hey everyone welcome to my channel i'm natasha the young conventional aussie and today i want to
share with you my journey to islam i have a lot of information that i want to put into this video so
what i'm going to do is break this video into two smaller videos and that way it'll just prevent me
from repeating myself and waffling on a little bit and it'll also be easier for you guys to follow
so with that said let's get started i grew up in sydney australia and i lived there
till i was about 23 years of age and then i moved to the uk where i still live today
i came from a christian background a christian household my mom actually works for the church and
also is a volunteer for the church and my stepdad is a volunteer as well so they both play quite a
crucial role within our local community and on top of that i went to a catholic high school and um so
in australia the grading systems is a little bit different to the uk so it goes from year seven to
twelve um so i studied religion as a part of that that whole time and it was kind of when i was at
high school that i started questioning my religion and started questioning my faith because i was
starting to get more intrigued i was starting to question things because when you're young and i
know when i was young i just kind of went along with the flow i did what you know my parents said
i did what the minister said i believed what i was told to believe and it wasn't obviously
until high school that i then started to kind of get a mind from my own and started to question
things that i was being told um because it just wasn't sitting right with me it wasn't settling
with me so naturally i just was asking questions and i was asking questions most of my both to my
teachers at school and also to the minister at our church and the responses i was getting
were just never like never satisfied me and i always found myself asking 10 more questions
about that one question because it just never sat it never sat right and i never walked away getting
an answer that i was like oh yeah that like that makes sense it was always like oh okay yeah like
and again i was just kind of going on with like with the flow of things and then i got to like
my towards the end of my schooling and i just kind of lost interest in religion i still believe that
there was a god and i still believe that there was one god but in terms of like me going to church
every sunday and also going to on church to church other days of the week and just my general
interest in it i just lost it um and it remained that way up until really recently if i'm honest
um so from that point i think we'll fast forward to 2016 when i moved to the uk
and i met my now husband whose name is osman and he was a non-practicing muslim
and what i mean by that is he you know he ate halal meats and he stayed away from the things
that he knew he had to steer clear of but he wasn't praying um he wasn't fasting through
ramadan and he wasn't doing those things that associated him with the islamic way of life so
i never really concerned myself with his religion i never asked any questions it was very much
an unspoken about topic in our relationship both because i was uncomfortable about it
and also because we just never really needed to talk about it so why would we
and then um something something changed so again like let's move forward another three years
and up until really recently so it was may about may this year and i noticed um osmond doing little
things that he hadn't done before like saying alhamdulillah after our daughters would sneeze
he would want to say a prayer for them when they were going to bed and we actually recently had
our second daughter in july alhamdulillah and he wanted to say a prayer for her when she was born
which didn't happen with our first daughter and so little things like that started creeping in
and so i knew something was going on and so naturally i questioned him about it and yeah like
he he just said to me well yeah like i'm i want to start practicing again um you know i wanted
to come to you about it but i felt really anxious about coming to you i felt really nervous about
coming to you and i didn't know how to approach it with you and the reason he felt like that was
totally legitimate because if i'm being completely honest um yeah i i didn't like the religion
i didn't like what i knew of it and from what i knew which was very media driven obviously we know
that's not the truth but at the time i thought i knew enough to know that i didn't like it
um so of course he's gonna feel that way about it about telling me um so anyway he's told me
now that he wants to start practicing again and immediately i felt angry scared confused
um upset every emotion under the sun i think passed through me but the biggest one of all was i
was so uncomfortable i couldn't help but question like where does this leave me and where does this
leave our two daughters because like i'm not a muslim they're not muslim so where to from here
and i actually it's really quite funny looking back on it now but i actually remember screaming
at him saying like i'm never going to be a muslim and i'm never going to support you being a muslim
and it is funny to look back at it now because clearly i'll have other plans for me which i
didn't know at the time um but yeah so i was really it was a really tense and awkward time and
i think it's really important to note in this part that we weren't married at the time so we
only got married recently um in october of this year so really really recently um so and i think
me not accepting his religion and him always feeling a little bit like even if he wanted
to practice he felt like he was never probably comfortable to practice because of how i felt
and that was creating this invisible barrier between us that neither of us knew was there
until it was gone and just like our relationship completely changed so
i'm at the stage where i'm super uncomfortable i don't know what to do with myself it was i think
i remained this way for maybe like a week and then it was like i woke up one morning and someone had
just slapped me in the face and was just like what are you doing why are you letting this
like why are you letting this affect you so much what like what is wrong with you
how could i be so judgmental of something that i knew nothing about
like if i really open-heartedly reflected on my feelings towards islam i knew that i
didn't really have any factual information it was all information that i'd gained from the media
or also information that i gained from other people who had a negative attitude towards islam
so both of those sources were not really reputable and were not really reliable so i kind of was like
okay i'm gonna do my own research and and i'll go from there so i secretly started watching videos
on youtube i started reading a lot i started like you know collecting pdfs and reading those
and slowly but surely i started to feel less and less um uncomfortable with it and i remember
the first thing that completely like intrigued me was i was really always uncomfortable when
osmond would refer to god as allah like it would just i just felt really awkward with it and i was
just kind of always like why don't you just call it like god god like that's like that's that's
how you call god is god like i was just i never got it it never like sat with me
i never understood and the first thing that i learned so i was watching a three-part series
on youtube and it's called understanding islam and i will link it for you in this description because
if you're someone like me at the very beginning of your journey or if you're looking into islam and
don't really know a lot about it then this was a really good starting point because it doesn't
really bombard you but it gives you really good information um just to start you off
with so anyway so i was watching this three part series of understanding islam and the first thing
that the teacher said was what allah means and all it is is the arabic word for god and immediately i
just had this like epiphany i was just like oh like that's that's it like my goodness and and
like immediately i just felt so much better about it and so much less uncomfortable it was just so
strange but it really intrigued me to to find out okay so i've had this really strong emotion
towards something so small so what else am i going to find out that i feel really negatively towards
that i shouldn't feel negative towards at all so i kept watching i kept reading
and then osman caught me he caught me watching some videos and again he was like oh like what's
going on what's happening and so i said to him like you know i've been doing some research and
obviously he was really happy that i was opening my mind and actually learning about it
um and you know i said at that point i said to him you know i feel like i've gotten as much as i can
from you know where i'm looking and you know i need something else like do you think i should
read the quran do you think that would be helpful for me or do you think it will be a little bit too
much too soon and he was really supportive and he was like no absolutely like read the quran
definitely like if you have any questions like write them down bring them to me if if
he couldn't so he was saying if i couldn't find the answers he was going to find him
from other people that were reliable and made me make sure that he came back with an answer for me
within the next couple of days and he did every single time every single question and i will do
a separate video on all of the questions i have kept them all all the questions that i had about
the crime because i think it's really important that from my perspective of knowing nothing
and reading the quran and having all these questions like it really brought islam together
for me and really really helped me so i will do a separate video on that inshallah and anyway so
i was reading and reading and i just gave birth to our second daughter in july so i had a lot of time
on my hands to read whilst i was breastfeeding so i was up a lot of the night breastfeeding again so
i was just reading and then during the day sitting around i had like a lot of time to read so that's
what i did and i think it was a couple of weeks and i'd already gotten past halfway and i'd had
pages of questions and i was getting really really into it and i was getting to the point where i
started to believe what i was reading and it was starting to kind of impact how i was feeling um
and you know i i spoke to osman about this and i said you know like this is what i'm reading and
you know i believe it and he said well that's really good you know like that's that's fantastic
what like like he he was just kind of in awe that i had come so far in such a short time and
from that point that my continue of reading and learning and my growth towards islam my journey
started to change so originally my journey was like i was only doing this so that i could
support and understand my partner who obviously is now my husband but my partner at the time
and now it was becoming a journey for me of actually islam is starting to look like
it could be a part of my life so where do i go from here and this kind of went on for a few weeks
and i was getting more and more and more hooked and then i just kind of i had a bit of a freak out
moment i had a bit of a meltdown and osmond asked me to watch a video on youtube and i was just like
no like i'm not interested i don't want to watch anything and i don't want to read i'm not i'm just
going to stop reading like and i remember saying to him i was just like can you just stop asking me
to watch things can you just stop playing things around me like i just i want to take a step back
because i'm feeling really overwhelmed with all of this and reflecting i was feeling so
overwhelmed because it was starting to really like take a hold of my heart and
i was getting really scared because what did this mean for me and what did this mean for now my
my life and how i'm going to live my life and what changes will i have to make in order to adapt to
what islam expects of me and so that's a really scary thing and so yeah i just i just wanted to
be left alone i didn't want to talk about it i didn't want it i didn't want it in my face i just
wanted to be clear of it and that lasted maybe like three four days and in those three four days
any time i had to myself i was like i just want to read or i just want to watch a video but i was
like no no i don't like no take a step back take a step back because it was just way too much and i
let my thoughts get the better of me and all all i could think at the time was
things like you know i think i should say in this part definitely one of my biggest tests
is how i worry too much about what people think of me and what people's expectations are of me
and so at this point all i cared about was like what will my family think
what will my friends think will i have to wear a hijab will i have to cover um
like will i be out like wear my dresses in summer will i be able to wear shorts and you need to
remember as well like i'm from australia so i'm from a very hot country and culturally i mean we
wear flip-flops short shorts and tank tops every day and summer like that is a normal outfit so
obviously like then things such as like cultural things started going through my head like
like what about christmas what about easter um you know all of the other things that
i live my life by now i'm gonna have to give up and i was really letting this take over me i was
really really letting this take over me and i spoke to a few a few people about it and then
i started actually talking to my friends about it because i was like oh so this is what i've
been reading and i was almost seeking validation from them like okay if they accept me like this is
good this is a good starting point because again i i really care about what people think of me
and so naturally like this is a big change i'm gonna care what people think as much as i don't
want to i'm going to and that's just the truth so yeah i started i started seeking validation and
again this went on for a little while and then i started to just get really frustrated with myself
because i was already thinking and acting like i was a muslim
but i wasn't really you know moving forward anyway because i was just so caught up with
the things i would have to give up and the things i would have to change about me
and so yeah i was just i was just stuck at limbo and like osmond just came up to me
one one of the days and was just like look you like you can't are you going to be able to just
forget about everything you've read are you able to just forget everything you've read forget
that you've believed everything you've read and just go on with life as per normal as you
would have done i was like well no like i can't just forget that with the things that i've read
um and and that was it was such a difficult time for me because i was so caught up in
what was going on around me that i wasn't letting i wasn't doing something for me
yet again i was doing what i thought other people wanted me to do and i was doing something and i
or i wasn't in this case i wasn't doing something for me i was trying to stick to what everyone else
thought that i should be and you know all my life i've been that way i've been someone that
does everything based on what i think people want me to do if that makes sense so i'm a bit like i
just kind of you know blend in with everybody and fit in and do things so that i do fit in and this
was going to be like my only decision that i've ever made that was 100 done for me and only for me
and between the relationship between me and allah like that was it it wasn't for anyone else but me
and i i was really struggling with it i knew in my heart what i needed to do and what i wanted to do
but i just was unable to make that decision so i'm going to leave the video there for now
and what i'm going to talk to you about next is the turning point for me and all of the turning
points for me that ultimately led me to taking my shahada so thank you so much for watching i really
appreciate your support so far don't forget to share this video with someone who you think might
benefit from it feel free to comment or feel free to privately message me any questions you have
and i will see you in my next video you