Tim moved from the UK to the US
ten years ago, and worked as a Human Resources Manager for a large company.
His wife, Paige, worked for a
large bookstore chain in the US, and together with her daughter Kayla are very
comfortable to wear hijab when going out from their home in Denver.
The following is a brief summary
of their stories finding Islam.
>Husband: Tim
My name is Tim, and I converted
to Islam 18 months ago.
Growing up, I went to a school
that was actually part of the Church of England. In high school, we had at
least 2 hours of religious education built in the curriculum each week.
It wasn’t until I finished
college and left home and starting out by myself that those nagging thoughts
came to my mind, that have always been inside me, a deep-rooted belief that
there is a God who looks after us and created us all and created the world and
universe that we live in. At that time I needed to try and understand and
explain the concept of God more closely to myself.
When I first met my wife, we both
had very heavy spiritual influences, not necessarily a part of any organized or
structured religion. But we had feelings and we understood that there was
certainly a lot more to life than just being here and now. I think we both had
a belief in the afterlife or spiritual life, but neither of us really explored
that too deeply at that time.
It was a couple of years later
before Paige started having interest in Islam, and then me following that
interest really to see what it is, what is she getting into here. This led us
to visit a mosque here in Denver, Abu Bakr mosque. This was a very interesting
experience because my wife phoned up the mosque and made an appointment to go
on a Friday around lunch time. I was very surprised to see that there was a
police car there with its lights lit up guiding the traffic because there was a
lot of traffic.
We went between the two sets of
prayers that occur. We have roughly 500 people that are attending each of the
two Jumua (Friday) prayers and khutbah (sermon) that take place each Friday.
There was a cultural shock to me there. We had a lot of different nationalities
walking around the place in their own costumes and national dresses and things
like that. There were very few Americans walking around in jeans and T-shirts,
and it was just a bit of a step back for me. It was like I walked out of
America and entered into somewhere in the Middle East.
We were very fortunate to meet
with a person who at that time was the president of the mosque, a sheikh by the
name Muhammad Norzai, and he was the one who gave us a quick tour and explained
some things about Islam, and then guided us to a place where we could observe a
khutbah taking place. For me, that was certainly getting my first experience
about what prayer and worship is for Muslims.
I always believed that there was
a person called Jesus and that he was a great prophet and a messenger that came
down from God. The problem I had trouble with is that Jesus was a man. He was
born of a woman in a miraculous way but he was still a man. He was not a God.
And why should we as men be worshiping another man? Surely we should be
worshiping God. And the concept that there is just one God and that you should
only worship that God alone and not worship idols or other people, and that forgiveness
can only come directly from your relationship to God, really what started
clinching it for me.
>Wife: Paige
My name is Paige and I converted
to Islam 2 years ago.
I was raised by my father who was
an atheist and he raised my sister and I as atheists, and I didn’t believe in
any God at all. Growing up, I thought that people who were religious were
silly. I thought that religion was something that governments used to keep
their population in line because if you have something better to look forward
to in the after death, you will be more obedient during life.
Sometimes when I was at high
school I started going with a friend to her church occasionally as a guest, and
I was really moved by the faith that people seemed to have, but I still
couldn’t get my head around the inconsistencies of Christianity that there are
a lot of leaps of faith that I was just not willing to make.
I’ve always been interested in
philosophy, people in general, religion, and religious history, and I happened
to be watching a documentary about the three Abrahamic faiths; Christianity,
Judaism and Islam. And for the first time I really listened to something about
Islam. I found it fascinating that Islam comes from Christianity which of
course comes from Judaism. And the messages are essentially the same messages.
And I thought that it’s like God tried to give us this message and human beings
kept messing it up.
After 9/11, I was working in a
bookstore here in the United States called Barnes & Nobel and everything we
had in the store that had Islam, Quran, Muslim, Middle East in the title just
sold up the next day; 9/12. I just thought this was fascinating, and I didn’t
know anything about it.
So I started kind of reading. I
bought a book called “Islam for Dummies”, really good. There were just some
really beautiful things about Islam and I found myself more and more drawn to
it especially its rationality. Like I said, Christianity has leaps of faith but
Islam doesn’t. It’s all very rational religion, everything makes sense.
In fact the first time I went to
the mosque, I thought of having this feeling that I was going inspite of
Muslims. It was nothing to do with these crazy people you see on the TV blowing
things up, you know, and I was terrified to go into the mosque. But I felt like
to find my religion and I had to put up with these people who go to the mosque.
That was before I met my first Muslim.
When Tim decided to become a
Muslim, I was absolutely tickled because I had been a Muslim at that point for
a few months. I wasn’t quite sure like what my plan of action was going to be.
As a Muslim woman I can’t be married to a non-Muslim man, but leaving my
husband was not really an option. I think like I sort of knew that he wasn’t
going to be too far behind me when I said my shahadah. And I was right, within
six months he said the sahadah as well.
>Daughter: Kayla
My name is Kayla Botello. I was
born in the United States of America. I was raised here my whole life and I
converted to Islam over a year ago. We didn’t grow in a religious household. We
didn’t grow up believing in God necessarily, but knowing that there is a
greater being. So there wasn’t really any certain religion that we followed. We
just made sure that we were well-rounded and knowledgeable.
I believed in God. I’ve always
had a kind of positive attitude on life. So for me I was kind of looking
around. There was so much beauty in the world, how could there not be a God?
But as far as any kind of religion, I didn’t have a religion.
Converting to Islam was like a
series of events, you know, it wasn’t one defining moment. I think what really
got me about Islam was because I started to attend classes after my mother had
converted, so I just started attending classes just for my mom to be respectful
and to understand her and a lot of things that caught me was the science in
Islam. They talked about the Big Bang and they talked about things like where
the salt water meets the fresh water, that was only discovered in the 1970s.
Things like that just make you think how did they know that 1400 years ago? And
for me I believed in God but I also believed in science.
>Daughter's Husband: Yassir
My name is Yassir. I’m an
American-born Muslim and I’m Kayla’s husband. My father came to this country
about 1980. He was doing aviation school, lived a single life for a while until
he met my American mother with whom he befriended and had very good connection
with. When they came to religious talks and they had this intellectual spark
immediately. They got married and they gave their five children the opportunity
to live the American life and the Syrian life.
We have been going to Islamic
schools since we were very young. So we had that kind of education and we have
always been very close to our American neighbors, friends like that. There has
always been that kind of relationship, never any tension, and we really had a
lot of good friends who actually came to our house and learn about the Islamic
and Arabic culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment