09-07-2004, 04:48 PM
First off apologies if i've posted in the wrong section, i feel it's polite to introduce myself before i join in the discussions. Please delete/move my post as you wish, i don't use internet forums and i may have posted wrong in the wrong forums etc despite reading the FAQ. I just need to express how i'm feeling somewhere, and maybe receive help and guidance. I can't explain how i feel right now...please forgive my ramblings but i have no one at all to speak with this on.
Islam came to me out of the blue. I've previously been an agnostic and the warmth, and overwhelming pull i've been feeling toward Islam over the last five days has been quite suprising and unlike anything else i've ever felt in my life, non stop constantly on my mind for the past few days, non stop, i've started thinking about god, it feels like my head is filled with a screen of endless data and the text is unreadable it's all blurring through my head so fast, it's so constant and so busy in my head right now. All the thoughts are of god, to hear myself say this to me, is truly insane, and this has only hit me the last five days. I don't know why now i should be feeling this warm pull toward god as opposed to any other point in my life, as religions of any kind have never touched me. In fact, at the point of my life now is when it would seem, for want of a better word inconvienient to change my life (on the verge of a major music deal) I've never been religious, or even thought of it. The impact this has had on me is so strong, and so unexpected and literally physical it can't be denied, but accepting this is very scary. The world has always been for the past 25 years viewed from one perspective for me, to have this literally upturned in a day is too immense and i know this is how other new Muslims feel, exactly the same, thus i am here.
I intially investigated Islam because i wanted to see why Allah accepted slavery. I am a African British male, Agnostic, and read a book by Ronald Segal called Islams black slaves for reasearch into a piece on African/Black history i was writing. Even if god said be nice to slaves, i didn't understand why it was even accepted by the allmighty, it didn't make sense. I read an explination which opened my eyes, and it continued from there...then i got to science and the Quran, once i read in detail the unexplainable, absouloutely astounding science in the Quran, there was no way at all to go back, a door was opened. If anyone reads in detail on the science and the Quran and still rejects Islam after this, to my personal eyes, they must be mad. I haven't even read the Quran fully yet, but this is the way, the route god picked me, through science and proof of his almighty power of creation. I've never wanted to embrace a religion, never been interested, but my studies bought me to Islam, to it's science and to a total belief in God. It seems like the natural way to live, it's all actually explained and proven in this book, i find it hard to accept anyone who has read this, the science in particular, can then turn away.
I don't know why now Islam and God are calling me now, and i still have many questions i need to ask about Islam, i hope i can ask here. questions regarding the status of women which concern me, and the existance of the devil etc. Please be patient with me as 25 years of walking around never knowing god and then within literally a day being struck with the most beautiful warmth i've ever felt, such as to bring me to tears is very very very frightening, i've been holding it all in for the past five days and i'm gonna burst soon!! I've been a solid Agnostic or to be honest probably Athiest for the last 25 years, up until the last five days, in which time i've read almost more about islam in such a short time, than i've ever read about one thing in my life.
How am i going to tell my girlfriend of six and a half years i love so much, who i think inside fears Islam. What am i going to do with everything ive done to get me to this point in my music career for the past however many years...and all my life really. To me disposing of what i've done musically now feels like the smallest chorse, but it will hurt so many people. I know none of you here can really answer these for me, and i know every non muslim who god reaches out to feels this way, i just hope someone can guide me. I havent even pronounced the "Shahada" yet. Or told anyone i know.
Thanks for bearing with me...sorry for the rambling