FiveWords That Changed My Life

Today, while out with my family at the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley
California, I ran into a man who changed the entire course of my life
fifteen years ago. And he did it with a smile and one simple question.
I have no doubt in my mind that hadI not met this man on that cold day
in February, that I would either be dead or in prison.
Fifteen years ago while on my way to a college class, Iran into a
familiar looking guy who pointed at my shirt and said "good looking
out" and stood up and shook my hand. I was sporting dread locks,
wearing a Haile Selassie shirt, baggy jeans, suede Pumas, sunglasses
and a Sessions snowboarder jacket. I was the quintessential hard to
labelCalifornia Bay Area pseudo hip hop hippie skater. Happy because
of my rasta shirt he guy said to me "Hey I think I know you dude, we
met at such and such a place. My name is Whitney Canon (who we now
know as USAMA CANON)." I answered in the affirmative and we struck up
a conversation and realized we had several mutual friends. This
"chance" meeting would prove to be "one of two" ofthe most important
random occurrences in my life.
Strangely it ended up that we had the same Spanish class together and
ended up sitting next to one another. Over the course ofa few days we
learned thatwe were both musicians / artists. Usama had the codeto the
piano room in the music hall so we'd sneak into the room and sit and
play music for hours and talk about spirituality. We did this just
about every day for an entire semester.
One day while eating sushi at a popular Japanese restaurant near
campus I confided in Usama and toldhim I was burnt out and tired of my
life and that I had decided to get things back on track. I was living
by myself in downtown San Jose, working nights waiting tables and
going to school during the day. There were many things about my
lifestyle (that I won't go into detail about here) that were
preventingme from success. I also hadthe burden of past demonsthat
would sneak up to torment me from time to time. So, the only real
solution I knew of to deal with problems of this magnitude was to get
religious and go back to church.
I told Usama that I was considering going back to the Catholicism to
get my life in order. He asked me ifI'd ever thought about Islam. I
told him that I hadn't thought of it for myself because I felt it was
either an Arab religion or a separatist black movement(which I
couldn't join because my mother is white) and that I felt the only
Muslims I had ever met were hypocrites and that I'd never seen a good
practicing Muslim.
He told me about his older brother (ANAS CANON) converting to orthodox
Islam after a short time in the Nation Of Islam and that it wasn't
just for Arabsbut that from what he knew it was a pretty universal
religion. (NOTE: Usama wasn't Muslim yet when he was telling me this).
He asked me if I knewabout Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) and I
told him that I just knew ofElijah Muhammad but that even Malcolm X
said he wasn't a real prophet. He then explained to me that there was
a different man named Muhammad that was a real Prophet from Arabia and
that I should look into him. At this point I started to get turned off
as I usually did whenever anybody spoke to me overtly about religion.
Plus once he said "Arab Prophet" I knew that Islamwasn't for me. We
ended the conversation and I headed to work. This was aWednesday.
That night after work I went to the bookstore to buy a Bible and I
walked past the "Eastern Philosophy" section and looked up and saw a
greenbook that had the name 'MUHAMMAD' written downthe entire spine in
gold letters. I stopped and thought for a moment and then reached up
and grabbed the book. The cover said 'MUHAMMAD – His Life Based On The
Earliest Sources" by Martin Lings. This phrase "earliest sources"
intrigued me because although I was there to purchase a bible, I was
aware of the theological debate about the number of mistakes found in
the bible and it was something that troubled me greatly. So, I opened
up the book and tried to read it but the Arabic names were really
difficult for me to pronounce and so I was struggling to get through
even a couple sentences. The four or five sentences I did read
mentioned the "QUR'AN" several times. The Arabic names solidifiedthe
reality that this was an Arab religion and not something I would want
tobe a part of so I put the book back up on the shelf.
As I began to walk away the gold letters "MUHAMMAD" caught my eye
again and looked back up at the book. This time, I noticed another
book titled"THE QU'RAN." I was going to keep walking but I remembered
that I saw that word a few times in the Martin Lings book so I reached
up and pulled it offthe shelf.

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