“I Never Saw Her Again”; New Muslim Stories

Christopher & Adam in Doha, 2007

I was in my third year at university in the UK when something completely unexpected happened. I was a 21-year-old, upper-class, white English student, more concerned with looking good and getting the best possible grades than with anything else.

For a chemistry research project, we were randomly assigned partners—no choice, no logic, just names paired together. That randomness ended up changing my life.

My partner was a Muslim woman. Until then, I don’t think I had spoken more than a few words to her in over two years. We came from entirely different worlds—different upbringings, beliefs, and assumptions. Yet suddenly, we were spending long hours together in a 24-hour library near Waterloo, working through research papers and deadlines.

And somewhere in those long nights, we started talking. Really talking.

Despite our differences, we connected. We spoke about life—our frustrations, hopes, and regrets. We became friends. Nothing inappropriate ever happened. She was principled, clear about her beliefs, and firm in her boundaries.

At one point, she said something very simply and very honestly: she could never be with a non-Muslim. I nodded and said I understood, though inside it affected me more deeply than I expected.

A few days later, we walked into a bookshop together. She picked up a biography and finished it overnight. The next morning, she handed it to me and said, “This is a great book.” It was The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography by Barnaby Rogerson.

I started reading it that afternoon and didn’t stop until the next morning. I couldn’t put it down. What struck me wasn’t theology—it was the man himself: a champion of the poor, a defender of orphans and widows, someone who stood firmly against injustice, arrogance, tribalism, and abuse.

I realised then that everything I thought I knew about the Prophet Muhammad was wrong.

At the time, I was a committed atheist. But for the first time, I found myself thinking: If there is a God, then this man must have known Him.

Weeks earlier, she had given me a Qur’an. I had left it untouched on my shelf. "After finishing the biography, I knew I could no longer ignore it. I opened it and began reading. Page after page, I kept stopping and thinking, Yes… this makes sense.

By the time I reached Surah al-Mā’idah, something shifted. A stillness came over me. A certainty. I closed the Qur’an, got down on my knees, and prayed— not out of fear, not out of habit, but with absolute conviction.

For the first time in my life, I knew God was real.

The next day felt strangely quiet, as if the world itself had paused to acknowledge the shift that had taken place inside me. I woke with a calm I couldn’t quite explain. I had believed, truly believed the night before. But belief lives in the heart, unseen. The next step was to bring it into the world, to make it official in the way Islam asks of a person: to speak it.

There is something beautifully simple about the Shahada. No paperwork. No rituals. No waiting period. Just words, but words that change the entire direction of a life.

Still, there were realities to deal with. Not the kind found in government offices or behind desks, but the kind that root a spiritual decision within a community. Islam isn't lived alone; it’s lived with people. And so, that morning, I set out to give my belief a voice.

I went to meet a small group of brothers who had agreed to witness my Shahada. They weren’t scholars or imams—just ordinary Muslims who understood the weight of the moment. The only one I knew by more than just name was Hisham, an Egyptian brother married to a Polish revert on my course. He would go on to be my source of Islamic knowledge for at least the next year. He is a brother to whom I owe a great deal, and whom I think of nearly every day of my life—though he doubtlessly does not know it.

They greeted me with warmth—not the overexcited kind, not the artificial kind—but something gentler, as if welcoming someone home.

Hisham explained what would happen: I would say the Shahada in Arabic, then in English, and they would serve as witnesses. A simple process. Yet my heart thudded in my chest—not from fear, but from the awareness that everything after this moment would be different.

When I repeated the words—

Ashhadu an lā ilāha illā Allāh, wa ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlullāh

— I felt something settled inside me.

Not fireworks. Not light descending from the sky. Just a deep certainty. A sense of alignment. As if, after years of walking in half-darkness, I finally knew where the door was. The brothers embraced me. Someone made a small du'a. Someone else reminded me that this was a beginning, not an end. And that was it—the “administrative” part done.  No certificate. No ceremony. Just spoken truth, witnessed by a few people who would now forever be part of my story, whether they realized it or not.

Walking home afterward, everything looked the same. The same streets. The same air. The same responsibilities. But I was no longer walking through it as the same man. My belief was no longer just felt—it was declared, confirmed, and shared.

That morning taught me something about Islam that has stayed with me ever since: sometimes the simplest moments carry the deepest weight, and sometimes the most “unexciting” events become the foundations of everything that follows.

Later that afternoon, I told her—without preface, “I'm Muslim now.”

And I meant it. Not because of her, but because she opened the door—and God welcomed me in. I said, “You were right.” You said a Muslim and a non-Muslim could never be. And now that I am Muslim, I want to do this the right way.

Then I said it: “Will you marry me?” She looked at me and said, softly, “No.”

She said it because her father would never accept an Englishman as his daughter’s husband—not even a Muslim Englishman. And that shattered me.

It was a soul-crushing irony.  This woman—who had been a means through which God guided me—was now being made to turn me away to honour the un-Islamic prejudice of her father. And yet, I understood. I did not resent her. I couldn’t.

I was level-headed enough to know we couldn’t elope. And even if we had, would that life have been halal? Would it have been right? And I wasn't sure—truly—that she would have wanted that kind of severance from her family anyway. Whatever her father’s flaws, he was still her father. That bond is difficult to cut—too difficult for most daughters. Maybe rightly so.

So that was that.

Life moved forward in the only way it knows how: quietly, steadily, without ceremony. I didn’t see her again. Not once. For a while, the absence felt sharp, like touching a bruise you forgot you had. But time has a way of rounding off the edges of things.

Eventually, the sting faded, leaving only the memory of how someone I cared for had unknowingly opened a door that changed the direction of my life. I threw myself into my studies. They gave me structure, purpose, and movement when emotionally everything felt still. I graduated from university with good results, alḥamdulillāh, and for the first time in a while, I started looking outward again. New beginnings. New paths.

It was around then that I heard about a scholarship—a program to study Arabic in Qatar.

I remember reading the description, learning about Qatari institutions supporting students who wanted to learn the language of the Qur’an, and something inside me knew this was what I was meant to do.

Maybe it was a curiosity. Maybe it was longing. Maybe it was the feeling that doors, once opened, keep opening if you’re brave enough to walk through them. So I applied.

I didn’t expect much. But to my surprise, I was accepted. The State of Qatar offered to bring me to Doha, cover my expenses, and house me in student accommodation. For someone who is only recently out of university, still finding his way in faith and in life, it felt like the world was suddenly tilting in a new, hopeful direction.

Arriving in Doha in 2007 was like stepping into a different pattern of life. The heat. The skyline. The calmness of the people. Everything felt unfamiliar, yet strangely welcoming. And it was there, at the Fanar Centre in the heart of Doha, that I met Adam.

Fanar wasn’t just a mosque; it was a place of conversations, learning, and friendships waiting to form. Adam and I crossed paths almost accidentally, the way meaningful friendships often begin. But from the start, there was a natural ease between us.

Later that same year, we went on Hajj together—2007 along with other new Muslims sponsored by the centre.

The kind of experience that etches itself into your bones. Standing side by side in Iḥram, hearing the same talbiyah echo through the air, feeling the pull of something ancient and universal—it anchored our friendship in a way few things can. It was a blessing I didn’t fully appreciate at the time, because when you’re young, you rarely realize you are living memories that will matter decades later.

Years passed. Doha became a chapter of growth, belief, and beginnings the foundations of everything I would later build. Eventually, life carried me into new responsibilities, new countries, new friendships, and new challenges.

And then, much later—in 2025—Google Photos surfaced one of those digital “on this day” memories. It was a picture from Hajj. Adam was in it. I was in it too, much younger, smiling in a way that held no worries about the future.

That reminder hit me harder than I expected. Suddenly, I was back in that desert heat, back in that crowd of millions, back on the dusty road where two young men stood side by side seeking God.

A wave of memories came rushing back—all warm, all positive, all carrying the quiet beauty of a chapter that shaped me long before I understood how deeply it had done so.

And that was the real lesson of those years: sometimes the loss of one person opens the path to meeting others who will walk with you on the journey that truly matters.

 Sometimes Allah removes someone from your life not as a punishment, but as protection—to guide your steps somewhere better.

Looking back now, I see it clearly. She was the spark. But Qatar—and the people I met there—became the fire.

People often imagine that the hardest part of becoming Muslim is the Shahada itself—the moment you say the words, the moment your life changes. But the truth is, the real test usually comes afterwards, when the world you come from has to make sense of the world you are growing into.

For the first few years after I became Muslim, everything was quiet. My brothers noticed the most obvious change: I had stopped drinking. In reality, I had given up alcohol long before Islam entered my life. I had simply reached a point where I saw no benefit in it. Sobriety made life calmer, clearer, steadier. But because I had grown up in a white, upper-middle-class, Church-of-England household—where alcohol wasn’t just normal but expected—my brothers’ curiosity gradually sharpened into a question: “Have you become Muslim?” And so I told them the truth. Their reaction was simple: live and let live. That was the way we were with each other. We didn’t police each other’s choices. We didn’t sit in judgment. We accepted each other as we were. In a way, my brothers were the easiest part of this whole journey.

It wasn’t like that with everyone. When I finished my Master’s degree in 2006 and moved back home, my father learned that I had accepted Islam. His reaction was immediate, sharp, and—to this day— one of the hardest things I have ever experienced. He told me plainly that he would rather I had come out as homosexual than become Muslim. It wasn’t said in anger, but in cold disappointment, as though I had crossed an invisible line.

Before that moment, my father had actually been pleased with the changes he saw in me. I was more focused, calmer, serious about my studies, more respectful. To him, those were signs of maturity. But when he learned the cause of those changes, all of that goodwill disappeared.

He accused me of deception. He insisted I had “cheated” him by not declaring my faith earlier. He even said that had he known I would become Muslim, he would never have paid for my education. That was the point where our quiet détente broke apart. Conversations became arguments. Arguments became silences. And those silences spread through the family like cracks in glass.

My mother and brothers knew I was Muslim before he did. But they hadn’t told him—they didn’t want to provoke him. Slowly, he managed to isolate the family emotionally, and I found myself at the centre of a storm I had never asked for. I went from being son and brother to being the unspoken problem of the family. So I left.

I left with the clothes on my back and the car my father had bought me for my seventeenth birthday—the same car he had given me on Christmas morning, with a smile I can still picture. Years later, even when we barely spoke, I would email him to say thank you again.

That car had meant something to me. It had taken me to university and back, to football matches, to drives around the country. For all the conflict between us, I never forgot that kindness, nor any other kindness he had shown me in my childhood—a childhood that could often be difficult, straddling the line between discipline and authoritarian harshness.

For my children, it was the first time they had ever truly met their grandfather.

When I finally left my parents’ house, driving away with nothing but the clothes on my back and the car, I had absolutely no idea where I was going to go. It was one of those moments where the only direction you have is away. I remember sitting behind the wheel, heart pounding, no plan, no home, no certainty—except that I could not stay.

In that moment, I relied entirely on Allah. I put my trust in Him in a way I never truly had before. And in return, Allah sent me brothers. Men I barely knew stepped forward with open doors, offering me a place to sleep, a roof over my head, and the kind of quiet reassurance that keeps a person standing when everything familiar has fallen away. They gave me work, so I could earn my own money—not out of pride, but because I wanted to contribute and know that I had something to offer.

Their support wasn’t just financial or practical; it was emotional, spiritual, human.

Without them, God knows where I might have ended up. And it taught me something important: the Muslims who leave Islam most often are not those who doubt Allah, but those who feel abandoned by the community when they need it most. I was fortunate. I was tested, yes, but I was held up by brothers who lived the very principles of brotherhood that Islam teaches—and that mercy carried me through.

After leaving home, our conversations became sporadic. When we did speak, they eventually turned into arguments about terrorism, foreign policy, Islam—all the usual talking points fed to the British public after 9/11 by commentators who had never met a Muslim in their lives.

My father was a deeply intelligent man, but as he aged, he became more susceptible to fear-driven narratives. It hardened him.

It made him unreasonable in ways I imagined the younger version of him never was. But I learned something important during that time: every Muslim must choose whether to meet ignorance with anger, or to rise above it.

I chose—eventually—not to argue. I learned to absorb his words without responding, not because I agreed with him, but because I refused to lose my peace over someone else’s fear.

Time passed. My father and I went long stretches without speaking.

Then, one day, I invited him to watch The Ashes at Headingley. I didn’t think he’d accept*, but he did*.

It rained most of the day. We saw hardly any cricket. But we ate together, spoke a little, argued a bit less. And something softened, just enough to open the door a crack.

Not long before he died, my family— my wife, my three children, my mother, and my father—spent a day together at an English Heritage site in the Midlands.

It was the first time we had all been in the same place for years. For my children, it was the first time they had ever truly met their grandfather.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t a fairy-tale reconciliation. But it was something. A small piece in a long and complicated story.

And if there is a lesson for new Muslims, it is this: Islam may bring clarity to your heart, but it may unsettle the hearts of those around you. Not because they hate you, but because they don’t understand your transformation yet. Give them time, patience, and space to grow into the change you have embraced.

Sometimes, reconciliation takes years. Sometimes, it never fully arrives. But along the way, you learn resilience, compassion, and a deeper trust in Allah’s plan—a plan that continues long after Shahada is spoken.

In Conclusion

Dear brothers and sisters, this brings us to the end of this story, shared by our brother Christopher (Ya‘qoob).

Stories like these—especially the journeys of new Muslims— *carry deep lessons: for lifelong Muslims, for those new to Islam, and even for those still searching for the truth.

Allah reminds us at the end of the story of Prophet Yusuf (peace be upon him) that within such stories are lessons for people of understanding. They are not tales invented for entertainment, but sources of guidance, clarity, and mercy for those who believe.

May this story soften our hearts, strengthen our faith, and remind us of Allah’s gentle ways of guiding whom He wills.