Converting to Christianity Over Coffee

You are not the saved ones.

Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash

Dear friend,

How are you? And how is your beautiful heart?

The world is heavy right now. I hope you’re managing to find some light.💛

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Walking home from the town centre the other day, my ears were viciously attacked by a Christian preacher on the streets, who was shouting angrily through a megaphone for people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord. “Save yourselves,” he hollered, “Come to Jesus, come to Jesus.”

I walked quickly past as one of his tribe shoved a leaflet into my hand that told me the same thing. And then I did something I would never usually do. I stopped, turned back, approached the preacher, and caught his eye, making it clear that I wanted to ask him a question.

He quietened down, slowly lowered the megaphone and beckoned for me to speak.

Legs shaking, I stared this man in the eye, and asked him with as much courage as I could muster, the question that was sitting on my heart,

“What would Jesus say about the genocide in Palestine? What with Jesus being Palestinian and all?”

He looked at me questioningly, confused. Still, my legs shook, my heart beating rapidly out of my chest. It seemed my question had caught me as off guard as it had caught him. He lifted his megaphone again and as you apparently do when you’re sharing the message of God, he shouted again, but this time, “Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew.”

“That didn’t answer the question,” I stated. “Do you know that the majority of the Christian population in Palestine has been exterminated?”

He had nothing to say. He and his tribe couldn’t and wouldn’t address the genocide, for some reason. Some of his people even started shouting at me to leave. What was most interesting about this interaction was that the preacher and his people were all black, standing in the middle of a town centre notorious for racism, sharing the message of peace and love - but clearly, a peace and love that doesn’t extend to all.

He was one of a race of people who have been horrendously persecuted throughout history up until the modern day, by the West. Yet he had nothing to say for the people of Palestine - for the Christian population of Palestine even, who are being publicly starved, tortured and murdered while we sit back and watch it all unfold on our phone screens.

I wasn’t surprised, to be honest, just disappointed that our labels continue to be a barrier to our common humanity. Just disappointed that some people really do believe they are the chosen ones and that because of that their sense of superiority overrides everything else - even calling for the end to a genocide.

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Because of things like this, I have a problem with religion. Or, many problems with religion, I should say. And that’s coming from a born and raised Muslim who lost her faith and found it again for herself, in the pits of depression and through the openings of a spiritual awakening.

Ever since I was a young child, the idea that only one group of people were favoured by God and would enter heaven didn’t sit right with me.

I was the child in the mosque who would raise her hand and openly question the words falling from the lips of my faith teachers, wondering whether the words they spoke truly came from their hearts. I was the teenager who would spend her lunchtime sitting on the school corridor floors, debating religion with her opposite-opinion friends. I was the young-adult Muslim girl whose first romantic relationship was with someone of the Sikh faith, finding the beauty and the truth within both religions. Now that I look back, I see that I was a seeker my entire life — I just didn’t see it at the time.

Sometime in 2017, after having been brought to my spiritual path four years prior, having the guidance and the love of a Spiritual Master, and coming to know so many profound truths that I would never have discovered on my own, I found myself living on the island paradise of Mauritius with my little family.

But I was struggling… mentally.

My little girl had been born on the island six months previously and the pressure of living in a whole new country, with a new baby in the middle of a neighbourhood away from other expats and from life as I knew it, was taking its toll.

So when a new friend I had made at an artisan market where I was showcasing my artwork, who lived nearby, texted me to suggest that we meet for coffee, I was overjoyed. Finally, a little sense of normality! Finally, the chance to develop a new friendship with a super cool girl who, upon our first meeting, I appeared to have so much in common with.

That excitement quickly changed about 10 minutes into our coffee date when my new friend’s agenda became quite clear. 

Seemingly, it wasn’t just the coffee that would leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

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I don’t think I’d ever met a radical Christian until I moved to Mauritius, let alone sat and shared a coffee with one. But what was different about this person was that she had accepted Christianity as a reaction to the rejection of her father’s faith, having been raised by a Muslim father and a Christian mother. Many religious people follow toxic cultural norms rather than religious truths, and unfortunately, this is what she had witnessed and experienced in her father’s community. Despising and deeply judging the behaviour she saw resulted in her rejection of the Islamic faith altogether.

When she asked me whether I believed in God, I said yes, deeply. When she asked me whether I was Muslim, I said yes, deeply, although I probably wasn’t Muslim in the way she imagined me to be. 

She asked me if I’d ever looked into Christianity, and I told her yes, of course. She then told me that Christianity was the one true religion and that if I also wanted to be saved, then the only way would be to accept Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) as my saviour and Lord.

I told her that I did accept Jesus Christ. I 100% accepted him. As one of the greatest Prophets and Truth-tellers this world has ever known. And then I also told her that I didn’t believe anyone had to accept anything or anyone to be loved by God.

I told her that being Muslim, to me, means to be a person of peace.

I explained how the book Conversations with God had absolutely changed my life and how maybe, she could read it, too?

I told her that I didn’t believe Heaven or Hell to be places, but rather states of Being.

I told her about my journey of spiritual awakening, of meeting my Sufi Spiritual Master, of all the beauty and joy and peace that Islam, along with all of the other religions, holds, if only we all chose to delve into the heart of them.

I spoke to her of, how sadly, much of humanity has lost touch with the true meaning of religion, has moved away from the deeply spiritual dimensions of it, and instead chooses to focus mostly on the external aspects, and the ‘rules and regulations’.

I told her how I felt that as human beings we are all one and that we must not let anything divide us, especially religion.

I explained to her how I came to the realisation that God is not an entity separate from us, but more so a part of us so completely and so fully that when we realise this, deeply realise this, all the guilt, shame and judgement that we have been brought up with completely disappears.

I told her that our love for one another should not be tainted or even withheld because of our differing beliefs. I told her that I believe we are all saved and that the purpose of our life here on earth is to be the change we wish to see, to serve humanity and to leave the world a better place than the one that we came into.

She looked at me - similar to how the preacher looked at me. Questioningly, confused.

She didn’t seem to have anything else to say. She seemed to be defeated, not that I was out to get one over on her — not at all. And then she told me she couldn’t believe everything I had just said and that she’d never met a Muslim like me before.

She looked at me, almost with tears in her eyes, and repeated,

“I have never met a Muslim like you before.”

In sharing this with you, in no way am I indicating that I am above anyone. We are each entitled to live our truth however we want to live it; to ride whatever river we choose that, hopefully, leads us to the ocean of Love.

But sadly, what I’ve discovered is that religion, for many, is not practised out of Love for God and Love for the whole of humanity. Rather, it is used as a way to serve one's ego and instil the belief that you are right, and others are wrong. This girl and the preacher were not able to fully connect with me nor with their humanity in those moments that we shared together, because something about the words I had shared with them had infringed upon this identity they had adopted of being Christian. They couldn’t seem to see beyond it.

I am a Muslim who prays, who fasts, who meditates, who chants mantras from the Hindu tradition, who reads books from all religious and spiritual backgrounds, who uses crystals to enhance her spiritual practice, who uses art and writing as means to serve God and humanity, and who strives to return to the silence of my Being…

I am a human being who has finally come to understand that how I choose to love God is how I choose to love God and that no one can judge or condemn my path, as I cannot theirs. 

We are living in what seems to be becoming an increasingly secular world, where for some, fear surrounds even uttering the name of God. And to be honest, I understand where those who are against religion are coming from — because when your religion destroys your humanity, what is the point in religion at all?

My Spiritual Master, in one of his last talks, before he transitioned from this world, repeated over and over again, “The heart of all religion is the human being”. At the time, I didn’t fully understand this, but in the time that has passed since his transition, I’ve come to realise how profound these words are.

For me, (and any mistakes in my interpretation are purely my own) I understand this to mean that religion exists to bring us back to one another. To serve one another. To love one another. And in doing so, we will in turn be serving God. If in practising our faith, whatever religious or spiritual path that may be, we forget what it means to accept and love one another, then maybe we’ve got it all wrong.

It is one thing to label ourselves as such and such, but another thing to be it. For me, to be Muslim means to be a being of peace — and this is what I aim for as I live my life. And I’m sure in all other religions and spiritual paths, the goal is the same; we sometimes just get so caught up in the external, that we forget that it is the state of our hearts that really counts.

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Apart from a few awkward text messages after our coffee date, I didn’t hear from this new friend again. And that is absolutely okay! It’s just a shame that as two lovers of God, we couldn’t be friends just because our labels are different.

And as I turned my back and walked away from the preacher that day, I prayed in my heart that his heart would be opened to see all of humanity - all of the light and all of the darkness - as his own.

Instead of preaching to one another about saying a few words to accept a particular religion and then rejecting those who don’t, how about we work deeply within our own selves to accept ourselves first, then the entirety of humanity and the spectrum of this whole human experience?

We all came from the same place and we’re all going back there. We can choose to live in that place now, too.

It’s called Love.

With Light, Love & Peace,

Sabah x

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I am walking/jogging/running 150km from 15th May - 15th June to raise funds to provide urgent medical aid to those in Palestine. Please support me with a small donation of whatever you can give to help our suffering brothers and sisters in humanity.

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Check out this YouTube video:

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📚What I’m reading: Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian - a self-help and healing book all about creating a stable and solid foundation and home within yourself. It’s a powerful and beautiful read so far.

🎧What I’m listening to: Wild by Cheryl Strayed on Audible. It’s a memoir and it is written so, so beautifully. I’m only a couple of chapters in so far.

🎶Song of the Week:

💭Quote I’m contemplating: “Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them they could make themselves “right” and others “wrong” and thus define their identity through their enemies, the “others”, the “nonbelievers” or “wrong believers” who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in the killing.” ~ Eckhart Tolle.

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