Hello and Assalamu alaykoum,
My name is Muneera (formerly known as Debbie), I was raised in a non-conservative Mennonite home, I paid my way through Bible College in Manitoba when I was 21, and I worked in a palliative care and surgical/rehabilitation unit in a hospital in Ontario for five years. I also lived my share of the "party" life before I came to where I am today.
I was brought up to view religion as a private aspect of life. You pray at night and sometimes before meals, go to church on Sundays and try to be a nice and honest person. As a Christian I was taught that after "inviting Jesus into your heart" you were "saved". After you are "saved" your "safe" and pretty much guaranteed to go to Heaven.
When I went to Bible College, I learned where the Bible came from and how it became what we read today. How it's interpretation had changed through translation, and how certain events in history changed its contents. This was discouraging since, as Christians you base your whole life and being into this book. I was more discouraged when any questions I had were all answered with "you must have faith", and "any doubts you have is from Satan". The conclusion I came to was, I would have to study and learn Hebrew and Greek (what the original texts were written in), and go and live my life like Mother Theresa - the only way I saw to truly live your life as a Christian. The problem was that I was beginning to question the authenticity of the Bible as a whole.
I dropped out of Bible College and moved with my parents to Ontario. After a few years of doubting and unanswered questions, I began to see the world through the eyes of a bitter atheist. I couldn't understand how people continued to believe in something blindly, not realizing how much the Bible had been changed.
It was after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq that I became interested in what billions of people in the Middle East and around the world believe. I could see that these people truly lived every aspect of their lives according to Islam. I knew all the propaganda about Islam on the news was false, since the US invaded Iraq for no legitimate reason, other than securing their precious resources. I began researching Islam for the first time last year and saw almost immediately that this was the truth. The very fact that the Qur'an has not and cannot be changed, how Islam forbids you to believe in anything you cannot prove, and you're commanded to seek knowledge and question everything. It is everything I wanted in Christianity including guidance on how to live every aspect of your life. It was then that I began practicing Islam.
Over the past year I have become more politically aware of what is really going on around the world, not sheltered under the umbrella of the west. I am frustrated at how unaware most people in North America are of the political situation around the world. How America, Britain, and France have colonized most of the world, cut it up into pieces and put tyrants into power who have instilled false national pride into the people, causing brutal civil wars. Just look at the example of what happened in Rwanda, and what is now happening in Iraq between the sunni's and Shia's.
This will be the objective of my blog. I will attempt to reveal my perspective, as a new Muslim to the current political and social situations around the world.
Thank you for reading and enjoy.
