After the Shahada — A Guide for New and Returning Muslims

1. 1Entering Islam: the testimony, and nothing added to itThe testimony, the bath, the certificate
2. 2Your past, both sides of itSins erased, good kept, and Bukhari 6921
3. 3What you do not owe, and what you must settleOld worship, interest, tattoos, work
4. 4The first prayers before you know ArabicStarting before you are fluent
5. 5Your name, your lineage, your identityNames, nasab and ethnicity
6. 6Parents and relatives who are not MuslimKindness without compromise
7. 7Festivals, food and the family tableThe three circles at home
8. 8Marriage after the shahadaWhen one spouse embraces Islam
9. 9Death, inheritance and the non-Muslim relativeInheritance, duʿāʾ, the grave
10. 10Coming back: a chapter for the returning MuslimFor the Muslim returning after years
11. 11Doubts, loneliness and slipping upWhispers, lapses, company, teachers
12. 12Twelve things new Muslims are wrongly toldEach answered in two lines

You became Muslim the moment you testified, sincerely, that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad ﷺ is His Messenger. Everything else in this book comes after that sentence, and nothing in it is a condition placed in front of it.

When the Prophet ﷺ sent Muʿādh to Yemen, he gave him an order of teaching. The testimony came first. The prayer came only after people had accepted it, and zakat after the prayer:

In another version of the same instruction Muʿādh is told, “YOU are going to people of a (Divine) Book”, and the order is the same: first the worship of Allah alone, then the five prayers, then zakat (Sahih al-Bukhari 1458). Nothing is placed before the testimony: no course, no new name, no new nationality.

No imam, no witness, no mosque

Converts are sometimes told the shahada “does not count” until it is said before an imam. It does. Witnesses and a mosque “are not conditions of validity — they are simply useful so the community knows you as a Muslim and can help you with documents, marriage, or a future janazah” (qa-585, deen2u.com/qa/shahada-witnesses-mosque-validity/). If you said the testimony alone and meant it, you are Muslim. Saying it again in public later is an announcement, not a second conversion.

The bath

Two reports describe the Prophet ﷺ telling a new Muslim to bathe:

Nasāʾī’s wording puts the command after Qays had accepted Islam, so this book reads the bath as something that follows the testimony, not a gate in front of it. That reading is ours, drawn from the wording. The site does not say whether this bath is obligatory or recommended, and this book does not decide it either. How to perform a ghusl is set out at deen2u.com/ghusl/.

The certificate

A conversion certificate is an administrative document. The site’s welcome page says its printable keepsake “isn’t an official or legal document”, and “if you need a witnessed conversion certificate for administrative purposes (e.g. some countries require one for marriage registration), your local mosque or Islamic center can issue one properly” (deen2u.com/new-muslim/). Your Islam does not depend on the paper.

Your first day, in order

The shahada settles your past in two directions. The wrongs are wiped away, and the good you did is kept.

ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ came to the Prophet ﷺ to pledge his Islam, and then pulled his hand back. He wanted a condition first: that he be pardoned. The Prophet ﷺ answered him with a question:

The Qurʾān says the same to those who had not believed:

And it goes further for the one who repents, believes and acts well. The wrongs are not only forgiven, they are changed:

Sincerity, and a new account

Two things in this narration matter to you. The first is the word “sincerely”. The second is the new account that opens afterwards, in which a good deed is multiplied and a bad deed is written as one.

The good you did is kept

The charity you gave and the parents you looked after are not thrown away (deen2u.com/new-muslim/).

If you were a Christian or a Jew, there is a further promise:

A text you will meet: Bukhari 6921

You will meet this authentic narration sooner or later, so it is printed here:

On its face it qualifies the promise. The one who “does good in Islam” is not punished for the time before, while the one who “does evil in Islam” is punished for his “former and later” deeds. How the scholars reconcile this with the narrations of complete erasure is not yet set out on any page of this site, so this book does not attribute a reading to anyone. Only this much can be said without leaning on any commentary. The forgiveness in Sahih al-Bukhari 41 is tied to embracing Islam sincerely. The fresh start is a mercy, and it is not a licence. The door of repentance stays open after the shahada as well as before it (Chapter 10). If it troubles you, take it to a qualified teacher.

There is no bill for the years before Islam. There are a few things to put right from today.

No make-up of old worship

You do not owe the prayers, fasts or zakat of the years before you were Muslim. The site’s answer is plain: “you owe nothing for the years before you accepted Islam … you are not required to repay a lifetime of missed salah, Ramadan, or zakat” (qa-587, deen2u.com/qa/make-up-worship-before-islam/). It rests on the two texts in Chapter 2: “Islam wipes out all the previous (misdeeds)” (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 228) and Qur’an 8:38. Your worship begins on the day you enter Islam.

Interest you earned before

The verse that forbids riba speaks directly to the one who stops:

On this basis the site tells converts that interest already in their savings from before Islam may be kept, and that what matters is leaving interest from now on: moving away from interest-bearing accounts and debts in reasonable, deliberate steps rather than in a panic (qa-277, deen2u.com/qa/interest-money-earned-before-converting/).

Tattoos and piercings

Tattoos from before Islam are not held against you and need not be removed. A new tattoo is different: the site records that the majority of scholars across the four schools hold it impermissible (qa-276, deen2u.com/qa/tattoos-and-piercings-from-before-converting/).

A job that involves alcohol or interest

The Prophet ﷺ cursed not only the drinking of wine but the whole chain of trade around it:

The site’s answer (qa-794, deen2u.com/qa/job-involving-alcohol-pork-or-interest-after-converting/) draws the line this way. Work that directly sells or serves alcohol or pork, or draws up interest contracts, has to be left, and you should begin looking for lawful work immediately rather than waiting for a perfect replacement. Peripheral roles are a different case: a cashier in a general supermarket, or an IT or cleaning job in a bank. Scholars have differed on these, “with some permitting them out of need and others advising avoidance”, and the answer calls this a legitimate difference of opinion. Take your exact duties to a knowledgeable scholar.

How much is asked, and at what pace

The two sides are not the same. A prohibition is left completely: stop what is forbidden. A command is done as far as you are able: build up what is obligatory as fast as you truly can.

Start praying now, before you can do it well. The prayer is the first thing taught after the testimony, and nothing in the texts tells you to wait until you are fluent.

In the instruction to Muʿādh the order was the testimony, then the five prayers (Sahih al-Bukhari 1395). Nobody was told to learn a language first.

If you cannot memorise anything yet

Abū Dāwūd records it in his Book of Prayer. Said in Arabic, these are subḥāna Allāh, al-ḥamdu lillāh, lā ilāha illā Allāh, Allāhu akbar, lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā billāh. The site does not set out the scholars’ detailed rules on how these words stand in for recitation in the prayer. Learn those from a teacher while you memorise al-Fātiḥah line by line, and pray from a transliteration rather than wait (qa-268, deen2u.com/qa/praying-without-knowing-arabic-yet/).

Ease is the rule, not the exception

Why the rules came gradually

ʿĀʾishah was describing the order of revelation, not a syllabus for converts. Our application of it: faith first, then the rules a settled heart can carry. The rules are all in force for you today; what is gradual is your learning of them.

Your first week of prayer

Becoming Muslim changes your heart and your worship. It does not change your ethnicity, and it does not have to change your name.

Your first name

The Prophet ﷺ changed names only when the meaning itself was the problem:

Barrah was changed because the name claimed piety for its bearer. The second report shows a change the Prophet ﷺ offered to a man whose name he disliked, and the grandson’s remark tells you what that name carried. Neither report touches a name with an ordinary, decent meaning. The site’s answer: “Changing one’s name is not required unless the name carries a meaning contrary to Islam” (qa-083, deen2u.com/qa/do-you-have-to-change-your-name-after-converting/). Its welcome page adds that there is “no requirement to take an ‘Arabic’ name — a good meaning in any language is enough” (deen2u.com/new-muslim/).

Your father’s name

On this site the verse is applied to adoption (qa-235, qa-960) and to a wife keeping her own father’s name after marriage (qa-981). Some converts are registered with “bin Abdullah” or “binti Abdullah” in place of their father’s name. Whether this verse bears on that practice is a question the site has not answered, and this book does not answer it: take it to a qualified scholar, and the registration rules to the authority where you live.

Islam is not an ethnicity

A Chinese convert remains Chinese, an Indian convert Indian. You do not have to become Malay or Arab to be Muslim; the verse ranks taqwā, not origin.

Circumcision

The site describes circumcision as part of the fiṭrah, strongly encouraged by most scholars for male converts, but “not treated as an absolute condition for your Islam to be valid”. Your prayers and fasting are not invalidated while you plan for it, and timing is something to discuss with a doctor and a knowledgeable imam (qa-275, deen2u.com/qa/circumcision-for-men-after-converting/).

Becoming Muslim does not cut you off from your family. It asks you to be good to them. The Qurʾān covers even the hardest case, parents who push you to leave tawḥīd: refuse the sin, and keep the kindness.

And for non-Muslims in general who do not fight the believers over their religion:

What the Companions did

So you visit your mother, bring her gifts and speak gently, and you do not join her worship. The site sums this up: “Kindness in dunyā matters, firmness in dīn: the two run on separate rails and neither cancels the other” (deen2u.com/fiqh-of-minorities/). Obedience has one limit. Where a parent orders shirk or a sin you decline, gently, in that one matter, and you obey and serve them in everything that is good (qa-588, deen2u.com/qa/obeying-honoring-non-muslim-parents/).

When and how to tell them

There is no religious obligation to announce your conversion immediately. “Islam doesn’t require public disclosure for your faith to be valid,” and you may take time to choose how, when and to whom (qa-263, deen2u.com/qa/telling-family-right-after-converting/). When disapproval comes, hold your convictions, keep turning up at family dinners, and do not debate religion in the heat of an argument; many families come round once they see your character improve (qa-264, deen2u.com/qa/family-friends-disapprove-of-conversion/).

Praying for them

You may ask Allah to guide a living relative. When the people of Daws refused the call and the Prophet ﷺ was asked to curse them, he prayed for them instead:

The site permits duʿāʾ for a living non-Muslim’s guidance, health and wellbeing, but not asking forgiveness for one who died upon disbelief (qa-976, deen2u.com/qa/making-dua-for-a-non-muslim/; see Chapter 9).

In Malaysia or the UAE a convert can be a minority inside their own family while the country around them is Muslim.

The site’s chapter on Muslims living as minorities (deen2u.com/fiqh-of-minorities/) draws three circles around another faith’s festival. Written for Muslims in the West, the principle does not depend on the country:

• What a Muslim does not do: “take part in the religious substance of another faith’s festival — attending the worship service, singing its hymns … erecting its religious symbols in his own home, or greeting people with words that congratulate the religious claim itself.”
• What a Muslim can do: “remain kind, present, and gracious around the season — visit his non-Muslim parents on their day off … exchange ordinary goodwill … give gifts at a neutral time, and check on elderly non-Muslim relatives precisely when they feel loneliest.” Purely civic occasions “are worldly matters, judged by their content, not their calendar date.”
• What fills the gap: making the two Eids real occasions (deen2u.com/eid/).

Applying the circles at home

The table below is this book’s application of those three circles to occasions a convert in Malaysia or the UAE is likely to meet. It is not a ruling by any named scholar. Where your case is not clear, ask.

On greetings the site records a difference. Congratulating a rite of kufr as such is forbidden, and Ibn al-Qayyim transmitted agreement on this; some contemporary scholars permit a neutral courtesy such as “enjoy your holiday”, which the site calls “a genuine difference of opinion among people of knowledge”. All agree that a Muslim may not attend or take part in the religious rite itself (qa-856, deen2u.com/qa/ruling-on-congratulating-non-muslims-on-their-festivals/; also qa-224 and qa-700).

The family table

The verse names the People of the Book. How far it reaches to meat from households of other faiths is not set out on the site, so this book does not extend it. For any household, the site’s answer on a family kitchen where pork is cooked gives a practical rule. Pork, blood, carrion and anything slaughtered for other than Allah are forbidden. Pots and plates are not permanently impure, and washing them with water makes them clean. Keep your own pan and dishes where that is easy. You may eat vegetarian, seafood or otherwise permissible food your family prepares, as long as it contains no pork, lard, alcohol or impermissible meat (qa-957, deen2u.com/qa/eating-food-cooked-in-a-non-muslim-family-kitchen/).

What happens depends on who has embraced Islam and the other spouse’s religion. Take your own case to a scholar and to the authority that registers marriages where you live.

If you are a man and your wife is Christian or Jewish

A Muslim man may be married to a chaste woman of the People of the Book, a practising Jew or Christian. The site adds that marrying a righteous Muslim woman is better for his faith and family (qa-701, deen2u.com/qa/can-a-new-muslim-marry-a-non-muslim/). If your wife is of another religion, the site says only that a marriage existing at conversion “is a separate ruling handled case by case”. It gives no ruling beyond that, and neither does this book.

If you are a woman and your husband has not embraced Islam

The site’s fullest answer (qa-996, deen2u.com/qa/marriage-when-a-spouse-leaves-or-enters-islam/) says that when a wife accepts Islam and her husband does not, “the marriage is suspended and marital relations stop”. It then records two positions:

• The majority: if he accepts Islam before her iddah ends, the marriage continues on the original contract with no new nikah; once her iddah passes without his Islam, the marriage is dissolved.
• A number of scholars, among them Ibn Taymiyyah: the marriage remains valid as long as she has not married another, so if he later embraces Islam they may return to it.

The second view cites the case of the Prophet’s daughter Zaynab, whose husband Abu al-ʿĀṣ embraced Islam long after she had. The narrations, with the grades this site’s collection carries:

Other narrations say she was returned with a new contract. Both are graded daʿīf in the site’s collection, so this book does not rely on them. They are shown so that you know why:

The authentic versions differ on the interval, six years in one and two in another, and this book leaves them as they are. What they agree on is the first contract. Under either view the first steps are the same: stop marital relations, keep treating your husband fairly and kindly, and get qualified advice early.

Marrying after you have become Muslim

A Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man, which the site records as scholarly consensus; a Muslim man may marry a chaste woman of the People of the Book; neither may marry an idolater until they believe (qa-701; Qur’an 5:5, Qur’an 60:10, Qur’an 2:221).

Read this chapter before you need it.

Inheritance

Under the Islamic shares there is no inheritance between a Muslim and a non-Muslim. The site records the four madhhabs as holding that there is no inheritance in either direction, and a minority of early scholars as holding that a Muslim may inherit from a non-Muslim relative, though not the reverse. Most scholars, it records, permit you to accept a bequest or gift from non-Muslim relatives, since that is not Islamic inheritance (qa-791, deen2u.com/qa/inheritance-and-wills-with-non-muslim-family/).

For your own estate, your non-Muslim parents and siblings are not your Islamic heirs, but you may leave them something by bequest, up to one third:

In another version: “One-third, yet even one-third is too much” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2744). Write a will.

Praying for one who has died

The narration of the death of Abū Ṭālib, the Prophet’s uncle, gives the occasion in its own words:

In the same narration, Allah then revealed the verse above. Even the Prophet ﷺ, grieving for his mother, was given this answer:

So the duʿāʾ for forgiveness is not made. Visiting the grave is permitted. Grief is not a sin. The site also says: “do not declare a particular person to be in the Fire”. We judge only by what is outward, and the final affair belongs to Allah (qa-792, deen2u.com/qa/praying-for-a-non-muslim-relative-who-died/).

Attending the funeral

You do not take part in non-Islamic religious rites. On simply accompanying the body, or being present at the burial for the sake of family ties, the site says that scholars have differed, and it does not name the positions. Neither does this book. Ask a trustworthy scholar before the day comes (qa-792).

This chapter is for the reader born Muslim who, after months or years without prayer, wants to come back. Much of this book is yours too.

The verse addresses those who “have transgressed against their souls”, which is to say you, and its instruction is not to despair. Remember too Qur’an 25:70 from Chapter 2: for the one who repents, believes and acts well, the evil deeds are changed into good.

Years of abandoned prayer

Two positions are recorded on the site’s page on missed prayers (deen2u.com/missed-prayers/). They are set out here as the site gives them:

• The four madhhabs and the majority: the one who deliberately left a prayer until its time was gone has sinned gravely and must repent, and is still commanded to make the prayer up. If the one excused by sleep must make it up, the one who left it deliberately is more deserving of being required to.
• Held by Ibn Ḥazm, championed by Ibn Taymiyyah, and favoured by a number of later scholars: the deliberate abandoner cannot validly make up that prayer, because prayer is tied to its time. His duty is sincere repentance and increasing in voluntary prayer.

The page adds what both sides agree on: deliberately abandoning prayer until its time expires is a grave sin, and some scholars count leaving prayer entirely as an act of disbelief. That is a reason to come back today, not next month; how any particular person’s past is classified belongs to qualified scholars, not to relatives. The site’s answer for the one returning gives the practical advice common to both views: guard today’s prayers first, make up what you reasonably can alongside them, and “never let an uncountable backlog become the excuse that keeps you from praying now” (qa-754, deen2u.com/qa/making-up-years-of-missed-prayers/).

“I feel too dirty to pray”

Stopping the prayer until you feel clean enough gets the cure backwards. The prayer is what pulls a person out of sin, not a reward for having already left it (qa-899, deen2u.com/qa/too-sinful-to-pray-should-i-stop-praying/):

The site calls the voice that says you are too filthy to approach Allah “Shayṭān’s oldest tactic”. The answer to it is to pray, seek forgiveness, and keep coming back.

Where to restart

Intrusive doubts, loneliness and your own mistakes come to nearly everyone in the first year. None of them means you chose wrongly.

Whispers

Seek refuge, and stop following the chain of the thought. You may also hear a saying that the distress itself is a sign of faith. It is not quoted here, because it could not yet be checked against the site’s own collection.

Slipping up

The site answers this one warmly: slipping up is “completely normal, and honestly expected”. When you slip, the response “isn’t self-punishment, it’s a sincere ‘astaghfirullah’ … and trying again” (qa-266, deen2u.com/qa/making-mistakes-as-a-new-muslim/). One sin does not undo your Islam. Recall “the best of the sinners are the repentant” (Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 2499, graded hasan).

Loneliness

Loneliness after conversion is common and usually temporary. Go to the same mosque consistently rather than moving between mosques. Join a new-Muslim class. Be the one who starts the conversation after prayer. Keep the non-Muslim friendships that are healthy for you, because you do not have to cut everyone off to belong here (qa-272, deen2u.com/qa/coping-with-loneliness-after-converting/).

Who to take your religion from

You are not obliged to bind yourself to one madhhab. For a beginner, though, the site advises that it is valid, and usually best, to learn the practical rulings of prayer and purification from one trustworthy scholar or one madhhab-based book, so that your worship is orderly. Stick to recognised, qualified scholars and their students rather than social-media personalities, and do not let the scholars’ differences shake you: “the core of Islam that you must act on is agreed upon” (qa-953, deen2u.com/qa/do-i-have-to-follow-a-madhhab-as-a-new-muslim/).

Much of what makes the first year hard is not the religion but what people add to it.

1. You must change your name. Only a name whose meaning is contrary to Islam is changed (Sahih al-Bukhari 6192; qa-083). Chapter 5.
2. You must become Malay, or Arab. The Qurʾān ranks people by taqwā, not nation (Qur’an 49:13). Chapter 5.
3. You must be circumcised before your shahada counts. It is not a condition of your Islam’s validity (qa-275). Chapter 5.
4. You must learn Arabic before you pray. Pray now. A man who could memorise nothing was given five short phrases (Sunan Abī Dāwūd 832, graded hasan; qa-268). Chapter 4.
5. You need an imam, witnesses or a mosque. They are useful, and they are not conditions of validity (qa-585). Chapter 1.
6. You must cut off your family. The opposite: refuse the sin, keep the kindness (Qur’an 31:15; Sahih al-Bukhari 2620; qa-588). Chapter 6.
7. You must confess your past to someone. What is asked is the testimony, sincerely (Sahih al-Bukhari 1395; Sahih al-Bukhari 41); the past is wiped out (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — site reader no. 228). Nothing cited here asks you to recount it to anyone.
8. You must make up every prayer and fast from before Islam. You owe nothing for the years before you accepted Islam (qa-587). Chapter 3. (A returning Muslim’s missed prayers are a different question: Chapter 10.)
9. One sin cancels your Islam. “Every son of Adam sins, and the best of the sinners are the repentant” (Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī 2499, graded hasan; qa-266). Chapter 11.
10. You must wear hijab on the first day. The site’s answer allows building up to it at your own pace (qa-269).
11. You must perform Hajj now. Hajj is owed by “those who can afford the journey” (Qur’an 3:97), once in a lifetime; if you cannot yet afford it, it is not yet required of you (qa-958).
12. Your tattoos must come off. Tattoos from before Islam are not held against you and need not be removed; new ones are another matter (qa-276). Chapter 3.

The rule behind all twelve is the one in Chapter 3: leave what is forbidden, and do what is commanded as far as you can (Sahih al-Bukhari 7288).