1. DR LAWRENCE B. BROWN

 1. DR LAWRENCE B. BROWN

After the September 11, Islam in the world in general and the United States in particular has become known notoriously as an aggressive religion, because it had been associated with the disaster. It was claimed that Muslims did it out of their religious fanaticism. Since then, some people have started learning about Islam and either they become Muslims, or they hate Islam, because of their misunderstanding of it. Another group of people have no concern about religion. They are atheists who disbelieve our doubt in the existence of God, among them was Dr. Lawrence Brown.

Dr. Brown was graduated from Cornell University, Brown University Medical School and George Washington University Hospital residency program. He is an ophthalmic surgeon, a retired Air Force officer, and the medical director and chief ophthalmologist of a major eye centre. He also obtained a PhD in religion. He was married with three daughters. He converted to Islam in April 1994. Before his conversion Allah had sent him a message which we called  a test twice: once with blessing, but he did not listen to  it, and therefore he failed; the second one with affliction, and feeling helpless, he prayed to Allah for the first time, and miraculously his prayer was answered. This led him to Islam.

When his first daughter Katrina was born he said that:

“… she did something I have never seen any child

do before, and that is that she was able to stand from

the first day of life. From the first day if I put her on her

feet, she would stand up  herself. Now I am a doctor. I am

a medical doctor. I understand that there is something

in that a new born  baby is not supposed to be able to do.

But I did not see that as a miracle, I saw it as something interesting, something charming about this child, but

I guess I did not get the message.”

          The second message which we call a test is when his second daughter Hanna was born ten months later in October 1990. When this baby was born she was brought straight to the intensive care unit. Although he himself was a doctor he was not told what happened to his daughter. He found out her body turned dusky blue, because it was not getting oxygen. He said:

To my great dismay, she was a dusky, gunmetal

blue from the chest to the toes. Her body was not

getting enough blood, and the cause was found to

be a coarctation of the aorta -- a critical narrowing

in the major artery from the heart. Needless to say,

I was shattered. Being a doctor, I understood she

needed emergency surgery, with a poor chance of

long-term survival. A consultant paediatric cardio-

thoracic surgeon was called from across town,

and I left him in the neonatal intensive care

unit to examine my daughter.

He knew that his daughter was not getting oxygen she needed, that she was starving, and part of her body was suffocating and dying. Even if the doctor opened her chest and  replaced her blood vessel with graft, and if she survived a few years, given the technology of that time, she would need to have a surgery again to replace the graft as she grew,  and eventually the graft would fail, and then she would die.

          Dr. Brown was very sad. He related his sorrow, as follows:

And when I saw that I felt sad. The first time in my life

 I needed to turn to some greater power. I was  atheist

until then; I have been raised in a family that  was basically Quaker, one of the Protestant’s sect, but not practicing.

And I myself did not practice any religion. So, I have to

 leave the intensive care unit because they brought on

 a team of doctors, a team of specialist in their fields, and

while they were doing their things, I just went to the prayer room and for the first time in my life I really prayed.

          Dr. Brown prayed in the hospital prayer room and fell to his knees. It was the first time that he even partially recognized God. He prayed the prayer of a skeptic,

“Oh God, if You are there, and if You save my

daughter, and then guide me to the religion most

pleasing to You, that religion I will follow.”

          About fifteen minutes later Dr. Brown returned to the neonatal ICU. He was shocked when the consultant told him that his daughter would be fine. His assessment was true, as within the next two days her condition improved miraculously, without medicine or surgery. She grew perfectly normal even when she was approaching her eighteenth birthday in July 2008. Being a doctor himself, the medical explanation of his daughter’s miraculous recovery provided by the consultant, he believed that her salvation was a divine miracle rather than a medical one. He could have accepted the doctor’s explanation rather than a miracle from God, but faith had entered his heart, and it would remain there. He had taken cardiac ultrasounds showing the stricture, and the next day, the other cardiac ultrasounds showed that the stricture had gone. All he could think was that God had made good on His part of the deal, and he had to make good on his. Even if there was a medical explanation, he claimed that it was nothing more than the pathway by which Almighty God chose to answer his prayer and affect His decree. He strongly asserted that he would not accept any other explanation.

          Dr. Brown remembered his promise to God, and said that   a similar situation happened to a woman in the hospital, but she did not fulfil her promise and therefore she did not receive guidance. He said that many people who made promises to God in moments of panic, but once God relieved them of their distress, and then they invented excuses to escape their part of the bargain. This reminds us of Allah’s statement in the Qur’an about people who were sailing in the ships, they were happy when they got a favourable wind. But, “then comes a stormy wind and the waves come to them from all sides, and they think that they are encircled therein. Then they invoke Allah, making their Faith pure for Him Alone, (saying): ‘If You (Allah) deliver us from this, we shall truly, be of the grateful.’ But when He delivered them, behold! They rebel (disobey Allah) in the earth wrongfully…” (Q. 10:22-23). In other words, when Allah delivered them from the disaster, they forgot their promise to obey Allah; instead, they rebelled against Him.

          Dr. Brown started his religious search with Judaism, then Christianity with its sects. He studied various sects of Christianity: Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon, Quakers, Southern Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. When he came to the tenet he liked some parts of it, but he had problems with others. He kept asking the preachers, “how about this, how about that,” and they could not explain it, and they just shrug their shoulders.

          Dr. Brown contends that there is no foundation of the teaching of the “trinity” in Christianity, as it is not mentioned in the Bible. Jesus himself never spoke about it explicitly. The quotation about “the father, the son and the holy spirit” was not written in the original manuscript. It was only a marginal note written by the scribes in the margin on one of the manuscripts, but was later copied into the scripture.  It was then an illegitimate insertion, and he wonders why the priests are teaching it as if it is the truth. He states further that Jesus Christ described himself in the Bible as “the son of man” 88 times, but nowhere does he call himself “the Son of God”. This doctrine of Trinity was introduced three hundred years after the time of Jesus. 

          Dr. Brown encountered the Jewish scriptures’ reference to three prophets to follow Prophet Moses. He assumes that John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were the two, and in the New Testament Jesus Christ spoke of a final prophet to follow him. He found in the         Qur’an the teaching of Oneness of God, and Muhammad as the final prophet.  He also read the Biography of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. by Martin Ling based on the earliest sources which increased his belief in Islam. He found peace entered his heart, and that in Islam all his questions were answered, that “all puzzles came together.”

Dr. Brown admits that it is not a matter of intelligence that he found Islam, as there are more intelligent people who have not found the truth of Islam. It is a matter of what he calls “enlightenment” which we used to call hidāyah, “guidance” without which a person will remain disbelieve. He cites the translation of the following verse:

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنْذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنْذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ. خَتَمَ اللَّهُ

عَلَى قُلُوبِهِمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ وَعَلَى أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ ..(البقرة:6-7)

Indeed, those who disbelieve – it is all the same

for them whether you warn them or do not warn

them – they will not believe.  God has set a seal

upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and

over their vision is a veil…  (Quran 2:6-7)

He also cites the translations Qur’anic verses as evidence that this “enlightenment” is only from Allah, as follows:  

... وَمَنْ يُؤْمِنْ بِاللَّهِ يَهْدِ قَلْبَهُ... (التغابن:11(

…whoever believes in Allah He will guide his

heart … (Q 64:11),

... اللَّهُ يَجْتَبِي إِلَيْهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي إِلَيْهِ مَنْ يُنِيبُ (الشورى:13(

… Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and

guides to Himself whoever turns back

[to Him]”  ( Q. 42:13)

 and

... وَاللَّهُ يَهْدِي مَنْ يَشَاءُ إِلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِيمٍ (النور:46(

… and Allah guides whom He wills

to a straight path.  (Q. 24:46)

          At the end of his discourse Dr. Brown said:

“So I thank Allah that He chose to guide me, and I attribute that guidance to one simple formula: recognizing our Creator, praying to Him and to Him alone, and sincerely seeking His guidance. And whom He guides, none can lead astray.”

          Following the chain of revelation through the Abrahamic religions from Judaism to Christianity Dr. Brown eventually came to Islam. He relates the result of that study in his books, among which are as follows:

The First & Final Commandment: A Search for Truth in Revelation within the Abrahamic Religion – September 1, 2004

The Eighth Scroll – February 22, 2008

God'ed?: The Case for Islam as the Completion of Revelation - Feb 22, 2008

MisGod'ed: A Roadmap of Guidance and Misguidance in the Abrahamic Religions – February 22, 2008

Bearing True Witness: "Now that I Found Islam, What do I do with it?"  -  July 14, 2010

The Returned - November 15, 2011

The Zion Deception   – May 11, 2012

          Miracles happen to us many times, but we do not notice them, until we realize that they are beyond reason. Staunch advocates of atheism like the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and the American neuroscientist Sam Harris, if Allah wills, could be easily “enlightened.”

(Civic, 8 January, 2016)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/503/laurence-brown-medical-doctor-usa-part-2/

http://negativity-sucks.blogspot.com/2009/02/dr-laurence-b-browns-conversi

https://archive.org/details/Are.you.sick.of.Religion

ttps://wechooseislam.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/how-i-came-to-