By Editorial Staff

Susan Carland is a lecturer at Monash University’s National Centre for Australian Studies, where she specializes in gender studies, youth and sociology of religion. Susan, who has been raised as a Baptist, decided to become Muslim. Here’s her journey to Islam …

I started to have lots of questions that I didn’t feel I was getting answers for.

How Did She Find Islam?

She said:

When I was 17 years old I began to question why I believed what I did; do I believe what I do because I think it is true or is it simply because this what I have been raised to believe?

I was raised in a very open-minded Christian household. My mom was very radical . I had positive connection to God. But at that time, seeing teens becoming quite existential, I started to have lots of questions that I didn’t feel I was getting answers for. And so I decided to start looking into different religions, except for Islam because I thought it looked like a violent, sexist and barbaric religion. Islam was not on my priority list.

Despite that, I kept coming across information about Islam; on TV, articles on newspapers, articles, etc. So, information about Islam had been presented to me without looking for it.

And it was when I started to look into what the religion said about itself as opposed to what I saw Muslims doing in the name of Islam and what I saw journalists say about Islam. To my surprise, it made a lot of sense to me, and I started to look at the matter more seriously.

Becoming Muslim

It was until I was 19 that I actually became Muslim. I was very worried about how my family was going to react, especially my mom. But it was then when I realized that I need actually to truly live my life, not to make other people happy. I have to make this choice for myself. I then decided to become Muslim. Islam engaged my intellectually and spiritually. The word “God” then made sense to me.

I didn’t have that intellectual divide between mind, body and soul that I had found in Christianity.

Susan became a Muslim without the influence of anyone.

Married to a Muslim; Melbourne lawyer Waleed `Aly, but she admits she “didn’t become Muslim for him.” She wanted and decided to be Muslim.

In the video below Susan tells more interesting details about her conversion story and her life as a Muslim woman; a Muslim wife, and mother living in a West …