EXPERIENCE OF FAITH

African attorney's transition from Catholicism to Islam

He was rummaging through some old books in his library and came across Sheikh Ahmed Deedat's book, Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction? which shook his faith and radically changed his concept of God and his entire life.

What made a distinguished attorney, a proud Zulu by birth and a son of the African soil give up the Catholic Church in which he was raised in favour of Islam? This was a faith he was taught to be wary of.

Attorney Dawood Ngwane was not searching for a new religion. He was quite pleased and happy as he was. At least that was what he thought. He was simply looking for a law journal in a heap of old books when he stumbled upon Sheikh Deedat's book, Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction? The title of this little booklet immediately grabbed his attention and stuck in his mind. He placed the booklet one side and felt an urgency to read it.

Once he started reading the booklet he could not put it down. It had plunged him into a decisive moment of deep questioning. He had reached a point in his life where he doubted his core beliefs. He mustered the courage to go and talk to Sheikh Ahmed Deedat at the IPCI with the intention of convincing him that he got it all wrong.

"My personal encounter with Sheikh Deedat further weakened my faith in the Trinity," Attorney Dawood said.

But attorney Ngwane is a man of great substance and he was not going to walk away from the Catholic Church without consulting his Bishop at the Marian Hill Diocese, a place where he loyally and devotedly served the Church and the Christian community.

Clutching Sheikh Deedat's booklet under his arm, he approached his Bishop. "My Lord, I have a problem," Attorney Ngwane said. "Yes, what's your problem?" he responded. "I no longer believe that God is a trinity," I said to him. "He nearly collapsed. He never thought that he was going to hear those words from me, because I was so firmly rooted in the Church."
In a firm and authoritative voice the Bishop asked him, "what has happened to you?" Attorney Dawood Ngwane handed him Sheikh Deedat's book, and asked him to read it and to get back to him with his response.

Three months passed and there was still no response from the Bishop. Attorney Ngwane informed the Diocese Management Committee what transpired between him and the Bishop and they were quite shocked. The committee then decided to arrange a meeting between him and Father Doncabe with whom he could discuss his questions of faith.

"When I met Reverend Father Doncabe he had several Bibles with him. Father Doncabe said that I need to understand right from the outset that the 'TRINITY IS NOT IN THE BIBLE AND THAT IT IS THE TEACHINGS OF THE CHURCH'."

At this point Attorney Ngwane knew that it was time for him to move on and made his transition from Catholicism to Islam in 1995, at the age of 65.

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