Another brother with youtube name 'Ex Shia' who left the pagan Ali worshipping sect of Shiaism and embraced Islam. I told him to make an account on this website but there was some technical difficulties. So instead, i am posting his story here. You can find his story on the youtube comments section of this video
Salam Alaikom,
Brothers, I had to overcome, not one, not two but at least three obstacles on my way to find true Islam.
The first of these obstacles was Twelver Shiism. I was born in a country where they were forming the majority (including my own family), but like in today's Syria were ruled by a minority dictator (Saddam). The victim mentality was strong. "They" are killing us for our faith. "They" have been doing this since the time of Hussain (ra).
The second obstacle was Kurdish nationalism. We are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country. "They" are killing us for our ethnicity. Kurdish nationalist and Rafidi, just great.
The third obstacle came in the form of Saddam's Baathist regime during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's. His regime took all our properties and belongings (we lived in Baghdad) and deported my family to Iran, while others with the same background were put in massgraves. The victim mentality here was stronger than ever. "They" did this to us because of our faith and ethnicity combined, the victomhood now became reality and not just words.
So, as you can imagine, when the time came for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 when I was 18, it was clear on which side I was. Even though I was not the dumbest kid on the block, and had read about the violent and despicable history of the U.S. regimes, I could never ever side with the Baathist tyrants in Iraq, especially not as a Kurdish Shia who was actually directly harmed by that regime.
And this is how history placed me side by side with the crusaders. I did not actually fought alongside them, alhamdulillah, and I was not in Iraq during the conflict, because as I said, our family was deported in the 80's to Iran. Ironically, Iraqi Shias had no equal rights in Rafidi Iran like the Iranian people, for example, you were not allowed to go to the university there, so our family left Iran for the West where I grew up.
During the war in Iraq in 2003 and beyond, things turned ugly. Civil war broke out, many car bombs, Shia masses were being targeted, Shia shrine blown to pieces in 2006, etc. Saddam was executed later that year. So here you have "them again" killing us for our faith, while at the same time the ignorant Arab masses were calling Saddam a Shaheed of the Ummah. In the meantime amidst the chaos, the Americans did not know what the hell they were doing there and were mismanaging the entire country. 2006 is also when the war in Lebanon broke out, and the "Shia Mujahideen of Hezbol-lat were fighting back", while some in Saudi Arabia were siding with Israel or against "the Muslims", which added to my confusion.
As I was growing older, I was doing my religious research, I also watched a lot of Muslim-Christian debates, by Ahmad Deedat (rahimullah), so I knew that Islam was the true religion of God. But when it came to Sunni-Shia debates, it remained vague for me, especially with my background and the events that were unfolding at the time.
This continued until the Arab Spring came late in 2010, I hated the dictators with a passion due to my historical personal hatred for the Baathists in my own country, so I sided with the mass uprisings, regardless of whether they were Sunni or Shia (like in Bahrain). In the meantime I was also coming across rightheous Sunni shuyookh (who were doing kufr bit taghut), and they really clarified a lot for me and gave me a great tool to judge others by it.
By this time, the revolution had reached Libya in 2011. Iran sided against Qaddafi because in the past a Shia priest (Musa al-Sadr) had dissappeared while visiting Libya. But when the revolution reached the blessed land of Shaam, Iran and its mouthpieces everywhere suddenly were speaking about a Zionist Conspiracy in Syria, while at the same time cheering for the Uprising in Bahrain. I disliked this hypocrisy from Iran very much.
By this time I had listened to thousands of hours of Islamic lessons by the righteous shuyookh who were anti-tawagheet, this in combination with the revolutions in the Arab world, especially the one in the blessed land of Shaam which crushed Iran's image (idol) in my eyes, and the martyrdom of several shuyookh who were on the haqq in 2011, which made me revert back to true Islam, more than 500 years after Ismail Safavi the dog had converted my ancestors from Sunnism to Shiism by the sword (my forefathers migrated from Persia to the Ottoman empire, this is why we as Kurdish Shias lived in Baghdad and not in Iraqi Kurdistan in the North of Iraq).
Brothers, continue with striving on the straigth path, your kufr bit taghut is destroying idols and bringing many people to Islam. Those who slander you as khawaarij are despicable bootlickers of the tawagheet. Only Allah truly knows the major benefits that have come out of the tribulations in Shaam. All praise belongs to Allah (swt).