According to rahyafte (the missionaries and converts website):Martin Bentz was just over 7 years old when he first heard the call to prayer. At that time, he was in Turkey, where his family lived, and his father worked as a geologist. He would see the muezzin climb the minaret of the nearby mosque and call the adhan.
Martin Bentz, now a communication coordinator for the Southeastern Massachusetts Islamic Society, says, “I was mesmerized. It was very beautiful. At that time, muezzins did not use loudspeakers for the call to prayer.”
After 30 years
Bentz grew up in an Anglican Christian family. His father traveled extensively for work, and the family lived in Turkey, the Netherlands, Egypt, and several places in the United States. Bentz was born in Switzerland, went to high school in the Netherlands, and graduated from Colorado College.
Bentz was 30 years old when he was working at the United Nations in New York. He was sent on a peacekeeping mission to Morocco, where he heard the same captivating and emotional call he had heard as a child in Turkey.
It was the call to prayer, and memories of that enchanting and emotional sound flooded back to Bentz. This prompted him to inquire about Muslims and Islam from his mission colleagues. He took a pocket-sized Quran and began to read.
He embraced Islam in 1996 and finally settled in New Bedford, where he became the communication coordinator for the Southeastern Massachusetts Islamic Society at the Al-Ehsan Mosque in South Dartmouth.
Bentz met his wife Wafa in 1994 while working with development agencies in Morocco. Wafa, originally from Morocco, also worked at the United Nations and was posted to Gabon, a former French colony in West Africa. They married in 1997. Bentz said they had traveled to New Bedford many times to visit his elderly sister and mother.
When the United Nations assigned them a new mission in Congo in 2004, Bentz and his wife were on the move again. Four years later, they were sent to Afghanistan but had to relocate to a safer location due to attacks on the country. In 2010, they settled in Kuwait to establish the support office for the United Nations mission.
He has since retired from his work at the United Nations and is now working at his local mosque, Al-Ehsan Mosque, in communication. He says their mosque in southeastern Massachusetts welcomes Muslims of all nationalities and races.
