God will Give You a Sign! (Islam)

I believed in the truth and power of what God sent down through Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Suddenly I had no doubts.

Not even a million words are enough to express my love to God sufficiently.

It is a deep, sincere feeling coming from the depth of my heart, moving through every part of my body up to my fingertips, when I talk to God in my prayers.

I am so thankful to Him for His gift and for making me a Muslim. In all my life I will praise Him and thank Him.

My journey to Islam started simply and inconspicuously. I always smile when I remember the beginning. I loved traveling with my parents. We visited various Muslim countries.

Egypt was the last one and its culture and everything in it captured my attention. It was my first time to be near a mosque, but I did not enter it since I did not know if I could as a non-Muslim.

Whenever I heard the call to Prayer, my heart trembled and I got into a sort of trance and did not hear anything but the voice from the minaret. I was absolutely captivated by it. The solidarity between people gathering in mosques and praying together charmed me and has remained in my memory until today.

When I returned, I felt as if I was leaving something very close to me. At that time I knew very little about Islam, almost nothing, compared to what I know now.

When I came home, I had a great desire to learn Arabic because it was charming to me. It has become one of the most beautiful languages of the world to me. But in my town there were no Arabic language courses. They only offered English and German courses.

They almost managed to have an Arabic course, but it was canceled even before it could start. It was some time before the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan and our teacher was preparing to go home. My excitement was replaced by disappointment.

Some time passed and I started to approach Islam gradually. I read about Islam on various websites, I watched all sorts of TV programs about Islam and Muslims. I followed a discussion forum of Muslim women on the Internet where I found out more and more.

Among the contributors there were some Slovak women as well. Once a sister from Kosice wrote there that there were Arabic and Quran lessons. Her name was familiar to me because I had seen her in a talk show with some other Muslim women a month before that.

I immediately sent an email to her saying that I wanted to attend these lessons and she wrote back. We met a week later. She was kind and good and I had a wonderful feeling of her. I had a feeling of tranquility and safety with her.

I had no prejudice to anybody or anything, so it was not hard for me to learn something new. We came to the lesson together and I got to know other girls and women as well.

I attended the lessons regularly and I enjoyed the Quran lessons most of all. We learned some Suras and in spite of me not being a Muslim, everybody was respectful and patient to me.

The Arabic lessons finished after a few months, but we all met even after that. We would talk a lot for hours. It meant so much to me because I could be with them and see their lives.

It was not clear to me if I wanted to become a Muslim. I did not know how to find out whether it should happen. I did not consider it to be crucial to change my faith. The important thing to me was learning about God and loving him.

I asked the sisters how to find out about the right time. They always told me that one day I would simply perceive a sign from God, a specific feeling which cannot be confused with anything. So I waited…

My family is Christian, but nobody guided me to religion. My mom used to say that I was free in this respect. She did not force me to believe or disbelieve. We did not go to church, but we all believed in God. But, as for me, I always felt I was nearer to Him than the other members of my family.

Time passed and everything calmed down. It was a short-term lack of interest. As if my previous way of life was coming back. I would meet Muslim women only once in a while and I would not even study so much at home anymore.

That is why I prayed as honestly as I could and asked God to give me a sign and make me a Muslim if it was His will.

In the summer I spent some time at my grandmother’s and when I returned home from my vacation, there was a turn in my heart and I perceived this “special” feeling; this call that I heard so much about but never experienced. It came unexpectedly and suddenly.

I remember the words of the sisters: “You will feel it. God will give you a sign.” I will never ever forget the feeling at that time. I was like a child that was desperately longing for something. I felt a great desire to become a Muslim. I felt that God accompanied every thought of mine, every deed of mine, and I wanted to be closer to Him.

I believed in the truth and power of what God sent down through Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Suddenly I had no doubts. I knew my choice was right — right for me. And if you ask me why, I cannot explain it. You simply know it. You find out it is the right time…

I wrote to my dear friend, the first Muslim woman, whom I met and who helped me much more than anybody else. On the same day I declared the Shahadah(declaration of faith) in the presence of her and another Muslim woman.

When she hugged me, I felt like a new person. Born again, cleansed from everything from the past and ready for a life according to the Quran and the Prophet’s Sunnah.

If someone had told me some years ago who I would be and what direction my life would evolve in, I would probably not have believed him. I would not have been able to imagine a life as a Muslim. And now I cannot imagine a different life…

In the beginning I felt there was so much of what I did not know. When I observed the lives of Muslims as a non-Muslim, I did not realize how much they knew. It was probably because I considered them to be a whole.

But after my conversion I had so many questions. I wanted to know everything from the beginning. I had a strong desire to study and learn. Islam awakened life in me. I want to receive information, study, get familiar with the history of this great religion and forward my knowledge to others.

My first attempts to pray were very amateurish, but sincerely coming out from my soul because I had a great desire to learn it. At first I wrote the whole procedure on a piece of paper and read the Suras from there too.

I always talked to God and asked Him to help me to improve. About three weeks later I could pray without this piece of paper.

Islam is beautiful because we learn something all our lives. We can never achieve perfection of the same sort as God’s, because He shows us that it is only Him who is perfect.

But it is our duty to get closer to Him spiritually, to live based on His commands, to avoid what He prohibited, and to be good examples to others around us. It is only thus that we can show Him our enormous love and devotion.  -onislam.net