When My Certainties Were Shaken
A University Story About Faith, Boundaries, and the Human Heart
Sometimes the people who enter our lives for a semester leave us with questions that stay for years.
There are some university stories that become funny memories.
There are others that become lessons.
And then there are a few that quietly disturb everything you thought you knew.
This is one of mine.
Some details have been changed, including names and circumstances, because this is not a story about exposing anyone. It is a story about what happened inside me when my certainty met a reality I had never seriously considered before.
Three Girls, Three Different Ways of Covering
In my first semester at university, three of us were roommates.
All three of us observed some form of modesty, but not in exactly the same way.
Maryam observed strict religious hijab and careful boundaries.
I had been wearing an abaya since school and usually covered myself at university as well, although I never claimed to observe the strictest form of religious hijab.
Our third roommate, Hira, was what I jokingly called a dupatta person. She dressed modestly and covered herself, but her practice was different from ours.
We were different in our understanding of modesty, but we were close.
Then there was Ayaan.
Ayaan was a student in our class who was treated differently by many of the other students.
People avoided sitting beside Ayaan.
Some boys would not speak to Ayaan.
Some openly made Ayaan uncomfortable.
We noticed.
And perhaps because we could not tolerate watching someone sit alone simply because others had decided they were different, Ayaan gradually became part of our group.
There were five of us eventually.
We ate together.
We travelled together.
We studied together.
And when no one wanted to share a seat with Ayaan on the bus, one of us usually did.
Sometimes that person was me.
At the time, none of us thought much about it.
We were simply being kind.
Or at least, that is what we thought.
The Afternoon That Changed Everything
It was May.
The kind of May when the classroom feels like an oven after the lecture ends.
One afternoon, instead of immediately leaving, several girls remained behind. We were sitting together, eating snacks and talking about completely ordinary things.
Then Ayaan mentioned someone.
A boy from our class.
I'll call him Hamza.
Ayaan had developed feelings for him.
But Hamza did not reciprocate them.
According to Ayaan, Hamza was often cold and sometimes harsh.
Ayaan began crying.
We immediately became protective.
Eight girls were sitting there, and suddenly everyone had an opinion.
How could he behave like that?
Why can't he simply be respectful?
Everyone deserves basic human dignity.
I remember feeling angry on Ayaan's behalf.
Then Maryam and I tried to comfort Ayaan.
We spoke from the framework we understood.
We told Ayaan that if Ayaan identified as a woman, then perhaps the same boundaries of non-mahram interaction should be considered.
We talked about modesty.
We talked about avoiding unnecessary closeness.
We talked about attraction and religious boundaries.
We thought we were giving advice.
We thought we understood the situation.
Then Ayaan quietly said something that made the entire room fall silent.
“I am not a woman. I am physically male. I simply experience myself differently.”
And suddenly, nobody knew what to say.
The Silence That Followed
I remember the atmosphere more vividly than the exact words.
The room changed.
The girls who had been talking seconds earlier became quiet.
Maryam adjusted her veil.
Someone looked down.
Someone else stopped eating.
And I remember thinking:
What exactly have we been assuming all this time?
The strangest part was that nothing visible had changed.
It was still the same person.
The same person who had travelled with us.
The same person who had cried in front of us.
The same person whose hand we had held when they were upset.
The same person whose tears we had wiped.
Yet our understanding of the relationship had suddenly changed.
And that frightened us.
When Compassion and Conviction Collided
That evening, we talked for hours.
Then we cried.
Not because Ayaan had suddenly become a different person.
But because our understanding of the situation had changed.
We began remembering small moments.
A hand placed on someone's shoulder.
A shared seat.
A hug.
A comforting gesture.
Things that had once felt completely innocent now made us question our own boundaries.
And somewhere between guilt, confusion, religious concern and compassion, another question emerged:
Can I disagree with someone's choices without forgetting their humanity?
That question was much harder than the first one.
The Person Behind the Label
Later, we learned more about Ayaan's circumstances.
Ayaan's family did not fully accept them.
There were financial difficulties.
There was distance from home.
There were people and organizations that provided support.
Ayaan had found a social circle where they felt accepted.
I cannot tell you everything about those circumstances because I only knew what Ayaan told us.
And perhaps that is another lesson I learned:
A personal story is not always enough evidence to explain an entire social phenomenon.
It is easy to see one organization, one friendship, one individual, one social circle—and construct an entire theory around it.
Reality is usually more complicated.
What About Faith?
This is where my story becomes personal.
I am a person of faith.
My beliefs are not something I can simply put aside whenever life becomes complicated.
At the same time, university taught me something uncomfortable:
Having a religious conviction does not automatically make me an expert on another human being.
I can believe something is religiously wrong.
I can maintain boundaries.
I can choose what I participate in.
I can disagree.
But none of those things require me to humiliate another person.
And none of them give me permission to pretend that I know every detail of another person's inner life.
Faith demands conviction.
But perhaps it also demands humility.
Then There Was Hamza
Ironically, the person who became part of this story was the same person I had initially disliked.
Hamza.
I had watched him reject Ayaan harshly.
At the time, I thought:
Why can't you simply be kind?
Then one day, during a class gathering, Hamza quietly moved his chair away from Ayaan and closer to me.
I became irritated.
I said something like:
“Whatever your personal feelings are, you don't have to be so harsh. Ayaan is still a human being.”
Hamza looked at me and said something I never expected.
“The argument of the heart is not always the highest argument. Allah's command is higher.”
My name happens to be Qalb, so perhaps the sentence stayed with me partly because of that.
But mostly, it stayed because I understood what he meant.
Not necessarily that every action of his was automatically justified.
Not that kindness was unnecessary.
Not that people should be treated badly.
Rather, he was telling me:
Personal feelings cannot become the ultimate authority over everything.
That sentence has remained on my phone wallpaper ever since.
But I Also Learned Something About Certainty
For a long time, I wanted a simple answer.
Who was right?
Who was wrong?
What exactly was happening?
Why did people behave this way?
Why did certain organizations become involved?
Why did some students support Ayaan while others rejected Ayaan?
Why did attraction, identity, faith and friendship become tangled together?
But life rarely gives us neat answers.
And I became suspicious of people who seemed to have them too quickly.
The internet is full of people who can explain an entire civilization in five paragraphs.
Writers who turn complicated human beings into characters.
Intellectuals who use enormous words to make simple ideas sound profound.
Religious people who sometimes speak with certainty about matters they have barely investigated.
Activists who sometimes reduce every disagreement to oppression.
And ordinary people like me who can become convinced that our limited experience represents the whole world.
Perhaps the wiser position is sometimes:
“I know what I believe. But I also know the limits of what I know.”
What Happened to Our Group?
Eventually, our group changed.
We became more distant from Ayaan.
Not because we suddenly hated Ayaan.
But because we became conscious of boundaries that we had previously not considered.
Some friendships continued.
Some did not.
Ayaan found other friends.
There were still girls in our class who spent time with Ayaan, went out together, ate together and remained close.
Life continued.
Lectures continued.
Assignments continued.
Exams came.
And the university moved on as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
But for me, something had.
The Question I Still Carry
Years later, I don't remember every lecture from that semester.
I don't remember every assignment.
I don't remember every classroom discussion.
But I remember that May afternoon.
Because it taught me that people are more complicated than the labels we put on them.
It also taught me that compassion and conviction do not necessarily have to destroy each other.
You can maintain your religious boundaries without treating another person as less than human.
You can disagree without mocking.
You can say no without cruelty.
You can protect your own boundaries without becoming hateful.
And perhaps most importantly:
You can be certain about your faith while remaining humble about your knowledge of other people.
“What About the Future?”
I still have questions.
What happens when institutions, families, social media, politics, religion and personal identity all collide?
How should educational institutions handle these complicated questions?
How should parents prepare their children?
How should religious communities respond?
How should governments regulate organizations without turning vulnerable people into political symbols?
How do we protect young people from exploitation while also protecting their dignity?
These are not questions that can be answered by slogans.
They require scholarship.
They require evidence.
They require responsible religious discussion.
They require serious policy conversations.
And perhaps most of all, they require us to stop pretending that every complicated human problem has a one-line answer.
The Lesson I Took Home
I entered university thinking I knew the difference between right and wrong.
I left that experience realizing something more uncomfortable:
Knowing what you believe and understanding every person you encounter are two very different things.
My faith still matters to me.
My boundaries still matter to me.
My understanding of modesty still matters to me.
But now, when I encounter someone whose life is unfamiliar to me, I try to remember that I am looking at a human being before I am looking at a category.
And when I disagree, I try to remember something else:
My heart can have an opinion.
Society can have an opinion.
Writers can have an opinion.
Intellectuals can have an opinion.
Institutions can have an opinion.
But none of these opinions should make us careless with human dignity.
And for me, the sentence that remains is still the one on my wallpaper:
“The argument of the heart is not always the highest argument.”
Perhaps growing up is not learning to have fewer questions.
Perhaps it is learning which questions deserve more humility.
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