A Jew Converts to Islam After 60 Years – I Saw Muhammad (pbuh) in the Bible!
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I was born in the mid 20th century, conservative American-Jewish parents. My parents said to me, "It's your 13th birthday. We're going to give you a gift. We want you to make the choice. Would you like to have a big party for you and your friends, or would you like a trip to Israel?" So after about 100 miles, I said, "I'd like to get out." So he stopped the car. I opened the door. I got out of my car. My hand was in this door handle and he started driving. He saw me stuck, hung onto the car, and he stepped on the gas. And I'm flying towards the highway. And all of a sudden everything slows down. And I heard this sound. "Not yet, not yet." And I started searching for truth.
And I studied the Bible very much. And I ended up in a monastery for three years. If someone had told me a minute before I was going to be a Muslim, I would have laughed. You know, I told my son. He said to me, "Dad, if you look in the Bible and you look in the Gospel, you're going to find Muhammad, if you look here and here and here." And I looked in the book, the words popped out of me like three dimensional. The words were like shining out at me. When I saw that, I could not unsee it anymore. Assalamualaikum Brother Sanford Pass, also known as a Muslim named Abu Mujahid. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. As Towards Eternity, we are very happy to have you with us.
Waalaikumassalam. Thank you for inviting me. It's always a blessing to be able to share this beautiful story. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. We are so grateful. So, I want to start with, who is Abu Mujahid? Can you tell us briefly about your life? I was born in the mid 20th century to a first generation conservative American Jewish parents. I was raised to believe in Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one. I grew up in a American society, observed the kosher laws and the Sabbath and so forth in my home. When I was growing up, certain things happened. Kennedy got shot when I was 14. I began to question everything.
That pretty much put me on the path to start looking for what's really going on in this world. When I was 14, my life changed because I started seeing things differently, and I started searching for truth. And I went from college to a monastery to meditate and became Muslim at the age of 60, after I realized that it's all one story. It's not a whole bunch of different stories, it's all connected. So that's when I became Muslim 16 years ago. How was your life in regards to faith before Islam? What were you believing in? I always believed there was one God. I followed Judaism until my teenage years. When I went to college, I started looking around and started looking and saying what...
Exploring and discovering and having different experiences and asking a lot of questions. A couple of things made me question my beliefs. When I was a young boy, we lived in a town where there was a university, and they had these houses called Hillel Houses. Hillel was a great teacher from the old time. And there would be a rabbi there, and this college students would go there and pray. They'd try to keep the college students connected. So I was a little boy when we lived in Columbia, Missouri, and my parents always took us to the Friday night services. And I always remembered those memories with a lot of affection because we would be declaring, you know, the Shahada, basically.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. There would be singing and you know, there would be different rituals. But that was the main thing was what held us together was that we were monotheistic, you know, that we believed in one God. When I got a little older, I started asking questions about things that were in the Bible, in the Torah, regarding Jesus, peace be upon him and others. And they always told me, "Don't pay, no, don't pay any attention to that. Don't. That's, a mistranslation." Kind of deflect. So what happened in my case was the training I got for this great event. It was supposed to be a great one, when a boy becomes a man.
They put me in a room with a vinyl, with a record player and told me to memorize this. I never sat with a rabbi and actually learned the inner meaning of what it was I was reciting. It was just, "Learn this," like it's a performance. And you got to look good to the congregation to show that we're good teachers. And it wasn't like they sat down and explained what any of it meant. That kind of, you know, I was just a kid, but I didn't like it. And this is the very important part. My parents said to me, "It's your 13th birthday. We're going to give you a gift. We want you to make the choice.
Would you like to have a big party for you and your friends, or would you like a trip to Israel?" At that time, everybody, you know, all Jewish kids were being encouraged to go make a trip to Israel. Why? So they could brainwash you, you know, so they could tell you this is, you know... I said, "I want a party," and I thank Allah. I thank Allah I chose the party. Because when I see what's happening now, it could have been me. I could have gotten my head twisted sideways by those people. So I just had a lot of questions because it didn't... The way people were living wasn't matching what I was reading about, and I didn't understand, you know?
But that was the main thing was, and the thing about Kennedy getting killed, it wasn't all religious questions. It was all about everything that was going on in the world altogether that made me start looking. I dropped out of college and I went and lived on the.. They started a farm in Tennessee, and I lived on that farm for a while. And people were just very, very honest with each other at the time. I didn't stay there long. I left there, I traveled around, and then I ended up in a monastery for three years. I became Christian and I studied the Bible very much. You know, it was the whole thing. Crosses and robes and the whole thing. I was looking for something and it wasn't there.
Anyway, after three years, I saw too many contradictions, and I left there. There was a man who was a young boy from India who was teaching a meditation, and he said, "I can put you in touch with the energy that moves the universe." In other words, the holy energy of God, the energy that moves our breath. So I studied that for a long time. I meditated, and I studied that for a long time. What happened after that was I found a problem. You know, I said "Something isn't right." I had experiences. But there was something about that whole system that didn't sit with me well, and I didn't feel right. How did your journey towards Islam begin? What impressed you the most about Islam?
And I was in my, I was about 60. That's when my son called me and he said, "Dad, I saw in my whole life you were always looking like, what's really true, what's behind all the all the headlines and everything." Because after all those experiences I told you about, I got married, I had two children. I, you know, lived in corporate America for a number of years. And so when my son, you know, I told my son. He said to me, "Dad, if you look in the Bible and you look in the Gospel, you're going to find Muhammad if you look here and here and here." And I prayed about it, and I looked in the book and the words popped out of me like three dimensional. The words were like shining out at me.
The words that were in Deuteronomy 18:18, where in the book of Deuteronomy it says, "A prophet's going to come who's going to be like you, like Moses. Who's going to... Not going to say anything of himself. He's going to say what he's given to say." When this reflects John 16:13, where Jesus says, peace be upon him, "The spirit of truth is going to come, and he's not going to say anything but what's given to him to say. And he's going to lead you to the rest of the truth." And in Deuteronomy 33:2, it talks about, "The sun was coming up over Sinai, came up higher over Sa'ir, and crested at Piran." And I looked that up, what that really means.
And Sinai is where Allah gave Musa the law, the Ten Commandments, Sa'ir is where Isa overcame the temptations of Shaitan. And Paran is an ancient name for Mecca, where Muhammad was born, peace be upon him, peace be upon them all. And that is what Deuteronomy 33:2 breaks down to. When I saw that, I could not unsee it anymore, you know? It's like the last thing I was thinking about was becoming Muslim, you know? I mean, after 2001, I was saying to my friends, "The Muslims could not have done this." Because I had been analyzing every major false flag event all my life from Kennedy, all the way through Vietnam, through all this stuff.
And I said, "The Muslims couldn't have done 9/11, physically impossible." Thousands of people say it couldn't happen this way. Because my friends would say to me, "What are you defending Muslims for?" The search for truth led me to Islam. And you know something? You don't need a lot of proof. When you're looking for water and you're dying of thirst, a little bit of water, man. It's like, so, so precious. And I saw it, and it's like, that was enough. I didn't need an avalanche of information. I had enough. Allah gave me enough proof that satisfied me. Was that the moment that you felt that Islam is 100% the truth? Yes.
That's the part where, you know, when you drive into a parking lot and there are these spikes and it says, "Don't back up because you're going to pop your tires if you back up." When I realized I had that experience of like, "You asked for it. You got it. Now you can't back up." This is like, this is one way street. If you back up, you're going to hurt yourself. And I mean, because I wasn't looking for a religion, I wasn't looking to convert to a religion. If someone had told me a minute before I was going to be a Muslim, I would have laughed. But Allah surprised me. Allah showed me, and a little... It wasn't like a voice saying anything, but it was a presence.
When I had that experience with the book, and with Allah and with Muhammad (pbuh), it was like, this is the answer to what you were asking for when you were 14. It was like very clear in my mind that it had my question, my big question about what's going on, it like, came full circle. Without any like, I didn't get it with a telegram or email. It's just a feeling of like, my question was completed. It was like, now I understand the world I'm in, and why things are happening, the way they're happening. It all makes sense now. Can you take us to those moments, how you took your Shahada? How did you feel? Fresh, kind of starting fresh. Like... Allah was welcoming me and He was forgiving me.
And I was told that when you take Shahada and you become Muslim, all of your sins are gone. Your negative, your bad sins are made into good sin. You know, you start fresh. And I felt very fresh. Not at the time of Shahada, as much as when I experienced the reality that Islam is true, that when I saw the book, I remember, see, things coming back to me. Tears were coming out of my eyes, but they weren't rolling down my face. They were flying out of my eyes like birds. They were, the tears were projecting. I could see them. What is this? At the same time that was happening, my ribcage felt like it was opening up like doors, like a French door on a balcony, you know, just like this.
And my heart was exploding, but not painfully, but in a good way. And all this was going on, at the same time, I realized that Allah has been over me the whole time, has guided me through my whole life to this moment, and has shown me that this is why the world is the way it is. This is why you've had so many questions. This answers everything, it really does. When you look at this world and everything in it, and you look at what's going on and you look at what Allah says, you're going, "It makes sense. It all makes sense now." How did your family and the people around you react to your conversion to Islam? Some people in my family don't talk to me anymore too much.
Maybe at social functions. Some people in my family keep in touch with me regularly and leave it, you know? Don't deal with that part of our lives. We stay family. Some people think I'm crazy. Some people, friends of mine, some accept me as I am. Some don't. Very few have questions at this time. I think they will, as time goes by, as things develop in this world, I think more and more people are going to want to know what's going on. Like the things that you and I are talking about here. Do you ever regret becoming a Muslim? No. I was like, whew. Well, never. It's been hard sometimes, but I never regretted it. No, ever. Sometimes I ask myself, I wonder why Allah let me go 60 years.
And then I don't question Allah anymore about it, I don't. But I used to wonder, why did you let me wander for 60 years and was like, maybe I had to. Why did He let the children of Israel wander? Why did He let, you know, why does he let people wander? It's because they appreciate something when they find it, maybe. Or maybe they learned experience. They got experience in their wandering that they can turn around. I did so many different things in my life that now I can turn around and I can communicate with different people from different walks of life and make connections for them and help them understand this.
Have you ever experienced an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah? Yeah, a couple of times when I almost died, before I became Muslim, even. I was hitchhiking and I got in this car with this guy. And this was 1971 on the Ohio Turnpike. Beautiful day, sunny day. We're driving along and he's not talking, he's not saying a word. It was unusual, creepy. Usually, you know, people say things to each other. So after about 100 miles, I said, "I'd like to get out." So he stopped the car. I opened the door. I got out of the car. I got out of my side.
I opened up the back door to get my bag, and my hand was in this door handle where you put your hand around and push the thumb. And he started driving and he saw me. He turned around and he saw me. He saw me hung onto the car and he stepped on the gas. I guess he thought I had something valuable in the bag. I could see over his bench seat. I saw it was like 70, 75 miles an hour. Somehow my hand got free and I'm flying towards the highway and all of a sudden everything slows down. Everything goes into slow motion. And I felt this like cocoon, like a cocoon of light surrounding me. And I heard this sound.
It was like I heard these voices go, "Not yet, not yet." And as I was approaching the highway, everything, as I said, was slow motion. And I wasn't thinking about death. Anyway, I stood up, there was gravel in my hands, and I had blood on my chin, and I stuck up my thumb. And there was a turnpike hospital at the next stop. They sewed up my chin right here. I didn't have any broken bones, and I kept going. And that was that. That was amazing. Allah saved my life at that time and also that time on the roof. And another time I was on a roof doing a roof estimate in Florida.
A mother seagull came out from behind the air conditioner, started coming at me, and I was backing up, and I was 12 stories up. My back foot went off and I felt air and I was on a 12 story hotel and behind me was the Atlantic Ocean. It was Miami Beach. And I felt a big hand on my back pushed me back onto the building. As Allah is my witness. I felt a big hand on the middle of my back pushed me back onto the building because my center of gravity was already over. It was gone, I was already tilting, when I was backing up from there and it happened. So these two times my life was saved. I felt Allah very close, when I realized that Allah is true. Yeah.
What about any experience after you became Muslim, any prayer being answered or any, like, closeness you felt? I asked for a pious wife who was not into materialism, who didn't care about materialism, after I became Muslim. And during my life, I guess it was 2015 or so, some of the brothers and sisters in the community fixed me up with a sister and introduced us and brought her over to the house. We were walking around the house, the other adults were sitting in the kitchen and I was showing her around the house. She said to me, "You don't have to show me anything." She said, "I'm not a materialistic person." And it was just like Allah goes...
"That's her." He said, "Hello." "You wanted to..." Anyway, we got married. May Allah bless her in her grave. She passed away. I asked Allah for a pious wife. And Allah gave me a pious wife. And she said the exact words that I gave Allah in my dua. "I want a wife that's not materialistic." And she said those exact words to me when we met. Like, "You don't have to show me around. I'm not a material..." And I said, "Okay, that's good." I know there's a spectrum, but what is the greatest goal in life for a Jew? And I was born into a Jewish family, right? The greatest goal for me was to realize that I was two prophets short of the whole story, and to accept them and to become Muslim.
I really do believe that, and if you look at that rabbi who became the Prophet's companion, peace be upon him. It's like that. To me, that's the successful Jew. To me, that is the highest success a Jew can achieve, is to realize that being a Jew is a step on the way. And a Jew is a brand, just like Christian is a brand. But Islam is like the water without a brand on it. It just means peace. It's a mission. It doesn't have a name on it, like a person's name, you know what I mean? So it's like, for me, being successful, the greatest thing for a Jew to achieve is to become a Muslim. Maybe from the experience that you show around you, what can you tell us about Israel and what is the mindset?
What is the world that those people live in? There's a spectrum. There's again... It goes from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say that Israel shouldn't exist. That Zionism is wrong, okay? And they're looked at as crazy. To other people who want to burn out Gaza and starve them and kill them. There are people in Israel that want to walk through Gaza and shoot everybody now. They just want to get it over with. There are other people in Israel that are protesting all of it. There's a whole rainbow of types of people over there in such a small space.
But the dominant ones, the ones in control, the ones with their fingers on the button, they are starving the Palestinians and they are going through there, and they are expanding their ground operation as we speak. The real motivation from the very beginning has been, take the land, take the people out and take over the place. And nobody is stopping them in the whole world and we're watching a genocide happen. So what is the motivation behind taking the land? There's a plan called Greater Israel, okay? It ranges from the Nile to the Euphrates. It includes part of Egypt, all of Lebanon, Syria, part of Jordan, part of Saudi Arabia. In other words, it's a big place. It's a big area.
It's all been a way, a method of them spreading out and creating what would be the New World Order. The headquarters of the new international government. I believe this is their plan. The Zionists control the American government. That what I'm saying right now, I could be put in jail for. They want to make a law that if you criticize Israel or you support Palestine, it's anti-Antisemitism and you can get 20 years and fined $1 million. This is the law they want to pass in Congress. I don't think it's going to pass, but just the fact that it's in Congress, they're arguing over this now. It makes you remember, like Germany in 1933, you know, only it's the Muslims now, not the Jews.
It's like history repeating itself. After watching Kennedy, after watching Vietnam, after watching 9/11. Things like this don't happen by accident, brother. I think this is all choreographed. I think this is all planned. It's on their drawing board for years before it happens in the news. I believe that this is all part of their big plan to take over. If Prophet Muhammad (saw) were to walk in through this door right now, what would you like to say to him? First I would stand up, then I would say Assalamualaikum. Then it would be up to him. I would thank him, I would thank him. I would just thank him. What else is there to say? Thank you for your service to Allah.
Thank you for guiding me and helping me out of this world. You know? Having lived all this life, like 75 years of life, searching the truth and finally found the truth, if you were given like one minute opportunity to address the entire American society or even the world in a maybe Super Bowl commercial, what would you like to say in just one minute? Just summarize all these things, everyone is listening to you. Peace be with everybody. I don't have a lot of time. I only got a minute. So, let me just make it simple. Whoever you are, wherever you're at, whatever your situation is, let me just say this.
There is no deity worthy of worship but the one God who's making your heart beat now, and my heart beat right now. And Muhammad is his final messenger, following and foretold by Moses, Jesus, and others, and also in other scriptures like the Vedas. He is the messenger to the whole world. Peace be upon them all. I invite everyone to discover your birthright. It is not what it looks like on television. Just learn what Islam is and come home. Brother Abu Mujahid, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and beautiful insights. Jazakallah khairan. May Allah reward you and Inshallah allow you to enter Jannah. And you as well, and all of your team. So I'm grateful for Allah is using me.
I'm very grateful. May Allah make your work easy and make it effective. May Allah touch a lot of people's hearts through your efforts.
And I studied the Bible very much. And I ended up in a monastery for three years. If someone had told me a minute before I was going to be a Muslim, I would have laughed. You know, I told my son. He said to me, "Dad, if you look in the Bible and you look in the Gospel, you're going to find Muhammad, if you look here and here and here." And I looked in the book, the words popped out of me like three dimensional. The words were like shining out at me. When I saw that, I could not unsee it anymore. Assalamualaikum Brother Sanford Pass, also known as a Muslim named Abu Mujahid. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. As Towards Eternity, we are very happy to have you with us.
Waalaikumassalam. Thank you for inviting me. It's always a blessing to be able to share this beautiful story. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. We are so grateful. So, I want to start with, who is Abu Mujahid? Can you tell us briefly about your life? I was born in the mid 20th century to a first generation conservative American Jewish parents. I was raised to believe in Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one. I grew up in a American society, observed the kosher laws and the Sabbath and so forth in my home. When I was growing up, certain things happened. Kennedy got shot when I was 14. I began to question everything.
That pretty much put me on the path to start looking for what's really going on in this world. When I was 14, my life changed because I started seeing things differently, and I started searching for truth. And I went from college to a monastery to meditate and became Muslim at the age of 60, after I realized that it's all one story. It's not a whole bunch of different stories, it's all connected. So that's when I became Muslim 16 years ago. How was your life in regards to faith before Islam? What were you believing in? I always believed there was one God. I followed Judaism until my teenage years. When I went to college, I started looking around and started looking and saying what...
Exploring and discovering and having different experiences and asking a lot of questions. A couple of things made me question my beliefs. When I was a young boy, we lived in a town where there was a university, and they had these houses called Hillel Houses. Hillel was a great teacher from the old time. And there would be a rabbi there, and this college students would go there and pray. They'd try to keep the college students connected. So I was a little boy when we lived in Columbia, Missouri, and my parents always took us to the Friday night services. And I always remembered those memories with a lot of affection because we would be declaring, you know, the Shahada, basically.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. There would be singing and you know, there would be different rituals. But that was the main thing was what held us together was that we were monotheistic, you know, that we believed in one God. When I got a little older, I started asking questions about things that were in the Bible, in the Torah, regarding Jesus, peace be upon him and others. And they always told me, "Don't pay, no, don't pay any attention to that. Don't. That's, a mistranslation." Kind of deflect. So what happened in my case was the training I got for this great event. It was supposed to be a great one, when a boy becomes a man.
They put me in a room with a vinyl, with a record player and told me to memorize this. I never sat with a rabbi and actually learned the inner meaning of what it was I was reciting. It was just, "Learn this," like it's a performance. And you got to look good to the congregation to show that we're good teachers. And it wasn't like they sat down and explained what any of it meant. That kind of, you know, I was just a kid, but I didn't like it. And this is the very important part. My parents said to me, "It's your 13th birthday. We're going to give you a gift. We want you to make the choice.
Would you like to have a big party for you and your friends, or would you like a trip to Israel?" At that time, everybody, you know, all Jewish kids were being encouraged to go make a trip to Israel. Why? So they could brainwash you, you know, so they could tell you this is, you know... I said, "I want a party," and I thank Allah. I thank Allah I chose the party. Because when I see what's happening now, it could have been me. I could have gotten my head twisted sideways by those people. So I just had a lot of questions because it didn't... The way people were living wasn't matching what I was reading about, and I didn't understand, you know?
But that was the main thing was, and the thing about Kennedy getting killed, it wasn't all religious questions. It was all about everything that was going on in the world altogether that made me start looking. I dropped out of college and I went and lived on the.. They started a farm in Tennessee, and I lived on that farm for a while. And people were just very, very honest with each other at the time. I didn't stay there long. I left there, I traveled around, and then I ended up in a monastery for three years. I became Christian and I studied the Bible very much. You know, it was the whole thing. Crosses and robes and the whole thing. I was looking for something and it wasn't there.
Anyway, after three years, I saw too many contradictions, and I left there. There was a man who was a young boy from India who was teaching a meditation, and he said, "I can put you in touch with the energy that moves the universe." In other words, the holy energy of God, the energy that moves our breath. So I studied that for a long time. I meditated, and I studied that for a long time. What happened after that was I found a problem. You know, I said "Something isn't right." I had experiences. But there was something about that whole system that didn't sit with me well, and I didn't feel right. How did your journey towards Islam begin? What impressed you the most about Islam?
And I was in my, I was about 60. That's when my son called me and he said, "Dad, I saw in my whole life you were always looking like, what's really true, what's behind all the all the headlines and everything." Because after all those experiences I told you about, I got married, I had two children. I, you know, lived in corporate America for a number of years. And so when my son, you know, I told my son. He said to me, "Dad, if you look in the Bible and you look in the Gospel, you're going to find Muhammad if you look here and here and here." And I prayed about it, and I looked in the book and the words popped out of me like three dimensional. The words were like shining out at me.
The words that were in Deuteronomy 18:18, where in the book of Deuteronomy it says, "A prophet's going to come who's going to be like you, like Moses. Who's going to... Not going to say anything of himself. He's going to say what he's given to say." When this reflects John 16:13, where Jesus says, peace be upon him, "The spirit of truth is going to come, and he's not going to say anything but what's given to him to say. And he's going to lead you to the rest of the truth." And in Deuteronomy 33:2, it talks about, "The sun was coming up over Sinai, came up higher over Sa'ir, and crested at Piran." And I looked that up, what that really means.
And Sinai is where Allah gave Musa the law, the Ten Commandments, Sa'ir is where Isa overcame the temptations of Shaitan. And Paran is an ancient name for Mecca, where Muhammad was born, peace be upon him, peace be upon them all. And that is what Deuteronomy 33:2 breaks down to. When I saw that, I could not unsee it anymore, you know? It's like the last thing I was thinking about was becoming Muslim, you know? I mean, after 2001, I was saying to my friends, "The Muslims could not have done this." Because I had been analyzing every major false flag event all my life from Kennedy, all the way through Vietnam, through all this stuff.
And I said, "The Muslims couldn't have done 9/11, physically impossible." Thousands of people say it couldn't happen this way. Because my friends would say to me, "What are you defending Muslims for?" The search for truth led me to Islam. And you know something? You don't need a lot of proof. When you're looking for water and you're dying of thirst, a little bit of water, man. It's like, so, so precious. And I saw it, and it's like, that was enough. I didn't need an avalanche of information. I had enough. Allah gave me enough proof that satisfied me. Was that the moment that you felt that Islam is 100% the truth? Yes.
That's the part where, you know, when you drive into a parking lot and there are these spikes and it says, "Don't back up because you're going to pop your tires if you back up." When I realized I had that experience of like, "You asked for it. You got it. Now you can't back up." This is like, this is one way street. If you back up, you're going to hurt yourself. And I mean, because I wasn't looking for a religion, I wasn't looking to convert to a religion. If someone had told me a minute before I was going to be a Muslim, I would have laughed. But Allah surprised me. Allah showed me, and a little... It wasn't like a voice saying anything, but it was a presence.
When I had that experience with the book, and with Allah and with Muhammad (pbuh), it was like, this is the answer to what you were asking for when you were 14. It was like very clear in my mind that it had my question, my big question about what's going on, it like, came full circle. Without any like, I didn't get it with a telegram or email. It's just a feeling of like, my question was completed. It was like, now I understand the world I'm in, and why things are happening, the way they're happening. It all makes sense now. Can you take us to those moments, how you took your Shahada? How did you feel? Fresh, kind of starting fresh. Like... Allah was welcoming me and He was forgiving me.
And I was told that when you take Shahada and you become Muslim, all of your sins are gone. Your negative, your bad sins are made into good sin. You know, you start fresh. And I felt very fresh. Not at the time of Shahada, as much as when I experienced the reality that Islam is true, that when I saw the book, I remember, see, things coming back to me. Tears were coming out of my eyes, but they weren't rolling down my face. They were flying out of my eyes like birds. They were, the tears were projecting. I could see them. What is this? At the same time that was happening, my ribcage felt like it was opening up like doors, like a French door on a balcony, you know, just like this.
And my heart was exploding, but not painfully, but in a good way. And all this was going on, at the same time, I realized that Allah has been over me the whole time, has guided me through my whole life to this moment, and has shown me that this is why the world is the way it is. This is why you've had so many questions. This answers everything, it really does. When you look at this world and everything in it, and you look at what's going on and you look at what Allah says, you're going, "It makes sense. It all makes sense now." How did your family and the people around you react to your conversion to Islam? Some people in my family don't talk to me anymore too much.
Maybe at social functions. Some people in my family keep in touch with me regularly and leave it, you know? Don't deal with that part of our lives. We stay family. Some people think I'm crazy. Some people, friends of mine, some accept me as I am. Some don't. Very few have questions at this time. I think they will, as time goes by, as things develop in this world, I think more and more people are going to want to know what's going on. Like the things that you and I are talking about here. Do you ever regret becoming a Muslim? No. I was like, whew. Well, never. It's been hard sometimes, but I never regretted it. No, ever. Sometimes I ask myself, I wonder why Allah let me go 60 years.
And then I don't question Allah anymore about it, I don't. But I used to wonder, why did you let me wander for 60 years and was like, maybe I had to. Why did He let the children of Israel wander? Why did He let, you know, why does he let people wander? It's because they appreciate something when they find it, maybe. Or maybe they learned experience. They got experience in their wandering that they can turn around. I did so many different things in my life that now I can turn around and I can communicate with different people from different walks of life and make connections for them and help them understand this.
Have you ever experienced an extraordinary event where you felt that you had a special connection with Allah? Yeah, a couple of times when I almost died, before I became Muslim, even. I was hitchhiking and I got in this car with this guy. And this was 1971 on the Ohio Turnpike. Beautiful day, sunny day. We're driving along and he's not talking, he's not saying a word. It was unusual, creepy. Usually, you know, people say things to each other. So after about 100 miles, I said, "I'd like to get out." So he stopped the car. I opened the door. I got out of the car. I got out of my side.
I opened up the back door to get my bag, and my hand was in this door handle where you put your hand around and push the thumb. And he started driving and he saw me. He turned around and he saw me. He saw me hung onto the car and he stepped on the gas. I guess he thought I had something valuable in the bag. I could see over his bench seat. I saw it was like 70, 75 miles an hour. Somehow my hand got free and I'm flying towards the highway and all of a sudden everything slows down. Everything goes into slow motion. And I felt this like cocoon, like a cocoon of light surrounding me. And I heard this sound.
It was like I heard these voices go, "Not yet, not yet." And as I was approaching the highway, everything, as I said, was slow motion. And I wasn't thinking about death. Anyway, I stood up, there was gravel in my hands, and I had blood on my chin, and I stuck up my thumb. And there was a turnpike hospital at the next stop. They sewed up my chin right here. I didn't have any broken bones, and I kept going. And that was that. That was amazing. Allah saved my life at that time and also that time on the roof. And another time I was on a roof doing a roof estimate in Florida.
A mother seagull came out from behind the air conditioner, started coming at me, and I was backing up, and I was 12 stories up. My back foot went off and I felt air and I was on a 12 story hotel and behind me was the Atlantic Ocean. It was Miami Beach. And I felt a big hand on my back pushed me back onto the building. As Allah is my witness. I felt a big hand on the middle of my back pushed me back onto the building because my center of gravity was already over. It was gone, I was already tilting, when I was backing up from there and it happened. So these two times my life was saved. I felt Allah very close, when I realized that Allah is true. Yeah.
What about any experience after you became Muslim, any prayer being answered or any, like, closeness you felt? I asked for a pious wife who was not into materialism, who didn't care about materialism, after I became Muslim. And during my life, I guess it was 2015 or so, some of the brothers and sisters in the community fixed me up with a sister and introduced us and brought her over to the house. We were walking around the house, the other adults were sitting in the kitchen and I was showing her around the house. She said to me, "You don't have to show me anything." She said, "I'm not a materialistic person." And it was just like Allah goes...
"That's her." He said, "Hello." "You wanted to..." Anyway, we got married. May Allah bless her in her grave. She passed away. I asked Allah for a pious wife. And Allah gave me a pious wife. And she said the exact words that I gave Allah in my dua. "I want a wife that's not materialistic." And she said those exact words to me when we met. Like, "You don't have to show me around. I'm not a material..." And I said, "Okay, that's good." I know there's a spectrum, but what is the greatest goal in life for a Jew? And I was born into a Jewish family, right? The greatest goal for me was to realize that I was two prophets short of the whole story, and to accept them and to become Muslim.
I really do believe that, and if you look at that rabbi who became the Prophet's companion, peace be upon him. It's like that. To me, that's the successful Jew. To me, that is the highest success a Jew can achieve, is to realize that being a Jew is a step on the way. And a Jew is a brand, just like Christian is a brand. But Islam is like the water without a brand on it. It just means peace. It's a mission. It doesn't have a name on it, like a person's name, you know what I mean? So it's like, for me, being successful, the greatest thing for a Jew to achieve is to become a Muslim. Maybe from the experience that you show around you, what can you tell us about Israel and what is the mindset?
What is the world that those people live in? There's a spectrum. There's again... It goes from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say that Israel shouldn't exist. That Zionism is wrong, okay? And they're looked at as crazy. To other people who want to burn out Gaza and starve them and kill them. There are people in Israel that want to walk through Gaza and shoot everybody now. They just want to get it over with. There are other people in Israel that are protesting all of it. There's a whole rainbow of types of people over there in such a small space.
But the dominant ones, the ones in control, the ones with their fingers on the button, they are starving the Palestinians and they are going through there, and they are expanding their ground operation as we speak. The real motivation from the very beginning has been, take the land, take the people out and take over the place. And nobody is stopping them in the whole world and we're watching a genocide happen. So what is the motivation behind taking the land? There's a plan called Greater Israel, okay? It ranges from the Nile to the Euphrates. It includes part of Egypt, all of Lebanon, Syria, part of Jordan, part of Saudi Arabia. In other words, it's a big place. It's a big area.
It's all been a way, a method of them spreading out and creating what would be the New World Order. The headquarters of the new international government. I believe this is their plan. The Zionists control the American government. That what I'm saying right now, I could be put in jail for. They want to make a law that if you criticize Israel or you support Palestine, it's anti-Antisemitism and you can get 20 years and fined $1 million. This is the law they want to pass in Congress. I don't think it's going to pass, but just the fact that it's in Congress, they're arguing over this now. It makes you remember, like Germany in 1933, you know, only it's the Muslims now, not the Jews.
It's like history repeating itself. After watching Kennedy, after watching Vietnam, after watching 9/11. Things like this don't happen by accident, brother. I think this is all choreographed. I think this is all planned. It's on their drawing board for years before it happens in the news. I believe that this is all part of their big plan to take over. If Prophet Muhammad (saw) were to walk in through this door right now, what would you like to say to him? First I would stand up, then I would say Assalamualaikum. Then it would be up to him. I would thank him, I would thank him. I would just thank him. What else is there to say? Thank you for your service to Allah.
Thank you for guiding me and helping me out of this world. You know? Having lived all this life, like 75 years of life, searching the truth and finally found the truth, if you were given like one minute opportunity to address the entire American society or even the world in a maybe Super Bowl commercial, what would you like to say in just one minute? Just summarize all these things, everyone is listening to you. Peace be with everybody. I don't have a lot of time. I only got a minute. So, let me just make it simple. Whoever you are, wherever you're at, whatever your situation is, let me just say this.
There is no deity worthy of worship but the one God who's making your heart beat now, and my heart beat right now. And Muhammad is his final messenger, following and foretold by Moses, Jesus, and others, and also in other scriptures like the Vedas. He is the messenger to the whole world. Peace be upon them all. I invite everyone to discover your birthright. It is not what it looks like on television. Just learn what Islam is and come home. Brother Abu Mujahid, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and beautiful insights. Jazakallah khairan. May Allah reward you and Inshallah allow you to enter Jannah. And you as well, and all of your team. So I'm grateful for Allah is using me.
I'm very grateful. May Allah make your work easy and make it effective. May Allah touch a lot of people's hearts through your efforts.