Christianity to Islam (Introduction to Chapters of Sunnah)

Assalam Alayakum and welcome to Chapters of Sunnah, a place of mutual learning, faith building and research. Let me start by introducing myself, My name is Gareth (may change, not 100% sure yet) and I reverted from Christianity to Islam.

I grew up in a Christian household with two very loving and wise parents who made me who I am today. I was very fortunate as I was never in want for anything, I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was spoilt, but my father worked extremely hard to provide for my mother, brother and myself.

I was adopted into this loving home at the age of three, and I find it hard to imagine life without my mom and dad. Growing up my parents were strong knowledgeable Christians, always trying to raise my brother and myself with Christian values. This strong faith based household led me to become a knowledgeable and faithful Christian following Jesus to the best of my abilities.

While growing up my father got me into music always trying to make me learn the Piano, which if I am honest, wasn’t at the time something I was interested in, however I eventually picked up the Bass, Guitar & Piano. While growing up in church with a very close nit group of friends, we all became involved in the worship team, eventually becoming what we would call worship leaders within our church, this lasted for about 5-6 years, however there became some political issues within the church which caused a church split.

This threw me away from the church with an amount of animosity towards the whole church political status. A few years later I joined another church plant in Wolverhampton where myself and one of my closest friends led a Christian Men’s group every month, leading the Worship, Study & Teachings. Again due to politics within the church this came to a halt, and we all eventually left the church.

After this point I didn’t want to join another church and wanted to focus on raising my family with Christian values as my parents had done for me. Skipping forward a few years now with 2 Children, 1 Divorce, Inheriting 2 Children (from my partner) & Having 2 more children, life became very busy and hectic. However my close friend at the time and myself still had deep theological talks once or twice a week. Supporting each other with prayer and teachings.

This is when things started to take a turn, my friend would occasionally and more and more frequently, talk about how “satanic Islam” was and how “blatantly stupid the Qur’an” was. over time the remarks and comments became more and more worrying. I didn’t want to just agree with what he stated without researching it for myself, and so the story starts.

I decided to order myself a Quran and Prayer Mat, and they arrived the following day. So, I started to read, for some reason feeling guilty for reading it as I went along. However as I was reading, I found myself agreeing and understanding the beliefs of Islam more and more. the biggest shock for me was as mentioned before, we would have very deep theological discussions, and while reading and researching for these discussions I would find Contradictions and other biblical errors, so I would play “Devils Advocate” and try to discuss the other views.

The funny thing is, the Qur’an answered all of the questions I ended up having as well as clearing up and bringing the bible to life for me. I spent more time reading and found a joy in reading and studying Islam. I would go to the Islamic bookshops in Birmingham where I was greeted more hospitably that I was when I visited Bible Book Shops. It was one of the first things I noticed about Muslims. Completely against the western standard negative view.

Whilst reading, I came to a point where my brain clicked and I knew I had to make a choice, either remain a Christian or embrace the Truth of Islam, In my heart I believe I had already made the choice a few months prior. however this was now a mental decision. Before taking my Shahada, out of respect I went to my parents to tell them that I was going to revert to Islam.

This came a shock to my parents and understandably they were a bit hurt, however I knew this was the right choice to make. A couple of weeks later I went to my local Masjid and took my Shahada. Since then I have lost communication with my friend after 20 years of friendship, and he now holds a large amount of anger, judgement and animosity towards me.

Since becoming reverting to the faith of my birth: Islam. I Decided I wanted to use my skills to support the Muslim ummah and started my own Muslim only IT business Sunnah IT and then I wanted to try a new way to grow my own learning so decided to start a blog and YouTube channel called Chapters of Sunnah.

I hope you found this insightful and engaging, please feel free to leave a comment and head over to my YouTube channel and Like & subscribe to keep up with the content I will be posting.