J.W. LOVEGROVE (G.B.) Why did they become Muslim?

 

J.W. LOVEGROVE (G.B.)



I would like to give the following short answer to your question
why I became a Muslim. I shall not attempt to give you a long
lecture on religion and belief. Religion and belief make up a
virtue that emanates from the human soul and which is unlike anything
else. It is identical with the thirst felt by a person left in
a desert. Man definitely needs a belief to rely on as a dependable
guide. First I studied a history of religions. I read with attention
the lives and the teachings of those personages who had invited
people to religion. I realized that the religious essentials that
Prophets 'alaihim-us-salam' had taught in the beginning had been
changed and turned into entirely different forms in the course
of time. What had survived of them was only a few facts. Various
legends had been mixed into the lives of those great, distinguished
people, and their deeds had been transformed into myths and reached
us as a conglomerate of mysterious stories. In contrast with all
these ruins, one true religion, Islam, has preserved its pristine
purity and simplicity from the day it was revealed to the present
time and, without being polluted with any sort of superstitions
or legends, it has survived to our age. The Qur'an al-karim is
the same today as it was in the time of Muhammad a.s.. Not a word
of it has changed. The blessed utterances of Muhammad a.s. have
reached our day in exactly the same literal form as they were
pronounced by him, without undergoing any alterations.



Allahu ta'ala sent Prophets 'alaihim-us-salawatu wattaslimat'
to humanity whenever He deemed it necessary. They are complementary
to one another. In consideration of the fact that the teachings
of other Prophets 'alaihim-us-salawatu wattaslimat' have been
interpolated and changed into annoying incongruities, is there
another way which one could find more logical than accepting the
Islamic religion, which has remained the most intact, the purest,
and the truest? As a matter of fact, a simple and useful religion
unsullied with illogical superstitions was what I was questing
for. The Islamic religion is that very religion. The Islamic religion
shows one by one all my duties towards Allahu ta'ala, towards
my neighbours, and towards all humanity. Although this was originally
the main objective of all religions, their tenor has been watered
down into unintelligible credal tenets. In contrast, the Islamic
religion embodies easily understandable, simple, logical, convincing
and useful principles of belief. In Islam, alone, did I find the
information concerning the requirements to be fulfilled to attain
peace and salvation in this world and the next. It is for this
reason that I became a Muslim willingly.