Perseverance — Page 23
Part II – My Life as a Muslim 23 Chaudhry Ghul a m Yas i n, Abdul Q a dir Zaighum, Maul aw i N u r-ul- H aq Anwar (Chicago for a short while but mostly New York), Mirz a Munawar (in Pittsburgh), and Maul a w i Shukr-Il a h i (Unfortunately, Maul a w i Shukr-Il a h i later became an opponent of the Jam ā ‘ah during the time of the Third Khal ī fah rta , and met with a bitter end. Inn a Lill a hi wa inn a Ilayhi r a ji‘ ū n [Arabic: To Allah we belong, and to Him we return ]. ) The missionaries viewed me with great caution as my lifestyle was very different from theirs. They were all of Indian/Pakistani 7 origin and were sent here for the noble cause of spreading Islam. I can understand how difficult it may have been for them to come from an environment such as the Indian Subcontinent, where their Ahmadi communities practiced strict observance of Islamic law, and suddenly finding themselves among some of the roughest urban streets in America, where sin ran rampant. I, on the other hand, had been a man of the streets. My pre- Islamic lifestyle conditioned me to think that drugs, gambling and womanizing were normal. I was accustomed to the conflict and chaos that resulted from deals gone wrong or “turf” that was trespassed. Life on the streets was survival of the fittest and it was 7 Pakistan and India became sovereign nations in August 1947 when they were granted independence from British rule. [Writer]