۱۰ فروردین ۱۴۰۳ |۱۹ رمضان ۱۴۴۵ | Mar 29, 2024
'I moved to Cambridge and rediscovered Islam': one woman's heartwarming story of acceptance

After moving to Cambridge this year, the community she has found here has inspired her to look again at the faith she took for granted in Pakistan - where it was a fact of life among much of the population.

Hawzah News Agency - It may come as a surprise to some that 20-year-old Frehya Ashraf didn’t start following the teachings of Islam until she moved to England from Sargodha, in Pakistan, ten years ago.After moving to Cambridge this year, the community she has found here has inspired her to look again at the faith she took for granted in Pakistan - where it was a fact of life among much of the population.

“When I was growing up I wasn’t really into Islam,” Frehya explains. “But now the feeling I have is very different. Now I read the books, I go to the mosque. I feel I’m coming onto the right path.”

She’s now on a gap year, before attending Queen Mary University of London to study science and engineering, so she’s using the time to reconnect with her faith.

Frehya said living with her cousins and wider family here has opened her mind to other possibilities. “They taught me things I didn’t know about before,” she says. “The feelings I have towards my religion are different.”

Beyond her homestead, the Muslim community of Cambridge, and the wider community have made her feel so welcome that she’s felt inspired to get more involved.

“I’m so moved,” she says. “I want this to be my culture. I’ve not had that before.”

Her experience of Manchester, where she lived up until moving to Cambridge this year, was much different to her experience here, as she experienced racism there - even, she claims, from the Asian community of which she is a part.

“They’d say things like ‘fresh off the boat’ and other insults, and my accent was one of the reasons I was bullied at school,” she says. “I was excited to move here and see a different culture but the reality is hard. 

These experiences meant she felt distanced from her religion, but experiencing kindness in Cambridge and seeing her friends engage with Islam has changed her outlook.

Now she wears a hijab - a headscarf - whereas she didn’t before. “Before, I was into my different hairstyles, " she explains, "but now I wear a hijab as I feel I’m closer to Allah that way.”

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