The Clear Evidence

My name is Lauren Booth. I'm a journalist from Great Britain and a revert to Islam. I'd like to share with you today how I came to be sitting here in Malaysia, wearing a hijab, and identifying as a Muslimah. I have only been a Muslim for two years, since 2010. Before that, as a journalist, I worked for newspapers that regularly printed stories portraying Islam as a violent religion—a religion for oppressed women and aggressive men. However, Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala had a different plan for me.

I suppose we can look back to our childhood to see where things begin. I remember that when I was around seven years old, I always prayed at night before going to sleep. Although I was raised in a Christian household, I never prayed to the Trinity—I never understood the Trinity enough to pray to it. But I did know that there was one God, and I would pray to Him. My prayers were very simple, like "Dear God, please make my younger sister disappear for a little bit"—the kind of things we all say when we're young.

But it’s not easy to stay religious or believe in God in the modern world. I think that applies to Malaysia today as well. It feels as if everything around us is designed to pull us away from the knowledge of Allah, from the certainty of the Hereafter, and from access to the unknown and the unseen. How can we hold onto faith when we are preoccupied with friends, appearances, shopping, or even something as trivial as our nails?

As I became a teenager, I stopped praying. I’m embarrassed to say that I really thought I was the center of the universe. The polytheism of today is not about worshiping idols—it is the arrogance of the individual. When I was a teenager, I was considered quite pretty and talented, so I believed that the world revolved around me. I remember my mother saying, "You really think the sun, the moon, and the stars go around you, don’t you?" And I said, "Yeah, I do."

But when Allah has a plan for you, no matter what you think you're going to do, it will always lead to His plan being fulfilled. People often ask reverts, "What was the first moment you became aware of Islam?" For me, it wasn't just about Islam—it was about realizing that the universe wasn’t what I thought it was.

In the year 2000, I was watching television, and a picture appeared on the evening news. It was a photo of a young boy, around 15 years old, holding a rock in his right hand, ready to throw it. His back was turned to the camera, but there was something so strong, so confident, so powerful about him that it took my breath away. Just meters away from him was a tank, its gun pointed directly at him. Yet, he wasn’t afraid.

His name was Farris Odeh. He was from a place called the Gaza Strip, in a land I barely knew—Palestine. Ten days after that photo was taken, he was shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper and bled to death. He was only 15 years old. At the time, I didn’t know any of this. I just knew that something was wrong in the world, and I wanted to find out what it was.

In 2005, I was working at the Mail on Sunday newspaper in London, which was part of a group of newspapers not particularly sympathetic to Islam. I can’t really explain why, but one day in December, I walked into my editor’s office and said, "I’d like to go to Palestine." The elections were happening in January 2005, and I wanted to cover them for the newspaper.

Amazingly, my editor handed me a check for expenses and told me to go for two weeks and find a story. So, in January 2005, I arrived in Palestine with only three phone numbers written on a scrap of paper—no other contacts, no idea what I would find. I had a knot of fear in my stomach. What if the Palestinians and Muslims really were terrorists? What if I wasn’t safe?

Continue Reading: Video: My Journey To Islam - Lauren Booth (English)