German Footballer Reverts to Islam

CAIRO – Germany's young footballer Danny Blum has announced his reversion to Islam, describing it as a religion of hope and strength.

"Islam gives me hope and strength. Pray calms my soul," Blum told Bild newspaper on Monday, January 26.

"I was short-tempered, erratic and did not know where I belong," he added.

Blum joined 1. FC Nürnberg in Bavaria last July. The team plays in the he Second Division of professional football in Germany, the Bundesliga.

Shortly after joining the team, he injured his knee and was forced eventually to take six months off.

A few weeks ago, he took the decision to revert to Islam, joining the world’s fastest growing religion.

"Living in the lap of luxury. Every weekend make alarm. No responsibility for anything. And what actually comes after retirement?” the questions came to Blum as he sat at home.
Talking with his friends about religion, he landed in Islam.

"I have visited a mosque and I immediately risen the heart. I felt this is something for me and wanted to know more," Blum told Bild.

Ever since, he prays five times a day and eat halal food. Informing his parents with his decision, the 24-year-old player said they were scare at first.

"They are devout Christians. But soon they said that I have to go that route if I believe that it is right," he said.

“Islam is a peaceful religion. My faith says: never force anyone to do what he does not want. If you think, it has to come voluntarily from the heart!"

Germany is believed to be home to nearly 4 million Muslims, including 220,000 in Berlin alone. Turks make up an estimated two thirds of the Muslim minority.

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/europe/482353-german-footballer-reverts-to-islam.html

Why India’s Finest Film Composer Converted To Islam

http://www.malaysiandigest.com/world/538409-why-india-s-finest-film-composer-converted-to-islam.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Published on Tuesday, 20 January 2015 09:58

When AS Dileep Kumar decided to shed the faith he was born into and adopt a new one, the reasons were several.

His father’s untimely death had put several financial pressures on the family, which included four children. His spiritual-minded mother had met, and gained immense succour, from a Sufi saint, peer Karimullah Shah Qadri. And he had been grappling with minor and major identity issues: he didn’t like the name he was born with, he was looking for direction and purpose, and he wanted to get a handle on his professional future. That man is today known as Allahrakha Rahman, one of India’s foremost composers. He discusses his decision to convert and the impact it had on him in these edited excerpts from AR Rahman: The Spirit of Music by Nasreen Munni Kabir.

How has Sufism affected your attitude to life?

It has taught me that just as the rain and the sun do not differentiate between people, neither should we. Only when you experience friendship across cultures, you understand there are many good people in all communities…

Did your belief in spirituality help when you and your family were facing hard times?

Yes, absolutely. My mother was a practising Hindu… My mother had always been spiritually inclined. We had Hindu religious images on the walls of the Habibullah Road house where we grew up. There was also an image of Mother Mary holding Jesus in her arms and a photograph of the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina.

In 1986, ten years after my father died, we happened to meet Qadri Saaheb again. The peer was unwell and my mother looked after him. He regarded her as a daughter. There was a strong connection between us. I was nineteen at the time and working as a session musician and composing jingles.

Did the peer ask you to embrace Islam?

No, he didn’t. Nobody is forced to convert to the path of Sufism. You only follow if it comes from your heart. A year after we met Qadri Saaheb in 1987, we moved from Habibullah Road to Kodambakkam to the house where we still live. When we moved, I was reminded of what Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, once said: “I wish that you were cold and hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

What I understood by his words was that it is better to choose one path. The Sufi path spiritually lifted both my mother and me, and we felt it was the best path for us, so we embraced Sufi Islam.

Were you conscious of the fact that changing your faith might affect your relations with people?

My family had started working by then and we weren’t dependant on anyone. No one around us really cared – we were musicians and that allowed us greater social freedom…

The important thing for me is that I learned about equality and the oneness of god. Whether you are a winner or loser, king or slave, short or tall, rich or poor, sinner or saint, ugly or beautiful – regardless of what colour you are, god showers unlimited love and mercy on us if we choose to receive it. It is because of our inability, our blindness in seeing the unknown that we lose faith.
On the net there are many versions of how you came to be called AR Rahman. What is the real story?

The truth is I never liked my name…. No disrespect to the great actor Dilip Kumar! But somehow my name didn’t match the image I had of myself.

Sometime before we started on our journey on the path of Sufism, we went to an astrologer to show him my younger sister’s horoscope because my mother wanted to get her married. This was around the same time when I was keen to change my name and have a new identity. The astrologer looked at me and said, “This chap is very interesting.”

He suggested the names: “Abdul Rahman” and “Abdul Rahim” and said that either name would be good for me. I instantly loved the name “Rahman.” It was a Hindu astrologer who gave me my Muslim name.

Then my mother had this intuition that I should add “Allahrakha” [protected by god], and I became AR Rahman.

- Quartz