Converts To Islam

Shezreen Mubarak

What moved me to embrace Islam

My family are Roman Catholic but my mother doesnt practise as she felt oppressed by it as a child in school. So she never got me christened but she planned to get me christened as a Protestant... I believed in God and I had a go at reading the Bible and listened to the stories at school (I went to a mixed school; not one of those strict Catholic ones with the statues etc like my mum went to) but I was never settled and I always wanted to be something else. In school I wasnt accepted by the popular group and I always tried to be individual and different, on the whole I felt confused and I hated myself. We had religious education lessons in school but we were never taught the truth, we were taught that Islam was a religion for Asian people and the Bible is our book and the Quran is theirs. Still I enjoyed the Islamic parts more than the others. Then when I was only thirteen, I started a pen friendship with a boy in Pakistan, he was nineteen and Muslim and my mother wasnt to keen on the idea as I was very young at the time and she was worried that because he was Muslim, he might be pushy about his religion in the same way the people were in her school. But I saw that he was so different and so polite, he showed me that Islam wasnt just a religion for Asian and Black people (like they said in school), it was a religion for everybody, and slowly I started changing my ways (eating, dressing etc) and Alhamdulillah when I was sixteen she gave us permission to

get married, I did the Shahada then too and now Im happy with my life, I dont feel sad and confused anymore and I dont hate myself now. When I reverted, I didnt know much about Islam, and even though I learned more afterwards, I never came across anything that Im not happy with or not sure about. Islam is the perfect way of life. Once a man who reverted to Islam was on TV and he said that when you become Muslim, you get a feeling that you have come home, and I really agree with that. Now my mother is happy about me becoming a Muslim, she was against it at first but after we went to Pakistan and met his family she started getting used to it. She didnt become a Muslim though, Insha Allah one day.

Holy Quran 40:54
A guidance and a reminder to the men of understanding.