I was born in 1979 into a devout Orthodox Roman Catholic family in Kerala, India, and my entire family took their faith very seriously, seriously, and devoutly. My people were actively involved in the church and the church’s jurisdiction, and to this day there are many priests, nuns and missionaries in our family, with my grandfather presiding over the construction of a church in his hometown.
For as long as I can remember, I realized that our family was very religious and wanted to be good people, and my mother was so religious that the pastor of our church used my mother as an example in every sermon, encouraging others to learn from her. Indeed, my mother was a good Catholic, she read the Bible every day and prayed with great devotion.
It was out of her love for her Creator and her devotion to her faith that my mother encountered many challenges while practicing her Catholicism. As she continued to learn more about the Catholic faith, she began to feel skeptical and even dissatisfied with it. She found that the Bible did not seem to address the deeper issues of life and human nature, and her love and reverence for the Catholic faith and the Bible gradually faded, and at one point she even began to doubt life.
Shortly thereafter, she was introduced to the Islamic faith. When our family lawyer was away on business, he recommended a Muslim lawyer named Ibrahim Khan to help my parents with their immediate needs. Driven by curiosity, my mother attempted to engage him in some faith-related discussions, which led to her initial knowledge of Islam, when I turned thirteen years old.
I was the eldest daughter in the family, and at that time I had no deep understanding of life and faith, and was in a state of ignorance and even confusion. Later, when my parents’ marriage broke up, my mother decided that her marriage with my father had become meaningless and empty, so she divorced my father and my mother was thrown out of the house, and soon after, my father abandoned us and disappeared. As a young girl, I believed that Islam had “poisoned” my mother, and I couldn’t believe that she had lost her love and trust in my father because of her faith. I grew up respecting my mother, who was well-educated and of good character, and I couldn’t believe that my talented mother could be obsessed with a backward faith that originated in the Middle Ages. One day, I could not help but ask her why she had abandoned Christianity for a faith that had been criticized by the world, for my dislike of my mother had extended to her new faith, Islam. My mother’s answer was simple: she told me to turn to the Bible and read it page by page.
So, with anger in my heart, I began the long journey of studying my faith. Fortunately, even though I was young, I was able to read and understand much of the Bible. In the course of my study, I found many inaccuracies and contradictions in the Bible. I realized that we Christians did not really follow the teachings of the Bible, and that many of the theoretical points in the Bible lacked the support of logical thinking, and I also found that the Bible explicitly mentions Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. However, I stubbornly refused to accept the facts and the truth, continued to study the Bible, and gradually became interested in comparative religion, but my hostility and opposition to Islam never changed.
One day after that, I received a letter from my mother mentioning the chapter of Faithfulness in the Koran, as well as the English translation and commentary of the chapter of Faithfulness. That day, I kept reading this short passage of the Koran and its commentary, and I became obsessed with it. In the end, I even had the feeling that all other religions, except the Quran, could not satisfy my desire for truth. So I began to study the Koran and was finally convinced that the Koran was the truth that I had been searching for so long! All my doubts and questions were answered in the Quran, and from that moment on, I knew that I had answered my destiny. I studied Christianity intensely for two years, but I am very grateful to Allah for finally allowing me to find Islam. I had just turned fifteen that year.
Soon after, I was on a plane back to Mumbai, hoping that my mother would be able to see me recite the halal words and become a Muslim. I later realized that ever since my mother converted to Islam, she had been praying to Allah to guide me to embrace the Islamic faith because she had been isolated by everyone since her conversion and she wanted her oldest daughter to understand her decision and to have the support of her eldest daughter. Praise be to Allah, who eventually guided me to follow in my mother’s footsteps and find the Islamic truth.
The year I converted to Islam, my younger siblings, who were actually still young, trusted me unconditionally and said that they wanted to believe in Islam as I did. I moved with my siblings to Mumbai to live with my mother. In fact, from the moment my siblings and I decided to convert to Islam, we knew that there was no place for us in our hometown, after all, Kerala is a Hindu town. Insha’Allah, the Muslim community in Mumbai gave us endless support, and as a family we began to learn Arabic, the Quran and Islam.
Insha’Allah, it wasn’t long before my father returned to Mumbai and wanted to live with us again. Although he was still a Catholic, we were happy to welcome him back. After his return, our lives improved considerably and he supported us, the four of us, despite the pressure. As for our relatives and other clansmen, they were adamantly opposed to our decision to convert to Islam, but they did not deliberately make things difficult for us. In the early years, we often received letters from family members and even strangers who wanted to persuade us to renounce Islam, but over time we received fewer and fewer such letters.
Not long ago, we returned to Kerala as a family to visit my grandparents, this time without the fear and worry we had before. This year is the tenth year of my conversion to Islam, and inshaAllah, I am proud to be a Muslim.
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