قصة إسلام الدكتور /وديع أحمد

Dr :Wa'dee, a former deacon, reverts to Islam

Praise be to Allah that I became a Muslim, in fact my journey to Islam started so early.
when I was still young, my doubts about Christianity were so strong when I was a mature young man. I will bring to light some incidents that happened in my childhood and youth stage and that led me to Islam.
Childhood stage
My father was a preacher, affiliated to the association of the Holy Book, his main goal was to evangelize in the nearby villages where the poor Muslims worked.
My father insisted that I should be a deacon. Though I was still six; I attended the church lessons, usually given on Sundays.
The oft-repeated lessons that we received were:
Muslims conquered Egypt and tortured its Christian aboriginals.
Muslims are heathen, much worse than the adherents of Buddha and even much more bad than cow worshippers
The Holy Quran is not a Divine Book and that Muhammad invented it.
Muslims persecute the Christians to enforce them to leave Egypt.
Many other black seeds were planted in our minds at that time.
At this early age, father used to talk to us about the deviation of the church from the true Christianity, which banned icons, statues and prostrating to the leaders of the church.
The stage of youth ( The maturation of the black rancor)
I have been qualified as a teacher for the deacons, I was eighteen years old, my job included many other programmes, among which visiting monasteries periodically especially in summer. In these monasteries Christians scholars are invited to give lectures on how to criticize Islam; they would for example say:
The Holy Quran is replete with contradictions; to furnish their sayings they would use a half of a verse without completing it to distort its meaning, an example of this:
"Don't approach the prayers…"
They would also misinterpret words such as" Ne'kah", this word means in Arbic" marriage" but they interpret it as " adultery"
Also they claim that the Holy Quran has borrowed its teachings from Christianity and that Muahammas( SAW) has learned the Holy Quran at the hand of the monk Bohyra and that later Muhammad killed him so that people could not know anything about this matter.
They would mock the prophet , many of his sayings and the Holy Quran.
Embarrassing questions:
At that time I, along with my friends, used to pose such question to the high priests to answer, for example:
What is your opinion about Muhammad?
The priest:
He is astute and genius.
Me:
But there are many geniuses in history, why did many people follow Muhammad and still do while they did not follow those historical geniuses?! Why his religion is the fastest expanding religion in the world.
The priest tries to fumble for answer but in vain.
What is your opinion about the Holy Quran?
The Priest: It is a good book, contains many stories about the prophet but is replete with errors.
Why do you proscribe reading it and deem whoever touches or read it an infidel?
The priest insists that whoever reads it is infidel without giving good reasons.
If Muhammad had been an imposter, why wouldn't God have finished him though it is written in the Holy Book( Armenia ) that God promised to finish who ever claims prophet- hood along with his family within just a year.
The Priest:
Perhaps God wants to test the Christians.
Puzzling questions
In 1971 the patriarch Shounoda issued an order for the priest Rofa'eel not to lead people in prayers simply because he didn't mention his name (Shounoda )in the prayer, Samouel, another priest, tried to convince the patriarch that he was just praying worshipping God, but he feared that the patriarch would excommunicate him, too.
The Monk Samouel commented on such strange decision by posing this question:
Can the Sheik of Azhar( similar position to the job of the patriarch in Islam) prevent anyone from praying?! Impossible.
What really confounds me is that a each Christian sect charge the other of infidelity, I asked the priest Metas about this and he affirmed that saying that this is God's will.
I asked him" Does this mean that we are unbelievers simply because the Pope in Roma think so?!
Yes, we are
And does this mean that all the other sects are unbelievers because the patriarch in Alex think so?
Yes they are.
So what is our situation on the Last Day?
May Allah be merciful to all of us.
My conversion to Islam
It happened that I was in the church looking at the statue of Jesus, I wondered how can this whom people humiliated and tortured be a god?
I should worship the lord of this weak man, I was confounded when I read in Deuteronomy that the Cross and whoever was hanged on it is also cursed( Deuteronomy 21:22-23)
In 1981, I spent most of my time debating with my Muslim neighbors, one day one of them was talking about justice in Islam( heritage, divorce, retribution)
He asked me if there are any parallels in Christianity?
I answered:
"No, there are not."
I began to wonder:
How could a man( the Prophet Muhammad) , just a simple man, living in the desert in the seventh century bring such a perfect system of law?
Also I wondered how milliards of Jews and Christians couldn't, through the span of history, prove that he was an imposter.
During the period between (1982-1990), I used listen to Muslims colleagues in the hospital discussing the prophetic words; in the beginning I felt jealous but I eventually abandoned myself to these discussions, I was overwhelmed by such polysmous prophetic words that are miraculously, though very few, phrased and has a lot of meanings … I began to believe that this man must be a prophet.
Did father converted to Islam?
Among the hidden factors that led me to Islam was my father; he left the church, he left preaching and many other things altogether .
He, towards the end of his life, refused to kiss the hands of the priests- something awful in Christianity.
He never believed ( in bread and wine), i.e, Jesus incarnation.
He didn't go to the church any more in the morning and instead he got up late at noon, had a shower and went out at the time of the Muslim prayer.
At the afternoon prayer( Al'asar), he used to seek excuses to go out and he didn't come back until it was late after the Muslim night prayer( Al'asha)
He prevented my sisters from going to the hairdresser.
He began to say Muslim words which are completely alien to the Christian words such as I seek refuge with God against the devil and so many.
Later after his death and while I was going through his Bible, I found pieces of paper on which he recorded some biblical errors and contradiction.
While looking at his library, I found my grandfather's bible which was printed in 1930, I noticed that he, too, recorded some remarks, among which the change of the word" master to my Lord", an attempt to convince people that the worship of Jesus was as early as his birth.
The way to the Mosque
On my way back home, there is a mosque. It happened that when I was back home that I had a look inside it; there weren't any thing similar to that in the church; no decorations, no paintings, no pictures, no musical instruments, no singing or clapping. Nothing there but praying to God, all people stand in successive rows, the poor beside the rich, the simple people beside the nobles. I compared what inside the church to that in the mosque but the mosque always won.
In the light of the Holy Quran
I decided to buy the Holy Quran to read, I read it in just two days, I was I afraid that I found contradictions like that I found in the Holy Book, I found out that what they taught us in the church was a big hoax. I was overwhelmed by a verse in which the One ( God) Who was addressing Muhammad told him that he ( Muhammad) would die… Who could say that but God?!
I prayed to God to guide me
It was a cold night in which I stayed up late praying to God to guide me, I put the Holy Quran aside and I slept. I had a dream at that night; the whole of the room was illuminated by a strong light, suddenly a man appeared, his face was shinning with light, he came closer to me and pointed to the Holy Quran, I stretched my hand to touch but he disappeared, I had a strong feeling that he was the Prophet Muhammad, he just wanted to say that the Holy Quran is the way of guidance.
I decided to embrace Islam, I left my home, it was six in the morning, I passed by the church, I entered and addressed the decorations, the statues there, I said,
"I am now going to where I would declare that I converted to Islam, if I am wrong, show any sign or any miracle but no reply."
I cried my eyes for the days I wasted but I felt that my tears purified me from polytheism.