Why Islam is my choice — Page 60
60 and its details. During the Gulf Crisis, Akbar and I started to have night vigils on the phone discussing the ramifications of the war. It was during one of these conversations that Akbar informed me that the A ḥ madiyyah Community was having a Qur’ ā nic exhibition at a hotel in New York City and suggested we get together and attend. At this exhibition I met Brother Naz ī r Ay ā z, President of the New York A ḥ madiyyah Muslim Jam ā ‘at. Ay ā z Ṣāḥ ib invited Akbar and myself to the upcoming Mu ṣ li ḥ Mau‘ ū d Day meeting at the Jamaica Queens mission house. We accepted his invitation and when I entered the mosque it was like coming home especially when I saw N ū rrud ī n ‘Abdul-Lat ī f and ‘Umar Bil ā l Ebrah ī m (during 1979 N ū rrud ī n invited me to his home and gave me some instructions in learning how to read Arabic along with some books about Ḥ a ḍ rat Mirz ā Ghul ā m A ḥ mad, the Promised Messiah and A ḥ madiyyat. When the Mu ṣ li ḥ Mau‘ ū d Day meeting concluded, Brother Naz ī r Ay ā z made the announcement that there were two A ḥ mad ī s who had been away from the community for a while and he asked the congregation to give us Sal ā ms to welcome us back. As I was not an A ḥ mad ī , I wanted to correct Ay ā z Ṣāḥ ib’s statement, and right at that moment I knew what I had been looking for, and I knew what had been keeping me from A ḥ madiyyat. I knew that to become an A ḥ mad ī one had to accept the ten conditions of bai‘at. In the past, I did not feel I could live up to the standard that the bai‘at represented, but at that instant I saw that in order to become purified, it could only be done by accepting those ten conditions. In short, I had to give up hell to obtain paradise. So on March 10, 1991. I accepted A ḥ madiyyat through Maul ā n ā Mukht ā r A ḥ mad Cheema, during the Khil ā fat of our beloved Khal ī fatul- Mas īḥ , Ḥ a ḍ rat Mirz ā Ṭā hir A ḥ mad, Fourth Successor to the Promised Messiah.