So, this is my another favorite conversion story. Yvonne Ridley is
a British journalist that came to accept Islam. After listening her
conversion story in YouTube, I thought this is pure guidance from Allah (God)
Himself. Because I think she herself never thought she will become a Muslim.
The other notable thing was how she become the witness of exaggerated
and misinform views in western media about Islam. In this case about the
Taliban, because she was held captive by them and the Taliban was not like the
media tells.
So, here the short version of her story that I took from
Wikipedia..
Yvonne Ridley
Yvonne Ridley (born 1959, Stanley, County Durham, England) is a British journalist, war correspondent[1] and Respect Party activist best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam after release, her outspoken opposition to Zionism, and her criticism of Western media portrayals of the War on Terror. Ridley currently works for Press TV, the Iranian-based English language news channel.
Capture by the Taliban
Yvonne Ridley came to prominence on 28
September 2001, when she was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan whilst working for the Sunday Express. Repeatedly refused an
entrance visa, she decided to follow the example of BBC reporter John Simpson, who had crossed the border anonymously
in a burqa.
Colleagues said Ridley responded to text
messages from friends until 26 September 2001, after having told them she would
attempt to cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan. It became clear
that she had been discovered without passport or visa, and was held by the
authorities after being arrested with her guides, the Afghan refugee Nagibullah
Muhmand and Pakistani Jan Ali, in a village in the Dour Daba district near the eastern
city of Jalalabad in Nangahar, close to
the border with Pakistan. She was dressed like an Afghan, but it is believed
she was caught after attempting to take photographs, an illegal activity under
the Taliban. She was spotted two days later, on 28 September, after slipping
across the border by local people who pointed her out to security forces, who
took her to Jalalabad for further investigation on possible espionage charges, that carried the
death penalty. Shortly before, the Taliban had asked all foreigners to leave
the country and had said they would not issue visas to journalists. They
threatened that anyone found using a satellite phone would be executed.[7][8]
She would at least be prosecuted for entering
the country illegally, reported the Afghan Islamic Press agency, quoting the
Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Mullah Abdur Rahman Zahid.[9]
Qudratullah Jamal, the Taliban's information
minister, expressed the suspicion that Ridley was possibly a member of a
military "special forces" unit like the British SAS.[10][11][12][13] It was also suggested that
she and other westerners could be kept by the Taliban as hostages.[14]
The British high commissioner to Pakistan, Hilary Synnott, met
the Taliban-ambassador in Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef and opened negotiations
intended at a quick release of Ridley.[15][16][17] While the press in Britain
speculated about the reason of her arrest and the seriousness of the suspicion,[18][19][20] she was kept in solitary
confinement for seven days and then moved to a prison in Kabul.[21] In the prison in Kabul she
met the Christian missionary Heather Mercer, who
was also kept by the Taliban and was unaware of the latest developments[22]
The same week British bombings on Afghan
targets as part of the Operation Enduring Freedom began, while the
whereabouts of Ridley were unknown to the British authorities and it was feared
that these bombings would jeopardise her release.[23][24][25] Then her release, ordered
on 'humanitarian grounds' by Taliban-leader Mullah Mohamed Omar,
was reported by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.[26][27][28][29] After her release on 9
October 2001, when her Taliban captors escorted her from the Kabul prison to a
Pakistan border post at the foot of the Khyber Pass, near
Peshawar, she revealed that she had kept a concealed diary inside a box for a
toothpaste tube and in the inside of a soap wrapper, and had been on hunger
strike throughout her captivity, but denied to have been physically hurt in any
way.[30][31][32][33][34][35]
After the release of Ridley, her guides Jan
Ali and Nagibullah Muhmand, as well as Basmena, the five-year-old daughter of
the latter, were kept by the Taliban in a prison in Kabul, according to Reporters sans Frontières.[36][37]
Conversion to Islam
According her own account after her release,
during her captivity she was asked by one of her captors to convert to Islam;
she refused, but gave her word she would read the Qur'an after her release.
In freedom, she kept this promise, as she
said partly to find out why the Taliban treated women as they do.[38] She said it changed her
life.[39]
The Qur'an, she says describing the holy book
of Islam, is a "magna
carta for women".[40] She converted to Islam in
the summer of 2003, stating that her new faith has helped put behind her broken
marriages and a reputation as the "Patsy Stone of Fleet Street."
When comparing her treatment to female prisoners' held in American custody, such
as Aafia Siddiqui, she
said that in Taliban's custody she was given her full privacy as a woman, and
was handed the key to the door of her cell to lock from the inside.[41] In 2004, she described her
journey of faith for the BBC's religion site (see A Muslim in the Family),
as well as in other publications and on other occasions in which she emerged as
a "fierce critic of the
West".[42]
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Related Article : "Why Islam? somethin to think about from a convert perspective"
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Related Article : "Why Islam? somethin to think about from a convert perspective"
