By Isra Ould Adda
Bio:
After feeling that the call from Allah had become too strong, and in search of a peaceful life, I converted to Islam in 2021. My hobbies include exercise, writing when the mood takes me and awareness work for domestic abuse campaigns.
“She said she is praying for you and she thinks you are mentally ill” said my Mum, relaying to me about what my auntie, her sister had said about my reversion. My news had been spilled, not by me, but a friend of my aunt who had overheard me talking to someone else.
It was August 2021 and I had very clumsily been trying to navigate her 50th Birthday weekend as a very new, very secret Muslim, I packed maxi dresses, a Qu’ran in the bottom of my bag, and made dua for the weekend to be quickly over with and as minimally raucous as possible.
“I’m on antibiotics” I said, when I was confronted with tequila shots whilst a drunk man who had joined our table proceeded to lick my aunties arm. This was the last place I wanted to be, a Muslim of only one month, trying to navigate modesty, praying and altering my life in so many ways.
Allah does not burden one with more than they can bear, and later, with my strong sense of justice and dislike of bigotry, I challenged one of my aunt’s friends who spoke ill of Islam.
“Well, I’m a Muslim, I bet you didn’t expect that, did you?”
I have always been an over sharer. Mic drop.
No sooner were we home and my secret was out. It was a relief as I didn’t know in actual fact how I would have told my parents and I think this is what I was hoping for deep down.
I highly suggest any other new revert reading this does exactly the opposite and actually plans a way of facing their parents, but this was my journey and here I now was.
I told my Dad it would be ok, “because I’m still a Man city fan.”
The joke went a bit flat.
I can actually recall being about 13 and overhearing someone say to him “What if she comes home one day and says “Dad he’s a city fan, his name is Omar but he’s still a city fan!” and the roaring laughter that broke out in the working men’s club.
I was frightened. I came from a family that didn’t talk about anything let alone God, my Mum had rejected the Catholic church a long time ago and has a confusing and messy relationship with faith, the aunt in question is a devout catholic, and my Dad, well he once told me after a night drinking Belgian lager that ducks have webbed feet so they can swim because God made them that way. No further elaboration however I suspect he knows more than he lets on.
******************************************************************************************
You’re mentally ill.
Surveys suggest that 9/10 reverts have been on the receiving end of this line. I made that up, but it’s probably true.
So why am I mentally ill now, why now? I have been lost and floating between toxic friendship groups and abusive partners and situationships for most of my adult life, but now I am mentally ill. Now when I have chosen a peaceful life, self-respect, to abstain from casual relationships, alcohol, intoxicants, I am mentally ill.
The stinging feeling wouldn’t go away and begged Allah to help me find forgiveness for the members of my family who had uttered these words, Islam was so much easier when no one knew. I wasn’t ready, this was still between me and Allah, I was still feeling so ecstatic, free and uplifted. I felt like a veil of shame and self- doubt had been lifted off me and I was finally free to live my life, and then a cloak of guilt and more shame was instantly dropped over me again in one instant. It took me off my feet and stung like an open wound, that I had expected some kind of open-mindedness from those I was related to and I was being so badly belittled, that they had exposed their racism and bigotry.
“Will you marry a Muslim man and have 6 children, and be locked up in the house?”
I didn’t have the answer, I didn’t have the energy.
“I nearly died Mum” I said.
“I know” she replied.
I know. Everyone knew, but it was too difficult to step in. I had left a relationship three years earlier with a violent abuser who had almost killed me, and I wondered why it was so easy for people to step in now, and try to stage an intervention of some kind, but not when everyone knew that I wasn’t turning up to family events, I was losing weight, I always had a new phone (because mine had been smashed) I never had any of my own money, I was living with a monster and it was clear. Why? Why question my choices now when I finally want to be happy?
I barely knew how to pray, I stood in my room every night in our tiny bungalow, paranoid they would hear me getting up and down, up and down, for sujood. I had also by this point secretly fasted my first Ramadan, it was exhausting. I would wait at the gym after work until Maghrib, so no one noticed I wasn’t eating, and sit in my car just making dua and imagining my new future.
I had never known how to choose myself before Islam, I had never understood that I had worth, that I meant something and it didn’t matter anymore about being bullied, about being a victim of abuse, about feeling ashamed and embarrassed that I let someone rob me of everything down to my concentration; Because I had finally realised I belonged to Allah first, I had retraced my steps, and found the gems that Allah had sewn into my life carefully:
Waiting for the adhan on a Turkish balcony at 9 years old trying not to wake Mum and Dad. I don’t know what it was but I knew how it made me feel, weightless and at peace. I used to seek out Muslim friends, customers, anyone who would tell me anything about Islam, studying fashion and modesty at Uni, writing a whole dissertation about hijab in the advertising world, trying to observe Ramadan in my behaviour rather than physically fasting, for 10+ years before I understood that I actually wanted to be a Muslim.
Allah’s timing is perfect and at 33 he had shown me enough things that made me yearn for his peace and consider that my life was fragile, and I could have left this earth without finally obeying him.
********************************************************************************************
A tough day in a high-pressure industry which goes by no modern workplace regulations-
“Yes I understand you said you wouldn’t touch our company with a bl**ding bargepole but I’m asking you to reconsider, the new line is going to be something you’ve never seen bef…”
Beeeeeepppp.
No one knew I was Muslim here yet.
My boss asked me to lunch.
“Do you not drink?”
“I’m going to the gym later”
1pm glasses of wine in the jewellery trade are perfectly normal.
I was told I was doing well, but my boss was changing the goalposts again, he wanted me to go to my old employer who were notoriously stingy about taking on new suppliers and try and crack them.
A few weeks earlier I had walked into Birmingham on a fine summer evening and inside my heart was breaking, things in my personal life just didn’t seem to be going well. I had climbed the corporate ladder very successfully, I always had enough money, nights out, friends, aquaintances, “wyd” texts…
Inside I was still the girl who got bullied for her nose and her weird ways at school, and the one who nearly died and never got justice from the broken system and I was angry and in pain, no one seemed to care. Every Monday I would look at the trains leaving Piccadilly and reluctantly step on the 7:10 to Birmingham New Street, actually thinking about the fact I wanted to go missing and asking God, whoever was there, to please just, give me a good day or something.
I had come back from being in Turkey for the first time in 10 years yearning to hear the call to prayer again, I remember looking at the moon and observing it as Allah’s creation, and without knowing the words to say promising him with my whole heart that I would find my way to Islam. When I got home, all the step seemed to be there, I realised the importance of my choice, Allah gifted me the ability to chose, and put it in my heart to look for Islam, to look for the benefits of it in my life and he knew I was capable of that reinvention. I was never someone to stay the same, I wanted to grow and develop and I opened my eyes to embracing that ability to change and take on knowledge that he gave me. I saw how he wanted me to survive and to be here to tell my tales and explain how he alone saved me.
I walked over to the dawah stand outside Primark and asked if I could take a Qu’ran. Shiekh Hussain introduced himself and I can’t even remember what we spoke about.
“Do you know you can become a Muslim in one minute?”
“Ash-hadu an la ilaha illa Allah, Wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulu-Allah.”
I became a Muslim. Alhamdulillah.
The emptiness was gone, in one empowering moment.
*********************************************************************************************
By the following November I was wearing hijab. My Dad wouldn’t look at me when I left the house.
My only support was the vaccination team I worked with on weekends and a class of about 8 people, new reverts at our masjid. The tests kept coming. Articles flying around about suspected extremist activity in our area, my aunties constant debates with my Mum that I needed medication or was having a breakdown, she questioned me on everything, from sharia to Shamima Begum. I was drained and broken, not by my faith, by my family.
I texted my Mum as I couldn’t face the conversation:
“I know you’re thinking oh what’s she doing now and why can’t she just be normal, but this is what I want I just want a peaceful life and nothing is going to change”
No response. Nothing said to reference it, radio silence.
********************************************************************************************
I went back to work after a very awkward Christmas period wearing hijab. Over the winter break I attended an event where Aliyah Umm Raiyyan was speaking and she received a standing ovation after talking about the story of Hind. This was all the motivation I needed to take my new self to work. I saw my boss do a double take and quietly bang his head against the nearest wall. The mini skirted, girl next door bubbly sales rep was gone. Enter Isra, you do not speak down to this believing woman who has the highest form of respect for herself and her Lord. This industry did not want me in my spiritual game, connected with myself and demanding respect for intelligence, this industry wanted me vulnerable, a piece of bait, and just as fickle and tormented as they are.
When you give Allah SWT a place in your life, he gives you an elevate place in your own.
A few weeks later, my area was changed to the opposite end of the country. Constructive dismissal I suspected but I couldn’t prove anything.
I left my job, I changed all my clothes, I stopped drinking, I studied hard and I asked questions. I changed my diet.
Neighbours, friends, extended family noticed, my career used to be everything to me and I had taken a step down. I flitted from job to job unable to find my place. I was labelled again, “mad, mentally ill, going through something”. One of my colleagues told me that she “also liked middle eastern men but didn’t take it that far”
I cringed.
This was Allah’s redirection, I couldn’t understand everything that was happening to me and nor was I meant to, but following his love and remaining fixated on the trail he was revealing to me, was leading me down his path of absolute splendour. I left everything for his sake, I stayed firm and focused on the stories of the sahaba when they were written off as following nonsense and their faith prevailed, and even in my complete innocence and lack of any proper understanding I spoke to him from my heart every single night. I spoke to him with the simplest dua, just let me have a good day, just give me something in today to hold on to whilst my whole world changes at the speed of light. Just show me your power and let me find my gratitude and feel overwhelmed by you in some way so I can find it in myself to carry on, when those who raised me are ashamed of me. Let me not question what you are showing me and keep following your light and call. Please. Just let me have a good day. Let me, let me, I was devoid of understanding that he was not just ‘letting’ me, it wasn’t a permission it was an order and a pre-determined miraculous journey that I was on, that I would find my way back to myself, find self-love in hijab, understand that shutting off access to me was also switching off the noise, and turning on my own validation and the remembrance of belonging to Allah every day. I was raised without a sense of belonging, to give myself away to comfort others, and now I was being taught by Allah in every scenario and every second of the day, how conducting myself with good character did not have to mean that I would sell myself.
Allah encouraged me, Allah guided me to people who could help. Allah helped me find the words when I did not have them, and he placed within me the determination that I could re-shape my life despite all of the humiliation and the unkind words. Through Islam I learnt that I only have to please Allah and myself, and the rest will follow, he took away my anxiety, he turned my trauma into ease, he showed me courage and purpose, and we are arrogant as a human race to even bear anxiety, because he holds the answers, there is nothing as empty as questions and worry because he will either guide us or has already written it for us! He gave me richness in my life and a beautiful family, a job where I am used in the best way possible for him, he gave me a place in the Ummah, a chance to attain Jannah at his mercy. He reshaped my whole world view and allowed me to re-build myself after attempted murder, I used to cry and ask him, why I wasn’t born Muslim? Why I had to go through being almost killed at the hands of a violent partner, why did I have to be humiliated and lose my job? The answer is that this was a mercy on me, Allah was bringing me back to my true self instead of the charade I had invented for people as an undiagnosed neurodivergent child.
I exist purely for him and he wanted me to survive and be chosen by him. He wanted me to become well with myself, because leaving the door of self -doubt open lets shaytaan in. Allah knows everything which is in our hearts and questioning our own worth is to question his creation. I don’t blame myself, and I am not victim blaming, I have become self- aware with stabilisers on, the stabiliser being Allah’s love. We have no automatic understanding of ourselves and what we are capable of until we respect his power.
Our Lord, and grant us what You promised us through Your messengers and do not disgrace us on the Day of Resurrection. Indeed, You do not fail in [Your] promise. And their Lord responded to them, “Never will I allow to be lost the work of [any] worker among you, whether male or female; you are of one another. So those who emigrated or were evicted from their homes or were harmed in My cause or fought or were killed – I will surely remove from them their misdeeds, and I will surely admit them to gardens beneath which rivers flow as reward from Allah , and Allah has with Him the best reward [Quran, 194-195]
