Apostasy in the UK

 
 
 
 

Vocabulary

Quran	cover (2)	cover to cover
Shia	faith (2)	competition (2)
mullah	situation	conservative
strict	reach out	upbringing
obey	follow (2)	keep her away
allow	hunt (2)	respectable
alone	hurt (2)	never looked back
threat	force (2)	oh my goodness
knock	wedding	fly/flew/flown
explain	sort out	paperwork
join	flood (2)	break/broke/broken (4)
selfless	heart (2)	vulnerable
try	share (3)	in order to
selfish	curious	missing (2)
accept	recover	determined
crazy	thing (2)	teach/taught/taught
similar	prophet	relationship
pray	vision (2)	kneel/knelt/knelt
instant	turn out	connect (2)
worry	courage	wash away
fear	suitable	give/gave/given (2)
testify	onward	run/ran/run (2)
eternal	forsake	believe (2)

 
 
 
 
 

Video

 

 
 
 
 
 

Transcript

Rayeesa: “I read the Quran. I read the Bible. I remember reading these books cover to cover.

And then one day, I just thought, “you know what? I need to know. I need to know if Jesus is real.”

Rayeesa was born in a religious Shia Muslim family in south London, and grew up learning the Islamic faith.

Rayeesa: “I remember my mum and dad would have a mullah come into our house and teach us how to read the Quran. I definitely believed in Allah. So I never questioned that.

But I never really felt any connection with God.”

Rayeesa’s family were quite conservative: they wanted her to follow the Islamic faith, but also keep her away from Western culture.

Rayeesa: “I had a very strict upbringing in the Shia faith. Other than school, I didn’t really know anyone other than my family.”

In order to obey her parents, Rayeesa wanted to do everything they asked.

However there was something she and her younger sister really enjoyed doing:

Rayeesa: “We loved tennis, and I wanted to enter competitions. But they wouldn’t allow that because it was not respectable for a Muslim girl.”

Rayeesa’s sport was becoming a threat to her parents. So they thought of doing something Rayeesa had no idea of.

Rayeesa: “They explained to us that we were getting too Western. And they wanted us to experience our culture. And after that, we went to Pakistan.

And we sat down one day, and my parents said, ‘we’ve decided that you’re not going back to England; that you are going to stay in Pakistan, and find you suitable husbands’.

I never ever thought something like that would ever happen to me. And it made me feel completely alone. I felt like, ‘oh, my goodness’.”

They stayed there for several months while Rayeesa’s parents were hunting for husbands.

Her parents forced her to marry a man from India, and flew back to England after the wedding.

Rayeesa: “I was suddenly married to someone I didn’t really know. It turned out that he didn’t want to be married to me; he actually wanted to come to England and have a job. His plan was for me to go back to England and sort out his paperwork.”

She flew back to England broken and hurt. There many questions on her mind. Rayeesa even questioned her belief in Allah. She didn’t know the paperwork for her husband or return to India.

She joined the police force in London and moved out of her parents’ house.

Rayeesa: “Through my work, I was introduced to this lady called Anna. And she was working with vulnerable young Asian women. And we just connected; we had the same heart, and the same vision to reach out to them.”

Anna was a believer, so she tried to share her belief with Rayeesa.

Rayeesa: “She was a very selfless person. And although I was not a bad person myself, I could see there was something missing in my life that she had.”

Rayeesa was trying to recover from what she had gone through. She didn’t have the courage to believe in anyone again.

Rayeesa: “Just because I was so curious, I asked, ‘what’s so special about Jesus?’ I said, ‘just tell me, why do you love Jesus so much’? I just thought it was the most crazy thing.

She told me who God was. That was so different from what I had been taught. I was taught that Jesus was a prophet. He was like Mohammad.

But hearing Anna’s explanation of how actually Jesus was God in human form, coming and then giving his life and dying so that we could have a relationship with God.

And I thought, ‘what if all this is true?’ Jesus really is God, and I’m believing in Allah and Mohammad . . . but what if this is not the truth?

So for me then, from that point onward, I was determined to find the truth about God. Who is God?

And I just knelt down, and I just prayed to God and I said ‘Jesus, if you are real, if you are who you say you are, then I hear your voice; you’re knocking on the door. I open my heart, and I want you to come in.

Suddenly, the minute I said that, it just felt like I was flooded with love. It was an instant feeling of being washed and accepted, and I knew that this Jesus is real.

Worry and fear and everything was just washed away. This love I felt, complete, I knew I had met God. I had met Jesus. The Bible is the final word. It is the word from God.

You know in the Quran, it does say that Jesus is the word of God.”

Rayeesa gave her life to Jesus that day, and never looked back.

She’s now married to a godly man named Richard, and they live in Hereford with their three beautiful children.

Rayeesa runs a cookery class, and testifies the love of Jesus to others, especially women who have gone through similar situations in life.

Her family never accepted her back after she became a Christian. But Rayeesa found a new family in Jesus, which is eternal.

Rayeesa: “God is always with me, He’ll never leave me or forsake me. And I also believe he will bring my family together, and bring my family to Him as well.

 

 

Questions

1. Rayeesa was born in Pakistan. True or false?

2. Were her parents liberal and secular, or traditional?

3. Did Reyeesa and her sister have a favorite hobby? What was it? Did their parents support them?

4. Their parents allowed them to be free and do whatever they wanted. Is this right or wrong? What did her parents do?

5. Rayeesa and her new husband loved each other. Is this correct or incorrect?

6. Did she become a homemaker (housewife)? What happened?

7. Describe Rayeesa’s relationships since she became a Christian.

 

A. Are there very conservative individuals in your community? Describe them.

B. Do people convert to other religions?

C. Do you know of anyone who changed their religion?

D. What might happen in the future?

E. Should people do anything?