Why I Embraced ISLAM – Maryam Jameelah, the First American Jewish lady

MARYAM JAMEELAH
(Formerly Margaret Marcus) The First American Jewish Lady from New York embraced Islam. The height of the Great depression a fourth-generation American of German Jewish origin.
The well-known convert from Judaism narrates below in her own words is not just a story, but the beginning of her literary mission to combat modernism inflicted on Islam by so-called reformers.
My discovery of Holy Quran was tortuous and led me through strange by-ways but since the end of the road was supremely worthwhile, I have never regretted my experiences.
These teachings of Holy Quran, made even more explicit by Hadith, were thoroughly compatible with my temperament. When I embraced Islam, my parents, relatives and their friends regarded me almost as a fanatic, because I could think and talk of nothing else. To them, religion is a purely private concern which at the most perhaps could be cultivated like an amateur hobby among other hobbies. But as soon as I read Holy Quran, I knew that Islam was no hobby but life itself!
Neither Judaism nor Christianity could satisfy me.
I could never reconcile myself to the complicated, incomprehensible theology of the Christians and the endless compromises of the Church with moral, social, political and economic evils.
The superiority of the Quran over the Bible to me lay in its all-embracing universality in contrast to the narrow, rigid nationalism of the Jewish scriptures. As this universality makes for the superior morality, it has exerted a drastic effect on the historical development of these religions and civilizations shaped by them.
In Islam, my quest for absolute values was satisfied. In Islam I found all that was true, good and beautiful and which gives meaning and direction to human life (and death) while in other religions, the Truth is deformed, distorted, restricted and fragmentary.