Sohrab Ahmari

From Fire by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith. Sohrab Ahmari. 2019. I cannot get enough of conversion stories, and this is one of the better ones. The Forward by Archbishop Charles Chaput is almost worth the price of the book: “The truth is, we’re never as important as we think we are, and in the end our stories will be forgotten by everyone but God…And yet, God made us social creatures for a reason. In needing each other, in depending on each other, we have a chance to learn how to love as God loves…And Ahmari takes us on his personal journey from lukewarm Islam, through atheism and Marxism to an abiding faith in our Lord. He is led on this trip by the works of some of my favorite authors: Benedict XVI, St. Augustine, and John Richard Neuhaus, and Blessed John Henry Newman whom he quotes: “[Rome] alone…has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may be especially called Catholic.” The rest of his story is fascinating too. Ahmari’s family was a member of the intellectual/arty group, and they allowed him to become almost completely Americanized. His family sheltered him as much as possible from the cruelty and dictatorship of the ayatollahs, but it was still a culture shock to move to the United States when he was a teenager and ended up in a trailer park in the Mormon state of Utah.… (mer)