WHY DID THESE PEOPLE EMBRACE ISLAM?

(41)

GAMBLING

I am M. E. Hilgard, 25 years. I was attending a Sunday church prayer when the pastor began talking about the dangers of gambling. I could not agree more to what he was preaching then. Meanwhile, he asked a question I wished I could have an answer to, "Is gambling prohibited in The Bible?" He said it was not disallowed in The Bible, in fact not mentioned at all.

I asked myself, "If gambling is so bad and so dangerous, which is true, why doesn't The Bible prohibit it?" This proves something important to me: The Bible is not complete; The Bible does not give enough guidance to people.

I said to myself if I can find a book or a religion where gambling is explicitly and categorically disallowed, this book must be God's complete and pure word. Upon inquiring, I came to know that The Holy Quran, the holy Book of Islam, disallows gambling very strongly. I concluded that The Holy Quran is God's complete pure word and that Islam is the true religion of God.

(42)

GOD'S LOVE

I am S. E. Combs, 33 years. Christianity emphasizes that God loves you and cares for you and that he sent his only son to the cross to die for you so as to save you. God does not want anything from you, not even good deeds; He just loves you. The church does not often talk about God; it usually talks about Jesus, God the son. God the Father is forgotten almost completely by the church. The church talks about a loving god; that's all.

As for me, I began to doubt the whole thing. I thought that it is not enough for God to offer us love. We should fear Him too. How can humans abstain from sins, crimes, and all kinds of misbehavior if they do not fear God? We need to love God, yes, but to fear Him too.

Islam teaches Muslims to love God and to fear Him at the same time. According to Islam, no one burdens your sins on behalf of you. You must observe your own behavior. You must be careful. You must strive to get God's love. God loves you if you deserve it, and He hates you if you deserve it too. I myself think that the Islamic view is the right one, the logical one, the view that really can control human behavior. That is why I have embraced Islam, and I thank God heartily that I came to the right decision before it would be too late.

(43)

ALCOHOL

I am W. T. Wallin, 41 years. I was married to a man who was madly fond of alcohol. As a result, he lost his job, and no one accepted to give him another chance as long as he was an alcoholic. I don't blame people for not hiring an alcoholic such as my husband. He began to mistreat our children and me including beating, calling bad names, insulting, and, the worst of all, falsely accusing me of adultery. Instead of him taking care of the family, he became a burden to the whole family, a social and financial burden.

Life with him became unbearable. Sometimes I asked God to end my life; death was better than living with him. I asked people whom I knew why The Bible did not prohibit alcohol since it is so destructive and so harmful. I asked if there is a religion which prohibits alcohol. They told me that Islam absolutely prohibits making or drinking alcohol, not a drop of it.

I thought that Islam must be the right religion because it always does what should be done. Islam, of course, has many other advantages, but, in my case, it is enough for Islam to disallow alcohol to be the greatest religion because alcoholism is, in fact, a horrible disease threatening millions of people in the West and all over the world.

(44)

THE ABSENCE
OF SPIRITUALITY

I am P. L. Seidman, 34 years. The key words in the Western life are dollars, salaries, income, production, sales, exports, imports, industry, and commerce. Our civilization is really " (In empty one and a nonbalanced one. The only thing it focuses on is money and whatever leads to money. In fact, we often send our military forces abroad for nothing but to kill in order to protect what we often call our interests, which is, indeed, an act of robbery at gunpoint involving stealing other countries' rights and natural resources. We kill for dollars, a shameful crime committed by both our gangs in our cities and by our governments abroad, with our church saying nothing in either case perhaps because all our sins are borne by Jesus, the Lamb! In media, we rarely hear anything about God. The Western civilization has killed its god or put it in the closet.

At our schools and universities, nothing is taught except technology, sciences, languages, and humanities. They teach anything except religion. They discuss anything except spiritual or God-related topics.

Parents are busy with their jobs. Our schools often instruct, but they rarely educate. The children are brought up spiritually empty with stone like hearts. They know little about mercy, tolerance, sympathy, pity, chastity, or decency.

In contrast, I know that schools in Islamic countries give a religion session almost every day. Students are made to learn by heart chapters and parts from The Holy Quran. Media make reference to God so recurrent and so essential in their pro gram content.

I like the spirituality of the Islamic countries. They live with Islam and Islam lives with them day by day and minute by minute. I like the great harmonious Islamic balance between spirituality and materialism.



(45)

GOD'S NAME

I am K. B. Trow, 30 years. Every one of us has a name. God, the Creator of all, must have a name. Christianity does not give Him a name although the name is there, i.e., Allah, which appears in the famous Biblical halleluyah. I was not at ease with Christianity hiding God's name and not using it although it is right there in The Bible.

Muslims call God Allah as God calls Himself. You cannot call one other than what he calls himself. The name Allah appears hundreds of times in The Holy Quran, the Holy Book of Islam.

The word god is not a name. It is a word referring to a common noun. It can be pluralized into gods and can be feminized into goddess. It can be written in a small letter or a capital letter. The Greeks had many gods and goddesses. Only the word Allah is God's name.

I take Muslims seriously, and I do respect them very highly because they take serious matters seriously enough. They do not have fun when it comes to Allah. They glorify Allah very highly. No people on the earth did, do, or will glorify Allah more than Muslims do. Faith in Allah comes first in their life. This is so because Islam, being God's true religion, is the most comprehensive, convincing, logical, simple, useful, and helpful creed. You can find no faults with it, no defects, and no inner-contradictions. It is simply superb. That is why, among other reasons, I have chosen Islam to be my religion.