Aisha has lived in England all her life, she was raised by a Muslim father but Islam was never really forced upon her. She describes her father as mild mannered with a cultural Muslim identity only. Although Aisha describes her upbringing as strict and although her family all had Muslim names and never ate pork as was the custom of her faith, her family never prayed nor went to the mosque and did not follow any of the Muslim traditions.
The family would celebrate Christmas in a very secular way and there was never any mention of Christ and she had never heard of Jesus when she was growing up. Aisha went to university in London and following the terror attack on the twin towers in New York she became much more aware of her Muslim identity and wanted to get in touch with the religion of her roots. Aisha felt a strong sense of identity with the Muslim people and the Anti-Muslim rhetoric that grew after 9/11 increasingly offended her identity and her sense of solidarity with Islam began to rise up and grow. Aisha joined the Islamic society receiving all their pamphlets which was the first proper contact she had with Islam. For the first time she read the Koran, learning the sayings of Mohammed, becoming part of the Muslim brotherhood and became more integrated into the Muslim community.
Although she had spent a lot of time reading the Koran and various leaflets she was troubled by its Anti Semitic tone and sense of aggression. In 2007 as Aisha was going through this religious searching and seeking, she was approached by a Christian evangelist. He asked her if she had ever read the bible and if she would like to. Aisha told him that she had never read it but would be very interested to, but from a historical perspective only as she felt that it was such an important document. They did readings together mainly from the Gospels and it made an impact on her yet at the end of term she went home and forgot all about it.
Aisha had a very difficult summer for lots of reasons, she felt really depressed with a deep anxiety about life and how to live it. One night in a moment of real psychological anguish and with no one to turn to she just prayed. It was the first time she had really called out to God. She felt the most incredible outpouring of love, it was like the whole room was filled with love and Aisha felt great restoration and healing and all the difficulties giving rise to her anguish vanished in an instant. She immediately knew, there was no doubt in her mind that this was Jesus’s forgiveness and she was going through the kind of rebirth that she had read about. All of a sudden she had faith, she had a belief and although she did not know enough about her new faith to evangelise she felt a strong need to defend it.
Shortly after she went to see an uncle who was a devout Muslim and he told her how the bible had been corrupted and told her that Christianity was a lie. This began to put doubts into her mind and opened up lots of questions which led her to want to settle the matter once and for all, because her desire was to dedicate herself to the one true God. Aisha began to use the internet as a resource for the various truth claims and engaged with Christians who had studied apologetic's, which examined the case for Christianity and the Muslim objections to it. Having examined the viewpoints on all sides she came to the logical conclusion that the attacks on Christianity did not stand proper scrutiny. Her Dad thought she had been brainwashed by Christians and that she had wanted to convert because of the negative portrayal of Muslims in the media and a fear of prejudice against her, the irony being that the outside attack had initially brought her closer to Islam.
Aisha’s mum was really unhappy about her conversion but because she was not 'fundamentalist' in her views there was never any risk of being ostracised, they just thought she had been led astray. After a while they became used to her Christian faith and now they ask her to pray for them, even though she is the only one in the family who has a strong faith. Aisha now has the creator of the whole universe as her father and an amazing sense of being part of Gods family with a strong fellowship. She has a new life, she is not the same person, she is more at peace and not tossed around by the waves of circumstance. Whatever pain, whatever difficulty, she just asks Jesus for help and feels blessed to know that she has the freedom and salvation that Jesus has given her