Khalid, thank you for your reply. Were you a Muslim before?
Sorry this may be off topic, but if you were a Muslim, was it hard for you to leave Islam?
Ahh! The question again. I’ll try and find some of my other posts on it for the full, 20k word story.
Epitomized, with all events except for the chronology removed:
I was born to a secularist Coptic Orthodox family, and thus baptized and chrismated as an infant. Around 11 years old I converted to Islam because everyone was a Muslim and to cultural pressure. I remained pious in the faith until I was about 13. Even when I lost my piety, I continued learning apologetics and philosophy, being inclined to such by my nature. I had a few short resurgences of faith, remaining mainly an agnostic. My outward piety waxed and waned, but I was always a staunch defender of Islam against other religions. For what reason I still don’t know. Misplaced pride in my strength of intellect? I was a sophist. I prided myself on the fact that whatever side I took in a debate, right or wrong, would win.
In a debate with a Christian anti-Islamist (who, at the time, I hated with a passion and thought was a bigot, for fearing Shariah law), I was told to read the New Testament and then get back to him; that he’d convert to Islam if I did. I took up the challenge and did. Then I read a few books of apologetics. I started studying Biblical criticism to see if the claims of extreme textual corruption alleged by Islam was accurate. It wasn’t. I remained in a sort of deist-theist flux.
I eventually realized the error of Islam, once I was willing to admit there may be errors in it. This came through the conviction, that according to the laws of Islam, the Sunnah of Muhammad, and the character of Allah, I was damned to Hell no matter what I did, so I resigned myself to it, and figured any chance of salvation was better than none (I had returned to Theism at this point through the grace of God and St Thomas Aquinas). With this admitted, Islam collapsed under its own weight.
Then, I became an Eastern Orthodox, not yet knowing the distinction between monophysitism and Orthodoxy. I saw too much of the same of Islam - a lack of intellectual tradition and worship of the past and hatred of change - in Orthodoxy, so I converted to Catholicism, also influenced by several theological points (mainly the essence-energies distinction of Palamas).
Now, my canonical status is as a Melkite (that is, Orthodox in Communion with Rome) due to my previous faith and heritage, but I share none of the Eastern mystical spirituality - I’m solidly in the Thomist, Scholastic, Western, Latin-rite Roman Catholic camp.
I’ve been a faithful or practicing Christian for less than a year, I think (I don’t keep track of these things or mark them on a calendar). I learn rather quickly, by the grace of God - it helps that I have an insatiable thirst for truth, righteousness, and knowledge.
