He Prayed to False Gods Until He Found The True God! - Emotional Journey To Islam @mohammadcleon
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foreign how was your life in regards to Faith how did your family react to your conversion to Islam what was the major challenge you faced after becoming Muslim I'm lost I'm confused I'm terrified I need answers about God that night I was feeling weird I saw this thing it was very fuzzy but it was moving at me at a very quick rate it was kind of invisible but when you looked through it everything was wavy like a funhouse mirror and it literally hit me no matter what I wanted to be on team Allah Allah thank you for accepting our invitation I want to start with who is Muhammad Cleon bismarckham with the name of Allah the most merciful for all of creation and the especially merciful for the
Believers my name is Cleon Cathcart I was born in California and I grew up went to Christian school and I was basically like an atheist until around 2010 when I discovered that God was real and alhamdulillah he was uh waiting for me to come to my senses basically how was your life in regards to Faith well I grew up in a Christian school and in a Christian family but at a certain point you know I mean I didn't really believe in it anymore well it just didn't make sense you know I mean I was able to see that the Trinity didn't match my idea of what God is supposed to be you know we say God is one but you know now he's three and and that was a little confusing and we were making God a human my
idea of God at the time and even today is this is a being that is so powerful he can create the universe how can I truly comprehend who he is it didn't make sense that God could one day walk around and that you know God had to create himself in a human so that he could kill himself so that we could all be forgiven and it was like well I mean can't he just forgive us and when I got to college I called the synagogue and I asked the rabbi I said look you know what I'm not sure but I think maybe I'm a Jew because I don't believe that Jesus is the son of God and you guys say he's not can you explain to me what you believe so maybe I can join and he said is your mother a Jew and I said no no my
mom's not a Jew and he said well you can't join then and I felt God would want you to worship Him and why would he say I couldn't be part of the chosen people if there was a real God so there must not be a God and that's kind of where I left that all these things that seem to be contradictions for me science at the time seemed to have the answers with Evolution science tests were talking about how we don't need God and I figured they're smarter than me so you know I just kind of like went along with the crowd so I just really kind of stopped believing in God how did your opinion about the existence of God change that I was sick in 2010 during that time I was watching a lot of documentaries I
remember that they had documentaries about physics at that time they discovered that there's dark energy and dark matter and there's a lot more gravity a lot more matter in the world we just can't see it basically at that time they said it was about 30 percent was what we can see and 70 percent is what we can't see and I realize well if there's 10 physical dimensions 30 height width link is 30 percent so they kind of fit together and it made sense to me that well this dark energy and dark matter must be real and and so then I kind of went from atheist to well maybe God does exist maybe this is like where Heaven and Hell and the angels and all this other stuff is at that time did you know
anything about Islam probably right after this or somewhere around that time I got my first Quran there was a an ad on television if you want a free Quran call us and we'll mail it to you I got the Quran opened it up and I saw Jesus and Moses and and you know all of these prophets from the Bible and since I didn't believe in the Bible I thought how can I believe in the Quran right I mean these basically the same stuff now I didn't actually read it I just saw these names in there and said okay I don't need to know any more and I put it away I didn't know anything about Islam other than they believed in Jesus and Moses and Prophet Muhammad peace be upon all of them so how did your journey to
Islam really start later in 2010 I had a very strange series of experiences for me I understood that that God was real because I did experience it if God is real and the devil is real then heaven is real and hell is real and all I knew is I don't want to go to hell so now I have to figure out who God is because I didn't know God is real but God is not like a real name that's just kind of like a description right I had read this uh phrasing from a book by a guy named Pike who wrote a book called morals and dogma and inside of this book it says Lucifer is God but unfortunately Adonai is also God and I thought well I know Lucifer and I don't want to be team Lucifer so maybe a Don I assume I'm
trying to reach that night I was feeling weird and I was embarrassed because you know we had been atheists in my family for so long I didn't want my wife at the time to see me praying so I went outside to pray and I prayed to Adonai I just you know basically if if you're God give me a sign and I saw this thing it was very fuzzy but it was moving at me at a very quick rate it was kind of invisible but when you look through it everything was wavy like a funhouse mirror but all around the outside everything was normal the cars and trees and everything looked normal and it was physically moving at me very fast and the word that I had at the time was oh no this is a demon and it literally hit me
I believe their negative energy because it took all of my energy I couldn't even think about what happened I just kind of stumbled and collapsed in bed and I woke up 12 hours later kind of like hung over groggy and sore and it was like why do you feel like this what happened to you oh yeah you saw that demon last night well that must not be the right track right a dawn I must not be who you're looking for so who did you pray to next even though I didn't really believe in the Bible and I felt like there was you know Kings and popes and scribes have changed the Bible for their own reasons for whatever that happens to be but maybe the Old Testament is right and and maybe Jehovah is God and so
at noon the next day I I prayed to Jehovah to give me a sign and I got a phone call within seconds and I have an ID box it's got a name and a phone number on it and and so I go and I pick up the phone and I say hello and the person on the other end of the phone said I got a message last night that somebody at this number was in trouble and I said dude that's a weird thing to say who are you and he said well I'm so and so and it matched the name on the box and I'm a priest and I thought wow man I just prayed to Jehovah for answers about God and you called This is the answer to my prayer look I'm lost I'm confused I'm terrified I see things that people are not supposed to see and this is too
much for me I think I'm suicidal I can't take it I need answers about God and he said well where are you and I said well I'm in Rochester and he said I was there last night but now I'm in this other City about 50 miles away I said that's okay I can be there in a half hour just let me ask five questions I want to know about God and he wouldn't let me come and I said well how about tomorrow and he said not busy and the next day was busy and finally it was like 10 days later he said okay you know we made an appointment and I hung up happy that finally I'm going to get some answers about God and then I said wait a second let's think about what just happened right what was the first thing this
guy said he said that he got a message last night that somebody this phone number was in trouble my house it was a landline yeah and I thought well what happened and oh yeah you saw this demon that came to your house and he said he was in Rochester last night my city when the demon came so somehow this guy in that demon must be working together because and I don't care if you're a priest or an Imam or a Buddhist monk when somebody tells you that they're suicidal you help them you don't wait 10 days to see if they actually kill themselves and so I knew there was something that didn't make sense here and then what happened did you finally pray to Allah at that point the only thing I thought
that could be God was Allah but at the same time all of that brainwashing from 9 11 and all of that it's the moon God subconsciously was still there and I was afraid to pray to Allah right because I didn't want to make another mistake and pray to something that wasn't the creator of the universe so I didn't pray and depression said it the next day I was tears were coming down not constantly but I would start crying and I thought this is weird why am I crying and why do I feel depressed I tried to make the tears stop but they wouldn't stop they just came all day long Friday morning I got got up and my bed was soaked and I thought well what's going on here and I realized that my bed was soaked
because I had cried all night and and the tears had made my sheets wet and the Depression was so intense I don't have words to describe how bad it was at that moment we had those little Whispers right it's like thoughts in your own head and it said look life is not worth living in this condition and I thought you know me that's right life is not worth living in this condition what can I do and then that little thought came to me that said you have to kill yourself and I thought you know what that's right that'll solve my problem I can get rid of this depression by killing myself and so I went through the logistics of how do you kill yourself and I determined that the best way to do it was
take a bunch of drugs so you feel good then you die out in the middle of a forest where the animals can eat you and dispose of your body and it's like a win-win and then it was like that other little thought came to me and it said what about the moon and then I got mad I was like oh that's right God is real if you kill yourself you're going to go to hell I thought well you know if Allah is the devil as some people want you to believe and I kill myself I'm going to go to hell and I'll meet him in hell so why not take a chance and pray to him before you kill yourself because maybe you're wrong like you've been wrong about so many other things I remember it was 10 a.m Friday morning and I stood
up tears just pouring out of my eyes and and I said Allah I am lost I'm confused I see things that people aren't supposed to see I'm depressed beyond words and I'm ready to kill myself and if you're God you know this I don't even know why I have to say this out loud I don't know why you haven't helped me yet but I'm begging you if you are God help give me a sign that you're real help me and at that moment it was like my heart was a balloon and Allah went and it literally expanded in my chest and it filled with a substance that I could only describe as love and it leaked out of my heart in perfect sine waves it was very weird and scientific at the same time and I could feel it go down to my
hands from my heart up to my head and actually turn around and go back and it was like these waves of Love filled my body except in my heart it was like this star like this solidness of Love had ignited and it was very brief that's the first time that I knew that Allah was God I didn't actually know anything about Islam but I knew that no matter what I wanted to be on team Allah and so whatever that meant I'm in so what did you do next there was a restaurant that some Pakistani people ran and had great food and and I seen they were Muslims I'd been in there before so that's where I went to learn about Islam and they connected me with a guy I was like I'm in man I don't care what it is I'm in
Allah is God I know this make me a Muslim what do I get you need blood what do we got to do I'll sign you know where do I sign he's like no no it's very simple it's very simple you just make a statement with your heart that Allah is God and Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of God and I said okay let's do it he said well there's some things we got to go over and so he spoke about the Five Pillars and the six precepts and I'm like I'm in okay you know I don't even have to think about it and he said it's important that you understand the Quran is the actual words of our creator and I went whoa whoa whoa whoa how do I know that that's a crazy thought right our creator gave us his own words you
know and coming from a Christian background it just didn't make sense because I never thought the Bible was God's actual words right I mean we're told that these are the inspired words of of God but men's words this is a very very strange concept for me and I'm like I I don't know that I can believe that and he said well you have to be a Muslim and I said well let's let's convince me he said well I tell you what let's meet again because you know we've gone through so much today let me bring you a little book called A Brief Illustrated guide to Islam and in there it said about scientific signs in the Quran and for me it was the development stages of the human embryo and how they're described
in the Quran that really match the actual development stages which we couldn't know without an MRI to confirm all of this for us and I realized that Prophet Muhammad he couldn't know that 1400 years ago that that had to be divine knowledge so how did you take your shahada after I accept the Quran I'm like okay let's do it now shahada time and my friend who I'm still I still communicate with to this very day Hassan wonderful man he said let's wait till Friday right we'll do it in front of all the people he said we you know like church service on Sunday we we do it on Friday so let's do it and everybody can have the blessings and and I said no what if I die tomorrow I get hit by a bus tomorrow
I I want it now and he said just wait a couple days and I said okay you know I trusted him I said okay but like I said earlier when you get close Satan starts working really hard and I was getting all these weird thoughts right crazy you know really crazy thoughts where I thought that if I went to the mosque on Friday somebody would blow it up and and all these innocent people would die because of me because I went there so I didn't go that Friday and uh Saturday my friend called me and he said okay I get it let's not delay this uh meet me on this park and so we sat on a park bench and I took my shahada with him on a park bench I felt relief because you know I had finally was able to be a
part of what God wants for us how did your family react to your conversion to Islam they didn't like it at first my mom had been on me to go to church I mean she'd been very active when I was sick about going to church when I discovered that God was real and I had accepted Islam so I called her and I said hey you know what Mom you're right God is real and she was very happy and she said she said oh that's wonderful did you you know because we had gone grew up in the Baptist Church he said did you find a Baptist Church and I said no no no I I wasn't at the Baptist Church and she's like well well you know in your area uh it's the lutherans did you was it the Lutheran Church I said no no I
wasn't at the Lutheran Church she said oh no it wasn't the Catholics was it and I said no it wasn't the Catholics and she just wouldn't let up I felt embarrassed to tell her because I know she wouldn't like the answer but she wouldn't lit up and so she you know I said where did you find God at and I said well Mom you want to really know where God's at you got to go to the mosque and she started to cry and said oh no that's it's not God and hung up on me but a couple years later I was visiting her in her house and and a family friend that you know she had called to talk to my mom and I didn't answer the phone and her name was Ruth Ruth said I I hear you know you're doing well and your mom is
so happy and I said are you sure we're talking about the same lady because that's not the way that I'm getting you know the story and she said oh no no your mom is so happy that you became Muslim and that you've changed your life around surprisingly she was happy that I became Muslim because she recognized how that had changed my life even though she couldn't admit it to me so inshallah make do it for her that she accepts this on one day what was the major challenge you faced after becoming Muslim that's a great question I don't know what major challenges other than sticking with Islam because you know there's all kinds of invitations to leave it right and come back to you know hey the girls
you had a lot of fun over there let's you know let's go you know rock and roll you know let's go concerts are waiting for you the weeds there the alcohol is there it's all waiting for you just come on back come on back buddy we love you right but you know it's wrong and and that's probably the major challenges is sticking to your guns to you know I mean I accept Islam and I've got to leave those things behind did you experience anything where you felt a special connection with Allah after I became Muslim I bought a bus ticket where I could go anywhere in America for two months and I traveled around and I warned people and sometimes that got me into some trouble and I realized that to avoid
the trouble I needed to shorten the message down to what was really important that message was about forgiveness and I remember being in San Francisco I was in what they call the tenderloin right this is like where where all the prostitutes and drug dealing and all this kind of stuff goes on because I was like at that time I thought well these are my people they're the ones that need the help the most they're the ones that are hurting the most and they are that's how they ended up there so I was down there I felt sort of like the crazy man holding the sign you know the end is near kind of a thing I mean I felt little like that but I was standing there saying forgiveness is healing and you
need healing ask a lot to forgive you and people would come up and tell me how crazy I was and swear at me and tell me how they didn't want me there and they were just like get out of here and and I would stay there and keep doing it after about five or six hours though it wears you down and I remember going you know this is stupid what are you doing you are crazy they're right you're standing here talking about God to these people they don't care about God what do you get out of here and it was at that moment the first day I turned around and there was this little old lady standing there and she's like thank you thank you for what you're doing and and it was like okay A Lie right I was
ready to walk away and you put somebody there to encourage me when I needed encouragement I understand that was you and the next day I was back doing it again and the same thing happened five or six hours into this I'm going you know that that was just an old lady that wasn't God right that was not a sign don't be stupid these people are right and I'm ready to give up and then it's an old man and the day after that it was like a little boy five days in a row when I was ready to walk away somebody would show up and encourage me and tell me that they're glad that I'm doing that I'm talking about God and sharing the importance of forgiveness I really felt connected at that point because I
realized that that doesn't happen randomly right I mean not every day in a row that was a sign now it wasn't a big sign like you know the heart expanding but if you're really paying attention that was truly a sign did anyone around you become Muslim after you like my grandmother her mother I think it was 2012 I went to see her she wasn't doing well she was 86 years old and she was in an old folks home and my mom took me by to see her when I was visiting she couldn't speak she couldn't she didn't have words she was in a wheelchair but she saw me and she started crying I said Grandma why are you crying she couldn't talk and but you know she was trying to and I said look I think I know let's
talk about God for a minute and I said here's the thing my aunt is going to show up she's going to try and get you to pray to Prophet Jesus and don't do that because that's blasphemy that's shirk right that's praying to something that's breaking the first commandment and I told her I said look Prophet Muhammad is a real prophet and Islam is the correct religion of God on Earth today that we're supposed to follow and every time I would say these things her tears would get bigger and bigger and I said do you want to accept Islam Today and and and she's nodding her head yes and crying and I said okay just take my hand and squeeze if you agree with what I'm saying I gave her the shahada
inshallah my Grandma will be you know a winner on Judgment Day I was with an organization actually amazing Dao in the Philippines and we would visit prisons so then we would talk about the Quran and we would talk about what Allah wants from us and many people took shahada what impressed you the most about our Prophet Allah his ability to be a mercy for mankind to be forgiving his self-described worst day we all know was Taif where the kids you know chased him they threw Stones they you know he was beat up and he had the option to just collapse the mountains on him and he's like no I don't want to do that one day maybe these people will accept and they did so his ability for forgiveness and
helping people to the right path what projects are you doing right now um I was doing a lot of projects for for dawa I have a a special project in America the furcon project with furcon Foundation where they distribute English language qurans I think it was about 600 hundred thousand qurans that he had already gotten and distributed and now I believe he's at 1.6 million and so my goal is to to help him get to 2.6 million or more because you know that's where I got my first Quran was from that organization and they do such good work in getting those qurans to people that need them or want them many now what organizations uh English-speaking organizations use the fercon Quran what would you
like to say as your final comments God wants you to be successful and God is waiting for you God's waiting for all of us right to follow him you know as we know you take one step towards God and and he takes 10 towards you and you know you take a few steps and he comes running towards you so God wants us to seek him foreign
Believers my name is Cleon Cathcart I was born in California and I grew up went to Christian school and I was basically like an atheist until around 2010 when I discovered that God was real and alhamdulillah he was uh waiting for me to come to my senses basically how was your life in regards to Faith well I grew up in a Christian school and in a Christian family but at a certain point you know I mean I didn't really believe in it anymore well it just didn't make sense you know I mean I was able to see that the Trinity didn't match my idea of what God is supposed to be you know we say God is one but you know now he's three and and that was a little confusing and we were making God a human my
idea of God at the time and even today is this is a being that is so powerful he can create the universe how can I truly comprehend who he is it didn't make sense that God could one day walk around and that you know God had to create himself in a human so that he could kill himself so that we could all be forgiven and it was like well I mean can't he just forgive us and when I got to college I called the synagogue and I asked the rabbi I said look you know what I'm not sure but I think maybe I'm a Jew because I don't believe that Jesus is the son of God and you guys say he's not can you explain to me what you believe so maybe I can join and he said is your mother a Jew and I said no no my
mom's not a Jew and he said well you can't join then and I felt God would want you to worship Him and why would he say I couldn't be part of the chosen people if there was a real God so there must not be a God and that's kind of where I left that all these things that seem to be contradictions for me science at the time seemed to have the answers with Evolution science tests were talking about how we don't need God and I figured they're smarter than me so you know I just kind of like went along with the crowd so I just really kind of stopped believing in God how did your opinion about the existence of God change that I was sick in 2010 during that time I was watching a lot of documentaries I
remember that they had documentaries about physics at that time they discovered that there's dark energy and dark matter and there's a lot more gravity a lot more matter in the world we just can't see it basically at that time they said it was about 30 percent was what we can see and 70 percent is what we can't see and I realize well if there's 10 physical dimensions 30 height width link is 30 percent so they kind of fit together and it made sense to me that well this dark energy and dark matter must be real and and so then I kind of went from atheist to well maybe God does exist maybe this is like where Heaven and Hell and the angels and all this other stuff is at that time did you know
anything about Islam probably right after this or somewhere around that time I got my first Quran there was a an ad on television if you want a free Quran call us and we'll mail it to you I got the Quran opened it up and I saw Jesus and Moses and and you know all of these prophets from the Bible and since I didn't believe in the Bible I thought how can I believe in the Quran right I mean these basically the same stuff now I didn't actually read it I just saw these names in there and said okay I don't need to know any more and I put it away I didn't know anything about Islam other than they believed in Jesus and Moses and Prophet Muhammad peace be upon all of them so how did your journey to
Islam really start later in 2010 I had a very strange series of experiences for me I understood that that God was real because I did experience it if God is real and the devil is real then heaven is real and hell is real and all I knew is I don't want to go to hell so now I have to figure out who God is because I didn't know God is real but God is not like a real name that's just kind of like a description right I had read this uh phrasing from a book by a guy named Pike who wrote a book called morals and dogma and inside of this book it says Lucifer is God but unfortunately Adonai is also God and I thought well I know Lucifer and I don't want to be team Lucifer so maybe a Don I assume I'm
trying to reach that night I was feeling weird and I was embarrassed because you know we had been atheists in my family for so long I didn't want my wife at the time to see me praying so I went outside to pray and I prayed to Adonai I just you know basically if if you're God give me a sign and I saw this thing it was very fuzzy but it was moving at me at a very quick rate it was kind of invisible but when you look through it everything was wavy like a funhouse mirror but all around the outside everything was normal the cars and trees and everything looked normal and it was physically moving at me very fast and the word that I had at the time was oh no this is a demon and it literally hit me
I believe their negative energy because it took all of my energy I couldn't even think about what happened I just kind of stumbled and collapsed in bed and I woke up 12 hours later kind of like hung over groggy and sore and it was like why do you feel like this what happened to you oh yeah you saw that demon last night well that must not be the right track right a dawn I must not be who you're looking for so who did you pray to next even though I didn't really believe in the Bible and I felt like there was you know Kings and popes and scribes have changed the Bible for their own reasons for whatever that happens to be but maybe the Old Testament is right and and maybe Jehovah is God and so
at noon the next day I I prayed to Jehovah to give me a sign and I got a phone call within seconds and I have an ID box it's got a name and a phone number on it and and so I go and I pick up the phone and I say hello and the person on the other end of the phone said I got a message last night that somebody at this number was in trouble and I said dude that's a weird thing to say who are you and he said well I'm so and so and it matched the name on the box and I'm a priest and I thought wow man I just prayed to Jehovah for answers about God and you called This is the answer to my prayer look I'm lost I'm confused I'm terrified I see things that people are not supposed to see and this is too
much for me I think I'm suicidal I can't take it I need answers about God and he said well where are you and I said well I'm in Rochester and he said I was there last night but now I'm in this other City about 50 miles away I said that's okay I can be there in a half hour just let me ask five questions I want to know about God and he wouldn't let me come and I said well how about tomorrow and he said not busy and the next day was busy and finally it was like 10 days later he said okay you know we made an appointment and I hung up happy that finally I'm going to get some answers about God and then I said wait a second let's think about what just happened right what was the first thing this
guy said he said that he got a message last night that somebody this phone number was in trouble my house it was a landline yeah and I thought well what happened and oh yeah you saw this demon that came to your house and he said he was in Rochester last night my city when the demon came so somehow this guy in that demon must be working together because and I don't care if you're a priest or an Imam or a Buddhist monk when somebody tells you that they're suicidal you help them you don't wait 10 days to see if they actually kill themselves and so I knew there was something that didn't make sense here and then what happened did you finally pray to Allah at that point the only thing I thought
that could be God was Allah but at the same time all of that brainwashing from 9 11 and all of that it's the moon God subconsciously was still there and I was afraid to pray to Allah right because I didn't want to make another mistake and pray to something that wasn't the creator of the universe so I didn't pray and depression said it the next day I was tears were coming down not constantly but I would start crying and I thought this is weird why am I crying and why do I feel depressed I tried to make the tears stop but they wouldn't stop they just came all day long Friday morning I got got up and my bed was soaked and I thought well what's going on here and I realized that my bed was soaked
because I had cried all night and and the tears had made my sheets wet and the Depression was so intense I don't have words to describe how bad it was at that moment we had those little Whispers right it's like thoughts in your own head and it said look life is not worth living in this condition and I thought you know me that's right life is not worth living in this condition what can I do and then that little thought came to me that said you have to kill yourself and I thought you know what that's right that'll solve my problem I can get rid of this depression by killing myself and so I went through the logistics of how do you kill yourself and I determined that the best way to do it was
take a bunch of drugs so you feel good then you die out in the middle of a forest where the animals can eat you and dispose of your body and it's like a win-win and then it was like that other little thought came to me and it said what about the moon and then I got mad I was like oh that's right God is real if you kill yourself you're going to go to hell I thought well you know if Allah is the devil as some people want you to believe and I kill myself I'm going to go to hell and I'll meet him in hell so why not take a chance and pray to him before you kill yourself because maybe you're wrong like you've been wrong about so many other things I remember it was 10 a.m Friday morning and I stood
up tears just pouring out of my eyes and and I said Allah I am lost I'm confused I see things that people aren't supposed to see I'm depressed beyond words and I'm ready to kill myself and if you're God you know this I don't even know why I have to say this out loud I don't know why you haven't helped me yet but I'm begging you if you are God help give me a sign that you're real help me and at that moment it was like my heart was a balloon and Allah went and it literally expanded in my chest and it filled with a substance that I could only describe as love and it leaked out of my heart in perfect sine waves it was very weird and scientific at the same time and I could feel it go down to my
hands from my heart up to my head and actually turn around and go back and it was like these waves of Love filled my body except in my heart it was like this star like this solidness of Love had ignited and it was very brief that's the first time that I knew that Allah was God I didn't actually know anything about Islam but I knew that no matter what I wanted to be on team Allah and so whatever that meant I'm in so what did you do next there was a restaurant that some Pakistani people ran and had great food and and I seen they were Muslims I'd been in there before so that's where I went to learn about Islam and they connected me with a guy I was like I'm in man I don't care what it is I'm in
Allah is God I know this make me a Muslim what do I get you need blood what do we got to do I'll sign you know where do I sign he's like no no it's very simple it's very simple you just make a statement with your heart that Allah is God and Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of God and I said okay let's do it he said well there's some things we got to go over and so he spoke about the Five Pillars and the six precepts and I'm like I'm in okay you know I don't even have to think about it and he said it's important that you understand the Quran is the actual words of our creator and I went whoa whoa whoa whoa how do I know that that's a crazy thought right our creator gave us his own words you
know and coming from a Christian background it just didn't make sense because I never thought the Bible was God's actual words right I mean we're told that these are the inspired words of of God but men's words this is a very very strange concept for me and I'm like I I don't know that I can believe that and he said well you have to be a Muslim and I said well let's let's convince me he said well I tell you what let's meet again because you know we've gone through so much today let me bring you a little book called A Brief Illustrated guide to Islam and in there it said about scientific signs in the Quran and for me it was the development stages of the human embryo and how they're described
in the Quran that really match the actual development stages which we couldn't know without an MRI to confirm all of this for us and I realized that Prophet Muhammad he couldn't know that 1400 years ago that that had to be divine knowledge so how did you take your shahada after I accept the Quran I'm like okay let's do it now shahada time and my friend who I'm still I still communicate with to this very day Hassan wonderful man he said let's wait till Friday right we'll do it in front of all the people he said we you know like church service on Sunday we we do it on Friday so let's do it and everybody can have the blessings and and I said no what if I die tomorrow I get hit by a bus tomorrow
I I want it now and he said just wait a couple days and I said okay you know I trusted him I said okay but like I said earlier when you get close Satan starts working really hard and I was getting all these weird thoughts right crazy you know really crazy thoughts where I thought that if I went to the mosque on Friday somebody would blow it up and and all these innocent people would die because of me because I went there so I didn't go that Friday and uh Saturday my friend called me and he said okay I get it let's not delay this uh meet me on this park and so we sat on a park bench and I took my shahada with him on a park bench I felt relief because you know I had finally was able to be a
part of what God wants for us how did your family react to your conversion to Islam they didn't like it at first my mom had been on me to go to church I mean she'd been very active when I was sick about going to church when I discovered that God was real and I had accepted Islam so I called her and I said hey you know what Mom you're right God is real and she was very happy and she said she said oh that's wonderful did you you know because we had gone grew up in the Baptist Church he said did you find a Baptist Church and I said no no no I I wasn't at the Baptist Church and she's like well well you know in your area uh it's the lutherans did you was it the Lutheran Church I said no no I
wasn't at the Lutheran Church she said oh no it wasn't the Catholics was it and I said no it wasn't the Catholics and she just wouldn't let up I felt embarrassed to tell her because I know she wouldn't like the answer but she wouldn't lit up and so she you know I said where did you find God at and I said well Mom you want to really know where God's at you got to go to the mosque and she started to cry and said oh no that's it's not God and hung up on me but a couple years later I was visiting her in her house and and a family friend that you know she had called to talk to my mom and I didn't answer the phone and her name was Ruth Ruth said I I hear you know you're doing well and your mom is
so happy and I said are you sure we're talking about the same lady because that's not the way that I'm getting you know the story and she said oh no no your mom is so happy that you became Muslim and that you've changed your life around surprisingly she was happy that I became Muslim because she recognized how that had changed my life even though she couldn't admit it to me so inshallah make do it for her that she accepts this on one day what was the major challenge you faced after becoming Muslim that's a great question I don't know what major challenges other than sticking with Islam because you know there's all kinds of invitations to leave it right and come back to you know hey the girls
you had a lot of fun over there let's you know let's go you know rock and roll you know let's go concerts are waiting for you the weeds there the alcohol is there it's all waiting for you just come on back come on back buddy we love you right but you know it's wrong and and that's probably the major challenges is sticking to your guns to you know I mean I accept Islam and I've got to leave those things behind did you experience anything where you felt a special connection with Allah after I became Muslim I bought a bus ticket where I could go anywhere in America for two months and I traveled around and I warned people and sometimes that got me into some trouble and I realized that to avoid
the trouble I needed to shorten the message down to what was really important that message was about forgiveness and I remember being in San Francisco I was in what they call the tenderloin right this is like where where all the prostitutes and drug dealing and all this kind of stuff goes on because I was like at that time I thought well these are my people they're the ones that need the help the most they're the ones that are hurting the most and they are that's how they ended up there so I was down there I felt sort of like the crazy man holding the sign you know the end is near kind of a thing I mean I felt little like that but I was standing there saying forgiveness is healing and you
need healing ask a lot to forgive you and people would come up and tell me how crazy I was and swear at me and tell me how they didn't want me there and they were just like get out of here and and I would stay there and keep doing it after about five or six hours though it wears you down and I remember going you know this is stupid what are you doing you are crazy they're right you're standing here talking about God to these people they don't care about God what do you get out of here and it was at that moment the first day I turned around and there was this little old lady standing there and she's like thank you thank you for what you're doing and and it was like okay A Lie right I was
ready to walk away and you put somebody there to encourage me when I needed encouragement I understand that was you and the next day I was back doing it again and the same thing happened five or six hours into this I'm going you know that that was just an old lady that wasn't God right that was not a sign don't be stupid these people are right and I'm ready to give up and then it's an old man and the day after that it was like a little boy five days in a row when I was ready to walk away somebody would show up and encourage me and tell me that they're glad that I'm doing that I'm talking about God and sharing the importance of forgiveness I really felt connected at that point because I
realized that that doesn't happen randomly right I mean not every day in a row that was a sign now it wasn't a big sign like you know the heart expanding but if you're really paying attention that was truly a sign did anyone around you become Muslim after you like my grandmother her mother I think it was 2012 I went to see her she wasn't doing well she was 86 years old and she was in an old folks home and my mom took me by to see her when I was visiting she couldn't speak she couldn't she didn't have words she was in a wheelchair but she saw me and she started crying I said Grandma why are you crying she couldn't talk and but you know she was trying to and I said look I think I know let's
talk about God for a minute and I said here's the thing my aunt is going to show up she's going to try and get you to pray to Prophet Jesus and don't do that because that's blasphemy that's shirk right that's praying to something that's breaking the first commandment and I told her I said look Prophet Muhammad is a real prophet and Islam is the correct religion of God on Earth today that we're supposed to follow and every time I would say these things her tears would get bigger and bigger and I said do you want to accept Islam Today and and and she's nodding her head yes and crying and I said okay just take my hand and squeeze if you agree with what I'm saying I gave her the shahada
inshallah my Grandma will be you know a winner on Judgment Day I was with an organization actually amazing Dao in the Philippines and we would visit prisons so then we would talk about the Quran and we would talk about what Allah wants from us and many people took shahada what impressed you the most about our Prophet Allah his ability to be a mercy for mankind to be forgiving his self-described worst day we all know was Taif where the kids you know chased him they threw Stones they you know he was beat up and he had the option to just collapse the mountains on him and he's like no I don't want to do that one day maybe these people will accept and they did so his ability for forgiveness and
helping people to the right path what projects are you doing right now um I was doing a lot of projects for for dawa I have a a special project in America the furcon project with furcon Foundation where they distribute English language qurans I think it was about 600 hundred thousand qurans that he had already gotten and distributed and now I believe he's at 1.6 million and so my goal is to to help him get to 2.6 million or more because you know that's where I got my first Quran was from that organization and they do such good work in getting those qurans to people that need them or want them many now what organizations uh English-speaking organizations use the fercon Quran what would you
like to say as your final comments God wants you to be successful and God is waiting for you God's waiting for all of us right to follow him you know as we know you take one step towards God and and he takes 10 towards you and you know you take a few steps and he comes running towards you so God wants us to seek him foreign