Salaam alaykum brothers and sisters, this is a very condensed version of my book Over the Wall. This version contains parts of the sections of my life from high-school, to finding Islam, and to prison. If you want all of the details you will have to purchase the book.

I went through public schooling until the end of Middle School. I was a normal young American child who had an inkling to crime and the gang life. I remember from an early age that I thought gangsters were cool and how I wished I could become one in the future. Not the best thing to wish for, I know, but what can I say.

Towards the end of Middle School I got suspended for being the lookout for somebody who wanted to tag.[1] He wrote his name on the wall and we all got caught and suspended. This shocked my family and they decided to take me out of public schooling and put me into private schools.

I was sent to a high school, which no longer exists, called Westside Preparatory High School. Despite its name, this school was full of gangsters. It might have even been a worse environment than public school. There are only two good things that I remember from this school – one was that they had a really good basketball coach, and two that they had a really good history teacher.

The history teacher taught us about the Middle East he did so through religion. He briefly discussed the major religions that were found in the Middle East and then described how they shaped the events that occurred throughout centuries in that region. This was very intriguing to me and it made me think. I decided to research these religions and something inside of me told me that I would have to choose one of them to live my life by.

While I was studying these religions other events occurred that shaped my future life. The school I was attending shut down and I moved and changed schools to West Los Angeles Baptist High School, which has also closed down. This was a smaller school with a much better environment. But, there was still the element of gang life. Some of the people who attended the school were gang members and some were normal teens just up to no good. We would go to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to hang out and pick up girls.