Omar Ghazali Grant’s Journey to Islam

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is the conversion story of Omar Ghazali Grant, who has since passed away. 

“My name is Omar Ghazali Grant and I am sixty-seven years old.  I said my shahadah in 1995.  As a child I was raised in the Anglican faith, the Church of England.  I was sent off every Sunday, to Sunday school, from a very young age - and I hated it!  I was a very bright young child with an enquiring mind but my questions about the meaning of the Trinity and the real nature of Jesus (a.s.) and others were usually met with the answer, ‘You will understand when you grow up!’ 

At the age of twelve, I was allowed by my parents to make up my own mind about it all and I immediately stopped going to church.  In my teenage years, I started to study other religions and philosophies; I read of Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen philosophy and the Indian religions and many other beliefs.  I studied mysticism.  In the early 1970s, I started studying Sufism and immediately came across references to Islam.  Only then did I realise that there was a huge gap in my education: I knew very little about Islam or its history!  So, I started reading the Qur’an and ahadits.  The years went by, and I had quite a large library of Islamic books. 

In 1995, the Brisbane company I was working for offered a six-month exchange with a Malaysian company engaged in the same business.  The Malaysian company sent an engineer to work with me for six months.  His name was Mashall, a Muslim and quite a character; we hit it off almost immediately.  When he first visited my home, he expressed amazement at the amount of Islamic literature I had.  To cut a long story short, about three months later, I went to Mashall and told him I would like to say my shahadah and he immediately burst into tears!  And then he told me a very interesting story.  His company had been preparing to send him and his family to England for six months on an exchange with an ICI company; they had their tickets and most of their bags packed when his company came to him at the last moment and told him he would be going to Brisbane instead!  Mashall was not happy!  But when I asked him to hear my shahadah he immediately saw the Hand of Allah (s.w.t.) in the change of plans.  He had obviously needed to come to Brisbane to hear my shahadah!  Certainly, it was all a bit strange.  I am not a ‘joiner’ by nature but there was certainly something working away that had drawn me to Islam.  I must add that at no time had Mashall even suggested that I should become a Muslim.  And so, it began. 

I must admit, I did not enjoy my initial visits to mosques; there seemed so many people who just wanted to lecture me about a religion I had been studying for thirty years, and much of what they were telling me was in fact quite incorrect!  Where was this beautiful religion I had studied for years?  Of course, I was being hit by my false expectations.  I had forgotten about the frailty of humankind!  Why did I stay and persevere?  Because of an old Egyptian brother who gave me an exercise book, filled in with the Arabic alphabet in beautiful, coloured inks to help me improve my Arabic!  No lectures.  Just a beautiful gift and a smile.  It must have taken him many hours to produce this work of art!  Such a kindly act made me decide to stay.  So, I have now been a Muslim for nearly twenty years. 

My biggest struggle is with myself because I suffer like all humans do - from being a human being with all the silliness and weakness that entails!  And I continue to study Sufism; I am not one of the Friends, but I am their friend.  I have no regrets of becoming a Muslim and I love its basic principles and postulates as much now as I did all those years ago when I first read the ‘message.’”