Bism'Allah Al-Rahman Il-Rahim,

A'salaamu'Alaikum Wa Rahmatu'Allahi Wa Barakatu,

My Childhood and Background

Due to some conflicts I go through where I live I am unable to disclose my birth name, instead I will go by the name chosen for me as my Islamic name, so I ask you kindly that you call me Noor-Adeen. Insha'Allah (by the will of God), one day I'll be able to re-do this testimony and make my actual name available.

My father being Greek and my mother being of an Italian background born and raised in Greece; carried me into a Christian Orthodox upbringing, which was moderately introduced to me. My mother was the religious one who always wanted us to go to church when my siblings and I were young, but my father disliked going there and in most cases was too lazy to be coming along with us there. As a result, it was my mother who was responsible in educating me to love God. I learned to worship God in the same manner as taught by in the church. Eventually though, going to church became a twice-a-year thing for us, where we would only attend on Christmas and Easter (Pascha in Greek) and we had become moderate in practicing religion. When I was 17, I started to look into taking God into my life even further, so I would participate in the prescribed fasting that would take place for lent and advent and I kept on doing this until I was 19. At the time I was against Islam and I thought it was a "messed up religion for the Arabs" but that was my ignorance talking. I was going to college at that point taking religious courses and meeting new people; amongst these people were some Muslims who I had made friends with very quick, who I got a kick out of trying to corrupt. I would make attempts to get my Muslim friends to eat pork, to try alcohol and to even try and come to atmospheres surrounded by fitnah (temptations, trials, tribulations.etc), but in most cases I would fail. Meanwhile, I was in a supposed state of believing in God.

Things started to change though, when in my religion studies class we were covering Islam. Islam made sense but out of my fear of change, I didn't express my interest to my Muslim friends, but I felt like I had to learn more on this religion. During lent in 2004 I found myself becoming more peaceful and I was abstaining from several things, and my Muslim friends were interested in learning about lent. I remember one particular day I happened to run into them at school when they were about to go pray, and I asked them if I could watch. I watched the prayer, and I was unable to understand it, but something looked and felt right about it. Something inside me caused me to want to join this beautiful prayer. However, I had questions and I needed answers.

I started to express my interest in Islam and how I wanted to convert, these guys were great and were patient enough to help with anything and everything. Just before my 20^th birthday, I started to call myself a Muslim and I started to make the attempts to learn on how to follow the religion. I remember it was Ramadan 2004 where one of the Muslims brothers went to me, "This year you fasted as a Christian during lent and in the same year you are fasting as a Muslim during Ramadan." I felt safe that I was following God alone for a change and not asking "saints," the Virgin Marry or Jesus for anything. I made one mistake where I got romantically involved with a Muslim girl who I felt was the most suitable for marriage for myself. Due to cultural conflicts and her parents not approving, we were unable to go through with our desire to get married. This painful experience broke me down, but then strengthened my faith more.

After this, I decided to become more serious in religion and life, and I took the step on declaring my faith (shahadah) to my friend and his brother. They got me to say word by word, "Ashadua la illaha il Allah, wa ashadua ana Muhammad an Rusul Allah" (I testify there is no deity other than God, and Muhammad is the final messenger of God). Now at age 22, I live for God and I intend to carry out my will on doing of that, which is most satisfactory for God. There are definitely some difficult times that one will go through upon converting to Islam. I find myself being considered an outcast in the Greek and the Italian community due to my change in lifestyle. My family tends to insult Islam, my choice of living and my Muslim friends. But this is all ignorance that they react with, and one day, insha'Allah, they will understand.

I ask you that you read the rest of my testimony based on what I know of how Islam is the truth and nothing out there can compare to it.

GOD, Jesus (PBUH), Christianity, and Islam

Jesus (PBUH) has been a heavy influence in my life. However, I was unable to associate how Jesus was a Prophet, a Messiah, the Son of God, and God himself. Overall, I wasn't sincerely able to consider Jesus God (even as a child). Christians to this day use many worldly examples to try and compare how this idea works but I was never able to associate this theological theory on how it could be possible. Many Christians claim they experience Christ, which is why they worship God through Jesus. They try and use this argument against Muslims who supposedly never get to "experience" God, but this brings up a couple of issues. Almost ALL religions out there have some sort of a claim that they have a vision of their deity. Hindus have that claim, and there's even times where their deity comes out in a spiritual form and enters the body of their priests who goes around blessing people. Buddhists have this claim that during meditation they experience some sort of divinity.

Now, if you bring this to the attention of a Christian they will try and back up this argument by saying that "some demonic force causes these poor souls to be brought into such darkness." However, when it comes to visions of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Saints (etc), they don't question these visions as being from the devil, which is hypocritical. Islam is not the type of religion to propagate such nonsense where we (the believers in God) have visions of God come to us, or our clerics being possessed by God, or in our prayer we fall into a trance and find ourselves in another dimension. This does not mean that we are unable to have a prophet visit us in our dreams though. On the whole Islam is a simple religion suited to accommodate natural human ability. God is the almighty creator, who (everyone can agree with) works in mysterious ways. We do not know the true plans of God on everything, but it is he who creates us. No one else!

Islam means to submit to God, submitting in a manner that is most suitable. It means to love God and to be willing to do everything possible for God, because this life is temporary and it is to God who we answer to in the end. Christianity fails to propagate true worship to God. Christianity has associated partners with God by giving him a triple identity (The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit). It's like the way a businessman can own three different businesses, but to avoid major taxes to the government he ends up registering each business with a different name creating different identities. Sounds fraudulent and the good Lord is not a fraud.

The Bible, Muhammad (PBUH), Qur'an and Hadiths

The bible is a book filled with stories and some useful information on what could have possibly happened in the past. However it's filled with inconsistencies, but I will not sit here and list these inconsistencies for there are too many and there are several articles out there, which discuss this. The bible is imperfect, miswritten, and corrupted. The atrocities in the bible are many, and it only makes sense how the Romans and the Byzantines got into violent wars; it was the example of their own religion that they were following. There's a difference between fighting a war to spread your religion by force, and fighting a war for the protection of your citizens. In the Christians' case, weather it's verbal, illustrated, documented, physical or murderous; they attack Muslims for their faith.

Muhammad (PBUH) was a man of righteousness, in many cases he is misunderstood and his sayings have been misinterpreted. His sayings have been documented in hadiths, hadiths are useful, but they can never be counted on as being reliable. Most hadiths do not come from authentic sources, and many of the authentic hadiths contradict what the Qur'an says. The Qur'an is the book that Muslims should abide by. Hadiths should be used for further understanding, the interpretation of certain rulings in the Qur'an, and positive life examples. If a hadith contradicts a verse in the Qur'an it should be discarded and considered unauthentic (no matter what the source), unless a condition applies. The bible contains messages of hatred, racism and brutality against those who refused to believe in God at those times, where the Qur'an tells us to be peaceful and that there is "no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

The bible feeds its people nonsense and has put its believers in a situation of uncertainty where people believe based on emotion, ignoring facts, logic, and science. We don't know the reality of who wrote what, and when and where. Scholars take the time to study a lot of details and end up trying to come through with these thoughts that the Bible is in its original form, but how are they so sure? No one has witness any of this stuff that happened through out history and even the so called "historical-texts" are not proof enough. Our only way to understanding truth, is the use of logic, facts and science. The Qur'an is a book for all mankind for all times. You take the bible and you take the Qur'an, and read both, without looking into hadiths and commentaries by scholars of either religions. Any person with common sense and open mind will notice the Qur'an sounds more logical, has facts that haven't been uncovered until recently, and also scientific discoveries are embedded in the verses of this sacred book. The Bible tries to tell its believers that God came as a man (who also happened to be his son) to die for the sins of mankind. Paul also contradicts himself in the bible several times and has proven himself to being a deceiver and liar. The Byzantines decided to come up with interpretations to these verses in the bible and came up with the trinity, eventually. The trinity is nothing new; it is something that was first known in Hindu theology.

The Hellenic Empire was at one point as far as India and it makes sense that Hindu theology was taken into the Hellenic world. When Judeo-Christianity was introduced into Europe the trinity was fused in with the religion to come up with a concept of believing in one God, without completely tossing away the pagan traditions in the Empire. Islam is purely a monotheistic religion and this is expressed in the divine revelations of the Qur'an, which can not be duplicated by anything else.

My experience as a Muslim has made my mission in life more clear and now I know how to serve the Almighty.

Amen.