 It is a story, it takes place when I'm actually doing my Tasmian, my recitation rather, to get ready for my Ijazah exam, and in this case it was for the Qira'at of Waddish. In Damascus the way the setup was for receiving your Ijazah and Qura'an, is you have to recite to your teacher, then your teacher takes you to their teacher, that teacher takes you to their teacher, until you reach the final, basically the top of Muqri'in of Damascus, which were five, and you have to recite to one of the five, in order to actually receive your Ijazah, that had the official khatim from Wazzarat al-Awqaf of Damascus. It's a very rigorous process, and so here I am reciting to my teacher's teacher, and I'm getting ready, just about ready to go to the sheikh and recite. So I've prepared for some time, and I'm sitting there reciting to her, and her heba, her presence, her the vibes, Masha'Allah, this amazing person, despite all of my studies, all I could get myself to read was, and so she said, Rania, Rania, Rania, you know, take a break, said okay, I was so embarrassed, Masha'Allah, she said take a break, and then she decided to like, call me this beautiful story, Masha'Allah, she decided to calm me down by telling me a story, and she said, do you know my story? Oh my God, you're a giant, Masha'Allah, and she said, no, no, no, no. I am also a professor of mathematics at the University of Damascus, and I have been, and since the 70s, the only female faculty member, and she said, did you know, I wasn't always a sheikh, I wasn't always a Muqri'a Jamia, she had all 10 recitations completed in Ijazah and all of them, and she said, I wasn't always this person, in fact, I came to Islam late, I thought I came to Islam late, Masha'Allah, and then she said, when the wave of feminism hit Damascus, so many of us were taken by it, we all took off our hijabs, and we all, you know, and she said, I just was raised in a family that wasn't at all religious, so it's not like she took off her hijab, she just was raised in a family that wasn't religious, and I thought to myself, I can do what any man does, and I'm going to study the most complicated thing, and so she chose mathematics, she said one day, the girls of the college came up to me and said, we want to have, there's very few women on campus, we want to have a woman's gathering, a woman's talk about, you know, being a woman on campus, so she said, yes, anything for women, so she met with them, she's not very busy as a professor, but she went ahead and met with them, and so she's sitting in the circle of women, so here we are at first, the discussion is just going on about academics and being a woman, and how difficult it is, and so on in education, this is, this discussion is back in the 70s, and she said, I don't know when the conversation switched from the discussion of academics to the discussion of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I don't even, because if someone had told me they were going to discuss the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I would never have showed up, I was so closed off to this idea, but as they were talking, she said suddenly something hit my heart, and it just opened, this heart that had been so close to anything related to religion, to Islam, to the Prophet anything, was so closed off, and when Hidayah is meant to come, the moment and how, and on the tongue of whom it comes with, Allahu ta'ala, and it just opened, and she said, there I was, suddenly I was hit with this wave of love for the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and I found myself listening intently, and then I realized, wait a second, this group is almost all hijabies, and she said, and do you know what I was wearing that day, and this is where the real crux of the story is, I said, yeah, and you could you possibly be wearing, she said, mini skirt, and I said, what? So in English, she repeats again, mini skirt, clearly it showed on my face, I was just, and she said, you know, Yarania, if the woman had judged me for how I looked, I never would have entered into that room, if they judged me for who, just what my outside was, I never would have been invited in to study the Dean, if they had judged me and said, ah, she's one of those women, she's one of those feminist, I don't know what woman, right, I would never have begun this journey, and there I was, fully welcomed by this group, and one thing led to another, one Halqah led to another, one teacher led to another, and that brilliance that she took to get a doctorate in mathematics, at a time when all other women had a doctorate in mathematics, imagine putting that brilliance into the memorization of Quran, she became so learned in Quran, and so accurate in all of her pronunciation, that the sheikh, the head sheikh that we receive Ijazah from, Rahimahullah, Rahimahullah, both of them, that when he would travel to go on Hajj, even though he had hundreds of students, hundreds of male students underneath him, he would choose her in his post to fill in for him, to give Ijazah on his behalf, when he would travel, that's how qualified she was, and she said, had they judged me, had they looked at me and said, oh, you can't enter the mentioned like that, sister, here's a blanket, I'm being very serious, I tell the story to you because it really resonates with me, and it resonates the kind of woman that I studied with, and it resonates that anybody, this dean is for everybody, this dean is accessible to men and to women, this dean is accessible to your daughters, this dean I'm talking to the woman and to the men, it is accessible to your sons, it is accessible to kids like me who grew up in America.