 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, in the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most kind. I wanted to take a few minutes of your time today to say Ramadan Mubarak, may Allah bless us all with a spiritual and blessed month. Our fastings be accepted, our Ibadats be raised to heaven every single night, and we be kind of our hearts and mindful of our tongues. In our series to introduce some of the converts in the recent years, MCC is trying to focus every Saturday on one person who has impacted one of us in our personal way or in our mosque. And today I have the pleasure of introducing you to one of my favorite people, Georgia. So Georgia plays many roles in my life. She's my mentor because although she's much younger than I am, she has taught me that once you set your mind to be guided towards Allah swt, you find ways towards Him. And He opens doors of ease and mercy and raises you. She inspires me to be a better Muslim every day and I hope her story will inspire you as well. Georgia is a daughter to me. She's a part of my family and we have grown to appreciate and this Ramadan we are very sad that we don't get to see her just yet. We're hoping that by Eid we will be able to visit with her and she can come over. And more than anything, Georgia is a friend with whom I giggle and we share lots of common things about books and shows and what crazy stuff we have been up to. So without any further ado, I will introduce you to Georgia and ask her to give us a little background on who she is. So let's see, general background about me. I grew up in the Bay Area. I'm going to college right now for creative producing for film and television and I converted officially at MCC two and a half years ago, I believe. So yeah, that's a quick background about me. What's your passion, Georgia? I'll tell everybody about that because I think it's very fascinating. I love writing and producing like TV and films. I grew up watching movies and movies have always been a really big part of my life. And so I just, I love telling stories, however, whatever form and representation is also really important to me. So I hope to be able to write and tell lots of different people's stories so people can see themselves on screen. And I'm very excited for Georgia to step into this field. I think Muslim representation by a female is definitely needed and we're very excited to soon see it's Georgia's name and go to her on. So please keep her in your duos. So today, because it's Ramadan, it's actually first of Ramadan right after Juma Salah that we are sitting to chat. And so Georgia, I just wanted to ask you, what was your first Ramadan like? What was good? What was hard? You know, tell us a little bit about your first experience. Yeah. So my first Ramadan that like I actually fasted for was three years ago. So when I was a senior in high school, I had been kind of studying Islam for about a year. But the previous Ramadan, I just didn't really know what to do. So I hadn't done much. So my first official one, it was still before it took Shahada, but that's when I fasted for the whole month. And that was it was it was good. And it was also very hard because I was not connected to any community yet. I didn't I hadn't really found a masjid that I felt kind of comfortable and at home in. So it most of most of the month was just me fasting by myself in my house. And it was it was it was senior year and it was graduation. It was all the senior year things that were happening. And so I still managed to like fast through all of those. And my friends were very, very supportive. They I think made me feel very they they never, you know, made fun of me or anything for fasting. They were always very encouraging. They always would count me down until my grip time. Like they would make a really big thing out of it and like, oh, yeah, she can finally eat. And it was just kind of a joke that like whenever we would go somewhere to the movies or we'd go to an event, I would just have a massive amount of food in my bag. So that when my group time hit, I just straight up brought out like a tough way of like rice and beans and like a massive water bottle. And it's just like wherever we are, it doesn't matter. I'm just going to I'm going to start eating now because I'm hungry. But yeah, so my I even though I didn't have Muslim community, my my close friends, all of whom were non-Muslim or super supportive and super helpful and kind of made made that part of Ramadan fun. And I think it's near the end of that Ramadan that I actually reached out to MCC East Bay. And that is when I got connected with Munir and Humira. And so that was that was really great. And I wish I had done that sooner. But yeah, just to remind everybody that Georgia was not a converted Muslim. She had done tons of research. The first time I met her, my I was blown away by how much Mashallah she knew. And in my heart, it was like she's already a Muslim. She she practices like like anybody who has was born into it or who has done a lot of research into it. She was doing Salwa. She was she knew a lot of the all the Irkans. She was she had fasted this whole month all alone without any support. That was just amazing to me. And I think that was our first meeting and our first connection. And since then, it has been a little bond that I hope to continue will flourish as time goes on. So also another thing that was that since then, what about your second experience in Ramadan or after converting? How did you feel was the community supportive of you? Did you feel that your needs were being met? Or what would you like us as a community to improve upon? Yeah, I think I think the big difference for me between like my first Ramadan and the next ones were not even not even really taking the Shahada that made that much of a difference, but me seeking and like kind of attaching myself to a masjid because before I mean because I was a teenager, I didn't have a driver's license. You know, it's hard to get places anyway. But before I just didn't have a community, so once I found one like MCC that I felt comfortable in, then it was like, oh, okay, I need to like look at all the events they're doing and see if I can make any of these. And also going off to college, there was some student association, so there are a couple things, a couple of events that we had. But I think for converts, how masjids can accommodate them, I would say is just be really open-minded and easy going. That it's really hard too fast. It's really hard to pray five times a day and like a convert might want to fast Ramadan, even if they've only been studying for six months and they might not even have enough time to pray for six months and they might not even have all five prayers down yet, but just to kind of meet them where they're at, which I think MCC East Bay and a lot of mosques are good at, but just making sure it's community members. You're not like, oh, it's your first Ramadan. Well, you're going to pray in the mosque every night, you're going to go to Taht-O-Wee and like I didn't even know what Taht-O-Wee was. I don't think I prayed Taht-O-Wee until like my second Ramadan, which is good because people can start Ramadan because so many born Muslims are excited about all the Sunnah that you can do during the month. It's like, well, you got to slow down with converts, just help them focus on the farth because they don't even understand all of that yet sometimes. So yeah, and just knowing that if there are converts in your community, just being proactive about reaching out to them and inviting them to iftars and especially Eid, Ramadan can be really lonely as a convert, but Eid especially can be just so sad when you don't have, like I always threw an Eid party with kind of my friends and my family, none of them Muslim, but I would just make food and just like put up decorations and but it's just different when you're able to have just a Muslim like family to celebrate it with. And so that was really nice that I've been able, after I met Humair, I've been able to celebrate all the Eids with her and that just makes a world of a difference because it's, you know, you finally get that celebration, you get that community and kind of feeling like you're really, you know, you get to experience with all the other like born Muslims talk about because a lot of born Muslims are like, Ramadan is all about Tarawee and then Eid and we're going out and it's all like fun and converts. We're like, oh, we don't know, we don't know what you're talking about. So just being proactive, I think and reaching out to them because I know I was really shy and really hesitant to reach out or to ask for help or anything because I didn't really know what a Masjid could offer. Those are some valuable gems that you have sent our way and I hope that the community, not only of Pleasanton but other mosques do embrace that and are more welcoming and connect converts to families, you know, so that they have their own little, they have a bigger community and then they have a smaller family that they can connect to, call upon, go break bread with and stuff like that. It has been an immense pleasure having you have read with us since then. And so one of the things I wanted to ask you was now that it's, you have spent three Ramadan's on and off at MCC, you know, at school you were not here throughout all Ramadan last two years. So what was your favorite memory? What, you know, you look back and you go like, wow, that was nice. Yeah, I thought, I had to think a lot about this question because I was like, oh my gosh, I have to run through everything but I think what clearly stands out in my mind is last year Ramadan was finally like kind of during the school year, it'd been mainly in summer but last year kind of half of it was in the school year and so my school's Muslim Student Association put on just a massive iftar for kind of the whole university Muslim community and that was probably just the best experience because I like, it was an iftar where I finally like knew everyone because even going to MCC, going to all their events, mashallah, just great events but just because I am not able to spend a lot of time at MCC I just don't know people that well, especially people my age, I just don't know them. So last year when I had them going to MSA for two years so I really knew most of the people who were in it, I knew a lot of the Muslim professors and so to actually be able, that was only my third or fourth community iftar ever that I'd been to in three Ramadan's and so to be able to go to that and to be able to say hi to everyone and to everyone who's talking to you and praying together and just eating together, it was so fun and I finally kind of understood like, oh this is what born Muslims get like every night because they have all their family over and they have their friends and they go to IHOP with their friends at 5am and like all of that experience that born Muslims have told me about I was like, oh like this is it, this is fine this is really cool. So yeah, that was definitely a very special moment, yeah. Well that does sound like a lot of fun and I wish you were able to do that this year too and I was hoping that we would not be in shelter in place and we would get to do some kiams together and go for, you know, Sahur maybe to Mirchi or IHOP this year but he was like, we will not be able to but inshallah let's hope that a loveless is us with more Ramadan's together and we can do that. Another question that was put forward to me to ask you is that what advice do you have to the converts? Some of the converts that we have in our community are very, very new. There might be just a few weeks, a couple of months this might be their first Ramadan. What advice would you like to give them? I would say the main thing is to just like go easy on yourself like don't beat yourself up too much. If you've never fasted before it's really hard so if you don't make every single one like that's okay it might feel, you might feel like you're you know not comparing to born Muslims. If you know born Muslims you might feel like you're kind of like failing or not meeting a certain standard but like really go easy on yourself first Ramadan. And like I said before like don't worry about tadawi, don't worry about any of the sunnahs just focus on like if you're not there yet with the five prayers then try to get there fast as you're able to do lots and lots of research about like what foods are the most helpful. Because sometimes born Muslims the foods they eat during Ramadan are not the best for fasting. So if you're fasting with born Muslims they might be like you know breaking their fast with like fried food you know like lots of samosas and stuff like that and if you've never fasted before and you're not used to it fried food can wreck your stomach. So keep that in mind like do your own research and like be you know eat very simple simple foods like soup, oatmeal you know keep it simple easy on your stomach. And also be honest that you're fasting with whoever you're living with whether it's your family whether whoever it is they're going to figure out that something's up and it's best if it's safe for you to do so to just be like yeah I'm actually I'm doing this I'm fasting. Yeah that's and it's also a good way to kind of start introducing the fact that you are Muslim to other people it's kind of a good segue because there's never really a time if someone has known you for a long time for you to be like pop this new thing on them unless you look differently. So Ramadan can be a really good way for at your work or at your home to be like hey like I'm not going to be eating doing some like hours and this is why um but yeah just go easy on yourself. Tell me how is this Ramadan coming along with shelter in place being at home still have school full-on finals coming up you know not being able to come to the mosque how are you handling all of those those stresses? I'm the law I mean shelter in place definitely not ideal but I mean I've had Ramadan's like this before so like this isn't super different for me you know so it's yeah I think it'll it is I wish of course that I could go to the masjid more now that I have a driver's license I can drive I could have gone anytime I was thinking about that I was like ah um but it's okay um yeah so I think I think this Ramadan is gonna be it's gonna be different for all of us but not too different um for me and I think I'm just trying to focus on yeah just going going easy on myself. Are there any lectures or any programs that you're excited to listen to during this Ramadan? I made a playlist of lectures my goal inshallah was to kind of listen to like one lecture every day from like a bunch of different um places but this Ramadan I'm actually all my lectures are ustadas and sheikhas so they're all women that I'm listening to and I really sometimes if you don't know the scholars you really have to dig through YouTube to find these but I think part of like the last year I have had I've definitely struggled with my faith and and feeling a little bit disconnected and I think one way as sisters that we can reconnect is you know being able to listen to female scholars and that because I think for any women converts when I was converting I listened to kind of all like the internet famous like sheikhs and all of that which is not a bad thing but I got a very one very specific point of view of Islam and it was always from men's point of view and so I think I'm trying this Ramadan to really connect with kind of the female scholarship that exists in our faith because it does exist and it's awesome mashallah so I would really recommend any female converts to you know look into talks with women quran recitation by women that's also something that can be challenging to find but it's out there it exists um one of my favorite ustadas mariam amir abrahimi I'm going to pronounce your last name wrong you're pronouncing it right okay okay yeah she she's um and a scholar from uh southern california and uh she's just amazing and she is having this Ramadan uh like movement to encourage women to like post videos of themselves for citing quran so that you know the next generation of women knows that the quran is is open to them it's for them to um yeah so she's she's a really cool person that I've been following and so she's so energetic she is so energetic I've been able to meet her once in person and listen to her speak and she's she's just amazing very talented oh mashallah how about sharing that list with us you know because I also struggle with that thing thing that as you said that um it's very easy to alhamdulillah there are many resources to find um in our times now this time asked me when 15 years ago or 20 years ago when I was a mom with young kids it was very hard to find resources that you could sit home and still be inspired by these great scholars male or female and female scholarship was not very prominent at that time at all so we are very blessed that we live in these times where through internet and instagram and facebook and zoom we we have access to mashallah scholars from all around the world so I would love for you to share that with me um and with that note I just wanted to say we miss you terribly we hope to see you soon even if we can social distance appropriately and so I hope we can do that um just this morning we were discussing that um Eid we have to somehow manage to see each other and and um at least wish one another I wish you a blessed Ramadan Georgia and um let me know if you need anything and let mcc meneer myself we are all here at the service of anybody who needs just a year to listen to just a helping hand take care that is