Authors: Marcus Grodi
Tags: #Catholics -- Biography; Coming Home Network International; Conversion, #Catholics -- Biography, #Coming Home Network International, #Conversion
former Muslim
MY ONGOING INTEREST IN THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
BAPTISM, CONVERSION, AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
In 1959 I was born into a Muslim family in Kurdistan in northern
Iraq. I was the fifth child of a large family. The Arab culture
and the religion of Islam were the dominant influences, overshadowing
the three other nations in Iraq, the largest of which are the
Kurds. I began the formal study of Arabic at the age of twelve.
By the time I was sixteen, I was writing poetry in Arabic, some
of which was published as early as 1976.
My political activities in the Kurdish opposition against Saddam
Hussein spanned most of my adult life in Iraq. Saddam Hussein,
in one of his many attacks on the Kurds, forcibly moved large
populations from their homes, banishing them to other parts of
the country, to grab and secure his control over the Kurdish oil
fields. Thus began in 1975 my active effort to free the Kurds
and unite them politically.
For this, I suffered jail and torture a number of times at the
hand of Saddam. My close encounters with death were seen as "luck"
when armies invading Kurdistan took the lives of my fellow fighters.
Numerous times God saved me from death as it came near through
a judge's decree, by the chemical bombs raining down upon the
Kurds, by near-drowning, and serious wounding. However, I did
not then recognize that it was the hand of God.
I continued in my freedom fighting, often spending months in the
mountains suffering cold and hunger, raw fear, and my people's
utter abandonment by the nations of the world. In 1988, I saw
my most beloved friends die in the horrors of the chemical attack
on the town of Halabja. I came to understand the frailty of every
man in his sin and the utter hopelessness of life without God's
intervention and protection.
Since the early stages of my life I had been interested in Christian
ways of life, due mainly to my earliest memories of our Christian
neighbors, many of whom were beautiful examples of Christ's love.
Remembering them leaves me with the precious realization that
God was calling me to Him, even from my childhood.
One day an Armenian Christian chanced to give me a book on the
martyrs of the early Church. I read it and was inspired to live
and die for the freedom of my people, the Kurds. I had a voracious
appetite for reading during my youth and read widely in theology,
philosophy, and history. I became fluent in English, reading Voltaire,
Hegel, and Dickens, to name a few.
Eventually I went on to study avidly the giants of the Christian
faith, St. Thomas Aquinas among them. By consistent investigation
and comparison of Islamic and Christian theology, I came to recognize
the truth of Christianity in early 1982. But this remained an
intellectual acknowledgement only. I recognized that Jesus was
the Messiah, but I did not know Him personally.
After the Persian Gulf War, I married Sara, an American Christian,
telling her that I believed Jesus was the Messiah but admonishing
her that she was not to try to convert me to her religion. I did
this despite the fact that I did profess to believe that Jesus
is the Messiah.
Muslims understand these terms quite differently from the way
Christians understand them. She knew this was a solemn agreement,
and for the next two years, we endured all the storminess of an
intercultural and interreligious marriage. Through the many arguments
and bitter disagreements, I slowly came to see that Sara constantly
forgave me, loved me, and wanted me more than she wanted her own
way.
Unbeknownst to her, she was the living testimony of the Person
of Christ in our marital struggles. Eventually, I began getting
up at night to read the New Testament secretly. I was coming ever
closer to the Lord as I met with Him secretly in His holy Word,
the Bible.
We came to the United States early in 1993 and continued a small
business Sara operated at the time. I had studied Islamic and
Christian theology for most of my life. This study took me on
a journey that led me finally to Jesus Christ, whom I intellectually
recognized as the Messiah. Even at this point in my life, however,
I did not make the final commitment of Baptism.
One day I was approached by my dentist, Doc Blevins, who prayed
with me and eventually brought me to faith in Christ during the
summer of 1995. I was baptized into the Body of Christ on September
17, 1995. Everything was changed. I began immediately to tell
my Muslim friends why I had converted and made great efforts to
evangelize them. I studied the Bible until I could quote chapter
and verse and began to witness to everyone who would listen. Many
did listen, intrigued by this Kurdish convert with so much enthusiasm
for Jesus and the Bible.
I knew that I now had what was needed for my entire nation, indeed
for all the Muslims and the unreached world. I had the gospel,
and nothing could keep me from sharing it!
For the next year or so, I read for hours every day, witnessing
to hundreds of customers at work and finding that I had a gift
to bring people to faith in Christ or to get them to be once again
active in their faith. In my small business, in our neighborhood,
among strangers and friends, I found nothing worth speaking of
anymore but Jesus Christ.
It has now been eight years since my conversion. During that time,
the Lord has used my witness to win many people to Himself, some
of them Muslims, some of them backsliders, and some of them atheistic
fence-sitters. "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words ...
of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when He comes in the
glory of His Father" (Mk 8:38).
Soon after my baptism, Sara and I began a neighborhood Bible study
for anyone from any denomination who would
come. To this Bible study came a nine-year-old neighbor boy,
Joe Sobran, who would read questions and answers from his
Baltimore Catechism. Sara and I were shocked at the unique
questions and were floored by the simple and profound answers in
the back of each chapter.
Little Joey did not give up, asking us why we were not Catholic.
He would plant seeds every time he spoke to us of the Catholic
faith.
One evening, Sara and I were watching television and happened
upon a broadcast of the Mass on EWTN at the exact moment of the
Consecration when the priest was elevating the Host. We were shocked
by this simple and beautiful respect for Jesus. Then the priest
elevated the chalice, in its ornate beauty.
The priest's vestments had a beauty that showed that only the
best we can offer is good enough for God. Sara and I suddenly
understood that the beauty in the Catholic Church was there because
it was truly the
House of God.
In 1996, Sara and I were introduced to the late Catholic theologian
Father William G. Most, who taught us Catholic theology. He generously
gave time every Sunday for a year and a half to bring these two
fundamentalists around to joining the Catholic Church. We were
received into the Catholic Church on July 13, 1998, at a special
Mass.
Father Most died in January 1999. It was an eternal blessing to
have sat at his feet and learned the Catholic faith. He encouraged
me to create settings in which Christians and Muslims could have
dialogue.
After his death, I carried on my life's mission of reaching Muslims.
That mission achieved new urgency after the horrific events of
September 11, 2001. It became clear to many that either the Muslims
will aggressively "evangelize" the West through their various
forms of jihad, or we will evangelize them with the Good News
of Jesus Christ.
I've been called on to speak numerous times since the tragedy.
These talks have been about the realities of Islam, their strategies
for converting us to Islam, and what we can do to be heard and
received by them successfully.
In the past, Christians have depended on the Bible to evangelize
Muslims. But this strategy has been largely unsuccessful because
Muslims believe that Christians and Jews corrupted the Bible.
We must develop instead a method to reach out to Muslims using
only their sources, such as the Qur'an and the various traditions
about Muhammed. All of us in the West have to study now in order
to learn how to engage a religion and a culture completely foreign
to Judeo-Christian culture.
The events calling for this new strategy have an urgency that
we ignore only at our peril. May God guide and empower us for
this task by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of His
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Daniel Ali, a convert from Islam, continues his outreach to Muslims
through writing and speaking.
former Jehovah's Witness
I was born in the largely Catholic town of New Orleans, Louisiana.
My father's family was Catholic, and my mother's family was Lutheran
(Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod). My mother was the spiritual
leader in the family. My father was not a practicing Catholic
by the time I came along.
I can remember attending kindergarten and Sunday school at the
Lutheran church. My mother taught Sunday school to the little
kids and was room mother for my kindergarten class. The Lutheran
church and my mother taught me to love the Bible and Jesus.
I knew that I had been baptized when I was a baby and that Jesus
loved me. I remember church being a fun place to attend and to
be with my mother and the rest of her side of the family. But
this all changed when my maternal grandmother died; I was about
five years old.
Within a year after the death of my grandmother, my mother stopped
going to the Lutheran Church and started attending the Kingdom
Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs). During this time, my father
would periodically take us kids to Catholic Mass, where we would
all fall fast asleep. There was no Catholic Sunday school, and
I really didn't understand what was happening there.
I had no idea that my mother was no longer attending the Lutheran
church, so I begged to go back to that church. Eventually, however,
my father started attending the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's
Witnesses. Within about three years, my father, his parents, and
one of his sisters left the Catholic faith and became Jehovah's
Witnesses as well.
From the time I was five, then, until I was around twenty-five
years old, I was a Jehovah's Witness. As Jehovah's Witnesses,
we attended five meetings a week. There was no worship service.
All these meetings were classes designed to teach you how to convert
others to the faith, and I got really good at doing this. I started
going from door to door with
Watchtower
literature when I was
six years old and gave my first sermon in front of the congregation
when I was eight. By the time I was nineteen, I was giving presentations
at conventions of JWs, with over two thousand JWs in attendance.
After high school, I became a pioneer minister of the JWs, which
means I spent a thousand hours a year going door to door. Eventually,
I was invited to serve at the World Headquarters of Jehovah's
Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York. I spent a year there, and I met
my wife, Kathy, there.
Kathy was raised a Catholic but was never satisfied. When she
was older, she asked her very devout Catholic mother if she could
explore other denominations. Her mother allowed it. Kathy spent
time in Pentecostal, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches. However,
none of these completely satisfied her. During this time, Kathy
continued to attend CCD (children's instruction) classes.
Eventually, her mother started studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
This greatly upset Kathy, since she was required to sit in on
the study. Kathy would ask questions and even tell her CCD teacher
what the Jehovah's Witnesses were teaching her, but the CCD teacher
could not teach the Catholic faith very well. Kathy eventually
began to accept the Jehovah's Witnesses' teachings as truth.
Kathy's stepfather, mother, and brother also became Jehovah's
Witnesses. Kathy's brother Scott served at the World Headquarters
in New York, and it was on a visit to the headquarters that she
met me.
I do not have time to explain all the doubts I had as a Jehovah's
Witness. However, I can tell you that I had doubts about the faith.
My hope at the time was that in serving at the headquarters, somehow
these doubts would go away. Fortunately, they did not. The main
doubt I want to talk about, which really changed my view of God
and my relationship to Him, occurred after Kathy and I had been
married for a few years, and I was starting to become inactive
as a Jehovah's Witness. You see, by this time I had left the World
Headquarters and started college. Kathy was working in downtown
New Orleans.
I would get done with my classes on Fridays by two p.m. and then
go to the theology section of Loyola University's library for
hours and just read. Mostly I read books written by ex-Jehovah's
Witnesses who were now Protestants.
The main teaching that I doubted at this time was the JW view
of salvation. Jehovah's Witnesses say that only 144,000 people
will go to heaven and live with Jesus for eternity; only these
144,000 people are "adopted sons of God." (In fact, we referred
to these people, who were mostly leaders in the faith, as "Christ's
brothers.")
The rest of the Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that they will
live forever in paradise on earth someday. These people are not
Christ's brothers but merely "friends of Jesus." The friends of
Jesus are taught that they must prove their faithfulness to God
by cleaning up the earth after Jesus returns and kills all non-JWs.
Then, after one thousand years of working themselves back to perfection,
they will be tested again by Satan. If they pass this last test,
then they can live forever in paradise on earth.