(slightly edited by MuslimAnswers.net Team )

بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

The story of how I came to Islam is actually a short and long one at the same time. What do I mean by this? Well if I include the actions leading up to it, it becomes longer.

I have been on the Internet, in chat rooms and on forums since I was about 11 years old. I developed an interest in web design around this age too and eventually it lead me to joining a forum dedicated to graphic design. After being active on the forum for a while I eventually was promoted to the rank of moderator.

I was requested by one of the users (who was a Muslim) to help him with his website and we both started working on it together. Something happened which I can’t remember what it was (perhaps it was 9/11?) and I deleted everything on his website. His retaliation was to log into my moderator account on the forum and to cause many problems (since I was using the same password everywhere).

So these events actually caused problems that went on for a couple of years. I know it’s pretty childish, but what more could you expect from a child :)? He got one of his friends (who was also a Muslim) involved too and they both attacked (verbally) me and I attacked them too.

So skipping past the age of immaturity, I actually lost contact with the original person. But somehow or another I was still in contact with his friend and we became friends.

During those previous years I was heavily influenced by my family who were racist, hated Islam, saw women as objects, etc (although at times they were good people). I remember back at school, my friends and I were talking about the Middle East. One of my friends said that we (our countries military) should turn it into glass, meaning to destroy it with bombs. That was the type of backward thinking I had a few years before I became Muslim, and unfortunately many people think in such an ignorant way. But as the years went by I started to mature and my heart began to soften and I became more accepting of things and willing to understand. Looking back at it, I feel that Allah was softening my heart for the seed of Eeman to be planted in my heart.

I started to have concern for the innocent people in the world who were dying unjustly. Two places that caught my attention were Iraq and Palestine. The more I saw the more I knew that what is being done to these people is wrong.

After looking into those places more I started to learn more about Islam. I had a Christian friend at the time who, when I told him about Islam, he told me many lies. One of which is that ‘Allah is a moon-god’. So I took these lies (or what I thought of to be the truth) to my Muslim friend (the one I was still in contact with) and he would explain, refute and give answers to the claims of the Christian, or from any one else I came across.

The Muslim friend told me I should buy a Quran translation, and so I did. I started to read a couple of pages but I could not really get into it as the English used was somewhat outdated. So it sat on my shelf for a year.

During that year I began to question many things. I was trying to find the purpose of this life, but not necessarily in a spiritual way. I even asked a teacher at my school, “We spend most of our early life studying (20-25), then we go on to find a job and work for a few more years, then eventually we retire. What if we die before retirement?” and she replied more or less, “Don’t ask silly questions”. After this (it was not only this incident but a gathering of my thoughts) I became very depressed and ended up taking about a month off school.

Eventually I came back to school I put those thoughts to the side. At the end of that year my interest in Islam began to come back again. The Muslim friend who I talked to, either he was busy or did not have much knowledge, and so I requested the help of one of my close friends to help me in finding answers to my questions. He knew of some chat room severs and thought he might check for an Islamic room, which he found.

At first I was actually too afraid to go there myself as I was afraid that maybe they would be rude. It turned out however that they were very nice and welcoming people. I eventually went in and after a couple of months my questions were depleted and I was convinced that Islam is the true religion/way of life. I saw that Islam was a religion whose beauty shined even in these times when many Muslims were not practicing, instead transgressing the laws of Allah, and as a result being humiliated.

I was looking for the purpose to life and I found it. I was looking for the best way for us to live and I found it. So I made the declaration of faith, Ash-hadu anla ilaha il-Allahu wa ash-hadi anna Muhammadur-rasoolullah.