My journey to Islam
D. Betty

My name is Diana Beatty, some call me Masooma Amtullah but most do not. I am almost 23 and converted nearly 3 years ago now. I am a college student studying physics and training to become a teacher. I am a native of Colorado, USA. My father and brother are electricians. I have only one sibling, my brother, who is 27 and is married with two young children. He lives just two houses down from my parents. my mother is a legal secretary for the county attorney's office. No one in my family before me has gone to college. My father is an alcoholic and smokes a lot and his habits make the household very stressful and unhappy at times because he tends to be very selfish and angry. He is like a living dead man. My mother is bitter about him often and lives in a loveless marriage, I think. But to most appearances they are an ideal family. They keep dogs at the house, and that along with the alcohol makes visiting difficult but I try to go when I can. My mother says I never go home enough, that is in part because she has few friends as my father prefers it that way. The family has been through a lot over the years and at least we have come to a point where we do not abandon each other even though things are not ideal. I have no children of my own yet and do not plan to right away but eventually.

When I came to college I met a Muslim for the first time. Only after meeting some Muslims did I slowly come to realize how ignorant I was about Islam and Muslims; a lot of what I had learned growing up was quite erroneous, but for the most part I just never heard anything at all about it.   Continue >>