Big Revert Energy

I discovered I had Big Revert Energy the day I accidentally started a revolution in a corporate prayer room.

Picture this: five hijabis standing side by side in a borrowed conference room, each praying their own private prayer like spiritual ships passing in the night. I stood there, baffled. We all knew congregational prayer multiplies rewards like spiritual, so why were we acting like strangers at a bus stop? I was expecting this to look like a small mosque and people weren’t even lining up… what was happening here?

That night I mentioned it to my husband. "You know," he said, "I haven't actually seen women pray together much in my life."

Wait. WHAT?

The next day I announced I'd be leading prayer and everyone was more than happy to let me stand in the middle. I had practiced calling to prayer, but I didn’t know the amount of pressure I would feel, knowing that I was responsible for everyone’s prayer now. The sweat that poured off me could have watered a small garden. I was proud of myself and happy to have contributed, inshallah, to everyone’s good deeds that day. We never prayed together but not together again.

A year later, I was having some friends over for tea, and one of these 5 hijabis was there, telling how we met. She said: "Nobody had prayed together at work for FIVE YEARS until she showed up."

"Classic revert!" my friend replied.

But it goes deeper than prayer logistics. Big Revert Energy means standing up at a dawah conference when a well-known imam declares that non-hijabi women shouldn't be allowed in mosques. The man actually smirked when I raised my hand the second time.

"Don't you know you need to cover your hair?" he said. "My seven-year-old daughter knows this. Would we play music at the mosque?"

"Actually," I said, my voice steadier than my hands, "I don't know why. Maybe if imams let women like me inside their mosques instead of shouting at us, we could learn."

The room went silent. The kind of silence that tells you you've just asked the question nobody's supposed to ask. Not all reverts have big mouths like me, but most of us share the idea that we should make Islamic spaces as welcoming as possible, because we know how rough it is, out there, without Allah.

This is what fresh eyes see: we notice when the doors meant to welcome souls get turned into checkpoints. We question why cultural preferences get dressed up as religious law. We refuse to let go of things that actually don't conflict with our faith, like my dog (yes, it's actually fine, fight me) or Christmas dinner with my family. Not for baby Jesus, but for the holy act of showing up for the people who raised us.

We're the ones who walk into established spaces and accidentally reveal what's cultural baggage and what's actually Islam. Sometimes this makes us beloved. Sometimes it makes people look at us like we've grown a second head. Like when you pray in pants in front of the aunties who point at you saying: “haram!” As a side note, I’d recommend not ever saying this like that to anyone. It seems very unlikely to change anyone’s behavior and very likely to make them feel less welcome into Islam. Just don’t do it. But I digress.

I think about that day in Bosnia, praying in a beautiful mosque with my mother-in-law for the first time. A mosque where I entered without feeling like an intruder. I cried through the entire prayer, the kind of ugly crying that comes from finally feeling at home. She watched, worried but then remembering. She'd forgotten how it feels when the divine actually shows up in moments you’ve gotten used to. We haven't had time to forget yet.

That's our superpower and our burden. We still feel, until we join the ranks of those who have gotten used to it, the joy of fresh wudu water between our toes. We still get goosebumps during the call to prayer. We haven't learned to sleepwalk through the motions yet.

But here's what they don't tell you about Big Revert Energy: it's exhausting, sometimes.

We become the designated questioners, the ones who'll say what everyone's thinking but won't voice. "Why don't the women have a decent prayer space?" "Why are we turning away people who want to learn?" "Why are we praying alone when we could pray together?"

You live between two chairs. The Western world invites you to bars and looks personally offended when you decline. The Muslim community pats you on the head like you're a clever pet who learned a new trick, forever the "new Muslim" even after years have passed. You're everyone's favorite spiritual success story and nobody's regular friend. I mean, I’ve made tones of friends - Praise the Lord!, and many of them through my faith. Doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m the new animal at the zoo once in a while.

Still, we keep showing up with our inconvenient questions and our refusal to accept "that's how it's always been done." We keep our dogs and our family dinners and our tears in Bosnian mosques. We keep suggesting that maybe, just maybe, if the Prophet (peace be upon him) didn't do it that way, we don't have to either.

Big Revert Energy is holy naïveté mixed with stubborn hope. It's the belief that Islam is actually as beautiful and logical and welcoming as what drew us to it in the first place. It's the exhausting, lonely, necessary work of keeping the windows open in rooms that have grown too comfortable with must.

We're not better Muslims. We're just not tired yet. We haven't learned which questions not to ask. We still expect the religion of mercy to be, well, merciful. We still think the path to God should be open to anyone brave enough to walk it, bad hijab days and all.

Classic reverts, indeed. Coming in here with our fresh eyes and our big energy, acting like the rules matter more than the rulebooks, like the spirit matters more than the cultural sediment that's settled over it.

Somebody has to. You should give it a shot, if you haven’t. The world needs more of this.