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Dr. Ali Selman Benoist, Ex-Catholic, France
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Description: A medical doctor explains what turned him off Christianity and on to Islam.
By Ali Selman Benoist, MD
Published on 03 Mar 2008 - Last modified on 03 Mar 2008
Viewed: 6350 (daily average: 4) - Rating: 4.7 out of 5 - Rated by: 20
Printed: 302 - Emailed: 3 - Commented on: 1
Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Men
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As a Doctor of Medicine, and a descendant of a French
Catholic family, the very choice of my profession has given me a solid
scientific culture which had prepared me very little for a mystic life. Not
that I did not believe in God, but that the dogmas and rites of Christianity in
general and of Catholicism in particular never permitted me to feel His
presence. Thus my unitary sentiment for God forbade my accepting the dogma of
the Trinity, and consequently of the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Without yet knowing Islam, I was already believing in
the first part of the Kalima, La ilah illa ‘Allah (There is no deity but Allah),
and in these verses of the Quran:
“Say: He, the God, is One; God the Self-Sufficient Master; He neither
begets, nor was He begotten; and there is none equal to Him.” (Quran 112:1-4)
So, it was first of all for metaphysical reasons that I
adhered to Islam. Other reasons, too, prompted me to do that. For instance,
my refusal to accept Catholic priests, who, more or less, claim to possess on
behalf of God the power of forgiving the sins of men. Further, I could never
admit the Catholic rite of Communion, by means of the host (or holy bread),
representing the body of Jesus Christ, a rite which seems to me to belong to [totemic]
practices of primitive peoples, where the body of the ancestral totem, the
taboo of the living ones, had to be consumed after his death, in order better
to assimilate his personality. Another point which moved me away from
Christianity was the absolute silence which it maintains regarding bodily
cleanliness, particularly before prayers, which has always seemed to me to be
an outrage against God. For if He has given us a soul, He has also given us a
body, which we have no right to neglect. The same silence could be observed,
and this time mixed with hostility with regard to the physiological life of the
human being, whereas on this point Islam seemed to me to be the only religion
in accord with human nature.
The essential and definite element of my conversion to
Islam was the Quran. I began to study it, before my conversion, with the
critical spirit of a Western intellectual, and I owe much to the magnificent
work of Mr. Malek Bennabi, entitled Le Phenomene Coranique, which convinced me
of its being divinely revealed. There are certain verses of this book, the
Quran, revealed more than thirteen centuries ago, which teach exactly the same
notions as the most modern scientific researchers do. This definitely
convinced me, and converted me to the second part of the Kalima, ‘Muhammad
Rasul ‘Allah’ (Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah).
This was my reason for presenting myself on 20th
February 1953 at the mosque in Paris, where I declared my faith in Islam and
was registered there as a Muslim by the Mufti of the Paris Mosque, and was
given the Islamic name of ‘Ali Selman’.
I am very happy in my new faith, and proclaim once
again:
“I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah, and I
bear witness that Muhammad is Allah’s servant and Messenger.”
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