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My single brothers in faith often ask me how they can meet a good woman. This is usually followed by a bitter lament: their friends don’t help them, the apps don’t work, it’s hopeless…

But if they knew the circumstances of me meeting mine, they would quickly conclude that I’m the least qualified to advise them.

At the time, I was lodging in a dank bed-sit on a rundown estate, with no hot water or heating. To wash, we’d have to boil a pan on the cooker, then carry it up two flights of stairs to the bathroom.

I had a job, but it wasn’t what we’d call a graduate or professional job. I had no car of my own, but a cheap hire car for work. The boss also had a lease car, but his was a Porsche.

My friends from university were all focussing on their careers, as trainee lawyers, diplomats and teachers. In their place, I was starting to make new friends from my daily trek to my local mosque and weekend visits to Central London.

I was in no real position then to pursue a good woman. How that happened would take everybody by surprise, including me.

It started when a brother I didn’t really know but had been greeting with salams for months spontaneously invited me to his flat for lunch just after the midday prayer at the mosque.

On a bus towards his flat, he quizzed me on everything stuffed into my brain. Politics, religion, work, how I’d became Muslim. A shared interest, because his brother had married a convert.

Queue the marriage question: what was I looking for in a wife? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. But my answers were all generic: someone kind and caring. When pushed, I said it was probably best she’d be a convert like me. Irish, perhaps, because I love the accent.

But to me, all of this was just banter. He wasn’t a close friend, just someone I regularly encountered at the local mosque and my favourite kebab shop. I was simply responding to a kind invitation to his home for lunch, attempting to avoid awkward silences.

Nevertheless, just days later, he and his wife would invite me back for dinner, in the hope of introducing me to a good woman. A hopeless clown, I turned up in Nike jogging gear. She arrived straight from work, dressed in a smart suit.

You would probably call me a lost cause. I didn’t have any of the things my brothers in faith complain all modern Muslimahs now demand. No professional career, no luxury saloon, no house, no fashion sense.

So when asked what my secret is, I am as perplexed as they are. I can only speak of what worked for me. And that wasn’t an app or strategy. It was just sincere prayer, repentance, giving charity, committing to be a better person.

So that’s always my humble, unqualified advice to single friends when they ask. Pray much and give charity. For me there is no “Yeah, but…” after that.