How i became a muslim - S.Ghaffan

I asked the Lecturer: 

"Do you Muslims study every other religion before you embrace Islam?" 

The lecturer replied: 

"No. Even as we remain Muslim, born of Muslim parents, we have been commanded by God to compare and contrast the truth, i.e. Islam, with every other faith and then own for ourselves a belief or conviction of our own which alone shall be acceptable to God as mere blind following of any particular doctrine, be that from our own parents, will not be of any credit to such a believer. Read what the Holy Quran enjoins upon those who have already professed Islam as their faith merely by heredity." 

I asked: 

"Do you believe in the Holy Bible as a Heavenly Book or not?" 

In reply to my question the Lecturer requested me to answer the following questions: 

1) "Is the Bible, which is in your hands, the book which Jesus wrote as a scripture revealed by God or to be called the book of his own?" 

I had to say, "No." 

2) "Did Jesus order or desire at any time in his life to write anything on his behalf?" 

"No." 

3) "Was this Bible which is in your hands written during the time of Jesus?" 

"No." 

4). "Was this Bible which is in your hands today written immediately after the departure of Jesus?" 

"No." 

"Then" he said, "Please read page 17 in 'The Founder of Christianity and His Religion' published by the Christian Literature Society, Madras. It is said in the Book: 

The whole Bible contains sixty six books written by forty different authors over a space of about fifteen centuries. 

It is clearly said in the book that:

Oral teaching was for several years - the only means employed in the spread of Christianity. It was for the guidance of those young converts, that the earliest writings of the New Testament were composed." 

The same book further discloses that: 

"They were probably written about twenty years after the death of Christ." 

On page 18 it is stated: 

"The Gospels do not give a complete history of the Life of Christ, they are rather memoirs."

"But the Bible is the word of God inspired and written by the disciples of Jesus." 

He again smiled and said: 

"Mr. Joseph, if the Bible is the Book of the disciples and of Jesus, how would you account for the differences in the Book, if it is an inspired word of God. Does not the Catholic Bible Duay contain some books which the Protestant version does not own? Have you read what Mr. Wilson says about the Bible, in his introduction to the 'Diaglot' published by the Watch Tower Society?": 

"If it had not been published by kingly authority it would not now be venerated by English and American Protestants, as thought it had come direct from Cod. It has been convicted of containing over 20,000 errors. Nearly 700 Creeks MSS. are now known and some of them very ancient whereas the translator of the common version had only the advantage of some 8 MSS none of which was earlier then the tenth century." 

"Is not the Bible based upon only 8 manuscripts whereas there are 700 manuscripts now available? If what is contained in all such manuscripts is also the inspired word of God, why were these manuscripts left away? In view of all these facts brought to your light, if you still believe in the Bible as the inspired word of God, you may do so but you can't expect the whole world to do it. If you make a serious and an impartial study of the Old and the New Testaments, you will find in them the amount of blasphemies which the Jewish mind has fabricated against Lot , David, Noah and Abraham who were the Holy Apostles of God viz: 

"And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the vine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan , saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two breathren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness." (Gen. 9:20-23) 

"Lot committing adultery with his own daughters." (Gen. 19:36) 

"David taking possession of his neighbor's wife." (II. Sam, 11:4) 

I asked, "What? Do you Muslims believe in the prophets of God other than Muhammad to be totally sinless and holy?" 

He answered me by reciting to me the following verses of the Holy Quran: 

"Say (O Muslims): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered. " (Quran 2:136)

 "The Apostle (Muhammad) believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers, (i.e. Muslims) they all believe in Allah (God) and his angels, His book (the different holy scriptures) and His Apostles; we make no difference between any of His apostles."

How I became Muslim

A must read testimony for every Muslim and non-Muslim 

By S. Ghaffan 

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent the Merciful  

I was born of staunch Catholic Christian parents. My father was a preacher who knew the Bible almost by heart my mother, an orthodox Catholic, would only give us the morning coffee after her return from Church. Even from my youngest days, I was made to memorize certain verses from the Bible. By the time I had completed the study of all the four Gospels and knew many important verses, in those four books, by heart.

My father sometimes took me along with him when he went to preach, and from the special attention he paid to my knowing certain controversial points, and his teaching me the methods of explaining to the others those intricacies, it was quite obvious that he wanted me to succeed him in his profession. The strong desire of the paternal love to make me a priest was implemented by educating me with a detailed knowledge of the Bible and the science of ministering it to others. By the time I reached the Form IV in school I could preach the gospels in my own way, supervised by my father. Many senior missionaries admired my knowledge of the important doctrines of the faith. I passed the Form VI and joined College. There I came in contact with several classmates who were Protestants, and some of whom were well versed in the study of the Protestant Bible.

I often met my Protestant classmates and discussed matters regarding differences in our faith and the performance of rituals. There were also some Muslim students, but I met them only in the play ground as I hated meeting Muslims whom I took to be dangerous fanatics. By the time I completed the first year in College, I was sufficiently grounded in the knowledge of the Christian faith as held by the Catholic Church and had also considerable knowledge of the Protestant view point. Appreciating this knowledge of the Catholic faith in my young age I was given a scholarship from the church funds and in return for the help I received, I was required to receive special coaching in the guidance of deeper thoughts about certain parts of the Holy Book, under of the Chief Priest of the Church who loved to teach me very much and was very intimately attached to me. He used the special devotional methods of worshiping Jesus and his Holy Mother. Having appeared in the first group for my intermediate course I used to sit working at his subjects till late at night.

One night when all were asleep and I was absorbed in my studies an idea suddenly struck my mind to examine the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Basic formula of the Christian faith. The question, how three different things can be one and the same, arose in my mind i.e. how anything singularly absolute in its unity with its indivisible oneness, can ever by itself become divided into three separate beings with three variant native attributes opposed to each other justifying the distribution into the three different entities.

My failure to reconcile my belief in the Trinity with the reasoning of the science of logic, created a mental restlessness in me. Days passed on and many a time I thought of asking my father to help me in solving the problem which was puzzling my mind. But I knew that my father would never appreciate the least doubt in the dogmatic belief of the Catholic School and my venture to discuss anything hated by the Catholic faith, would only create further problems in my domestic life. However, one day when I found my father in a happy mood, I asked him as to how he would defend the Christian faith in the Holy Trinity against the attacks from the members of the other religions of the world. The answer was:

"In matters of faith one has to stop reasoning. One should belief in the doctrine only by one's heart and mind." 

This reply from my father upset me further more and disappointed me to a very great extent and all my thinking got centered in the question which had become a definite problem to puzzle my mind further and I wondered saying: 

"What! Is this the Foundation upon which is built the huge edifice of the Christian faith? Is the basis of my own faith only a matter of a blind following of some dictated belief which can never stand reasoning or the independent scrutiny by the dispassionate and impartial arguments from the clean conscience?" 

I became much worried and made up my mind to find some arguments to somehow make my much disturbed mind at least imagine that one could at one and the same time be three different persons, and the three different persons could at the same time remain one.