Heart and Soul: How the war in Gaza helped me find God

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vanessa’s Fridays saw her dancing the night away in the night clubs of Liverpool, having drinks with friends, sometimes staying out all night. But now Fridays are times of prayer with new friends at the mosque. She took her vows – shahada – to become a Muslim within a month of Hamas attacking Israel and the resulting military campaign in Gaza and says the unshakeable faith of Palestinian Muslims then was the catalyst for her conversion. Now, wearing a full hijab, she has made it clear to all around her, her life has totally changed. She no longer sees the friends she used to spend so much time with. But that loss has partly been made up through the support of her new friends, many of whom are also converts to Islam. In Liverpool where she lives, the South African born Vanessa, plans to change her name to Amina, after the prophet Mohammed’s mother, further marking herself out as Muslim and identifying with the global Muslim community – or Ummah.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Out of my friend group, I was one of the people that wore the highest heels.
0:08.7	So I'd be like, hold on, wait, you guys are walking too fast.
0:12.1	Because my heels were that high.
0:14.0	And you know how embarrassing it is to fall when you're dressed in your nines and then you fall down.
0:18.6	So what sort of clothes did you wear apart from the heels?
0:21.6	Skimpy floats.
0:23.7	Like really short.
0:25.2	Really short.
0:25.9	Short dresses.
0:27.3	Like many a student, Vanessa lived for clubbing.
0:30.7	Yeah, I loved hip-hop music.
0:32.5	So I would come here definitely to just belt out like rap songs and stuff like that.
0:36.9	So love it. my favourite place.
0:39.6	Paradise.
0:40.8	That's a new place.
0:41.7	Okay.
0:42.2	I think we went there, like, the first night it opened with my friend,
0:45.7	and we got, like, a free shot back in the day.
0:49.0	But nowadays, the end of the week has an altogether different focus for Vanessa.
0:54.2	The situation in Gaza led her into a deep search of the religion of Islam and now covered apart from her
1:13.7	face and wearing trainers under her long dusky pink dress or bias, Vanessa rocks silently,
1:20.8	eyes closed during Friday prayers.
	...

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