UK REVERTS SHINE AT MUSLIM NOW RETREAT

UK reverts shine at the Muslim Now retreat

by Amal Stapley

Before I came to Islam, I was surrounded by Muslims who were encouraging me to say my Shahadah.

When I finally did take the step they were overjoyed, but when I asked them to tell me more about the deen they all started to fade into the background.

They said that they didn’t know enough about Islam to help me on my journey.

So I had to hunt around for somewhere to go where I could learn the foundations of Islam to help me put my new-found fledgling faith into practice.

My quest took me on a very long journey to many different sources and eventually to many different countries, and eventually back home to the UK.
But it was only recently that I came across an amazing Retreat for New Muslims. Muslim Now, a branch of iERA (Islamic Education and Research Academy) that was established to provide support for new Muslims in the first couple of years of their journey, is now holding two of these Retreats a year.

REVERTS: IS IT BETTER TO LIVE IN A MUSLIM COUNTRY?

Reverts: Is it better to live in a Muslim country?

by Aya Timea

Do you dream of living in a Muslim country?

Do you get tired of fighting with your family and friends to accept you as a Muslim?

Wish you to live in a land where you hear the beautiful sound of Adhan (call to prayer) five times a day, everybody welcomes you with salam aleikom and everybody is just tremendously happy that you chose the path of Islam instead of living in the West?

Well, I did. And I moved.

That is why I want to share my experiences with you, to let you know how I see life as a reverted Muslimah coming from the heart of Eastern-Europe and now living in the land of the Nile, in a city which never sleeps: in the adventurous Cairo.

REVERTS: HEROES OR SOCIAL MISFITS?

Reverts: Heroes or Social Misfits?

by Lauren Booth*

‘Mum I’m a Muslim’.

This statement falls from your lips.

Then you watch, heart pounding, as your mother, the one who gave birth to you, who knows you inside and out, struggles to put words to her horror – that you have suddenly joined the most pilloried faith in the modern world.

Despite the fact that before taking my Shahadah I had spent half a decade traveling the Muslim world, my mum was still shocked. She had never expected me (‘of all people’), her Jack Daniels drinking, low neckline wearing, foul mouthed, eldest daughter, to embrace something so ‘puritanical’.

All credit to my mum though. Despite her silent horror, she has (with bitten lip) for the past three years, worked hard at accepting that Islam has entered her family from this most unexpected direction.