What if I were a Muslim convert?

A lot of people say that to be born a Muslim is something wonderful and lucky. I was born a Muslim but sometimes, I don’t feel so lucky about it.

It’s not that I felt unlucky to be a Muslim. I just wondered how it felt for someone who was a not a Muslim deciding to embrace Islam as a religion.

My experience as a born Muslim in Malaysia is a little bit different than what I imagined a Muslim convert would experience and that’s why I wonder.

In my mind, for someone who is not a Muslim wanting to be a Muslim, he or she must have had a huge epiphany to be convinced into converting. And that must be a wonderful feeling.

I, on the other hand, grew up learning about Islam. I went to religious classes when I was a young kid when I didn’t understand the significance of it.

What I learned were the habits and rituals of the religion. I mean, what else can you teach a kid who had not reached mental and physical maturity yet.

As I grew older, the rituals and habits became more intense as the teachers who taught me began to scare me into practicing them, convincing me that if I strayed, I would be punished.

It was only when I got older, and began looking for another meaning to Islam and being a Muslim that I have come to appreciate the religion and to understand it’s beauty.

So, back to these converts.

Two days ago, I was invited to a dinner at the Australian High Commissioner’s residence. He had a special guest, an Australian Muslim named Susan Carland.

A Muslim sociologist at Monash University, she converted to Islam when she was 19 years old, and is now a leading Australian Muslim thinker.

During the dinner, Carland said that the reason she was able to explore Islam and to convert was because she lived in a society that allowed the practice of any culture or religion.

“In Australia, there is no one form of Islam that is indoctrinated into you by authorities. People can explore and practice whatever form of Islam they felt comfortable with,” she said.

After the dinner, while I was driving back home, I listened to the radio. The programme that was playing was a talk show called Night School, hosted by Sharaad Kutan.

He had a guest on. Professor Harry H. Behr is an academic from Germany and a practicing Muslim who converted from a Jewish background to Islam when he was in his teens.

Professor Behr credited his conversion to the fact that he was raised in a secular and intellectual family, and in a secular country.

“I enjoyed the freedom of choosing my religion and the education I had. I think in secular governments, it is guaranteed to the most positive extent the freedom of religion in a plural society,” he said.

Of course, both Carland and Behr did not deny the fact that the societies that they come from also has biasness and prejudice against Islam, but that is a given anywhere.

To me, both these individuals seemed so at peace with their choice of embracing Islam and they whole-heartedly believe that the religion is for them.

In a way, I feel like I converted to Islam too, or more like being a "born again Muslim", and I am very much at peace with being a Muslim and constantly learning more.

But I just can’t help wondering if I didn’t have the initiative learn about Islam on my own, would I have developed into a bitter Muslim, or even worse, an ignorant Muslim? – July 18, 2014.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.