I am presently known among my Muslim brethren as Abdur Razzaq (the slave of the Provider) or Abu Sumayyah (the father of Sumayyah). I am of Puerto Rican decent and I was born in Passaic, NJ. I was raised in a Christian household, Pentecostal to be more specific. My parents were not very religious. They rarely attended church and on the odd occasion practised the Christian faith.
I was taught about the Christian faith via my grandmother who played a very important and vital role in my life. My aunt (father’s sister) always picked up my cousins and me on Sunday mornings in order to take us to Sunday school since our parents did not attend church.
Growing up I was taught to believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he was God as well. We were taught to pray to Jesus, to turn to him in times of need, to believe that he had died for all of humanity.
Once I reached the age of 10, I became a little more disconnected from the church. I rarely attended church at this point in life due to my commitment and love for baseball. I would dedicate my Sundays to playing and practising for upcoming baseball games, while spending much time with cousins and friends.
The years to follow were crucial in my development toward the main belief system in Christianity, which was to accept Jesus Christ as one’s saviour and Lord. For the next 11 years I removed myself from Sunday school and church in general and I did not want to attend church any longer.
I began to think much in times of need about whom I should call upon for help. I started finding myself questioning the teachings that were taught to me by my grandmother and the church that we used to attend. I started to have doubt about worshiping and calling on Jesus whom at this stage in life I considered to be a man who walked the earth, a man who lived and died, and a man who ate and slept.
I commenced thinking within myself that God had to be something greater than another human being like myself. I then started re-directing my prayers and my asking toward God alone. I would say, “O God, help me,” instead of “Jesus help me.”
Within these next 11 years my thoughts regarding God remained firm; I continued to seek from Him solely and from none other than Him. I regarded Jesus as a Prophet of God and I did not raise him above this standing. I prayed in a similar fashion using similar words and that was something that I had become steadfast upon.
Since I was now removed from faith in general, and I had no faith guidelines to live by, I began indulging in and trying many different things. By the eighth grade I had tried drinking alcohol and that seemed to become more frequent the older I got, especially in my high school years.
I was pretty good at concealing my newly founded hobby of drinking from my parents since most of the time my friends and I drank on the weekends in my room while my parents were downstairs asleep in their bedroom.
When I became a freshman in high school I began to go beyond drinking and I tried smoking marijuana and taking tabs (little purple pills that made you hallucinate and laugh.) I lost my virginity this same year and I found that this had become a new addiction that I was willing to continue exploring.
This same year, my junior year of high school, I decided to drop out of school and begin to work. I was uninterested in education and I was more interested in having girlfriends, partying, and making money. I was totally enveloped by the idea of making money both legally and illegally and I was caught up in this false sense of security. I used to think that I could make more than a college graduate if I continued to sell drugs and work full-time.
I thought selling drugs would be safe since I knew my entire drug clientele and I was not from those individuals who sold drugs on a street corner. If I did not know you, I would not sell anything to you and that was the motto I lived by. My cousin and I also tried selling marijuana wholesale to all of the drug dealers whom we knew, and we figured that this would keep us off the streets and it would be safer.
I lived this lifestyle up until I was 20 years old, selling drugs, smoking weed; and consuming more alcohol after dropping out of school than I had in the years that preceded it. I found that I was drinking every day and that most weekends I would not even know how I arrived at home and sometimes awake not knowing where I was for the first five to ten minutes. I began drinking and driving and this became a regular practice.
I had my first kid when I was 20 and my second at 21 years of age. The two children were from different mothers and I was not with either of them. I began paying child support for both children. At this point I had stopped selling drugs, but I did not stop consuming them. I started to drink more; the stress of having children and paying child support was something that I found to be heavy on my soul.
It was around this time that I had an unforgettable moment. I met a friend whom I had not seen in years and I went to visit him with two cases of coronas. I went to his home and along with two of his friends we drank the coronas mixed with some other forms of hard liquor. We then proceeded to go to a club around 12 am and continued to drink and party.
Upon leaving the club I fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed into a light pole at a main intersection in Hackensack, NJ. Thank God that we both survived, but after recuperating from the intoxication and being spared that night by a cop who was a friend of my friend, I then saw just how bad the car was and how we should have been dead.
This was a moment that began a small change in my life. I still drank alcohol, but I tried not to drink as much when I was the responsible driver.
It was not too long after all of this that I was introduced to one of my mother’s new foster children. He was around 17 years old and he had lived a rough life in NY City where he was raised. He and I became close friends and he introduced me to an organisation that was called Zulu Nation. He took me and another friend of mine to their meetings which were held in Harlem, NY once a month.
The leader of this organisation was a man by the name of Africa Bambada. He would come to teach about various things that contained faith, government conspiracies, etc. The two of us joined the organisation while my friend who was the foster child was just reacquainting himself with the organisation that he was once a part of when he lived in NY.
It was at these meetings that we were introduced to the concept of Islam.
We were unaware of what Islam was and how it would soon change all of our lives for the better. We soon began researching it and studying its various forms within the various sects that connected themselves to it.
We studied the Five-Percent Nation, the Nation of Islam, Islam according to the Sunnis, and we studied the books that were sold to us at Zulu Nation meetings that consisted of the teachings of Dr. York.
At one meeting an old friend of the foster kid came and hugged him. He said to him:
“Do you remember me?”
And my friend who was my mother’s foster child said:
“Yes, how can I forget?”
This man was someone who had just come out of prison, who accepted Sunni Islam in jail, and who was also Puerto Rican. He asked us to drive him home after the meeting and he began telling us about Islam and its teachings.
We had been reading many different books and we had many questions. We asked him about God and what did he consider or who did he think God was. He told us that in Islam God was One whom no one has seen; He was not created, He was not part of His creation, He was not like His creation, He did not have children, He did not have family members, and so on.
At that point I was still reluctant to believe in what I considered to be a new religion, Islam, but at the same time within myself I stated, “Wow, this is what I have believed for the last 11 years of my life.”
My two friends and I soon began reading some books that he gave us and one in particular was titled: Tawheed, the Oneness of God, written by Bilal Phillips.
Upon reading this book on tawheed (the Oneness of God) we all believed that this is the true religion and that this was the religion that we wanted to ascribe ourselves to. We continued to go to both the Zulu meetings and to the Muslim brother’s home where we would ask more questions and learn more about Islam.
The Muslim brother, after two months of visiting him and learning from him, told us that we could not have our cake and eat it too. He told us that we must choose between Allah (God) and a gang, and that we cannot mix the two. We decided to stick with the religion of Islam and we stopped attending the Zulu Nation meetings.
At this point he asked us not to come back to New York, rather to seek out a mosque in New Jersey, to continue learning there, and to call him with an update every now and again. We proceeded to do as he said and we began looking for mosques that were close to our homes.
One day we were parked in the projects waiting for a friend to come out of his apartment. While waiting, my friend, who accepted Islam, and I saw two African-American men walking toward the projects dressed with what we perceived to be all white, long-sleeved, dresses. My friend said:
“Those two men are Muslims,” to which I replied, “I will never dress like that, they must be crazy.”
We continued after this to Paterson where we found a mosque but we were too nervous to go in. We left and returned the next day and, after building up some courage, we entered.
My first impression upon entering the mosque was, “What did I get myself into?”
All I saw were Arab men sitting around talking in Arabic. Their leader stood in front of them and began delivering a speech in Arabic and I was even more convinced, saying to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?”
I could not understand what this man was saying. I asked myself, “How can I join this religion?”
I looked at my friend and stated that I was prepared to leave. Upon exiting the main prayer hall, I saw two Muslim brothers who were dressed in baggy pants and had sweat hoods on. I said to my friend, “Look! The two brothers over there look like they are from the hood, maybe we can speak with them.”
We introduced ourselves and they introduced themselves and we soon found out that they were from South America and that they had also converted some years earlier. This brought a sense of comfort to both me and my friend since we were both from Puerto Rico. It was also comforting to see someone who came from the same streets we came from.
They told us about another mosque whose congregants were mainly American, informing us that they delivered all of their speeches and lectures in English. Soon after we went to the American mosque only to find that same African-American brother, who we had seen with the white dress on at the projects, was giving the lecture. Glory be to Allah! It was as if Allah had shown us our future companion prior to meeting him.
After introducing ourselves we told him that we had seen him and his father at the projects; relating to him how shocked I was to see a man wearing a white dress (an Islamic robe for men). He began to laugh and this was the beginning of a fantastic relationship.
(to be concluded)