I’m a middle-aged, white Scottish man who converted to Islam without ever meeting a Muslim. This is how…
How does a middle-aged, white Scottish man living in the Scottish Highlands end up becoming a Muslim – especially when he hasn’t properly met a Muslim in his life?
For me, it all started when I heard the call to prayer from a local mosque while on a beach holiday in Turkey. It woke something up inside me, and inspired me to begin a spiritual quest.
Back home in Inverness, I went to the local bookshop, bought a Qur’an and started to read. While reading, I always asked God to guide me on the journey I had set out on.
A lot of praying. A lot of time on my knees.
The Qur’an really shook me. It’s quite a scary book to read because it tells you so much about yourself. Some things that I found out about myself I didn’t like. So I decided to make some changes
I knew that I could stop reading the Qur’an and halt the process at any time, but I also knew that would mean giving up something really important.
And I knew what the end result of this process would be: I would be a Muslim.
So I kept on reading. I read it three times, looking for the catch. But there was no catch; I was quite comfortable with everything.
The difficult part in all of this was wondering who I would become. Would I become strange, dress differently, speak differently in the eyes of others?
What would my family, friends and workmates think of me?
Most importantly, what would I think about myself? Would I like who I became?
I would spent time conducting searches online, looking for the stories of people who had gone through this experience themselves. Nothing ever seemed to quite fit the bill – each person’s journey, of course, is unique. It is good to know, however, that others have gone down this same path as you. Put simply, I turned to these resources when I became afraid I’d be seen as an oddball.
Online resources are great to find out how to pray in Arabic, to listen to the Qur’an read out loud or perhaps to listen to some Islamic music. For me, music was a great way of picking up some of the phrases I wanted to start to use.
Key in all of this, though, is that I questioned absolutely everything – as is absolutely necessary in a religious conversion. You question yourself. You question what you hear, and what you read.
- Door Locks in the Quran - February 25, 2022
- A Lesson in Cattle - February 25, 2022
- Why Abigail Converted to Islam – How a Spiritual Journey to Islam Began - January 2, 2022
