Zakir Naik and Questions from a Christian

Hope you all find this beneficial inshaAllah :)

Till the next post, Assalamu alaikum

How a White English girl became an outcast due to Hijab!?

After I took my shahada, by the grace of Allah I started wearing hijab straight away. It wasn’t a difficult choice for me since I had been studying Islam for a long time and was clear on it. However what was surprising to me was the reaction of others around me.

 Reaction of my Family to Islam & Hijab

 My family was mostly fine with my conversion. My dad was a bit annoyed in the beginning, however soon afterwards he accepted it as well. My family are in fact of the view that Islam has brought a lot of positive changes in me. I dress modestly now. I have stopped smoking and for some reason I have also started eating healthy!  Since Islam places a lot of importance on respecting and caring for your parents, I have upped my efforts to make time for my parents, listening to their advice and just generally treating them the way they deserve to be treated. This is not that I was rude or obnoxious to them before my conversion to Islam however I was just like a normal Western teenager who is actually shouting back at their parents and not listening to them.

My family also accepted my decision to wear hijab too. I have been really blessed since I know that many non-muslim families give them the toughest time.

Reaction of my friends to Islam & Hijab

My close friends were fine with me after conversion. They understand that I don’t drink, smoke and won’t go clubbing either. This has certainly led to less mixing with few of my friends; however we still meet up for brunch and tea. I never had any boyfriends Alhamdulillah so this is not an issue, although I do plan to marry a good Muslim man soon inshaAllah. My not so close friends however distanced themselves from me especially when I was wearing a hijab.

Reaction of General Public to Islam & Hijab

Now this is what surprised me the most. I always thought or was always trained to thought that we Brits are one of the most tolerant and civilised nation in the World. We have freedom of speech, freedom to wear & freedom to express ourselves the way we like. In fact the mantra of Mr Bush & Blair during all the Mideast occupations was that the Free World was going to ‘liberate’ Iraq. Anyway, what I experienced after just wearing a piece of cloth on the top of my head which is called hijab/headscarf, was that the World just suddenly changed their opinion of me.

I am no super-model however I have Alhamdulillah been blessed with good looks. I come from a white English background and having blonde hair definitely helped me to appear ‘correct version of British’. It was really common for men and women alike to open the doors for me, smile to me on the tube and just simply be polite during any interactions. However it just all changed when I started wearing hijab. The conversation I could have most white English women was minimal! I felt being shouted down in simple conversations. It was as if what I had to say wasn’t important anymore since I was oppressed and backwards in their heads. Funny it was my own race doing that to me, mostly white English women. Men were slightly better behaved and the blacks/Asians much better than the others. The norms of opening the doors for each other just wouldn’t apply to me anymore. Most people would avoid making eye-contacts me with me. Someone even said to me while explaining something that “this is how we do this in this country of ours” and the woman was clearly Eastern European from her looks. So I was suddenly less British than an immigrant from Eastern Europe since I was wearing a Hijab. For the first time in my life, I could actually see how Muslims and Blacks feel all their lives. It is so easy to ignore all of this if it has never happened to you. I would love to say otherwise but this sudden rude behaviour did unsettle me for some time.

The plus side of all this was that I made a lot of new friends. Lot of Asians and Blacks I could have never connected to suddenly became very close to me. Making friends from other cultures, I also realized that how other cultures still valued things like modesty, honestly/loyalty in relationships, and caring for their old parents. These are the things that we have lost in majority of the white families today unfortunately.

Although the experience was tough and an eye-opening one, would I ever go back? NO. I did it for my creator Allah SWT and only He would give the reward to me for becoming an outcast amongst my own race & people in order to follow Islam. One thing I would do though is to campaign for Black rights #BlackLivesMatter and also against Islamophobia which is rampant in the West. May Allah give me the strength to do this iA.

How to wear a Hijab?

Ok so lot of you emailed me to ask which type of hijab I did. Well honestly I wanted to do a Turkish hijab because I love those beautiful Turkish girls in such cute colourful hijabs. However I simply couldn’t tie it properly for the first few months J If you don’t know what a Turkish hijab looks like and how it is done, then you must visit this website and this.

As for where I buy my hijabs from, it depends. Most of the times I just pop into any Asian high-street Hijab shop and just buy one from there. However with experience, I have learnt that online Hijab shops are actually much better in terms of variety and cost too! I recently bought my last two Hijabs from this Hijab shop or Hijab online UK. These guys have got some really good hijabs at very affordable cost. If you like a few friends of mine, travel to any Muslim majority countries like Pakistan or Turkey, just buy them from there. The variety you would get from those countries would never match anything that you would get here. Hope this helps inshaAllah. 

My 1st post!

Assalamu alaikum all :)

I am just going to test the waters here and see how this actually looks like :) But I guess one way I could this is to write a bit about myself.

Well I alhamdulillah belong to a well off family. My father is a lawyer and my mother is one of the most renowned fashion consultant in England. By the way, I have always loved fashion as well!

More to follow later today iA. Stay tuned!