Ameena Blake embraced Islam in 1992. She holds a BA in English Studies, an MA in Teaching, an MA in Leadership and Management, and an MA in Islamic Studies. She is currently a chaplain at the University of Sheffield and a lecturer at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. Ameena also teaches at events, courses, conferences, and on social media. She is the project director of the EHUK women’s refuge project, which provides support to vulnerable women and children.
Can you tell us briefly about yourself?
My name is Ameena Blake. I am an English revert to Islam and reverted 32 years ago when I was a teenager. My background is interesting. I was adopted as a tiny baby as my birth mother was too young to care for a child. My adoptive parents were a professor and his wife who was a painter and poet. They are the reason that I ended up living in the city I did. Allah (swt) was guiding my life (as He does with all of us) to where it needed to be to become a Muslim.
Now, in 2024 I have many roles, Alhamdulillah. I am a Muslim scholar, teaching degree-level Islamic studies and education in a UK-based Islamic university. I am also a public speaker, speaking at events and conferences around the globe. As well as this I am a Muslim chaplain, working in a university and I run a project which provides housing and care for ladies who are victims of domestic abuse. I feel honored that Allah has allowed me to serve Him in His dawah.
How was your life concerning faith in the past?
Before Islam, as a child, I was raised as an Anglican Christian (there are many denominations of Christianity in the UK).
Can you tell us when and why you started to ask yourself questions about your beliefs?
When I was around 16 years old, I began to question the legitimacy and proof of the Bible, as it was unable to fit into proven science. The Bible (New Testament) is a collection of stories written by others, about Jesus (as). They were written, many of them, long after He ascended to Allah, and all of them were written in a different language to what he spoke (Aramaic and Hebrew). There is no original text of the Bible, and I cannot accept the following writings that were authored by human beings (no matter how pious they were), especially when the same stories often contradict each other. There was also the contradiction with scientific facts. Yes, I was told to believe it with my heart. For me, that was simply not good enough. I needed guidance straight from Allah that made sense. I became a believing agnostic at that point.
What were your thoughts on Islam at the time? Have you ever heard about it?
I had always known Muslims as a child and while growing up, but I didn’t know much about Islam. Many of my friends at school were Muslim, but although they identified as such, they were not practicing, or at least not outwardly. In fact, as far as I know, there were no practicing Muslims in the school I attended and nobody wore the hijab. Therefore, Islam for me was alien and unknown. I was taught at school in religious education classes that Allah was the God that Muslims believed in and the Christian God was the God that Christians believed in. It was totally different. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that it is the same God with only a linguistically translated difference in name. I knew a few cultural things about Muslims-that they did not eat pork. That was about it. My Muslim friends did the same things as me and enjoyed the same games and pastimes. I didn’t really see any difference. Children are innocent of the societal and identity segregation that society imposes on them as they grow. Maybe the internet, smartphones, and access to global biases have accelerated the loss of this beautiful, innocent outlook toward other human beings. As Muslims, we must shield our children from this toxic view of difference being negative and teach them to embrace others in the name of dawah.
What was your breaking point when you decided to become a Muslim?
When Allah (swt) directs someone to hidayah (guidance), it is both a spiritual journey of the mind and the heart. The mind is opened to receive knowledge and the heart is opened with the sweetness of faith. Again and again, I see this in others and I look back and recognize it in my own journey. The human condition is such that the need for faith and spirituality is buried deep in our DNA. As Muslims, we would identify this as al-fitrah (the natural inclination to believe in The One God), and indeed some research into DNA supports this. Society or the people that the person mixes with and so many other circumstances lead to either nurture or suppression of al-fitrah.
I was in a difficult situation as a teenager. I got into bad company and left home to live in a small apartment alone. Some of these people attacked and robbed me one day in my apartment. After that, I was too frightened to go back, but I had no place to stay. A Muslim friend offered me a room in her own place. A risk for her as she hardly knew me. I was grateful for a place to stay. Whilst I was staying with her, I got ill really ill for a couple of weeks with a nasty infection in my face. I had to remain in the house and I was very bored. One day I found her Qur’an (in English and Arabic), so I asked her if I could take a look. She explained that this is the Muslim Holy Book and it is the true word of God. So I said, “Prove it to me!”
She asked her neighbour, a convert to Islam if he could help with my questions, so he gathered some information for me. Verses from the Qur’an showing the embryonic development and the development of the fetus in the womb were shown to me. The more I asked, the more I believed. Why? Because it was proving itself. Then, the biggest surprise was that this book lined up so perfectly with scientific facts that was revealed to an illiterate man in a desert 1500 years earlier! I was convinced with knowledge but needed the opening of the heart. Then it came. Like a bolt of lightning that swallowed my senses and heart all in one. I heard the adhan for the very first time. I knew then that this was it. I turned to my (shocked) friend and told her I wanted to take my shahadah.
How did your close circle (your family and your friends) react to this?
When I took my shahadah in 1992, Islam was less known about but also much less criticized than it was pre-9/11. I clearly remember the day when I told my parents. I had decided to show up at their house with Asian clothes on (because my Asian friends had said that this was the way to be a Muslim). I went into my Father’s study where he was reading the newspaper, and told him I had become a Muslim. He raised his eyes above the paper and as far as I remember said, “That’s nice dear”. My Father was a very kind, giving, and a gentle man. He was my world both before and after Islam. I miss him every single day. My mum and dad thought this was probably a phase I was going through, but they didn’t object to it too much. They read books on Islam to try to understand my new faith. However, I did lose a lot of my old friends after becoming Muslim. They thought I had gone crazy and some really hated my new faith. But although it was difficult, I later realized that isolation was good for me at the time. Allah (swt) was creating a space for me that was much healthier and allowed for new journeys and friends who were good for me.
What do you find the most admirable about Islam?
The most wonderful thing about Islam is Islam itself. I can say no more than this. It is a full and a complete packed perfect gift from the Creator to His servant.
What impressed you the most about the Prophet Muhammad, the Messenger of Mercy (saw)?
What can I say about Rasul Allah Muhammad (saw)? How can words begin to describe this wonderful human being whom Allah (swt) chose? His wife Aisha Bint Abu Bakr describes him as ‘the walking Qur’an’. I cannot do justice to him in my humble writing just like I cannot do justice to Islam in my humble writing.
However, I will offer some of his words, a part of a Hadith that describes the love he feels for me and all his beloved ummah and one of the countless reasons we should love him (saw). It speaks about the Day of Judgement when all of humankind will be there. We’ll be desperate for intervention to save us from hell, running to different prophets and messengers to beg them to intercede. They will refuse due to their own burdens. Yet, Prophet Muhammad (saw) will agree to intercede. Here is one of the versions of this hadith:
“They (the people) would come to me and I would say, ‘I am for that (interceding).’ Then I will ask for my Lord’s permission, and it will be given, and then He will inspire me to praise Him with such praises as I do not know now.
So I will praise Him with those praises and will fall down, prostrate before Him. Then it will be said, ‘O Muhammad, raise your head and speak, for you will be listened to; and ask, for you will be granted (your request); and intercede, for your intercession will be accepted.’ I will say, ‘O Lord, my followers! My followers!’ And then it will be said, ‘Go and take out of Hell (Fire) all those who have faith in their hearts, equal to the weight of a barley grain.”(Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 97, 135) and the hadith continues.
May Allah’s peace and blessing be on the Prophet (saw) and his family and companions.
