How and Why I Became a Muslim

When people meet me, they are often curious about how and why Muslims born in America become a Muslim. I have been a Muslim for about forty years and people still ask me how I became a Muslim, as if I became a Muslim yesterday. This questioning not only occurs in the United States from non-Muslims, but also and more so in Muslim countries from Muslims. Giving a clear answer to people much younger than I is often difficult since my conversion was in many ways a product of the times and events that occurred when I was growing up. The remainder of this article describes the times and narrates the events that influenced my converting to Islam.

June 1969, about a week before the Fourth of July, I accepted the belief that there was a complete way of life originating from the Creator. By bearing witness "that there is nothing worthy of worship except God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God" I accepted the belief that there was a spiritual, political, economic, and social system stemming from God. My acceptance of Islam occurred after meeting some visitors from Philadelphia at a local place of prayer, Masjid al-Mu'mineen on Superior Avenue, in Cleveland, Ohio. It was somewhat mystical that a week prior to that, I had made up my mind to search for an ideology that was not limited by nationalism or racial origin and not limited to ritual acts of worship. I had decided to start researching the scriptures of the world's religions and to compile the truths from them to form a complete way of life. I had no idea that a week later my quest would end in success almost before it began.

Some two years before making a commitment to embark on the search for a new world ideology and way of life, I had accepted the concept of black nationalism. After a year as a college student at an almost totally white college, after coming from an almost totally black community and high school, American patriotism was not for me. American patriotism was nothing more than white supremacy. After taking a course on the Old and New Testament, Christianity was not for me. Christianity was limited to spiritual practices and limited by scriptural questions and doubts, white racism and black pacifism. My focus became "black pride," "black power," and "black is beautiful." After the Los Angeles Watts Riots of 1965, the Cleveland Hough Riots of the summer of 1966, the Newark and Detroit Riots of 1967, the struggle against racial and economic injustice would no longer be the exclusive domain of non-violent, Christian Negro activists. New organizations formed to harness the emotions and energies of the young black masses. Under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael in 1966 and H "Rap" Brown in 1967, SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) renounced non-violence and took up the banner of black nationalism and black power. Under the leadership of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 to defend the black community against police violence and later adopted a Marxist, Maoist philosophy. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), around since 1942, under the leadership of Floyd McKissick in 1966 changed its integrationist, nonviolent philosophy to one of black nationalism and black power. In 1965 Ron Karenga founded US, a cultural black nationalist organization. In 1968 brothers Milton and Richard Henry founded the Republic of New African (RNA), a black separatist group. Though Cleveland was home to only two of these national black nationalist groups, CORE and the Black Panther Party, it had its own homegrown black nationalist groups. They included the Afro Set, Pride Inc., and the House of Israel under Rabbi David Hill.

Under the influence of the rise of black nationalism, black power, and black pride, black college students began forming black student nationalist organizations known as black student unions. In 1967 I helped found the Ohio Wesleyan University black student union known as SUBA (the Student Union on Black Awareness). It followed the path of non-student civil rights organizations in its rejection of white leadership and assimilation with white society. Ohio Wesleyan University's Student Committee On Racial Equality (SCORE) under the leadership of the white liberal organization of the YMCA and YWCA was rejected. Black students on almost every prodominantly white college in Ohio began forming black student unions to the point that a statewide association of black student unions was formed. Two years of struggle under SUBA against white assimilation was about to come to an end for me with my last year of college approaching. That's when I concluded that it was time to focus on joining a non-student organization promoting black nationalism. That's also when I started looking at black nationalist organizations in Cleveland in the summer of 1969.

As previously mentioned, I was not interested in American nationalism, which is the upholding of white supremacy. Two events occurred in 1969 that made me question and eventually abandon black nationalism. First, at UCLA conflicts between two black nationalist organizations, the US Organization led by Ron Karenga, and the Black Panthers resulted in the shooting deaths of two Panthers by two members of the US Organization on Jan. 17, 1969. This was no example for black people to follow. The event made me recall listening to Ron Karenga at he National Black Power Convention in Philadelphia in 1968 in which he criticized black nationalist leaders for their air of being blacker than thou. Most of the leaders had multiple bodyguards and seemed to promote personality cults. This was no example for black people to follow. Ron Karenga mentioned that if these groups wanted to prove that they were "tough," they could easily confront one of Philadelphia's finest. For some reason his followers forgot that message in their confrontation with the Panthers. Second, just when I was trying to decide what non-student group I might join after graduating from college, lightning struck again. Once again the Black Panthers were involved in a deadly dispute with another black nationalist organization. On June 4, 1969 a Panther was shot to death and two were wounded by Afro Set members. One Afro Set member was wounded. In another confrontation eight to ten Afro Set members attacked three Panthers. The headquarters of each group were fired upon. It was alleged at the time that the shootings resulted from a girl friend of the Prime Minister of Afro Set leaving him and joining the Panthers. Other versions of the incident are reported in an article on the "Cleveland Black Panthers 1969" reported by It's About Time. This incident coupled with the "black-er than thou" vibe of black nationalist group members was too much to stomach. I decided that nationalism by any color or ethnic group was not a universal, objective solution to world problems. The murder of Martin Luther King in 1968 and the My Lai Massacre of 1969 confirmed my views about American patriotism. Nationalism is afflicted with the human frailties of being ethnocentric and biased. Any manmade ideology is by its very nature biased and defective. Although some, like my father, may consider religion to be a manmade ideology, I have always been religious, believed in God and religious scriptures and had a distain for the arrogance of human beings. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I do not readily accept the opinions of others regardless of how many of them hold that opinion. So, I concluded that the solution to world problems-social, political, economic, and spiritual-laid in discovering what guidelines the Creator has revealed concerning politics, economics, culture, and worship.

In June 1969, about a week before the Fourth of July, after some Muslim brothers from Philadelphia informed me that Islam was a spiritual, political, economic, and social system revealed by God, I recognized that my search had come to an end. I felt that there was no longer any need to search the scriptures of the world religions of Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity. The scripture containing those activities, the scripture encompassing the truths in previous scriptures, the scripture I needed to understand was the Qur'an. In the back of my mind I was open to the possibility that what I had been told and accepted may not be true, but I would continue on the path until I discovered it not to be true. Some forty years later, after obtaining a Ph.D. specializing in Islamic Studies and living in Muslim countries for five years, I have been thoroughly convinced that Islam is the truth, Islam is the way, Islam is the answer.