welcome everyone thank you for being
here
to tell to hear our stories and i was
thinking as i was hearing the stories
because i didn’t really
prepare where i was going to start or
where i was going to finish so i’m just
going to go based on the time
i’ve been given so my story is a little
different than the speakers before me
something similar something’s very
different
i come from the life of what
the dunya brings you when you think
dunya is what is
most important i come from being a
celebrity personal trainer nutritionist
traveling around the world training
professional athletes celebrities
notable people behind the scenes
being in miami las vegas and hollywood
and that life was filled with a lot of
great things at the time
there is not any party in the hamptons
or in vegas
or in l.a that i hadn’t been to there
wasn’t a magazine i wasn’t in
there wasn’t a celebrity or rapper or
a professional athlete that i didn’t
know or associate with
but with all that said at the end of the
day
even though i was born and raised
catholic from
a puerto rican family but not so
traditional because i was raised in an
italian neighborhood
so i was like the only puerto rican girl
in the italian neighborhood
and i’m from brooklyn so if you could
tell a little bit by my accent
but nonetheless i was
also a national level fitness competitor
so a fellow competitor a guy
happened to be lebanese and was muslim
so we’re both
competing at the national level i mean
he’s competing
in the small attire that they wear and
i’m in my bikini
and he decides at some point tell me
you have to change your ways you have to
change how you dress
i said but wait a minute you wear the
same thing i’m wearing we’re both
competing what are you talking about you
do the same thing i do what’s so
different
and of course being a feminist like lisa
i was like no
women can compete just like men do so
he gives me the quran and i was like
okay but he did it in such a forceful
way
that it reminded me of something that
i’d seen
from born again christians which my
father
is actually a born again a born-again
christian pastor
in orlando florida as we speak and my
mother is still
somewhat catholic so i looked at it i
was like okay whatever
i opened i read like a page or two and
i put it on the shelf and that was back
in like 1998. so
the years are going by again i’m
traveling the world
and in my work it was put to me to
make a trip to malaysia but it was eight
months after 9 11.
so they asked me would you feel
uncomfortable to travel to malaysia
i said well i don’t think in my mind
i’ll ever get to go to asia or malaysia
or anywhere like that again so i’m not
going to say no
so here i go i land first i went to hong
kong then i went to malaysia
and when i got there i was like wow
there’s so many muslims i thought they
were asian
i didn’t know so and it just so happened
that it happened to be ramadan it was
november
of 2002. so i’m doing my
uh my circuit that i had to do because i
was a presenter
at the collegiate level and also on the
international level so i had to present
at kuala lumpar’s islamic university
i didn’t know it was an islamic
university so i get up in front of all
the faculty the professors
all the physiology department the
anatomy
the you know all the exercise
physiologists that are staring at me
they’re all men
so there’s like maybe two women i had to
go off
of my lecture for about 45 minutes to
prove myself
because i didn’t look like the typical
american i wasn’t
blonde hair blue eyed and they just were
like okay we got to make sure you know
what you’re talking about
and it was just so interesting because
the people
were just had this tranquility to them
but it didn’t really hit me
so i go back to my hotel after my
lecture and i noticed i was like why is
it so
quiet where is everybody it’s only like
five o’clock
so my hotel was connected to a large
mall
and then i said oh let me go to the mall
they told me the mall was going to be
open late so i go to the mall all of a
sudden
i don’t know at seven eight o’clock
this stream of people came from
everywhere it was
the middle of ramadan so it was after
iftar so after iftar
everyone was everywhere there were
muslims everywhere i was like
wow supan allah didn’t say subhanallah
at the time
i said subhanallah wow
and everybody’s covered up okay this is
cool
so that was in 2002. that just stayed at
the back of my mind
so now we’re going to flash forward to
2005.
i’m now a competitive triathlete and
biathlete which i was at that time the
best shape of my life and i was
preparing for that
uh this was in september of 2005 the
following week
i was preparing for a pretty big uh
biathlon
in long island and i was driving to my
nutrition office in howard beach queens
and i had just recently gotten my first
suv
so i thought it was cool i was driving
down the highway
and apparently maybe somebody had a blow
out of a tire or something
there was debris in front of me so just
as i thought i’m in an
suv i can just kind of veer around it no
problem
i go like that and all of a sudden
i start to skid into the grass
so i said i’m an suv it’s no problem
i’ll just
get back on the road oh no in a
millisecond
the car started to flip
and i flipped across what’s called the
belt parkway
from one side of the belt parkway to the
other side i flipped five
times and landed on the opposite side of
traffic that goes back towards manhattan
new york
subhanallah it was
a very surreal millisecond similar
different to sister armani
i opened my eyes i don’t know if i was
unconscious
or the paramedic that was driving
watching my car flip touched my face
but no car hit me subhanallah by the
grace of allah i am standing here to
even tell this story
and i was rushed to a hospital in
brooklyn lutheran
and all i could think is
oh my client i’m in the ambulance i was
about to see
some nutrition clients later in the
afternoon i had more clients
i made the lady in the ambulance i said
if you do not give me my cell phone so i
can call my client
you will have to get me i will not go in
this ambulance
so i’m like with the gas the oxygen
telling my client excuse me
i’m not going to make a garden to a car
accident my dedication
to what i do of helping people
women and men at the time that is
the soul that i have always breathed
that’s the breath within me that is the
soul that i am
so that was the most important thing to
me at that time
so i get to the hospital and apparently
there might be blood on my brain oh oh
that’s a problem
they stick me in icu so at this point
uh my friends get a hold of my mom and
my brother they’re like flying from the
bronx
to get to the hospital and alhamdulillah
the blood in the brain or what they
thought they saw it
the swelling went down so it was fine
but i was admitted because i had a
massive concussion
with that type of accident most people
don’t even make it
i just had a little cuts on my elbow
and i had a nice little gash on my head
because of the seat belt my head was
banging into the seat belt as the car
was flipping
so as the weekend passed on monday
the administrator of the entire hospital
comes
to my bedside now
apparently he doesn’t come and visit
patients so
he said to me this is off the record
i just wanted to come and see the person
that survived this accident
because most people come into this
hospital with a quarter of this accident
and don’t make it
so i wanted to see who it was and he
said to me again off the record
i don’t know what you believe in but
whatever it is if you believe in god
you find out what god has planned for
you and you go and you do it
now that was 2005. so that kind of
stayed there
didn’t really do anything with it i
continued with my dunya
fast life hollywood vegas
you know that scene like you see it on
television all the flash
and now we fast forward to
2009 so i’m flying back from a business
trip in
in los angeles and i had to get to a
wedding a catholic wedding
and it was march of 2009 i landed in
john f kennedy airport
raced to the uh
to the church in queens because it was
my good friend
and client getting married and she was
not gonna walk down the aisle
until she saw her personal trainer
because we worked so hard
to get her in the best shape of her life
alhamdulillah
anyway so i get there i’m like and i
watch the mass i can recite the catholic
mass like if it was
like you know part of breathing and in
some moment
watching her get married i said
i no longer want to be catholic i didn’t
know why
maybe because i just didn’t have that
connection in that mass i just felt
so disconnected from god that’s all i
did know
i said i know i don’t i don’t want to be
catholic anymore this is
there’s something lacking and it’s my
connection with god
now when i walked out uh i did know i
didn’t want to be jewish
because i knew that process was just way
too long i read about that i was like oh
no i don’t want to do that oh they’re
never going to let me in
not with my past so
living in bay ridge brooklyn a very
heavily diverse community
and probably the largest arab american
community in
new york city i had a lot of friends
palestinian-american egyptian-american
so i was around a lot of people
that were muslim were practicing muslims
and basically i uh
thank you i called up
the closest family i was closest to an
egyptian american family
and may allah preserve them and raise
them in rank for what they’ve done for
me
uh i called them up because
i was like i think i want to take my
shahada
well before i said that i actually
googled it how to become a muslim
that’s it that’s all you have to do you
just have to say that that’s it
wow and then i called the monam family
and said you know what
i think i want to take my shahadah
they rushed me to the local masjid and
bay ridge mossab
and at the time there was a library next
door i mean i walked out with books like
this
and i said to myself i know i’m not
going to read any of this
so what i knew was in my heart it wasn’t
going to be on books
so i got the quran in every possible
translation transliteration arabic
english every combination
a book of sata and of course what do
they tell you read
read this is what they tried to tell me
to do the first time
so of course okay i read one two pages
put that to the side so this was march
but in my heart
i had already didn’t know what ania
or intention was but i made the
intention that i knew for 2009
i wanted to fast for ramadan and i
wanted to be muslim
i didn’t know how i was going to get to
that point but i knew that
ania was already there okay
so again back to the flash las vegas
la miami so now we’re in june of 2009 so
we’re getting close to ramadan which was
now going to be
at the end of august so i come back from
a trip to la
and my car was parked in long-term
parking
so i’m walking got my luggage
subhanallah as i’m standing here
the hoshua just entered in my heart i
was ready for my shahadah
i don’t know how i don’t know what the
quran of allah
the hoshua subhanallah it just entered
my heart i knew i was ready at that
moment i don’t know where it came from
it’s as if
it was an information that was in my
brain already there
so on the drive back to bay ridge i
called the monam family again
i’m ready to take masha’allah
alhamdulillah
okay here’s what we’re gonna do on
friday we’re gonna go to the masjid
you’re going to take your shahadah but
you know you don’t need to do that you
can take it by yourself
well lo and behold whatever happened
you know there they were on arab
standard time
and i was on my time somehow we missed
timing so i didn’t get to go with them
to the masjid for jummah to do my
shahada
and i did my shahada by myself with the
law the angels
and my computer
now i don’t know how to do anything so
me being a very
type a structured person as everyone who
knows me
i was like oh my god i need to know what
i have to do i have to do this
so days are going by it’s getting closer
to ramadan lo and behold i didn’t learn
how to pray till the first day of
ramadan 2009
i’m with the sheets of paper oh what do
i have to do
awesome oh alhamdulillah
it took me three weeks to memorize my
fatiha subhanallah was the most amazing
experience
so nonetheless i said okay this is
ramadan
i didn’t really have any to spend it
with my family
was kind of on the fence didn’t really
know
since i didn’t know anything about islam
i didn’t know what to tell them
so i said i need to learn anyway
after ramadan i knew i need to go
somewhere to learn
and again allah subhanahu wa’ta’ala had
blessed me with the mecca center
that is a school in manhattan primarily
for converts
and i took the new muslim program
and subhanallah without that i wouldn’t
even be able to continue with my story
today
i walked in in my gym clothes
my regular gym clothes like the
non-muslim gym clothes
and my teacher i came in
he said brooklyn where are you going
like that
i said oh oh well
and i looked around and i said oh i
can’t come dressed like this
so within a couple of weeks one of the
administrators gave me my first abaya
and that was at the end of october and
january 1st
2010 i put my hijab on
alhamdulillah for me the biggest
struggle
has been the manners and behaviors
because i come from
bronx brooklyn street life and
corporate life so for me i don’t come
from any of these cultures
i don’t know too much about any of these
cultures i know
how i had to raise myself i’ve been on
my own since i’m 18 no
parents divorced parents i raised myself
so i wasn’t
the shyness the how you treat a guest
all these things were these are the
hardest things for me
how to interact with people from all the
cultures
that out the gate treat me differently
because i’m not like them
and as a convert my biggest struggle has
been
finding a masjid or a community that
accepts
a latina convert coming from
a different background i pray five times
a day
at least i fast i do dawah i do charity
i’m not even about to talk about naduna
and all the things i do
but tomorrow i am teaching another class
at 10 in the morning for sisters
i teach a lecture called fick of
nutrition and i’ll be doing
an exercise class which is a group
personal training class called fit for
allah that i’ve been teaching for
over two years in manhattan and for me
the biggest struggle as a convert is the
acceptance by people from other cultures
i’m not arab i’m not pakistani i’m not
this
i’m not that so i’ve had to
sometimes doing ramadan travel 45
minutes to a masjid in new jersey
where sister nahila is from just to feel
i’m home that is the problem for me
the biggest thing is the being able to
mesh
into these other cultures i’m just not
from that
but i love allah just like you do i love
the rasulullah just like you do
i love all the prophets just like you do
we’re not the same but we are the same
we’re here for the same message and
that’s to praise
and please allah thank you