Journey to Islam

Journey to Islam


My Journey to Islam
Aisha Bhutta

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The Guardian Newspaper, England
Thursday 8th May 1997

A Woman on a Mission
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Aisha Bhutta, also known as Debbie Rogers, is serene. She sits on
the sofa in big front room of her tenement flat in Cowcaddens,
Glasgow. The walls are hung with quotations from the Koran, a
special clock to remind the family of prayer times and posters of
the Holy City of Mecca. Aisha's piercing blue eyes sparkle with
evangelical zeal, she smiles with a radiance only true believers
possess. Her face is that of a strong Scots lass - no nonsense, good-
humoured - but it is carefully covered with a hijab.
For a good Christian girl to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim is
extraordinary enough. But more than that, she has also converted her
parents, most of the rest of her family and at least 30 friends and
neighbours.

Her family were austere Christians with whom Rogers regularly
attended Salvation Army meetings. When all the other teenagers in
Britain were kissing their George Michael posters goodnight, Rogers
had pictures of Jesus up on her wall. And yet she found that
Christianity was not enough; there were too many unanswered
questions and she felt dissatisfied with the lack of disciplined
structure for her beliefs. "There had to be more for me to obey than
just doing prayers when I felt like it."

Aisha had first seen her future husband, Mohammad Bhutta, when she
was 10 and regular customer at the shop, run by his family. She
would see him in the back, praying. "There was contentment and peace
in what he was doing. He said he was a Muslim. I said: What's a
Muslim?".

Later with his help she began looking deeper into Islam. By the age
of 17, she had read the entire Koran in Arabic. "Everything I read",
she says, "was making sense."

She made the decision to convert at16. "When I said the words, it
waslike a big burden I had been carrying on my shoulders had been
thrown off. I felt like a new-born baby."

Despite her conversion however, Mohammed's parents were against
their marrying. They saw her as a Western woman who would lead their
eldestson astray and give the family a bad name; she was, Mohammed's
father believed, "the biggest enemy."

Nevertheless, the couple married in the local mosque. Aisha wore a
dress hand-sewn by Mohammed's mother and sisters who sneaked into
the ceremony against the wishes of his father who refused to attend.

It was his elderly grandmother who paved the way for a bond between
the women. She arrived from Pakistan where mixed-race marriages were
even more taboo, and insisted on meeting Aisha. She was so impressed
by the fact that she had learned the Koran and Punjabi that she
convinced the others; slowly, Aisha, now 32, became one of the
family.

Aisha's parents, Michael and Marjory Rogers, though did attend the
wedding, were more concerned with the clothes their daughter was now
wearing (the traditional shalwaar kameez) and what the neighbours
would think. Six years later, Aisha embarked on a mission to convert
them and the rest of her family, bar her sister ("I'm still working
on her). "My husband and I worked on my mum and dad, telling them
about Islam and they saw the changes in me, like I stopped answering
back!"

Her mother soon followed in her footsteps. Marjory Rogers changed
her name to Sumayyah and became a devout Muslim. "She wore the hijab
anddid her prayers on time and nothing ever mattered to her except
her connections with God."

Aisha's father proved a more difficult recruit, so she enlisted the
helpof her newly converted mother (who has since died of
cancer). "My mumand I used to talk to my father about Islam and we
were sitting in the sofa in the kitchen one day and he said: "What
are the words you saywhen you become a Muslim?" "Me and my mum just
jumped on top of him." Three years later, Aisha's brother
converted "over the telephone - thanks to BT", then his wife and
children followed, followed by her sister's son.

It didn't stop there. Her family converted, Aisha turned her
attentionto Cowcaddens, with its tightly packed rows of crumbling,
gray tenement flats. Every Monday for the past 13 years, Aisha has
held classes in Islam for Scottish women. So far she has helped to
convert over 30. The women come from a bewildering array of
backgrounds. Trudy, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a
former Catholic, attended Aisha's classes purely because she was
commissioned to carry out some research. But after six months of
classes she converted, deciding that Christianity was riddled
with "logical inconsistencies" . "I could tell she was beginning to
be affected by the talks", Aisha says. How could she tell? "I don't
know, it was just a feeling."

The classes include Muslim girls tempted by Western ideals and need
ingsalvation, practicing Muslim women who want an open forum for
discussion denied them at the local male-dominated mosque, and those
simply interested in Islam. Aisha welcomes questions. "We cannot
expect people blindly to believe."

Her husband, Mohammad Bhutta, now 41, does not seem so driven to
convert Scottish lads to Muslim brothers. He occasionally helps out
in the family restaurant, but his main aim in life is to ensure the
couple's five children grow up as Muslims. The eldest,
Safia, "nearly 14, alhumidlillah (Praise be to God!)", is not averse
to a spot of recruiting herself. One day she met a woman in the
street and carried her shopping, the woman attended Aisha's classes
and is now a Muslim.

"I can honestly say I have never regretted it", Aisha says of her
conversion to Islam. "Every marriage has its ups and downs and
sometimes you need something to pull you out of any hardship. But
the Prophet Peace by upon him, said: 'Every hardship has an ease.'
So when you're going through a difficult stage, you work for that
ease to come."

Mohammed is more romantic: "I feel we have known each other for
centuries and must never part from one another. According to Islam,
you are not just partners for life, you can be partners in heaven as
well, for ever. Its a beautiful thing, you know."