Islam began as something strange, and it shall return to being something strange, so give glad tidings the strangers. (Sahih Muslim 145)
This famous nasheed has many versions; this one is from Muhammad al-Salman and has the subtitles in English embedded.
[We are] strangers and we do not bow the foreheads to anyone besides Allah […]
Transliteration to help in the pronounciation: Ghurabaa’ wa li ghairillaahi laa nahnil jibaa
Aisha Stacey wrote in an article for Aboutislam.net :
“I think that many of you would agree that being Muslim in the 21st century makes you well acquainted with being strange. It might even be a metaphor for random, as in you have been randomly selected.
[…] many converts to Islam will tell you about feeling as if they were strangers, before finding Islam. They will speak of feeling that they belonged somewhere else that their lives were just slightly off center.
They often speak about a vague sense of knowing they were not like everyone else around them, feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Converting to Islam gives one a sense of coming home, of finally being normal, albeit sometimes still in a strange land.”
