My Journey to Islam

A sister/friend asked me to post my journey to Islam story.   Insha’Allah  it will be a developing story because until now, I have never really wanted to talk too much about it and it is an evolving story.

But here is my story and insha’Allah it will encourage my sisters and brothers  in Islam and if you are not a Muslim and you read this, I do pray it will help you think of all the many reasons why non muslims, even those, who like me come from an evangelical missionary perspective are embracing Islam.

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I think it all began as a 5 year old child, perhaps slightly younger.  I can remember sitting watching my great uncle as he read the Bible in his bedroom.  He had lovingly made a reading stand for it and it sat there night and day with the Bible open.

I wouldn’t say he or anyone in my family were overtly religious.  Our family believed in God, but I don’t remember that belief really having much impact on our family life.  Certainly we didn’t go to church.

My parents had been raised as Catholic and Church of England, and when they wanted to marry,  neither church would marry them till one of them changed their allegience.   Eventually they were married by a Methodist minister and later, out of gratitude,  both my sister and I were also christened in the Methodist Church.

When at the age of 5 my fascination with the bible was realised by my Great Uncle,   he gave me my first Bible.. a Children’s picture Bible and later my mother’s step mother gave me a very very old King James Version Bible, that I didn’t understand at the time, but treasured for it’s antique look.  My Children’s Bible was well read and my own children read it as they grew up).

At the age of around 7  I attended Sunday School in England but it really didn’t do much for me, and God was pretty much forgotten until I came with my parents to Australia aged 9 years old.   A couple of years later, I was on a school excursion to a museum in Perth where we lived,  and  was confronted for the first time with my own mortality.  I saw the skeletal remains of a sailor lost at sea during a ship wreck and it hit me that oneday, I too would be a skeleton and dead.  From that point on, my desire to know God grew and grew.

I knew that I needed to know God if I was going to die.  I had night mares about it..  real night terrors that didn’t stop happening till I received permission from my parents to attend a local girls club based at the nearby Methodist Church and later to attend Sunday School at that same Church.

My Sunday School teacher invited us girls to her home regularly and held Saturday afternoon craft sessions with us, all the time telling us about the God who loved us.   Yes, from a Christian perspective of course.. but it instilled in my heart an even greater love for God my Creator.

Finally so great was that love, that at age 12,  I submitted my life to His worship in the only way I knew how.  I became a Christian.   My life had meaning, purpose, and joy that  was to direct my decisions for the next 30 plus years of my life.  My love of God grew in intensity..  so much so I quickly decided I was going to be a missionary when I grew older so I could share with others about God and the relationship they could enjoy with Him also.

My teen years were spent attending churches that encouraged a very focused religious life.  By the time I was ready to leave school,  I was leading Christian bible study  groups in both my Church and at school.  I was involved in youth groups with focus on mission work and most of us as older teens were preparing to go to many parts of the world as Missionaries.

My Church focused on knowing God and not compromising your faith for anything or anyone.  Back then, women dressed modestly in church,  and most of the families I associated with practiced limited segregation,  separate boy and girl activities and were very protective of our interactions.   I see Allah’s hand of protection on me, even back then.. Allahu Akbar.  I was protected from all the  usual teenage attractions of  my peers, by very protective parents and the Churches I attended.

I finished school, went nursing and then aged 21  went to Africa where I  spent three wonderful months working in a mission hospital in the middle of a West African Country.   Here I was exposed to Islam for the first time, though not always in the most positive of ways, due to my own misunderstandings of the relgion.

On my return, I was preparing to go to Bible College for two years and complete midwifery training so I could return as a full time missionary.  By this time, many of my friends from the Mission groups had married, were settling into life and careers in Perth and never went overseas at all.    I was still very  focused on telling others about God, and never expected marriage.  Where would a girl find a husband in the middle of Africa, or even one who wanted to go there in the first place?

I completed mid wifery training, went to college ready to spend two years studying the bible  and then to return to Africa and the friends I had made there.   I spent two amazing years immersed in studying the bible and doing nothing but focusing on my faith and my love for God.  An fantastic experience and  I did find a man to marry and we did make application to go to Africa together.

After marriage, we ended up not in Africa though, but in the Northern parts of Australia where we lived and worked with our two beautiful children  for 17 years as missionaries to Australia’s indigenous people.    We were living in the most isolated regions of Australia,  and it was there in 2006, just after Rahmadan, , that Allah was to guide me to Islam.

My journey started, when in 2000  I had an inner  urge to Muslims on the internet.   I joined a number of online forums where Muslims and Christians interacted.   In my heart in those early days was admiration for Muslims who loved God with an intensity of worship I hadn’t seen for a long time in Christians.   But I thought of Islam as a misguided and counterfeit religion that Satan had created to lure people away from worshipping God in truth through Jesus.   I was sure, if Muslims knew the truth about Christianity they would see the light,  and worship God correctly and find their deepest needs and desires fulfilled.   I felt very close to them as I talked to them.. their own desire to worship and please only God in their life mimiced my own.

Finally, after a couple of years..  I was confronted with startling awareness..   I believed that Islam could also be a true path to God and that Muslims really did know God..  not just about Him.     That feeling grew so strong that around 2004 I longed to become a Muslim, to wear hijaab and to pray.. but I couldn’t let go of Jesus and the thought that if He had died for my sin, and I rejected that I would go to hell.   But I knew from those I was talking to, that there was a depth of hope,  spirituality and intimacy with God which was offered in Islam that just did not exist the same way in Christianity. I longed to know it for myself.  Far from telling others how to know and love God.. I was now the student and they were the teachers.

My focus changed now..  I couldn’t accept Islam for myself at that point, but I stopped reading Christian material about Islam and started reading Muslim material about Islam.    I was still learning about Islam as satanic from some sources, but my heart and logic  was telling me what was being said by Christians  and what I was hearing from Muslims did not match up..  they were totally opposite.   I started to see more love for God,  and absolute commitment to Him regardless of personal cost in the hearts and lives of my Muslim friends than my Christian friends.

A young brother in Lebanon went on Umrah and made dua for my soul in the Masjid Al Harem  in Makkah  .. crying to Allah to guide me to Islam.   He came back and told me. what he had done.  That simple action  touched my heart.  I even read his letter to the Church.   I began to teach my church about true Islam and learned to teach English as a Second Language, so I could gain entry into the homes of the very small group of Muslim I knew lived in the main town, close to where  we were living.      I knew then I had to decide once and for all about Islam.  The tension between knowing the truth and yet rejecting it was becoming too strong for me to keeping pushing to one side.

At the same time another young man on a forum I was  very active on (Ummah.com) was trying to decide between Christianity and Islam.    I was trying to convince him even then to become a Christian.  I remember him saying to me    ” I can believe in Christianity , but I can’t believe Jesus is God”.

I was trying all ways to convince him to just accept Christianity and he would see that accepting Jesus as God was natural.. but then read some missionary material from missionaries working in Asia which asked “does a Muslim have to believe in Jesus as God to be saved.”

They said that accepting Jesus as God was not essential  (though they did say that one had to accept Jesus died on the cross for sin).  ..  that hit me like a rock.  They showed evidence  from the Bible that showed belief in Jesus as God was not necessary for salvation.. but it would come they said later.

I read the verses they showed in their work  .. these are evangelical bible believing missionaries I had long respected.  I remember thinking to myself.. if you don’t need to believe Jesus is God, then all my confusion of the last few years makes sense.

I had been so upset by a growing trend in the church for Jesus and not God to be worshipped.  As a child and a teen and young adult, God the Father was the focus of worship in the Church..  yet as an adult ..  God was forgotten and the praise of Jesus was uppermost in the Church.  I had never got used to this and both as a Bible Teacher,  Worship Leader and as a Missionary I had emphasised God was to be worshipped.  I had chosen songs to lead worship that exalted God .. and recognized Jesus.. but did not worship Jesus to the exclusion of God.  Jesus had said “you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve”.   Jesus had also taught us  saying “when you pray say.. “our Father”"  He had encouraged worship of God, not Himself..

Suddenly I knew that I didn’t need to worship Jesus as God, I could worship God alone.. and see Jesus as a man who had guided others to God.  Finally,  my faith began to make more sense on a natural level.   I spent the next few months looking at Islam..  and finally through the help of  a very special group of muslims on that same internet forum,  I said Shahada..   and the rest is history.

The ayat (verse) that describes perfectly how I feel coming from Christianity to Islam is this one, found in “Today I have perfected your religion for you and I have completed thus My favours upon you and I have chosen for you Islam as your religion.” (Al Qur’an 5: 3)

A number of Christians asked me after I reverted  ”how can you leave Jesus”..  My reply has not changed, then or now..  ”in becoming  a Muslim, I know Jesus more intimately and more logically, than I have ever known him before”.   Allahu Akbar!

All praise is due to Allah SWT.   I am completely dependent on Him for all things   He said ..  “if you take one step towards me, I will take ten steps to you. If you walk towards me, I will run towards you” For those of you who know the story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus tells in the Gospels of the New Testament.. you will understand how significant this was to me.   I knew I was coming home at last.    Very soon after my reversion   I was guided to these words  which I have taken as from Him to me ..  (and all of us)..  “Verily Allah says: O son of Adam, free yourself for my worship, I will (in turn) fill your chest with satisfaction and remove your poverty, and if you don’t I will fill your hands with distraction.and will not remove your poverty.” (Ahmad, no. 8681, at Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah no.4107, Ibn Hibban and others). In another narration, “I will fill your chest with distraction.” (Sahih Ibn Majah no. 3315)

There is so much more that could be said about my journey since becoming a Muslim.  Everything had to change and my world was turned upside down.  I still have to deal with trials and tests that somedays I wonder how I will survive.   He has promised that He won’t burden us with trials more than we can bare.   I have no choice but to come to Him  in complete dependence for everything ,  in a way I only imagined possible  as a Christian.

I would love to share more of it,  but I want to keep it private..  it’s still ongoing and involves people I love dearly..  I will let my blog tell the rest of the journey insha’Allah