30+ Yr Convert to Islam: How Does It Feel Now?

On Finding and Maintaining the Passion of a Convert

Ramadan Mubarak dear Friends,

Greetings of Peace as we enter this beloved and sacred month of spiritual rejuvenation. None of us knows how many Ramadans we will meet in our lives, nor how many we have left before we return to our Lord.

I have the great honor that this year’s Ramadan commences on my 31st anniversary as a Muslim convert. To say that God has curated for me a most intricately nuanced life journey of discovery and growth is a massive understatement. God’s curriculum for me continues to unfold with greater richness, challenge, beauty, and expansion with every passing day. I cannot fathom the lessons yet to be learned.

Yet at this moment in time, I feel the weight of the gift received thus far and the burden and blessing of sharing what I have learned from my highly atypical vantage point. I am an American-born Taiwanese (immigrant parents) California-raised, Ivy-league educated Muslim convert married to a world-renowned Islamic scholar! As my Muslim classmate put it after we reconnected at our 10-year high school reunion shortly after my conversion, “You are the last person I would ever have expected to convert to Islam!” Ya, me too.

But there you have it. God extended the invitation and I accepted. But not without a lot of trepidation, struggle, and hard work. It would take two-and-a-half years from my initial intrigue with Islam to my actual conversion. In between, there was a whole lot of reading, praying, and talking to God on the one hand, and on the other hand, a lot of wrestling with the self, my identity, my value system and my belief structure. The path to conversion is lonely, confusing, exhilarating, relieving, clarifying, and hundreds more descriptors. It is a fundamental transformation of one’s worldview.

But the journey to conversion is only the opening chapter of a great book. The act of conversion itself demarcates the start of a completely new journey, a shift in the book’s narrative with a whole new set of characters, plot lines, and story twists. The first few years of new convert life can go well or not so well depending on a myriad of complex factors. Many converts don’t stay.

I honestly don’t know how many people make it past the three-decade mark and still maintain the passion of a convert. But I believe I have, and that it is nothing short of a miraculous gift. For all the social media posts and YouTube videos proclaiming new converts to Islam, I have not come across the same from any 30+ year converts who are not academics or scholars. I am neither.

In my own journey, I know that God directed my path so I would witness the Muslim convert experience in its full glory, first on my own, and then beginning a year later, alongside my life partner, an old-school trained Islamic jurist and Ivy League polymath who fled persecution in his native Egypt for daring to dream of democracy and human rights. There were perhaps no two more unlikely people to meet and marry than the two of us.

But we plan and God plans, and God is the best of planners. On this 31st convert birthday of mine, I look back and see that all along the way God was building up my knowledge, my confidence, and my voice, despite all of the hardships of conversion. This Ramadan in 2025, I recognize that God quietly granted me the gift of courage.

I have always wanted to speak to and about converts. This is where my passion comes alive. But the truth is, it is not about “converts,” or “reverts” (a term I absolutely abhor because it sounds like the conflation of “retard” and “pervert” and conveys backwards movement rather than forward motion, which is more consistent with the spirit of vibrancy, growth and human progress, which I believe to be inherent to Islam).

For me, being a convert means firing up your passion for doing a lot of good in the short time we are on this planet. You could be a heritage Muslim and still be a convert. In fact, I think every person should go through the conversion process to find that passion. I believe conversion is about passion for truth-seeking, for seeking God, and for being at the forefront of everything beautiful, virtuous and good to help humanity elevate towards the Divine. Call me a Divine Idealist, but I believe this is what every human being is called to do, everyone who cares about leaving the world better than when they arrived, that is.

Today, this lofty goal shows up in my world as the launch of a new YouTube channel with my first video. In my 30+ year convert journey, somehow my major attempts to try something new, creative and outside the box always happen to begin during the month of Ramadan. Not my plan but God’s! I don’t believe in coincidences but I do believe in Ramadan Miracles, so the fact that this first video came to life at the beginning of this blessed month I take as a hopeful sign, insha’Allah (God willing)!

God has given me so much. It feels like it is time to start paying back my debt of gratitude, which by definition can never be paid back. With my new Ramadan gift of courage, I begin this new challenge on my Ramadan convert birthday. The convert path is decidedly lonely and challenging, yet truly priceless if one can stay the course. I pray that I can share the jewels that I was given to help shine a light on the sometimes dark path that converts often must traverse alone. May we find our strength, passion and path to the Divine together, and may God accept during this blessed month and beyond.