(Sister’s Christina’s Journey to the Truth)
By Reading Islam Staff
(www.onislam.net*)
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I said Shahadah, it will be ten years in December. I took Shahadah when I was 47 years old. I considered myself to be a good Catholic lady, but I always would go to church and pray to God.
I couldn’t pray to Jesus, it just didn’t feel right, and I would always talk to God.
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I didn’t come from a religious family. My grandmother took me to church once in a while, you know in the major holidays, but that was only when I was little.
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So at 7 years old I would pick myself up and go to church and just talk to God.
When I was 8 I had my own Bible, and again I just always talked to God, and I was always a big believer of the truth, my whole life is based on the truth.
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And then when I was 47, I met someone who was a Muslim, and we started talking. I had never met Muslims till I was about 46 years old. So this was after 9/11, and I started reading the Quran, and I just kept saying but this is what I believed my whole life!
Wait … What’s going on here?
I thought I’m Catholic, and why is everything that I’m reading to be true? I mean to me it was the truth.
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And within about 3 to 4 months of reading the Quran I knew that there was no other choice. This is what I was my whole life, I just didn’t know it until that time. And then on December 25th.
I said my Shahadah with my Christmas tree in the dining room because I was still Catholic at the time. But I just knew it was over, I knew that part of my life, that 47 years of being Catholic was over, that I really was Muslim, and that my parents when they baptized me they just didn’t know it.
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About Islam to Those Who Are Searching
What is the truth?
When Ramadan is over, I want to cry
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What is the Truth? There is only One God, and that’s who you ask for help and that’s just who you go to. You don’t need someone to intercede, you don’t need to go and speak to someone else, you just talk to God in your whole relationship and you just lay everything to God.
And it’s so freeing, you are just so free. And people can say aren’t you hot? Look how you dress, and I’ve never felt more free. It’s truth and it’s freedom, the ultimate freedom, to be a Muslim woman, Subhan Allah, it’s just wonderful.
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Ramadan?
Oh I love Ramadan.
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I mean I fasted when I was Catholic on some of the Catholic days of fasting, and I know the first couple of days it’s a little rough, but then it’s just so amazing what you are doing. You are sacrificing and you are doing this all for God, and it’s just amazing.
And when Ramadan is over, I want to cry, and I know I have some sister friends who are like that, we just want to cry. You love it so much, it’s just an amazing feeling, and it’s just amazing what you can do.
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You know, so many people say oh I couldn’t fast that many hours, especially it’s been in the summer, but it’s amazing what you can do when you are doing it for God. It’s just absolutely amazing. (T/R-022/R-006)
*OnIslam.net is an independent website that emerged out of an initiative by the team that created and run IslamOnline.net for the past 10 years, after the idea had been embraced by a group of people with experience in the field of civil society work in Egypt. This project was launched in August 2010 (Ramadan 1431 A.H.) under the umbrella of Mada Media Development Association, a non-profit civil society institution born in Egypt with a global outlook.