Hi Everyone, A few months ago I was asked by a friend of mine to put my testimony of going from a Muslim to a Roman Catholic in writing. He felt this could help a lot of people.
I am still hesitant to share it with the general public because of potential hate. However trusting all of you, I'd love your opinion, and guidance. Please read it below (it's kind of long,) and would love your thoughts.
My Journey to Christ
by Shazib Hassan
My father moved from Pakistan to the United States in 1972. In 1977 he returned to Pakistan to marry my mother, and then brought her back to the U.S. They were what I would call “cultural Muslims.” They would go to the mosque mainly during Ramadan, and for the two Eid celebrations, just as many Catholics will go to a church only on Christmas and Easter.
My father’s own father was a very devout Muslim. But, among my father’s siblings, degrees of faith in Islam varied. Dad was the rebellious son, who identifies as agnostic to this very day.
My mother, on the other hand, still identifies as a Muslim. This identity is more cultural than it is spiritual, largely because it’s what she’d been born into, and what she’d been taught since childhood to never question.
So, I grew up in a household in which my parents didn’t necessarily agree, spiritually, but collectively and culturally we still identified as Muslim.
My father was very proud of being different from the stereotypical Pakistani immigrant, and he encouraged his children to think differently, that we not turn into what we understood as your typical cookie-cutter Pakistani-American family, and so none of my siblings nor I became doctors, engineers, or lawyers.
As a child, though, this was confusing at times.
On the one hand, I was encouraged to integrate, to be a Westerner. I grew up outside of San Jose, California, and later on in Oregon, all in predominantly Caucasian communities, and had incredible friendships with the other neighborhood kids. This was during the 1980’s and early ’90’s, when kids still left the house at sunrise and never come back until it was dinnertime. I would eat lunch at friends’ houses, and their mothers were always happy to make me a sandwich, just as my mother would do so for my friends.
But, at the same time, I’d attended Sunday school at a mosque in Santa Clara, California. Most of my teachers were recent immigrants from the Middle East, and, in retrospect, I realize that many of those who struggled to adapt to Western life were likewise those who ended up teaching in Sunday school. The men among them were assigned to teach the boys, and the women to teach the girls. I remember being told that my closest friends ought to be other Muslims, and that I should avoid integrating too deeply with the pals I’d grown up with, even though their families were stable, loving, and kind.
I openly questioned this, and the teachers weren’t accustomed to being talked back to by a kid. On one occasion, I was hit on the knuckles with a ruler and though to myself: "This is America—you can’t touch me." I stood up and walked out after that, and my parents pulled me out of Sunday school as a result.
I was twelve when my family moved to Oregon, and it was there that I’d really began questioning Islam. I was one of those high schoolers who’d begun identifying himself as agnostic simply after having read a few philosophy books.
It was when I’d gone off to college that I felt like something was missing in my life, that I’d joined the Muslim Students Association (M.S.A.), and suddenly felt again like I belonged to something greater.
My uncle, being my father’s very devout brother, was thrilled by this, and proudly told friends of his that his wayward nephew had returned to Islam. The people he’d told were impressed, since they knew my father well enough, that I was seeming to become the kind of Muslim they wouldn’t have expected. But, deep down, I still felt like a round peg in a square hole, trying to be someone I thought I was supposed to be.
One night in college, I was driving around with two friends—one of mixed race, the other Hispanic—in my father’s brand-new BMW. The windows were down, the sunroof was open, and we were freely (and innocently) dancing in our seats to pop music when I unknowingly pulled the car up next to three Muslim women who’d recognized me from the M.S.A. Later, they complained to the M.S.A. leadership that they’d had seen me dancing with non-Muslim girls, and left the organization as a result.
"That’s between them and Allah," I’d figured at the time, trying to brush the whole incident off. It was later on that night that it hit me: I was still trying to fit into something that didn’t truly fit me.
It was after that realization that I became more open to Christianity. My curiosity first took shape after I’d transferred to U.C. Davis, and joined the College Republicans, which essentially felt like the opposite of the M.S.A. I still have close friends from that group today.
It was at my first meeting that I’d met Michelle. It was like one of those movie moments: she walked into the lecture hall, and all the other guys just stared at her. It was after a moment that I’d stopped looking at her, and started watching the other guys who were still gawking, finding it rather hilarious. She and I became close friends over those next two years.
One night, after having cooked dinner together at her place, we sat on her couch and watched The Mothman Prophecies. We ended up kissing, and nothing more, before falling asleep on the couch.
“Oh my God,” she said the very next morning, looking horrified. “I have to go to confession.”
“Why?” I asked, obviously rather confused.
“Because you’re not Catholic,” she told me, “and I’ve sinned.”
That moment hit me hard.
I realized then I didn’t really like Catholicism. This wasn’t because of Christ Himself, but because I felt objectified as a sin. And, ironically, that very moment planted the first real seed of curiosity about the Catholic faith itself.
I asked her what I would’ve needed to do to become Catholic, and she handed me a copy of the Catechism—unabridged that is. I tried reading it, and didn’t last a week. It felt much like reading The Silmarillion instead of The Hobbit, and so I put it on a shelf—literally and figuratively.
Michelle later went to a Catholic summer camp, where she met her future husband, that put an end to that particular chapter of my life.
After college, I moved to North Carolina, and started going by the name “Sean.” A friend of mine from college lived nearby, and we would visit different Protestant churches together on weekends. I didn’t care for them much—too much rock music, too much feel-good emotion, and Scripture verses on PowerPoint. It felt hollow to me.
It was on Halloween night in 2006 that a friend of mine convinced me - by which I mean practically dragged me - to go to a bar in downtown Raleigh. A friend of mine named Michelle – no, not that one – was already there. She was part of a social group for transplants in the area, and had mentioned earlier that she would be bringing some friends. One of those friends was Bridget, who had just moved from Notre Dame.
Bridget and I talked for two hours that night, and neither of us drank much, since we’d both gotten roped in to be designated drivers. When I found out that she was Catholic, I had an immediate flashback to Michelle – yes, the college one.
Two weeks later, Bridget called me, and we went on our first date. She’s now my wife, and we have four beautiful children together.
It was a month after having met Bridget that I went to my first Catholic Mass, at St. Michael the Archangel in Cary. I’d never experienced anything like it—the structure, the reverence, the kneeling, standing, praying together. When I learned that the same readings were being shared all over the world that day, as well as homilies based upon them, I was blown away.
It felt familiar. As a Muslim, I’d grown up praying as part of a community.
Bridget and I were married in a Catholic Mass in 2008. Many Muslims from my family attended, some of them wearing hijabs, and the monsignor marrying us was overjoyed to celebrate our union before so many Muslims. The agreement had been that we would raise our children Catholic.
I’d been attending Mass, as a non-Catholic, for several years until something changed in the fall of 2014. One Sunday, while feeling frustrated and tired, I questioned Bridget why it was that I even went. This broke her heart. Though we missed the 9 a.m. Mass, I ultimately relented, agreeing to attend the 10:30 one.
That decision changed my life.
It was during that Mass that the R.C.I.A. (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults,) a program for people exploring and entering the Catholic faith, was dismissed for the Breaking of the Word. As I watched them process out, the Holy Spirit hit me. I looked at my wife and said: “I’m following them.”
I went and knocked on the door, asked if I could join. A fire in me had been lit that I ended up going again the next week, and the week after that, until I was baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2015.
The change in me was immediate. My father noticed. The employees of the company which my father and I ran noticed it, too. Eventually, my father had asked whether Bridget was forcing this upon me. “No,” I assured him. It wouldn’t have worked if she would’ve tried that.
Today, my greatest supporter in my Catholic faith is my father—Mohammad Hassan. I never thought I’d find Jesus Christ through a Mohammad, but here I am.
Jesus was patient with me. And now, here I stand.
I hope my story inspires you.
