My Path to Islam

I was born into a Hindu family and raised in a Hindu neighborhood. All I ever heard about Islam and the Prophet (peace be upon him) was negative. I despised Islam and Muslims, thinking it was a bad religion. As I grew older, I began questioning my own faith: why do we worship many gods? Why do our gods have families and children, looking like us? Why do so many Hindus worship human 'babas'? At the same time, I was exposed to existential philosophy and evolution, which led me to become a naturalist and atheist. I started hating all religions, seeing them as remnants of a barbaric past that science and enlightenment had overcome. But soon, I lost my sense of meaning in life and fell into nihilism. I tried hard to find purpose but couldn't find it in anything. I became addicted to pornography and almost became suicidal. I began searching for God in other religions besides the one I grew up in. I became interested in the Abrahamic faiths and started researching them. The concept of monotheism made absolute sense to me. At first, I looked into Christianity because I had studied in a Catholic school, though I knew little about it. I started watching YouTube videos by Christian apologists and their testimonies. Unfortunately, the two testimonies I saw included one by a famous Pakistani man in the USA who became a Christian after being born Muslim. He said many things about Islam that I thought were true because I had no knowledge of Islam. So I learned more about Christianity, but the concept of the Trinity as monotheism and verses like John 17:3, John 14:27, John 10:29, and Mark 12:29 made it clear that Jesus himself never claimed to be God; rather, he worshipped the true God. Then I searched into Islam, and the debates between Muslims and Christians made it clear that Islam was much closer to the truth than Christianity. The concept of Tawhid (the Oneness of God) made far more sense than the Trinity. But it was Surah Al-Ikhlas that convinced me Islam is the truth. I have never heard a better description of God than this. Ashhadu alla ilaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadarrasulullah (I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah).