Voice of British Muslim Women

Nooresahar Ahmad, Oxford

A few years ago, when I was in my first year of college, I attended a talk delivered by members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women’s Students Association, wherein several young women described their journey in achieving academic excellence. As I watched each of them speak, an obvious pattern emerged; a rope was woven through each of their experiences. At any obstacle or fork in the road, when faced with the question of what to study or whether to continue with their education, they had clung to this rope to help them through any and all difficult decisions. This rope was, of course, the love, wisdom, and guidance of the Khalifa of the time.  

Some months later, when I was faced with making my own difficult decisions regarding my application to university, where else should I turn but to our Khalifa, His Holiness  Mirza Masroor Ahmad (may Allah be his Helper). It is, after all, a unique privilege that we as Ahmadi Muslims have a divinely appointed Khalifa, who shoulders the burden of our hurts, hopes, and questions.

In September 2019, my family were blessed with the opportunity to have a mulaqat (meeting) with His Holiness. After a few minutes, my father introduced the question of my university application, upon which His Holiness discussed a couple of universities with me. It is still quite extraordinary to me that His Holiness —  the person who successfully planted and grew wheat in Ghana for the first time, the person who has correspondence with and gives words of comfort to thousands of people everyday, the person who spends every waking moment trying to spread peace and understanding in the world, should have taken time to have a conversation with a teenager who couldn’t even figure out where she wanted to apply to university. Yet he graciously did, in such a way that I only felt contentment and joy in my heart when speaking to him. I left the meeting that day with the advice from him that one of the universities I apply to should be the University of Oxford.

Both family members and teachers had asked in the past if I would try and apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but I wasn’t inclined to, though it was difficult to explain why. Looking back, a large part of it came from a lack of self-confidence. I was not at all convinced I would be able to get in to such a competitive university. I attended a state-funded school and college in a relatively small town in the North-East, where it was not at all the norm to send students to “Oxbridge”. It was only the words of the Khalifa which gave me the resolve to try. This is the way of our Khalifa— to remind us of our own capabilities, and to encourage us in pursuits of self-improvement which are in line with Islamic teachings.

On a February morning in 2020, I sat by my laptop and awaited an email from the university, which would tell me whether I had received a place. I had been lucky in that an array of people had supported my application— my brother had helped me write my personal statement, my English teacher, mother, and cousin had helped me prepare, and my father had spent a total of 18 hours driving me to and from Oxford. Most significantly, His Holiness had supported me with his prayers.

I don’t remember exactly how I felt that morning, except that I had a horrible flu at the time. It was with a pounding headache, and probably whilst fighting back a sneeze, that I opened the email to find that by the Grace of Allah I had been offered a place. Just like the young women at the talk I had heard months before, and like countless other men and women before that, the rope of Khilafat gently navigated me onwards.