From Muslim to Catholic

I was born in Massachusetts on September 18, 1982. My mother was a Muslim from Pakistan. Her mother was pious and her father nominal. In 1975, she emigrated to the United States for graduate studies. My father was from Michigan. His mother was Catholic, his father Lutheran. He converted to Islam shortly before he married my mother. At the time I was born, he worked for a company that was contracted by the Department of Defense.

My family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, when I was six. From a very young age I had a sense that God — Allah as I was taught to call Him — was very powerful.

My childhood was, for the most part, typically American. Demographics assured that the majority of my friends were Christians, at least nominally. Pepperoni pizza, which in Islam was a forbidden food (pork), did occasionally remind me that I was also a little different from my friends.

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