Conversion

By Mohammed Alkhadher

May 30, 2017

In the fall of 2011, Ibeth Hernandez was weighing the prospects of becoming a Muslim. Her fondest memories as a child were of Sundays spent with her family at church. Both of Hernandez’ parents immigrated from Mexico and didn’t forget their strong belief in Catholicism, the religion more than 90 percent of Mexicans share.

Still, she’d been considering converting to Islam for over a year. College had exposed her to other religions, but it was her encounters with Muslims that inspired her interest in Islam.

“I had met some Muslims and they were just so at peace with themselves. So comfortable with who they were,” Hernandez said. “I wanted that, you know?”

She was at Pioneer Place, the mall adjacent to Pioneer Square in Portland, with her younger sister, Claudia, when a mannequin dressed in a bright colored head-wrap, “turban-style,” caught her attention.

Turban-style refers to the way the hijab is worn when it’s wrapped around the top of the head, without covering the neck.

“I just couldn’t not have it,” Hernandez said, and bought it. She’d already been experimenting with wearing hijabs around the house and while running errands, but she thought she was buying this for later, when, and if, she eventually converted.

“I just had to know for sure if this was for me,” she said. “I had to feel it.”

Half an hour after leaving the mall and dropping off her sister, she picked up a Muslim friend and told him, “I think I’m ready to become a Muslim.” Her friend was born a Muslim and had taught Ibeth most of what she knew about Islam at that point. She relied on other Muslims for information because she hadn’t yet read the Quran.

Keep in mind, when she said she was ready to become a Muslim, she meant she was ready to begin planning for it to happen in the near future. She works as an event organizer, and that’s how she thinks.

Her friend took her remark differently.

“Then you should take the Shahadah,” he told Hernandez.

Shocked, Hernandez asked, “Right now?”

She’d never imagined her conversion happening in a car.

“I always thought it would be like in a mosque somewhere really cool and peaceful and all my friends would be there,” Hernandez said.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five minutes,” he said. “If you die, you want to die a Muslim, don’t you?”

The first thing she thought was, “What will my parents think?” she said.

The second thing she thought was, “I can’t have anymore tattoos,” she said as she laughed at the memory,  like she was joking but wasn’t convinced herself. “It’s crazy, but I love my tattoos,” she said. “I have five.”

Hernandez, now 31, was attending Portland Community College when she began her career as an event promoter. She became the president of the college’s student association. Part of her job was to organize entertainment for students on campus.

It suited her personality, said her younger brother Diego Hernandez.

“She was a cheerleader and she was always busy with dance stuff,” he said. “She’s always singing and dancing around the house. Commanding attention.”

The college experience led to a career in event promotion. In 2011, with the network she’d built as an organizer in college, she co-founded Chapters Alumni, an entertainment company that hosts some of the nation’s biggest acts when they come through Portland.

She also began exploring theology while she was in college. One book in particular made a life-changing impact on her. “I read a book called ‘The Bible, The Quran and Science’,” Hernandez said.

The book’s author, Maurice Bucaille, was a French physician who serves the families of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family and Egypt’s late-president Anwar Sadat. He’s also the father of Bucailleism, which describes a movement that follows modern science and religion, especially in regards to Islam, according to the “Encyclopaedia of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures.”

Bucaille argues that the Old Testament was distorted in the many translation processes and alterations. Essentially, he says that the Bible is inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge and that it isn’t a divine scripture. He’s also been credited with making the claim that the Quran is entirely consistent with modern scientific theory, while being divine.

“I saw some of the differences between what the Bible says and what the Quran says about life, development and evolution,” Hernandez said. “That for me, is when I knew this was real.”

She’d already began her journey of studying Islam when she came across the book, but to her, that link between science and faith was what tipped the scales. It can be hard for people to know themselves why they convert, and harder still to explain to others.

Conversion took just a few minutes. Hernandez pulled over to the side of the road near the Burgerville on S.E. 12th and Hawthorne and took the Shahadah, the proclamation one makes to become a Muslim. It says there is only one God, and that Muhammad was his prophet.

Hernandez promotes hiphop concerts, a genre that has a reputation for producing mature content, but is often consumed by a younger audience. That doesn’t sit well with some Muslims.

“I posted a flyer on social media,” she said. “And a [Muslim] sister replied saying [the artist] calls women the B-word and talks about drugs and drinking alcohol.”

It was the first time Hernandez had been confronted about her work. She’d grown accustomed to the content over the years as an event organizer and promoter, and realized that while she’s already stopped drinking alcohol or swearing, she’s complicit in giving the artists who glorify those actions a platform.

Want to know how Hernandez balances her two worlds? Watch the video below:

She didn’t respond to the comment, but it made her realize that her work is in some ways problematic, or at least can be perceived as such. She’s conflicted by what she’s done for the last decade, her passion for hiphop music, and how it influences those who consume it. Despite conflicts between her faith and profession, both make up so much of her identity that she can’t let either go.

In the end she’s found ways to make up for her own guilt over what some Muslims may perceive as negative. For example, at her second job she helps run an after-school program at Jefferson High School and she helped her students establish the school’s first Muslim Students Association.  

When she first converted to Islam one of her coworkers asked, “So, you don’t love Jesus anymore?” To which Hernandez explained, “Muslims love Jesus too.”

“My favorite thing about Islam is that it’s just between me and Allah, I don’t need a building, group or church or worship,” she said. “I think it was just the spirit that I felt in talking to other Muslims. I just the energy, the vibe that you get when you talk to somebody who’s like totally calm, at peace, very kind, very giving… like that was what I felt was like ‘yes, this is it’.”