True Stories
That Changed My Life
How and Why I "Reverted" to Islam, and then Left It
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How and Why I "Reverted" to Islam and Why I Left By John of AllFaith (Muhammad Yahya Saleem) © July 2001 (last updated 8.11.2007)
This is a brief statement about how, when and why I reverted to Islam and why I later chose to leave it. Those who have spent much time at AllFaith.com will have read my description of the vision I had at the age of twelve. My reversion to Islam (and subsequent experiences) was part of my lifelong Quest for Truth. For more of my spiritual quest experiences, visit the MyStory web site here at AllFaith.com. In brief, when I was twelve years old I offered my life to God at the alter of Harrell Grove Missionary Baptist Church and promised to follow Him as best I could wherever the path might lead (this path has led me to places I never even conceived!). A few months later I had a vision in which I was shown seven teachers who would enter my life to draw me ever closer to God and help me fulfill His Will for my life. By 1975 I had met the first five of these teachers. For many years I had waited and prayed for the sixth and seventh teachers to come and continue my spiritual education. Then came the sixth. I should say first of all that I am no longer associated with Islam. This piece discusses both my entrance into Islam and my exit. While I deeply respect the zeal many Muslims have for their deen (religion/way of life) as well as their refusal to submit to the ever-encroaching New World Order and its Secular Humanist world view, I can not accept certain of the essential tenets of Islam nor their practical application in the world. I should also point out that I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I believe the leadership of both parties have betrayed the people of the United States and the world. I blame much of what is going on in the world today directly on George Bush, Dick Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic and Republican party leadership and their Globalist corporate handlers. The international Jihad movement is reacting understandably and predictably to the NWO assault on their deen and countries. This of course does not mean I support their intention to establish a global Sharia based caliphate, however it needs to be understood that the Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. regimes are primarily to blame for the current and coming woes due to their stationing and maintaining of US troops in Arabia. Nonetheless for a period of time I was a Wahabi Sunni Muslim and I feel certain that the man discussed below was my sixth teacher as seen in my 1969 vision. All I can say is that God works in mysterious ways! Then my sixth teacher was revealed to me. The result of this on my life has been profound if uncertain. Briefly, here’s how it happened: In January 2001 Andrea and I left Grace Inclusive Church (the charismatic Christian congregation I had co-founded in Santa Cruz) and moved to Vallejo, California. Prior to this move CFIDS/FMS, the illness I’ve lived with since 1989, had taken a decided turn for the worse. In early 2000 I took a brief missionary trip to Buenos Ares, Argentina. While I was there my symptoms began to return and by the time I'd been back in Santa Cruz for a week I was bedridden again. For most of the year 2000 I was very ill. Despite my frequent prayers and "claiming of biblical promises" such as, "lay hands on the sick and they will recover," "Ask and you will receive," "whatever you ask in my name I will do," and so on, my physical condition continued to decline. To make matters worse, my son suffered an extended temporal lobe seizure that threatened to be become a permanent disability (thank God it didn't! He's fine now). We moved to Vallejo to be closer to my son so we could help his mom care for him. During this time and with so many things going wrong in my personal life, I felt within my heart and soul that I was in desperate need of spiritual revival and renewed spiritual direction. As a result from around August 1999 my prayers had begun to include more requests in this direction. I didn't question God or His love for me, but I did begin to question the path I was following in His service. As I sought God for my son's recovery and for my own I knew that God doesn't lie, and yet it seemed the clear promises contained within the New Testament simply were not proving true despite being applied in faith to our very real needs. I had seldom prayed for personal needs believing that God knows my needs better than I. But now that my supposedly complete healing had failed and my son was facing a possible lifetime of seizure disorders I prayed as never before for healing. I was prepared to live as a disabled person if that was God's will for me, but in faith I claimed the biblical promises on his behalf. Of course I realized that many other fully committed and sincere disabled Christians had likewise prayed without receiving, but I needed a positive reply from God on this one and when I didn't receive it I left the Church and began looking elsewhere for God's mercies. I'm just being honest here. One day someone from the little church across the street from our apartment left a flier on the windshield of my car inviting me to a "Men's Meeting" at the church. I had been meaning to visit the little church for a while so this seemed like a good time to do so. As I approached the church, two of the men there met me out front and welcomed me as "a fellow soldier of Jesus to resist the evils of our godless society." As we spoke it become clear that this was not God's will for me. Their words and even the vibes they projected struck me as hypocritical and indicative of some of our nation's main evils. All I could think of was the spiritually lukewarm Laodicean Church Prophet Y'shua condemned in Revelations 3. What they were saying ran counter to true spirituality so I returned to our home without going into the church. Sitting down at my computer I received an e-mail notification that someone had posted to a discarded BeSeen.com discussion board I had created three years or so before. As I read the post, I knew within my heart that this was what I'd been seeking, that the piece discussed what I inwardly needed to hear for the next phase of my quest. I've written the author several times and have not yet received a reply from her. The article was named, "The Truth about Islam," a religion with which I was already well acquainted through reading but had never personally been involved with (with the exception of a few Sufi groups). After reading the post I went to an Islamic web site and did a search to find a local masjid (mosque). I had no intention or even thought of converting, I was just curious and following my heart. To my surprise I found that there is a masjid in Vallejo not far from my apartment. The listing offered a phone number, which I called, and I was warmly invited to come over for a visit. Walking into the masjid I was met by the imam (Sheikh Burhaan) who welcomed me warmly and explained that it was time for their prayers and would I please wait in the rear of the room; we would speak afterwards. I asked if it would be acceptable for me to join the prayers reasoning that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I had learned the proper form of Muslim prayer several years before, and was told that I could. As the evening prayer (magrib salaat) was about to begin brothers hurried in and joined the prayer line (Muslims observe a very formalized method of prayer which is practiced standing shoulder to shoulder). The last of these men to enter was my sixth teacher! I recognized him immediately and almost fell over as I saw him. He looked at me, smiled, and readied himself for prayer. When the prayer was finished he walked over to me, tugged my shirt inviting me to follow him to a rear corner of the room and began telling me about Islam. I listened with joy as he discussed the five pillars of the Islamic faith and other issues. As he spoke, a number of people surrounded us and listened in to his presentation. After explaining the basics he said, (and I paraphrase) "So how to become Muslim? It is done like this. You must say the Shahada. It goes like this..." Someone interrupted and asked me, "Do you understand what he's asking you to do?" I thought for a moment, "I do," I replied. I knew beyond any doubt that God, Allah, subhana wa ta'ala, had led me at long last to the very man I had seen in my 1969 vision: my sixth teacher. I also knew that were I to refuse to accept the faith of the prophets being offered I would be denying the promise I had made to God when I dedicated my life to His service at the age of twelve. There was therefore no question of what I should do. I reverted to Islam and became known as Muhammad Yahya Saleem. The Shahada ("the Testimony"):
La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad -ur-Rasool-Allah:La ilaha il Allah: There is no deity other than Allah
Muhammad -ur-Rasool-Allah: [Prophet] Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
I only saw Sheikh Hamdi a few times after reciting the Shahada however I am convinced that our meeting was arraigned by the One God. The servants God uses to reach us are not always the important thing; it is our submission to God's will that matters and I was now in a position to submit and follow the One wherever that might lead. I was quite excited and soon became deeply involved with the Bay Area Muslim Community. Unlike Christianity with its teaching of original sin, Islam teaches that everyone is born Muslim, a servant of Allah, subhana wa ta'ala. Most people leave the truth as they age however hence one does not "convert" into Islam but "reverts" back into submission to God's Will. Imam Burhaan and I developed a close relationship and I learned many things from him. Burhaan had managed to get us a great deal on an apartment in the complex where he was living, right around the corner for the masjid and so we moved. I went to masjid several times a day for prayers and fellowship. I was invited to attend weekly and monthly planning meetings in various Bay Area cities and was seriously considering an offer to go to Pakistan to attend classes at a madrasah. I was in a word, plugged in and being groomed. It was during this time that I first heard about the Project (they called it the Plan) by which the Ummah intends to establish a global caliphate by 2082. Then came 9-11...
Imam Burhaan and I were living in the apartment complex when the attacks of 9-11 occurred. A non-Muslim friend called and told us to turn on the news. After a while I went to the masjid. By this point I had generally been accepted by the community and the brothers were quite open about their reactions. Many were surprised but everyone clearly considered it to be a great day for the deen. Almost immediate after the attacks of 9-11 the US government (or someone) began spying on our apartments and following us when we went anywhere. Our phones were tapped (you could tell by the clicking sounds) and frankly we were all getting concerned! "They" would follow me to the masjid, and when I left the building I'd see them parked across the street waiting to follow me back home. The same was the case with the imam. As they made no serious attempt to hide their presence from us presumably their intention was to intimidate us... it worked! A couple of weeks after 9-11 Burhaan, his wife and newborn (and hence a US citizen) son Usama left the US. I was told by people who definitely knew what they were talking about that many Muslim women are coming to the US, giving birth to US citizens and leaving so that later these madras trained children can easily re-enter the US as adults to serve the Ummah in various ways. I was also told the Ummah plans to get covert operatives into US and state governments and other high level positions. One may be running for president at this time. The months that followed were difficult ones for me. My health, which had been in a state of mild remission for a few months, collapsed again and for a while I was largely house bound. Despite this I continued to observe most of the five daily prayers at the masjid and grew in my faith and knowledge of Islam. In the photo nearby I'm preparing to take a group of peace activists to our masjid to show their support for the local Muslim community in the face of local post 9-11 persecutions. The government surveillance continued for a few weeks but in time it either ended or became more covert. My knowledge of true Islam (rather than the Islamic propaganda printed in popular books and websites) developed as I studied and certain truths became apparent than I had not formerly understood. There are many individual Muslims as well as organizations that are actively supporting or participating in the rise of the global Ummah. Most Muslims have no direct knowledge of these plans however in my opinion a significant percentage of Muslims living in the West support the jihad movement. In the UK the Daily Mail recently reported the following:
As many as one in 11 British Muslims agree with and proactively support terrorism, a Government adviser has warned police.
Haras Rafiq also told officers at Scotland Yard that up to 20 per cent of the Muslim population ' sympathise' with militants, while stopping short of being prepared to 'blow themselves up'.This seems a bit low to me. In any case, generally speaking Islam DOES view Israel and the West, especially the US and the UK, as Great Satanic powers that must be overthrown. The global jihad movement IS committed to doing this and there WILL will be war in the United States, the UK and throughout the EU in coming months and years. This coming war was NOT started by Islam but if the West does not act now it WILL be won by them! It may well already be too late. The globalist plutocrats ruling the United States could not be handling this situation worse if they tired. And so two things led to my decision to leave Islam. First I could not accept Islam's view of the Jews. Secondly, being in a western Muslim community has its good points. I made many good friends and enjoyed the strong sense of community; but then I asked myself if i would want to see the United States becoming a Muslim country, would I want to live in Arabia, Iran or any other Muslim country. The answer was no.
But the end is not yet...
