Haroon Hanif (Chicago East)

My Journey to Islam-Ahmadiyyat

by

Haroon Hanif (Aaron Garel II)

I am 28 years old, born and raised in Chicago. I am going to try to share my experiences about my journey to Ahmadiyyat.  This is not an experience that is easy to describe in words.  And if I were to go back as far back as I could remember, it would take up an enormous amount of time and space. 

So instead I am going to start at the point in my life when I could not sleep any more.  I was at that time doing many terrible things.  I was in a way so much over my head that I felt that I could not control myself.  And that is when I went to Allah for help. 

At that time I did not even know what to call Allah.  So when “talking” to Allah, I would refer to the One Who created me.  I asked Allah for help in giving me the answer to questions such as:  “Why am I here?”  “What is my purpose in life?”. I had these fundamental questions because I was tired of living my life the way I was living. So I asked Allah, almost as if to challenge Him, "Can you show me a better way of life than the one I am currently living?” 

I was in prison at the time and had nothing but four walls, a toilet and a sink. However, that was the time when I started to understand the true concept of Allah because whatever I prayed for, was delivered straight to my prison cell! That is when I realized that Allah was much more resourceful than I could imagine. 

So as soon as I asked Allah to show me a better way to live, a bible was brought to my prison cell. After reading the bible front to back several times and taking notes I became a Christian.  Then I prayed to Allah to give me a deeper understanding because there were a lot of things that did not seem clear to me in Christianity.  That is when a lot of Israelite books came to me and showed me how to read the Bible in a different way. 

So I prayed again and asked Allah to give me a Divine understanding of religion.  This is when I found the Holy Quran. Although I had the Quran with me all these years, I had tried reading it but did not get much understanding out of it. However, now it was very different. This time I was able to understand the Holy Quran, and that is when I decided to become a Sunni Muslim. 

Before my time was up from serving in the prison system I prayed to Allah that He direct me to a Masjid where I could go to once I was released.  As I prayed to Allah for this, I already has one mosque in mind. However, when I was released from prison, I immediately came across brother Haneef Karim who introduced me to a new mosque. The mosque belonged to the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam, and after about a year of reading and studying the message of Ahmadiyyat, I was convinced of its truth. Alhamdulillah I decided to become an Ahmadi Muslim.

Share (Social Bookmark)

Email this

Comments (0)

Write comment

Show/hide comment form

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment Preview