Muslim Brotherhood

BEFORE embracing the religion of Allah, Ahmad Holt was a Christian who was very familiar with the Bible, The Holy Bible. He accepted everything that he read in it without question. And in later years he accepted that it was fitting that the Jews should be returned to their homeland. And in due course he felt a deep affection towards those people who were being threatened by a surrounding hostile enemy, mostly Muslim, especially the Palestinians. 

The time came when he felt himself drawn towards that land, what people call Israel, to identify with those persecuted Jews who have suffered terribly in Europe during World War 2. At that period of time his attitude towards the Muslims and towards the Palestinians was that they were terrorists and they were among the least of humanity. He always had that mental image of Islam advancing by the threat of the sword, the threat of death.

In the late seventies, he felt so moved that he decided that he must go to Israel to identify with the Jews, to identify with the Israelis, to help them in their struggle against the Palestinians in particular and against the Muslims in general.

There is an old saying, and it is a very true one, that Allah works in mysterious ways. And Praise be to Allah, it is very true. He arrived in Israel and he was welcomed by the Jewish people. He worked with them and he began to meet Palestinians.

There was something about the Palestinians. They knew who he was, his attitudes and thoughts and the reason why he had gone to Israel. There was something from their example that began to radiate into his life.  Their warmth and their hospitality, their love and their affection. They always referred to him as a brother. Never a stranger, always a brother. And yet he had denied them and he had gone to work against them. There were many wonderful experiences that occurred in his meetings with the Palestinians. They never once tried to impress Islam upon his life, it was hardly ever mentioned, it was their example that radiated so much into his mind, his life.

The time came when, because of his association with the Palestinians, he was ordered to leave Israel. In the period time he had been there, a blindfold had fallen from his eyes and he began to see a new picture. He saw the suffering of the people who had been driven from their land. He saw the inhumanity of the Israelis towards the Palestinians whose land that they had stolen. He saw young men who had been in the prison and tortured. He saw people whose land had been confiscated and taken from them. He saw school boys who been beaten up by the police. All these things were revealed to him at first hand.   

When he came back to England, he gave a lot of thoughts to these events that occurred to him in what he always called and referred to as “Israel”, which by then was imprinted in his mind as “Occupied Palestine”. In all truth, it was like putting pieces of jigsaw puzzle together. He began to question. What was it that those people, who had been denied their homes, their land and their livelihood, many of them being so poor, what was it that they radiated into his life? What did they give to him? And Holt began to search, to reach out.

One day, on a visit to London, he met an English brother and he said, “You know, you are a Muslim and you don’t recognise it.” This was the effect the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle fitting into position.

Before he could confess Islam, before he could acknowledge Islam as his religion, there was an obstacle that he had to overcome. This is related to Jesus (Prophet Isa, peace be upon him). He always accepted Jesus as being the “Son of God” and “God-made man”. He began to rationalise. To whom did Jesus pray? How did he pray? Jesus prayed as a Muslim. He went into the desert and he prostrated on the ground to the Supreme Authority, to the Supreme Creator. Holt began to give thought to the opening line of the Lord’s prayer which Jesus (peace be upon him) taught himself. “Our father who are in Heaven.” Not “my” father but “our” father. So Jesus is telling us all that Allah (The Most Glorious, Most High) is the father of all creation because all is created by Allah. This eased the conscience in Holt’s mind and with a joyful heart, he became a Muslim.

(This article that I had adapted was sourced from a booklet, The Call To Islam, published by Islamic Media Services, United Kingdom)