The
more I read the Qur’an, the more it struck me, deep down. This was not that foreign
religion which I had expected. First and foremost it was talking about belief in One God
for all people, talking about humanity as one family. The verses talked about Prophets as
brothers preaching the same message of unity to mankind, trying to put man back on the
track of righteousness. I saw the names of Jesus, of Moses, of Abraham, of Jacob, of Noah
and of course, importantly, the name of this last messenger, the last Prophet of God,
Muhammad (peace be upon them): All mentioned with the same honour and respect as Prophets
of the one and only God. It said: ‘O mankind worship your Lord who created you and those before you, that you may
become God-conscious’. I’d never heard anything like that before. Now what did the word Islam mean? Oh,
it comes from the word salaam, which means ‘peace’. Hey! Didn’t I once
write a song called Peace Train? It was fast becoming clear that I was now being
confronted with something much greater than I had originally anticipated: possibly - the
Truth! I started to feel challenged. So I began to look for mistakes, ‘Come on
there’s something wrong with this.’ I thought to myself, ‘It’s too
good, too perfect!’ But the more I looked, the more my eyesight came back to myself:
I found that it was right, and it was I who was wrong. All this took time for me to absorb. Perhaps one of the great moments came when I read
the story of Prophet Joseph. It's very similar to the story we find in the Bible. As I
came to the end of that chapter, my heart suddenly opened and tears filled my eyes; I knew
that this book could not have possibly been written by a human being. It was truly a
Revelation. From that moment I realised that there was nothing left for me to do but to be
a Muslim - and that was my next step. 
Eventually, I
met a Muslim lady who told me that a new Mosque had just opened in Regent's Park. In fact,
I'd walked through that Park so many years of my life, I'd never seen anything there apart
from trees, ponds and grass. Now, out of the greenery, I saw this golden dome which was
never there before. That was in a way the epitome of everything that I was discovering
about Islam: suddenly it was there - where it wasn't there before. On a winter Friday in
1977, I took that dramatic step and I walked to the Mosque to declare my belief. That's
where I made the Testimony of Faith, which is the first thing one must do to enter Islam.
I declared one sentence: 'There is no God but Allah (the One God), and Muhammad is His
servant and messenger'. Now I was a Muslim.