Testimony

I converted to a Muslim in order to marry a Muslim girl to make it easier for her family to accept me. I never had any intention of being a Muslim as I had already seen the problems Islam caused in my teenage life. I had a Muslim friend and he was the best person I ever met and we were very close together except that Islam kept us apart. He was a Muslim and found it hard to openly mix with my family and I his mainly due to the training he had as a Muslim. He had problems with verses in the Quran which was not conducive to mixing with non Muslims. I found that this faith destroyed our relationship and although I was glad I had our time together, I begrudge Islam for standing in our way of having a good and innocent friendship with a very nice person.

I married a Muslimah and in order to ensure my child was entering a religion that would allow them a respect for morality and awareness of God without the other baggage of religion. I wanted to prove to my wife that Islam was incompatible to these goals. She was not convinced at first as she had an Islamic upbringing. My wife however I am lucky to have is an open minded, intelligent person who can discuss anything and would never defend what is obviously incorrect. It didn’t take long for me to ask her some questions about things on the Quran and Muhammad she never knew or heard about as she lived in a Muslim country all her life till we got married. She changed her style of prayer in the end after the things she had time to reflect on what she found out. She didn’t become Christian but she was one that would not do things blindfolded and she adjusted the way she prayed so as not to disrespect the Creator. I also told her that I had disbelief of Christianity too. The Catholic Church had priorities based on strong family and morality that was important to me. I believe that a religion should continue to evolve. Although there have been tremendous problems for all religions in the past I found that the rules of the church were living and ongoing i.e. Catholicism. So it could evolve with society while also keeping the important traditions.

Although I am not a total believer in the Bible as there is a lot of quite unbelievable stories and I am not a believer about the trinity, I have become comfortable with relatively more of the rules of the church than other institutions. I believe that the transfer of power for Catholicism from bible to church was done in an orderly manner Catholicism as the authority of Christian morality is actually a living religion that can develop in the spirit of morality and yet grow to embrace the modern world. I am afraid that the transfer of power in Islam was not well managed and there is a problem of leadership, which will never be resolved as a result of this. Also Islamic rules of Sharia, polygamy, Muhammad’s examples in his life, propensity of Islam towards authoritarian rule, dangers to peoples freedoms of Islamic fundamentalism wherever Islam has a foothold, problems with modernity, the incredibly high level of ignorant and intolerant people in Islam etc have in my opinion lost Islam a great deal of credibility and ruled it out of my consideration as a religion that has "too much baggage".