I believed in God but I didn't really identify Him as a Christian; it's just sort of family culture. And I think when I learned about Islam, I really felt like this is the God that I had always believed in; and I felt that it was kind of my duty to follow this path...
I was astonished. I was perplexed. This experience, this verse was the answer to my dua that I had made a few days earlier. I read the verse many times. This verse talked to me. It explained what I had felt since childhood. It explained the strange experience that made me get up and open the Quran.
I was on a path of seeking a way, not really a religion; just do good and have good come to you. One of the choices I made, which was a mistake, was partying and stuff like this, which led to a car accident. This car accident sent me in the wrong direction...
Ahmed’s attitude impressed me. And what he told me about the position of Islam regarding marriage and family impressed me even more. I really thought about becoming Muslim, not because I fell in love with Ahmed but because I fell in love with what he told me about marriage and family in Islam.
Woman in Islam is protected like diamond. It gives protection in many ways. Even before marriage, man is asked to do a lot of things to marry a woman, and the woman comes with small bag of clothes to her husband, and he must take her with all his heart.
I accepted Islam because I wanted an education, because I wanted a scholarship. But that was only the beginning. I understand now that this was Allah’s way of getting my attention. Allah knew that education was very important for me.
One of the first things that stuck out to me with respect to the Quran has to do with preservation of the Quran. The Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) for a period of 23 years. And so this book was passed on by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers, and it has been preserved minutely since that time to this day.
I’ve noticed in my extensive research of Muslim converts, that just about every single one of them did extensive research which included reading the Quran, most often the entire Quran, sometimes several times over before coming to a decision.
I realized that even from the childhood that Allah was present and calling me to a relationship with Him. I didn’t always understand it, but I felt the pour since childhood and it was a matter of me reaching the point where I said ‘yes. I submit’ I want to do all that I can to fully develop this relationship.
I never questioned this order of making supplication until one of my Muslim co-students mentioned that Muslims make dua directly to God. That was the first seed of doubt sown in my spiritual consciousness.
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...
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