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I was born in Jamaica, which is an Island in the Caribbean, on the shores of Central America. I was born into a Christian family, my mother was an Anglican and my father a Presbyterian. At that time, my grandfather was one of the leading church scholars in Jamaica.

    At the age of 11, I migrated with my family to Canada, so I don't have many recollections about religion, except for when my siblings and I used to go to church. Our parents used to give each of us a penny, we were instructed to place the penny into a donation plate, which was circulated around while we were in the church. As a child I found this quite strange. I would have preferred to use the penny to buy some candy, but my parents were around, so I couldn't put it in my pocket.

    What had left the biggest impression on me while growing up in Canada in my primary and secondary education, is having to go swimming naked. All the way through junior high school and high school, all the boys had to go swimming naked. I felt shy about it and couldn't really understand why we had to do it, but this is what we had to do. Much later in life I found out that there was a philosophy behind it. It was something being introduced as a means of breaking down the feeling of shyness that people naturally hold to exposing themselves in front of others. And it was a product of the Darwinian approach to sociology, wherein feeling of shyness are looked at as being signs of sickness.

    With regards to Christianity in my primary and secondary education, Christianity was basically Sunday school. It was also a place where we met girls and arranged parties, etc. So in terms of religious instructions, I guess it was present, but most of us as young people, were oblivious to it.

    My only exposure to Islam at that time was in some of the cartoons that I watched. They gave an image of an Arab riding on a camel with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other, with the basic idea that either you accept the Quran or you lose your head. Also I can recollect a song called ‘Ahab the Arab, sheek of the burning sands’, which is supposed to have been ‘Ehab the Arab, Sheikh of the burning sands’. The only reading material that I can remember was the ‘1001 Nights’, which is basically a book of pornography, about the sexual lives of the sultans and caliphs.

    After completing high school, my family and I traveled to Malaysia. Both of my parents were teachers and they came to Malaysia to join the Colombo plan. This project was to help the Malaysian government in their educational program. In Malaysia, the majority of my friends were expatriates and I could honestly say that there were no visible signs of Islam in the society. Years after becoming a Muslim and on making Hajj, I encountered a number of women in Makkah and Madeenah wearing white coverings and they looked similar to the people that I saw in Malaysia. I then asked a few of my friends who these people were and they said that they were from Malaysia. I was very surprised because I had never seen women like that in Malaysia. My friends then explained to me that in Malaysia, women didn't dress like that but they would carry their Islamic dress in a bag to the mosque. All the time I had spent in Malaysia, I had never seen these white garments covering their hands and bodies because people didn't wear it openly in the society.

My Way To Islam (Text Version) Part One
Transcribed & Edited Version

My Way To Islam Audio lectures (1 2 Q & A)

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