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Jenny's Testimony
By Jenny
In the Name of
Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful
October, 1998
Often when people ask me ‘How did you come to Islam?’, I take a deep breath and
try and tell them the ‘short version’. I don’t think that Islam is something
that I came to suddenly, even though it felt like it at the time, but it was
something that I was gradually guided towards through different experiences.
Through writing this piece I hope that somebody may read it, identify with some
things and may be prompted to learn more about the real Islam.
I was born in 1978 in Australia, was christened and raised ‘Christian’. As a
child I used to look forward to attending church and going to Sunday School.
Even though I can still remember looking forward to it, I can’t remember much
about it. Maybe it was getting all dressed up in my best clothes, maybe seeing
the other children, maybe the stories, or maybe it was just that I could look
forward to my grandmothers’ famous Sunday lunch when I got home. My family
wasn’t strict about religion at all – the Bible was never read outside church
from what I knew, grace was never said before eating. To put it simply I guess
religion just wasn’t a major issue in our lives. I can remember attending church
with my family sometimes, and as I got older I can remember getting annoyed when
the other members of my family chose not to come. So for the last couple of
years I attended church alone.
At the time that I attended primary school ‘Religious Education’ was a lesson
that was given weekly. We learned of ‘true Christian values’ and received copies
of the Bible. While I wouldn’t admit it at the time, I also looked forward to
those classes. It was something interesting to learn about, something that I
believed had some sort of importance, just that I didn’t know what.
In my high school years I attended an all girls high school. We didn’t have any
sort of religious classes there, and I guess to some degree I missed that
because I started reading the Bible in my own time. At the time I was reading it
for ‘interest sake’. I believed that God existed, but not in the form that was
often described in church. As for the trinity, I hoped that maybe that was
something I would come to understand as I grew older. There were many things
that confused me, hence there seemed to be ‘religious’ times in my life where I
would read the Bible and do my best to follow it, then I would get confused and
think that it was all too much for me to understand. I remember talking to a
Christian girl in my math classes. I guess that gave me one reason to look
forward to math. I would ask her about things that I didn’t understand, and
whilst some explanations I could understand, others didn’t seem to be logical
enough for me to trust in Christianity 100%.
I can’t say that I have ever been comfortable living with a lot of aspects of
the Australian culture. I didn't understand for example drinking alcohol or
having multiple boyfriends. I always felt that there was a lot of pressure and
sometimes cried at the thought of ‘growing up’ because of what ‘growing up’
meant in this culture. My family traveled overseas fairly often and I always
thought that through travelling I might be able to find a country where I could
lead a comfortable life and not feel pressured like I did. After spending 3
weeks in Japan on a student exchange I decided that I wanted to go again for a
long-term exchange. In my final year of high school I was accepted to attend a
high school in Japan for the following year.
Before I left Australia to spend the year overseas I was going through one of my
‘religious stages’. I often tried to hide these stages from my parents. For some
reason I thought that they would laugh at me reading the Bible. The night before
I flew to Japan my suitcase was packed. I stayed up until my parents had gone to
sleep so I could get the Bible and pack it too. I didn’t want my parents to know
I was taking it.
My year in Japan didn’t end up the most enjoyable experience in my life by any
means. I encountered problem after problem. At the time it was difficult. I was
17 years old when I went there and I think that I learned a lot of valuable
lessons in that year. One of which was ‘things aren’t always what they seem’. At
one stage I felt as though I had lost everything - my Japanese school friends
(friends had always been very important to me, even in Australia), my Japanese
families, then I received a phone call saying that I was to be sent home to
Australia a couple of months early. I had ‘lost everything’ - including the
dream that I had held so close for so many years. The night that I received that
phone call I got out my Bible. I thought that maybe I could find some comfort in
it, and I knew that no matter what, God knew the truth about everything that
everybody does and that no amount of gossip and lies could change that. I had
always believed that hard times were never given to us to ‘stop us’, but to help
us grow. With that in mind, I was determined to stay in Japan for the whole year
and somehow try and stop the ridiculous rumours. Al-Hamdulillah[1] I was able to
do that.
From that year I came to understand that not only is every culture different,
but they both have good points and bad points. I came to understand that it
wasn’t a culture that I was searching for.. but something else.
I attended an all girls Buddhist school in Japan. We had a gathering each week
where we prayed, sang songs and listened to the principal give us lengthy talks.
At first I wasn’t comfortable attending these gatherings. I was given a copy of
the song book along with the beads that you put over your hands when you pray. I
tried to get out of going to them at the start, but then decided that I didn’t
have to place the same meaning to things as others did. When I prayed, I prayed
to the same God that I had always prayed to – the One and Only God. I can’t say
that I really understand Buddhism. Whenever I tried to find out more I met with
dead ends. I even asked a Japanese man who taught English. He had often been to
America and he said that in Japan he was Buddhist, and in America he was
Christian. There were some things about Buddhism that I found interesting, but
it wasn’t something that I could consider a religion.
In a lot of ways I picked what I liked out of religions and spiritual
philosophies and formed what I considered to be my ‘Jenny Religion’. I collected
philosophical quote after quote in high school, read into things such as the
Celestine Prophecy and Angels when I returned to Australia, and still held onto
the Christian beliefs that made sense to me. I felt like I was continually
searching for the truth.
When I returned to Australia from Japan I had grown closer to a girl that I went
to high school with. She was always somebody who I considered to be a good
friend, but wasn’t in ‘my group of friends’ whom I sat with in class or for
lunch. Some of the people in that group I haven’t heard from and haven’t seen
since I returned. I realised that this other girl and I had a lot more in common
than I had first thought. Maybe this was because I had changed a lot in Japan,
or maybe it was because I had learned that being ‘socially acceptable’ and
popular wasn’t important because the people that are making those judgements are
not always morally correct. I didn’t really care who was my friend and who
wasn’t anymore, but I did care that I was true to myself and refused to change
to suit other people. I felt like I had found who I really was by losing
everything that I had previously considered important.
The girl that I had grown closer to was Muslim, not that I thought of it at the
time. One night we sat in McDonalds, taking advantage of their ‘free refill
coffee’ offer and talked about religion, mainly in what way we believed in God.
She was the one asking the questions mostly, about how I thought God to ‘be’. I
enjoyed the discussion and felt somehow that I might be making some sense to her
with my ‘Jenny Religion’. When we got home she got out the 40 Hadith Qudsi and
read them for herself. She read some of them to me which of course got me
interested. I asked to borrow the books from her so I could sit and read them
all too, which I did. Reading the books in some ways was frightening. To me,
examples of Islam could be found in TV news reports and in books such as
‘Princess’ and ‘Not without my daughter’. Surely, I thought, the Hadith were
just a good part of it, but the bad part was there too.
From there I moved back to my university for the start of semester and couldn’t
really get the books from my friend anymore so I started looking on the
Internet. I had already ‘met’ some Muslims on the IRC but I considered them my
friends too and that they wouldn’t tell me the ‘truth’ about Islam. I thought
that they would only tell me the good parts. I did ask them some questions
though and Masha’ Allah they were a great help. I still remember asking a Muslim
guy whether he believed in angels. Angels were a part of my ‘Jenny Religion’ and
I certainly didn’t believe that a Muslim guy would admit to believing in the
existence of Angels!! My limited and ignorant understanding of a Muslim male was
one who beat his wife, killed female babies and was a terrorist in his spare
time. This sort of person couldn’t possibly believe in angels I thought.. of
course I was shocked when he said ‘Of course I believe in angels’. From then I
was interested to know what else Muslims believed in.
I often think that I initially continued reading about Islam through the
Internet to prove it wrong. I was always looking for that ‘bad part’. Everybody
couldn’t have such a bad view of Islam if there was no reason for them to. I had
always found a bad or an illogical part to every religion that I had read into..
so why would Islam be different? I remember finding an Islamic chat site for the
first time and expected to see suppressed females just reading what the males
were saying. I expected them not to have an opinion, I expected the ‘typical
Muslim girl’ that I had always felt sorry for. To my shock I saw girls happily
chatting, with opinions that they were allowed to express. Muslim girls that
were somehow more liberated than I felt.
My learning about Islam through the Internet continued through chatting to lots
of people and printing out homepage after homepage. The more I learned the more
scared I was. I didn’t tell any of my friends that I was reading about Islam,
not even my best-friend. At first it was because I didn’t want them telling me
only the ‘good parts’, and then even when I came to realise that I wasn’t going
to find any of the bad parts, I didn’t want them to get their hopes up about me
reverting to Islam. I wanted this ‘decision’ to be one that I made on my own -
without pressure.
This ‘decision’ that I refer to wasn’t really a decision at all. I am often
asked ‘What made you decide to become Muslim?’, but when something as clear and
logical as Islam is put in front of you, there is no choice. This is not to say
that it made the decision to say Shahadah[key sentence for entering Islam] any
easier. There were many things that stopped me at first. Firstly I didn’t think
that I knew enough about Islam… but then it didn’t matter because I knew that I
would never find anything that was illogical or ‘bad’. I came to realise that
saying Shahadah is not the final step, but the first. Insha-Allah throughout my
life I will continue to learn. The other thing that made me hesitant, was
turning the meaning of the word ‘Islam’ from all the bad things that I had
linked with it. I always thought that I couldn’t possibly be Muslim!! To then
learn that my ‘Jenny Religion’ and beliefs for example of God being One, was
actually Islam was hard at first. Islam brought everything together, everything
made sense. To me, finding Islam was like one big bus ride – I had stopped and
had a look at all of the stops along the way, taken a bit from all of them, and
continued on with the journey. When I found Islam I knew it was the ‘last stop’
of my long ride.
In October of 1997, my best friend came with me for me to say my Shahadah at an
Islamic Centre in Melbourne (Jeffcott st). I was still scared at the time, but
after one of the sisters going through the articles of faith, and me putting a
mental tick next to each of them, I knew that there was nothing left to do but
to say it with my mouth. I still cry when I think of the moment that I said
‘Yes.. I’ll do it’. I finally dropped the mental wall that had been stopping me.
I was to repeat in Arabic after the sister. With her first word I cried. It is a
feeling that I can’t explain. My friend was sitting beside but a little behind
me, I didn’t realise it then but she was already crying. I felt so much power
around me and in the words, but I myself felt so weak.
Sometimes I think my family wonder if this is a phase I am going through.. just
like my other phases. I was even vegetarian until mum told me what was for
dinner that night - a roast. There is still so much for me to learn, but one
thing that I would like people to understand is that I know, Al-Hamdulillah,
that Islam is a blessing for mankind. The more you learn, Insha Allah, the more
beauty you will see in Islam.
Your sister in Islam,
Jenny
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