He spent three decades as a Christian preacher and teacher, then lost an arm in a car crash. He had a dream that caused him to lose faith. Then a single verse finally drove him to embrace Islam. The journey of Eissa Abdulaziz, 54, formerly Nicanor Abana, was full of loss, yet he said his biggest gain was discovering the true guidance of God. "I was on annual leave in the Philippines. I was working as an engineer in Saudi and I was driving my car and the girl I was supposed to marry was sitting next to me. Then we crashed into a lorry, I put my left arm around her to save her life and my arm was severed."
During his three-week-stay in hospital, he had a life-changing experience. "I don't know if I was in a dream or in transit, but I was separated from the Earth, I saw planets, rainbows that I have not seen before. I heard a loud voice saying: 'I'm your God, I will never leave you, I'm your God'." After working for two years in Malaysia, he returned to Saudi Arabia in 1997. One of his Saudi colleagues, said that he seemed different, and gave him a book. "I couldn't sleep, then I remembered him saying the book will have all the answers, so I opened it and read one verse only, I didn't know this verse would change my whole life."
He said the verse was about the guidance of monotheism. "The next day I went to my colleague and informed him about the verse, so he took me to one of the Da'wah centres, where they explained to me about Quran, and it took me till the following day to go back to them and say shahada." He said the fact he heard only one voice speak to him, combined with the break-up from his fiancée and losing his job due to his medical condition, were all factors that led him to him to change his religion.
@Email:hdajani@thenational.ae
