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Phreddie, Ex-Christian, USA
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Description: The remarkable, powerful testimony, full on insights, of a black American Christian girl whose studies of the Bible and Church history studies left her shocked at the “hypocrisy, blasphemy, and human tampering with holy scriptures”. Impressed by the respect Islam shows to women, she became a Muslim at the age of only 18.
By Phreddie
Published on 07 Jun 2010 - Last modified on 05 Jul 2010
Viewed: 3456 (daily average: 3) - Rating: 4.8 out of 5 - Rated by: 17
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Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Women
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I will say right away that I am very young. I am only
18, and that fact seems to astound most people. I think it is proof that we
are never too young to begin looking for God, or to understand His truth.
I was raised Christian, nondenominational. We were
never big church goers, but we always knew who our God was and what our
obligation was to Him. In my living room, to this day, hangs a big velvet
painting of Jesus as a black man. That left a huge imprint on me, because it
made God real to me. Not only did he come to earth as a man, but he was black
like me.
In my preteen years I was a crusader for Christ. I
wanted to convert the world and save souls. I believed blindly 100% in
everything that was given to me by the Bible and my pastor/youth leader. Then
one day I ran across something in the Bible that didn’t sound anything like the
God who I had learned to love and obey. I thought perhaps I was just too young
to understand and took it to a more knowledgeable Christian who confirmed that
it was what I thought it was. My world fell apart.
I read the Bible, cover to cover, and marked along the
way all of the things that were contradictory or ungodly. By the time I got to
Revelations I had a large segment of the Bible marked as invalid. So, thinking
maybe I needed to look at it in a historical perspective I did my history
work. There I found even more hypocrisy, blasphemy, and human tampering with Holy
Scriptures. What shocked me was the story of the Council of Nicea where men “divinely
guided” decided which text would be in the Bible and which ones needed
editing.
I also had to ask myself how God could be three and one
at the same time. What happens to a good man like Ghandi when he dies without
Jesus? Does Hitler get to go to heaven if he accepts Christ as his Lord and Savior?
What about those who have never been exposed to Christianity? I was once told
that the Trinity was part of the essence of God and that since the breadth and
scope of God is beyond my understanding I should simply believe. I couldn’t
worship a God I couldn’t understand.
I never lost my faith in God, I just decided that
Christianity was not the right path for me to travel. I felt no kinship with
fellow believers. I never felt anything special while attending service except
that I was doing an obligatory service to God. So I wandered faithless,
looking for something to hold on to. In my search I found Wicca, the Bahai
faith, and finally Islam.
I studied Islam quietly, on my own, in secret, for two
years. I wanted to be able to separate fact from fiction. I did not want to
confuse Islam with the cultures who claim to practice Islam while instituting
things that are clearly against all that Allah has revealed to us. I wanted to
make the distinction between the religion and the societies that adopted it.
That took time and patience. I met a lot of helpful brothers and sisters via
e-mail who answered all of my questions and opened their lives up for me to
examine.
I never liked the image that I was handed as to what a
woman was. In popular culture we are portrayed as very sexy, lady like,
independent enough so that men have no real responsibility toward us or the
children they help create, but dependant enough that we are continually in
search of a new man. The average woman on the street is honked at, whistled
at, has had her butt or breasts pinched, slapped, rubbed, or ogled by some
strange woman. I never agreed with any of that and never found a “come on”
flattering.
In Christianity I was taught that as a woman I should
not teach in church or question the authority of any man in public. The
picture painted of women in Christianity was one of inferiority. We were
supposed to be chaste and silent with children about our feet. In Islam I
found a voice, a system that gave me ultimate respect for being a mother and
acknowledged the fact that I was equal to man in every way except one: physical
strength. The hadith are filled with stories of women who spoke publicly and
Islamic history is full of women who were leaders. It was a theology that I
could respect because it respected me.
I had to ask myself if I really wanted to be like all of
the people I saw around me. Who was really oppressed? The girl wearing skin
tight jeans getting cat calls from boys rolling by in cars was not free. She
was society’s whore and she got no respect. I was thankful that my mother had
never allowed me to wear such things, not that I ever wanted to, but her
disapproval was an added incentive. After examining the position of the Muslim
woman and what I felt to be truth in my heart, how could I deny Islam?
Six weeks ago I made the decision to convert to Islam.
I did so and have not looked back since. My friends respect it because they
see that it has not changed who I am and what I stand for, in fact it has
backed it up. My advice to any woman out there is to ask herself these
questions:
What do you want your daughter to believe about herself?
How should she allow herself to be treated?
Is she really born with evil tendencies because she is a
descendant of Eve?
How do you want her to feel about her body?
What are you modeling for her?
What image of womanhood are you promoting?
How do men treat you and how do you allow yourself to be
treated?
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