I am prone to occasionally writing e-mails to old friends and dear friends, essentially saying things like ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘Do you remember that time when…’ and ‘I thought of you today when…’

I don’t do it that often, because although it’s been almost a decade and a half since I first began to overcome my instinctual barriers to expressing emotions of this sort, I still feel a little abashed about it, and I often think perhaps I am saying too much, perhaps this is going too far.

I think this strange over-capacity for love and affection is one thing that propelled me into Islam. With my friends I am grateful for their friendship, their support and the memories they’ve given me. With God I am grateful for giving me my friends and everything else that I have. Plus I get to e-mail God five times a day without feeling any reserve about the matter.

You know what? I love Islam, and I would give my life to maintain my faith because I don’t know how I would live without it. BUT Islam does NOT define the entirety of who I am. I will not apologize even in the guiltiest depths of my soul for saying or thinking things that touch upon deeper metaphysical questions but are not in any way drawn from or inspired by the materials of the Islamic canon.

sorry, that's been bothering me for some time now. Probably from the very beginning.

People ask my why i converted, they ask me sometimes searching for answers of their own, reasons to continue the struggle to hold to faith.

I converted for many reasons, but ultimately I converted without reason. Truthfully when I decided to convert, if I did consciously decide at all, it was on the basis of a handful of unempirical truths, things which do not have their genesis in the mind of a person and cannot be effectively transmitted to other persons because they are first and foremost rooted in the heart, in the soul, in the inexplicable regions of who we are, and as such they supersede the reason of secular skepticism and become, in their own way, unassailable sanctuaries in which we find abode.