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How Aisha Bhutta
Converted her Parents, Family and 30 Friends to Islam
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 Makkah. Aisha's piercing blue eyes sparkle with
evangelical zeal, she smiles with 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 at 16.
"When I said the words, it was like 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 eldest son 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 and did 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 help of her newly converted mother (who has since died of
cancer).
"My mum and 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 say when 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
attention to 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
needing salvation, 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, Al-Hamdulillah (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 be 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."
Thursday : 27/02/2003
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