Yusuf Richardson grew up in Florida. He had everything he needed in America. He never wanted for anything. Yet he felt his life was empty, and he knew he was missing something.
That feeling stayed with him until he went to college. There he met Muslims for the first time in a real way, and what he saw in them made him want to understand what they had.
He joined the Muslim Students Association at his school. It was a small group, only about thirteen people. On Fridays they would go out onto the quad, right outside the student union, and give dawah to whoever would listen. Yusuf threw himself into it. In time he became the president of the association.
He started going to the masjid and spending time with the brothers there. He began learning Arabic and getting to know the religion properly. The more he learned, the more serious he became about it.
One of the things that pulled him toward Islam was the life of Malcolm X. He read the letter Malcolm wrote to his wife from Hajj, in which he described the full light of the morning sun. That letter stayed with Yusuf. It gave him the idea that Islam was the best message, and that it could answer the emptiness he felt.
In college he had also been drawn to the teachings of the Nation of Islam. He found them attractive at first. But then he started to ask questions. He looked at the people around him, at who was leading them and who was spreading these messages, and he was not satisfied with what he found. He read the letter Malcolm X wrote to his best friend, telling him that he no longer believed in the Nation after studying the matter. That letter mattered to Yusuf, and he moved on from the Nation's teachings.
There was a brother at college who helped him take the next step. They had known each other since they were children. The brother had been class president, had moved to Philadelphia, and had ended up at the same college as Yusuf. He was the one who walked Yusuf into the masjid and into the first steps of becoming Muslim.
One day Yusuf called him and told him he wanted to go to Jumuah, to Friday prayers. He said he needed to become Muslim. They went together that day, and Yusuf took his shahada in front of the entire community. The same brother gave him his shahada.
After that he became more serious still. He spent time with brothers who were serious about the religion, and he kept learning. He had not known how to be a Muslim before, or how a normal Muslim lived. He wanted to learn properly, so he kept close to the community at the masjid.
By his junior year of college he had already decided he wanted to leave America. He planned his whole senior year around leaving. A close friend at the masjid suggested he go to Egypt for a period of time, to study Arabic and acquire knowledge, and then perhaps come back to the States and become an imam. Yusuf thought that was a good plan.
He had already tasted something of the Muslim world. He had visited the UAE and Morocco, and both had been very attractive to him. Ever since that experience he had wanted to go back.
The decision to leave was not an easy one to explain to people. He had a comfortable life in America, and he was leaving it for a situation full of uncertainty. But he believed that if he stayed in America he would be isolated, and that he would lose his religion. He wanted to find a righteous wife and raise a strong Muslim family, and he did not believe he would find what he was looking for in the United States. He knew there were righteous women in America, but he felt they were more hidden there. He wanted to raise his children in a conscious way, and to protect them from the things around them in the West. He felt that in America his children would be exposed to those things sooner or later, because of the way the institutions there work.
When he first arrived in Egypt, he slept at a brother's house. He slept on the floor, with no bed. He had a place of his own soon after, but Allah tested him in different ways than he had ever been tested before.
He has now been in Egypt for a year. He says that everything has exceeded his expectations. He lives next to a masjid, and he calls it the best decision he ever made. The community around him is really inspiring, and the people are very supportive.
What struck him most when he arrived was the contrast between being Muslim in America and being Muslim in the Muslim world. In America, he says, you have to be very careful to hold onto your religion. The examples he had seen of Muslims who grew up and were raised in that environment were all negatively affected by it, to the detriment of their deen. In the Muslim world, he found people more interested in being Muslim, and more interested in helping each other be Muslim.
He believes the environment shapes the person. A person raised in a Muslim environment becomes a different person than one raised in an environment that works against his religion. That is why he left, and that is why he says he will stay.