I Got Attacked and Beaten Up Pretty Badly! - Conversion Story of Ameena Blake

[Music] what was the thing that made you question your beliefs what was the major challenge that you had to face you were the only a hijabi bus driver at that time right my friend called me for the geneza i'd never been to a funeral before and i never saw a dead person before i got attacked beaten up pretty badly they stole my car that i had at the time they stole money from me god i don't know whether you're there or you're not there but if you are there i was blown away whoa i want to first ask you who is usteda amina blake can you tell us briefly about your life okay so my background is i was born to a 17 year old girl in chester which is near liverpool she decided to adopt me out so i was adopted as a child by a family who lived in sheffield so i came to sheffield and that's where i lived and lived now so i'm adopted child only child my father was a professor of english language and linguistics at sheffield university and my mother was a poet and artist unfortunately both of them have passed away now and so yeah i you know i had quite an interesting upbringing very academic but i was a rebellious child a tomboy actually i loved horses and cars and lorries and buses and not dresses or anything girly at all how was your life in regards to faith what were you believing in my faith i was brought up as a christian which was actually at the request of you know my birth mother and i was sent to sunday school which i loved but i always i questioned christianity really from quite a young age from being a teenager but i loved the stories of the prophets and the stories in the bible we used to sit in sunday school and the teacher would really nicely teach us the stories of you know asa salam and moses and ibrahim and i really used to enjoy that as a child but by the time i was i guess maybe 15 or i'd asked questions of the bible and didn't get convincing amstels about its authenticity and its kind of foundation so at that point really i believed in god but i wouldn't have identified myself as any particular religion what was the thing that made you question your beliefs and when was it when i found that there were contradictions in the bible i found out from the actually the vicar he was very good and he was very honest and i said well you know what's this you know why should i believe in god why should i believe in the bible and he said well you have to believe in your heart and i said well what's the proof so i asked him these questions you know well you've got to believe in your heart it's a feeling and i thought well i believe in god but actually if this text if this book can't uh prove that it's the word of god and it has contradictions in it and actually if it was god's word in my opinion it would be perfect with no contradictions then actually i don't think i can follow that what were your thoughts about islam well i'd always mixed with muslims even as a child my father but as a professor he had students who were muslim and so my first contact with islam actually was through a girl that i used to go night clubbing with as a as a 17 18 year old i was about probably about 18. and at the time i left home at 16. i mean this is how rebellious i was got myself a council flat a council property this tiny little property what happened is i mixed with the wrong people and some not very nice people sent some people to to basically attack me in my apartment where i was living um so i got attacked and um beaten up pretty badly they stole my car that i had at the time they stole money from me and actually subhanallah allah subhanahu ta'ala places people in the situation where they are forced to do something because otherwise your life is never going to change there has to be this disruption in your life in order to have change and so as a result of this attack i was too scared to go back to my flat and the place i went to and was my muslim friend who i was nightclubbing with and she said no come and stay at my house. so i went to stay at her house and she only had one book in the house and this book is al quran and the quran it just was the english and arabic version and so i said to her because i was bored teenager i was bored and i was oh look at this book can i have a look so she's okay go have a wash wash your hands and you can open the book and have a look so i opened the book and i saw subhanallah i saw the stories that i'd seen and loved in my sunday school days and i was like wow that's familiar because it's school this is really important to note in the west at school you're taught islam christianity as two completely separate things there's no uh autonomy or or comparison between god and allah allah is for muslims and god is for christians it's like they're different gods different religions and that's what i had understood and so i started asking questions to my friend what's this book why is it so similar to christianity so she introduced me to her neighbor and he actually said give me some time and i'm going to bring you some answers but he must have gone to his chair and the sheriff obviously gave him some versus some ayad which were relevant to what i was asking which was scientific proof i said wow that's amazing and then he added something that was key was that oh by the way this was revealed to an illiterate guy in a desert like 1400 years ago i was blown away whoa so this brother he gave us this video called rasala the message and it was two and a half or three hours longer forgotten allah subhanahu ta'ala made me come into the room where the tv was in the corner at the key moment near the end of the film when bilal radhilan he's on the kaaba and he makes the adhaan and i heard the advan and it was like my whole being was immersed in a warm fizzy feeling what like completely enveloped of course this is so i had this halawa tiliman i remember turning to my friend and i said to her i want to become muslim and i want to do this like now how did your family and close circle react to this okay well because it was pre-911 i think it was a lot easier because there was still this element of multiculturalism in in british society anyway and so when i became muslim um i remember i went and told my parents in a very clumsy way and i think that's what lots of new muslims do my father he thought it was a phase that i was going through and my mum she was concerned about about me being oppressed you know not being able to work and all these kind so they did have concerns but not the same type of concerns as people who you know have children who become muslim or family members now but your father didn't take you seriously but he didn't take me seriously at first but once he realised how islam grounded me and made me much more sensible much less headstrong i was much uh made me a much kinder person made me a much nicer person alhamdulillah and so i think they realized that islam was actually very good for me and wasn't detrimental what was the major challenge that you had to face after you became muslim one of the main challenges i suppose was gaining knowledge i really really wanted to gain knowledge and i wanted to i was so excited about being muslim and really when i became muslim all i really knew was that's pretty much it and but i thought i was like the greatest year on the earth because i had this new thing and i thought i have to gain knowledge if i want to give this beautiful message of islam i have to gain knowledge and that was the next part of my journey from whom you could get this knowledge and what did your quest turn out to be okay well my quest was very much a spiritual quest but i didn't realize that at the time now again we go back to the idea of strangeness of loneliness and many muslims and new muslims will talk about this feeling and this experience of loneliness in quite a negative manner and it's only actually been in the last few years that i realized that it's something that is choreographed by allah subhanahu wa tala and it's very very important to experience this why because when you become muslim or when you start embracing your spirituality you get to the point that first of all you are asking other people to help you so i would ask my friends teach me to pray i was desperate to pray i would ask and ask and i got really frustrated when nobody knew how to teach me how to pray everyone was saying inshallah nothing happened and this carried on until a point in time when i realized that actually i shouldn't be asking people that's not the first port of call the first pulse of call is asking allah subhanahu ta'ala and there was this guy in the phone box this really tall built mixed raised guy he was looking at me from the phone box and all of a sudden he opens the phone box and he sticks his head out and he says you're muslim and he said wait there i was like when somebody like that size tells you to wear you just wait so i waited he picked up the phone and dialed a number and then the phone came out of the phone box the with his hand and he um he said here this is sister tracy talk to her and she subhanallah became not just my mentor and my teacher she also sowed the seeds for me becoming an usteda myself she taught me how to pray she taught me the li man she showed me the correct way to be muslim she told me about the hijab and actually she was an answer to my daughter from allah subhanahu ta'ala subhanallah amazing what about the islamic practices like salah five times a day and fasting for a whole month were they difficult for you my journey actually into the salah was an amazing one because again i was learning how to pray i'd been given a small tracy gave me a small book to to read from to learn how to pray and i was on that process but i wasn't praying yet now at the same time a friend of mine's father fell off a ladder he had a heart attack and his muslim family he fell off this ladder had a heart attack and passed away when i used to go to this friend's house he was the uncle who would come in and he'd go to the kitchen he'd make wuvu and he would pray in front of the gas fire that they had in the room that's what i i always knew that you know he was the one who he was the guy who prayed my friend called me for the janeza i'd never been to a funeral before and i never saw a dead person before so in pakistani culture it's very different so what they do is they have the the body in the in the coffin in the uh the room in the home and they the face remains open until halas they close it ready for the uh and so she said look come in and see because my dad really thought a lot of you can come in and see him i was really really nervous and she says no no come it's fine it's fine and i looked into this coffin and as i'm sitting here walloh this brother was lying there and he was smiling he had the most beautiful smile and he had noor coming from his face and at that moment allah reminded me and gave me the vision of this brother doing his salah so i immediately connected this smile is a result of this summer from that time on i didn't miss a salah you weren't mentioning you were the only hijabi bus driver at that time right since i was a young child i loved big vehicles and i wanted to like i used to work on a farm and volunteer on a farm and tractors and things like that i used to love them um and so when i became old enough to drive in the uk you have to be 21 to drive a bus i was already muslim and i was already hijabi but i thought well why should a hijab stop me from driving a bus alhamdulillah i you know i moved forward and then you know went to this bus station insisted that they give me the application form you have two barriers to get through there first of all three first of all the fact that you're a woman and a very young woman secondly you're a muslim woman wearing a hijab so you have to get through all that mess but then of course you have to get through the barriers of the muslim community like the haram police you know come and say oh well you know you're hijab and what are you doing and you're mixing with men and you're all the rest of this stuff actually the rest of the people on my group who were trainees were all men and i was the only one who passed the test first time how did you manage to keep your faith and what should be done to prevent the other people leaving islam there are several different things to consider here firstly new muslims need mentorship they need one-on-one support in order to put them on a simple and correct path you know people presume that because allah subhanahu ta'ala has given you this man and this hidayah to become muslim then you automatically have a strong iman and taqwa you don't it's like expecting a newborn baby to stand up and run a marathon it ain't gonna happen so you need that support i think on the other level it's very important to remember that being muslim is a process and throughout that process we need to have structures in place whether it's social structures or its emotional structures or psychological structures in order to help people to move forward do you think that islamophobia is growing in the world nowadays and what should be done to you know stop this from happening islamophobia is definitely growing in the world today media is a massive platform for this we as an ummah must pull together you know allah says and do not be divided amongst yourselves because when you're divided we're weak we have to pull together even just on this subject and create wisdom we have to have the elm and the hikmah through the through the words of allah the guidance of allah subhanahu talaha to be able to create a counter narrative that is understandable by the world now how we do that is up to us to decide but what we cannot do is to sit and be silent because when you have silence you have a space and space will always be filled by something and currently it's filled by negativity we are the representatives so why don't we start representing islam in the most beautiful way because it's a beautiful faith and many people are searching for this i'm going to go to a story actually of the rasulallah was that was media then right as well media has been always there it's words and when in in the uh the time when rasulallah entered mecca the media was he's going to kill us all he's going to slaughter us all it's going to be a bloodbath you know everyone was terrified right of these these muslims because they oppressed them they'd been bad to them but when rasulullah was entered entered back into mecca he gathers the people together and he says what do you expect from me what do you expect from me and he uses the words of the in the quran in surah yusuf and he talks about allah as being the most merciful of the merciful and he destroys that narrative now if we can give a positive narrative then it doesn't matter what impression the media and politicians give because that positivity is already inside people's hearts what is the best way to call people to islam do you think there are different ways of calling people to islam depending on where they are in their lives when you live islam amilo salihat you are the person who is trustworthy your person who is the best of human beings you are doing islam rather than saying islam and if when we look at the um the practice of not just the uh rasulullah yusuf ali all these prophets the first stages are building this trust with the people because if you can't build trust with the people if you can't be the best that you can be why do you expect people to listen to you when you give them a message of truth if you've been not behaving appropriately in the first place what impressed you the most about our professor is oh that's a that's a deep deep deep question everything is the answer everything every time i read something or learn something new about rasulallah i love him more but there's one particular thing that when i learnt this thing i just i was crying subhanallah and this is actually that there was a there's a beautiful incident when rasool allah is growing weak and so it's close to the end and he's being walking with two of the companions and he says i miss my brothers i miss my brothers and his companions said ya rasulullah we're here with you he said no he said you are my companions he said my brothers are the ones who will believe in me but they never met me if you had a chance to speak all the non-muslims in the world and you have only one minute what would you like to say to them what i would say is put prejudices to one side open your heart and think about you know peaceful hearts how you want your heart and your life to be peaceful and this void many people have a void of a spiritual void filled by something positive you know i always say to people and like you know my non-muslim friends when they ask me you know if you seek the truth if you open your heart and you put your prejudices to one side and you genuinely seek the truth and pray god i don't know whether you're there or you're not there but if you are there guide me to the truth and then see what happens [Music] you

Channel: Towards Eternity

Views: 1,132,985

Keywords: islam, muslim, towards etenity, ameena black, towards eternity ameena black, ameena black interview, converting to islam, convertion story, uk muslim, british muslim, becaming muslim, became islam, convert story, muslim convert story, muslim convertion story, journey to islam, why islam, why muslim

Id: WgVH2q300Hw

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 22 2022