Quora Answer: Why Did You Leave Christianity in Favour of Islam?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why did you leave Christianity in favour of Islam?” 

Conversion is a process, not an event.  Personally, I never set out to convert.  I was a staunch Catholic, from a family of staunch Catholics.  But I had an eventful life and that lead me to question everything at a deeper level. 

In 1998 and 1999, I would go to Novena Church, the Church of St. Alphonsus almost every single day.  Most days, I would be there for the morning Mass and the evening Mass.  I memorised the order of Mass, I knew most of the liturgy by heart and I could sing the hymns without the book. When the priest was celebrating the Mass, I would mouth along the words.  There were days I would be there at night and stay until the early hours of the morning before walking home to where I stayed.  By this time, I hardly drank.  AI had stopped eating pork because it was in the Old Testament.  There were days I fasted just like Jesus (a.s.) did, in the gospels – from sunrise to sunset.  But in truth, I had no real idea what I was doing.  I was a Christian who had stopped believing in much of Christianity. 

For me, the problem with Christianity is that it did not stand up to intellectual scrutiny.  It began with innocent questions of wonder:  The crux of the matter was the concept of Divine Will.  If man is condemned because of Original Sin, and is only saved by the Vicarious Sacrifice of Jesus (a.s.) upon the Cross, what about those who did not meet him?  Or those who have never met him?  What about children who die before receiving the Sacrament of Baptism?  Is there Salvation?  Or are they condemned?  If man is not saved by good works but by Grace, what is the purpose of good works? 

That led to the Original Sin itself.  If God is Infinitely Merciful, why would He be vindictive and inflict the sins of the father upon the son?  If the sins can be inherited, can the Grace be inherited as well?  With Original Sin comes the Vicarious Sacrifice.  If God’s Justice cannot be sated except by a perfect sacrifice of the innocent, would that not be a contradiction since there is no justice if one is blamed for the misdeeds of another?  It was like taking a thread to the edge of the cloth and every day, bit by bit, the pieces started to unravel. 

Then there was the issue of Paul of Tarsus, the actual founder of Christianity.  Paul never net Jesus (a.s.).  He never spent much time with the actual Apostles or was even on good terms with them.  So Christianity was not even about Christ (a.s.).  The doctrines were essentially reactive, developed by people hundreds of years after the fact.  When faith is all you have, to realise one day that what you have held on is not correct is a rude shock.  I actually fell ill and was in a state of distress and discombobulation.  I had no one to talk to about this, except this God who may not be God.  I had read philosophy and was quite familiar with the Western schools and Near Eastern discourse. 

Coming back to the concept of the Triune God, the main issue I had was this: if Jesus (a.s.) was God and he died on the cross, then did God die?  If “god” died, then he is not my god.  The God who Created the universe, the God of that storm when I was sailing, the God of the Heavens that unfolded before me all those years ago could not be so fallible.  He is not God if the universe was sustained in His absence.  If Jesus (a.s.) died and God Lived, then Jesus (a.s.) is not God.  I spent many nights thinking about this conundrum.  Thus, Jesus (a.s.) was relegated to a charismatic Pharisee of uncertain origin. 

I did a close study of the Bible and each and every one of its books, including the history, the mythology and especially the supposed origins.  This threw much of everything into doubt.  Of no doubt, I was no longer a Christian, albeit a non-Christian who went to Mass twice every single day for two years.  I had nowhere to go.  I rejected outright the thought of being an atheist or an agnostic.  There was a God and there had to be a reason for Creation. 

In the end, I decided to start from scratch and empty the cup since all that I believed was suspect.  The question now was: Is there a God?  After much thought and deliberation, I concluded that there was.  What is the Nature of this God and there more than one?  The first Nature of God I recognised, was that He Exists.  And the second is that He is the Creator since He Created.  For Him to Create, it meant He had to be Omnipotent.  And if God was Omnipotent, then He is One since were there another God, someone could stop Him and there would be plurality in the laws of Creation.  If God was One and Omnipotent, then He was also Omniscient, since He cannot be Omnipotent if there were even one thing, He was not Aware of.  If such a God were Omnipotent, He must also be Omnipresent.  That immediately ruled out Jesus (a.s.) as God.  That was all I had to begin with: That God Exists, that He is One, that He is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent.  This is a summary of much deliberation and thought over a great period of time.  I had rationalised God, but I did not know Him. 

I moved on from Christianity and studied many other religions.  Based on the above, all religions of cyclical time were immediately eliminated from consideration.  All religions of a polytheistic nature were also eliminated.  Christianity was eliminated from consideration and all I had left was – Judaism. Islam was never on the list.  I did not like the “Islam” portrayed by the Muslims. Judaism seemed the perfect initial fit.  After all, Christianity developed as a Jewish sect.  And yet, after much study, Judaism itself was found wanting for me. 

One day, I passed by a bookshop, and on a whim, I bought an English translation of the Qur’an.  I read it on the bus on the way back.  And I could not put it down.  I read it over days afterward and I looked up the exegesis of the passages.  I bought a copy of the story of Muhammad (s.a.w.).  The first book of sirah, narrations of the prophets, was Shaykh Siraj ad-Din Abu Bakr Martin Lings’ (q.s.) “Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources”.  Now, this Muhammad (s.a.w.), this was a man I could follow. 

It was a shock to the system and I remember that I had a very high fever for days.  I went back to Novena church almost every evening and sat in the pew outside long after the rest of the church was closed.  Only these days, I stayed until well into the morning and I had the King James’ Version of the Bible in one and the Shaykh ‘Abdullah Yusuf ‘Ali (r.a.) translation in the other.  This went on for several nights.  This ummah that I read about; that was what I wanted to be part of.  Jesus (a.s.) was no longer a Pharisee wandering rabbi; he was a prophet of God.  And Muhammad (s.a.w.) was indeed the final Messenger and the evidence of everything, I found in the Bible.  It was in the beginning that I found the end of the search.  Most importantly, the Qur’an is about tawhid, monotheism.  The exercise that I had done to find out that God is One was done, perhaps more than 5,000 years earlier by Abraham (a.s.). 

Then I read the story of Pharaoh, when the seas closed in: 

سُوۡرَةُ یُونس

۞ وَجَـٰوَزۡنَا بِبَنِىٓ إِسۡرَٲٓءِيلَ ٱلۡبَحۡرَ فَأَتۡبَعَهُمۡ فِرۡعَوۡنُ وَجُنُودُهُ ۥ بَغۡيً۬ا وَعَدۡوًا‌ۖ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَآ أَدۡرَڪَهُ ٱلۡغَرَقُ قَالَ ءَامَنتُ أَنَّهُ ۥ لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِىٓ ءَامَنَتۡ بِهِۦ بَنُوٓاْ إِسۡرَٲٓءِيلَ وَأَنَا۟ مِنَ ٱلۡمُسۡلِمِينَ (٩٠) ءَآلۡـَٔـٰنَ وَقَدۡ عَصَيۡتَ قَبۡلُ وَكُنتَ مِنَ ٱلۡمُفۡسِدِينَ (٩١) فَٱلۡيَوۡمَ نُنَجِّيكَ بِبَدَنِكَ لِتَكُونَ لِمَنۡ خَلۡفَكَ ءَايَةً۬‌ۚ وَإِنَّ كَثِيرً۬ا مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ عَنۡ ءَايَـٰتِنَا لَغَـٰفِلُونَ (٩٢) 

We Took the Children of Israel across the sea: Pharaoh and his hosts followed them in insolence and spite.  At length, when overwhelmed with the flood, he said, “I believe that there is no god except Him Whom the Children of Israel believe in: I am of those who submit (to Allah in Islam).”  (It was said to him), “Ah now! ― but a little while before, were you in rebellion! ― and you did mischief (and violence)!  This day shall We Save you in your body, that you may be a Sign to those who come after you!  But verily, many among mankind are heedless of Our Signs!” (Surah Yunus:90-92) 

I believed in the God of Moses (a.s.), the God of Jesus (a.s.) and finally, the God of Muhammad (s.a.w.).  It was there, alone in the dark, at three in the morning, 06^th December, 1999 that I said the shahadah.  I did the sujud in the church, near the altar.  It was a most unconventional thing to do.  But that was how my voyage as a Muslim began.  Perhaps I never left Christianity, but I refined my understanding of it.