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“To
me it's not just a religion, it's a way of life,” Korman says
about Islam. (Courtesy South Bend Tribune)
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Michiana,
Michigan, December 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – After
the 9/11 attacks, Brandy Korman became curious to know more about
Islam.
She
started with tying the words “Islam” and “Quran” in the Google
search engine but only few months later she embraced Islam and then
married a Muslim.
“It
was just out of curiosity,” recalled the then 18-year-old
church-going Catholic during a recent interview with the South Bend
Tribune.
“I
was thinking, 'What kind of religion tells their people to kill?'”
She
began reading. From Web sites she moved on to library books, then to
the Noble Qur’an.
Reading
thousands of pages, she remembered that with each page the idea of
Islam as a faith that promotes killing faded away.
Korman,
21, began to see Islam as a way of life of submission to God -- a God
who forbids killing innocent people even in the name of faith.
“Just
as God provided laws for nature, he provided laws for us through his
scriptures,” she said.
After
moving with her mother from Pennsylvania to South Bend, she began
talking with some of her Muslim classmates in the business department
at Indiana University South Bend.
One
day she e-mailed her classmate Osama Abaza, 24, and asked to go to the
mosque with him.
She
began visiting the mosque each week with Abaza, who was in the midst
of rediscovering Islam.
Before
he left Egypt for the United States four-and-a-half years ago, Abaza
did not consider himself a devout Muslim.
It
was only after living in the United States that he began going to a
mosque on a regular basis.
“To
me it's not just a religion, it's a way of life,” Korman says about
Islam. “You have to change the way you act, the way you dress.”
She
replaced sweaters and jeans with long dresses and scarves and switched
from a single woman to a wife who did not date her husband before she
agreed to marry him.
Feeling
there is a long way to go in becoming a Muslim, she attends the
Qur’an study group every Thursday and reminds Abaza to use the
simple Arabic terms she knows as often as possible.
Korman
says that she doesn't approve the killing of innocent people in the
name of faith, as some claim to do.
“But
on the other hand, I don't agree with the American administration that
is bombing people all over the world in the name of freedom and
democracy.”
