A Grammica Student's Story to Islam and Arabic (Guy - Bilal Mansoor Robinson)

My Journey to Islam: Part 1

I was about nine or ten years old. We started going to church pretty regularly, especially on Sundays. I would attend Sunday school and was taught the stories of Jesus and stories from the Bible, both the New and Old Testaments.

The name of our church was Christ Temple. We were Pentecostal, which is a branch of the Protestant church. At the time, when I was a child, that was the only religion I knew about. I knew you could be a Protestant—like a Baptist or a Pentecostal—or you were a Catholic. Back then, I thought being Catholic was something far, far away from Black people. I thought only my Mexican friends or some white people were in the Catholic church, so I never knew anything about that side of things.

As I grew up, I realized I really didn't like church. It wasn't that I didn't understand it; it's just that I didn't see the benefit of it. I didn't see why I should be there every Sunday and partake in what they were doing. So, when I turned 16 years old, I went to my father and told him I didn't want to go to church anymore. That was a hard thing to do because my father was an authoritarian man, but for some reason, I could see that he understood. From the age of 16 on, I never went to church again. My brothers, my sisters, my uncles, aunts, and cousins—everybody else kept going, and everybody knew that I didn't.

For the next ten years or so of my life, I was completely disconnected from any religion. As a matter of fact, I became somewhat antipathetic toward religion in a sense; I just didn't want to hear anything about it. I wasn't an atheist, though. I always believed in God, and whenever I faced a crisis, I would always turn to God in secret. But I wouldn't turn to the teachings of the church, like calling on Jesus or the Trinity, because I just didn't see the significance of it.

Later on, as I grew up and began to deal with more intellectual concepts, I realized I had one major problem: the idea that Jesus was God. I could never put that together, even though I loved Jesus and loved the stories about him. I also became confused about the way they said he died. To me, it felt almost like a defeatist religion—the hero was killed (which meant God was killed), and all of his homeboys, his companions, ran away. I just couldn't relate to that.

My Journey to Islam: Part 2

I grew up during the 1960s, during the Black Power movement—the era of "I’m Black and I’m Proud." Because of that, I just couldn’t accept the image of Jesus being white. It didn’t make sense to me. The scriptures described his skin like copper and his hair like lamb's wool, and when I thought about that, it seemed like he looked just like me. But then I thought, if Jesus was a White man and Jesus was God, that meant God was White. So, I eventually just left all of that behind.

After I graduated from high school, I became very political. It was the era of the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X, the Watts Riots in 1965, the March on Washington, and the rise of Black awareness. When I left my mother’s house after high school at 17 years old, I entered right into a political movement: the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Some of the prominent figures of that time were Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Angela Davis. I actually met most of those people along the journey. Not that I was anyone important; I was just a young lad in the crowd, in the mix, trying to change the world.

Through that, I became politically aware and educated. I guess my religion became the Black Panther Party. It was a Marxist organization, and we used to read Mao’s Red Book. We even tried to read Marx’s Das Kapital—we were young, 17 or 18, and we didn’t really know anything, but we tried. We also had the Black Panther newspaper, which was a tool the party used to educate the people. That is really how I became educated: by reading revolutionary, Marxist, and philosophic literature. Being a revolutionary was my religion. I didn't fully understand Marxism yet; my intellect hadn’t developed that keenly at the time, but I believed in the cause.

However, within three years, by 1971, the Black Panther Party had disintegrated. It had been heavily infiltrated by the FBI, and there was just too much infighting. For me, that broke my heart. It felt like a divorce, and I had gone through some very trying times.

I needed something. By the time I was 20 years old, I became a father, and that completely changed my life. I needed a way to face this new dilemma in front of me. I got married, but at the same time, I was living an unsavory, borderline criminal life —about 60% to 65% of the people I grew up with out of high school were going to juvenile hall, jail, or the penitentiary during that three-year period. I was doing the exact same things they were doing, and I knew that sooner or later, that was going to be my fate too.

But when my son was born, I told myself, I have to do something. I need a change. Right around then, I ran into an old friend, and he said...

My Journey to Islam: Part 3

When I ran into that old friend, he said, "Why don't you go into the military?"

Now, he was a fellow comrade from the revolution, so I looked at him and said, "Man, I can't go into the military." This was during the Vietnam War. I said, "I'm like Muhammad Ali—no Vietnamese ever called me the N-word. I'm not going to fight any Vietnamese."

But he told me, "Go into the Air Force. You won't have to fight." And that turned out to be true. I wasn't jumping out of airplanes; I was just a clerk. I joined the Air Force because I needed a way to take care of my family, and it truly benefited me. When I came out four years later and saw the guys I grew up with, many of them had been in jail the entire time or were still locked up.

By contrast, I was a different person. I had made it out of the Air Force, but my personal life was complicated—I had gone through a divorce, I had custody of my two sons (I had a second son by that time). I started going to college on the GI Bill, but my life felt confusing. I didn't know what direction to go in. I was also starting college late; I was 25 years old when I got out of the military, while most first-year students were 18, 19, or 20. Because I had a family to raise, I didn't have a regular college life. Times were hard, things were confusing, and I was still slipping back and forth into my old habits. I desperately needed a change and a sense of direction.

In my third year of college, I took a communications class. I was a political science major—still a political man at heart—but I took this specific class thinking it would be an easy way to boost my GPA. That class ended up being the one that changed my life.

On the very first day, we were all sitting there waiting, and the teacher hadn't shown up. Five minutes passed, then ten minutes, then fifteen minutes. Everyone in the room was muttering, "Where is he? Where is she?" One guy finally stood up and said, "Man, I'm leaving."

The moment he said that, a man we had assumed was just another student stood up. He turned out to be our professor. He was a middle-aged Jewish man with big, thick glasses, wearing Levi's with holes in them, and he didn't have any shoes on. He walked up to the front of the room, but instead of sitting in the chair, he climbed on top of the desk, sat in a lotus position, and began the class.

Up until that point in my life, I never really knew there were other major religions in the world. But in that class, we started reading books that felt completely different from the religion I grew up with. One of the first books we read was about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and it was life-changing. It showed me that there was another world, another way of seeing, and another way of being. From there, we read the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. From the one comes the two, from the two comes the three, and from the three comes the ten thousand things."

My Journey to Islam: Part 4

We began to study figures like Gurdjieff, and I read the Vedas. I discovered what Buddhism really was, and I learned about yoga. I also got deeply involved in Native American spirituality, particularly through the books of Carlos Castaneda—people who lived through the '60s know his work very well. In that tradition, you would have a shaman or a medicine man who would guide you through your spiritual journey.

After about a year and a half of studying under this professor, Mr. Jenkins, I sat down with him in his office for a conference. I told him how incredibly interested I was in this world and this new way of thinking, and that I was trying to find my path. I explained that I had completely thrown away Christianity because it just didn’t fit me, but now, seeing through all these different lenses, I realized there was a whole other world out there beyond what I had grown up with.

I told him, "You know, the only person in my life—whom I only knew vicariously through reading—that I truly trust, the man I consider the greatest person to live in my lifetime, is Malcolm X."

Mr. Jenkins looked at me and said, "Oh. Then what you're looking for... you're looking for the Sufis."

I said, "What?"

He said, "The Sufis." I had never heard that word before in my life.

Right after I left his office, I went straight to the university library. I’ve always been a big reader. It turned out the university had a gigantic Islamic library with thousands of books. I started searching for anything on Sufism. That first day, I officially checked out ten books—and, as we used to say in the revolution, I "liberated" about twenty more. So, I went home that day with about thirty books on Sufism.

I spent the next six months doing nothing but reading those books. By the end of it, the main essence of what I understood and deeply wanted was Sufism. But the most important realization I had during those six months of study was that Sufism is Islam, and Islam is Sufism. They were the same thing.

Now I finally knew the direction I wanted to go in, but the question was: How do I get there?

I didn't know a single Muslim. My path to Islam didn't happen through conventional dawah or because I met someone on the street; it came strictly through reading Islamic literature, reading pieces of the Quran, and studying what these Sufi masters wrote. I actually threw away some books because I thought, This is just Buddhism, or This is just a fake. But with the ones that truly resonated, I noticed a pattern: every single Sufi that attracted me was firmly connected to the Quran, connected to the Sharia, and connected to the Sacred Law.

In Islam, we speak of Islam (submission/practice), Iman (faith), and Ihsan (spiritual excellence)—with Ihsan being the core of Sufism. I realized that the esoteric, spiritual side was completely inseparable from the law. There was the inner reality, and there was the outer law. They went hand-in-hand.

And from there, it was time to figure out how to take the next step.

My Journey to Islam: Part 5

The next step came through the very same friend who had advised me to join the military. It so happened that he had become a Muslim over the years. I hadn't seen him for a while, but when we reconnected, I told him all about my intellectual conversion.

He looked at me and said, "You know, you need to go to a mosque." I asked, "Where is there a mosque?"

He gave me directions to a small place. He explained that some students from the university had rented a small apartment and turned it into a masjid. It was close to evening when I drove over there. I had absolutely no idea what a mosque was supposed to look like—I had never been inside one. But since I grew up seeing storefront Christian churches, the fact that this was just an apartment didn't bother me.

I parked and sat in my car in front of the building for about twenty minutes. I watched people go in and out, noticing that they didn’t even knock on the door. Finally, I worked up the nerve, got out of my car, and walked inside.

There were no chairs, no couches, nothing. People were just standing around talking or sitting on the floor. I walked over to a corner and sat down by myself. It turned out these were almost all university students—mostly Arabs, some Pakistanis, people from Libya, Saudi Arabia, and East Africa. I didn't know a soul, so I just stayed in my corner. Nobody said anything to me at first. After about fifteen minutes, I told myself, That's it, I'm leaving.

Just as I was about to get up, a man walked through the door. He was an African American man—the only other one I had seen there. He walked straight over to me and said, "As-salamu alaykum."

I didn't know how to answer him, so I just said, "Hi."

We started talking for a while, and we actually discovered we had people in common—I knew his older brothers. While we were sitting there chatting, someone started making the Adhan (the call to prayer). I had never heard the Adhan before in my life, and honestly, it scared me a little.

I stood up and said, "Hey, I think I'd better leave." He said, "No, why don't you stay and pray with us?" I said, "Pray?"

I hadn't prayed since I was sixteen years old, and I had no idea what to do. But I said, "Okay."

He told me, "First, we have to clean up." I had no clue what that meant either. We went into a small bathroom, and he said, "Just do what I do." He washed his hands, his face, and his arms, and I followed along, step by step. The whole thing felt so strange to me—wash my feet?

As soon as we walked back into the main room, they were finishing the call to prayer. People started lining up in perfectly straight rows. My new friend told me, "Just do exactly what I do."

They raised their hands to their ears, so I raised my hands. They placed their hands on their chests, so I placed my hands on my chest. The Imam began reciting the Quran. Today I know what it was, but back then, I had no idea what he was reading. I couldn't even tell if it sounded beautiful or not; I was just completely focused on how strange and cramped inside I felt.

Then, we went into Ruku—bowing down with our hands on our knees. I had never done anything like that in my life. And finally, we went down into Sujud, and I put my face completely on the ground.

That was the exact moment I became a real Muslim.

The very second my face touched the floor, I knew this was the truth. I knew that I was actually communicating with God—the Lord of the Worlds, the exact same God I had been calling out to in secret ever since I was a child.

When the prayer finished, I felt like I was in an entirely different world. Overwhelmed by the experience, I rushed out of the little apartment, jumped into my car, and drove straight home. For the rest of the night—because that had been the Maghrib prayer—I just sat there, trying to process what had just happened to me.

I went home and tried to recreate the prayer I had gone through. The most important thing I was trying to recreate was that feeling, and every time I went into sujud, I would weep.

 So eventually, I went to a large Pakistani masjid it was like the central mosque. And I met a Pakistani Imam by the name of Imam Ibrahim Hamdani he was an amazing man.  He became my teacher, he became my friend, he became my mentor and for the next three years, I would spend the three, four days a week coming to study, coming to the lessons, group lessons and private lessons and learning the religion of Islam. And this is how my Islam began, so that's the end of the story.

Learning Arabic: Part 1

After I entered Islam, I had to learn my religion, and a major part of that was learning how to pray. Because the prayer is made in the Arabic language, I started on the journey of learning Arabic.

I had a friend who spoke a little bit of the language, and since all Muslims know Al-Fatiha (the opening chapter of the Quran), he transcribed it into English transliteration for me. I used that for the first couple of weeks when I tried to make my prayers. That same friend also taught me the alphabet and showed me how to connect the letters together. I practiced that for a couple of months, and before I knew it, I was connecting letters and recognizing words.

But I knew that wasn't the same as truly learning the Arabic language.

Along the way, two people deeply influenced me. The first was a man at the masjid who was a white American convert. He eventually became a well-known caller to the faith, a da'ee, named Jamal al-Din Zarabozo. Jamal and I became good friends. He was at a level where he was giving lessons in the masjid on Hadith (prophetic traditions), Tafsir (Quranic exegesis), and Fiqh (jurisprudence). He was also translating scholarly books into English that had never been available in English before. He was the very first non-Arab I had ever seen who was able to use the Arabic language at such a proficient level, and I used to observe him closely.

One thing I noticed, though, was that when he was around native Arabs, he wasn't able to speak with them at a highly fluent, conversational level. Sometimes, I observed that he wouldn't fully understand what they were saying at times. He said he was still learning. 

Through him, I realized it was entirely possible to be highly educated in reading, writing, and comprehending complex books, while still being weak at speaking or understanding audible speech. I told myself, that is going to be my goal. I reasoned that I didn't have so much interaction with Arabs that I needed to have casual conversations with them, but if I could directly access the Quran and the classical books I wanted to read, then this academic route was the way to do it.

Then, I had a second friend who, early on in my Islam, went away to the Islamic University of Madinah. He studied there for about three years, and when he came back, everybody was amazed. He was speaking Arabic proficiently , and his Quranic recitation was beautiful.

Seeing him inspired me to...

Learning Arabic: Part 2

Seeing my friend come back speaking Arabic so fluently inspired me to really want to study the language. I tried to self-study, and I would approach native Arabs in the masjid, but the reality was that I was already in my thirties with a family when I first came into the Deen. I had work, I was still going to school, and I just had so many responsibilities that I couldn't study full-time. Studying Arabic was just something on the side that I tried to pick up whenever I could.

The biggest issue was inconsistency. Whenever I found someone to help me or act as a teacher, there was no consistency. I’d study with them for maybe a few weeks, or up to two months, and then they would leave—or I would become inconsistent myself and drop it.

Eventually, the internet became my teacher. Now, I’m not talking about the internet of today, where absolutely anything you want is at your fingertips. This was back in the 1990s. Even then, they had online materials and videos , like the Madinah Arabic Books (Book 1 and Book 2). I managed to finish both of those books using the internet, but the problem was that I had zero live interaction with a teacher. I was essentially self-taught, and for many years, that remained my plateau: the level of Madinah Book 1 and Book 2. I was constantly on and off with my studies.

I didn't start truly studying Arabic in a real, consistent way until I reached retirement age. After I retired, I actually moved to an Arab country to begin studying the language again.

But once I got there, I discovered something major: living in an Arab country does not automatically guarantee you the ability to speak or learn Arabic. The formal Arabic you study is not the everyday Arabic the people actually speak. On the streets, they speak a local dialect. Whether you are in Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Mauritania, the regular person on the street speaks a localized ammiyah (colloquial dialect).

As a student of the religion, you have to make a choice. The language you want is Fusha—the classical Arabic of the Quran—because you are trying to benefit yourself in your faith – understand the Quran in its original language. You aren't just trying to learn how to chat with taxi drivers or order food in a restaurant; you are looking for the key to the sacred texts.

Learning Arabic: Part 3 (Conclusion)

Because my choice was to access the sacred texts, studying Arabic for me became all about grammar and structure. I figured that this is the true gateway to entering the classical books—you have to understand Nahw (grammar), Sarf (morphology), and Balaagha (rhetoric) to really unlock the texts.

Being in the Arab world, I am surrounded by many students of knowledge, and I learn a great deal from them as well as from formal teachers. Over the last few years, I’ve sat with a few private tutors, and I can truly see the improvement in both my speaking and my comprehension.

It is a long journey.  One of the most beneficial resources I found was Ustadh Yusaf and his Grammica Institute. His teaching methods and materials have been incredibly helpful to me. I started out using his free resources on the internet, and eventually, I took formal classes through his program.  Over the last couple of decades of trying to enter this world of Arabic, I can say that his program is honestly one of the best I’ve ever seen for understanding the mechanics of the language.

If I could give any advice to those trying to learn, I would say: continue on your journey with Arabic and never give up. I am over 70 years old, and I still put in the work every single day. If you truly love a thing, you want to be with it every day.

That is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

—Bilal Robinson took our Ramadan Reading Sira (2026) class.