My first encounter with the Tablighi Jama’at took place more than two decades ago, when I was still uncertain of the career path I would take in the years to come.

On the morning of the second-to-last day of the month of Ramadan in 1986, I woke up on the cold, hard floor of the mosque in Dewsbury, England. Recovering from a bout of influenza and being somewhat under the weather as a result of nearly a month of fasting, I was not in the best of spirits. As I turned, I saw beside me a figure who bore an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus. He was a portly figure, decked out all in red and of ample girth and cheerful countenance, and he smiled upon me. His name – or rather, the name he adopted – was Brother Bismillah, and he said to me: ‘It is always difficult at the beginning, but don't worry: it gets easier over time.’ Brother Bismillah was an English Muslim convert and throughout my stay in Dewsbury was my minder, bringing me bread and dhal to eat when the time came to break our fast, and plying me with medicine whenever fever broke out. He told me he had a soft spot for Malaysians as he was married to one, and that his wife and daughters were living in the northern state of Kelantan in Malaysia. Being in a sea of strangers – nearly all of them South Asian Muslims who spoke mostly Hindi or Urdu – his was the only voice that gave comfort to me then. And being the offspring of a single-parent family, his constant reminder that ‘you are like a son to me’ was balm to my fragile nerves, too.

I was nineteen years old and in Europe for the first time, alone and about to begin my studies. Having left home for the first time, I found myself in an England that was alien and strange to me. Despite having read copious amounts of literature and having committed to memory the works of Dickens and Conan Doyle, this was an England that was unfamiliar and new.