#shahada

I want to be a muslimah

Can you please guide me a bit?

🇬🇧 Inside the Cattolica of Stilo, one of Calabria's most famous Byzantine churches, archaeologists identified Arabic inscriptions containing phrases from the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith.

Their presence alongside Greek Christian carvings reflects the complexity of medieval Calabria, a region that belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire and stood on the frontier between the Byzantine world and Islamic Sicily.

Monks, merchants, sailors, pilgrims and travellers moved across this Mediterranean landscape, leaving behind traces that still bear witness to centuries of cultural encounters and exchange.

🇸🇾 داخل كنيسة كاتوليكا دي ستيلو، وهي واحدة من أشهر الكنائس البيزنطية في كالابريا، عُثر على نقوشٍ عربية تتضمن عبارات من الشهادة.

ويعكس وجود هذه النقوش إلى جانب كتاباتٍ مسيحية يونانية طبيعة كالابريا في العصور الوسطى، حين كانت جزءاً من الإمبراطورية الرومانية الشرقية وتقع على الحدود بين العالم البيزنطي وصقلية الإسلامية.

La ilaha illa YHWH, wa-Yasu huwa kalimatuhu al-mutajasidah

Today I woke up to someone (from the people I live with) revising Surah Al Baqara, repeating the ayah that goes: “Do you command others to do good and forget yourselves while you recite the Scripture? Will you not reason”

It felt like a sign, a slap in the face right as I opened my eyes from my sleep, but that didn’t motivate me to be better, I just thought I was doomed, will I not reason? Will I not repent?

A few hours later, I passed by this beautiful text, and, this calmed my stirred emotions -which led me nowhere-, and instead actually motivated me to remain firm and steadfast and to rush to tawbah after sin every single time.

“Jihad will continue from the time Allah sent the Messenger ﷺ until the last group fights against the Dajjal. The oppression of any oppressor will not harm them.”

(Risalah fi al-Sunnah, narration of al-Andrani and al-Sarakhsi, Tabaqat al-Fuqaha al-Hanabilah 1/329-330)