When people see the truth of Islam, it can change them if they want to be guided. If they want the truth, it can change them.
I am Sakina Desuza. I am a Catholic. I believe that brother Yusuf was a catholic before. I’d like to ask him a simple question. He was brought up like a Catholic but what made him change? Does not he believe that the Messiah is true? Did he ever feel that the Catholic religion has not been brought by the Messiah and the Bible is false? I would like to know what that means, because he said that he was a Catholic before and now he becomes a Muslim, what made you change? What is the story line before? Does not he believe that there is Messiah or the Messiah has come, saved us and died on the cross?
Sheikh Yusuf Estes:
Thank you for your good question. I hate to disappoint you but I was not the Catholic. But I was with a Catholic priest the night that he accepted Islam. I asked him the question you asked me, because after all I was still a Christian, a preacher in Christianity and I want to know why my best friend, a Catholic priest, had converted. A Catholic priest is not like a regular preacher in the protestant religion. A Catholic priest has given up everything; he is giving up his life to be a Catholic priest. When he enters into this realm, he is basically giving away everything. He cannot have a wife. He cannot have children obviously. He has no home; he just lives in what they gave him a place to stay. He is sent to what they tell him to go, do whatever he is told to do, and that is it. He cannot disobey the pope. Otherwise, they can kick him out of their religion, he gets excummincated and he goes to the hell forever. So, how would a person like that once become a Muslim terrorist? That we are already know.
He explained in very few beautiful words something that I come to learn for myself. He said that he was sincerely in the Catholic religion because he believes in God. He studied, his degree was anthology, and a part of the teaching that they as priests have is the study of Islam. Every priest is forced to study Islam. You may not know that. You can ask a priest and he can inform you. When you study Islam, even when Islam is told to you by somebody who hates Islam, as long as they do not corrupt it too far, you can still see the truth in Islam. A classic example happened to me just recently when I was in Saudi Arabia. A friend of mine brought a very old copy of one of the first translated Qur’an. It was translated to English by George Sale. George Sale hated Islam, hated the Muslims but when he translated the Qur’an into English, he was true to the text of the words. The meaning was true to the words. I was shocked when I read it. Have you seen it? Amazing! Gorge Bernard Show, for instance, is one of many, a long list of people, who read this, and realized the truth of Islam.
When people see the truth of Islam, it can change them if they want to be guided. If they want the truth, it can change them. You might think I am a Catholic and never be anything but a Catholic. But I want to ask you a question and want to be honest. Was Jesus a Catholic? You know and I know he was not. The Catholic Church was in business about three hundred years before Jesus was born. It is on the website, do not look this, it is their own website that is where I took it from. The Catholic Church was really started in Rome by Alexander the Great. Do you know what the word Catholic means? It means universal. It was a universal church for the Roman Empire. If you did not join it, you could not be a Roman citizen.
They were diametrically opposed to each other to the extent that the Romans were killing the early Christians. Now, if you understand that and you go to their website and read, they did not even take over Christianity until year 25 AC and when they did, they changed a lot of things again, referring to their own website. But if you want to check it in Britanica, American encyclopedias, go ahead and read about the Catholic Church. In August of 25 AD, they took over. The first thing they said was “Let’s change the date of the birth of Jesus to be the same day as that of Mithras which was the god, one of the gods worshipped there and also the sun god birthday on the same day, December 25; believing it to be the shortest day of the year. And in consistent with the sun worshipper, go the website and read of yourself. There are a lot of points but not the least of which even the day you go to any Catholic Church, you see so many portraits, statues, idols, and images throughout the whole place. This for the one who never experienced that, for a Muslim, who knows about the images, will say, “A`uzu Billah, (may Allah save me), Wow what is this?” The first time I went to a Catholic Church I was about ten years old. I was shocked. I was shocked with the idols and statues. The first commitment in the bible in Exodus is the same as the first commitment in the book Deuteronomy. It says, “I am the lord, your God, there is no other gods… Thou should not have any other gods beside me.” How many in this room agree with this commitment? Raise hands. You know the Muslims are raising their hands because it means “Ash-hadu an la Ilaha illa Allah (There is no god but Allah).” That is the first commitment for us as well…
Watch Sheikh Yusuf Estes’ answer here:
