Why Did They Become Muslims

turn made me realize that they had been looking at the world and
the events taking place in the world from angles quite dissimilar
to those of Europeans. I must acknowledge that their extremely
dignified and composed attitude towards the events, and their
approach that was much more humanistic than our own, began to
stir up my interest. I was from a fanatical Catholic family.
Throughout my childhood I had been inculcated with the belief
that Muslims were irreligious people worshipping the devil. When
I came into contact with Muslims I realized that they had been
lying to me and I decided to study the Islamic religion. I acquired
a number of books written on this subject. When I began to read
these books with close attention, I saw in amazement how pure
and how valuable a religion it was. Yet the manners and
behaviours of some Muslims I had been in contact with did not
conform to the Islamic principles that I was reading about. First of
all, Islam dictated cleanliness, open heartedness, brotherhood,
compassion, faithfulness, peace and salvation and, rejecting the
Christian doctrine that “men are ever sinful,” it substituted it with
quite an opposite belief which tolerated “all sorts of worldly
pleasures with the proviso that they should not cost someone
else’s harm and that they should not overflow the free area
defined by Islam.” However, I also met some dirty and
mendacious Muslims. To understand the matter better, I began to
run an experiment on it, putting myself in the place of a Muslim
and adapting myself to the principles I had been reading in the
books, and thus examining Islam from within. I came up with the
conclusion that the main reason for the increasing degeneration
and decline of the Islamic world, which was already on the brink
of a collapse, was Muslims’ becoming increasingly indifferent
towards their religion. As long as Muslims preserved their
perfection as true Muslims, they always made progress; and a
downfall began the very moment they relaxed their grips of Islam.
In actual fact, Islam possesses all the qualifications required for a
country’s or a nation’s progress. It contains all the essentials of
civilization. The Islamic religion is both extremely scientific and
very practical. The principles it lays down are completely logical,
intelligible to everybody, and do not contain one single element
that would run counter to knowledge, to science, or to human
nature. There is nothing unnecessary in it. The grotesque
passages, the sophistries, and the superstitious mysticisms, which
are the common properties of other religious books, do not exist
in Islam. I discussed these subjects with most Muslims and
– 37 –