Yusha Evans, a former Christian youth minister, came to UCLA on Thursday night to speak about his conversion to Islam at a Muslim Student Association event titled “How the Bible Led Me to Islam.”
Drawing a crowd of about 50 people, the event was designed to change perceptions of Islam as an extremist and foreign religion, Muslim Student Association members and event planners Abrah Ahmed and Naqip Shifa said.
“We want people to see what it is truly about ““ believing in one God,” said Omar Nasar, a Muslim Student Association member and one of the event planners.
Ahmed, a fifth-year engineering student, said the group has 500 to 700 inactive members and approximately 50 active members. They hold weekly prayers and provide a community for students to practice their religion at UCLA.
Ahmed said students at UCLA are much more open and accepting toward his religion than is the United States in general.
Approximately three-quarters of the students who attended the event were Muslim, many of whom were from the Muslim Student Association.
Some of the non-Muslim students who went to the event said they decided to attend out of curiosity.
“I wanted to understand other religions,” said Sarah Evans, a second-year student.
Sarah Evans, who is Christian, said her motivation for attending was to gain a sense of perspective on other religions, allowing her to further her Bible study by being able to understand different opinions.
But she said she disagreed with Yusha Evans’ views on the Bible.
“Some of what he said about the Bible I have found to be false,” she said.
Shifa also said he chose to help organize the event to raise the profile of Islam on campus and to dispel misconceptions surrounding the religion.
Shifa said the MSA invited Christians to highlight the similarities between Christianity and Islam.
For example, they both have the same central figures such as Jesus, he said.
Evans gave a speech that detailed his origins as a youth minister from South Carolina and his upbringing as a Methodist.
He then spoke about his study of the Bible and how that caused him to question its discrepancies.
Evans highlighted an intellectual analysis of holy documents rather than blind faith, telling of the disillusionment toward Christianity that he felt when a priest told him that he was “justified by his faith rather than his knowledge.”
He then told the story of his search for God, including two near-death experiences: getting held up at gunpoint next to an ATM and being in a car accident with a drunk driver.
Yusha Evans said these events made him “question God’s purpose for him.”
He made the decision to convert after visiting a mosque with a friend and studying the Koran, he said, adding that he found no factual discrepancies within the Koran as opposed to the bible.
Despite devoting his life to religion, Evans said he is a “normal person.”
“I play with my son, I have a Facebook,” he said.
He said that his speech was designed to inform students about Islam by describing “one man’s journey,” rather than to preach to them.
Shifa said the event was intended to “revive the religious atmosphere on campus.”