Jummah Kutbahaykum is a Muslim convert who left Islam in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this episode, he shares his story and how he was able to return to Islam.
00:00:56.880For those who have no clue what you're talking about right now, give us a general idea of what that would include.
00:01:02.540Well, fitna can be apostation from Islam, outright where you say, I'm Muslim, I no longer am Muslim, I renounce Islam.
00:01:12.620But you can apostate from Islam by denying anything that's cardinal to Islam, like the nature of the Quran, the five pillars of Islam, some of the cardinal rules of Islam, like wearing the hijab or Kimar, being modest, praying five times a day.
00:01:35.780So if you say, I don't believe in that, or even if you just don't do it, I believe in it, but I just don't do it.
00:02:29.180I haven't spoken to him, hadn't received a text message.
00:02:32.760We hadn't had any communication in years.
00:02:36.640At that point in my life, which coincided with the beginning of Ramadan, he sends me a text message asking, Are you ready to come back home?
00:02:46.400And, you know, I was being a smart butt, and I sent back, Are you ready to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
00:02:53.920And so we started talking, you know, and we started talking, and I just found it weird that those things coincided with each other at the same exact time.
00:03:09.740And I really started thinking, Well, if you're open-minded enough to explore everything, you say that you want to see the proof for everything.
00:03:22.980You want to see the evidence for everything.
00:03:25.940Will you take a look and to see whether or not it was a mistake to leave Islam?
00:03:38.840There was a part of me that resisted that.
00:03:41.320And it got to the point where, Wallahi, I would wake up in the morning, and I would go into the bathroom, and I would look in the mirror, and I couldn't look at my own reflection in the mirror.
00:04:11.860So, I started going, I went to a masjid, and I would just, first day, I just wanted to sit and observe, and I watched the brothers make salah.
00:04:27.440And then, after doing that a few times, I started, I got into a conversation with the imam, Wallahi, another brother that I knew from back in the days.
00:04:38.140He just happens to be at the masjid, you know, and we started talking.
00:04:45.080So, now I'm talking to the brother of Riyatetz that I hadn't spoken to in years, talking to this other brother that I hadn't seen in years, and speaking to the local imam at the masjid.
00:04:56.540And it was like my, it was, if you had a heart covered in steel, and you poured acid, and it melted the steel down, so you got to the fleshy part of the heart, that's what it was like.
00:05:14.480The hardness, against the hardness that was inside me, towards the idea of Islam, and returning, even returning to Islam, it began to just slowly melt away, day by day.
00:05:29.080Each day of Ramadan, it just melted away.