<\/p>\n
I grew up in a dysfunctional family setting in the atmosphere of alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse that came from my father.\u00a0 Without a positive father figure, I was basically developing antisocial behavior and an inclination to violence.<\/p>\n
By Clinton Sipes<\/p>\n
I began to imitate what I was being exposed to, this process of imitation began unconsciously. \u00a0It affected my interaction with my older brother, classmates, teachers and animals also.\u00a0 Nothing was exempt from the sadistic outpouring of pent up anger and rage!<\/p>\n
At the age of 13, I fell into association with similar children, but because they weren\u2019t as driven as I was, I quickly became bored with them. \u00a0I began to hang out with the young adult type who welcomed my willingness to participate with no reservations in anything under the title of alcohol, drugs, crime, violence and racism.\u00a0 The period of reform school (adolescent jail) began, and that environment also shaped me, refining crime inclination to a full time skill.\u00a0 Violence and racism were honed to razor sharpness…an environment of negativity that fueled my growing rage and hatred of authority, blacks, Jews and Asians.\u00a0 After 3 years of this (reform period) I was released.\u00a0 I was a walking grenade.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Searching for a point of focus to release this rage I became association with paramilitary racist group of young adults.\u00a0 I participated in regular assaults on people and engaged in various criminal activities.\u00a0 At 16, I found myself incarcerated serving a 6 1\/2 year sentence in the California Youth Authority for robbery, assault and weapons charges.\u00a0 Immediately I feel in step with the gangs of \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d \u00a0and cultivated my rage and anger into pure \u201cHate\u201d of all people who were not \u201cAnglo Saxon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I began correspondence with the KKK, and upon my release on parole, I was a full fledged card carrying hate-monger.\u00a0 For the next 3 to 4 years, my activities were heavily involved in Klan cross-burnings, media appearances, night raids of beatings, property desecrations, etc.\u00a0 My parole was violated for possession of weapons and suspicion of robberies.<\/p>\n
This last violation of parole, at the age of 20, the search for peace began.\u00a0 I had so much rage and hatred inside me for so many years, it was beginning to consume me from the inside out.\u00a0 I lashed out at the prison staff in hatred.\u00a0 I had anger and hate literature, graffiti, drawings covering my cell walls and tattoos covering half my upper body.\u00a0 I was not exploding, but imploding!<\/p>\n
In a haze of anger and rage, I found myself stripped naked in solitary confinement with not even a mattress.\u00a0 Only me and a styrofoam cup.\u00a0 I began to review my past and the negatives which brought me to this point of reduction to the lowest terms.<\/p>\n
While I was there my daughter was born.\u00a0 I began to assess my future.\u00a0 I began thinking of the many victims\u2019 lives I had affected.\u00a0 I could see myself in prison for life if this past were to continue into the future.\u00a0 I said to myself, \u201cClint, you must make a choice between this evil or a future good.\u201d \u00a0It was clear to me there was no future (of longevity) in this evil.\u00a0 My family – mother, girlfriend, brothers – were afraid of me.\u00a0 I had become alienated from them.\u00a0 I began searching for a purity to purge the cancer of hate from inside me.\u00a0 I wanted to be loved and to love in a pure sense.\u00a0 I just didn\u2019t want to \u201cHate\u201d anymore.<\/p>\n
I moved to Montana and was arrested for burglary. \u00a0I was sentenced and served 2 1\/2 years of a 5-year sentence, and was then released on parole, which I successfully completed.<\/p>\n
I became involved with human rights groups and I started my own human rights group, C.H.E.R.E. (Children Escaping Racist Environments).\u00a0 My goal was to reach out to children to help them escape the environmental circumstances that had overwhelmed me once.\u00a0 I wanted to give back where I was once the problem, but I was still involved in crime.\u00a0 I took part in possession of explosives and was arrested by the federal government and sentenced to 35 months in federal prison.<\/p>\n
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It began upon my arrival to federal prison.\u00a0 An African American offered to assist me in my cosmetic needs.\u00a0 He said he was a Muslim, and Muslims are commanded to help those in need.\u00a0 It struck my interest to check this Islamic thing out.\u00a0 However, I was under the impression that this was a religion exclusively for African Americans.\u00a0 I was thinking, no way I can become a Muslim, I\u2019m white!<\/p>\n
Still, I asked this brother for some literature on Islam.\u00a0 I found out about the universality of it, how it transcends color, ethnicity and race.\u00a0 It sounded real and pure.\u00a0 It began to appeal to me.\u00a0 This brother invited me to Jumu\u2019ah (Friday) service. I was given a Quran, and as I read the translation, I felt the purity and truth of it.\u00a0 There was no hocus-pocus, no spookism, no mysticism, just plain, simple understanding of the \u201cTruth.\u201d \u00a0When I heard the Adhan (the call to prayer) I felt a closeness to God that penetrated my heart and soul.<\/p>\n
After some research and study of the Quran, I discovered its total infallibility, no contradictions in it.<\/p>\n
There are religions based on believing in certain sciences, multiple deities, the religion of 3 gods in one.\u00a0 I was a thinking man, and none of them made any logical sense to me.<\/p>\n
Here was Islam, based on the belief in One God who created the creation itself out of nothing, and the fact that this book I was reading (Quran) had not one vowel or language changed in over 1400 years was a miracle in itself.\u00a0 Thus, I was sold on the oneness of God and the unity of Islam.<\/p>\n
Christianity has and is still undergoing changes, in the Bible and in the Christian doctrines, and cannot even begin to claim originality of the Bible which is read and taught out of today.<\/p>\n
There is only one God and one Religion, and religion is \u201c Submission\u201d \u00a0to the one God.\u00a0 This is the meaning of Islam.<\/p>\n
As you have read, the life of Clinton Sipes was one of hate, crime and violence, the very things that bring about the total destruction of a human being.<\/p>\n
After years of falsehood, half-truths, following others on the road, and then, from within a place (prison) where more than one million people are cast away, the same environment that once honed my anger and hate to a razor sharpness was now the place where Islam greeted me and proceeded to change me into a \u201cServant of [the Source of] Peace.\u201d \u00a0Islam filled the spiritual void by teaching me my beginning and end, has given contentment, a peace, a serenity to me these words cannot adequately describe.\u00a0 My purpose is clear, my direction is straight.<\/p>\n
Islam has, through its truth, taught me humility and the true worship of God.\u00a0 I had learned that from God we came and to God we must return.\u00a0 God created all things animate and inanimate, microscopic and macroscopic, the finite and infinite.\u00a0 Nothing creates itself but is created by God.<\/p>\n
On the last day, it will not matter if I was black or white, rich or poor, powerful or weak in power, nor will it matter about all mankind.\u00a0 Rather it will be about one\u2019s deeds good and bad that an individual is personally responsible for and will be punished and rewarded accordingly.\u00a0 No one can die or be punished for my sins or be rewarded for the good I may do but me.\u00a0 I am responsible, I must answer when asked.\u00a0 I became aware of this truth and I declared openly, \u201cThere is no god but God and his last messenger was Prophet Muhammad-Ibn-Abdullah-Al-Mustafa.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, in essence, my life has returned to infancy where truth and purity begin!<\/p>\n
In closing, the metamorphosis has now come full circle.\u00a0 I have found \u201cTruth\u201d in God (all praises to Him, creator of mankind, angel and jinn, all that exists in the heavens and earth).\u00a0 God (Whom all praise is due) has [many] names or attributes, one attribute is Salam (peace).<\/p>\n
The Creator, Originator of the very existence of peace.\u00a0 There is no peace but the Peace of God (Whom all praise is due).\u00a0 I have found this Peace, I am now \u201cAbdus Salam,\u201d \u00a0the slave and servant of The Originator of the one and only source of Peace…God, The Most High, Whom all praise is due.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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