My Conversion Story: I Believe

Coming from a background of no faith I was ill prepared for the friendship that would develop between my now good friend Maryam and me when we first met while sharing halls of residence together during our first year at university in the September of 2006.

Maryam is a Muslim and when we first met I think it is fair to say it was the first time we both had really had chance to see how the other side really lived. Out of curiosity it was not long before I began to ask questions about Islam and as fair is fair she would more often than not return with a question about Christianity and our discussions would quickly turn into friendly debates.

But it was not long before it was obvious that her knowledge of Islam greatly outstretched my knowledge of Christianity, so to match her arguments I had to read, first just a little, but then more and more and more. We debated regularly sometimes every evening. She stood for Mohammed and I stood for Christ.

We would debate nearly every night and I would always begin my line of defence with the words "Christians believe". The longer the debate lasted the more passionate I got. Then one day out of the blue I substituted the word ‘I’ for Christian and said "I believe".

That evening I truly believed the points I was arguing and I left the debate went to my room fell to my knees at the bottom of my bed burst in to tears and prayed, begging for God’s forgiveness for having rejected him for so long.