Aisha Bhutta, nee 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 Mecca. Aisha's
piercing blue eyes sparkle with evangelical zeal, she smiles with a
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."
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.
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 at16. "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 provd 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,
grey 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". Unlike Aisha,
Trudy has chosen not to wear the hijab, believing it to be a masculine
interpretation of the Koran. Her family don't know that she has
converted. "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, practising 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, alhumidlillah (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 by 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."
Tags: Islam Revert Muslim
