It was Ramadan and everyone was fasting and they took me at night to the masjid for laylatul-qadr (the night of power in the last 10 days of Ramadan). I had never been in a masjid before, and walking in I could feel the power of that night. I went into the kind of dark room, and everyone was praying and a lot of people were crying, and I didn’t know what was going on.
I became Muslim mostly through meeting a French Algerian brother outside a nightclub in which I was working as a DJ at the time. God made it so that we met right there in front of that nightclub. He heard me speak French and he was just coming into town...
My first desire was to learn Arabic, but my soul awakened when I began to read the Quran. Maybe it was better because I began to read it in Arabic directly, while I was consulting a dictionary. I could realize that what the Quran says was the parts that were missing in the Bible...
Egyptians were poor, suffered hardships, yet were happy. They left everything in the hands of God and forget their miseries when they return home. Prayers help them place their worries before their God. I noticed humility as well as intimacy in Islamic prayers.
My meditation and contemplation had an impact on me. And honestly, deep inside of me, I felt that there was this burning flame of longing for that Higher Being ready to ignite me. I found myself having thoughts about God in His role as Creator and Sustainer.
There was one question in my mind that nobody else raised. Would this Allah even listen to me? Me, a young, uneducated woman? In my culture, it was men who practiced and carried out all the official rituals. Men live in the monastery. Men are the ones that can obtain a higher form of spirituality.
I was introduced to Islam while I was a freshman at UCLA. Although I had already achieved a certain degree of national fame as a basketball player, in my personal life I tried hard to fly under the radar. Celebrity made me nervous and uncomfortable...
My soul was crying out and even my stubbornness could not squelch the cries. We started working together and discussing our respective beliefs. I had given up on Christianity completely, but when he started asking me questions, my faith surged and I felt I was a ‘Crusader’ defending the Faith from this evil “Moslem”.
I felt angry at Islam! I felt angry at a book that would tell hungry people to be hungry for thirty days. I was angry at the Quran for telling this poor woman not to drink water when always her water is dirty.
It was February, and I was playing guitar in a carnival in Rio de Janeiro. It wasn’t a good day for me, I was sad due to many stuff in my life, and I was in the street and I said I would go home. I was drunk with my guitar and I said I would go home. Walking in the street to my house...
My first Ramadan truly showed me how blessed I was. The fact that I was able to get excited to break my fast at the end of the day and truly spend a good amount of hours trying to decide between which meals I would like to cook, while others do not have any options, is a blessing in itself.
I grew up with Islam all around me. I witnessed my Muslim friends performing prayer and fasting during Ramadan. When I was fifteen years old, I wanted to know more about the religion that surrounded me.
About Islam