By Nur’Aisha Binte Johari Mohd Zain

هُوَ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ فِى سِتَّةِ أَيَّامٍۢ ثُمَّ ٱسْتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلْعَرْشِ ۚ يَعْلَمُ مَا يَلِجُ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَا يَخْرُجُ مِنْهَا وَمَا يَنزِلُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ وَمَا يَعْرُجُ فِيهَا ۖ وَهُوَ مَعَكُمْ أَيْنَ مَا كُنتُمْ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌۭ ٤

It is He who created the heavens and earth in six days and then established Himself above the Throne. He knows what penetrates into the earth and what emerges from it and what descends from the heaven and what ascends therein; and He is with you wherever you are. And Allāh, of what you do, is Seeing.
Quran 57:4

Assalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.

It is now the second third of the night as I write this; most souls are beginning to drift away to wherever they are allowed to roam. I, however, am still sitting at my desk whilst my two cats roam about in the house—my mother is asleep in the next room. Under the watchful eye of my Rabb, I am stressing over how I’d like to narrate my journey back to Islam.

How about…starting with a little peek into the window of my childhood?

I am a born Muslim, raised in a strict and religious household where the words of God would often be used to restrict rather than liberate. My younger self knew fear before love, felt loneliness before companionship and held distrust before acceptance—religion in her eyes a tool to traumatise rather than to heal. SubhanAllah…after many years, it felt like nothing could reach my hardened heart. Religious trauma began taking over like pesky vines; not long after the Clinical Depression and Anxiety diagnoses followed suit and my will to live slowly disappeared.

It was also around this time that I began to recognise the profound abject sense of loneliness residing within me.

Growing up in my home as an only child—having been taught to be hyper-independent and not rely on anybody—even before I knew how to tie my shoelaces did something to me. I understand, retrospectively, that these principles were taught to me out of love and survival rather than malice; my parents were only trying to ensure that I could stand firmly rooted to the ground even when calamity struck and I would find myself all alone. This was further exacerbated by the splitting up of my parents!

Still, nothing could negate the fact that no person, object or vice that I turned to helped me feel less alone. This is where I’ll add a little caveat for you, dear readers, to note that I should have consulted the words of the Qur’an (which at that time was collecting dust on my shelf, astaghfirullah) instead of turning away from it. But fret not—this is a story of our Rabb’s Mercy. And His Mercy did touch me eventually—alhamdulillah—when He made the world experience a global pandemic.

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا۟ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ ۗ

“Indeed, Allāh will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”
Quran 13:11

The year was 2020; I was in my second year of completing my Bachelor’s in Tokyo.

Word of the pandemic and the lockdown began to spread almost as rapidly as the virus itself. The global borders began to close one by one and my international friends and I were scrambling to get out of Japan. I ended up having to stay, and face my first-ever Ramadhan alone whilst stuck in my apartment—thousands of miles away from home and loved ones. The loneliness returned, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I began to grieve hard.

‘WHO IS GOING TO HELP ME?’ I REMEMBERED THINKING. ‘I ONLY HAVE MYSELF TO RELY ON, RIGHT?’

The ebb and flow of time began to suffocate me and I was growing increasingly desperate for some semblance of normalcy in a highly abnormal period. That was when I got back into the art of writing and sending out personalised, hand-written letters to friends and family via post! Excited, I began collecting people’s favourite colours, and designs as well as quotes/phrases of hope that they lived by. That was when a dear university friend of mine sent me her favourite Quranic verse—

At-Tawbah 9:40

لَا تَحْزَنْ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَنَا ۖ

“Do not grieve; Indeed Allah is with us”
Quran 9:40

—and the entire axis of my universe shifted.

Admittedly, it took a while before the weight of the verse properly sunk in. Nevertheless, when it finally did, it grounded my trembling heart, restless soul and tired mind. Alhamdulillah, I was never alone; my Rabb who is Al-Wadud and Al-Latif (the Most Loving, Most Subtle) was with me the entire time. As a result, the Ramadhan of 2020 was the most secure I felt thus far in my life. Sure, I was cooking my iftar meals alone and putting on podcasts to fill up the vacuum of silence, but I felt the company of my Rabb after a very long, long time.

Alhamdulillah, my journey to truly assuming the identity and lifestyle of a Muslim has so far been an interesting and less lonely one. Now, when grief threatens to consume my fragile heart once again, I tighten my grip on the anchor of my Rabb’s promise that He is with us.

He ﷻ is with me.