My faith gives me inner peace

Sep 24 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

“I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I got to a certain age not much older than Jasmine, and I had to put the brakes on,” she says.

“I realised sometimes you need boundaries. You can get into trouble without restrictions. I liked the parameters Islam offered and the responsibility to family. Islam says paradise lies at the feet of the mother, which is beautiful. British society was like that years ago, but I feel we’ve lost that a little bit.”

Nearing 30, and after becoming a single mother at 22, she began to feel there was a hole in her life. Others filled it by immersing themselves into work, relationships or even addictions. For her, Islam’s appeal intensified. She read Islamic texts, and a Syrian woman and a Tunisian woman took her under their wing. She was welcomed as someone chosen; loved especially by God to be brought to a faith she wasn’t born into.

Her friends and family, however, were more doubtful – especially seeing the difference her new faith made to her outward appearance.

“When I became Muslim, I used to wear a beret as the first step in covering my head. You can’t rush it. At first, I didn’t see the point.

“When I started wearing the scarf, I had a coming-out party at Kimos restaurant, on Mount Pleasant, where my friends and family they could all see me for the first time with the scarf and modest clothing. All my friends saw it as a bit of a tragedy because I couldn’t drink any more. My family were perplexed. But my dad told me it was the best thing I’d ever done.”

Amirah now also wears the long, loose-fitting abaya, which she felt more nervous of wearing because of the attention it might attract.

She chooses a pretty, flowing pink one with a matching headscarf, but stops short of donning the more restrictive nikab.

“For me personally, living in the UK in this area, I feel that would repel people rather than attract them,” she explains, “and I wear Arabic-style clothes, rather than a Pakistani shalwar kameez, because it’s what I’ve been exposed to. I wear a lot of Western clothes, too, but I adapt them a little bit, so there is no cleavage or leg showing.

“It’s amazing how a piece of material can provoke such a response by people. I’ve become oblivious to it. Actually I’ve been racially abused more times than an Asian man I know. People just see the scarf.”

It’s the outward element of Islam that many Western women feel most uncomfortable with.

“It’s much more respectful not to reveal yourself for all and sundry to see,” she contends. “I don’t experience sexual harassment to the same degree as before. Men on a building site are not going to wolf-whistle or be derogatory. It’s not about why can’t men control themselves, it’s about being appreciated for your personality, rather than the way you look.”

Amirah, in the third year of a degree in Education and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, was canny enough not to insist on her daughter’s conversion, but at 13 Jasmine started going to the mosque regularly, inspired by her mother’s example. She has a gift for Arabic and goes to Quran classes and, before starting secondary school, decided she would wear the head covering.

“I thought, if I put it on in Year Seven, everyone will be used to it by Year 10, and they won’t see it as a big thing,” explains Jasmine, still in the dark trousers and top uniform of Weatherhead High School.