Journey of faith

When Sherifa Madgwick flew for Emirates, she was often subjected to questions and stares from fellow European crew members. It was no about her looks or her personality: Sherifa, a Briton from West Sussex, is a warm, attractive, high-spirited woman with a great sense of humour. It was just that she had recently become a Muslim.

"A lot of crew members would come up to me and ask, 'Are you the girl that converted?'" she said. "And they'd ask 'Why have you done that' or if I was different now, or if I was okay." Those days seven years ago marked the first leg of Sherifa's journey of faith.

In recent months, the world has been caught up in a debate about the 'clash of civilisations' and the inevitability of tensions between Islam and the West. Amidst the clamour, the talking heads and the sound bites, some Westerners go about the business of their Islamic lives quietly, secure in the common ground between the two worlds.

Sherifa is one of those Westerners - and she is far from alone.

Earlier this year, a mosque survey in the U.S. showed the presence of six to seven million Muslims in the country. Close to 29 per cent of those were converts to Islam, said the study sponsored by the Council for American-Islamic Relations. Additionally, more than 30 per cent of the converts surveyed were women.

Even eight years ago, new Muslims were becoming a significant force in Britain. A 1993 report in the Times of London said women made up the bulk of the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 new Muslims annually.

Sherifa came to Dubai in 1992 to visit a girlfriend, and decided she wanted to stay. She was determined to make the move work, but the job market thought otherwise. She started to spend more time alone, thinking about her life and where it was going. It was, she says, her hermit time.

"I felt like my life was empty," she said. "Even when you have everything, you can still have nothing. I wondered what my direction was, where I belonged."

For Sherifa, who stopped going to church when she was 14 and had grown away from religion, the abundant faith on display in the emirate changed her life. She became conscious, she said, of people having a faith and expressing it physically, through the adhans, the numerous mosques, the behaviour and the clothes.

She became increasingly curious about Islam and its practices, started to ask questions of the Muslim friends she had made and began to read the Holy Quran.

"The more I read, the more I found out, the more sense it made to me," she said. Her confusion with Christianity seemed to be a thing of the past. The structure of Islam, its five pillars and the way it blended into the realities of the world particularly attracted her.

"It gave me something I could apply to my life everyday, and several times a day," she said. "With zakat, you are reminded of those people who are less fortunate than you. With prayer (salat), it constantly reminds you to be thankful to God for all that you have, Ramadan brings you closer to God, and the shahada makes you understand that there is no other."

Two years after arriving in the country, Sherifa became a new Muslim, shortly before joining Emirates as a cabin attendant.

The first few years in Emirates were hard, she said. There were stark differences between her previous way of life and the Muslim way of life, between her Western friends and the path she had chosen.

And then there were the difficulties with covering her head, and with Ramadan. Sherifa did not wear a hijab when she worked for Emirates, although she had already started to use it outside of work. The Emirates uniform has a hat and veil of its own, which makes it hard, and then there was the social disconnect.

"It's the same thing as when you face your family," she said. "A hundred questions. And it was hard sometimes, especially trying to fit in. You had to choose between going out with your Western friends and do the things you've always done, or being more Muslim."

"I know I did a lot of things I shouldn't have done," she said of the learning process. "I embraced the faith, but I was still a student, I was still learning. I was slowly getting used to hearing and listening to my tacqwa (conscience)."

Her own family was not an obstacle. An Australian friend, Jawaher, was far younger when she converted to Islam, and her parents did not talk to her for six months. They felt she had thrown away everything they had raised her with.

"Allah tests you to make sure your faith is strong enough," Jawaher said. "My test was with my family."

Sherifa's test seems to have been with her peers, but there has been a sea change in her faith. That sea change is Hind Essa Al Dabal, Sherifa's one-and-a-half year old daughter. Sherifa got married and left the airline industry early in 2000, long before Hind was born, and had started wearing her hijab and shayla everywhere.

The visible manifestations are only the tip of the iceberg. Sherifa has become stricter with herself, renewed in her faith and divested with a grace and unshakeability that come when one is truly at peace with God.

"My daughter has been the biggest turning point of my life," Sherifa said. "I want to live my life as an example for her, to be a really good Muslim so I can give her the religious grounding I never had."

Hind is currently in London with Sherifa's mother, who converted to Islam shortly after her granddaughter was born. Making trips back home and abroad as a practising and visible Muslim also gave Sherifa the opportunity to experience the international solidarity of Muslims.

Sherifa has come a long way on her journey, but knows she still has far to go. Ramadan has become much easier. Every night this Ramadan, she is working for the Shaikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding, manning its majlis outside the Grand Mosque in Jumeirah.

Dressing in the traditional way has become habit. "I feel really strange to go out without my hijab now," she said. "It's almost like I'm naked without it."

Growing closer to God has not come without its share of testing times, however. The last year-and-a-half has been particularly hard. Friends have asked how she is able to cope, and how she can retain her sense of humour in the midst of all the troubles. Her answer is simple. "If I didn't have my faith to rely on and my God, I wouldn't have been able to cope," she said. "It keeps me strong."

Sherifa has come a long way on her journey, but knows she still has a long way to go. "You don't become a better person just by becoming Muslim," she said. "It's not like suddenly everything is going right and you're doing everything right. It's still a struggle."