"Road to Islam"
by Amina
My name is Amina and I reverted to Islam on January 31. 1999.
This is the story of my road to Islam, as written in 1999,
a few months after my conversion.
I was born in Iceland in 1976. My family belongs to the state
church of Iceland, which is Evangelical Lutheran (Protestant).
However, although religion was always present to a certain
extent in my life it never played a very large role in my
upbringing. When I was very young I attended Sunday School
regularly, I went to summer camps which were run by religiously
affiliated organizations and my grandmother used to come to
me and tuck me in before I went to sleep and say prayers with
me. However, my family never attended church regularly and
in everyday life religion was not an issue. In Iceland it
is a tradition within the church that you go through “confirmation”
around the age of fourteen. By that time you are considered
an adult and should affirm your faith and the baptisim that
your parents did for you at a very young age. When I had to
make the decision whether to do this or not I remember thinking
whether I should or not, whether I believed enough to do it
sincerely or not. My conclusion was that I believed in God
and that was more than most others that go through the confirmation
do and I felt that if I didn´t go through it I would
be rejecting God, something that I could not imagine doing.
While preparing for the confirmation we had to attend classes
with the priest and go to church regularly. I tried to continue
going to church after these classes and the mandatory attendance
to church ended but somehow it just didn´t feel right.
Going to church “didn´t do anything for me”. So, for
the next years I thought very little about religion and its
effect on my life. I would often pray to God but that was
about it. I did not go soulsearching or research different
religions, I was quite content with things the way they were.
I mean, after all, I believed in God, wasn´t that enough?
Islam has very little presence in Iceland and I didn't know
very much about it growing up. In school I was never taught
about other religions than Christianity along with a little
bit about Judaism in relation to the history of Christianity.
Growing up I remember Islam mostly as being referred to as
Mohammadanism and muslims as Mohammadans, and even today people
use these words more often than the words Islam and Muslims.
I have even seen it several times in the major newspaper in
the past month. My knowledge of Islam was thus minimal and
came mostly from what I had read and the media. Overall it
was not a pretty picture, but despite reading all these horror
stories such as Not without my daugher and other similar books
as well as the horror stories in the news, alhamdulillah I
did not become prejudiced against Islam and kept my mind open.
One of the major reasons for that is probably due to my correspondance
with an Icelandic girl who was an exchange student in Indonesia
while I was an exchange student in Venezuela. In her letters
and after we returned home she told me stories of her life
and experience in Indonesia, which was all very positive and
showed me a different view of Islam and muslims than the books
I had read and the media portrayed. However, personally I
didn´t really come into contact with Islam until I went
to study in the United States in the fall of 1997. I went
to the United Staes on a one year Rotary scholarship program
and in my University there was a guy from Egypt, who was a
part of that same program. We became very close and through
my relationship with him I became interested in Islam. He
often used to tell me things about Islam and I'd watch him
practice Islam. Little by little I became interested in Islam,
I started asking questions and debate Islam with him and then
I started to research on my own, first on the internet and
then by reading books about Islam, including a a translation
of the Quran.
My research started for real last spring and continued over
the summer while I was back home in Iceland and then in the
fall when I went back to the US to finish my studies here
on my own. For a long time the only person I had discussed
and debated Islam with and asked questions about Islam was
my friend from Egypt, but in December last year I stumbled
upon a chat about Islam on the internet where I met some really
wonderful muslims that I chatted with and asked questions
and they helped me a lot. Talking to someone else, someone
neutral was really important to me. When I first started researching
Islam I was very excited and I was discovering so many wonderful
things about Islam that I didn't know about and in a way I
just got hooked so to speak, I could not stop thinking about
Islam and I just wanted to read more and more. But for a long
time I was torn, there were many issues that I didn't understand
and many that I had a hard time accepting. For a period of
time I went through a phase where I tried to find anything
negative about Islam, I guess to convince myself that I didn't
have to become a muslim, because to be honest I was terrified
and confused and it seemed much easier to just continue living
my life the way I had been, than accept the truth and change
my lifestyle. I was really confused during this time. One
moment I'd feel that Islam was the truth and all I wanted
was to submit to God and become a muslim, but the next moment
I would find everything wrong with Islam, it was like in the
cartoons, having an angel whispering into one ear and a devil
whispering into the other. But finally I managed to stop listening
to the “little devil” and see clearly that Islam is the truth
and that all I wanted was to submit myself to God and live
my life as a muslim. I was chatting with a muslim sister that
I had met at that first chat in December I, when I decided
that it was time to take my shahada. I had already made plans
to go to a sisters halaqa the next morning (we were chatting
in the middle of the night) and I told her I was going to
take my shahada then, but that I wished I could do it immediately.
So she decided to see if that was possible and found three
other muslim sisters she knew online and we all met in a chatroom
and I ended up taking my shahada on the Internet.
Since becoming Muslim I have gone through both very happy
times and difficult times. I am contintously struggling with
learning more about Islam and how to be a good Muslim as well
as trying to keep strong despite negative reactions from my
family and friends. All I know is that I made the right decision
and I thank Allah for guiding me to the truth.
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