Christian Preacher Converts to Islam! - "I Tried to Make Muslims Christian"
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I believed that Jesus was my savior. I decided I wanted to become a Baptist preacher. I tried to convert my Muslim friend to become a Christian. So, I just read what Jesus said. And it says, well, "The Father is greater than I." On the cross, "My God, my God, why did thou forsake me?" All of that just shouted, "I'm not God." The Bible ordered me to follow the Prophet Muhammad. And I come home, I said, "I want to tell you something." "I'm going to be a Muslim." And her face... "Hi!" to "What?!" Assalamualaikum Brother Khalil Meek. Thank you for accepting our invitation. As Towards Eternity, we are very happy to have you with us. I want to start by asking, who is Khalil Meek?
And can you tell us briefly about your life? My name is Khalil Meek. I'm from Dallas, Texas. I grew up in a Christian family, and I wanted to become a Baptist preacher. While studying comparative religion, I embraced Islam in 1989. So 34 years ago, I became a proud Muslim. I'm also the founder of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which is a national charity in the US that helps Muslims with immigration, civil, criminal cases. How was your life in regards to faith? What were you believing in? I was a Baptist Christian. I believed that Jesus was my savior and everything that goes along with that. So you came from a religious family. What were your beliefs like?
So, yeah, growing up in a Christian family, my mom, brother and sister and I, we all would attend church on Sunday and we'd go to Vacation Bible School in the summer. And once, we had a visiting preacher come to our church, who actually gave a presentation about Hell. And it was a video production that they played on a big screen for us to watch. And they had reenacted people, you know, dying or whatever, and then angels coming and either taking them to Heaven or Hell. And then showing us what happened in Hell. So, I was like 6 or 7, you know. Second, third grade at this time. And that's what scared me a lot. So, I became Christian that night.
And then I went to all of my neighborhood and invited all the kids and families to come the next day to see it again, right? I did that. So, it was very emotional. And then as I grew up, it just became a Sunday thing. And then when I went to college, I did not practice my faith in college. My birth mother died in a car accident when I was one and a half years old. But because of her death, there was an insurance settlement that my father got. And the kids, myself, received an insurance payment. That sat in an annuity, you know, growing, until I reached the age of 18. And then that money was given to me all at once. So when I was 18, I had money, I had freedom, but I partied a lot in college.
I enjoyed my time there. But by the time my senior year came, the year I was going to graduate, I started feeling like all of what I was doing was way out of line, and that I had been brought up better. So I decided that, you know, it was kind of an epiphany, that I needed to get back to my religious heritage. At the same time, I decided I wanted to be a Baptist preacher. So I finished my degree and planned accordingly. So then how did your journey towards Islam begin? Can you take us to those days? Well, my journey to Islam began my senior year in college, when I decided I wanted to become a Baptist preacher.
I decided not to quit college and go to seminary, but to finish my degree and then go to seminary. So, I had one year to finish. And because of my enthusiasm, I just started dragging all of my friends, colleagues, everybody I met into a religious conversation, so that I could think about how I could practice saving people, right? The whole mission would be to convert them to Christianity. So how would I relate to other faiths and be able to convince them of Christianity? So, as an entertainment, that's what I did. My senior year was just, ask people, "What do you believe and why?" And I would listen. Then I made friends with a Muslim.
I'd made friends with him earlier, but I never talked about religion. So now I ask him, "What do you believe?" And he said, "I'm Muslim." And back in the 80s, when I was in college, I didn't know what that even meant, really. Just, what is that? Is it a cult? Is it a religion? That's what I'm thinking. He said "I'm Muslim," and he started telling me what he believes. And after a couple of minutes I'm still listening. But I'm thinking in my head, "You sound like a confused Christian." I don't know what this Islam or Muslim is, but you're very close. You've almost got it down. You got, you're that close, you know?
So I think, "Eh, I'll go ahead and save somebody before I go to seminary." Right? I tried to convert my Muslim friend to become a Christian. And he would just enjoy talking religion. No, he couldn't get tired of it. But he never debated. He never compared. I'm trying to tell him about Jesus and why this, and he's just thinking how good I am and how wonderful it is to have this conversation. But when we left, the next time I'd see him, he would give me a brochure, a pamphlet, something, that was kind of a comparative religious dialogue on that topic that we had discussed. And I ended up receiving numerous pamphlets.
One of the pamphlets that I received was "Is the Bible God's Word?" And it was Ahmed Deedat pointing out the historicity of the Bible, and him just asking the question, is this book God's Word? And he makes his analysis in the book. The problem with that is, I believed the Bible was true, 100%. I'd grown up reading it, studying it, participating in church. But I'd never studied the historicity of the Bible. How did we get this book, right? It has names on every chapter, so I'm just assuming these guys wrote it and they put it all together in a book, right? So it's just people in the past, inspired by God to write what they were inspired.
But I said, that's not going to cut it to prove anything. So, I need to learn the historicity of the Bible to prove its authority. A skeptic or anyone. I said, I'm going to dedicate myself to that. So instead of now entertaining myself with "What do you believe and why?", I dove into the historicity of the Bible, so I could explain it to somebody else. In that process, I started with 100% conviction. Then I started to learn how we have the Bible. When you start to look at how do we know this is what Moses said, Jesus said, the Prophet said, then you look at the copies or the historical documents. Well, to my surprise, the New Testament.
There are no original manuscripts in Aramaic, which is the language of Palestine during the time of Jesus. There are no documents in Hebrew, which, he was a Jew, and they preserved their messages prior and everything in Hebrew. So we have nothing in Hebrew, nothing in Aramaic. The only documents we have are in Greek, and later in Latin. And we have 10,000 copies of each one of those books. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet, no two copies are identical. That is something you can believe and explain. But it wasn't a very strong proof in my opinion. Some can.
However, you learn when you keep studying that there were other books just as old, just as, you know, apparently authentic, that were not included in the Bible. In fact, there's the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible, which are different. In other words, 2000 years of Christian belief. And there are authors in the Bible that are still unknown. And as I'm learning the historicity of the Bible so I can convince others of its authority, I am starting to have concerns, right? I'm learning what I didn't know And going from certainty, I became more skeptical the more I learned. That process continued until I got to a point where I was upset that this isn't getting better.
It gets worse the more I go, the further I get. In retaliation mentality, I ask my Muslim friend. I ask him, "Well, tell me about the Qur'an, right?" "What's its historicity?" So, he brings a book that's got the Sirah of the Prophet. You know, just kind of the historical background of the Qur'an, very simple. As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an and so on. And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah.
Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. And I take that, and then I study what the Islamic sources say about the Qur'an. And it was very quick to come to the conclusion that it's a totally different historicity. The Qur'an is in Arabic. It's in the language of the Prophet. It can be dated back to the time of the Prophet. It's been written down and memorized since the time of the Prophet. So its historicity is very simple, right? Doesn't make one word of it true, but it does make it authentic. So, because the two books were so different, and the Qur'an didn't have the same issues, I would say, as the Bible, I got even more upset.
I'm like, you know, this is not helping. I'm hoping that everybody's in the same boat and I can just move on. But it didn't help. And so, as I read more pamphlets of Deedat, one of them was "Muhammad in the Bible." It was just a little pamphlet that said "Muhammad's in the Bible. Why don't you believe in him?" I'm like, I've been to church my entire life. I have talked to people, listened to people. I've never heard his name mentioned once. Nothing good, nothing bad. He has never come up in any topic ever. I don't see him anywhere in this Bible, you know? So now, I'm competitive with, arguing with Deedat, his books. He's challenged me.
So, if you want a Christian to prove that Jesus is who they say he is, they would refer to Old Testament and say, "Hey, he's mentioned here. There will be a Prophet who does this. He comes from this area. He does this, he does that." I mean, and he fits it perfectly, right? So how can you reject him? But it never says Jesus in the Old Testament. There's no Jesus mentioned by name. And each time I compared the two, I found myself more favorable to Deedat's explanation than the Christian explanation. It becomes, in my opinion, overwhelmingly conclusive that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, talks about this Prophet.
It mentions a Prophet will come from where he came, what he did, how, everything that's relevant and the Prophet's life is in the Bible. So I found that very, one, troubling. But two, it's like, maybe I'm the confused Muslim. I now have probably 50 to 100 verses in the Bible that are very, just clear. It has to be the Prophet Muhammad. "HMD" in Hebrew, which would be, similar to Arabic, it would be Ahmed. The Ahmed of all nations will come. And he will do, you know... His house will be greater than the former, which is switching from Jerusalem to Mecca.
It calls, in Deuteronomy 32:1 through 3, it says, "The God came from Sinai, dawned from Seir," which is Palestine, "and shined forth from Mount Paran." Okay? So if God came from Sinai, that's a direct reference to Moses. If He dawned from Seir, Jesus' ministry was three years in Palestine. Very clear who that's referring to. Who shined forth from Mount Paran, right? And he came with 10,000 saints, with a fiery law in his hand. Who might that be? Well, where is Paran? Okay, you have to... And people argue about this all the time, but it's abundantly clear in the Bible.
It says that, "When Abraham took Hagar and her son Ishmael out and left them in the wilderness of Paran, and he grew to be an archer, and then..." So where is Paran? Mecca. Where did the Prophet come from? Paran. Did he come with 10,000 saints in a fiery law? Yes. The Qur'an says they knew Muhammad better than, or they would recognize Muhammad easier than their own son. It's because the revelations that have been revealed were so clear, so concise, so perfect that you'd have to be ignorant of them to reject him. So then it became an issue of, well, still, Jesus is so overwhelmingly profound in Christianity. He is the religion. I mean, the religion is about him and it is directed through him.
So as a Christian, you're thinking, how can I give up Jesus and do anything else? That just doesn't compute. You can't do that. So then I learned, well, another book that Deedat wrote was "Jesus: A Prophet of Islam." I'm like, no, he isn't. He's a Christian. But then when you understand the view of the Muslims like, everything he did, we agree, you know? This is his life, his miracles, his birth, his... Everything's fine. But we don't think he's God. So is he God or is he not God? So when it got down to that question, it's like, well, okay, now it's very clear. These two religions are almost identical except for salvation. How do you get to Heaven?
Is it belief that Jesus is God and died for your sins and you... That he paid the price and you go to Heaven? Or is it Muslim where it's belief in one God and that Tawhid is your salvation? So I just read what Jesus said. In the Bible it says, well, "The Father is greater than I. I, Jesus of mine own self, I don't do anything. Why do you call me good? There's none good but the Father." So I'm reading Jesus, like, he seems to be denying it over and over and over again. Why would he do that, right? Why was this happening? Now the apologetics are that it wasn't time to reveal himself. But obviously he was asked many times, "Who are you?
What are you here for?" And he answered them, you know, "Prophet," and nothing to do with... My father, who, you know, he taught us to pray "Our father who art in Heaven" on the cross. "My God, my God, why did thou forsaken me?" All of that just shouted, "I'm not God," right? And without any theological apologetics. It's blunt. "No, I'm not." So then I'm thinking, okay. I ended up being convinced that the Bible ordered me to follow the Prophet Muhammad. So, I went to a mosque in Denton where I was going to school. And I showed up, now, I'm having all of this epiphany inside. Nobody but me knows what's going on in my head. But I decided I wanted to be a Muslim.
I didn't even go to my friend to tell him. I just went to the mosque. I found a mosque in Denton. And I tried to open the door. It was locked. How did you take your Shahada? So, yeah, I'm at the masjid. It's locked. So I just sit down on the curb thinking, you know, what am I going to do? Wait till somebody comes or leave? I'm just debating. I wasn't there more than five, ten minutes, max. A car drives up, right? So I'm like, "Oh, good, somebody's here." And gets out of his car and he's walking up and he says, "Can I help you?" I said, "Yeah, I'm here, I want to become a Muslim." And he opens the door and it was time for Salah. So, he invites me in.
They're very excited and they're saying, "Do you know this and this?" And I'm like, I don't know the pillars of Islam, the articles of faith. I just know that what I understand about these two religions is that they're identical except for salvation. Either the Trinity or Tawhid. I am convinced that Tawhid is right. So, I'm here. I want to be a Muslim, after taking my Shahada. Then, I took my Shahada. They let me leave with a book called "The Halal and the Haram." An English version of that. So, this is an interesting story. I had my, now wife of 34 years, in college, and we weren't married. We were waiting till I graduated to get married. But we had been dating for three years.
We were engaged. We had a wedding planned. I'm doing all of this mental research. She's thinking I'm going to be a Baptist preacher. I've decided I want to be a Muslim, right? But I'm not talking with people. I'm just doing this internally the whole time. So when I show up on the mosque, and I take Shahada and I come home, I said, "I want to tell you something." She goes, "What?" "I'm going to be a Muslim." You know, "I took Shahada, I became a Muslim." And her face, looked at me. I mean, from "Hi!" to "What?!" "What did you do?" I said, "I became a Muslim." She goes, "Why would you do..." And she started yelling and getting upset. And she says, "I don't know what, where did this come from?
I'm not going to..." And she started just making a list of things she was never going to do. I'm like, calm down. Just be happy for me. I don't care what you do. Right? It's for me. So she calmed down. I got that book, The Halal and Haram, right? So I was reading and I learned very shortly that Muslims don't deal in riba, interest. Well, I graduated with a degree in finance. I specialized in interest rates, how to make money with money. And I'm no longer going to be a Baptist minister. So I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? So I start looking for whatever job I can find. And I get hired as a trucking sales rep.
So, calling businesses on the phone saying, "Use our truck lines to ship your product." Okay. And starting that, just have income. I read a little bit in the Halal and Haram, and it says, hey, Muslims don't eat pork. I'm like, hmm. Christians view was, pork was bad, Jesus died, everything became clean. So you can eat it now. So, I grew up eating pork. Well, the Muslims still don't eat pork. So I go to my wife, I said, "Hey, I learned something." She goes, "What?" I said, "Muslims don't eat pork. So, when you're making dinner or whatever, don't give it to me.
Just leave it out." She's like, "What have you got..." I mean, she gives me this sad look, and a little upset and then, like, I joined a cult really is what she's thinking. And she's like, "I'm not going to do this." And she goes on about what she's not going to. I said, "Don't worry about it. You do what you want. Just let me be happy." I read a few pages later and it says Muslim men don't wear gold. Well, I already had a gold wedding band picked out. I went to her, I said, "Hey, can we change this band to silver?" She took off her engagement ring and threw it across the room and said, "I'm not going to." And she gets upset and then she calms down.
And then, "I'm never..." And I'm like, okay. But she... Long story short, we ended up getting... I talked her into going to a mosque and getting Islamically married. And I went to church and got through the whole wedding like we already had planned. So, two weddings. But she was just tolerating me. She really liked me, but she thought what I was doing was weird. And I met the Muslim community in Omaha and they invited me in. They treated me like a rock star, like, "Hey, you're white, you're Muslim, we love you," you know? I was happy to find that they had a library in the mosque with books on comparative religion. Or Dawah videos, or Christian debates with Muslims over the...
I mean, just a lot of stuff that was very good. So I started borrowing it and taking it home and reading it and then telling my wife, "Look what I learned. Look what I learned." And she'd listen. For a while. Then, 5-10 minutes, she'd be like, "That's it. I don't want to hear any more. I'm done. Just leave me alone." But one day I come home. And this is after several months of me reading, watching videos, doing things. I'm all pumped up. I'm a Muslim. I'm doing that. And she sees some changes in me, right? It's not threatening her. She's just observing.
And she goes, "I want to meet other Muslims." I'm like, "Oh, I'm not good enough for you, right?" So, I go to the mosque and I say, "Hey, my wife said she wants to meet other Muslims. What do you think?" They said, "Well, brother, we have a halaqa," right? "A bunch of families get together at a house on Friday. And we do tafseer of the Qur'an, a little bit of discussion. Then we eat, and then we pray and we go home." He said, "Why don't you just bring her to the halaqa? We can, you know, we can all visit." I said, "Great." So, we go to the first halaqa. And this is the first time she's seen Muslim women and children and men all interacting in a normal, you know, everyday environment.
And she enjoyed it. It was like, that was something that she hadn't expected. I don't know what she expected, but it was, like, positive for her. So we go to 1 or 2 of these halaqas in a row. And the next time we're going, she goes, "Would it be okay if I pray with you guys this time?" And I'm thinking, "Okay, do you want to be a..." "No, I don't want to be a Muslim. But every time you guys all stop and get up and pray, I'm sitting, watching. Something inside of me wants me to join. Like, I'd like to be part of that. That'd be cool." So I'm like, "Yeah, you can just join. Just, you know, get in line and follow." You know?
She doesn't even know what to say, she's just mimicking the movements, but wanted to be part of the prayer. Like, okay. A few more halaqas. And I come home one day and she goes, "I think I'm ready." I go, "Ready for what?" "To be a Muslim. But I'm not going to..." She gives me this list of things she's not going to do. I'm like, "Hey, this is going my way. Yeah, fine. Good. You want to be..." She becomes a Muslim. Make a long story short, everything she said she would never do, she now does. Can you tell us what you felt when you took your Shahada? Well, I'll tell you what. Taking the Shahada was just mechanical for me.
But immediately after becoming Muslim, you notice something that you never noticed in your life before. So, that's a peace, a tranquility, a comfort. Allah says He puts love in our heart. Whatever you want to call that, you feel it. And you didn't know that you had this, like... Between me and anybody else in my life, there's always some level of barrier that you keep and you don't even really notice it, right? I mean, they're friends. They're my friends. I do everything with them. When you become Muslim, and you say "Assalamualaikum" to a stranger, or you meet someone you know, and the feeling that you have, you notice something's missing.
And it's that barrier that you've always had that you didn't know was there. And once it leaves, you really have that... It's a spiritual connection that doesn't exist prior to becoming Muslim. And it is a very addictive feeling. What was the reaction of your family or your closest circle to your conversion to Islam? My parents at first tolerated, you know, looking happy for me or whatever. Thinking "It's a phase. He'll get over it," right? "It's just something he's going through. He's young, he's stupid. He'll move on." So there was no friction in our family. Her family was a little more reserved. Her father was so upset with her that he, kind of, you'd say, disowned her.
But she was married and she had me. She didn't need him, you know, for anything but being a father. So they didn't talk for, like, ten years. And her father was already divorced from her mother, so they were living separately. Her mother was like, you know, "If you're happy, I'm happy." But her mother was very uncomfortable going out in public when my wife started covering. So when she's covering and she's, like, asking, "You can take it off when you're with me, right?" You know, and she was worried about the views of other people on her. But it was a minor issue, and she eventually just got used to it. And her father eventually came to not only to terms, but friends with her.
And then he, in his old age, moved in with us. We took care of him until he died. So, their relationship ended on the highest note. It was a little awkward at first. But I've heard horror stories. So, I was lucky. We were lucky. And what about the Prophet (saw)? What made you impressed about him the most? What you love about the Prophet is, he dealt with every issue we face today. Whether it's media, or abuse, or violence, or rhetoric with his own family, his own community. We have superheroes in American tradition, right? Every superhero you can imagine. Well, the reason you have superheroes is, people see the limitations of each other, right? And none of us have those superhero qualities.
So, if we could fix things, we would have a superhero intervene and make things right. Well, when you understand that one man in a desert received a revelation at a time of extreme ignorance and violence and everything you can think of, and how it resonated from one person to the entire world in such a short period of time. That a superhero of how to affect change through himself, his companions, through the followers. It's more inspiring than a mythical or a fictional character. So, you have, you kind of replace your heroes with real people.
Lastly, there's someone in the audience among those watching us now, warming his heart to Islam, but afraid of the reaction of his relatives or his close circle. What would you like to say to such a person? Can I read my answer? I thought about this for a second, and will not help them on the Day of Judgment. When you're standing alone, facing your Lord or your Creator, belief is a personal decision that everyone must face. You need to answer, why am I here? Where am I going? What should I do? No one is responsible for your accountability, nor are they going to participate in your success. A strong conviction in faith will overcome any obstacle, barriers or reactions.
Once you connect your head and your heart, you will find an unshakable peace and unshakeable strength. So if you're worried about other's reactions, don't be. Act with sincerity, conviction, and trust that God will be there every step of the way. He already is.
And can you tell us briefly about your life? My name is Khalil Meek. I'm from Dallas, Texas. I grew up in a Christian family, and I wanted to become a Baptist preacher. While studying comparative religion, I embraced Islam in 1989. So 34 years ago, I became a proud Muslim. I'm also the founder of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which is a national charity in the US that helps Muslims with immigration, civil, criminal cases. How was your life in regards to faith? What were you believing in? I was a Baptist Christian. I believed that Jesus was my savior and everything that goes along with that. So you came from a religious family. What were your beliefs like?
So, yeah, growing up in a Christian family, my mom, brother and sister and I, we all would attend church on Sunday and we'd go to Vacation Bible School in the summer. And once, we had a visiting preacher come to our church, who actually gave a presentation about Hell. And it was a video production that they played on a big screen for us to watch. And they had reenacted people, you know, dying or whatever, and then angels coming and either taking them to Heaven or Hell. And then showing us what happened in Hell. So, I was like 6 or 7, you know. Second, third grade at this time. And that's what scared me a lot. So, I became Christian that night.
And then I went to all of my neighborhood and invited all the kids and families to come the next day to see it again, right? I did that. So, it was very emotional. And then as I grew up, it just became a Sunday thing. And then when I went to college, I did not practice my faith in college. My birth mother died in a car accident when I was one and a half years old. But because of her death, there was an insurance settlement that my father got. And the kids, myself, received an insurance payment. That sat in an annuity, you know, growing, until I reached the age of 18. And then that money was given to me all at once. So when I was 18, I had money, I had freedom, but I partied a lot in college.
I enjoyed my time there. But by the time my senior year came, the year I was going to graduate, I started feeling like all of what I was doing was way out of line, and that I had been brought up better. So I decided that, you know, it was kind of an epiphany, that I needed to get back to my religious heritage. At the same time, I decided I wanted to be a Baptist preacher. So I finished my degree and planned accordingly. So then how did your journey towards Islam begin? Can you take us to those days? Well, my journey to Islam began my senior year in college, when I decided I wanted to become a Baptist preacher.
I decided not to quit college and go to seminary, but to finish my degree and then go to seminary. So, I had one year to finish. And because of my enthusiasm, I just started dragging all of my friends, colleagues, everybody I met into a religious conversation, so that I could think about how I could practice saving people, right? The whole mission would be to convert them to Christianity. So how would I relate to other faiths and be able to convince them of Christianity? So, as an entertainment, that's what I did. My senior year was just, ask people, "What do you believe and why?" And I would listen. Then I made friends with a Muslim.
I'd made friends with him earlier, but I never talked about religion. So now I ask him, "What do you believe?" And he said, "I'm Muslim." And back in the 80s, when I was in college, I didn't know what that even meant, really. Just, what is that? Is it a cult? Is it a religion? That's what I'm thinking. He said "I'm Muslim," and he started telling me what he believes. And after a couple of minutes I'm still listening. But I'm thinking in my head, "You sound like a confused Christian." I don't know what this Islam or Muslim is, but you're very close. You've almost got it down. You got, you're that close, you know?
So I think, "Eh, I'll go ahead and save somebody before I go to seminary." Right? I tried to convert my Muslim friend to become a Christian. And he would just enjoy talking religion. No, he couldn't get tired of it. But he never debated. He never compared. I'm trying to tell him about Jesus and why this, and he's just thinking how good I am and how wonderful it is to have this conversation. But when we left, the next time I'd see him, he would give me a brochure, a pamphlet, something, that was kind of a comparative religious dialogue on that topic that we had discussed. And I ended up receiving numerous pamphlets.
One of the pamphlets that I received was "Is the Bible God's Word?" And it was Ahmed Deedat pointing out the historicity of the Bible, and him just asking the question, is this book God's Word? And he makes his analysis in the book. The problem with that is, I believed the Bible was true, 100%. I'd grown up reading it, studying it, participating in church. But I'd never studied the historicity of the Bible. How did we get this book, right? It has names on every chapter, so I'm just assuming these guys wrote it and they put it all together in a book, right? So it's just people in the past, inspired by God to write what they were inspired.
But I said, that's not going to cut it to prove anything. So, I need to learn the historicity of the Bible to prove its authority. A skeptic or anyone. I said, I'm going to dedicate myself to that. So instead of now entertaining myself with "What do you believe and why?", I dove into the historicity of the Bible, so I could explain it to somebody else. In that process, I started with 100% conviction. Then I started to learn how we have the Bible. When you start to look at how do we know this is what Moses said, Jesus said, the Prophet said, then you look at the copies or the historical documents. Well, to my surprise, the New Testament.
There are no original manuscripts in Aramaic, which is the language of Palestine during the time of Jesus. There are no documents in Hebrew, which, he was a Jew, and they preserved their messages prior and everything in Hebrew. So we have nothing in Hebrew, nothing in Aramaic. The only documents we have are in Greek, and later in Latin. And we have 10,000 copies of each one of those books. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet, no two copies are identical. That is something you can believe and explain. But it wasn't a very strong proof in my opinion. Some can.
However, you learn when you keep studying that there were other books just as old, just as, you know, apparently authentic, that were not included in the Bible. In fact, there's the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible, which are different. In other words, 2000 years of Christian belief. And there are authors in the Bible that are still unknown. And as I'm learning the historicity of the Bible so I can convince others of its authority, I am starting to have concerns, right? I'm learning what I didn't know And going from certainty, I became more skeptical the more I learned. That process continued until I got to a point where I was upset that this isn't getting better.
It gets worse the more I go, the further I get. In retaliation mentality, I ask my Muslim friend. I ask him, "Well, tell me about the Qur'an, right?" "What's its historicity?" So, he brings a book that's got the Sirah of the Prophet. You know, just kind of the historical background of the Qur'an, very simple. As Towards Eternity, we need your support. We are a charity organization that aims to spread the message of Islam to the entire world in ten languages. With your support, you can help people convert to Islam, give up harams, start praying, wear hijab, learn to read the Qur'an and so on. And get your share from all these good deeds, Inshallah.
Donate to Towards Eternity and don't miss this golden opportunity. And I take that, and then I study what the Islamic sources say about the Qur'an. And it was very quick to come to the conclusion that it's a totally different historicity. The Qur'an is in Arabic. It's in the language of the Prophet. It can be dated back to the time of the Prophet. It's been written down and memorized since the time of the Prophet. So its historicity is very simple, right? Doesn't make one word of it true, but it does make it authentic. So, because the two books were so different, and the Qur'an didn't have the same issues, I would say, as the Bible, I got even more upset.
I'm like, you know, this is not helping. I'm hoping that everybody's in the same boat and I can just move on. But it didn't help. And so, as I read more pamphlets of Deedat, one of them was "Muhammad in the Bible." It was just a little pamphlet that said "Muhammad's in the Bible. Why don't you believe in him?" I'm like, I've been to church my entire life. I have talked to people, listened to people. I've never heard his name mentioned once. Nothing good, nothing bad. He has never come up in any topic ever. I don't see him anywhere in this Bible, you know? So now, I'm competitive with, arguing with Deedat, his books. He's challenged me.
So, if you want a Christian to prove that Jesus is who they say he is, they would refer to Old Testament and say, "Hey, he's mentioned here. There will be a Prophet who does this. He comes from this area. He does this, he does that." I mean, and he fits it perfectly, right? So how can you reject him? But it never says Jesus in the Old Testament. There's no Jesus mentioned by name. And each time I compared the two, I found myself more favorable to Deedat's explanation than the Christian explanation. It becomes, in my opinion, overwhelmingly conclusive that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, talks about this Prophet.
It mentions a Prophet will come from where he came, what he did, how, everything that's relevant and the Prophet's life is in the Bible. So I found that very, one, troubling. But two, it's like, maybe I'm the confused Muslim. I now have probably 50 to 100 verses in the Bible that are very, just clear. It has to be the Prophet Muhammad. "HMD" in Hebrew, which would be, similar to Arabic, it would be Ahmed. The Ahmed of all nations will come. And he will do, you know... His house will be greater than the former, which is switching from Jerusalem to Mecca.
It calls, in Deuteronomy 32:1 through 3, it says, "The God came from Sinai, dawned from Seir," which is Palestine, "and shined forth from Mount Paran." Okay? So if God came from Sinai, that's a direct reference to Moses. If He dawned from Seir, Jesus' ministry was three years in Palestine. Very clear who that's referring to. Who shined forth from Mount Paran, right? And he came with 10,000 saints, with a fiery law in his hand. Who might that be? Well, where is Paran? Okay, you have to... And people argue about this all the time, but it's abundantly clear in the Bible.
It says that, "When Abraham took Hagar and her son Ishmael out and left them in the wilderness of Paran, and he grew to be an archer, and then..." So where is Paran? Mecca. Where did the Prophet come from? Paran. Did he come with 10,000 saints in a fiery law? Yes. The Qur'an says they knew Muhammad better than, or they would recognize Muhammad easier than their own son. It's because the revelations that have been revealed were so clear, so concise, so perfect that you'd have to be ignorant of them to reject him. So then it became an issue of, well, still, Jesus is so overwhelmingly profound in Christianity. He is the religion. I mean, the religion is about him and it is directed through him.
So as a Christian, you're thinking, how can I give up Jesus and do anything else? That just doesn't compute. You can't do that. So then I learned, well, another book that Deedat wrote was "Jesus: A Prophet of Islam." I'm like, no, he isn't. He's a Christian. But then when you understand the view of the Muslims like, everything he did, we agree, you know? This is his life, his miracles, his birth, his... Everything's fine. But we don't think he's God. So is he God or is he not God? So when it got down to that question, it's like, well, okay, now it's very clear. These two religions are almost identical except for salvation. How do you get to Heaven?
Is it belief that Jesus is God and died for your sins and you... That he paid the price and you go to Heaven? Or is it Muslim where it's belief in one God and that Tawhid is your salvation? So I just read what Jesus said. In the Bible it says, well, "The Father is greater than I. I, Jesus of mine own self, I don't do anything. Why do you call me good? There's none good but the Father." So I'm reading Jesus, like, he seems to be denying it over and over and over again. Why would he do that, right? Why was this happening? Now the apologetics are that it wasn't time to reveal himself. But obviously he was asked many times, "Who are you?
What are you here for?" And he answered them, you know, "Prophet," and nothing to do with... My father, who, you know, he taught us to pray "Our father who art in Heaven" on the cross. "My God, my God, why did thou forsaken me?" All of that just shouted, "I'm not God," right? And without any theological apologetics. It's blunt. "No, I'm not." So then I'm thinking, okay. I ended up being convinced that the Bible ordered me to follow the Prophet Muhammad. So, I went to a mosque in Denton where I was going to school. And I showed up, now, I'm having all of this epiphany inside. Nobody but me knows what's going on in my head. But I decided I wanted to be a Muslim.
I didn't even go to my friend to tell him. I just went to the mosque. I found a mosque in Denton. And I tried to open the door. It was locked. How did you take your Shahada? So, yeah, I'm at the masjid. It's locked. So I just sit down on the curb thinking, you know, what am I going to do? Wait till somebody comes or leave? I'm just debating. I wasn't there more than five, ten minutes, max. A car drives up, right? So I'm like, "Oh, good, somebody's here." And gets out of his car and he's walking up and he says, "Can I help you?" I said, "Yeah, I'm here, I want to become a Muslim." And he opens the door and it was time for Salah. So, he invites me in.
They're very excited and they're saying, "Do you know this and this?" And I'm like, I don't know the pillars of Islam, the articles of faith. I just know that what I understand about these two religions is that they're identical except for salvation. Either the Trinity or Tawhid. I am convinced that Tawhid is right. So, I'm here. I want to be a Muslim, after taking my Shahada. Then, I took my Shahada. They let me leave with a book called "The Halal and the Haram." An English version of that. So, this is an interesting story. I had my, now wife of 34 years, in college, and we weren't married. We were waiting till I graduated to get married. But we had been dating for three years.
We were engaged. We had a wedding planned. I'm doing all of this mental research. She's thinking I'm going to be a Baptist preacher. I've decided I want to be a Muslim, right? But I'm not talking with people. I'm just doing this internally the whole time. So when I show up on the mosque, and I take Shahada and I come home, I said, "I want to tell you something." She goes, "What?" "I'm going to be a Muslim." You know, "I took Shahada, I became a Muslim." And her face, looked at me. I mean, from "Hi!" to "What?!" "What did you do?" I said, "I became a Muslim." She goes, "Why would you do..." And she started yelling and getting upset. And she says, "I don't know what, where did this come from?
I'm not going to..." And she started just making a list of things she was never going to do. I'm like, calm down. Just be happy for me. I don't care what you do. Right? It's for me. So she calmed down. I got that book, The Halal and Haram, right? So I was reading and I learned very shortly that Muslims don't deal in riba, interest. Well, I graduated with a degree in finance. I specialized in interest rates, how to make money with money. And I'm no longer going to be a Baptist minister. So I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? So I start looking for whatever job I can find. And I get hired as a trucking sales rep.
So, calling businesses on the phone saying, "Use our truck lines to ship your product." Okay. And starting that, just have income. I read a little bit in the Halal and Haram, and it says, hey, Muslims don't eat pork. I'm like, hmm. Christians view was, pork was bad, Jesus died, everything became clean. So you can eat it now. So, I grew up eating pork. Well, the Muslims still don't eat pork. So I go to my wife, I said, "Hey, I learned something." She goes, "What?" I said, "Muslims don't eat pork. So, when you're making dinner or whatever, don't give it to me.
Just leave it out." She's like, "What have you got..." I mean, she gives me this sad look, and a little upset and then, like, I joined a cult really is what she's thinking. And she's like, "I'm not going to do this." And she goes on about what she's not going to. I said, "Don't worry about it. You do what you want. Just let me be happy." I read a few pages later and it says Muslim men don't wear gold. Well, I already had a gold wedding band picked out. I went to her, I said, "Hey, can we change this band to silver?" She took off her engagement ring and threw it across the room and said, "I'm not going to." And she gets upset and then she calms down.
And then, "I'm never..." And I'm like, okay. But she... Long story short, we ended up getting... I talked her into going to a mosque and getting Islamically married. And I went to church and got through the whole wedding like we already had planned. So, two weddings. But she was just tolerating me. She really liked me, but she thought what I was doing was weird. And I met the Muslim community in Omaha and they invited me in. They treated me like a rock star, like, "Hey, you're white, you're Muslim, we love you," you know? I was happy to find that they had a library in the mosque with books on comparative religion. Or Dawah videos, or Christian debates with Muslims over the...
I mean, just a lot of stuff that was very good. So I started borrowing it and taking it home and reading it and then telling my wife, "Look what I learned. Look what I learned." And she'd listen. For a while. Then, 5-10 minutes, she'd be like, "That's it. I don't want to hear any more. I'm done. Just leave me alone." But one day I come home. And this is after several months of me reading, watching videos, doing things. I'm all pumped up. I'm a Muslim. I'm doing that. And she sees some changes in me, right? It's not threatening her. She's just observing.
And she goes, "I want to meet other Muslims." I'm like, "Oh, I'm not good enough for you, right?" So, I go to the mosque and I say, "Hey, my wife said she wants to meet other Muslims. What do you think?" They said, "Well, brother, we have a halaqa," right? "A bunch of families get together at a house on Friday. And we do tafseer of the Qur'an, a little bit of discussion. Then we eat, and then we pray and we go home." He said, "Why don't you just bring her to the halaqa? We can, you know, we can all visit." I said, "Great." So, we go to the first halaqa. And this is the first time she's seen Muslim women and children and men all interacting in a normal, you know, everyday environment.
And she enjoyed it. It was like, that was something that she hadn't expected. I don't know what she expected, but it was, like, positive for her. So we go to 1 or 2 of these halaqas in a row. And the next time we're going, she goes, "Would it be okay if I pray with you guys this time?" And I'm thinking, "Okay, do you want to be a..." "No, I don't want to be a Muslim. But every time you guys all stop and get up and pray, I'm sitting, watching. Something inside of me wants me to join. Like, I'd like to be part of that. That'd be cool." So I'm like, "Yeah, you can just join. Just, you know, get in line and follow." You know?
She doesn't even know what to say, she's just mimicking the movements, but wanted to be part of the prayer. Like, okay. A few more halaqas. And I come home one day and she goes, "I think I'm ready." I go, "Ready for what?" "To be a Muslim. But I'm not going to..." She gives me this list of things she's not going to do. I'm like, "Hey, this is going my way. Yeah, fine. Good. You want to be..." She becomes a Muslim. Make a long story short, everything she said she would never do, she now does. Can you tell us what you felt when you took your Shahada? Well, I'll tell you what. Taking the Shahada was just mechanical for me.
But immediately after becoming Muslim, you notice something that you never noticed in your life before. So, that's a peace, a tranquility, a comfort. Allah says He puts love in our heart. Whatever you want to call that, you feel it. And you didn't know that you had this, like... Between me and anybody else in my life, there's always some level of barrier that you keep and you don't even really notice it, right? I mean, they're friends. They're my friends. I do everything with them. When you become Muslim, and you say "Assalamualaikum" to a stranger, or you meet someone you know, and the feeling that you have, you notice something's missing.
And it's that barrier that you've always had that you didn't know was there. And once it leaves, you really have that... It's a spiritual connection that doesn't exist prior to becoming Muslim. And it is a very addictive feeling. What was the reaction of your family or your closest circle to your conversion to Islam? My parents at first tolerated, you know, looking happy for me or whatever. Thinking "It's a phase. He'll get over it," right? "It's just something he's going through. He's young, he's stupid. He'll move on." So there was no friction in our family. Her family was a little more reserved. Her father was so upset with her that he, kind of, you'd say, disowned her.
But she was married and she had me. She didn't need him, you know, for anything but being a father. So they didn't talk for, like, ten years. And her father was already divorced from her mother, so they were living separately. Her mother was like, you know, "If you're happy, I'm happy." But her mother was very uncomfortable going out in public when my wife started covering. So when she's covering and she's, like, asking, "You can take it off when you're with me, right?" You know, and she was worried about the views of other people on her. But it was a minor issue, and she eventually just got used to it. And her father eventually came to not only to terms, but friends with her.
And then he, in his old age, moved in with us. We took care of him until he died. So, their relationship ended on the highest note. It was a little awkward at first. But I've heard horror stories. So, I was lucky. We were lucky. And what about the Prophet (saw)? What made you impressed about him the most? What you love about the Prophet is, he dealt with every issue we face today. Whether it's media, or abuse, or violence, or rhetoric with his own family, his own community. We have superheroes in American tradition, right? Every superhero you can imagine. Well, the reason you have superheroes is, people see the limitations of each other, right? And none of us have those superhero qualities.
So, if we could fix things, we would have a superhero intervene and make things right. Well, when you understand that one man in a desert received a revelation at a time of extreme ignorance and violence and everything you can think of, and how it resonated from one person to the entire world in such a short period of time. That a superhero of how to affect change through himself, his companions, through the followers. It's more inspiring than a mythical or a fictional character. So, you have, you kind of replace your heroes with real people.
Lastly, there's someone in the audience among those watching us now, warming his heart to Islam, but afraid of the reaction of his relatives or his close circle. What would you like to say to such a person? Can I read my answer? I thought about this for a second, and will not help them on the Day of Judgment. When you're standing alone, facing your Lord or your Creator, belief is a personal decision that everyone must face. You need to answer, why am I here? Where am I going? What should I do? No one is responsible for your accountability, nor are they going to participate in your success. A strong conviction in faith will overcome any obstacle, barriers or reactions.
Once you connect your head and your heart, you will find an unshakable peace and unshakeable strength. So if you're worried about other's reactions, don't be. Act with sincerity, conviction, and trust that God will be there every step of the way. He already is.