WHY DID THESE PEOPLE EMBRACE ISLAM?

(36)

LOST ORIGINALS

I am T. H. Bode, 37 years. Whenever I went to church to attend the Sunday sermon, I heard the pastor emphasizing that The Bible is God's word. After one of those sermons, I privately asked the pastor whether the original of The Bible is in English. His answer was in the negative. Then I asked him about the original of The New Testament. He said that its original is lost.

I truly began to wonder how the original of a book supposed to be God's word is lost. Had Christians been serious about their Book, they would not have lost its original. How can we be ever sure that the translations which we have nowadays do really correspond to the original? If The Bible had been meant to be God's final word, God would have preserved its original. Since this original is not preserved and is actually lost, this proves that God does not want it to be His final word.

In contrast, the Arabic original of The Holy Quran of Islam has been kept safe and sound for the last fifteen centuries. When a Muslim says about The Holy Quran that it is God's word, he has the full right to say so with the original right in his hand. I have figured out that Chrisu'an clergy are living in a world of fancy, and they are sure of nothing, not even of the book which they repeatedly claim that it is God's word.

I have chosen Islam because The Holy Quran, the book of Islam, is God's true pure word.

(37)

CHURCH PRAYER

I am K. U. Park, 46 years. What happens in every church on Sunday differs from what happens in other churches. Every pastor conducts the prayer in his own way. The prayer audience do nothing but listen and say amen upon the pastor's request. Let alone laughter, joking, singing, music, and miscellaneous acts that differ from time to time, from place to place, from sermon to sermon, and from church to church. One pastor criticized the way Christians pray and said it does not include prostration, the importance of which he strongly emphasized as a symbol of complete submission to God. He even asked sinners in his audience to approach the platform and, despite their embarrassment, confess publicly because, as he put it, God came to us publicly.

I began to wonder why Christians do not pray as Jesus did. I felt that Christians do not have an example to imitate. I thought that The New Testament should tell us how to pray, which it does not. If prostration in prayer is essential, as the pastor sees, why don't we do it? Why doesn't The New Testament command us to do so? I had strong feelings that Christianity is very far from being complete, not in any aspect at all.

One day, it came to my mind to ask a Muslim friend to allow me to attend a Muslim prayer at the mosque. Since I did not know Arabic, the language of Islam allover the world, I was interested mainly in the explicit components of prayer. I saw it include the positions of standing, bowing, kneeling, sitting and prostration. I sawall persons performing prayer do all the movements together in straight lines, led by the prayer leader, saying the same statements. The Islamic prayer is performed exactly in the same way at millions of mosques all over the world by millions of Muslims. It is performed exactly in the same manner as Prophet Muhammad did it fifteen hundred years ago.

Comparing the Islamic prayer and Christian prayer, I felt that Islamic prayer is a godly one, more divine, more spiritual, more submissive to God, more unified, more unifying, more social, and more meaningful than any other prayer I have ever experienced. Islam is indeed perfect in all its ways and aspects.

(38)

A BURIED GOD!

I am I. S. Thomson, 39 years. Christianity holds that Jesus is God incarnate and that, after his crucifixion, death, and burial for three days, he was raised alive. I could not understand how God can possibly be buried, nor how he can be dead for three days. My concept of God is that he is the Ever-living. No god died except the Christian god, to my surprise. The church story about God's death made me doubt all the church stories about crucifixion, original sin, and salvation. The more you think about Christianity, the less convinced you become. In contrast, the more you think about Islam, the more convinced you become. God, in Islam, does not ever die; nor can He be ever buried. The Islamic concept of God fits very well in my logic and understanding. This is how the story of my Islam began.

(39)

SEPARATION OF
THE TWO SEXES

I am D. S. Finney, 36 years. The church welcomes the intermingling of the two sexes without any restrictions whatsoever. They mingle everywhere, at any time, whether necessarily or unnecessarily. The result is obvious: boyfriends and girlfriends, dating, fornication-making, now called love-making, adultery, drinking, dancing, and a long list of sexually-stimulated behaviors.

When a Western man gets married, he usually keeps in touch with his ex-girlfriends, and they usually keep in touch with him as well. When a woman gets married, she usually continues to keep in touch with her ex-boyfriends. The result is that the husband rarely remains loyal to his wife and the wife rarely remains loyal to her husband.

The free intermingling of the two sexes is blessed by the church and the clergy. I have never heard a pastor warning people against intermingling and its dangerous consequences. Everybody, including the clergy, seems happy with the intermingling behavior although it is extremely destructive to society, family, and marriage; nevertheless, nobody cares.

Being a psychologist, I thought of the matter deep. According to my experience with my clients, I noticed that most of their problems, especially the marital ones, are caused by the non-restricted intermingling Christian habits. I had a Muslim friend, with whom I used to discuss different things, one of which was the intermingling habit in our Christian community. To my surprise, he explained to me that Islam disallows the free intermingling of the two sexes. Islam puts restrictions on this matter. For example, no man and woman can meet alone in a room, house, or office. No woman can travel alone. No man can visit a woman alone in her home. Women should cover their bodies and wear untight clothes. Women cannot go on streets with make-ups or perfumes on.

I came to the conclusion that if I am for a clean society, I should embrace Islam, which I fortunately did two years ago. Islam looks at the woman as a dignified person, not as a sexy female. In Islam, the woman is a person first. In our Christian civilization, she is a sexy female first. I personally prefer the woman's role as designed by Islam. I feel that Islam respects the woman's humanity and dignity more than any other belief. Islam is perfect in all its aspects, not in this aspect only.

(40)

FAMILY PROTECTION

I am M. B. Home, 27 years. The family in the West has no chance to hold together, no chance at all. I was a student and had many girlfriends at the school stage and the university stage. I had several jobs after graduation, and had many office female colleagues. I went to parties, where I made some more female friends. Then I married a girl, and her female friends became mine too.

Thus, I ended with about seventy girlfriends, most of whom I dated, danced with picnicked with, kissed, hugged, and even went beyond that in many cases. Now, how can I stay loyal to my wife with seventy ex-girlfriends around me? Most of them are more beautiful, more sexy, and more cute than my wife. They used to phone me, to visit me, to invite me, and write to me. Most of them, in fact, tried more than once to seduce me.

What applies to me applies to almost all men in the Christian world. Women in the West also have boyfriends and male classmates, and male office mates. Every man has his past relations, and every woman has her past relations.

It is rather impossible, literally so, that a man or a woman can stand against the temptations of the Christian life. Only a few do not commit fornication before marriage or adultery after marriage.

The family is dying in the Christian West. Marriage is dying. Divorce is the rule and a protected surviving marriage is the exception. Everybody there is somehow tortured from within although he seems happy or pretends to be so.

In Islamic communities, the opposite is true. Divorce is the exception and a continued marriage is the rule. The family is well protected. Most men and almost all women do not practice sex outside marriage. It is a blessing to be a Muslim or live in an Islamic society, where the father can rest assured that his child is really his, where loyalty is the rule, where virginity is something holy, where no man touches any woman except his wife, and where no woman touches any man except her husband. Such a life is a real life, a clean life, a secure life, an ethical life, a godly life, a righteous life with a special taste, indeed.

When I became a Muslim, I felt really clean, internally pure, spiritually happy, and fully conscientious. I became a completely different person with a different look and a different objective. My objective now, the main one, is to obey God and be ready for the Day of Judgment.