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Probably in common with many people, one of my family’s hypotheses when I took up this path was that there was a girl. In their mind’s eye, I had fallen in love with a Muslim girl and had thus converted to placate her family. An amusing theory, I must say, because there was no girl at all; in fact I was more or less a recluse in the months leading up to my testimony of faith.

Mulling over the whole episode five years later, while writing her thesis for her Masters in theology, my mother made reference to this, recalling that after leaving college I wrote a novel about a Muslim girl. It was therefore theorised that my adoption of the Muslim faith was somehow related, undoubtedly discussed at length in my absence, as my family tried to come to terms with my actions.

Of course, not only was that pure supposition, but also a complete red herring, because the protagonist she had in mind was in fact a young Sikh woman. Though once considered an infantile product of my imagination, I guess that in grasping to explain why and how their quiet and shy son had embraced the religion of extremism — so imagined — they had had to consider that the novel was in fact based on real events.

But those events were no more real than my youthful crush on the American actress Julia Roberts. The only real events it described were my very confused feelings for a girl who considered me a total idiot, and the warning, just when I had mustered the courage to speak to her, that her brother would break my back if I didn’t clear off. All that remained of the story was a justification to myself as to why it was a really good thing that I had heeded the threat, namely that I would have completely ruined her life.

In short, the first five chapters told a story that was very vaguely, sort of based on a complete misreading of actual events — girl thinks boy is total idiot, idiot boy misinterprets everything — and the remaining twenty-one were a very thorough exploration of why it was a jolly good thing that this was all that had happened. Normal people would have just spoken to a mate about their feelings and got over it, but having no friends to speak of and burdened by heavy depression, I counselled myself by writing a very crap novel, which for reasons unknown, I then self-published, printing a handful of copies.

Inexplicably, I then let others read it, as if I momentarily believed I had written something worthy of attention, impressed with myself for having written my first novel at the age of eighteen. Of course it was just embarrassing, exposing all my family and friends to my extremely immature thoughts and opinions. Only one acquaintance dared tell me the truth, recognising the two lead characters in the early chapters. “But, mate,” he laughed, “that girl absolutely hated you!”

Yep, so oops. If my family thought they were going to mine that novel as a historical document, capable of explaining how and why I had become Muslim, they were sorely mistaken. All that it revealed was that I was suffering from serious mental illness when I left college, obsessed about things that both had and had not happened. If they had wanted to understand what had really happened, they could simply have spoken to me about it, but in truth we never talked about anything. That’s why I took up writing.

If they had wished to understand what was going on, they just needed to reflect on what I had tried to talk about over the preceding years. The first, that conversation I had tried to have when I returned from a Christian youth festival on the Isle of Iona aged fifteen, declaring that I no longer believed in God. Standing on a mountaintop there I had in fact declared the first part of the Muslim declaration of faith — la ilaha — there is no god. For the next few years I would struggle with agnosticism, mostly believing in the Creator but always rejecting the notion that Jesus was God. There, the second part — illallah — except God.

I spoke about those matters openly. I articulated those thoughts to anyone who would listen, but nobody was listening. I would continue to go to church on my parents’ insistence, but would always sit at the back, refuse communion and utter only the first line of the Nicene Creed: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.”

I wrote about my doubts in my report on my forty-day stay at a theological college in Tanzania in 1996. I’d broach the subject throughout my first and second year at university. I was reaching out for guidance from my family continuously. But nobody was listening to anything. Nobody saw my unceasing depression. Nobody saw that I felt a complete misfit, so completely alone. Nobody paid attention to anything at all.

No one could comprehend that my journey of faith was genuine, borne of a decade of experiences leading up to the moment I uttered my shahada. All they could imagine was that I had either fallen in love with a brown girl, or that I wanted to fall in love with a brown girl, or that by adopting a faith imagined to be populated by brown girls, I thought I would eventually end up with one. Wow, that does sound racist. Let’s hope nobody articulated that hypothesis out loud.

No, but surely it was about a girl? It had to be. Well if it was, only in a very indirect sense. True, there was the girl who walked home the same direction as me years earlier, with whom I hoped to become friends, to whom I wrote the most cringeworthy letter known to humanity in my first year of college. This played a part, because it led to my utter humiliation, making me the laughing stock of the entire student body. My humiliation fed into my unceasing anxiety and depression, which in turn fed into the narrative which followed me around for the remainder of my time there.

So yes, it was about a girl — or girls — in that my interactions with them had led me to rockbottom. It was about a girl in as much as I had misread glances and had repeatedly made a fool of myself, leading to months of ill-feeling and intense discomfort. It was about a girl in as much as I had got myself into an emotional tangle, in which I could no longer separate fact from fiction, which led on into the darkest days of my life.

It was about a girl in as much as encountering practising Muslim women at university reached into my soul and spoke to me of a better way. About a girl in as much as I learnt to lower my gaze. About a girl in as much as I shared study space in the university library with young women whose character exuded peace and tranquility, so distinct from my perpetual awkwardness and inner angst.

But about a romantic relationship? No, I’m sorry. There were no romantic relationships while I was at university. Female friends? Yes, plenty of them, but none who thought of me as anything other than a quirky, eccentric mate. One was a well-known classical Indian dancer. Another was a mature student from Denmark, with whom I’d often explore questions of belief.

No, I’m afraid my journey of faith was exactly how I had always explained it. I was seeking the Oneness of God. True, that exploration was accelerated in many ways by my long-term inner despair, dealing with feelings of rejection and isolation. It is true that I pursued the One to counteract the loneliness I felt back then. So about a relationship in that sense, I suppose: about the absence of wholesome relationships with my fellow human-beings. But no, there was no one special in my life back then.

It would be another three years before I was introduced to my beloved. Funnily enough, she had embraced the faith herself at the exact same time as me, but though our paths unknowingly crossed many times, we would not meet until 2001. Of course, when I suddenly announced out of the blue that I was getting married, the hypothesis about the fabled girl was back on the table.

My brother drove four hours down the motorway to talk me into submission, walking me round and round Kew Gardens, in the hope of convincing me of the error of my ways. There was that fictional girl again, still imagined as the reason for my conversion. So much prepostrous nonsense and supposition, writing my heartfelt beliefs off as late-onset adolescent rebellion, deployed to upset my entire family.

Had I not considered that if the Archbishop of York found out that I was performing my Muslim prayers in the vicarage, my mother could lose her job? Why on earth are you subjecting yourself to an arranged marriage and not meeting a girl the normal way like everyone else? And what are you going to do if the marriage doesn’t work out? I suppose if your faith asked you to blow yourself up, you’d do that too, would you? Oh, and why are there so many Muslims in prison?

On and on and on, all afternoon long, exploring every single nonsense hypothesis anyone had come up with to account for my declaration of faith three years earlier. None of them anything to do with my pursuit of the One. No understanding at all that I was a genuine seeker, walking the path of faith because it was my refuge. No, just a rehash of the works of V. S. Naipaul, disassembled and reassembled in the wrong order.

More of the same followed on the weekend I was summoned up north to explain myself. After hours of conversation supposed to give me second thoughts — which it did — I meekly said, “But don’t you at least want to see her photo?”

And so it was that I produced the album she had lent to me for the weekend and passed it on. And there, pure comedy: “Oh, she’s white!”

I felt sorry for having burst that bubble, wherein it was thought that the whole business was the culmination of a mysterious clandestine relationship I had written about five years earlier, about a young woman who wasn’t even Muslim.

I’m sorry, but it was never about a girl. A few girls unknowingly helped carry me here, in a very indirect roundabout kind of way. A few other girls helped inspire me, seeding a yearning for a better way to live my life. To both sets of girls, I am incredibly grateful. The first, for showing me the error of my ways. The second, for setting me the best of examples.

There was a girl after that. A girl who helped keep me on the straight and narrow. Yes, that girl I was introduced to on the edge of Southall three years after taking up this path. Okay, I concede that it was about that girl, in as much that our Creator had made sure we both uttered our shahada on the same bank holiday weekend in 1998, and that we both then later settled in Ealing, and that we would end up with mutual friends who would think to introduce us.

It was about a girl in as much that I had prayed for a righteous companion while I was a student in Scotland the previous year, enjoying Turkish breakfast with an overseas student’s family one morning. Their hospitality touched my heart so profoundly that my dua that day was that I be granted a wife just like my friend’s. As always, my Lord came up with the goods, surprising me once again one year later.

Yep, for that evening in Southall, I discovered not only was the young woman I was introduced to Turkish — all I had known up until then was that she was a convert like me — but she had the same name as that lady in Scotland! She also bore an uncanny resemblance to Julia Roberts, that longterm youthful crush of mine.

So okay, I concede, it was about a girl, just in a completely different order. The One became my priority. Seeking faith and a path of reform was my prerequisite. My intentions had to be purified. My heart had to be made sound. First I had to learn to make my intentions solely for the One. Only then would the One introduce me to the one. Only then would it be about a girl.