Why Islam is my choice — Page 105
105 Ḥ ameed Mosque. Every time I visit here, I think of the grace of God, or All ā h, because this mosque is a product of 7 years of prayers. I happen to know that God answers prayers because this mosque has been one of my prayers on a daily basis. And that prayer came true, and we’re sitting here as a witness to that prayer. Living in Los Angeles was a turn of fate because when I was in Ohio, after I had become Muslim, I had a choice to make, to either come to Los Angeles or go to New York, and I guess it was the will of All ā h that I came to Los Angeles because there were other A ḥ mad ī s in New York and the eastern states, but there weren’t any A ḥ mad ī s on the west coast, to my knowledge. All ā h turned me to come to Los Angeles because my wife at the time had a brother here and he had been here, he found out about Los Angeles because he was in the navy during World War II and he had established himself here after the war, and he had sent for his mother. We said, okay, we’ll go to Los Angeles, we’ll take a look. If we don’t like it, we can go back to New York. I was thinking about leaving the country at the time. At the end of this program you’ll find out why I had inclinations to leave the United States. When you know what the conditions were in the United States, from the 1920s to 50s, you’ll understand why my inclinations were to leave. After I came to Los Angeles and saw what it was like and how the people were here, I liked it and decided to stay and [that is how] why I happened to be the first A ḥ mad ī here in southern California. W: That’s an extremely interesting way of telling us how you came to Los Angeles. But one of the things I have always wanted to ask you, ever since I met you (which I think was in England in 1967) has been that you were born into a Baptist Christian family, and baptized at the age of 11 and a few years later, at a very young, tender age, you embraced Isl ā m. At that time, in those days, in that age, it was a tremendous