Posted on 12/26/2003 4:01:29 AM PST by kattracks
Marisol Rivera spent Christmas Day much as she had in years past, preparing breakfast and watching as her four children excitedly opened their gifts. Yet despite the familiar ritual, the holiday now has little religious significance for the 32-year-old from Queens.Last January, Rivera converted to Islam - joining more than 30,000 Americans who make the same leap each year, helping make Islam one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States.
"I felt drawn to Islam," said Rivera, fingering a gold charm that spells Allah in Arabic. "I felt it was something I could practice and apply in my life."
Experts say the number of people converting to Islam, especially whites and Latinos like Rivera, actually has risen since Sept. 11, 2001.
The terrorist attacks sparked negative sentiment toward Islam, spurring bias attacks in parts of Brooklyn. But it also brought unprecedented attention to a faith followed by 1 billion people worldwide.
"The primary effect of 9/11 was a backlash," said Hisham Aidi, a research fellow with Columbia University's Muslims in New York City Project. "The other effect was higher rates of conversion."
In New York City, there are approximately 600,000 Muslims, a number bolstered by both conversions and increased immigration from largely Islamic regions such as South Asia and the Middle East.
Traditionally, converts have been left-leaning intellectuals and young members of minority groups who felt marginalized and derived strength and an identity from Islam, Aidi said.
More recently, Aidi said, people are joining Islam for reasons ranging from the racial diversity of Muslims to its defined "manual for daily life."
Converts typically abstain from alcohol and pork and begin to learn verses from the Koran that they need to recite during their five daily prayers.
The transition is not always smooth.
In Rivera's case, converting was the final blow to her already strained marriage. Shortly after the former Pentecostal converted, she and her husband of 12 years divorced.
"In his opinion, I was being deceived," said Rivera, whose four children live with her in Glendale but have not converted. "He didn't agree with my being a Muslim."
Ghazi Khankan, an imam at the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, said Rivera's experience is not unique. Enthusiastic converts often find that their loved ones are not supportive of their new path.
"Parents raise their children one way, and when the children grow up and choose something else it is not easy to accept," he said. "It is very understandable."
Khankan said mosques play an important role for new converts. "We try to fill the gap in case they were rejected by their own community or family," he said.
Francesca Pagan-Umar's family was mostly accepting when she left the Catholic Church for Islam in August.
"My mother feels it has helped me as a person," said Pagan-Umar, 23, a John Jay College student from Park Slope, Brooklyn.
But for her grandmother, who always imagined her getting married in a church in a white dress, it was hard when she wed a Muslim man in August.
Pagan-Umar said she became interested in Islam upon meeting her husband shortly after the World Trade Center attacks of 2001. At the time, she was deeply suspicious of Arabs and Muslims.
"The things I was hearing on the news was that Islam stressed war and killing," she said. "That's what I thought Islam was all about."
But as she and Muhammad Umar, 25, got closer, Pagan-Umar - who describes herself as a feminist - began studying the religion and felt drawn to the emphasis Islam puts on family relations and how it "elevates women."
The day after the August blackout, she converted at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York City on the upper East Side by reciting the oath called shahadah in Arabic. "There is no God but Allah, and the Prophet Muhammed is his messenger."
Pagan-Umar, who follows the Muslim custom hijab, which calls for wearing a scarf that covers her hair in public, is Italian-American - a rarity among converts. The vast majority are African-American, making up about a third of the estimated 6 million Muslims in the United States.
"I used to look at Islam as a religion for foreigners," said Mummin Billah, 30, of Westbury, L.I. "But as I kept learning, I saw it was not at odds with modern times."
Billah, an African-American father of two girls, was a Baptist and converted in 1998. He said he was drawn to the "disciplined and humble" Islamic way of life.
Rivera said praying has helped her through the emotional torrent of her divorce and dampened her once-explosive temper.
"I've become a lot more humble," she said. "Islam has brought me clarity."
Originally published on December 26, 2003
Apparently this convert has never heard of the woman who are murdered to uphold the family "honor".
Rivera has forced herself to forget everything she learned from Christianity as she grew up, and can ignore history to boot!
Well, at least she is aptly named.
Gosh, what a surprise.
If they could become Palestinians, they'd do that too.
For some reason, the term "Fertile Crescent" seems awfully erotic to me.
I can't figure out why?
Speaking personally, Musky Phonebooks does it for me.
If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
I can understand how leftists, feminists, the underclass and the criminal class are drawn to islam (lower case intended)... it is the religion of revenge.
What experts? Isn't there some controversy about the statistics with regard to muslims/converts in this country?
If that little statistic doesn't grab your attention, nothing will.
How long will it be before Muslims start demanding Sharia Law to be used between them in civil courts, just like in Canada?
Several times in this article you hear the converts speaking of a desire to become more humble and disciplined. I think an unstated reason is because they're looking for some purpose or reason for their life and even a challenge or a test that they must pass with courage. Now this all sounds weird coming from a believer of Christ like myself, but I can see it.
What people do not realize is that there is a growing backlash in the hearts of many, particularly the young, against the anything-goes, there-is-no-absolute-truth culture that has been developed in this country over the last century. Moral relativism as well and tolerance of all religions as equal has led people to search for a religion that makes clear to them exactly what they should and should not do and which fearlessly holds itself out to the world proclaiming that it is the true way and no other.
What is saddest of all is that Christianity is, in its true form, the ultimate in all of those things but its people have lost their way. We huddle into churches (or not) and listen to some paid preachers of words that tickle our ears rather than the true meat of God's word. We look at and listen to nearly every form of fornication, blasphemy, excess, and immorality on television and radio and laugh and love it. Then we tolerate it in our family, our friends, our brotherhoods, and even in ourselves. We look at those among us who are willing to suffer shame for what is right and who speak out against this evil as weirdos and "dorks".
We are terribly proud of ourselves too. The idea of the importance of the individual has been taken to a hedonistic extreme where each person can feel fully justified in satisfying himself at the expense of all others because no one has the right to tell him how to govern his morality. We think that our God-given power and prosperity is eternal and can never be challenged as long as we live. Even those who admit that their children and grandchildren may yet live to see a terrible civil war will even yet not try to do anything to change things. They continue on their own path to destruction and try to lead their children and grandchildren with them.
But the children are not following as planned. Many are turning into another path to destruction: the bonds of Islam. They see in it at least a religion which makes things clearly defined and is not at all relative but which gives them a path and a purpose and above all something to die for---something to believe in.
They do not see that the true path and the true reason for life is the one which they have heard of many times as a child and yet have never truly been shown: Jesus the Christ of God. It is human error spurred on by selfishness, greed, and the evil promptings of the Deceiver himself which leads those who raised them or are friends of theirs to misportray Christianity and Christ by living a false life themselves.
And so they search on, and find their own destruction.
And people like me keep searching too---asking God constantly and fervently to take us deeper and deeper into Christ and the truth of all things...and asking God to lead back our friends whose hearts have been deceived.
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