Sr. Jamilah Kolocotronis, a fabulous author and dear friend, converted to Islam. She has a fascinating Greek ancestral history that proves to be a struggle to her journey. Here’s her story in a nutshell:
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In 1913 my grandfather left his home in the small village of Zatouna and traveled to Patras to earn some money. He was seventeen. He worked in a shop and at night, he told me, he slept behind the counter. Two years later, when he had earned enough, he boarded a boat for New York City, traveling steerage. When he left, his mother gave him two pieces of underwear and instructed him to wear the first on the voyage. When he reached America he could throw that in the ocean and put on the clean pair.
After his arrival Grandpa was processed at Ellis Island and placed on board a train bound for St. Louis. He couldn’t speak a word of English but there was a color-coded system to let the conductor know when each passenger should get off. In St. Louis he joined three older brothers. They slept in a large room with other Greek immigrants and worked wherever they could. A few years later he sent for my grandmother, whom he had never before met.
Eventually, my grandfather opened a Greek restaurant with his brothers and helped build the first Greek Orthodox congregation in St. Louis. He did what he could to raise his family of six, but practical life didn’t really suit Grandpa. He was a scholar at heart. If he’d been born to a rich family I have no doubt he would have been a priest, but his family was very poor and he did what he could to survive.
Years later, I benefited from my grandfather’s wisdom. He talked of history and politics and religion, all in his thick Greek accent, and I hung on every word. One day he gave me a postcard of the statue of Theodoros Kolokotrones, my ancestor, and told me how he had defeated the Turks. Through my grandfather I learned of a heritage that extended far beyond my suburban St. Louis neighborhood.
When I went away to college I began learning about Islam. But I also carried with me the distrust of Muslim Turks, the people my ancestor had fought in the name of Greek independence. It took me four years to convert. One reason, I think, is that I couldn’t take that step and face telling my grandfather. He died in 1979. I became a Muslim in 1980.
My father, the son of Greek immigrants, basically renounced his Greek heritage. But I learned much of it from my grandfather and my aunts. I grew up Lutheran but we went to the Greek Orthodox Church for weddings, baptisms, and festivals. As a college student I spent two years learning Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, and I can still read it. I never learned to speak Greek but I can make some awesome kourabiethes.and even baklava. And one day I hope to visit Greece and find the little village of Zatouna.
Author
Jamilah Kolocotronis is an author and an American Muslim from Greek ancestry. She has a doctorate in Social Science Education and has taught in Islamic schools for many years. She writes Islamic fiction for young adults/adults about American Muslims striving to live Islamic lives within the challenges of American society. She especially likes to write about converts who struggle to integrate their non-Islamic pasts with their new lives as Muslims. She has six sons, ages twenty-two to nine and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Published Books
Fiction – Innocent People, about a Muslim family in the year after September 11, 2001.
Fiction – Echoes Series (5 books), about an American Muslim convert’s struggle to pick up the pieces of his life
Nonfiction – Islamic Jihad, about the principles and practices of military jihad.
http://jamilahkolocotronis.writerswebpages.com
Greek Muslims 