrong direction, somehow puts me on the right way again... even completely without me knowing it, or even realizing i was heading in the wrong way to begin with. everything in my life sings of the truth of Allah... in a way, i feel i've been guided since birth, and in fact in some ways i feel i've been a muslim since birth... i just didn't know what name to put on my religion :) for that is one of the great things i found, when i was learning of it... that all the things i believed (which i believed even more deeply and strictly than mom raised me to believe), are supported fully by islam. *SIGH* :)