HOW I BECAME A MUSLIM
A FORMER GUITAR SHREDDER SWAPPED HIS INSTRUMENT FOR ISLAM, A NEW NAME, AND A BLISSFUL FAMILY LIFE

Peace be with you, seeker after truth.

I used to be just like you.

I looked at the Muslim people and I didn’t like what I saw.

I thought that it was time for the religion of Islam to change, because it was incompatible with the values and ideals of the twenty-first century.

So many other religions have been able to move with the times, to change their positions on certain topics and sweep away the traditions of the past.

But doesn’t true religion come from God?

If God gives us some guidance, that’s a precious thing. Ask yourself, “Does God’s guidance have an expiry date?”

“Is God so short sighted that his guidance eventually becomes obsolete and needs to be updated by human beings?”

A true religion does not need to be synchronized with the values and ideals of the twenty-first century.

It is the values and ideals of the twenty-first century that need to be synchronized with a true religion.

This is the story of how I became a Muslim. You could do it too.

If you don’t want to read this story, if you would never consider doing what I did, then please just reflect on the brief thoughts above.

If you read this story and decide that you’d like to become a Muslim as well, don’t praise me because I don’t really need any praise. All praise belongs to God. But please pray for me - I do need that.

If I say anything good within these pages, all praise should be given to God alone. If I say anything bad, all blame should be attributed to me alone.

Dear God, who created me, my mother and the entire universe,
I seek refuge with you; please save me from the influence of the devil, and please forgive my sins, the sins of the Muslims and the sins of the people who are not Muslims, because we all the sons and daughters of Adam, and we all share basic human weaknesses. Ameen.

I was a self-confessed enemy of Islam. I wanted the Muslims out of Australia because I felt that their culture and traditions were barbaric and medieval.
I was a Christian, and had in fact participated in Bible studies and gone to Christian holiday camps throughout my teenage years.
I graduated from the Australian Institute of Music and began a career as a studio guitarist.
One day, I picked up the Qur’an with the firm belief that I was picking up a book of nonsense.
What I found in the Qur’an changed the way I looked at the world and my place in it.
I realised that the Qur’an was the truth, even though I didn’t like that truth.
I didn’t really want to become a Muslim – but I knew that I couldn’t ignore what I had found in the Qur’an.
Like it or not, I would have to make that change. It was a matter of self-respect.
I declared that there was no-one worthy of worship except Almighty God, who has no partners, and that Muhummad (peace be upon him) is the messenger of Almighty God. This was the first step in the transformation.
I then made a dramatic change in lifestyle, following the example of the Prophet Muhummad (peace be upon him).
Finally, I changed my name to Hasaan. I didn’t have to, but I felt it was an expression of commitment.

I was a studio guitarist in my early twenties. I didn’t know much about Islam and I didn’t care to learn.
• I thought that Islam was a country.
• I knew that the words Arab, Arabian, Turk, Persia, Muslim, Islam, The Prophet Mohammed and Allah were all connected somehow, and that it was all very confusing.
• I thought that the Muslims worshipped their own god, called Allah.
• I thought that the Arabs lived in tents in the desert, that they had pyramids and the Sphinx, I thought that they all ate horrible things like the testicles of camels and monkeys eyes, and that they didn’t wash because there was not enough water in the country of “Islam”.
• I thought that every Arab lived in the Sahara desert, and that it was in “Arabia”
• I didn’t know that every Arab is not a Muslim.
• I didn’t know that Muslims came from India, Indonesia and Bosnia as well as the Middle East.
• I thought that Muslim women were forced to cover themselves and that they weren’t allowed to get an education. I was convinced that Muslim women were considered worthless to their men.
• I thought that all Muslims mutilate the genital parts of women.
• I knew that there was a lot of war in the Middle East and that it was all because of religious stuff.
• I couldn’t understand why Muslims came to a good country like Australia and wanted to keep their religion and traditions, especially since we have such a “superior” way of life here.
• I didn’t know there were any Christians in the Middle East.
• I thought that every Lebanese and Egyptian was a Muslim.
• I didn’t know there was a difference between a Turk and an Arab.
• I had never heard of the Qur’an.
• I thought a Mosque was somewhere to bury the dead in some foreign country.
I’ll be honest with you. I hated Muslims in 1995. I started reading the Qur’an to find all the absurdities and nonsense that I imagined must be contained within its pages.

I wanted to use those absurdities to embarrass every Muslim who tried to espouse his views in my direction.
Hell, I was doing the same thing with the Book Of Mormon. I wanted to embarrass those guys too.

Guess what? The only absurdity I found was me.

I knew the Bible very well, and if I had to compare the Bible and the Qur’an objectively at that time, the Qur’an was more likely to be a true revelation from God.

I didn’t want that to be the case. I was perfectly happy as a Christian. I could eat what I wanted, drink what I wanted, say what I wanted, play guitar until I was blue in the face, chase girls, stay single, be a dole bludger, chase girls some more, and as long as I believed that Jesus died for my sins and that he was the only begotten son of God, my lord and saviour, I was going straight to heaven when I died. Pass the whiskey dude, my redeemer liveth. Amen.

Being a Muslim made a lot more sense. It’s a hard way of life, and requires a lot more self-control than I felt I was capable of. Even if there was no God and no heaven, wouldn’t it be better to live your life assuming that there was?
Yeah, I became a Muslim, but I’m sorry to say that the Muslim community can’t take any credit for it. There are millions of non-Muslims in this city who will never know the beauty of Islam because a small minority of Muslims are unintentionally hiding that beauty. They advertise themselves as Muslims but act like jerks and idiots.

So my advice to you, dear seeker after truth, if you don’t like the way that Muslims behave, become a Muslim yourself, be the best Muslim you can, and show the rest of them how it’s done. Everyone wins.

"YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A SPECIAL KIND OF PERSON TO BECOME A MUSLIM..."

It’s very unusual for many Muslims to see a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, red-faced white guy wearing Islamic dress and participating in everyday Muslim life.
Some Muslims just stare at me and ponder.

What disturbs me is that a few Muslims seem to think that there is something special about me, and they offer me favours that I definitley do not deserve.
Some are convinced that I’m going to heaven when I die and that I can take them with me.

People always want to hear my story. That’s part of my incentive to write this book. I try to tell them, “Hey look, if you want to hear a nice conversion story, go and ask Cat Stevens or Yvonne Ridley.”

Everybody knows about Cat Stevens the musician. Cat Stevens was also a nice guy. He embraced the world in all its cultural diversity. He was a very spiritual person. When he became a Muslim and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, a lot of people who knew him could understand why. Nice story.

Yvonne Ridely was a British journalist who was held captive by the Taliban. She got a real close look at them. After she was freed, she thought a lot about their way of life. She decided to become a Muslim. Nice story, and has some excitement and intrigue thrown in.

So then we come to me. Six foot three.

I was a service station manager in his early twenties, who hated Muslims. I read the Qur’an with the intention of finding problems with it, but found that the only problems were with myself. I never wanted to become a Muslim. That’s a hard way of life, and requires a lot more self control than I was capable of. And the worst thing about becoming Muslim was that I had to hang out with other Muslims. I didn’t know a single Muslim that I liked.

But I became a Muslim anyway.

See? I told you there were nicer stories to choose from.

So why telling my story if the story is not so nice? Because my journey into an Islamic way of life was turbulent and touches so many issues that Muslims in Australia need to talk about. I want to draw their attention to the sorry state of our community.
Yeah, I became a Muslim, but I regret to say that the Muslim community can’t take any credit for it. There are millions of non-Muslims in this country who will never know the beauty of Islam because a small minority of Muslims are unintentionally hiding that beauty. They advertise themselves as Muslims but act like jerks and idiots.
No wonder the people of the non-Muslim world are confused.