Source: Islamonline.net by Ann Marie Lambert Stock
An American Woman's Journey to IslamComing from a small town in Indiana, my life experiences were limited. After graduating from high school, I got married as many small town girls do, and began working and having a family.
It wasn't long until restlessness set in and I longed to do more. Top of my list was going to university. Divorced with two little girls in tow, I began a life's journey that I couldn't have even imagined.
As an older student and a mother going to university, I naturally fit in with a group of graduate students, which necessarily means a majority of foreign students. It was in this group that I had fascinating contacts with a world beyond the corn fields and creeks I had known all of my life.
People from the Arab world, Europe, Asia, and Africa were living encyclopedia pages that satisfied my curiosity about the way people live in other places. I felt at last I had found a group that would keep my interest, raise my spirits, and inform me about things I didn't know and in the end some things I didn't want to know.
A bunch of us from the university decided to go to "The Feast of the Hunter's Moon Festival." It was an annual Native American event. It was at this event that my life would take a turn.
I met a young man named Mohamed who was from Egypt. What a fascinating place; I thought he must be a fascinating person. In an effort to strike up a conversation, I offered him one of the delicious BBQ pork chops that were being sold as we walked around the festival taking in the sights and sounds. He refused, and said he didn't eat pork, which immediately made me think he was a Jew.
Small towns in the Midwest do not usually offer a variety of ethnicities or religions, so it was actually the first time to hear the words "I am a Muslim."
