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Well I will start off by saying my name is Ian but i changed it to Mujaahid cause i believe you have to fight through struggles all trough out life and what better way than to fight in the way of Allah (swt) Mentally and sometimes physically if Allah so wills it. I grew up in Chicago as your typical hooligan a thug so to speak but in my younger years i attended a Catholic School were I went to church almost three times a week. I read the bible as we pretty much was forced to do, but the more i read the more I really didn�t understand. I questioned everything i noticed contradictions in the Bible, absurdities, etc and i would ask the priest about these things and he could never give me a logical answer which led to arguments and me getting into trouble at school even sometimes suspended. In the sixth grade i even stopped going in the communion line so i basically threw Christianity out the window lol. My parents didn�t mind cause they weren�t really religious they were Christian but kind of not, they never attended church are anything like that but they got divorced when i was younger anyways. I didn�t think it had a big affect on me until i got older and I look back at it now because my father wasn�t there and my mother was always at work which left me to get into to trouble and get caught up in all the wrong things. I don�t blame my parents for that because they taught me right from wrong i knew the things i was doing wasn�t good for me but i was rebellious i got caught up in gangs, drug dealing, smoking weed, drinking alcohol, chasing girls just living a horrible lifestyle. I never stopped believing in God though i knew this world couldn�t have just popped out by mere chance its just too perfect like there had to be a designer. So i looked into other religions, more so your eastern Asian brand of religious thought but I found problems in those belief systems too. Then I started to keep my self busy by doing graffiti and making hip-hop music when I first started i was just rhyming i wasn�t recording anything not till later i was really just trying to do whatever i could to keep away from the gang banging that plagues my city cause I�ve seen it all I�ve lost friends to murder, suicide, drug overdoses, imprisonment i knew girls that were raped i had friends that were having babies at such a young age as they say around my way kids having kids. I dropped out of high school the beginning of my second year. Eventually i left the gang alone and i started to just focus on making music but the past still haunted me then my mother decided that she wanted to move to New Orleans, so i figured that was the ticket because there were prices on my head so i was overjoyed i said lets go. I basically wanted to run away and try to get my life back together so we went. She bought a house out there we fixed it up then bam! Three months afterwards Hurricane Katrina hit. Praise be to Allah we left the day before it really struck and we went up to my uncle's house which was in Arkansas. We were stuck in Arkansas for two months the only thing we pretty much knew for sure is that our house had to have been destroyed which it was. I really didn�t want to stay in Arkansas any longer so i flew back to Chicago to go live with my father. Now here i am back in the same place i was trying to get away from but things had cooled down since i left i was no longer looking over my shoulders anymore but yet the first thing i do when i get back is start Hustling again but i played it low key for a lack of some better words. Now this whole time i was just reflecting. I thought about all the things i had been through i thought about all the times i guess i could say i missed death (But now i know Allah decides when that will happen) so i used to think someone or something a saint, my grandfather in heaven, a guardian angel, or God was looking out for me and protecting me. Yet i didn�t pay it that much mind i just knew i was lucky to be alive. I was doing good for the most part (well not really lol) by this time i had turned 18 and got my G.E.D. i was still running around rapping, smoking, and all that ignorant stuff. Then one day i get a call from my mother and she heard i had got my G.E.D. and she tells me she had got a good amount of money from her insurance because of the damage the Hurricane did so she offered to send me to community college. So once again I said to myself its time to get serious its time to quit drinking, smoking and get back into school. So I flew out to Arkansas with the intention of sobering up and getting back into school and to write rhymes (Lyrics for music). It was a long duration before I would start my first semester of school I had six months on my hands. I spent it just writing material for songs. Then I was listening to some hip-hop records and this rapper was mentioning stuff about some Muslim I forget the name it was some Shiite that�s all I can remember. Then I said let me try that let me write a hip-hop song about having to do with Muslims so I looked into it. I came across this website and I started reading just to get an understanding of what being a Muslim is all about. Then I see the Miracles of the Holy Qur�an and what I read amazed me. I read about the scientific miracles, the numerical symmetry of words, the inimitable literary aspect of the Arabic and I was Shocked. Then something kept driving me to read more about it I wanted to find something wrong with the Qur�an I tried finding contradictions but I couldn�t there were no flaws that anyone has come up with, sure there has been things tooken out of context but I could see right threw the lies people were making about the Qur�an. Then after all this I wanted to know how the Qur�an came about how was it compiled and most of all who is Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Then I learnt about the Prophet (pbuh) and his story amazed me, it humbled me with no words I can use to describe. Then I actually read the Qur�an and the first words I read were �In the name of Allah most Gracious most Merciful� in Al-Fatiha. I reflected upon what it said it made me realize who was protecting me it was Allah�s mercy and grace and the more I read the more the Qur�an seemed to speak directly to me. It answered Questions I had been asking since I was young that no one ever could answer and it all made perfect sense to me. The Qur�an literally touched my heart and It wasn�t even logical for me to say that a man or any group of men could have put this together I felt it was the truth then I knew from that day on that there is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God; I became a Muslim. This happened 5 months ago since then I have been studying constantly reading books by scholars studying Hadith researching and reflecting upon the Qur�an listening to lectures I learnt how to pray in Arabic and it has best the best thing that has ever happened to me praise be to Allah. Now I quit rapping I burnt my rhyme books I started my first year of college everything is going well so far and Inshaa�Allah I will live a righteous and pious life in accordance with Islam. All I can say is at the end of this is I was never proud to be a Hoodlum but now I can say it real loud that im proud to be a MUSLIM. Praise be to Allah the one and only the most high and creator of the universe.
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