By Darlene Jiadi
The light of Islam entered my heart when I was thirty-five years old, almost twenty-five years ago. Alḥamdulillāh. The doorway into Islam for me was meeting my then-future husband, Jamal. I didn’t know much at all about his religion, but there was something about his soul and approach to me as a woman that piqued my curiosity from day one. I am a reader and natural researcher, so when he told me he was Muslim at our first meeting, and I liked him very much, I went out to find books to learn about Islam. Luckily, Allah ﷻ led me to good books, and I sat down with the intention of opening my heart to any wisdom within the pages that I might receive. What I found surprised and excited me!
You see, I was raised in a small town in the Midwestern United States, in a Christian denomination called the Holiness Church. I was rather religious as a young teenager and attempted to adopt the faith fully, following all of the many rules to express piety, and I even considered becoming a missionary. This denomination held many beliefs about lifestyle that were in harmony with parts of Islam—daily prayers, reading and reflection, modest dressing, and lifestyle guidance, including limiting television and music not of a religious nature, no alcohol consumption, and other things. My parents did not attend this church and were not religious; my aunt took me there. So when they saw that I had become more practicing than they were comfortable with in our household, they forbade me from going there, which broke my heart at the time. But alḥamdulillāh, Allah is the best of planners.
Fast forward to my journey learning about Islam: Many of the beliefs and values we hold as Muslims innately made sense to me. Most importantly, I was never fully convinced of the Trinity in Christianity, and the concept of tawhid articulated what I had felt in my heart my whole life—that God is One Supreme Being, with no partners and no human “god.” This understanding alone was enough to convince me of the truth of Islam. I also loved knowing that the words in the Qur’an have been preserved in their original form from the very beginning, handed down over the generations with complete accuracy, and this connects us firmly to the time of the revelation—subḥān Allāh! Having the solid strength of this silsila at our backs provides a certainty that no other revelation can match.
My journey in Islam has had its ups and downs over the years, as we are all human, but at the heart of it, it has been a journey of joy and growth in the sure knowledge of who my Creator is and why I am here on this earth—to worship Allah ﷻ in everything I do. Ṣalla Allāhu ʿalā sayyidina Muḥammad, waʿalā āli Muḥammad for being the vessel for bringing this knowledge to the world and sharing it with us. Āmeen thumma āmeen.