As-salamu alaikum, brothers and sisters. I had made a post a couple of days ago about being ready to enter Islam. I was very appreciative of all of your feedback and help. The mosque I contacted still has not responded to my e-mail. If they do not respond within a week, I will call them and try to schedule a visit. I'm serious as a heart attack on this.
I had it in my mind to officially become Muslim, but hide it. Hide it from my family, hide it from my friends, but I've never been good at hiding; even when it's hard, I have been a "truth at all costs" kind of person. I have been so afraid of being completely rejected by everyone I love if I said these simple words to the assembled Ummah: I testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His messenger. It started with talking to my mother (I'm 33 and live at home for now). I just said to her, "So I'm thinking about visiting a mosque." She didn't seem super fazed by it; she was engrossed in her phone. Eventually she did give me her full attention, and we had a long, constructive conversation about religion. We disagree on some of the finer points (she is a lapsed Christian with her own invented ideas about the afterlife) but one thing I told her was that, "I've spent the past four years trying to make Christianity work for me. And it doesn't." And I also said, "I've read the Bible; I've read the Qur'an, and the Qur'an is true." She told me, "Ever since your accident (I almost died when I was 6), you've always been a seeker. And Islam has been a consistent interest of yours for the past seven years, and I don't think you should be discouraged from pursuing what is true for you." But she added, "People will be mean to you about it." I know that. I know the risks. But by the grace of Allah, I feel ready to face that. I told her I had no intention of telling anyone else in the family, and she said I probably wouldn't have to worry about family, but other people out in the world would be unkind about it. Yeah. That's probably true. If they know about it at all, there may be some backlash. I'm prepared for that. She really doesn't like Islam because like any American, she's seen a lot on the news about the Taliban and Isis and all kinds of things that I don't feel are representative of the beauty of true Islam. But she will not disown me if I convert. So that's good. In fact, at one point she told me over the past several years she has learned things from me about religion that she had never seen or had never thought about that way. And she said, "Any religion can be used for nefarious means. But you're not doing that. So I support you. The point should not be being right, it should be love." I couldn't agree more. This has always been and will always be my stance. With Islam, with the guidance I get from the Qur'an, I feel able to love more fully. I know this is a bit scattered, but the uptake is, if I convert, I will still have a family. Alhamdulillah. That's step 1.
Today, I talked on Skype with my best friend from college. We've been best friends for 15 years. I was the best man at his wedding. I am the godfather to his son, which is a potential sticking point, because he gave me that role on condition I would be a Christian and help bring the kid up in that faith. I have become part of their family, and I love them, and I would not want to do anything that would make me lose those connections. He said, "No matter what, you'll always be Uncle S--------. And we've been best friends for 15 years, and I have no plans for the next 15 years to be any different." I told him I loved him and his family, and I didn't want to lose that connection, and he basically told me I won't. So if I convert, I will not lose my best friend or his wife and kid. Alhamdulillah. That's step 2. He did say if I go through with this he will change the contact of who he would have to bring the kid up in the Christian faith, which I think is fair enough. I won't be disallowed from visiting them so I think I can be okay with that.
I have learned that no one I truly love will reject me if I accept this faith, and I feel blessed, but one thing my friend said that I found insulting was that, "You may go into this, and you may learn a bunch of stuff that's interesting and cool but whatever you find there won't be God," and "I don't see this being tenable over the long-term." Like every Christian I've ever met, liberal or otherwise, he thinks Jesus is the only way to God. "I am the way and the truth and the life" and all that. And then I asked him, are you absolutely sure that Jesus said that?" Here's what I said to him: that comes from the Gospel of John, the latest written, that contains a lot of long discourses from Jesus that are not found in any other Gospels or earlier sources. A lot of the Gospel of John is Jesus saying, "I am God, so worship me." But Jesus does not say anything like that in Mark, for example, the earliest written of the Gospels. My friend didn't really have an answer for that, and I told him I'm more likely to believe what I hear in the Qur'an and the Sunnah because these things were recorded and written down at the time they occurred, and have been preserved and are generally pretty reliable. He didn't really buy it because he's always been taught that Christianity is the one true religion. We've had discussions like this before. When we were in college, he was a Christian and I was an Atheist. And we always had religious discussions, and we were always respectful. We do not fight and we never say, "You're wrong." We may say "I disagree and here's why." We both lectured each other a bit, and it ended in a stalemate, which is okay because we're not trying to convert each other. We never were. But the main thing I found offensive was his assumption that anything that's not Christianity is not a viable path to God. The Qur'an talks about all this stuff. God brings up many of these arguments from detractors to the Prophet (pbuh) and God tells us that they are not true.
I'm still serious about converting. In fact, I'm more serious now. And maybe it means more hard discussions with my friend. But we will still be friends, and that's good enough for me. Overall I feel better and less scared.
I welcome any input, as you all were so supportive on my last post, but anything suggesting I should not be friends with him anymore, I will not listen to even for a second. We're a fixture in each other's lives and we may disagree on some things but we've always been there for each other. And that's stronger than an argument about religion.
God bless you all.
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