Page 88 - MY GREAT LOVE FOR JESUS LED ME TO TROUTH

This was happening just like in the movies. My great hero, the good guy in the movie,
my beloved prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, to whom I used to pray twice a day in a small
altar in my house, had not been crucified after all!

To me it seemed as though the weight of the cross that Jesus allegedly carried to Mount
Calvary vanished and disintegrated in the same manner that great buildings and firm
mountains crumble when demolished by dynamite.

What followed this discovery was no less significant. I reasoned, "If this is the truth, then
this religion is the right one." For twenty years, I had been told that Jesus had been killed.
I had been taken on a journey without any alternate routes. Now, another avenue had
been opened with a more logical answer, and now things were getting clearer as the final
piece of the "puzzle" was eventually found. This was the last in a sequence of miracles
that Jesus had performed by Allah's leave. A man who, by the permission of God, restored
sight to the blind, walked on the water, cleansed the lepers, made the lame walk again,
multiplied bread and fish to feed thousands of people, exorcised demons, and brought
the dead back to life could not have been crucified! Once again I reasoned and resolved
that I wanted to belong to this religion. I wanted to be a Muslim!

In the same manner that the weight of the cross disintegrated, the resurrection of Jesus
on Sunday, the Holy Week (the week immediately before Easter), Good Friday, the visit
to the Seven Churches (Stations of the Cross), the fasting on Fridays, the eating of fish
instead of meat on those alleged "Holy Days" also disintegrated all at once, and I realized
that they were all lies. The power of the talisman vanished. The logical mind of a young
man studying to be an engineer was now free to reject all these baseless traditions built
upon the irrational concept of God becoming a man and dying for the sins of men. As a
young man who had been a professional fireman saving lives and property and who had
not acquired the vices of smoking and drinking even though these were among the norms
of society, I could no longer accept these lies and deception.
During the summer of 1979, I took an optional course at Oklahoma State University that
further illuminated the new path I had already followed. The course was called "Islamic
Teachings". At the end of the summer of 1979, I went back to Seattle, where I officially
embraced Islam by pronouncing the testimony of faith (the shahaadah), before the
same imam who had given me the Islamic literature.