JALALEDDIN LAUDER BRUNTON (G.B.)
(Sir Brunton, who comes from an eminent family and who
possesses the title of Baronet, graduated from the Oxford University
and made fame with his publications.)
I am grateful to you for giving me the chance to explain why I
became a Muslim. I grew up under the influence of Christian parents.
Theology was one of the subjects that I was interested in when
I was young. I met some missionaries and closely concerned myself
with the activities they had been carrying on in foreign countries.
My heart felt like helping them. Without being officially appointed,
I joined them in their journeys. To say the truth, although I
had taken religious lessons, the Christian theory that "People
come to this world in a sinful state and they therefore must be
sure to expiate," sounded bizarre to me. For this reason,
I was gradually developing hatred against Christianity. I could
not tolerate the idea that Allahu ta'ala, with all His infinite
power to create anything He wished, would have to create only
sinful creatures, which would run counter to His almightiness
and compassion, and I therefore harboured doubts as to the genuineness
of a religion that described Allahu ta'ala as such. These doubts
developed into curiosity about the instructions that the other
religions gave in this respect, and consequently I decided to
examine the other religions as well. My heart was innerly craving
for a just, merciful and compassionate god, and I was looking
for such a creator, i.e. Allah. I was wondering whether that was
the real Nazarani religion that Issa a.s. had brought. Or had
the pure religion preached by him been polluted in the process
of time? The more I thought about these, the stronger did the
doubts in my heart become, so much so that more often than not
I would pick up today's current Holy Bible, delve into the book,
and at each time find more deficiencies and unintelligible discourses.
Eventually, I reached the conclusion that that book was not the
genuine Holy Book revealed to Issa a.s.. People had made a myriad
of wrong accessions into the Bible, thus turning the pure heavenly
book into an irreparable mixture of facts and fictions.
Having reached an absolute conviction as to this fact, I substituted
Bible-reading with other sorts of preaching to the people that
I met during the journeys I was making with the missionaries.
Instead of mentioning their fictitious theory of 'God, the Son
of God, and the Holy Ghost', for instance, I would inculcate the
facts such as that when man died his soul would not die, that
human beings were created by a great creator, that this great
creator would punish men both in this world and in the next on
account of their sins, and that this great creator, being extremely
compassionate, would forgive men their sins in case they repented
for their wrongdoings.
As days went by, my belief in the unity of Allah developed into
an absolute conviction. In order to penetrate into the inner nature
of truth, I tried to dive deeper and deeper into the subject.
It was sometime during these efforts that I began to study the
Islamic religion. This religion magnetized me so strongly that
I dedicated my entire day to studying it. I happened to domicile
myself in a forlorn Indian village, called Ichra, which was rather
far from the urban areas and whose name almost no one knew. The
inhabitants of this village belonged to a very poor and destitute
caste. Only for the sake of Allahu ta'ala, I was trying to teach
them the existence of a single and compassionate creator and the
right way they ought to follow in this worldly life. I was also
striving to inculcate into them such notions as religious brotherhood
and cleanliness. So strange to say, all these notions I was doing
my best to teach them existed in Islam, not in Christianity, and
I was preaching them not as a Christian missionary, but like a
Muslim religious man.
I am not going to enlarge on the details of the great efforts
I made, the degree of self-sacrifice I achieved, or the severe
difficulties I faced in that lonely and desolate village, among
those unenlightened people. My only concern was to guide them
to spiritual and physical cleanliness and to teach them the existence
of a great creator.
Whenever I was on my own, I would study the life of Muhammad a.s..
Very few books had been written in English to reflect the facts
about his life, yet no effort had been spared on the part of Christians
to criticize and vilify that great Prophet and to incriminate
him with lying. However, I was now able to study Islam fairly,
without being influenced by those books that had been written
under inimical motives. During the course of my studies, I came
to the full realization that it was a definite fact that Islam
was a true religion in which the concept of Allah and reality
became manifest in its clearest identity.
Once you had been informed on the services which the great Prophet
Muhammad s.a.s. had rendered for the good of humanity, it would
be impossible for you to deny his prophethood. Definitely, he
was the Messenger of Allahu ta'ala. As a blessing of Allahu ta'ala,
he, alone, and in a very short time, transformed the Arabs from
a mass of heathens who had been living in utter savagery and nascence,
worshipping many idols, believing in superstitions, leading a
bestial, semi-naked, and overwhelmingly polygamous life, into
a civilized, morally upright and clean nation whose members were
now believing in Allahu ta'ala, observing women's rights, and
always trying to be good-natured and genial. A person never could
have managed such a job without the blessing or help of Allahu
ta'ala. As I thought about the strenuous efforts I put forth in
that tiny village whose population was only one or two hundred,
and how I still could not bring those wretched people to the right
course, my admiration for the work accomplished by Muhammad s.a.s.
grew all the greater. No. Something as great as that could be
accomplished only by the Messenger of Allahu ta'ala. One ought
to believe in his prophethood with all one's heart.
I do not want to make mention of all the other so many even much
more beautiful facts about the Islamic religion. For, by acknowledging
the existence of Allahu ta'ala and the prophethood of Muhammad
a.s., a person has already become a Muslim. One of those days
an Indian Muslim visited me. That polite person's name was Mian
Amiruddin. We had a long conversation on the Islamic religion.
That conversation was the decisive encouragement, and I accepted
Islam.
I believe in the fact that Islam is the true religion of Allah,
in its simplicity, forgivingness, compassionateness and sincerity,
in that it establishes brotherhood among people, and in that one
day it will unite the entire world.
I have reached the last stage of my life, and from now on I have
dedicated myself to the service of Islam.
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