Kerim Nur

A blog about a Muslim convert's experience with Islam.

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First Azan in Karatau

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Qaratau Masjid (Mosque)
Qaratau Masjid (Mosque)

Spring, 1998, became a big moment in my life. It was the first time I heard the azan, the Call to Prayer. I was in my first year serving in the US Peace Corps in a small southern Kazakh town named Karatau (Qaratau). I remember that it surprised me since it was coming from the unfinished Karatau Mosque. There was another mosque but the Muslim community had decided to move to this mosque.

This unfinished mosque had an interesting story. Before I had arrived, they started construction of the mosque. My understanding was that funding came from Turkey but when funds ran out, the construction company left. There were attempts to raise funds from other Muslim countries but this proved fruitless. By the time I left, the mosque remained unfinished but they could hold prayers there.

Hearing the azan would become a daily routine after just a couple of days. I enjoyed hearing it. To this day, I wished I had recorded the call of prayer but at the time, I did not have a video camera nor did I think about doing a audio recording. Blogging or social media would be 6 years away.

Within the next year, my journey to Islam started. The next posts are my experiences meeting a young Kazakh Muslim community.

Kapchagay Mosque – My first Mosque visit

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  • Қапшағай мешіті (Kapchagay Mosque), Kapchagay, Qazaqstan
    Қапшағай мешіті (Kapchagay Mosque), Kapchagay, Qazaqstan

Well, I said my last post would be my last Pre-Shadada post but actually I had a couple experiences with Kazakh Muslims before I became a Muslim. I nearly forgot about the first mosque, meshit (Kazakh) or masjid (Arabic), while I was training as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kapchagay, Kazakhstan.

During one of our training seasons, my Kazakh group decided to walk around Kapchagay to practice our Kazakh. During the walk, we ended up visiting the local mosque. I was surprised to see no pictures on the walls inside the mosque which is definitely a big contrast to an Orthodox Church full of icons.

A local Kazakh Muslim “sister” gave us a short talk about Islam. We then left. I do not remember much about the mosque so I actually Googled it.

Still, it lists as my first ever mosque visit. The next post will talk about my first experience hearing the call to prayer.

How I came to Islam

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A question I always get asked is how I became a Muslim. It is a question that I never really fully answered even to myself. The matter of truth, starting in April, 1999, I started doing the 5 Daily Prayers. I will not go into that now and rather focus on what most like brought me to Islam.

The first thing that really helped push me towards Islam definitely is related to the Mongols. I have always had an interest in Genghis Khan, pronounced Chingis Han in the Turkic speaking world, since a kid. Being mixed Asian, you get used to be called Mongoloid in the early 1980s. One day I did some research at the library and found out the Mongols were cool.

I eventually read many books about the Mongols when I got to university. It eventually brought me to enroll in a couple classes focused on Near Eastern Studies. There were not Central Asian classes at the time but in one of my classes we did have one Kazakh student and one Kyrgyz student. Then I forgot about them but I got to learn about Islam for the first time. My final paper focused on how the Mongols helped spread Islam into Central Asia.

After the class ended, I forgot about the class. By summer, 1996, I had all forgotten about Islam and Central Asia. Then I joined the US Peace Corps. It gets really interesting here. I actually wanted to do my Peace Corps service in the Ukraine. I wanted to visit an Eastern Orthodox country. Unfortunately, at the time, the Peace Corps said Ukraine was not available. They asked me if I had another choice.

I do not know why but for some reason I started to remember the Kazakh girl. I told the Peace Corps to send me to Kazakhstan. They smiled. I found out later, no volunteer wanted to go to Kazakhstan so I got my second choice easily.

In May, 1997, I left Seattle and flew to Washington, DC., to meet the Kaz-5 Group flying together to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Several months later my Host Country National, Sharizat, and I were on a train heading from Taraz, in southern Kazakhstan, to Karatau. Karatau would be my Peace Corps site for two years.

By Spring, 1998, I heard my first azan, call to prayer, when the “unfinished mosque” played it for the first time (this will be discussed in a future post). A year later I met some medreseh Kazakh students in Taraz. The next month I was given my first Quran by a mullah, who was a PE teacher at another school, for my birthday. A couple days later he visited me to teach me how to pray.

I prayed since.

This is how I came to Islam.

I will speak more about this day in a future post as well.