Shahid Bolsen discusses his reversion to Islam

My parents were Catholic. I was raised Catholic, but not particularly practicing. But by one way or another, I I can't say religion was particularly important to me, but God was important to me all all my life growing up. And at a certain point in my teens I started to research other religions. First I began with doing a proper sort of research about Christianity itself, Catholicism and about Christianity and the origins of Christianity and the evolution of Christianity and the church which when you do that it's kind of unavoidable that you realize that it's false.

And so I started to look into other religions and I looked into Hinduism, Buddhism, looked into everything. And I had decided that I was not going to look into Islam at all. I didn't think that there was anything of value in this religion of crazy, militant, you know, terrorist people. Because, you know, I'm from an older generation obviously, so we didn't have the I didn't grow up with the, you know, the Al Qaeda idea, but there was Khomeini, was the big enemy of America at that time when I was growing up, when I was a child. So we had this image because of Iran and the Islamic so called Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Mhmm. So, you know and then, of course, there was a Qaddafi and there was there were terrorist attacks and there was also in America, obviously, the whole, you know, pro Israeli, anti Palestinian narrative. So I was dead set against thinking that there was anything of value to learn from Islam. And then when I was in university, I took an African American studies class and read the autobiography of Malcolm X. And I admired him for his honesty and his discipline and his courage.

And then when I discovered that he became a Muslim, I mean, actually properly became a Muslim, not from the the black Muslim nation of Islam ideology, but actually converted to Islam properly, Then I thought, okay. Well, maybe there's something I can learn from from Islam after all. If someone as intelligent as him and as, you know, upstanding as as him, may if he if he finds some value in it, then maybe there's some value in it. So I started to look into Islam at that point and very quickly I I fell in love with Rasulullah and was very very quickly convinced that what he claimed about himself was true, that he was a prophet and that the Quran was from Allah. And that's it.

I just I I was it was I I studied Islam and I read about Islam and I studied that. For example, I read Sahih Bukhari before I converted, cover to cover. And I was actually I was actually very hesitant and intimidated to read the Quran. Because at that point, I I believed that it was actually the word of Allah, the word of my creator. And that's intimidating.

That's a that's a scary thing to to to to approach that book. But I was like I I felt I felt very much that I should convert, but I also thought that it would be irresponsible for me to convert without reading the Quran. So I I I did eventually start reading the Quran. And then in the process of reading it, I just realized I'm putting myself in danger every moment that passes that I don't take Shahada and and become a Muslim. And so that's the story there.