My name is Maria. I converted to Islam one year ago.

My Fiancé's Death Led Me to Islam (Part -1)
I was reading the Quran and it all came clear to me.
-Maria ( By Reading Islam Staff )

My name is Maria. I converted to Islam one year ago.

I’m from Boulder, Colorado. I was born here. I went to school here my whole life.

Both my parents they are actually from South Africa. They immigrated here. Neither of them is religious. They are both atheists, so they don’t really believe in God.

I have one brother, he is studying music at the University of Colorado. He is Catholic, so he is not Muslim either.

Before I converted, I didn’t really believe in God. I didn’t really have a religion. I didn’t really have a faith, I guess you could say. I kind of grew up with what my parents taught me, so I didn’t really believe in God. I didn’t believe in really any religion at all.

If we talked about religion, we kind of talked about it almost negatively I guess. Before, I didn’t really see religion as a good thing. I thought it was something that like caused a lot of problems, like wars in the world and stuff. I viewed it as mostly negatively.

Discovering Islam

Maybe because he was a Muslim, he actually ended up being more kind-hearted
I guess I first learned about Islam about 2 or 3 years ago. I was dating this guy from Pakistan, and so it was the first time I opened up to Islam. I was more open to learning about it and not to think about it negatively. I really didn’t know anything about it at all. So after talking to him and talking to few other people, I started to gather more facts. I bought an English copy of the Quran that I started reading.

When I met my fiancé, we didn’t really talk about religion. I didn’t think about him in a sense of being a Muslim, or being very religious. I guess I just thought of him as being like a really noble and kind-hearted person. He was one of the best people that I had ever known, he had such a good character, he was really like kind to everybody. He was never mean to anybody even if he didn’t like them, you know, he would be nice to them. He would never look at you straight in the face and be mean to you.

I guess when I thought about him I didn’t think about those qualities being because of Islam. I just thought they were because of him. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that maybe these good things about him were because of Islam. Maybe because he was a Muslim, he actually ended up being more kind-hearted and more open, and a better person.

The reason that I really chose Islam when I really decided that it was going to be the right thing for me that guy I was dating from Pakistan, and we were engaged for a long time. He was my fiancé and at the time I was going to school in Arizona and he was coming to visit me.

He was driving from Boulder to Arizona to come and visit me, and he was actually killed in a car crash. And that was my first real experience with death, and that was what really inspired me to look more into Islam because I just knew that there had to be more to him than just dying. He just couldn't die, like there had to be like a reason, not even a reason, there had to be something like a higher power that was like dictating it.