“There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger”, my tongue continued to repeat, without sign of tiredness. This was the only truth I knew, my mind blank from any other matters. For my own safety, I was restrained and unable to move like a captured man, denied freedom with only my sword of belief. Take whatever you want from me, but you cannot take my faith; this is the truth I know, and my tongue will testify. I laid on the mattress on the floor of the bed, with my head in the arms of my mother, surrounded by familiar voices. I continued for sixteen hours with my body depleted of energy. My world was darkness, with no sight or ability to move. Like a nightmare, with delusions flooding my mind. Occasionally, I saw the situation around me – the tense faces of the voices I heard, my siblings, sat in a predatory stance, ready to pounce.
My situation was uncertain; I did not know where I was or what was going to happen to me. I felt like I was trapped in a vacuum inside my head. Perhaps I was possessed, or death was coming? I heard my grandmother reciting verses of ruqya, supplications to protect oneself from demonic possession, in accordance with the sunnah of prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In addition to the verses of ruqya, my grandmother recited the other verses of the Quran, stories of trials and tribulations of the prophets, the story of Jonah and the whale, Abraham and his son and the many trials of Moses. This calmed me down because I knew whatever happened, Allah has power over all and that I am in His hands. Like the Prophet’s were tested, surely, I will be tested, as will you and everyone else. We know that for a believer, in this test we call life, everything has been written. You will be given signs and guidance and the goal is to remain steadfast on the straight path.
Religion is the core the way I view the world; my source of my knowledge and beliefs of what is the truth in this world and the hereafter. Generally, my whole psychotic episode was themed around religion, and this was evident from the delusions I was experiencing. Initially, when the symptoms of psychosis occurred, my first instinct was that this was something religious and this continued throughout the breakdown. From reading the experiences of others, I learned that many people had delusions correlating with their already developed view of the world. For example, some thought the government was spying on them whereas others believed they were talking to angels or demons. Speaking to a psychologist, he presented a model which may help us understand the relationship. In this model, the mind is seen as a bucket which begins to fill with our subconscious thoughts of how we see the world and our beliefs. At times of major stress, or with mental illnesses, this bucket becomes overfilled, and the subconscious information begins to leak out. Those leakages are what we see in delusions, hallucinations and voices heard during a psychotic episode.
I was born in September 1997. At the time, my parents were staying in my grandmothers’ house, with my mother’s siblings. We were a small family at this time; my parents, my older brother and myself. During this time, my parents purchased a new house on the same street which I still live in today.
Since birth, my parents set a way of living and co-ordinated the way in which my siblings and I lived our lives and what information reached us, they set a safe structure guided by the wisdom of Islam with an established way of being. There was a clear hierarchy and authority; I knew what would lead me to success and what would lead me astray and it is the way in which we live our lives, how our household is managed and how we conduct ourselves in society. It must have been tough, being parents of young children in a country which had a different culture and religion to theirs. My parents came from Bangladesh and followed the religion of Islam at a time where many Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and other eastern families immigrated to the UK. My mother came to the UK first, as a young girl she attended formal education and grew up as a British citizen with her Bangladeshi ethnicity. Back then, the common goal was to work hard, make money and send it back to the homeland; they did not plan to remain in the UK for the rest of their lives, so they were invested in their own country. My mother married my father who was a university-educated teacher in Bangladesh shortly before her father passed away, and he moved to live in the UK. My mother worked full-time doing labour which consisted of sewing and my father worked in a factory, both working simple jobs in order to provide for the house we lived in and to feed and look after their two sons.
As a child, I was clearly taught what was right and wrong from the outset. I was told where the lines were and what were the punishments for crossing those lines. Although I was a natural rebel against rules and authority, I found the wisdom behind good rules and its importance in following those set by a sensible authority. As a child, the dominant structure around me was religion. Even when I was away from the boundaries of my parents, I conducted myself in a manner which was appropriate for them according to what I knew. Religion was always my protection, and I always would be considerate of my behaviour to ensure it abided by an Islamic way of being. My parents made sure we abided by a religious lifestyle and my grandmother organised Quran recitation sessions in her house during the weekends where we would recite the Quran, learn from its wisdoms and learn more about Allah and His messenger. This is where I first got my Islamic education; where I got to learn about the prophets, how to pray, and learning about morals. Everything was coherent and it made sense to be the truth. It was simple, logical and sensible.
There were not many pictures of me as a baby, or during my childhood but I do hold some memories. One of which is something which is difficult to pinpoint chronologically, a tragic situation and one of my first encounters of true trauma. Someone in my year group ignited a fire within their house. This fire became large and uncontrollable, leading to the entire house being in flames. Emergency teams were called, and the street was in chaos, uncertain of what was to happen. Firefighters jumped into action, as the street watched in fear. Then I saw with my eyes, the grieving of the people who would soon find out that the boy’s sister had passed away in the fire. She was young, innocent and did not experience much of life. Perhaps her parents had hopes and dreams for her, yet their time was short, and it was destined for her be taken at an early age. The mourning of the people stuck in my mind.
As a Muslim, I was continually reminded of death and of the delusion of this world. From an early age, I was taught that I will inevitably die and to live my life the best I can. Death is also a test in itself, for that young girl, her family was tested with a situation. If they responded well and Allah is pleased, He will reward them, and it will serve them in the next life. Also, it is no use considering the life in which she could have led had the fire had not happened, or that she was saved, because it was already written, and nothing could prevent the event and the rest of her life in this world was not to be. Her family was tested, and we are all tested in many ways. With all tests, Allah gives us an amount that He knows we can handle. For example, Abraham (PBUH) was tested with sacrificing his own son, Jacob (PBUH) was tested by the thought of losing his son, and Moses (PBUH) was tested to confront an oppressive tyrant. We learn in the Quran, the many tests which the prophets had undertaken in stories and it important that we reflect. When we are tested, we must be patient and seek His guidance so that we may be guided to the straight path.