Melissa Riter, Ex-Christian, USA
- Categories: Da'wah to Non-Muslims -
I was raised in a sadly dysfunctional family. My father was
anti-religion (all religions) and my mother was a non-practicing
Southern Baptist. On my father's side of the family, religion was
something to ridicule while one was "straight" and to adopt when
one was drunk or high. On my mother's side of the family, religion
was "understood" but never talked about. My mother's father had
been a Southern Baptist minister at one time, but faith was
something only for Sunday sermons.
At a very young age (as young as nine or ten years old), I started
to have an interest in "going to church". I was allowed to go to
Vacation Bible School during the summer as long as it kept me out
of my parents' hair, and I was allowed to go to church on Sundays
as long as they served a hot lunch afterward. I learned to sing
songs like "Jesus Loves Me" and "This Little Light of Mine". It was
good. It was fun. By the time I reached the age of 12, though, my
father started to forbid me to go to church. Lessons in Sunday
school were getting too serious. I had started to learn about
morals. Don't drink. Don't smoke.. Stay away from drugs. Never talk
about what happens between husband and wife. I brought those morals
home and tried to teach them. Church was banned. Fortunately, I had
learned enough to strengthen my desire to learn more.
My parents divorced when I was 12 ½ years old. I stayed with my
mother and it was then that my search for the true religion began.
I started attending a Pentecostal church every Sunday. I learned
how to dress - no pants, no makeup, don't cut your hair - and how
to sing. I learned how to quote the bible. I learned how to worship
Jesus (peace be upon him). God forgive me. The idea of God's mercy
stuck with me. It was the first truly important lesson that I
learned in my search for guidance. Something was fundamentally
wrong, though. I was saved and no matter what I did, I couldn't go
to Hell. It seemed to me that this couldn't be right, or the Bible
wouldn't talk about punishment for our sins. There wouldn't be
commandments to follow. Where was the incentive?
I left that church and started studying other faiths. I stuck with
the monotheistic religions by pure instinct. I knew in my soul that
God was the key and that Jesus had to fit in there somewhere. I
studied Judaism but the fact that they discounted Jesus altogether
ruled that religion out very quickly. I moved on to the different
Christian denominations. I tried Baptist, but there was no mercy
there. If you did anything wrong, you went to Hell. Period. No
chance. No hope. I studied Catholicism, but something about praying
to saints (Mary included, God be pleased with her) didn't sit well.
Methodist and Presbyterian weren't much help either. Eventually I
went back to the Pentecostal churches for no other reason than that
they offered hope of redemption.
There were two big questions that kept me confused much of the
time. The first was, if Jesus was God's son, then how could he also
be God? The second was much the same as the first. If Jesus was
God, then whom was he praying to in the Garden of Gethsemane? I
asked these two questions of my pastor and was told, "If you ask
those questions, you'll go to Hell for lack of faith." I was
shocked! To quote Galileo, "I do not feel obliged to believe that
the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect
has intended for us to forego their use." I left the Pentecostal
church never to return.
At the age of 19, I opened my door to a pair of Mormon
missionaries. My search for the true religion was on again. I let
them in and promptly began studies. Here was a religion that made
sense! They told me that Jesus and God were not the same personage.
They told me that those who truly strove to live the true religion
would be rewarded with Heaven and that those who made big mistakes
but who still had faith would only be punished a little while. Hell
was not forever for believers. They told me about Prophets and how
Moses wasn't the last, after all. They explained that, even though
they loved Jesus and considered him their eldest brother, they only
prayed to God. I liked what they told me and it rang true. I joined
their church and remained a member for 16 years.
During those 16 years, I found myself going through rough times.
There were many times when I stopped practicing my religion
altogether. I became an alcoholic and did the things alcoholics do.
I divorced my husband and started "dating". I degraded myself.
There was always the belief, though. I always believed what the
Mormons had taught me. I deluded myself into thinking that it
didn't matter what I did. Hell was only for people who didn't
believe. I could just go to the spirit prison after death and
repent and then eventually make my way to Heaven.
There were times during those 16 years when I cleaned myself up and
went to church. As one progresses through the lessons at the Mormon
church, one begins to hear things that are kept quiet from
"investigators" into the religion and from new converts. It was
somewhere in late 2003 or early 2004 when it was "revealed" to me
that God had been a human man on a different planet and that He had
worshipped yet a different god. It was also revealed that any human
from earth could become a god in his/her own right, if only he/she
did the right things. This bothered me a little. Still, Mormonism
was the closest I had come to anything that felt right both
spiritually and logically. I tried to explain away those ideas of
other gods by telling myself that they actually meant something
else. I wasn't quite sure what that other something might be,
though.
In May of 2004, after having remarried and again left (for the last
time) my previous husband, I stayed up late one night, playing on
the Internet. I visited a chatroom that looked like the
conversation was halfway decent and there met a very nice young man
from Egypt. His name was Samy. Samy was very nice and always
discussed appropriate topics. That was a first in my experience, so
I sought him out online very often. We talked about his home, my
home, family. We shared our hopes and dreams for the future. We
also talked about God in a very general sense. We talked about Him
a lot. I discovered that our basic beliefs about God were the same.
In August of 2004, we began discussing marriage. It was then that I
decided to study his religion - Islam.
It was never my intention to convert. After all, I was a Christian
- a Mormon, at that - and to deny Jesus or the Holy Ghost was
instant damnation. (In fact, I believed it was the only thing a
person could go to Hell forever for.) My only intention was to
learn enough of his religion to avoid offending him with
mine.
Samy turned my studies over to his friend Ahmed, who is very
knowledgeable about Islam. He said he didn't want our relationship
to influence me. Too many women convert just to please their
husbands. I began by learning the nature of God. There is only One
God. Omnipotent. He needs nothing from his creation, but all of
creation needs Him. He neither begets nor is begotten. And there is
nothing like Him. That was easy to accept. My soul clung to that
information for dear life. Still, I couldn't convert. There was the
whole idea of Jesus and the Holy Ghost. I didn't dare deny
them.
Then I learned about Prophets. I learned that all the prophets were
equal, and that Muhammed, may the mercy and blessings of God be
upon him, was the last prophet. I also learned that Jesus, peace be
upon him, was a prophet, not the son of God. I had a little trouble
with this one, so Samy's friend showed me a number of places in the
Bible where other prophets than Jesus had been called God's
begotten son, His only son and His firstborn son. He also showed me
where Jesus himself forbade his disciples to call him the Son of
God and pointed out that Jesus called himself the son of man. That
cleared up part of my problem, but there was still the issue of the
Mormon prophets. That was a little harder to clear up, but it came
down to differences instead of similarities. The prophets in the
bible had a message for all of mankind, and that message was always
the same. Worship God alone, with no partners. The Mormon prophets
had a message only for the Mormon church, and it usually had to do
with things like food storage and self-reliance. Once it was
pointed out, I wondered how I could have missed that one.
We went on and on like this, learning a new point, disproving
another point (of Mormonism), for seven months. All the while, I
insisted that I was not going to convert and Samy and Ahmed both
said, "I know." I demanded proofs in the Bible for what they were
saying, and they produced them, including an obscure revelation
about Muhammed. They even showed me where Muhammed's name had been
in the Bible at one time and had been edited out. The name given
was Ahmed, which equals Muhammed the same way John and Jack are
often used interchangeably. Only the name was removed. The rest is
still in there. He was foretold by Jesus, himself, as well as by
Moses.
In March of 2005, I learned the final lesson that allowed me to
shake off the fear of Hell and to accept Islam with all my heart,
mind and soul. I learned about the Holy Ghost. As a Mormon, I
believed that, if I denied the existence of the Holy Ghost, I would
instantly be condemned to everlasting hellfire. There was no chance
of repentance, no matter what. Thankfully, I don't have to, and in
fact never can, deny such existence. I learned that the Holy Ghost,
also known as the Holy Spirit, is also known in the Old and New
Testaments as the Spirit of the Lord. Again, they proved it with
the Bible. We all know the story. The Spirit of the Lord appeared
to Mary…. The Holy Spirit, or Spirit of the Lord is none other than
the Angel Gabriel - and Muslims know about the existence of the
angels. It was Gabriel who revealed the Quran from God to
Muhammed.
The next day, I spoke with an online friend and told her I wanted
to convert. I had a surprise in mind for Samy and Ahmed. She
contacted my local masjid (mosque) and arranged for a sister and
two brothers to come to my house so I could say shahadah. It was
very easy. They guided me first in English and then in Arabic, and
I repeated after them, saying, "I testify that there is no god but
the One God (Allah, in Arabic) and I testify that Muhammed is His
messenger." The sister gave me my first headscarf (hijab) and
helped me put it on as a symbol of my conversion.
That night, I met Samy and Ahmed online, where we always chatted.
They were both very pleased to see that I had converted, but they
weren't surprised. And I found out why they always said "I know"
when I said I wouldn't convert. You see, a Muslim is one who
willingly submits his or her own will to the will of God. All
children are born in that state of submission and are pulled away
by outside forces. Still, our souls seek the "face of God" and a
return to that submission. My soul began that search in 1978, and
in March of 2005, at the age of 34, I did not convert. I
reverted.
Incidentally, I totally cleaned up my act the moment I converted.
The incentive is there. God sees all and knows all. And, Samy and I
were married in July of 2005 and he has taken over the
responsibility of teaching me about Islam. There is always
something to learn.
By Melissa Riter
The Religion of Islam