User:Bodhicide

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Bilal Ayyub McDaniel (بلال أيوب مك دانيال) (born Jeremy Alexander McDaniel) was born on June 13, 1987 in Fort Worth, TX to Douglas and Judy McDaniel. He was named after the Great Prophet Jeremiah, or Yirmiyahu (יִרְמְיָהוּ) in Hebrew. His family was ethnically mixed, being Welsh and Scots-Irish-Sephardic Jewish (McDaniel is a Gaelicization of 'Daniel', the name of a prominent Sephardic Jewish family who emigrated to England and Scotland) on his father's side and Blackfoot Native American and Ashkenazi Jewish on his mother's side, the latter making him a Jew according to the Rabbinical Jewish Law of matrilineal descent. He was raised a Protestant Christian of the Baptist denomination, with influence from the Pentecostal creed of his mother's parents. Though extremely religious, with convictions of joining the Baptist ministry as a young child, Jeremy was never able to comprehend or accept the ideas of the Trinity, other mainstream Pauline Christian doctrines, or the extreme literalism with which those around him interpreted the Bible, and eventually became so dissatisfied with his experiences in the Baptist Church, he left religion completely and became agnostic for a number of years.

After much reflection, Jeremy began seeking truth, and turned to reading about all the major world religions. He read extensively about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, various Christian denominations, Taoism and Judaism. For a time, Jeremy identified particularly with Mahayana Buddhism and other Eastern paths, though ultimately found this unsatisfying to his basic spiritual needs. Reading through the Qur'an twice, and many reading books about Islam in general and especially much about the Islamic mystical paths of Sufism, he became more and more convinced of the truth of Islam. Before he converted, he decided to also look heavily into the Sunni/Shi'ite divide he'd read about passingly. Studying the points of view of both sides, and the criticisms they produced of one another, he became convinced that the Shi'ite school more accurately portrayed the Islam of the Prophet, and that the twelve Imams indeed were his legitimate successors. Jeremy took shahadah, the Islamic confession of faith in the unity of God and the Messengership of Muhammad, on January 20, 2006, at the Islamic Association of Tarrant County, a Sunni majority mosque in the Hulen area of Fort Worth. Jeremy then took the name Bilal Ayyub McDaniel, after the Ethiopian Sahabi Bilal ibn Ribah (بلال بن رباح), who was the first mu'adhin, and the Prophet Job, called Iyyov (אִיּוֹב) in Hebrew and 'Ayyub (أيوب) in Arabic. He then began attending the Shi'ite mosque MOMIN Center, having already made the intention to follow the teachings of the Ahlul Bayt, and has since spent much of his time studying the religion, as well as other religions, especially in their relation to Islam.

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