My name is Louise.

I have been a Muslim for one and half years now.

I come from Denmark.

Concerning the way that I became Muslim, I’m not sure if I can say what directly made me become Muslim, but during my life I was raised as a Christian from the Lutheran Church, and I was probably the only one in my family who was religious.

When I became a teenager and I was going to church and everything, my mum had cancer. And I remember I was really praying for her, but that didn’t help.

So after that I kind of lost my faith in God because I was only a child. I was thinking how could God do this to me?

I couldn’t believe anymore and through my teenage years I wasn’t practicing any kind of religion. But I had a lot of Muslim friends as well as a lot of Christian friends. I was always talking to a lot of people from everywhere.

And once in a while I just found some things with Islam which sounded true to me. It sounded like this must be right. And later on I started having religion in school where I was studying Islam, Christianity and Buddhism and so on to find out what seems to be right for me. I wasn’t thinking about converting to anything, but just to find a meaning with life. And I didn’t talk about what I was feeling about this to anybody.

But now when I look back, I found Islam easy to learn and logical and there were so many beautiful things about Islam. But it was not only a good faith. In the beginning I was feeling afraid of Islam, like many other people, in some kind of way.

I was thinking that women are suffering and are not equal to men like many other non-Muslims are thinking. And I was thinking a lot of bad things about Islam, but the more I was studying the more I found out that I can’t really find any bad things in this religion. I can only find beautiful things.

And after that I met this American Arab man, and I fell in love with him. And I felt that this is it, it must be my destiny or some kind of way. I felt like Allah wanted me to become a Muslim. I don’t know who or what exactly was the reason, but I just felt it. So I became a Muslim very fast after that. This relationship didn’t continue, and unlike many people think that Muslim women can’t leave their men, which is not true, I did that!

For the first maybe half or almost one year when I was Muslim, I wasn’t really practicing Islam. I was fasting in Ramadan but I wasn’t praying. I didn’t know how to do it because you have to pray in Arabic.

No Way Am I Going to Wear Hijab!

And there were a lot of things that I didn’t really know. I didn’t wear the Hijab. I didn’t cover up. I was continuing to live like I always was doing, just without drinking or eating pork. It seemed very easy to me to stop eating pork and drinking, but it was hard for me to cover up and pray five times a day.

So, after a while I started reading more and more about Islam, and that made everything easier. I found out that there were different parts of Islam, such as Sunni and Shiite and so on, and that helped me a lot. And I started thinking about wearing Hijab, but I was like I can’t do that. My family wouldn’t be happy about that.

My family asked me when I converted “So, are you going to wear Hijab now?”

And I said: “No way, I’m not going to do that”.

I didn’t feel that was necessary at the time, but the more I was getting in love with Islam, the more I wanted to wear the Hijab also. That just felt right inside of me.

I was thinking about wearing Hijab I think almost every day for six months. And in Ramadan 2007, I started wearing it, alhamdulellah. I was afraid because many people were afraid of Muslims especially maybe since 9/11, but I was praying that Allah would help me in this and make it easy for me, and it has been easy so far. Everybody has been very accepting. I think that’s the good thing about America. What I have experienced so far is that people are very open minded about other things, so alhamdulellah.

But I also had some troubles about becoming a Muslim within my family. They were very shocked when they first heard that I wanted to be a Muslim. They were trying to dissuade me from converting. I was called a lot of bad things by them, but my dad was taking everything in a very relaxed and very cool way if I may say so.

But I had a sister who hasn’t been able to accept me as a Muslim so far. But the rest of my family are accepting it. They just don’t serve pork when I come to their homes and everything, so that’s very good. That made it easier for me, alhamdulellah …