Ammar Bakkar

Dr. Jeffrey Lang is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kansas, one of the biggest universities in the United States. He started his religious journey on January 30, 1954, when he was born in a Roman Catholic family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The first 18 years of his life were spent in Catholic schools, which left him with many unanswered questions about God and the Christian religion, Lang said, as he narrated his story of Islam. �Like most kids back in the late 60s and early 70s, I started questioning all the values that we had at those times, political, social and religious�, Lang said. �I rebelled against all the institutions that society held sacred including the Catholic Church�, he said.

By the time he reached the age of 18, Lang had become a full-fledged atheist. �If there is a God, and He is All Merciful and All Loving, then why is there suffering on this earth? Why does not He just take us to heaven? Why create all these people to suffer?� Such were the questions that came up in his mind in those days.

As a young lecturer in mathematics at San Francisco University, Lang found his religion where God is finally a reality. That was shown to him by a few of the Muslim friends he had met at the university. �We talked about religion. I asked them my questions, and I was really surprised by how carefully they had thought out their answers�, Lang said.

Dr. Lang met Mahmoud Qandeel, a regal looking Saudi student who attracted the attention of the entire class the moment he walked in. When Lang asked a question about medical research, Qandeel answered the question in perfect English and with great self assurance. Everyone knew Qandeel-the mayor, the police chief and the common people. Together the professor and the student went to all the glittering places where �there was no joy or happiness, only laughter�. Yet at the end Qandeel surprisingly gave him a copy of the Quran and some books on Islam. Lang read the Quran on his own, found his way to the student-run prayer hall at the university, and basically surrendered without much struggle. He was conquered by the Quran. The first two chapters are an account of that encounter and it is a fascinating one.

�Painters can make the eyes of a portrait appear to be following you from one place to another, but which author can write a scripture that anticipates your daily vicissitudes?... Each night I would formulate questions and objections and somehow discover the answer the next day. It seemed that the author was reading my ideas and writing in the appropriate lines in time for my next reading. I have met myself in its pages...�