Why Did They Become Muslims

a devoted Catholic, my mother wished that we be raised with a
Catholic education. I had very deep respect for religion. I believed
in the fact that religion was the most important guide both in
individual life and in social life.
My family had frequent foreign relations. My father had made
many journeys in his youth, and therefore he had numerous
foreign friends. Consequently, we had respect for other races,
civilizations and religions. Without discriminating one person from
another, we respected every nation, every race and, in short, every
individual. I considered myself not as a Polish citizen, but also as a
citizen of the entire world.
My family held moderate views concerning temporal matters.
Although my father was a born aristocrat and therefore must have
been a person without any practical skills, he hated laziness and
inactivity, and recommended that everybody should have a job.
He was totally against dictatorship. Yet he would never approve a
social revolution that would demolish the world’s order. He had
deep respect for traditions coming from earlier times. He was
against their being degenerated. In short, my father was a
modernized and moderate prototype of the knights of the Middle
Ages. The liberal education that my father had given me had
made me a researcher and I had embarked on a research into
social matters. The world had quite a number of social, political
and economical problems that awaited solution. What had to be
done to solve them and to find the right path? I saw that humanity
had been parted into two polar opposites in those matters.
Capitalism on the one side, and communism on the other. In other
words oppression and terror on the one side, and a thoroughly
uncontrolled society on the other. These two opposites would
have to be brought together and integrated into a moderate
system so that the entire humanity could attain peace and
happiness. In my opinion, the human society would have to be
based on essentials that were liberal, but at the same time
disciplined, in conformity with today’s conditions, but at the same
time respectful of the old customs. As a person who had been
educated with the principles of ‘walking exactly on the
intermediate path’, it was natural for me to think so. We were
nicknamed ‘Progressive Traditionalists’.
By the time I became sixteen years old, I had already begun to
wonder whether the Catholic religion could establish those
essentials. Subsequently I examined the Catholic religion more
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