My Meeting with Abdur Rahman - A Revert to Islam Recently, I met a 23-year-old newly converted, young man for a one-to-one discussion. He is originally from Atlanta city, Georgia in USA. He was formerly known as Deangelo and now his new Muslim name is Abdur Rahman. He joined the American forces in 2007 at the age of 17 and in 2008 was posted to a base on the outskirts of Peterborough. According to Abdur Rahman his interest in Islam, grew after he received initial Islamic Awareness Training as part of his job. Later he read the autobiography of Malcolm X and that further increased his interest in Islam. Several weeks later, he borrowed a copy of the Holy Qur’an from his local library. Within days of reading, he felt Islam was the religion of his choice and in December 2010, he took Shahada (declaration of faith) through the UK Islamic Mission’s Da’wah team and became a Muslim. Three weeks later, his partner also embraced Islam and they formally had a Nikah (Islamic marriage) and started to live lives of a Muslim couple. Abdur Rahman said that since embracing Islam, his concept of life has completely changed and now he is constantly thinking of Allah being present with him in his everyday life. He also feels more in control of himself and appreciates life much more. The habits he had to discard are smoking and not being respectful to women. He stated that his family and friends are happy with him after he embraced Islam and further explained that the truth is that they do not understand the religion of Islam enough, as he is the first Muslim in his family. Since embracing Islam, he feels a huge amount of weight has lifted off his shoulders and now he believes that he is on the right path but his life journey will be long and arduous. Abdur Rahman has since left his job in the USA armed forces and is now planning his long-term future either to go to Sudan or Egypt to increase his religious knowledge, and to learn the Arabic language. He has a desire to live a simple and humble life. Raja Tahir Masood Author and Historian Peterborough UK
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 23:45:07 +0000
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