By Eunice Safiyah Tan

Honestly, when Ustaz Sameer first approached Abbas and I, Eunice, to be a guest speaker during his class, I was very apprehensive. I’m the last person to be giving advice to other people, but I know that one shouldn’t deny the request of a teacher. So Insha’Allah, our experiences would be of little benefit to others.

Ustaz wanted us to focus more on our challenges as an interracial couple but we felt like talking about Ramadhan resonate more with us because the blessed month is coming up and also our families were not the most cultural of families. We didn’t have many challenges with regards to our difference in race other than the occasional racist comments from my Chinese parents and the language barrier for both of us.

I think our challenges mostly arose from our different upbringing, with me being raised as a Christian and Abbas going through 13 years of madrasah.

I spent my childhood days as a practicing Christian and I grew up with a close group of friends who met and discussed religion every Sunday. They were integral to my growing up years and I relied a lot on religion to ground me as a person.

Abbas on the other hand, grew up in a good Muslim family and had the privilege to attend a madrasah for his growing up years. However when he entered polytechnic, he started to rebel a little. He had the information on Islam, but not the knowledge.

So my first Ramadan was 4 months after I started practicing Islam properly. I say “properly” because I converted when I was staying with my parents who were strongly opposed to me converting to Islam and I did not have the courage to practice Islam while living in their house. So it was only after we got married and moved out that I started to try and practice Islam the way it should be practiced.

Because I had only just started practising, I was still getting used to all the practices and nuances and my fast was very focused on the outer fast aka the abstinence of food and drink. My ibadah did not go past the very basic—5 prayers and no food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

It was still difficult for me at that time though, I had no prior experience fasting and I often got indigestion. And I think one thing that Abbas learnt the hard way this Ramadhan was how much to push me and how much not to push me. Being a born Muslim, he has grown up with all these practices and it’s hard for him to understand how it’s like doing it for the first time as well. But Alhamdulillah, he was very patient and we learnt together through the years.

One thing I wish Abbas had done more was to prepare on how Ramadan with family and Eid was going to be like. We live alone and we didn’t visit our families as often because we were living in Bukit Panjang and they were in Bedok. So I was still very awkward with his family and Eid especially was a huge culture shock.

His family had a tradition of going to the stadium to pray Eid and I honestly had no idea what was going on. I was just following his sister and mother around, trying to remember the steps of the Eid prayers and feeling so relieved when I could be with Abbas again after the prayers and khutbah ended. It was chaotic for me. But honestly, I don’t know how he could have prepared me better and I don’t know what questions to ask as well because I’ve never been through it. And for him, he’s been through it so many times that it’s just another year to him.

I was really scared for my second Ramadhan because I felt like I had to do better than my previous one (as it should be every year). But it felt like I had a checklist of things to achieve this Ramadhan.

Abbas and I would sit down and talk about our goals before each Ramadhan and reflect on how our Ramadan has been when it has ended. And I’m a person who likes to go all out to achieve my goals once I’ve decided on them. For example, if I was going to pray terawih, I have to pray all 30 nights, except the days where I cannot pray because of my monthly cycle. So that puts a lot of pressure on me and I felt like Ramadan was just so many more things on my plate that I needed to learn and do.

I felt very lonely in my journey because the only Muslims around me were Abbas and his family. Sure we attended classes, but that just provided us with the knowledge, and not the community I was yearning for. I grew up as a Christian with a lot of support from my family and friends, and I yearned for that in my journey as a Muslim as well.

During our third year, things in our marriage were more settled and I believe my foundation was more firm. We also moved into our own place which was in Bedok and hence we spent more time with our families.

During that year, I really wanted to understand more about Ramadhan. From what I’ve been doing the past two years, I don’t think I’ve truly understood why Ramadhan is such a blessed month for Muslims.

This was also the year I started to try wearing the hijab full time. I was super resistant to wearing the hijab at first, so I made a few conditions with Allah ﷻ to convince myself to wear the hijab.

The first condition was that I wanted to wear the hijab full-time before I became a mother. The second condition was that if I were to hear about wearing the hijab randomly in my day to day life—from a video, podcast or conversations with people other than Abbas—when I wasn’t specifically looking for it, and if it happened 10 times, I would wear the hijab full-time.

I also tried to wear the hijab full-time during an overseas trip to Japan because I thought it would be easier doing it where no one knows me and we had a lot of time. It still had its challenges though and I wanted to give up many times but Alhamdulillah, now I’m wearing the hijab full-time.

I also met Abbas’ extended family this year and the vast difference between my small family and his family was overwhelming, yet so heart-warming at the same time. I was really glad to have his family because my own family wasn’t really there for me.

We celebrated Ramadhan on lockdown this year. For Abbas and myself, it was really a blessing in disguise.

I felt like this was my actual conversion because honestly when I took my shahada, I wasn’t really ready to take the leap. But Abbas told me that I have to try it to experience it. For example, describing the taste of durian to someone. You can never come close to the actual taste of durian until you try it for yourself.

And I think this year, I truly experienced the sweetness of Islam. I just had so much awe and gratitude for the religion.

This year, Abbas and I had different goals. I was still not confident in my recitation of Arabic so I sat with Abbas during his taddarus session, where one would read one juz per day, and read the translation of that juz. I really loved the experience of sitting with Abbas, doing something together, separately. It was definitely one of the highlights of this Ramadhan.

One of the things I especially appreciated was the ease of the religion. During my 23 years as a Christian, I often struggled to remember God. But now, with a little bit more knowledge of Islam, I realised that the formula has been handed to me. Islam teaches us to remember Allah ﷻ in everything we do—drinking water, wearing clothes, walking, dhikr, our prayers, everything is to help us to remember Allah ﷻ. I’m so grateful for the formula even though it’s always a work in progress to do it better.

Another thing that made this Ramadhan special was that it was 4 months after I had a miscarriage. I think I was still healing and I depended a lot on Allah ﷻ for comfort. His words in the Quran and the words of the hadiths really tied me through this period. It also made me realise how reliant we, as humans, are on Allah ﷻ, but yet fail to thank Him for it.

I was the mother to the unborn child in my tummy yet I had zero power to feed or help the child to grow healthily. Similarly, I have zero power to help myself breathe, move my muscles or do anything, yet I failed to realise that it’s Allah ﷻ who is keeping me alive.

Our fifth Ramadhan was vastly different because now there was another variable in the equation—a three-month old child. For all the past years, we had gone through Ramadhan as a couple and I had no idea what to expect going through Ramadhan with a child was going to be like. Much less a three-month old child.

I was still trying to adjust to being a mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, and now a wife to my child’s father. So Ramadhan was difficult. I was sleep deprived and there were a lot of unexpected situations.

We also spent more time with Abbas’ family since the mosques were still difficult to go to because of Covid and that in itself presented a whole set of challenges.

Terawih was often stressful, not knowing if Hafsa could get through the eight rakaat without crying, but not wanting to inconvenience others. Abbas’ mum would often ask the helper to take care of Hafsa while we prayed terawih and I felt really bad because I felt like I was taking away her opportunity to pray terawih. But Abbas changed my perspective by saying that she might have even more rewards for doing so and we just have to think good of Allah ﷻ.

This year was when Converts Central was founded as well and we had an online converts Eid where Abbas and I made so many good friends and I finally had the community I was yearning for. When we could finally have big gatherings again, Eid was amazing.

Allah’s plans are amazing and perfect. Both Abbas and I agree that if we had come across the Converts Central community any earlier, perhaps in my first two years of conversion, we might not have integrated as well into the community because of where we were in our journey. Everyone in Converts Central strives so much and it would have put even more pressure on ourselves when we were not ready.

Looking back at how all the past years have been a really gratifying experience. One that I’m glad that I took just a little time to document because humans really forget so quickly. I hope that my experience has been beneficial to you and please forgive me for my shortcomings.