Craig Robertson, Ex-Catholic, Canada

[I went to work the next day & said to the Muslim brother “how do I say ‘hi’ to you?”  He asked me what I meant & I said, “I wanted to become a Muslim”.  He looked at me & said “Allahu Akbar!”  We hugged for a good minute or so & I thanked him for everything & I began my journey into Islam.]

My name is Abdullah Al-Kanadi.   I was born in Vancouver, Canada.  My family, who were Roman Catholics, raised me as a Roman Catholic until I was 12 years old.  I have been Muslim for approximately six years, & I would like to share the story of my journey to Islam with you. I suppose in any story it’s best to start from the beginning.  During my childhood I attended a Catholic religious school & was taught about the Catholic faith, along with other subjects.  Religion was always my best class; I excelled academically in the teachings of the Church.  I was pressed into service as an ‘altar boy’ by my parents from a very young age, which pleased my grandparents a great deal; but the more I learned about my religion, the more I questioned it!  I have this memory from my childhood, I asked my mother on Mass: “Is our religion the right one?”   My mother’s answer still rings in my ears to this day: “Craig, they are all the same, they’re all good!”  Well to me this didn’t seem right.  What was the point of me learning my religion if they were all equally good!? At the age of twelve, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer & died a few months later, after a painful battle with the disease.  I never realized how deeply her death affected till later on in life.  At the tender age of twelve, I decided I would be an atheist in order to punish God (if you can even fathom such a thing!) I was an angry little boy; I was angry at the world, at myself & worst of all, at God.  I stumbled through my early teenage years trying to do everything I could to impress my new “friends” in public high school.  I quickly realized that I had a lot to learn, for being sheltered in a religious school you don’t learn what you would in a public school.  I pressed all my friends in private to teach me about all the things I did not learn, soon enough I gained the habit of swearing & making fun of people weaker than me.  Even though I tried my best to fit in, I never actually did.  I would get bullied; girls would make fun of me & so on.  For a kid my age, this was devastating.  I retreated to myself, into what you would call an ‘emotional shell’. My teenage years were filled with misery & loneliness.  My poor parents tried to talk to me, but I was belligerent towards them & very disrespectful.  I graduated from high school in the summer of 1996 & felt that things would have to change for the better, since I believed they couldn’t get any worse!   I was accepted in a local technical school & decided that I should further my education & maybe make good money, so that I would be happy.  I took a job at a fast-food restaurant by my house to help pay for school. A couple of weeks before I was to start school, I was invited to move out with some friends from work.  To me, this seemed like the answer to my problems!  I would forget my family & be with my friends all the time.  One night, I told my parents I was going to move out.  They told me, I couldn’t, & that I wasn’t ready for it & that they wouldn’t allow it!   I was 17 years old & very headstrong; I swore at my parents & said to them all sorts of evil things, which I still regret to this day.  I felt emboldened by my new freedom, I felt released, & I could follow my desires as I saw fit.  I moved in with my friends & didn’t speak to my parents for a long time after that. I was working & going to school when my roommates introduced me to marijuana.  I was in love with it after the first ‘puff’!  I would smoke a bit when I got home from work to relax & unwind.  Soon though, I started to smoke more & more, until during one weekend I had smoked so much, that it was Monday morning & before I knew it, it was time for school.  I thought, well, I’ll take one day of school off, & go the next day, since they won’t possibly miss me.  I never returned to school after that.  I finally realized how good I had it.  All the fast food I could steal & all the drugs I could smoke, who needed school anyways? I was living a great life, or so I thought; I became the ‘resident’ bad boy at work & consequently the girls started to pay attention to me like they hadn’t in high school.  I tried harder drugs, but alhamdulillah, I was saved from the really terrible stuff.  The strange thing was, when I wasn’t high or drunk I was miserable.  I felt worthless & completely valueless.  I was stealing from work & from friends to help maintain the ‘chemical haze’.  I became paranoid of the people around me & imagined police officers were chasing me around every corner.  I was beginning to crack & I needed a solution, & I figured that religion would help me. I remember seeing a movie about witchcraft & I thought that would be perfect for me.  I bought a couple books on Wicca & Nature Worship, & found that they encouraged the use of natural drugs so I continued.  People would ask me if I believed in God, & we would have the strangest conversations while under the ‘influence’, but I distinctly remember saying that no, in fact I don’t believe in God at all, I believe in many gods as imperfect as me. Through all this, there was one friend who stuck by me.  He was a ‘Born Again’ Christian & was always preaching to me, even though I would mock his faith at every opportunity.  He was the only friend I had at the time who didn’t judge me, so when he invited me along to go to a youth weekend camp I decided to go along.  I had no expectations.  I thought I would have a huge laugh making fun of all the “Bible Thumpers”.  During the second evening, they had a huge service in an auditorium.  They played all sorts of music which praised God.  I watched as the young & old, male & female cried out for forgiveness & shed tears over everything.  I was really moved & I said a silent prayer along the lines of “God, I know I have been a horrible person, please help me, & forgive me & let me start fresh.”  I felt a surge of emotion come over me, & I felt tears roll down my cheek.  I decided at that moment to embrace Jesus Christ as my personal Lord & Savior.   I raised my hands in the air & started dancing around (yes, dancing!) All the Christians around me were staring at me in stunned silence; the guy who mocked them & told them how stupid they were for believing in God, was dancing & praising God! I returned to my party home & eschewed all drugs, intoxicants, & girls.  I promptly told my friends how they needed to be Christians so they could be saved.  I was shocked that they rejected me, because they always used to pay attention to me before.  I ended up moving back with my parents after a long absence & used to badger them with the reasons why they should become Christian.  They being Catholic felt they were already Christian, but I felt they were not, for they worshipped Saints.  I decided to move out again but this time on better terms & was given a job by my grandfather who wanted to help with my “recovery”. I started to hang out at a Christian “youth house” which was basically a house where teens could go, to get away from family pressures & discuss Christianity.  I was older than most of the boys, so I became one of those who talked most & try to make the boys feel welcomed.   In spite of this, I felt like a fraud, for I started drinking & dating again.  I would tell the kids about Jesus’ love for them, & during the nights would drink.  Through all this, my one Christian friend would try to council me & keep me on the right track.

I still remember to this day my first encounter with a Muslim.  One of the boys brought his friend to the youth house.  He was a Muslim kid whose name I forgot.  What I do remember is the boy saying “I brought my friend ‘so & so’, he’s a Muslim & I want to help him become a Christian”.   I was absolutely amazed by this 14 year old kid, he was calm & friendly!  Believe it or not, he defended himself AND Islam against a dozen Christians who were hurling abuses at him & Islam!   As we sat there fruitlessly thumbing through our Bibles & getting angrier & angrier, he just sat there, quietly smiling & telling us about worshipping others besides God & how, yes, there is love in Islam.  He was like a gazelle encircled by a dozen hyenas, yet the entire time, he was calm & friendly & respectful.  It blew my mind! The Muslim kid left a copy of the Quran on the shelf, either he forgot it or left it on purpose, I don’t know, but I starting reading it.  I soon became infuriated with this book when I saw that it made more sense than the Bible.  I threw it against the couch & walked away, seething with anger; yet, after I read it, I had a niggling doubt at my core.   I did my best to forget about the Muslim kid & just enjoy my time with my friends at the youth house.  The youth group used to go to various Churches on weekends to prayer events & Saturday nights were spent in a huge Church instead of at the bar.   I remember being at one such event called ‘The Well’ & I felt so close to God & wanted to humble myself & show my Creator my love for Him.   I did what felt natural, I prostrated.  I prostrated like Muslims do in the daily prayers, yet I didn’t know what I was doing, all I knew was, that it felt really good… it felt right, more than anything else I had ever done.  I felt very pious & spiritual & continued on my path but as usual, started to feel things slipping away. The Pastor always taught us that we must submit our will to God’s, & I wanted nothing more than to do that; but I didn’t know how!  I always prayed “Please God, make my will Yours, make me follow Your will” & so on, but nothing ever happened.  I felt myself slowly slipping away from the Church as my faith ebbed away.   It was at this time that my best friend, the Christian man who had helped me come to Christ, along with another close friend of mine, raped my girlfriend who I had been with for two years.  I was in the other room too drunk to know what was happening & unable to stop anything.  A couple weeks later, it was revealed that the man who ran the youth house had molested one of the boys that I was friends with. My world was shattered!  I had been betrayed by so many of my friends, people who were supposed to be close to God & working towards Paradise.  I had nothing left to give, I was empty again.  I walked around as before, blindly & without direction, just working & sleeping & partying. My girlfriend & I broke up soon afterwards.  My guilt, rage & sadness encompassed my entire being.  How could my Creator allow such a thing to happen to me?  How selfish was I?! A little while after, my manager at work told me that a “Moslem” would be working with us, he was really religious & we should try to be decent around him.  The minute this “Moslem” came in he started Da’wah.  He wasted no time in telling us all about Islam & everyone told him they didn’t want to hear anything about Islam, other than me!   My soul was crying out & even my stubbornness could not squelch the cries.  We started working together & discussing our respective beliefs.  I had given up on Christianity completely, but when started asking me questions, my faith surged & I felt I was a ‘Crusader’ defending the Faith from this evil “Moslem”. The fact of the matter was that this particular “Moslem” wasn’t evil like I had been told.  In fact, he was better than me.  He didn’t swear, he never got angry & was always calm, kind & respectful.  I was truly impressed & decided that he would make an excellent Christian.  We went back & forth asking things about each others religions, but after a time I felt myself getting more & more defensive.  At one point, I became very angry… here I was trying to convince him of the truth of Christianity, & I felt it was he who was on the truth!  I started to feel more & more confused & didn’t know what to do.  All I knew was that I had to increase my faith, so I jumped in my car & roared off to ‘The Well’.  I was convinced that if I could only pray there again, I could get the feeling back & the strong faith & then I could convert the Muslim.  I eventually got there, after speeding the entire way, & found it was closed!  No one was in sight, I frantically looked around for another similar event so I could ‘charge up’ but found nothing.  Dejected, I returned home. I started to realize that I was being pushed in a certain direction, so I prayed over & over to my Creator to surrender my will to His.  I felt that my prayer was being answered; I went home & laid in bed & at that moment I realized that I needed to pray like never before.  I sat up in bed & cried, ‘Jesus, God, Buddha, whoever You are, please, please guide me, I need You!  I have done so much evil in my life & I need Your help.  If Christianity is the correct way then make me strong, & if it is Islam, then bring me to it!’  I stopped praying & the tears went away & deep within my soul I felt calm, I knew what the answer was.   I went to work the next day & said to the Muslim brother “how do I say ‘hi’ to you?”  He asked me what I meant & I said, “I wanted to become a Muslim”.  He looked at me & said “Allahu Akbar!”  We hugged for a good minute or so & I thanked him for everything & I began my journey into Islam. I look back at all the events that happened in my life over time, & I realize that I was being prepared to become a Muslim.  I was shown so much mercy from God.  Out of all that happened in my life, there was something to learn.  I learned the beauty of the Islamic prohibition of intoxicants, the prohibition of illegal sex, & the need for the Hijab.  I am finally on an even keel, no more am I too much in one direction; I am living a moderate life, & doing my best to be a decent Muslim. There are always challenges, as I am sure many of you have felt, as have I.  But through these challenges, through these emotional pains, we become stronger; we learn &, I hope, turn to God.  For those of us who have accepted Islam at some point in our lives, we truly are blessed & fortunate.  We have been given the chance, a chance for the greatest mercy!  Mercy which we don’t deserve, but still will God willing be given on the Day of Resurrection.  I have reconciled with my family & have started looking to start my own God willing.  Islam truly is a way of life, & even if we suffer poor treatment by fellow Muslims or non Muslims, we must always remember to be patient & turn only to God. If I have said anything incorrect it is from me, & if anything that I have said is correct it is from God, all Praises are due to God, & may God bestow His mercy & blessings upon his noble Prophet Muhammad, Amen. May God increase our faith & make it in accords to that which pleases Him & grant us His Paradise, Amen! [taken from IslamReligion.com]

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No difference. Allah says, “Say ye: "We believe in Allah, & the revelation given to us, & to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob, & the Tribes, & that given to Moses & Jesus, & that given to (all) prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one & another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam)."” [2:136]
 Guideth to a path. Allah says, “Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace & safety, & leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light,- guideth them to a path that is straight.” [5:16]
 

Openeth their breast. Allah says, “Those whom Allah (in His plan) willeth to guide,- He openeth their breast to Islam; those whom He willeth to leave straying,- 

He maketh their breast close & constricted, as if they had to climb up to the skies: thus doth Allah (heap) the penalty on those who refuse to believe.”  [6:125]

 Guides not a people unjust. Allah says, “Say: "See ye? If (this teaching) be from Allah, & ye reject it, & a witness from among the Children of Israel testifies to its similarity (with earlier scripture), & has believed while ye are arrogant, (how unjust ye are!) truly, Allah guides not a people unjust."” [46:10]