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It all began like a rising flower bud, nonetheless, a ROSE I would forever consider to be injurious rather than a blessing, had it not been for my audacity: THE AUDACITY OF LOVE! Hailing from, and raised in a third generation Christian family in Ngara and Karagwe, Tanzania, in the neighborhood where Muslims were few and far apart, I considered them-Muslims, their faith and traditions-as strange and unconventional! My father, raised and educated at Rubya Seminary, a Christian school during the colonial Tanganyika, believed there was only one true religion-Christianity-and he passed the same mentality down. I believed him! Then I went to a boarding secondary school, a school far from home, near the shores of the Lake Victoria at Kahororo, and later at Ihungo, in a cosmopolitan town of Bukoba! That's where my first shock registered. Multiculturalism among tribes and religions was the standard-notwithstanding the fact that Christians still outnumbered Traditionalists, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindu, all put together, the latter of whom I had met for the first time! Trouble began when I went to the university-the University of Dar es salaam, located just a few miles from the shores separating Arabia and the rest of the country-the area wherein Muslims were majority! It didn't click in my mind that it was an important revelation yet-the lesson they ought to teach at the university! I began working and made new friends among whom were Muslims. It still didn't change me much, or call my attention to such important details. Then, I met a beautiful girl, a girl who deserved nothing less than a hand in marriage! Trouble had begun! Why? This girl who had descended into my life was Muslim! I was shocked out of my mind! I regretted to have met her! I regretted to have fallen in love. Nothing could upgrade her Muslim background. I mournfully turned and fled, promising myself to stay away from her. I couldn't! The scandalous tragedy I had dreaded had materialized! It was not only because of her beauty that this nagging feeling persisted though? Nay! It was her character! That was truly a serious shock! How possible was that? May be she falsified her usual conduct to persuade me into marrying her? Not her character! No! I refused to believe it. I took the case to one of my most trusted friends-and he shocked me more than anyone else! He didn't laugh at me having fallen in love with a Muslim girl-a girl I had confessed I wanted to marry! Ordinarily, he should have ridiculed me. Instead: Who are you? he simply asked; well aware that I was-and still am-named Michael, and yes a Christian. That's how I began wondering, like Jackie Chan, asking myself: Who am I? I also began questioning the meaning of religion. Suddenly, my eyes opened, and lo! I perceived that not all good people were Christians. I had so many well-cultured and kind Muslim friends too! Did I subsequently marry this lady? Oh dear! What would my parents say or do? Her family? How did all this inner revolution alter my attitude? Simply put, for first time in my mature life, I questioned my old-school-Christian mentality (the mentality every simple-minded believer of any religion upholds, i.e.): Anyone who doesn't believe in my religion is a pagan-or kafir, -call it anything! I was wrong! Fifteen years down the line, I've finally stumbled upon the truth that, yes, all religions had problems native to the human nature-narcissism (ego or vanity), rashness, and arrogance-but in this case, I learned that Mohammedans, i.e. True Followers of Prophet Mohammed PBUH, (I repeat: True Followers of Prophet Mohammed PBUH) were indeed True Men of God, the same Maker who created the earth and heaven and all in between; the disposer of all affairs, the same God who crafted all of us-Christians, Muslims, Chwezi, Hindu, Buddhists, etc., White, Africans, Mexicans and Latino. This is the point Donald Trump misses, the lesson he would have learnt, had he married a Muslim!

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