COPENHAGEN, Denmark ― Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen first began to spiritually connect to the Islamic faith on a mountain in the holy temple town of Hampi, India in the summer of 1977. It would be about five years before Pedersen, then a 23-year-old convert to Hinduism, would become Muslim, but the experience left him profoundly changed.
“Time seemed to stand still, and I was totally lost in that feeling for as long as it lasted,” he said. “It would, nevertheless, take another few years before my brain and heart fully understood this message, and I surrendered to Allah.”
Pedersen had been on a quest for greater spiritual understanding, climbing up a mountain toward a temple at the top when it had happened. It was a moonlit night, and as the chanting echoed above, he had stopped for a drink of water at a small stream along the way. The opening was so low that he had had to bend down in order to catch the trickle. Laying on the ground, he had stretched his hand forward towards the water. At that moment, with the moon on the mountains, he realized that, “God wanted me to lie flat in front of him.” When he did so, Pedersen had unintentionally completed a prostration before God.
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