Embracing Islam

For 39-year-old Edward, now Imran, May 27 of this year was the most significant day, as on this day he embraced Islam.



“I was passing by a da’wah center and decided to go inside. The same day I read the Shahadah and became a Muslim,” said the Filipino electrical engineer residing in Jeddah.



Many non-Muslim expatriates in Saudi Arabia have been entering the Islamic fold of life. Around 1,392 expats of different nationalities embraced Islam at the Cooperative Da’wah and Guidance Office in Riyadh’s Suwaidi District recently.



“As converts, if we are explained the various tenets of Islam, it will be easier to understand. The da’wah center provided reasoning and this is important as you just don’t embrace Islam but you also need to learn it,” said Imran, adding that his Muslim colleagues, Saudis specially, are “very happy” with his conversion.



“Earlier also, I was never left in isolation and felt I was one among them,” said Imran.



In the past five to seven years, there has been a 20 to 30 percent rise in the number of expats embracing Islam, said Mohammed Aqil of the Jeddah Da’wah Center (JDC).“More people are coming to the Kingdom, including non-Muslims, to observe Islam closely.



Also, with the help of new media, such as e-books, social networking sites, online videos, Muslim organizations are better able to spread much more Islamic awareness,” he said.



The JDC has seen 450 conversions in nine months since the last Muharram, with 55 people on an average embracing Islam every month. Last month, 64 conversions took place with most of the new Muslims being Filipinos and Indians.



“However, this is nothing as compared to the number of people coming to the Kingdom,” Aqil said. He estimated that there are seven da’wah centers operating in Jeddah under the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da’wah and Guidance.



Of the eight million expatriates residing in Saudi Arabia, over one-quarter of them are non-Muslims.



The close interaction between the foreigners and Muslims often provides increased level of Islamic awareness among the former.



“As a non-Muslim, I respect the Qur’an and wish that every Muslim reads it and follows it,” said S. Narendra Babu, 39, an Indian accounts executive in a travel company in Riyadh. He has never observed fast but, follows the general routine during the month of Ramadan which helps him to adapt a healthy diet.



“I have Muslim friends who invite me and my family for Iftar parties,” Babu added. Ye Ruan, a Chinese national, 39, hopes to become a Muslim and has started reading the Qur’an. He doesn’t fully understand it and communicates his doubts to his Muslim friends. He finds the atmosphere in the Kingdom more conducive to learning Islam than in his homeland, where the recent riots involving the Muslim minority ethnic group have raised concerns about China’s level of religious tolerance.



“Muslim people have a strong desire to help. I wish to learn more Arabic and, have also subscribed to an Arabic newspaper here to do so,” he said.



However, it should be noted that Islamic da’wah does not aim to convert people. It seeks to spread Islamic awareness and leave it to individual discretion whether to choose Islam or not. – SG

From America to Yemen to Egypt: Rocky life of a revert divorcee

HOW does a born Muslim meet a revert American Muslim woman? ‘Wow! Masha Allah, Allah guided you. It’s such a pleasure to meet you.’


Little more than speaking glorifying words do we do. Helping her out in the issues she may be facing hardly crosses our mind. Reverts aside, our attitude gets worse toward Muslims in general.


Meet Umm Ni’mah, an African American woman whose ancestors were slaves and who grew up in the late 1960s in New Jersey under the cult of Elijah Muhammad. She embraced Islam in her early twenties.


“I remember how I’d often pass by a Masjid on the bus and look at how beautiful and clean the sisters looked. I wanted to be like them, I wanted to look like that,” Umm Ni’mah recalls. “I found no real satisfaction from dating and going out dancing. I wanted to submit to something greater to feel fulfilled, not used. I became tired with wasting my life and my time.”


“I started to practice true Islam. I read the Qur’an more and more. I tore down and fought my desires within myself in order to please my Lord, Allah Alone. I cried to Him a number of times to remove the evil filth of shirk from my chest, my mind, and my soul. I tried to follow every rule I could and I loved reading about the religion, Alhumdulillah.”


Reborn with Islam, Umm Ni’mah’s life was filled with peace, contentment and gratitude. She found the purpose of life and the way to success. Then came time for the next stage of life, the desire of every youthful being, the world’s prelude to fantasies – it was time to get married.


“I married at 26. We had a son together.” But marriage is more than a fantasy, it’s about adjusting to one’s role, caring for each other and building a family.


“We argued a lot and our marriage did not last over two years. We divorced, may I add, happily?” Like Umm Ni’mah, her husband was a practicing Muslim and a student of Islamic studies. He left for Yemen with their son, Abdur Rahman, to study Islam and live in a Muslim country. He remarried and settled there.


Two years later, in 1999, it was Umm Ni’mah’s turn to travel to Yemen. It was her own Hijrah (migration to a Muslim land). “After two years of staying away from my only child, I wanted to leave the non-Muslim land and be with my son and support him,” Umm Ni’mah wrote in email to Saudi Gazette.


“At the airport, a couple received me and escorted me to the village where my son lived. I had high hopes that my son would be learning Islam and benefitting from living in the Muslim land. Everyone seemed anxious to meet the sister who’d let her only child go to the land of the Muslims at such a young age. They didn’t know the pain and hardships I faced alone for doing this.” For more read here.