Australia: Waleed Aly’s wife Susan Carland in a new interview to The Australian Women’s Weekly has opened up about her decision to conversion to Islam.
Wife of this year’s Gold Logie winner Waleed Aly said, ‘Becoming Muslim felt like coming home. It felt like a natural fit for me as a person.’
Raised a Christian, Susan at 17 started to question her religious beliefs.
“Was it because I genuinely believed it to be true or was it because it was what I was raised to believe?” she recalled.
The respected sociologist confessed that, she, at first thought Islam was a ‘barbaric, outdated and sexist religion.’
“I thought, why would anyone want to be part of a barbaric, outdated, sexist religion?”
But two years later, after comprehensive research she realised this was not the case and at the age of 19, she became a Muslim despite her mother’s vehement objections.
Carland who converted to Islam pre-9/11 told The Australian Women’s Weekly that people who are still believing that ‘Muslims are all terrorists and kill people’ have to be ‘switched on’ about the reality of Islam.
‘There’s definitely still the fear and belief among certain people that Muslims are all terrorists and kill people, or if not they are sleeper cells,’ Susan said.
“Ninety-nine per cent of what people see about Muslims in the media is negative,” she says. “As consumers, we need to be switched on.”
Carland donate $1 to charity for each hate-filled tweet she get from troll and since October last year she donated about $4000 to UNICEF along with the message:
“The needy children thank you, haters!” Carland wrote in a tweet announcing the initiative.
Mother of two children and a Monash University academic, Carland believes there is no contradiction between Islam and feminism.