My background is working class, coming from Maltby, South Yorkshire, UK which is a quite rough coal mining community but I some how always managed to do well at school, mainly because no one dared pick on me for being smart or I would have kicked them from one side of class room to the other. I fell in love with books from an early age; I would read for fun, often two books a week, a habit I still try to keep up.
In my family are my mother and father, one elder brother and one younger sister. We are hardly a conventional family, my brother has always been an idealist and thrill seeker, my little sister at 17 went off to a forest trying to "save the trees" from the evil developers. My Father used to be a Conservative Councillor in an overwhelmingly old Labour Socialist area and my mother is the stable one in the family.
My upbringing was good, our parents instilled in us good values, values I now recognise as Muslim values, but obviously I didn't then. They were strict sometimes but very loving, my father was equally not afraid to show his affection by kissing his children, nor afraid to give us a good hiding if we did something wrong. Sometimes we would go camping as my dad tried to instil some the discipline into us he had got from the army, but with little success given the independent nature in our family.
I was perhaps a little too independent for my teachers liking at school. I remember one incident from early school, when I started I could write left or right handed. The teacher tired of teaching me everything twice decided I must chose one and stop using the other, I was about 6 years old I think. I asked her "which hand are you?" she replied that she was right handed like most people. I told her "I choose left then."
My childhood was also almost entirely completely devoid of any religious framework; our parents had neither myself or my brother or sister christened. My Father was Roman-Catholic in name only and stopped going to church at the age of 16, and until recently considered himself an atheist.
My mother was raised as a Protestant, but her family pretty much stopped with the Church of England thing when a vicar said my aunt's dead baby was going to hell because it hadn't been christened. During a brief trail separation my parents had, my mother sent me and my brother to Sunday school, but this soon stopped, we had no interest, just thought it was somewhere else to hang out as it had a free snooker table. Now I would say all my family are agnostic at best, my brother is unfortunately an atheist.
About the age of eleven I became very introverted and dark in my thoughts, I would sit reading books and try to keep out of the way, Alhamdulillah I was big enough that people who noticed didn't pick on me for long. During my early teenage years I never went out drinking and trying to "pull" with friends as I didn't see the point of it, I also was a little too moral for most people, they liked me, but not as someone they wanted to see doing things wrong, I think the fact I didn't do these things myself made them feel guilty.
I did well in my GCSE exams, and stayed on at school to do my A-Levels, at this point things went a little wrong... Most of my friends went into work, after all this was a working class community, this allowed me to reinvent myself with my new friends to a large extent, to become more outgoing, to start going to the pub, to drink with my friends and play cards and gamble and yes to start behaving towards the fairer sex in a way I am much too embarrassed to repeat in print today, although I was much better behaved than most of my peers in a community which had made local and national headlines when girls from my school year had been prostituting themselves from about the age of thirteen. I am still not happy to think of these times and what I did, but it was still a quite good period compared to what was to come and what had been done by those around me.
I did moderately well in my A-Level exams, not really trying, once again, as I always had done relaying on luck and natural intelligence to get me through the exam with the bare minimum of revision. I had spent too much time in the pub and playing around to do well.
At Bangor University I started ok, but was still quite lazy, but then something happened, I was hurt in love and was quite devastated, and really went a bit out of control. I drank too much, gambled too much and even experimented with drugs, something that other than pot I hadn't touched before.
I also hated my course, my tutors, the dull welsh city, hated a lot of things. I would often spend time in the student bars taunting religious friends for their beliefs; I was very low and wanting everyone else down there with me. I especially taunted Christians, I found the concepts of Trinity and original sin to be against all natural reason and what is more later found not really contained within the Bible or Old Testament.
Another failed relationship resulted in me burning my poetry books and I think this finally killed off the last of my romantic streak, I really was on a downer and didn't much see anyway out. I had put on weight, I didn't look after myself, I just pitied my existence and didn't much care how things went.
I transferred to Northampton University to do a different cause the next year. But once again I partied too hard, drank too much and pretty soon the money ran out, so I quit, dropped out and went home to my parents.
One thing I will add is my time in Northampton wasn't just spent building up a bar tab and an impressive collection of stolen garden gnomes and Road signs, I also shared a flat with a Turkish Londoner called Vulcan Gor, which I felt was a very cool name. I talked with him a lot, and even though I didn't make any changes then, I still feel a debt of gratitude for showing me you can have fun without having to drink and that there is more to life than dullness inter dispersed with parties.
Despite the hard life I had still continued to read extensively, to keep up my self learning which I had always thought was more important than school.
I was also not sleeping well and often thought about the nature of the world in the middle of the night. I think it was sometime when I Northampton I came to a true belief in one god, although I had been thinking about it for a long time and having doubts about my atheistic faith. It just seemed logical to me, I thought about the universe, its beauty and its cruel nature and I could only see one reason for it. But if anything this made me even more bitter, I cursed the God who I believed had created me and called him an unjust and cruel master, Astagfirullah (Allah forgive me) I am very ashamed of this and it is a great comfort to think that Insha’Allah (Allah willing) I have been forgiven this upon my acceptance of Islam.
Finally the partying had to end as the money ran out with my father's business not going so well, so I went home, got a job and spent too much time with my friends in the bar. We drank, got in fights, but even now I was still a little too prudish for some people. I was kinder living a double life, I had become involved with Conservative Party Politics and would some nights be at a public meeting or talking to other young politicians, other nights I would be drinking myself into oblivion and fighting in the street with my working class friends.
Strangely there were times when the two worlds crossed over, if anyone believes that binge drinking is confined to the working classes, they should observe the bars in the late evenings around the party conferences every autumn where you will find many party activists, major and minor Politicians and of course journalists drinking themselves into oblivion and behaving badly.
I finally got a wake up call opening my eyes and looking up at concerned faces in a pub car park where three men had just pummelled me with pool cues.
So I calmed down a little, cut out the pot, drank much less in much nicer places, I even ran for local council for the Conservative party, first as a paper candidate and then more seriously in a bye-election.
Shortly after this I came to another conclusion on religion. God was not unjust, he was just testing us for a lifetime, and I still didn't know what came after but I just had now gained a glimmer of hope in salvation.
In one of my more useful sleepless nights I looked at things, I still believed in the big bang and thought... if some being created this, he must be outside of the creation, beyond it and beyond our comprehension. If so he is beyond space-time, as time and space are one or so the physicists would tell us, so if he is beyond space he is beyond time and if so time wouldn't be linear to him, to him he could see in the future, past and present because he is beyond our concept of time. So... from this I drew the following conclusions. If he is beyond space-time then to him everything that is happening and will happen already has, so he is effectively able to predestine and affect everything. But to us within the creation, within that the confines of time and space free will exists to an extent and must exist for life to have any meaning.
I rose a little higher in Conservative Party rankings, becoming the deputy chairman of a whole parliamentary constituency and once again running for the local Council. This time missing out narrowly but I knew that I had to keep searching for something else I knew was missing. I had faith now in one god and absolutely no idea how to put it into practice.
I felt looking round at different philosophies and even religions, although in my arrogance I thought I was right and all the other religions had some how got it wrong. I was still quite spiteful and sarcastic and would sometimes tease friends.
I had some pretty disastrous times with women, mainly due to the fact I wouldn't sleep with women straight away thinking it immoral, I wanted to wait until we were at least engaged. In fact my last date about three months before I became a Muslim went very well... right up till the point I politely refused her invitation to come upstairs to her flat when I walked her home.
Apparently I was a heartless bastard for this and probably queer or so it got back to me from a mutual friend.
Finally one night on the way home from a particularly good fun evening I decided to quit drinking. Just thought about it and decided I had had enough and would stop the next day. I didn't quite make it; in that first week I had two glasses of wine with a meal. After that I haven't touched a drop since. This would have been about two months before Ramadhan 2002.
At the same time a Muslim had come to work in the same department as me, this job was incredibly dull and you end up talking with your colleagues a lot.
Over the next two months coming up to Ramadhan we became good friends. We got to talking about most things till we finally got onto the subject of Religion, My new friend asked me what I believed in, I said I believed in one God, that I didn't sleep around as thought immoral, I no longer drank and just thought best to live a good life. My friend then told me that I was probably a Muslim and didn't know it... I was a little shocked but very intrigued.
I began to study Islam, the first book being the complete idiots guide to Islam by Yahya Emerick, my friend’s father and grandfather also talked to me a little and I still talked to my friend at work also. The family also borrowed me a copy of the Quran with English translation so I read this avidly, twice over at the beginning of Ramadhan, I also fasted to test myself and see if I could manage it. I thought this would be hard but actually found it quite easy.
I came to believe that this book – The Quran, was genuinely a book sent by god, what's more it also showed me why the bible had so much sense but also other things I couldn't accept. I had never been able to accept trinity and it was one of the things I had most mercilessly teased my religious friends at university over, that and the concept of original sin, the religious concept that drove my mothers family from the church, neither of which I had ever been able to accept.
If I accepted the Quran as genuine I therefore accepted the person who received the book as a true messenger and prophet of Allah just as I had read of other messengers and prophets in the Quran.
I was quite shocked to discover I believed in the Kalima and also talked on the Internet with others who had been through what I had. Particularly the New Muslim project, and many people on there I became friends with, and also more importantly I was talking to one brother Asad Habib, who although born into a Muslim family had recently come back to practicing Islam.
Asad actually came from Sheffield, which is about 15miles from where I lived with my parents and as well as being my best friend he is my landlord now as well. Then he worked down in Guildford, near London and only came back at weekends mostly.
This particular time he was off work was the 19th Night of Ramadhan, he had suggested as I now believed I should go to the mosque and try praying, on the way he suggested I should do my shahadah as no time like the present. I had not been sure whether I should do it then or wait till after Ramadhan but I thought why not and went through with it in front of about 300 people in the mosque and many more listening at home on their radio receivers.
I was a little nervous to say the least, but it was the most powerful moment of my life. Nothing compares to the absolute freedom and feeling of such a weight being lifted from my shoulders. Afterwards I had to bare up to what seemed like a hundred bear like hugs from all the brothers at the Mosque, this truly settled my fears about whether I would be accepted into the Muslim community and I have now moved to live close to this Mosque, Masjid Umar on Barnsley Rd in Sheffield and it is the most friendly Mosque I has ever been in.
On returning home I still hadn't told my parents at this point, and to top it off my little sister chose this time to announce she was off to live in the forest to save the trees in Derbyshire. So I left it a day or two. When I finally told them they were quite shocked, my mum was a little more understanding, at least at first but my dad was quite bewildered and angry.
This only got worse as in the space of a week my whole character shifted, it was quite uncanny and scary to kind off watch yourself change so much in such a short period of time. As mum later said to my brother, "I like the person he has become, I just don't like the reasons for it."
My friends, the few that I still had who hadn't run a mile when I quick drinking before now totally distanced themselves, I only have one friend left from before I was a Muslim, who has been a true friend since we were 15 but all the others have gone.
Others noticed it at work and where as before my wit and sarcastic humour had meant many left me be for fear of a tongue lashing or email bashing, now I was fare game given that I would no longer bite back or perhaps backbite especially as it was Ramadhan still.
It wasn't long before it became common knowledge I had become a Muslim and all the sniggering rumours started. They couldn't comprehend how someone could go from parties and pubs to living a simple life of prayer and trying to be nice to people, they looked at all sorts of agendas I must have had to their eyes and took great joy in teasing and making my life at work into a dull monotonous hell.
Looking back I can see my life as a gradual series of changes as Allah slowly brought me into Islam over a number of years, how my Fitrah constantly gave me more impetus to make more and more changes, the better I did.
Now I have been a Muslim for almost four years, I am really enjoying my time as a Muslim; it will be four Muslim years on the 19th night of Ramadhan coming up (2006). I have now learnt my Salaat; I am learning to read the Quran and how to practice Islam, this ‘Deen’ as a total part of my life. Unfortunately I am doing this from a House in Sheffield, as I moved out of my parents house within a couple of months of becoming a Muslim, the arguments being too much and with wanting to live closer to a mosque.
I still see my parents though and I try to keep the arguments to a minimum but it is not easy to stay quiet when someone else wants to attack your beliefs. I have many new friends now to replace my old drinking and work mates, all Muslims, I find myself increasingly distrustful of the backbiting and nastiness that is a general part of the day-to-day relations between the Kaffirs. (disbeliever's) The only major testing that Allah has given me was that I made a bad choice in choosing a wife first time over. However I am now married again very happily to a wonderful loving woman who truly does complete my life and we have our first child on the way.
I have become active in Dawah work (Islamic propagation), Alhamdulillah (All praise be to Allah) it is good to find something I enjoy so much and actually seem to have some talent for at the same time as being able to please my creator.
So that is my story of how I reverted to Islam, there isn't much more to tell yet, I am just trying to live a simple and nice a life as possible.
Having dumped my CD collection and TV Arial when I first embraced Islam, I know relax by visiting friends and their families and by my old hobbies of reading books and even writing a little poetry and trying to write fictional stories.
Here is a poem I wrote not long after reverting...
Who was that man I remember?
Who was that man I remember?
He disappeared when I was born in cold November.
His memories still swim around my head,
but I cannot believe we were ever the same?
Like he went to sleep and I woke instead, my spirit now strong, his almost lame.
I continue wearing his clothes still,
as a small remembrance of him,
though he has gone and his body I now fill, and of this new life we both wanted, I begin.
Who was that man who I remember?
When did he end and I begin, in cold November?
I catch myself when my own voice I hear, he sounded the same, with the same eyes, will he ever return, is there anything to fear?
No! He wont return no matter how hard he tries!
My iron-will I forced through the fire,
to forge anew a mind even stronger,
so very few the same things we both did desire, but now my heart is still and tame, his was stormy anger.
So different that man that I remember...
before he went and I came in cold November.
Copyright - Daw'ud Mannion
Poem Written 9th December 2002
What is the best way to do Da'wa?
TO BE A GOOD MUSLIM
In my family are my mother and father, one elder brother and one younger sister. We are hardly a conventional family, my brother has always been an idealist and thrill seeker, my little sister at 17 went off to a forest trying to "save the trees" from the evil developers. My Father used to be a Conservative Councillor in an overwhelmingly old Labour Socialist area and my mother is the stable one in the family.
My upbringing was good, our parents instilled in us good values, values I now recognise as Muslim values, but obviously I didn't then. They were strict sometimes but very loving, my father was equally not afraid to show his affection by kissing his children, nor afraid to give us a good hiding if we did something wrong. Sometimes we would go camping as my dad tried to instil some the discipline into us he had got from the army, but with little success given the independent nature in our family.
I was perhaps a little too independent for my teachers liking at school. I remember one incident from early school, when I started I could write left or right handed. The teacher tired of teaching me everything twice decided I must chose one and stop using the other, I was about 6 years old I think. I asked her "which hand are you?" she replied that she was right handed like most people. I told her "I choose left then."
My childhood was also almost entirely completely devoid of any religious framework; our parents had neither myself or my brother or sister christened. My Father was Roman-Catholic in name only and stopped going to church at the age of 16, and until recently considered himself an atheist.
My mother was raised as a Protestant, but her family pretty much stopped with the Church of England thing when a vicar said my aunt's dead baby was going to hell because it hadn't been christened. During a brief trail separation my parents had, my mother sent me and my brother to Sunday school, but this soon stopped, we had no interest, just thought it was somewhere else to hang out as it had a free snooker table. Now I would say all my family are agnostic at best, my brother is unfortunately an atheist.
About the age of eleven I became very introverted and dark in my thoughts, I would sit reading books and try to keep out of the way, Alhamdulillah I was big enough that people who noticed didn't pick on me for long. During my early teenage years I never went out drinking and trying to "pull" with friends as I didn't see the point of it, I also was a little too moral for most people, they liked me, but not as someone they wanted to see doing things wrong, I think the fact I didn't do these things myself made them feel guilty.
I did well in my GCSE exams, and stayed on at school to do my A-Levels, at this point things went a little wrong... Most of my friends went into work, after all this was a working class community, this allowed me to reinvent myself with my new friends to a large extent, to become more outgoing, to start going to the pub, to drink with my friends and play cards and gamble and yes to start behaving towards the fairer sex in a way I am much too embarrassed to repeat in print today, although I was much better behaved than most of my peers in a community which had made local and national headlines when girls from my school year had been prostituting themselves from about the age of thirteen. I am still not happy to think of these times and what I did, but it was still a quite good period compared to what was to come and what had been done by those around me.
I did moderately well in my A-Level exams, not really trying, once again, as I always had done relaying on luck and natural intelligence to get me through the exam with the bare minimum of revision. I had spent too much time in the pub and playing around to do well.
At Bangor University I started ok, but was still quite lazy, but then something happened, I was hurt in love and was quite devastated, and really went a bit out of control. I drank too much, gambled too much and even experimented with drugs, something that other than pot I hadn't touched before.
I also hated my course, my tutors, the dull welsh city, hated a lot of things. I would often spend time in the student bars taunting religious friends for their beliefs; I was very low and wanting everyone else down there with me. I especially taunted Christians, I found the concepts of Trinity and original sin to be against all natural reason and what is more later found not really contained within the Bible or Old Testament.
Another failed relationship resulted in me burning my poetry books and I think this finally killed off the last of my romantic streak, I really was on a downer and didn't much see anyway out. I had put on weight, I didn't look after myself, I just pitied my existence and didn't much care how things went.
I transferred to Northampton University to do a different cause the next year. But once again I partied too hard, drank too much and pretty soon the money ran out, so I quit, dropped out and went home to my parents.
One thing I will add is my time in Northampton wasn't just spent building up a bar tab and an impressive collection of stolen garden gnomes and Road signs, I also shared a flat with a Turkish Londoner called Vulcan Gor, which I felt was a very cool name. I talked with him a lot, and even though I didn't make any changes then, I still feel a debt of gratitude for showing me you can have fun without having to drink and that there is more to life than dullness inter dispersed with parties.
Despite the hard life I had still continued to read extensively, to keep up my self learning which I had always thought was more important than school.
I was also not sleeping well and often thought about the nature of the world in the middle of the night. I think it was sometime when I Northampton I came to a true belief in one god, although I had been thinking about it for a long time and having doubts about my atheistic faith. It just seemed logical to me, I thought about the universe, its beauty and its cruel nature and I could only see one reason for it. But if anything this made me even more bitter, I cursed the God who I believed had created me and called him an unjust and cruel master, Astagfirullah (Allah forgive me) I am very ashamed of this and it is a great comfort to think that Insha’Allah (Allah willing) I have been forgiven this upon my acceptance of Islam.
Finally the partying had to end as the money ran out with my father's business not going so well, so I went home, got a job and spent too much time with my friends in the bar. We drank, got in fights, but even now I was still a little too prudish for some people. I was kinder living a double life, I had become involved with Conservative Party Politics and would some nights be at a public meeting or talking to other young politicians, other nights I would be drinking myself into oblivion and fighting in the street with my working class friends.
Strangely there were times when the two worlds crossed over, if anyone believes that binge drinking is confined to the working classes, they should observe the bars in the late evenings around the party conferences every autumn where you will find many party activists, major and minor Politicians and of course journalists drinking themselves into oblivion and behaving badly.
I finally got a wake up call opening my eyes and looking up at concerned faces in a pub car park where three men had just pummelled me with pool cues.
So I calmed down a little, cut out the pot, drank much less in much nicer places, I even ran for local council for the Conservative party, first as a paper candidate and then more seriously in a bye-election.
Shortly after this I came to another conclusion on religion. God was not unjust, he was just testing us for a lifetime, and I still didn't know what came after but I just had now gained a glimmer of hope in salvation.
In one of my more useful sleepless nights I looked at things, I still believed in the big bang and thought... if some being created this, he must be outside of the creation, beyond it and beyond our comprehension. If so he is beyond space-time, as time and space are one or so the physicists would tell us, so if he is beyond space he is beyond time and if so time wouldn't be linear to him, to him he could see in the future, past and present because he is beyond our concept of time. So... from this I drew the following conclusions. If he is beyond space-time then to him everything that is happening and will happen already has, so he is effectively able to predestine and affect everything. But to us within the creation, within that the confines of time and space free will exists to an extent and must exist for life to have any meaning.
I rose a little higher in Conservative Party rankings, becoming the deputy chairman of a whole parliamentary constituency and once again running for the local Council. This time missing out narrowly but I knew that I had to keep searching for something else I knew was missing. I had faith now in one god and absolutely no idea how to put it into practice.
I felt looking round at different philosophies and even religions, although in my arrogance I thought I was right and all the other religions had some how got it wrong. I was still quite spiteful and sarcastic and would sometimes tease friends.
I had some pretty disastrous times with women, mainly due to the fact I wouldn't sleep with women straight away thinking it immoral, I wanted to wait until we were at least engaged. In fact my last date about three months before I became a Muslim went very well... right up till the point I politely refused her invitation to come upstairs to her flat when I walked her home.
Apparently I was a heartless bastard for this and probably queer or so it got back to me from a mutual friend.
Finally one night on the way home from a particularly good fun evening I decided to quit drinking. Just thought about it and decided I had had enough and would stop the next day. I didn't quite make it; in that first week I had two glasses of wine with a meal. After that I haven't touched a drop since. This would have been about two months before Ramadhan 2002.
At the same time a Muslim had come to work in the same department as me, this job was incredibly dull and you end up talking with your colleagues a lot.
Over the next two months coming up to Ramadhan we became good friends. We got to talking about most things till we finally got onto the subject of Religion, My new friend asked me what I believed in, I said I believed in one God, that I didn't sleep around as thought immoral, I no longer drank and just thought best to live a good life. My friend then told me that I was probably a Muslim and didn't know it... I was a little shocked but very intrigued.
I began to study Islam, the first book being the complete idiots guide to Islam by Yahya Emerick, my friend’s father and grandfather also talked to me a little and I still talked to my friend at work also. The family also borrowed me a copy of the Quran with English translation so I read this avidly, twice over at the beginning of Ramadhan, I also fasted to test myself and see if I could manage it. I thought this would be hard but actually found it quite easy.
I came to believe that this book – The Quran, was genuinely a book sent by god, what's more it also showed me why the bible had so much sense but also other things I couldn't accept. I had never been able to accept trinity and it was one of the things I had most mercilessly teased my religious friends at university over, that and the concept of original sin, the religious concept that drove my mothers family from the church, neither of which I had ever been able to accept.
If I accepted the Quran as genuine I therefore accepted the person who received the book as a true messenger and prophet of Allah just as I had read of other messengers and prophets in the Quran.
I was quite shocked to discover I believed in the Kalima and also talked on the Internet with others who had been through what I had. Particularly the New Muslim project, and many people on there I became friends with, and also more importantly I was talking to one brother Asad Habib, who although born into a Muslim family had recently come back to practicing Islam.
Asad actually came from Sheffield, which is about 15miles from where I lived with my parents and as well as being my best friend he is my landlord now as well. Then he worked down in Guildford, near London and only came back at weekends mostly.
This particular time he was off work was the 19th Night of Ramadhan, he had suggested as I now believed I should go to the mosque and try praying, on the way he suggested I should do my shahadah as no time like the present. I had not been sure whether I should do it then or wait till after Ramadhan but I thought why not and went through with it in front of about 300 people in the mosque and many more listening at home on their radio receivers.
I was a little nervous to say the least, but it was the most powerful moment of my life. Nothing compares to the absolute freedom and feeling of such a weight being lifted from my shoulders. Afterwards I had to bare up to what seemed like a hundred bear like hugs from all the brothers at the Mosque, this truly settled my fears about whether I would be accepted into the Muslim community and I have now moved to live close to this Mosque, Masjid Umar on Barnsley Rd in Sheffield and it is the most friendly Mosque I has ever been in.
On returning home I still hadn't told my parents at this point, and to top it off my little sister chose this time to announce she was off to live in the forest to save the trees in Derbyshire. So I left it a day or two. When I finally told them they were quite shocked, my mum was a little more understanding, at least at first but my dad was quite bewildered and angry.
This only got worse as in the space of a week my whole character shifted, it was quite uncanny and scary to kind off watch yourself change so much in such a short period of time. As mum later said to my brother, "I like the person he has become, I just don't like the reasons for it."
My friends, the few that I still had who hadn't run a mile when I quick drinking before now totally distanced themselves, I only have one friend left from before I was a Muslim, who has been a true friend since we were 15 but all the others have gone.
Others noticed it at work and where as before my wit and sarcastic humour had meant many left me be for fear of a tongue lashing or email bashing, now I was fare game given that I would no longer bite back or perhaps backbite especially as it was Ramadhan still.
It wasn't long before it became common knowledge I had become a Muslim and all the sniggering rumours started. They couldn't comprehend how someone could go from parties and pubs to living a simple life of prayer and trying to be nice to people, they looked at all sorts of agendas I must have had to their eyes and took great joy in teasing and making my life at work into a dull monotonous hell.
Looking back I can see my life as a gradual series of changes as Allah slowly brought me into Islam over a number of years, how my Fitrah constantly gave me more impetus to make more and more changes, the better I did.
Now I have been a Muslim for almost four years, I am really enjoying my time as a Muslim; it will be four Muslim years on the 19th night of Ramadhan coming up (2006). I have now learnt my Salaat; I am learning to read the Quran and how to practice Islam, this ‘Deen’ as a total part of my life. Unfortunately I am doing this from a House in Sheffield, as I moved out of my parents house within a couple of months of becoming a Muslim, the arguments being too much and with wanting to live closer to a mosque.
I still see my parents though and I try to keep the arguments to a minimum but it is not easy to stay quiet when someone else wants to attack your beliefs. I have many new friends now to replace my old drinking and work mates, all Muslims, I find myself increasingly distrustful of the backbiting and nastiness that is a general part of the day-to-day relations between the Kaffirs. (disbeliever's) The only major testing that Allah has given me was that I made a bad choice in choosing a wife first time over. However I am now married again very happily to a wonderful loving woman who truly does complete my life and we have our first child on the way.
I have become active in Dawah work (Islamic propagation), Alhamdulillah (All praise be to Allah) it is good to find something I enjoy so much and actually seem to have some talent for at the same time as being able to please my creator.
So that is my story of how I reverted to Islam, there isn't much more to tell yet, I am just trying to live a simple and nice a life as possible.
Having dumped my CD collection and TV Arial when I first embraced Islam, I know relax by visiting friends and their families and by my old hobbies of reading books and even writing a little poetry and trying to write fictional stories.
Here is a poem I wrote not long after reverting...
Who was that man I remember?
Who was that man I remember?
He disappeared when I was born in cold November.
His memories still swim around my head,
but I cannot believe we were ever the same?
Like he went to sleep and I woke instead, my spirit now strong, his almost lame.
I continue wearing his clothes still,
as a small remembrance of him,
though he has gone and his body I now fill, and of this new life we both wanted, I begin.
Who was that man who I remember?
When did he end and I begin, in cold November?
I catch myself when my own voice I hear, he sounded the same, with the same eyes, will he ever return, is there anything to fear?
No! He wont return no matter how hard he tries!
My iron-will I forced through the fire,
to forge anew a mind even stronger,
so very few the same things we both did desire, but now my heart is still and tame, his was stormy anger.
So different that man that I remember...
before he went and I came in cold November.
Copyright - Daw'ud Mannion
Poem Written 9th December 2002
What is the best way to do Da'wa?
TO BE A GOOD MUSLIM
