My name is Areefa and this is my long, exhaustive story. I was born in 1983 in a small town of Pakistan. My mother was very religious. When she married my father she became a way more devoted Muslim and my father loved her for that. We were raised in an extremely religious family. My father loved us very much and kept us very close. My father ensured that we got Islamic education and made sure we performed all our salaahs. The girls had to wear hijabs even at a very young age and the boys had to wear topies to constantly show we were Muslims.
My father was extremely religious. He had a beard and wore a white Kurta. He went to the mosque for all his salaahs and he was very popular in our community. My father was a very open-minded man and believed in education for girls. In madressa(Islamic school), we would learn the Quran such as the creation of Adam and eve and about all the other prophets. The birth of Isa Al-Masih was one of my favourites. At that time, I want to learn more about Isa but my Islamic teacher told me that he was a prophet before prophet Muhammad and that was it, and he stopped me from asking more questions. In Islamic history we were taught about prophet Muhammad s.a.w., his wives, his sahabas and the battles the Muslim fought with the Jews. I loved him with all my heart because we were taught he was a saintly man. He never hurt anyone, he never got angry, and everyone wanted to be around him all the time. He was exceptionally good to his wives and he only married them out of charity. Islam was a marvellous religion that I wanted to share with the entire world.
The problems in my family began when my father lost his job and became self-employed. My father, who was a henpecked husband, then became ill-tempered and we would avoid him. Though my father and mother loved each other very much, they began to fight with each other. During this period of family feud my grades at school began to drop.
Islam in my country is unlike places such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. Though my best girlfriends were Muslims, they sometimes wore normal clothes like everyone else, dyed their hair, had streaks of coloured hairs, etc. We had fun, but I could not dress like my friends because my parents would be extremely upset and I was afraid of upsetting them. Also, my friends were not as religious as I was. So, they enjoyed their life. I would say no to everyone who asked me to hang out because Allah would punish me for committing any sins and I was afraid that my dad and brothers would find out. Thus, I missed out on a lot of fun in my life. My mother would play the translation of Quran loudly early in the morning. The Quran has always scared me to the point of stifling me my social life. I would fast and performed salaah to prevent me from dying and going to hell. It began to affect my entire life. I loved art, poetry and music but I could not tell anyone because Islam doesn’t allow these kinds of things.
During this time, my feminist views began to arise when I looked on the internet at the situation of women in other countries. It would break my heart to see the number of women who suffer in this world from poverty, rape, deprivation of education etc. All of these have affected me deeply. In high school( I attended an Islamic school where boys and girls were separated), during Islamic studies, I began to have problems with my moulana. He would say things like women tempted men into doing evil and I would lift up my hand and point out statistics of crimes against women around the world and ask him, “Who was more evil?” Obviously he was not very happy. In our school, girls always outperformed the boys and we girls always knew we were smarter and we would joke about it. When I matriculated, my problems with my religion began to escalate. In university, all the boys and girls would dress nicely and fashionably but I had to wear hijab. It began to burden me. I constantly feared the fire of hell. Due to the different classes I had to attend, I would miss prayers and go to panic mode. I could not concentrate on my studies properly so my grades were falling. My friends never seemed to care about these things, they would just laugh and fool around. But everyone is made differently. I was terrified that Allah would burn me in the fire of hell. Soon due to lack of confidence, I took a year off.
I began university again after one year and the same things happened again; the fear, the panic. My mother started battling with her long recurring cancer, but she lost her battle. The women I loved and looked up to had died. During this period, I became restless. I did not leave the house, wore a full black hijab all the time, spent time on my musalah(prayer mat)making salaahs, asking for forgiveness for all my sins and praying for salvation.