Hi I'm Cheryl Fatima I'm Abdullah Sameer's wife.
We had a video from before, we did our first video last week and I was just interviewing
Abdullah and many viewers were asking about me.
So we are doing a followup video and we are going to talk about how she became Muslim
and stuff like that.
So let's get to it then, first question is: What did you believe before you became a Muslim?
Okay so I was raised as a Pentecostal Christian.
My dad was Catholic and my mom Pentecost.
I was basically raised in the Pentecostal denomination, and I tried practising, I tried
believing, and so many things didn't make sense to me.
One of the major things was the trinity concept (3 in 1).
I couldn't make sense of it, so..
So, that's interesting because as a child even though you were taught a certain religion
to be true, everyone around you was following that religion, your parents were following
that religion,and you were taught certain values, yet you were still trying to see for
yourself does this belief make sense, and I think that's great, and that's called skepticism.
Skepticism is something wonderful because it allows us to take what we're told with
a grain of salt and to judge it and decide for ourselves what is true and what is not.
This is one of the tools that we have using our brain, that's a good thing I will take
from your story.
To move on, you were Christian and you didn't have many Muslims around you, you were living
on a small island, and you moved to a big city, how did you learn about Islam?
When I moved to a big city that's when I started meeting people of different faiths and cultures
and it was kinda like a culture shock, but it was really interesting.
I admired meeting people from all around because I was raised on a small island and surrounded
by Christians, same culture all that.
So it was quite interesting, I met some Muslims and they gave me lots of information about
Islam through books and I had a copy of the Quran.
We would have dialogues about religion and the more I learned the more interested I became
and I started doing lots of research and prayed to God for guidance and from there I decided
to accept Islam.
So what did you like about Islam and from what you seen about Muslims?
I really liked the idea of worshipping one God, because the Trinity didn't make sense
to me, and I liked that it also took all the prophets that the Christians believed in,
the same prophets, and that really resonated with me and the idea of one God really intrigued
me and I admired that.
Okay that's good!
So tell us, how was being married, how did it affect your faith?
It was a big support for me,in a time where my family was very unhappy with me for changing
my faith, and changing my way of life, and so you were really my support and were very
practising Muslim so you inspired me and taught me a lot, a lot more than the little I knew
at the time.
It definitely helped me.
How did the marriage affect your faith?
Or what were some of the challenges?
Some of the challenges that I can remember is hijab (head scarf).
I wasn't so strict about it before I met you, and you showed me the importance of wearing
the hijab, and really motivated me.
In the beginning it was kinda tough, especially in front of my family who already felt uncomfortable
with me being Muslim, and now I'm really putting it in their face with the hijab, so that was
certainly a challenge.
But I got over it, like everything in life, you adapt to it.
Another challenge was music, I was a big music lover and I grew up with music all around
me from church to every social setting, back home we were big on that.
Having to give that up was a challenge but I did it for the sake of God and I adapted.
So, incase people are wondering, there is a difference of opinion about whether music
is forbidden in Islam, and the more conservative opinion is that no music is allowed except
let's say vocals, and of course there's every opinion on the spectrum as in certain instruments
are allowed, certain types of music are allowed, or in certain situations like a wedding it's
allowed.
So we were going by the most conservative position, which is what I was following at
the time and I wanted her to follow as well, which is that very little music is allowed.
So we mainly listened to like religious kind of music.
At one point Sami Yusuf or stuff like that.
For the most part there was no music allowed in the house and we tried to listen to more
Quran rather than music.
Tell us how it was when I left Islam.
When you left Islam it was a very big shock, I was very sad and I did a lot of prayers
and doing a lot of research at that time to try to find the answers to your doubts, and
to get you back on track and yeah it was like a rollercoaster I guess of different emotions
and I just hoped that you would find the answers that would change your mind.
What social pressures did you face being with someone that was coming out as no longer a
Muslim?
Yeah it was a big shock to the whole community and I had a lot of sisters reach out to me,
even brothers actually, I had a lot of the Muslim community reach out to me.
I even had one sister tell me that I could stay at her house with all my kids, and I
guess they expected a divorce between us.
They were saying they would be supportive of that.
How is our marriage now?
How do you guys live together and how do you work things out?
I feel that our marriage is all about loyalty and commitment.
Many people wonder as an atheist how do you, are you just going to cheat on your wife because
you have no morals, no belief in God, no God standing over your head saying don't do that
or I will punish you.
This is actually a misconception of many people, they think that atheists have no morals, we
eat babies for fun.
It's actually not true, all humans have values that we have got from certain places, whether
it's from our culture, or from evolution of humans over the centuries, but for whatever
reason we have values.
Some of the values we have are very strong like empathy, the concept of guilt and shame
even without religion it's still there.
For me personally it's about committing to my relationship to you despite whether I believe
in God or not believe in God.
I believe in honesty and commitment, and obviously if this marriage wasn't valuable to me then
I wouldn't continue it.
I did continue it because it's valuable to me.
Last question was someone was asking how do we raise our kids?
Because obviously we have different beliefs.
So we teach them critical thinking and to search for the truth and you teach them what
you believe, I teach them what I believe, and they will decide for themselves, and that's
how we both found Islam right, by being skeptical and critical and looking into different ways
of life and we decided for ourselves.
Yeah, exactly.
What we thought was the truth.
That makes perfect sense.
So in conclusion what I want to say is that even though we may have different beliefs
in God, we still hold many of the same values and interests in life, and I believe that
what's most important and what holds people together and makes our world a peaceful place
is mutual love and respect.
Well said!
I really like that.
And I also want to add that it makes a lot of sense that a family stays together, we
have 5 kids together that need our loving family and they need both their dad and their
mom.
This is what family is about, the idea of breaking up a family over something like this
is a very painful and difficult thing to deal with in life, and I'm glad that we are able
to stay together.
I know many people in the world lost their spouses because of this, and I know many ex
muslims in the closet that are not able to tell even their own spouse that they don't
believe anymore because they fear losing their spouse.
They know that their inlaws will take their wife away and one case I had a friend in the
UK who told me that even his own mom and dad would side with his ex-wife for custody of
their children rather than him because he's not Muslim anymore, so he couldn't even tell
his parents that he's not Muslim anymore.
A lot of people have to hide this in order to keep the family together, so I am glad
we can be honest with each other and keep this together.
Thanks for watching guys, hope you enjoyed this interview.
Please leave followup questions in the comments or a response video if you like, and we'll
try to make another video with more details and more about our journey.
Bye!
Umm you knew a lot more than me at that time..
Still...
What do you mean?
I still know more than you..
(laughs) I don't know about that!