Dr. Laurence B. Brown's Conversion Story

I found out about Dr. Laurence Brown from my aunt, then I looked him up and found his website and turned out to be truly his, and the story was authentic from his own telling. The first few times I told the story to others, I couldn't help choking up as I reached the end, it is nothing short of truly miraculous:

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There is a certain fascination with conversion stories, and for good reason. Frequently they involve dramatic life-altering events, sufficient to shock the convert out of the materialistic world and into the spiritual. Most who pass through such moments of trial and panic experience an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, and turn to their Creator in prayer. In virtually every case I know, they forget the strained theological formulas they have been taught and instinctively pray directly to our Creator.

For example, a lady once related her ‘Born Again Christian’ conversion story on a popular evangelical television show. This lady told how she had been the sole survivor of a terrible boat-wreck. During her days and nights alone in the harsh elements of the open ocean, she told how God spoke to her, guided her and protected her and how, seeking His favor, she prayed to God and to God Alone. In her long tale, she mentioned God over and over again, and never once mentioned Jesus Christ. However, the moment she was saved by a passing ship, she threw her arms open to the heavens and yelled, “Thank you, Jesus!”

There is a lesson here. When in panic and stress, people instinctively pray directly to God, without intermediary or intercessor. That is the default setting of our spiritual consciousness. However, when relieved of their distress, people frequently return to their previously held theological formulas, no matter how strained or bizarre. All converts feel God saved them, and that the miracle of their salvation justifies their beliefs. But there is only One God, so it makes sense that there can only be one religion that is true in all aspects. Hence, only one group can be right and all others are, to one degree or another, wrong. For the latter group, their personal miracles serve to confirm them upon disbelief rather than upon truth. As Allah teaches in the Holy Qur’an, “Allah leaves astray whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him]” (TMQ -- Translation of the Meaning of the Qur’an: 13:27) and “So those who believe in Allah and hold fast to Him – He will admit them to mercy from Himself and bounty and guide them to Himself on a straight path.” (TMQ 4:175) As for those astray in disbelief, our Creator leaves them to stray upon whatever misdirected path they themselves choose.

So who will become Muslim based upon my conversion story? Only one person: me. Muslims might appreciate my story, others might not. Either way, here it is:

In 1990, I was in the last year of my ophthalmology residency at George Washington University hospital in Washington, DC. My second daughter was born October tenth. To my great dismay, she was a dusky, gunmetal blue from the chest to the toes. Her body was not getting enough blood, and the cause was found to be a coarctation of the aorta -- a critical narrowing in the major artery from the heart. Needless to say, I was shattered. Being a doctor, I understood she needed emergency surgery, with a poor chance of long-term survival. A consultant pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon was called from across town, and I left him in the neonatal intensive care unit to examine my daughter. With no companion but my fears, I went to the hospital prayer room and fell to my knees. A product of Christian-American heritage dating back to 1677, nonetheless this was the first time that I even partially recognized God. I say partially, for even then I prayed the prayer of a skeptic, “Oh, God, if you are there . . .” I promised that if God existed, and if He saved my daughter and then guided me to the religion most pleasing to Him, that I would follow. I returned to the neonatal ICU roughly fifteen minutes later, and was shocked when the consultant told me that my daughter would be fine. True to his assessment, within the next two days her condition resolved miraculously, without medicine or surgery. She grew to be a perfectly normal child and as of this date -- July 2008 -- is on the verge of her eighteenth birthday.

Now, as I said before, I am a doctor. And although the consultant provided a medical explanation for my daughter’s miraculous recovery, I simply didn’t buy it. I remember him explaining about a patent ductus arteriosis, low oxygenation and spontaneous resolution. But I also remember thinking, “No,” my daughter’s salvation was not a medical miracle, but a divine one. Many who make promises to God in moments of panic find or invent excuses to escape their part of the bargain, once God relieves them of their distress. I could easily have assigned my daughter’s recovery to the doctor’s explanation rather than to a miracle from God. But faith had entered my heart, and it wouldn’t leave. We had cardiac ultrasounds taken before and after, showing the stricture one day and gone the next, and all I could think was that God had made good on His part of the deal, and I had to make good on mine. Even if there was a medical explanation, that was nothing more than the pathway by which Almighty God chose to answer my prayer and effect His decree. I did not then, and I do not now, accept any other explanation.

For the next few years I tried to fulfill my side of the bargain, but failed. I studied Judaism and a large number of Christian sects. I felt I was on the right track, close to the truth but not upon it. I never fully embraced any specific Christian formula, for I could not reconcile the differences between Christian canon and Jesus’ teachings. Eventually I was introduced to the Holy Qur’an and Martin Lings’s biography, Muhammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources.

During my years of study, I had encountered the Jewish scriptures’ reference to three prophets to follow Moses. I had concluded that John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were two, but that left one. In the New Testament Jesus Christ spoke of a final prophet to follow. When I found the Holy Qur’an teaching the oneness of God, as both Moses and Jesus Christ had taught, I become convinced Muhammad was the predicted final prophet. Suddenly, everything made sense: The continuity in the chain of prophethood and revelation, the One-ness of Almighty God, and the completion of revelation in the Holy Qur’an. It was then that I became Muslim.

Pretty smart, hunh? No, I would err greatly if I believed that I figured it out for myself. One lesson I have learned is that there are a lot of people more intelligent than I who have not learned the truth of Islam. It is not a matter of intelligence but of enlightenment, for “…whoever believes in Allah – He will guide his heart” (TMQ 64:11), “Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him]” (TMQ 42:13), “And Allah guides whom He wills to a straight path.” (TMQ 24:46)

So I thank Allah that He chose to guide me, and I attribute that guidance to one simple formula: recognizing our Creator, praying to Him and to Him alone, and sincerely seeking His guidance. And whom He guides, none can lead astray.

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Standing Next to a Murderer.. infront of God

About five years ago, at the lunch table with my family, having m6abbag Balool extremely fresh and tender, my dad and grandmother were talking in low shocked voices:

Dad: "He did what???"
Grandmother: "inna lillah wa inna ilaih raje3oon, what can you do or say? it's hard to imagine."
Dad: "That man?? he prays with us in our mosque!! are you sure it's him??!"
Grandmother: "Yes I am sure as I am sure you are my son. There's no mistake."

Then they stop while my dad shakes his head "La 7ola wala qowata illa billah". and my grandmother sighs and her hand forming her next lugma not enthusiatsically. My dad's shock stopped him from eating altogether. My eyes following both of them with concern and curiousity, I can't help but ask what's going on? And they tell me the horrific story.

This man who's only maybe a few years older than I am, in his mid 30's at the time, very quiet and mild mannered, divorced with children, and regularly prays at our neighborhood mosque, was in the newspaper for murder.

Turns out he was not mentally stable, and was on medication for a long time. I would never have suspected it, because he always had this air of calm and good manners about him. He even walked slowly, never rushing to catch a rak3a.

The reason he was in the paper was that he had come to his father's house one day, where his ex-wife lived with his children, he got a knife from the kitchen, and as he sharpened it he told his eldest daughter not to be afraid, and that she would go to heaven, then as she was totally unsuspecting, he cut her throat. (that was pretty hard to type out)

He was going to continue with the rest of his children but his son ran crying to his mother and they all escaped.

The man disappeared and the case was famous at the time, it was too shocking to comprehend.

I had trouble for a long time to connect the face of the man I remember from the mosque to the man in the story. I couldn't imagine such a horrific act from ANYone I knew, let alone knew from the mosque.

Almost a year ago, I see the man in our mosque and my dad points him out to me.

He must have been released from the psychiatric hospital and heavily treated, and God knows what has been done to him. I am not a legal expert, but I think perhaps a death sentence wouldn't have been understandable in his case. Who could gaurantee that he's not a danger to anyone now? What if he forgot to take his pills?! My mind is having trouble handling him, free and so close to me physically. There are many parents who bring their sons to the mosque, from 4 years and upward. I fear for their safety near him.

Since he came back his presence has been very noticeable to me. Where he sits. He sits at the right back corner of the mosque with a few cushions and a Qur'an on its X shaped wooden carrier. He prays in his spot all the time, before and after prayers. He reads that Qur'an all the time. He doesn't talk to anyone. And not many talk to him.

Sometimes I see one of the old respected men of the mosque sitting with him talking softly.

I am always aware of his presense or absence. And whenever he turns towards me I intentionally turn my head away from him, ignoring him. I can't bring myself to say Salam to him. Always on the defensive around him.

I also feel sad thinking of his crime and how is he dealing with his guilt. He certainly looks like he's in pain because of it. I can't imagine what sort of strong will to live and faith in Allah's mercy he must have just to be able to walk and eat and breathe every morning, and pray and ask for Allah's forgiveness. I feel sorry for him. But I also can't speak to him or even offer greeting.

Yesterday and today it was by chance that he stood next to me for the first time in salaat. Which pushed me to write this post.

We're both men of very different circumstances. il7amdulillah Allah gave me beautiful kids and a beautiful wife who loves me and I love them all. and I can't imagine hurting them. And next to me is another man who has many years ahead of him and has to live with this horrible crime he did. He's not in prison for life, he's not sentenced to death. He's a Kuwaiti who the government didn't know what to do with. It's too strange to judge. But his biggest judge which he has to face now is Allah's judgement.

All he has to face that is repentance. As much as he is man enough to muster.

I still can't bring myself to pray to Allah to forgive him. I don't know him much. I don't want to know him at all. I am curious to what he's thinking now, but he repulses me.

And the wonderous and amazing thing is... No one can ever say who was a better man as we stood there, me or him.

Giving and Receiving in the Didache

I was thinking of avoiding people who hurt you in any way this morning. Usually they do it without meaning to. But in the end, the hurt is received, and it is not pleasant. You may have a certain level of tolerance for being hurt. A threshold for pain. Anything bellow that level is fine, you can take it. But with time, either that threshold becomes lower, or the hurt being received becomes higher, and they meet in the middle, and you can't endure it, you can't take it. You WANT to endure it, because enduring it would be good. But your knees simply buckle from underneath you and you fall. Or perhaps not yet, they just threaten to fall.

And then your alarm goes off. You have to protect yourself from more hurt, otherwise the next hit will surely mean you WILL fall. And you don't want to fall. Falling is the most shameful thing that could happen. So what to do? if you tried returning hurt back, you would know how useless and bad that was. It only breeds regret. And regret makes you hate yourself for being not wise enough.. to simply just.. avoid.

If you simply want to avoid hurt, you just stop receiving from people. You close the door shut, to the good as well as the bad. And you definitely never ask to receive.

As I was pondering all this, this morning I was researching old texts from the Bible (I needed information talking to a christian who was curious about Islam), and I came to hear of the "Didache", it's a text believed to have been written in greek by early 100-200 A.D. christians concerning the newly converted, and as I read into it, I found this piece (what's between parentheses are my comments):

Happy is he who gives according to the commandment, for he is guiltless. (Generousity)
Woe to him who receives; (The Warning)
for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless;
but he who receives not having need shall pay the penalty, why he received and for what. (The Accounting and the Reckoning)
And coming into confinement, he shall be examined concerning the things which he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last penny.
And also concerning this, it has been said,
Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give. (The Responsibility and Care in Helping those who Deserve it)

What struck me was the responsibility tied with receiving. You can't get anything completely for free. If someone is kind to you now.. you need to be careful of the hurt that might come later.. if for no other reason that they feel entitled to.

Lesbo Concert One Summer Evening

I've been a fan of the Indigo Girls since the 80's. And when I went to San Diego this past summer and saw that they were to play at this place: Humphrey's "Concerts by the Bay" me and my youngest sister immediately booked tickets and went.

The catch was that both Indigo Girls are lesbians (but not lovers themselves), and at the time California was juuuuust starting to issue marriage licenses to gay/lesbian couples, it was an issue being talked about all over the news.

The morning the courts started doing that me and my wife went to a great breakfast restaurant which serves the best scrambled eggs with home baked bread, along with cut fruit and watermelon, the whole table is just filled with hearty juicy food. There were atleast 4 different tables around us that had gay couples dressed in tuxedo suits, with maybe a pink/peach handkerchief neatly tucked in. All celebrating their "weddings". One table had two couples with their families celebrating, the table was so long it took the whole side of the place.

The mood was festive, everyone was happy, they all felt like it was a triumph for humanity and justice.

That night at the concert with my sister I was waiting for salat ilmaghreb and I can clearly see when the sun is setting on the pacific horizon. So I get up to go to the bathroom and I'm told that most of the restrooms are reserved for women. The door with the Male sign has been taped with a piece of paper that said:
"We are sorry, but this restroom is for women only. Please use the male restroom at the gates"

Turns out since most of the fans for this band were also lesbians, 90% of the people attending were women. So I go and join the line of grumbling men waiting to use the single male-dedicated bathroom at the gates, overhearing lines like "How's this for discrimination", and "This is so unfair".

As my turn comes I quickly do my ablution (wudhu) and I hear the opening band starts, Brandi Carlile (The Story):


Lovely song, but I have a bit of a hard time finding a suitable patch of grass behind the bungalows and the stage to actually pray.

Then when I go to my seat which happened to be many rows behind my sister, because she reserved her ticket a month before, while mine was almost a previous day's notice. And surrounding me on all four sides were lesbian couples. And as the night went on and the songs became more affectionate, and the more beer consumed, the more kissing and smooching that happened all around me.

I felt VERY out of place and VERY uncomfortable needless to say. True that I had a good time repeating the words of some of the songs almost by heart, since they were so familiar to me. But I didn't actually like alot of what they stood for, I simply liked the beats and melodies which they wrote. As far as gay/lesbian rights go, I think what Allah decides in them is the most appropriate. Imagine if all the gay/lesbian people in the world lived in a single country, by theory and definition, that country should become extinct in a matter of 50 years or so... basically it threatens the continuation of the human race. Nothing serious really :P

My sister was screaming her head off on 2nd row, so she was clearly having fun. Good for her. Plus as a full blown feminist, the frenzy of justice and vindication for women was right up her alley, true she's not really comfortable with lesbians either, but I suppose she can indulge in some denial here, details details.. don't get bogged down in the details. Only liberty matters right? sure whatever.

And in the end, the noise was so loud throughout the concert my head hurt and I thought to myself, I could have just downloaded their albums and listened in the comfort and solitude of my iPod...... right?

But atleast Ms. Carlile was a pleasant surprise.

His Voice Tore My Heart Out

I 1st heard his voice talking to BBC's Lucy Ash last Thursday, he was afraid for his children. This morning I heard him again on BBC, his voice barely sustained, his sobbing unstoppable, three of his daughters and a niece killed in their room by a tank shell slamming into their building. This happened Friday, the exact next day after the 1st interview I heard.

This is the full heart-wrenching story from BBC's Lucy Ash:
Gaza doctor's loss grips Israelis

He used to work in Israeli hospitals helping jewish mothers deliver their babies. He's been an activist for peace. And during the 21 days of bombing he's been a frequent face of Palestinian suffering on Israeli TV, and 1 day before the cease-fire his tragedy is as we speak shocking Israelis to their core, and forcing them to question what they did to Gaza.

This is the same story reported by Haaretz:
Israeli-trained Gaza doctor loses three daughters and niece to IDF tank shell

And now all he could muster was a cry of impaling pain "Why did my daughters die?". I ask of Allah to give him the faith to endure this and hope for God's reward.

Only a couple of days ago I got a call from my wife that my 4.5 yo son ran infront of a large Yukon at the co-op and got his foot wedged under the tyre before the driver managed to stop the car quickly and the tyre didn't go over my son's foot. il7amdellah alf. Thankfully his foot didn't have any breaks, just a minor injury to the muscle and it swelled.

The point is, when I first heard it on the phone, I was silent for about maybe 5-10 seconds, then was able to ask where they were, and that I'm going to follow them to al-Razi hospital. I guess those blank seconds had my head filled with fears of what might be wrong with his foot, and if the injury is going to ruin his foot permanently or not. and so on of the many fears a parent might have for his child.

It only occured to me to thank God later. Maybe 1 hour later. And I don't mean only thank Allah that his injury wasn't any worse (God forbid), but I mean actually accept the bad and thank Allah for it. because even the bad things than happen to us can be good things if we thank Allah and be patient.

I truly regret that I wasn't able to come to my senses on the spot, and consider how minor this event was. and consider how this doctor lost three of his eldest daughters in a single moment. I really ask of God never to place me a in a moment of enormous test like this one without me being ready to accept it and be thankful for it.

Yalla la teblana.

Kiva Rocks the World

Ever heard of Kiva before?

Ever heard of Micro Financing?

It's somewhat like charity, but where you get your money back.

Mohammad Yunus started the whole thing with Grameen bank and won the Nobel Prize for it.

The IDEA is simple:
You give a small loan to a poor person with a small idea (usual example: indian lady wanting to buy a sewing machine). That lady then repays the loan (without interest) using the income of the sewing machine, and can then support herself better. The lender keeps a database of the loan and repayment schedule, and if the lady doesn't pay back in time, she's not taken to the police, she's simply blacklisted to not receive any more money in the future.

The repayment rate is usually between 98-100%!!!!

These people take their loans seriously.



So what's Kiva? It's a website that takes this model to the next level, the INTERNET.

It lists thousands of loan seekers, and you can lend any of them using paypal! You get your money back over a certain time period.

Here's a video that tells the whole story:

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

A Mouse Trap That Doesn't Work..

I only recently noticed a comment by "The Wise One" under "My Friend The Atheist" in which he basically proclaims that he is an atheist himself and mentions a few issues which he thought were proofs that Islam is a lie and also mentions "Intelligent Design" and how our human bodies are not well designed.

I wish to respond. O' Mr. Wise One:

You mentioned how our blood vessels are all chaotic and tangled up. You prefer them all proper and straight and parallel for example? you don't like that there's way too many in there? more than what's efficiently needed? And what about redundancy and failure tolerance? You see chaos but when you get cut and start bleeding, you don't think how all a doctor really has to do is put the parts close together and wait for these veins to find their way to each other and mesh? How come you don't marvel at that? How do cells understand what they need to do as group? how is it that when the healing is sufficiently complete, that the cells actually STOP?? because you know that extra unwanted rampantly growing tissue is nothing but cancer. How is it that we don't get cancer after every cut?

Intelligent Design proponents usually bring the example of a simple Mouse Trap. I recommend this book I read a few years ago "Darwin's Black Box". We all know that the basis of the theory of evolution is "Survival of the Fittest". That random mutations occur throughout generations and which ever mutation is more "fit" (stronger, faster, smarter, more gorgeous) , is more likely to reproduce and survive, while the "unfit" (weaker, slower, dumber, uglier) is less likely to have offspring, and eventually die out of the population.

The problem is that some of our biological systems are so complicated and advanced in order to give the slightest bit of benefit, that slow and gradual mutation can NOT produce middle steps that are "partially beneficial" to the animal.

The book explains in heavy detail the process of blood coagulation, or clotting. If you get cut and your blood doesn't clot quickly, you'll bleed until you die. No one has yet been able to show how the modern clotting process could have had a simpler ancestral chain which would have worked, say with 50% or even 20% effectiveness.

To illustrate the idea more, the book uses the example of a mousetrap, which is many many times simpler than the chain of chemical reactions which clotting needs. To make a mouse trap to work and catch mice, you need about 4-5 parts to make it work. A base, a spring, a hammer, a holding bar and ofcourse the cheese. Those parts need to be aligned so carefully together in order to be ready to trap anything, (I remember that from my childhood qubbi trapping days). Now if any of the parts is missing, or not positioned correctly, the whole trap's effectiveness would not be reduced by a certain amount, the whole trap would STOP working. There's no "previous ancestor mutation" to it. Any previous random mutation to the mousetrap would have been a complete failure at catching mice.

And since we know that these mutations take 10's of thousands of generations to occur, I ask why would any organism that includes a bunch of parts of a system that does not really benefit the animal in any way, keep the system? wouldn't evolution theory dictate that a useless mousetrap be removed? to save the energy and cells required to make it atleast. The animal itself can not predict that the system of parts is useless now, but is HOPING to evolve it into a useful mousetrap 100's of yearsin the future, and thousands of generations later.

I agree that evolutionary mutation is correct when each step produces a benefit. But when each individual step does not produce a benefit, then why would the animal continue in that path? the more logical way for it is to mutate backwards and remove the part in later generations no?

Here's a link that the author of the book Behe talks about an evolutionary experiment where a kind of bacteria evolves to be able to benefit from cirtus Multiple Mutations Needed for E.Coli:

if only one mutation is needed to confer some ability, then Darwinian evolution has little problem finding it. But if more than one is needed, the probability of getting all the right ones grows exponentially worse. “If two mutations have to occur before there is a net beneficial effect — if an intermediate state is harmful, or less fit than the starting state — then there is already a big evolutionary problem.” (4) And what if more than two are needed? The task quickly gets out of reach of random mutation.