Becoming a Muslim

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   Okay, well I am a first year college student in an upstate New York school, and I have been doing some thinking late. I've read several books (The Autobiography of Malcoln X in particular) that have been making me reposition my stance on religion, and Islam specifically. 

I'm of a mixed heritage, southern Native American and English, however I and my older sister were adopted into a white Baptist family and raised in the suburbs of a small city, by my father, a bartender, and my mother, who stayed at home. Religion was very much just something for our Sundays and for the Holdays, and I never really developed a faith. By the time I had entered middle school, I was identifing myself as an atheist and disbelieved anything I perceived as supernatural.

I've been lucky to have never had any trouble with the police. I got in many fights, and hurt many people who probably didn't deserve it. I've experimented with more drugs then I knew existed six years ago. Women, I've known a few, and none of them do I regert, because we did, and some still, love each other. I am telling you all of this so you can understand where I am coming from.

However, things for me now are changing, I'm seeing people who were my friends a few months ago stab me in the back, and others burning out like a candle in a jar. I am reconsidering how greedy I have been for very long, and what that could make me if continue. I recognize now that I've been an optimist, even if I didn't know it, believing that the Universe will throw itself together in such a way that no matter what happens, I'll come out on top. I've been lucky with that mindset, and I don't want to push my luck any further.

I, briefly, considered Christianity. I've been there, and it isn't right for me, and I don't think it, as it is preached, is right for anyone with a thinking mind. Other religions thought of, and knew I could never believe in them, fully.

To me, mankind is lost in a storm. We're fighting each other over nothing, when we should be huddled together for protection and comfort. Oneness of humanity is what I seek, acknowledgement that our differences are purely aesthetic, or can be overcome.

That's what attracts me to Islam. The way Muslims pay honor and respect to each other, and everyone else, is something I do not see in the condescending posture of every other faith. However, it is also my biggest fear from Islam. I'm an individual, I've never had any desire to be anything greater or pretend I'm part of any group but mankind. As an individual, it is justice and freedom I value most.

Slavery is, of course, the exact opposite to freedom, and I when I see Islam I cannot help but see a relation. Islam, I believe, is not just membership of a community and devotion to Allah, but slavery to the community and Allah.

Justice I will not speak much on. We've heard stories of unfair trails and mob rule in Muslim nations. That happens just as much in West.

But I can put my fears aside for now, I can work on those when I have found my faith. Instead I'd like to take a step towards Allah. I've given up smoking and eating pork. What is the next step?