{"id":282,"date":"2012-07-15T12:48:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-15T10:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/web\/?p=282"},"modified":"2012-07-15T12:48:32","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T10:48:32","slug":"richard-leiman-ex-jew-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/?p=282","title":{"rendered":"Richard Leiman, Ex-Jew, USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a child, I always had access to a short-wave radio.\u00a0 I used to listen to the BBC World Service about the Middle East.\u00a0 I also loved the music from that part of the world, and I probably was listening to the Quran being recited, but did not know it at the time.<\/p>\n

As I grew older, I continued to listen to the BBC World Service.\u00a0 Back then, they had a program called Words of Faith in which they had a five- to eight-minute talk given by a different religious speaker each day of the week representing all the major religions in the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Out of all the speakers, the Muslims were the ones I loved listening to most.<\/p>\n

Every time the Muslim representative spoke, I wanted to find out more about Islam.\u00a0 My impression of the religion was that the person who practices Islam is a happy person, not like the mean people portrayed by the American media.\u00a0 I just refused to believe people that loved Allah so much could be like the people portrayed by the media.\u00a0 Because I come from a Jewish background, the thing that united me with Islam was the belief that Allah had no partners.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Work in the United Kingdom<\/h2>\n

An important time in my life came when I met a real Muslim, but did not know it yet.\u00a0 I was doing contracting computer programming work in New York State when I had a strong urge to visit the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

I visited London and loved it.\u00a0 During my visit, I went to several employment agencies without luck.\u00a0 One of the agencies gave me several trade magazines.\u00a0 When I arrived back in the States, I started to send more CV\u2019s to companies and other agencies listed in the magazines.\u00a0 I returned to the United Kingdom because one of the companies wanted to interview me.\u00a0 Then I started to visit more companies and agencies until I landed a position even though I was on a visitor\u2019s visa.<\/p>\n

The company that hired me applied for a work permit for me and the Department of Employment told me that I had to leave the country in order for the paperwork to be processed.\u00a0 Again, I went back to the States.\u00a0 Another agency obtained a temporary work permit and employed me for a company called LogoTech, which, at that time, was located in Egham, Surrey.<\/p>\n

Meeting a Real Muslim for the First Time<\/h2>\n

Some time after I started working at LogoTech, I found out that my supervisor, Anis Karim, was Muslim.\u00a0 I asked him if he knew how I could get a copy of the Quran.\u00a0 To my surprise, he obtained a copy of the Quran for me within a few days.\u00a0 He also asked me to pledge that I would have a bath before I read from the Quran[1]<\/a> and that I would never show it to anyone who might make blasphemous remarks about it.<\/p>\n

The next day, I took my morning bath and made breakfast.\u00a0 Then, while eating breakfast, I started to read.\u00a0 Later I found out that \u201cread\u201d is what Allah had the Angel Gabriel instruct our beloved Prophet to do, even though he could not read or write!<\/p>\n

Well, words can\u2019t describe how I felt when I read just that small portion of the world\u2019s most holy book.\u00a0 It took only 10 pages, when, at that point, I told myself that this religion was for me.\u00a0 This occurred around 1990.\u00a0 The more I read, the more I wanted to know, and I loved what I was reading.<\/p>\n

At the time, I did not know anything about how to pray or any of the details of Islam.\u00a0 If Anis had invited me to go the masjid in London, I would have gone with him.\u00a0 The only thing I knew about praying to Allah was the prostration position.\u00a0 At the time, I knew that Muslims prayed several times a day, and so I started to do so at night before I went to bed and in the morning when I woke up.<\/p>\n

Back to the States Again<\/h2>\n

When the work permit ran out, I had to return to the States and was unemployed for several years.\u00a0 I visited my father in Huntsville, Alabama, and created a database application for him.\u00a0 I saw that Huntsville was a high-tech cosmopolitan city and decided to try to land a programming position there.\u00a0 My father told me that if I did not get a position, I would have to go back to New Jersey to my mother, who had moved from New York to New Jersey.\u00a0 About a fortnight before I was going to go back to New Jersey, I landed a programming position at a company in Huntsville.<\/p>\n

My First Trip to a Masjid<\/h2>\n

My sister and I were planning a trip to Indonesia because we had a pen pal on the Internet.\u00a0 My sister asked me if I could help her find Islamic jewelry as a gift.\u00a0 At that time I had no idea that there were Muslims in Huntsville.<\/p>\n

Then Allah put things into place for me.\u00a0 I remembered that there was a shop called Crescent Imports, which I thought was run by Muslims.\u00a0 It was not.\u00a0 It was run by the group called Nation of Islam.\u00a0 Now here is the strange part that only Allah could have arranged.\u00a0 We spoke to the owner of the shop and told him that we wanted to find Islamic jewelry.\u00a0 He directed us to the Huntsville Islamic Center.<\/p>\n

I do thank Allah for having them direct me to the masjid.\u00a0 We went to the building, but there was only one car parked there.\u00a0 I spoke to a man in the car, and he told us that we should speak to the imam about where to find the jewelry.\u00a0 I was still afraid to go into the building because for me, it was such a sacred place.<\/p>\n

At the moment, I remembered one day when I saw a lady at work wearing a hijab.\u00a0 I told her about accepting Islam personally and she said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you visit the masjid in Huntsville?\u201d \u00a0I eventually went back to the masjid after I summed up enough courage to go into that sacred place.<\/p>\n

I spoke to the imam, and he invited me to perform salah with the Muslim brothers.\u00a0 This was a turning point in my life.\u00a0 I loved it and started to visit the masjid once a week at night.\u00a0 Then I started to visit it several times a week at night.\u00a0 The urge to come more times was stronger and I now perform most of my prayers at the masjid, except `Asr and Maghrib prayers when I am at work.<\/p>\n

I Officially Accepted Islam<\/h2>\n

In November of 1996, I publicly made Shahadah.\u00a0 At work, I pray Zhuhr and Asr by myself or with other Muslim brothers in a small mosque in my work place.\u00a0 I proudly carry my prayer rug in the hallways at my work in an attempt to get people to ask me what they are.\u00a0 When they do ask me about it, I tell them that I am Muslim and the mats are what I use to pray on.\u00a0 Also, my work area, including my computer, is decorated with Islamic artwork.\u00a0 My background on my computer is usually the Ka`bah or our masjid.<\/p>\n

Now that I am a Muslim, there is no turning back to disbelief!<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n
\n

Footnotes:<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> Although this is not something recommended, this Muslim happened to think so \u2013 IslamReligion<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a child, I always had access to a short-wave radio.\u00a0 I used to listen to the BBC World Service about the Middle East.\u00a0 I also loved the music from that part of the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36,275],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-muslim","tag-convertd","tag-new-muslim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}