ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Converts To Islam Anisah Georgia Liliou I welcomed Islam into my life at, what people think, a very young age. And yet, bringing back to my memory the years before my conversion, is still a chilling experience for me. In principle, my conversion story may seem similar to many other stories. But what still amazes me is the relation between the events; a proof to the fact that Gods Will prevails, no matter the circumstances.

I was born and brought up in Athens. My parents, like 98% of the people in Greece, are Orthodox Christians. During the first years of my life I cannot remember them being particularly religious. They led a normal family life, which included the occasional visit to the church. The people who reminded us of our responsibility towards our religion were almost always my grandmothers and grandfathers. My mothers parents were both children of priests and had great knowledge in Christian traditions.

In their bedroom, they had converted part of their wardrobe into a church, shelves stocked with images of Jesus, Virgin Mary and various saints. Every night, my grandfather would stand in front of that shelf for a couple of hours, reading with humility the holy book; a picture I will never forget. As I almost always spent my holidays with them, they introduced me to the routine of reading every night little poems to Virgin Mary.

That, however, did not prevent me from having my own spiritual experiences. Up until the age of ten I used to see in my dream the events of the following day, which I thought was something normal. I never did my homework, unless I saw in my dream that my teacher would examine me. So I would do it in the school bus, on the way to school. Sometimes I would see dreams relating to other peoples worries, worries I knew little about. My elder sister probably realises this better than me.

Sometimes in the morning I would say to her I had the weirdest dream, I would narrate it to her and then forget all about it. She would not forget though, and years later she confessed to me that my dreams had affected her life. When I was 10 or 11, nothing seemed to go well. We had family problems, school was very hard for me, I had no friends. One night I slowly slid out of my bed and decided to pray for help.

I think I spent about 10 minutes just standing there; I was trying to decide who to pray to. Should I pray to Jesus or Virgin Mary? Saint George or Saint Helen?